Draft Evaluation Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Final Cut Express
iMovie
Blogger
Using other blogs for info
Photoshop
Sharing our rough cuts on YouTube and Facebook
Watching videos online
Websites, Forums and fansites
How has these technolgies made our video 'as good as' professional music videos that have been produced?
Show link lists

Draft Evaluation Question 2

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Similarities within our products:
- Effects with colour, we have used black and white shots in our digipak and the music video itself to show flashbacks of the relationship which is being portrayed in the video.

- Layering has been used in the digipak especially on the back in which the band shot from behind has been added as layer and moved back so it looks like the band are actually walking away.

- The same font is used on my magazine ad to my digipak and both have been outlined in silver and purple glitter so that the convention of the texts standing out is anchored.

- Photos encorporated on the digipak have also been used on the magazine ad so that the two texts related we also hoped to use shots from filming the performance aspects to link the three texts.

- White swirl fonts have been used within the digipak centre aswell as on the front of the magazine advertisement showing the release dates and Twitter and Facebook information.


Differences within..
products:
- As our music video has more potential and time the shot variety is much greater than in our other two texts.

Draft Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt form your audience feedback?

Defining audience:

- 15-24 core audience.

- General fans of the Genre and Destiny's Child are our secondary audience.

- Audiences may be interested in Romantic comedy films.

- Fans of mass and mainstream music such as R&B, Hip hop and Rap.

- Audience may read magazines such as More, Now and Heat.

- The male audiences have been brought in as we have applied the male gaze theory to our music video dressing our band members in short shorts, low cut tops and tight leggings a swell as high heels.

To get audience feedback we have used a variety of methods such as posting our rough cut music video on Facebook, Destiny's Child forums/fan sites, YouTube and getting feedback from the class. Feedback from face book and the class were all from people within our target audience age range although some were male. Before we posted this rough cut we knew there was a series of problems with the footage which we knew the audience would pick up on but their viewing brought up points we had not yet recognised including a lack of shot variety and certain clips not making sense although we already knew this and were behind so were under pressure it showed used us how receptive the audience are. We dismissed some feedback which we did not agree with such as having a shaky shot at the beginning purely because we didn't think we would have enough time to re shoot but then realised it was essential as it did look rubbish and re-shot the footage.

- I will target each of the three texts individually.

- 1 draft and 1 roughcut - expain all of the feedback points made and what we needed to do.

- Before and after shots of the video after we have made changes from any negative feedback.

- Show when we ignored or disagreed with any of the feedback instead of just not making changes.

- An overview of all the feedback we have recieved and what was most useful.

- How important or limited we thought the feedback was.

- Is our final cut all of our work or did we change vast amounts of it due to audience feedback.

Draft Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

THE TASK: to produce a portfolio of three productions including a music video (main text) plus two ancillary texts:- a digipak and a magazine advertisement for the digipak. We have all come up with our music video ideas independantly.

Magazine Ads:

The band name is shown in bold text to make it stand out, this is key if the background of the advertisement is busy as the audience want to know what the ad is as soon as possible before losing interest. A good example of this is the Destiny's Child cover for Rolling Stone magazine.
They provide realise dates for tours and CDs. We found a advert advertising the fan club and releasing tour dates if readers signed up to a particular fan site.
Newspapers or magazines often give the products a star rating out of 5.
Band information and band websites, so people know where they can find out more information on the band.
Record label information and a copyright statement.
Band image or cd image.
Websites related to the band are shown such as there Twitter name and Facebook page.
The singer or band dominates the advertisement. Female bands or solo singers in particular often go into advertising beauty and cosmetics (Beyonce releases perfume scents annually aswell as being a Loreal girl advertising a new lipstick shade)

Digipak:

Made from paper board which is recyclable and therefore more environmentally friendly than a CD.
The band name is usually clear on the front unless there is a symbol representing the band.
Band image or print on the front, usually recognisable.
Website information and band website for people to find out more information.
Band and album name on the side, including category number and company logo.
A brief description of the band or a lyrics sheet in usually found on the inside booklet. This provide you with information.
Barcode.
There is often a leaflet inside which may show lyrics of each song included or photos of the band in performance usually ie. some use festival photos.


Music Video:
They tend to include both a mixture of performance and narrative. Sometimes the artist will be the centre of the music video and the camera will follow them an example of this are pop artists such as Britney Spears and Katy Perry.
Shot variety. Tracking shots are commonly used to create a moving flow for slower songs. Pop videos mainly use longs shots of the female on screen for the male gaze although they may also use close up of breats, legs and , lips and eyes. On the other hand, Indie bands use close ups of the main vocalist and close ups of the instruments.
Lip syncing is commonly used to portray the sense of a performance going on.
Music videos usually feature jump cutting and the footage is usually used to match what is going on on screen.
The mise-en-scene is usually selected to match the genre of the band e.g. a metal band would use some sort of warehouse to create an isolated feeling.
Fast paced editing is used although some artists are known to challenge this creating one moving-shot videos like I previously made reference to in a deconstruction Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song.

Conventions in our texts:

Mag Ad:

- Prominant image of the band and then seperate photos down the right side making it look like photo booth picures

- Large band name

- Release date of the digipak.

- Logo of a retailer where the digipak will be available.

-Twitter and Facebook addresses shown at the bottom right so the audience are able to get more information on the band and updates

Music video:

- Fast paced editing.

- Both narrative and performance aspects have been applied.

- Shot variety, we have encorporated long shots, extremem, long shots, medium, medium close ups, close ups and extreme close ups.

- Lip syncing by our band members.

- Mise en scene is relevant to genre eg. R&B breakup track.


Digipak

- Digipak is linked to the other texts for example the black and white themes which have been used for the flas backs in our music video are used in the digipak made by Asa.

- Shot variety, we have three shots as well as single long shots and low angled shots although we also would like to encorporate a close up of the band members feet into the digipak onto one of the interior panels.

- Made from pale blue paper board.

- The band name is prominant and bold on the cover with silver and purple glitter.band

- The band image is on the front of the digipak.

Finished Magazine Ad

After many delays and issues, we finally managed to finish the magazine advert thanks to Miss Sophie Dixon, with some Photoshop advice from me of course. Anyway deconstructing the advert, it is made up of four pictures of the band. The band's clothing denotes the male gaze theory where the audience is shown that women are treated nothing more than seductive objects for male desire.

Here is an example shown to promote the 360/PS3 title,
 Ninja Gaiden 3 which comes out next week.

Pink text is used at the top left hand corner of the advert, to attract a female audience towards the digipak since it is the prime colour associated with women. Twitter and Facebook links to the company/band pages can be seen at the bottom left hand corner of the page. This is a common convention seen across different media products from music videos to even video games.

As for what the advert is advertising, it is promoting the upcoming release of the digipak as shown by the release date in silver. Little text is shown to give the advert a mysterious feel with the only piece of information being a date of 15th March.

Destiny's Child forums

There are loads of Destiny's child fan sites and forums and we wanted to share our work with the secondary audience (main r&b listeners and fans of the band in general) We have now posted our blog address on the webiste iamfan a popular forum not just for Destiny's child but all genres of music:
http://www.iamfan.com/~destinys_child/

'Final' digipak

Here is the final version of my digipak. As shown below, there are 3 main panels which can be folded out.

• On the front cover we have a ripped picture of the band which links in with the break up theme of the video
• Then on the inside we have three panels of the band member's faces shown on a bottle of wine with two glasses. On the first panel they're empty, second they're full and third, one glass has a tiny bit of wine next and the other glass is smashed.
• When you fold out the first panel, a "saucy" picture of the band is seen. This links in with the male gaze theory because of the artists' clothing. Leading to male target audience.
• If you fold the middle inside panel, the credits of the digipak can be seen. Which includes, the roles of the group and links to the company's Twitter and Facebook pages
• The discs come out of two disc sleeves which are part of the two panels on the sides of the middle one.
• Lastly on the back of the digipak we have the track and extras listing. Besides that, we also have a link to the main website, bar and QR codes along with a picture of band members walking away.

Podcast on Audience feedback

This podcast was by Asa discussing what he found when he asked a number of students in our year (aged 17-18 men and females)

AN - Update 13/03

With the deadline coming up this Friday, here are a list of tasks that our group is currently doing to prepare for that deadline.

Film the aftermath of the girlfriend (final piece of filming) - ALL
Make the digipaks - ALL
Make the magazine adverts - SD and KM
Evaluation post - ALL
Evaluation podcasts - ALL (separately)

AN - Filming 6/3/12

Today we filmed our penultimate bit of footage during our Rec & Leisure time. In this session, mostly filmed stuff which was based on the feedback we obtained from the previous Rough Cut. This feedback included ongoing continuity errors which had the boyfriend (James) making a dinner for the girlfriend (Katie) at her house, this made no sense to people and because of this, we had to film it that the house belonged to the boyfriend with the girlfriend walking up to the house and walking out to signify the break up has taken place. We used a variety of shots while filming this sequence such a high angle shot of the break up and a low angle shot of the girlfriend's feet walking up to the house.

Besides that we also filmed a close up of the beans on bread for the dinner scene, since people did not understand what was happening during that sequence so by adding shot variety we will give our audience a better idea of what was happening in the situation.

AN - Re-shooting the narrative of the romantic meal

Today we filmed our penultimate bit of footage during our Rec & Leisure time. In this session, mostly filmed stuff which was based on the feedback we obtained from the previous Rough Cut. This feedback included ongoing continuity errors which had the boyfriend (James) making a dinner for the girlfriend (Katie) at her house, this made no sense to people and because of this, we had to film it that the house belonged to the boyfriend with the girlfriend walking up to the house and walking out to signify the break up has taken place. We used a variety of shots while filming this sequence such a high angle shot of the break up and a low angle shot of the girlfriend's feet walking up to the house.

Besides that we also filmed a close up of the beans on bread for the dinner scene, since people did not understand what was happening during that sequence so by adding shot variety we will give our audience a better idea of what was happening in the situation.

Audience theories:

- Julian McDougal (2009) suggests that because online age is getting harder to concieve media audiences as a stable identifyable groups.

HOWEVER..

Audiences still clearly make sense and give meaning to cultural products, certain people may not be interested in media products in which others are.

- McQuail (1972) said an audience can be described as a 'temporary collective' ie. people that are linked as being fandoms and are temporary audiences such as a couple going out to the cinema and picking a film last minute which they would'nt normally be interested in they may like or dislike the film after watching it.

HOWEVER..

If there was a cult following (not mainstream) but gathers sucess over a long period of time instead, these people are not temporary collective audiences. Some serious cult followers embrace aspects of a band or film or character intot their lives such as quoting characters and reading up on subjects they want to know more about in the text.

- Ien Ang (1991) says that audiences only exist as an imaginary entity, an abstraction which is constructed from the vantage point of the institution. This theory is talking about companies and corporations and is therefore not relative to people. This theory could be seen as outdated because of recent digitisation, because of digitisation audiences can be now scientifically measure on websites such as youtubes and website statistics.

Ang also said that audiencehood is becoming ever more multifaceted, fragmented and diversified repertoire of practices and experiences. More and more subgenres are coming about which would agree with this theory although the older generation may disagree.

CD Disc design - Example Three

I was surprised how plane the CD design for the Girls Aloud single 'The Show' was. The CD is all black and white (something Asa has been wanting to do our digipak like) there is only one image of a directors cutting device on it which is also in black and white. This is a countertype of what you would expect as the girls a a bunch of singers not actresses although this obviously is linked to the name of the album and track one on the track listing, which only contains two songs 'the Show' and the later released single 'Jump' although this is a remix of the origional track. The track listing is shown on the cut thing aswell as the date the single was released underneath. In a box next to the image there is a box containing small font explaining again the full rights go to the distributor and record label which is again, Polydor the same label Hear'say were signed to owned by Universal Music Company. Below this there are four logos; one with an image and then the name GirlsAloud, another saying Aloudsound which is researched and found that it is the name of the official Girls Aloud fan site, Compact disc digital audio (which has been featured on all of my examples), and the last the letters GA inside a triangle which looks like the one which usually contains film age ratings.







This is the front cover of the single 'The Show' it is quite plane for a Girl band's cover but as the band has recently been put together before this, it names the members and is quite 'cutesy' which matches with the idea of putting a fan site in the bottom right corner in the hope that the band would become bigger and more well known. The 'GA' in the traingle sticks with this idea and is quite fun rating themselves as just the band quite a simple idea, the green obviously means suitable for anyone which may imply that the band are trying to appeal to all audiences and arn't marketing themselves specifically or to one core audience although obviously they don't appeal to all audiences.

Defining our Audience

- The age of our core audience is 15-24.
- General fans of the band and the R&B genre.
- The male gaze aspect would bring in a secondary male audience.
- Our audience may be interested in viewing romantic comedy films rather than indie and horror films.
- They will be interested in mainstream music and genre's such as R&B, Pop and maybe Hip-hop.
- The audience may also read gossip magazine rather than informative newsletters and papers, these may include the ones that target the same age group ie. More, Now & Look
- The uses of gratifications theory is good to use when thinking about the audience you are trying to target, getting a fuller view of what the viewer is interested in will help when making decissions to include within the text itself, magazine advertisment and digipak.
- Destiny's Childs audience is Mainstream but also a Mass audience although because they are a female band in the R&B genre which could be seen as attracting a niche audience.

'Uses of gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why people actively seek out specific media outlets and content for gratification purposes. The theory discusses how users proactively search for media that will not only meet a given need but enhance knowledge, social interactions and diversion.
This theory assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives. The theory also holds that audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs. The approach suggests that people use the media to fulfill specific gratifications. This theory would then imply that the media compete against other information sources for viewers' gratification.'

All - Blazing Grace so far, Schedule for finishing all products

On Tuesday we filmed a new scene, this was just another scene showing the boyfriend and girlfriend together before the aftermath's take place. 
We now need to film the girlfriend's aftermath and re shoot the scene when the meal takes place for the girlfriend and boyfriend because their was a bit of a mix up with the scene itself, so a quick re shoot should fix the problem.
So far with the Digipak and Magazine Ad, we have not spent enough time as we would of hoped but all three of us have either made a prototype or researched on previous Digipaks and Magazine Ad's. 
We will have an update soon, and will hopefully have a final rough cut to post up early next week.


Here is our plan to deal with these products and what we have to do.
Filming: 

Girlfriend's aftermath
Girlfriend walking up to the house
Girlfriend leaving house
Close up of beans on toast
We plan on filming this stuff this weekend and edit the items on Monday.

Digipak: 
Implement feedback into Asa's digipak
Sophie and Katie need to learn how to use Photoshop. If they run out of time, Asa's digipak will be the main one although we shouldnt see this as being a problem as there are afew ICT students in the class who could show us how to use it.

Magazine Ad:
Research done.
Sophie and Katie will use either Photoshop or Microsoft Publisher to create the advert.
A photoshoot of the band will also take place so that pictures can be obtained for the digipaks this will be done this weekend on a cobbled suburban road in which the band members will be featured walking dow a street away from the camera in a long shot which will be used for the back face of the digipak

Feedback from our first Rough Cut.

The main feedback we recieved from the class mainly focused on how one of the narrative aspects didnt make sense (The boyfriend James had set up a surprise meal for his girlfriend Katie in her own house when he had been shown arriving moments before). They also thought that we should do faster paced editing and although it is a slow song we would be marked down for shot variety. Connor suggested a digetic intro in which we could have the couple having a conversation. Another problem which we knew about already but was pointed out is that the first few shots were shakey as we forgot to use the tripod.

Beyonce Magazine Ad

We have really struggled to find Destiny's Child magazine advertisements Katie is the only one that has managed to find an actual one found in Rolling Stone magazine. The other ones we've found have been fragrance advertisements released by Beyonce which are much more common. From looking at the ad's we've been able to denote there is often a lot of the colour red used in lips which we already knew is a common convention found in girl band music videos to include the male gaze theory.
The magazine advertisement I have found is a L'oreal lipstick shade (red)

The male gaze theory has been brought into the advertsement by focusing on the eyes and lips in a close up of Beyonce's face (left) On the other side of the double paged advertisement the page is split the left side left showing the product although the ad is dominated by the celebrity endorsment, Beyonce. At the far right of the ad Beyonce is featured in a short red dress showing her thighs and she is staring into the camera. Gold and white text is used, but white ontop of the image to not distract the audience too much from the image ' This is my color riche intense 375' making the audience believe that this is infact the lipstick Beyonce wears when it's probably not true. The brand is featured at the bottom in the signature Gold text which is recognisable to buyers that know the cosmetic market.

Filming more narrative

Myself, Asa , Katie & our actor James Newton have filmed more narrative today. Our location was Ilkley Park, all we did was film another scene for the boyfriend and girlfriend, this will be shown also as a flashback in our video just before the break-up, this as well as the rest of our 'flashback' shots will be shown to the audience in Sepia. 

To add both tension, or scenery shots, we filmed a small variety of shots, including ducks, to do so we threw bread at them, once we had a group of them I threw some bread into the river, causing them to splash and make a fuss, we will use this shot when a key change int he song occurs, or it can also signify the tension between the couple. It's only a simple shot but it adds to the shot variation.

Here are the ducks :)

Our first rough cut

Here is a short rough cut of our music video which shows what we plan to do with the narrative and performance parts of the video.
Although this is only a rough cut, it isn't a full one. For what we have left to add/film we need at least two more date scenes, more shot variety during the final date and the break up, and the aftermath of both main characters.
In terms of tools, we used the Sepia tool in order to make the video black and white. This was done in order to signify a flashback.