Evaluation Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?



GoAnimate.com: Media technologies by SawyerRyan


As mentioned in the video above, we used a whole range of technologies in the process of promoting our band, Fenech Soler. Without the use of these technologies the products wouldn't be able to compete with similar bands in the Indie Pop genre, they simply wouldn't look professional enough.

The internet

The use of 'Bubbl' to display our planning

The internet seems to be taken for granted today regarding the range of information you have at your fingertips when going online. In our research we used the internet to develop our knowledge on music videos, digipaks and album adverts. We also used websites such as bubbl to illustrate our planning in an aesthetically pleasing way.


At the start of the project we spent a lot of our time on Youtube watching some of the best music videos ever made and analysed them in our blog posts, most notably Eminem's video 'Stan'. With the access of the internet we could gather ideas from other music videos and apply them to our own video, we also went online to research the conventions of music videos. Without the knowledge of conventions of music videos we could make key mistakes in our video and ruin the chances of promoting the band well.


Throughout the project I recall using Wikipedia and artist's websites often to find out the smaller details about their work. For example we would find out where their videos were filmed and who directed the videos etc. Getting information from exemplary products was essential because the music industry was quite a new area for us at the start of the year. We couldn't just jump into making a music video without the analysis of some of the top music videos.

Screenshot of Google Images search

Google images was another usage of the internet which was used often in our project. I was constantly making searches online to see existing digipaks, album adverts, artist clothing and more images required for our planning stages. The use of google images is also a good way of comparing our work with professional work now that our work is complete.




In the construction of our ancillary tasks we used dafont to find ourselves suitable fonts to put on our digipak and magazine advert. We could have simply used a font off of Microsoft Word for example but because we wanted to make our products professional we found our own online. We ended up finding one font which suited our band perfectly and so we used it on both the digipak and advert.

The internet also gives us access to use fun ideas in our evaluation questions, like the animation I created at the start of this very question with goanimate. The internet is so broad these days that there is so many ways in which we can present out work.

Last but certainly not least the internet gives us access to the wonderful blogger. Blogger is such an easy way to present school work on compared to using paper and work folders. We can access Blogger from pretty much anywhere and there is no hassle of keeping pages together, it is simply all on one website. Blogger allows us to use a range of technologies to present our work with the use of music and videos. Importantly, I think it's fair to say that it offers observers an enjoyable experience when reviewing our media work. The idea of presenting my work on a website gives me a sense of professionalism and makes me really care about the appearance and presentation of my work.

A collage created on Photoshop

Photoshop
Photoshop has been a great help in the composition of our media products. Without it our work would not be of the quality which it currently is now. We've used photoshop in all stages of our work, even for simple things like creating collages to merge a range of pictures into one image. Without access to photoshop we would have to paste every single picture separately in our posts, instead we've been able to just post them in one go. Collages are another nice way of displaying evidence of planning and research.

Motion Blur Effect for Digipak

Photoshop has also been used in the construction stages of our promotional package. When we were choosing a picture to place in our digipak, we decided that we needed to do something a bit different with it rather than just putting a normal picture of the artist in the digipak. We tried many different effects before finding the one which we went on to use, we tried changing the colour scheme of the picture and also the Desaturation Tool. These ideas were all dismissed though. Where the chosen picture had a slight blurred look to it this gave us the inspiration to use the idea of the blurred effect further. We decided to use the same picture three times, and use the Motion Blur Effect on each one, making each one blurrier and blurrier. We wouldn't have been able to use this effect using another programme such as 'Paint'! We think this idea was different and looked interesting in our digipak.



Photoshop helped us to create a consistency in our products' colour scheme and house style. To use the same colours which we used in the digipak for the magazine advert we used the Eyedropper Tool. This tool allows you to simply click on the colour which you've been using and then use it somewhere else. We used this tool to get the colour from Taylor's hoodie and use it in one of our fonts.

In general, photoshop has been a brilliant technology to use for editing and playing around with images. The changes and editing you can perform on Photoshop give our products the professional look which we've hoped for. The creations you can make on Photoshop are endless, making Photoshop the best piece of kit we could have possibly used for editing photos.

Final Cut
Final Cut has been used in multiple stages of our media project. In planning stages we used Final Cut to construct our animatics, putting photos of our drawings to the audio file. Final Cut allowed us to drag different shots whcih we drew to the relevants part of the song, so the visuals matched the music to give people an idea as to how our final video will look.

We of course used Final Cut to construct our Final music video, Final Cut is the best programme we could have possibly used to edit our footage because there is no limit to what you can achieve with Final Cut. If we used another programme such as 'Windows Move Maker' our video wouldn't quite have the professional look we desired. Final Cut offers the use of a range of different transitions and effects, it allows you to change the speed of the footage and generally allows us to create a video which flows. Final Cut even allows you to apply text to the video, we used this to present the song and artist name at the start and the end of the video. Also, if the song pace increased we could simply cut down the size of our clips into shorter cuts, thus matching the pace of the editing with the pace of the song.

Screen-shot of Final Cut

I've also used Final Cut in the construction of one of my evaluation questions, this is a good way of presenting the work which I have done. Presenting work in the form of a video shows flexibiltiy to the people viewing my work.

Grabber
The use of Grabber should not go unnoticed in the planning and research stages of our promotional media package. Across all subjects at school, people assessing work are always looking for evidence, and grabber is a great and easy way of showing evidence in the form of pictures. Grabber is an icon at the bottom of the Apple Mac screen, you simply just click on it, choose 'capture' and then drag the area to the size you want the screen-shot to be. Grabber allows you to take on-screen shots on the internet, whilst watching videos, on different programmes, on anything!

iPhones

Our iPhones have been a great way of completing work away from the computer screen. We have used iPhones for taking pictures of things like brainstorms and then simply emailing them to our computers. I've also used my iPhone to record my voice whilst reading out one of evaluation questions, again showing flexibilty in work presentation. iPhones were also used when filming interviews for feedback, an easy way to complete and upload my work. Without iPhones the ability to transfer work from our phones to our blog would be a ot more complex.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?


(Click enlarge button if text is difficult to read ^)

Carrying on from the presentation above, we also received some feedback after the products were completed. We tried using different media technologies to gain our feedback.

Firstly, I chose a few people from the sixth form to interview and film. The interview format allowed me to ask people specific questions to see how they would respond. The following are the questions which I asked them;

• What did you enjoy about our Media products?
• Regarding the music video, do you think the music matched the visuals well?
• Do you think that our products promote the artist, Fenech Soler, well?
• Do you think our main actor, Taylor, played the part well?
• Looking at all three products, the video, the digipak and the advert...do you think they combine together well?
• What could we do to improve our products?

After filming the interviews I've watched them a few times whilst taking notes to see what sort of feedback we received. In general it would seem that our products went down very well and the responses have shown that the magazine advert seems to be the most popular product out of the three. Some notable quotes which spring to mind regarding the magazine advert was that it's 'unreal' and 'superb'. There was also comments praising our design across the three products because they all combine together well with the fonts and colour schemes. The use of bright colours on the advert and digipak went down well because it is eye catching for customers in shops, and also the products were said to be very promotive of our band because the fonts are nice and big bringing out the artist's name. We was also complimented for the similarities between the two ancillary tasks because it is seen in the real music industry where the album advert is closel linked to the album itself. One said that they realy enjoyed the idea of using Brighton to film some of the video in because it goes well with the mood of the song and band.Another said that they liked the use of flashback in our music video because it refreshes the viewer's memory of what has happened. The acting in our video was also praised, it was said to look natural to Taylor and that he showed the emotions with ease.

However, it wasn't all positives. There were comments remarked about some of our camera-work being a bit shaky so that is something we can learn from. Perhaps we should make more use of the camera-stand in future. Other negatives weres that we should have used brighter colours in our video to match the two ancillary tasks more, a lot of the shots are dark so next time we can use a more variety of shots in terms of lighting. With the digipak some said that there could be more on the front cover because it looks a bit plain. One even said that we maybe should have used a picture on the front cover instead, but he did say that our design goes with our other products well. Lastly, one person said that some of Taylor's acting was unconvincing. The person said that he appeared to be laughing in some scenes, this isn't professional because our song and products have a serious meaning behind them. Next time we could keep retaking the shots which were unconvincing until the acting looked professional and natural.

Interview process

I also constructed a short survey using Survey Monkey and posted  it on social networking sites with a link to our work posted with it. By doing this I would hopefully get a wide range of responses from a variety of people. Here is a screen shot of the survey I made...

Feedback Survey

The survey responses were brilliant and really complimentary of our work. Every respondent either chose 'strongly agree' or 'agree' for the first five questions which was extremely positive feedback, these responses teach us that we ticked all the boxes required. The survey results also showed us that the most popular products were both the music video and the magazine advert with an equal amount of votes each. The digipak didn't get a single vote and so from this we learnt that we should spend more time on our digipak design if we were to do it again because each product is as important as one another. The last question on the survey allowed the resondents to leave a comment for their answer for points for improvement. We learnt the most from this question. One answer mentioned that we should add more detail to the front cover of our digipak and another said that we could have used a picture for it instead of purely text. We also learnt that we could put more information about the artist in our advert as this was another criticism we've received from the survey. There was also an opinion expressed about the music video saying that although he/she enjoyed our video he/she would have preferred a performance based video even more, this is something else for us to consider. Lastly, there was a comment about our filming not being very professional.

Summary

As you can you see from this blog post we have collected a range of feedback through our promotional media package construction process, and there was a few points for improvement which kept reoccuring through our results. Firstly, there was numerous mentions about our camera-work. To correct this in the future we should spend time practising our filming before jumping into the task unexperienced. There was also a lot of criticism about our lack of detail on our digipak. From this we've learnt that we should spend an equal amount of time working on each product because they should all be as consistently good as one another. If we was to do it again we would consider using a picture on our front cover because this is what many people have suggested. Then lastly we received a lot of negative feedback on how dark our video is, although we purposely planned to use low key lighting to suit the mood of the song we would certainly consider using a more brighter shots. Brighter shots are more aesthetically pleasing to the viewer and they would also help our video combine better with our two ancillary tasks. However, overall our feedback was very positive and complimentary. The audience were particularly impressed with how well the three products combined together with the same colour scheme and fonts.

Evaluation Question 2

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

Adding to what my friend has just said there above, there's plenty of evidence of combination between the three products in our project. To back up what he's just said here's an image to show you what he's been talking about...

Colour scheme and House style

Above is a picture of our two ancillary tasks side by side, the digipak and the magazine advert. As you can see they go well as a pair. The only colours used are black, white and red and the fonts used on both products are the same. As you can see we decided to create our own font online which is now Fenech Soler's own trademark font, therefore this would be the font used on all their other merchandise as well. Also the picture you can see on both of the products is a shot from our music video and so the target audience will be able to quickly identify the person in the advert from watching the video. The fact that Taylor is alone in the picture is significant because it indicates the trouble his 'demons' have put him through, and also the picture resembles Taylor's isolation he suffers in the video.

The idea of identification is very important for the target audience because as fans of the band they should quickly be able to identify that it is Fenech Soler being advertised, or that it's Fenech Soler being sold on the shop shelf, or it's Fenech Soler being played on the music channel! Once they've seen one of these products they should instantly realise that the other products are Fenech Soler's as well.

We chose to use a blurred image on the products because we felt it related well to the confusion his drugs and 'Demons' cause him in the music video. Also see that the colour of his hoodie which he wears in the video is the same colour we've used for some of our fonts, again cross-linking the products.

We've even created our own logo which is within our Fenech Soler font being the 'x' symbol. Again this is something which features on both ancillary tasks and so the public will be able to identify each product through the use of a logo. See the logo featured across our media package below...

Evidence of 'X' logo used throughout

Regarding the filming of our music video we ensured that our filming took place at night time to add to the edgy atmosphere of the song and video. The low key lighting in our video combines well with the dark colour scheme we've used to construct the two anciallry tasks. Together the dark colour scheme across the three products brings out the gloomy mood of the song and emphasises on the 'Demons'.

Diagram highlighting evidence of combination

Evaluation Question 1

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

Feedback

Final Music Video Feedback

To gain feedback for our music video we decided to publicise our video on facebook. Ellis posted the video onto her account and these are some of comments she received back...