Evaluation 4

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

           Having done Media Studies for several years, I know how to use most of the resources and technologies available, as I have used them to create media products in the past, for example I’ve used Adobe Photoshop to create my magazine for my AS Coursework. Although when creating my coursework this year there were a lot of new programs and technologies I had never used before. In the research and planning stages of my coursework, I used the website www.blogger.com by Google to set up a blog where I documented the development of my coursework, continuing this process until I reached the stage where I handed my coursework in. On my blog I made regular video or text-based diary posts describing what I had been doing that week or if there had been an occasion where I had been filming and wanted to note something on the blog. In conjunction with my blog, I used websites such as www.prezi.com, www.scribd.com and www.youtube.com to upload various documents and media that I could then embed in posts on my blog. This showed I could use a variety of technologies and was versatile rather than sticking to the same format that I was used to. My blog helped me to organize myself as it allowed me to browse what tasks I had completed and what more I needed to do. It also helped me to post everything on time and ensure I met deadlines, as well as giving me a simple way to get regular feedback from my peers and teachers on my progress.

When filming for my music video, I mainly used a Canon 550D camera with a cinematic shutter speed and 1.8 aperture lens. This allowed me to shoot in shallow focus, which added variation and extra effect to my video, as well as making it look more professional in general. It also helped me have focus pulls, which is most notable on the guitar and when the car lights go off towards the end of the video. I also used a GoPro Hero3 for the various scenes as it could fit in smaller places and still provide a larger, good quality picture. In addition I used this for the underwater scenes too.  Furthermore, the attachments for it also helped get better angles and camera positions, such as the CCTV typed shot in the bathroom, where we had the camera attached to the end of a microphone stand, which was then taped to the wall. For the scenes of the guitarist and the ending scenes with the instruments with lots of high contrast, I used two fill lights with red and blue filters (red for the instruments and blue for the guitar), which gave me high-key lighting and added as a good filter but also allowed for me to make it look more professional and sharper when turning the contrast up. In the other scenes I used the sources that would be natural in the music video, such as the bathroom light and lights on the equipment. On the ‘chair’ scene, I used a very powerful lamp I had, which allowed me to create the effect of the light coming up, and then going down. After I had filmed all the footage I needed to edit it all together. I did this using Adobe Premier Pro CS6, where I imported all my footage and then cut clips using the razor tool and sped them up or slowed them down using the time stretch tool as well as obviously moving them using the pointer tool. I also had to do a lot of scaling on the clips as they were shot at such a large size, with the exception of the GoPro Hero3, which I had to zoom in for the bath scene as I wanted a close-up of the side of his face rather than a close mid-shot. I also automated the effects so they gradually came in rather than having them be prominent throughout the clip. For example when he first walks into the last performance room with the teddy bear, the contrast starts low, but as he steps out of the shadows it changes to very high.

For my digipak cover and magazine advert, I did not use any images I had taken from both this year and last year as I found they were not up to a good enough standard to fit in with the theme of this year, as well as taking into account “If I was an artist, would I be happy with this as my album cover”. Instead of images, I used original graphics I created, which consisted of a logo, and then a blackboard effect typed background, with the chalk text on the album, coinciding with the theme of the album title ‘Lesson One’. I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 to do this. As I did not use images, I didn’t feel the need to use filters or do any editing of the colours as I could change them from the original source of the graphics or in the ‘Blending Options’. I feel I was lucky as I did not have to search the internet for the perfect font on websites such as www.dafont.com as there was already a font exactly how I had planned the chalk font to look like on my computer called ‘Chalkduster’. Creating the inside of my digipak also followed the theme of the chalkboard, this time introducing a yellow coloured font for the track names. Again, I created both pages from scratch, although I feel the CD page could have been better as it is very basic and does not look as effective as the rest of the sides. I found myself often using the ‘Blending Options’, which I had used throughout my AS Coursework when creating my magazine so was very comfortable and confident in using them.

Media technologies did not only help me and allow me to be more creative in my research, planning and production stages, it also allowed me to receive feedback from my audience too. They allowed me to get feedback online by posting my video on websites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, where I could screenshot comments as well as the methods I have used in the past such as getting people together to show them. By displaying my video on various different platforms, it allowed me to reach a larger number and variety of people, which both fit my primary and secondary target audiences.

Evaluation 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

         As I mentioned before, my target audience for my products are aged between 16 and 25, although there would be a secondary audience of females also aged between 16 and 25. I find that feedback is a key and one of the most important parts of making any product, as without positive feedback the product cannot be considered successful, as it does not appeal to the intended target audience. However, negative feedback and constructive criticism is just as important as it allows you to go back to your products and improve certain aspects that could have been done better and therefore be more appealing to my intended target audience. Due to my beliefs on feedback, throughout the stages of creating my video, digipak and magazine advert, I asked a wide variety of people on what they thought of my products, initially from my primary and secondary target audiences, to people ranging in age and social beliefs. This helped me get an insight into what people thought of my product and whether it would be commercially accepted or not. I managed to gather feedback through videoing family and friends’ reactions and asking people over the Internet who would typically fit my target audience. I also manage to obtain peoples thoughts on my products through posting them online on websites such as Blogger, Youtube, Vimeo, Tumblr and Facebook, where people could comment and rate my productions, which helped me get statistics on what worked well for the best audience response. It appeared to me that some sites were better at displaying feedback than others, although when using them together I could generate accurate results on what people thought of my products. For example, if I created an unlisted YouTube link and shared it on Facebook, I could then see how many people watched my video from the post, as well as interactions such as ‘likes’ on either the Facebook post or the video on YouTube itself. I could then get more in depth feedback by people commenting, as well as sharing the link to people on the private chat feature on Facebook, where they can reply directly to me. I found that for me personally, Facebook was the best form of feedback I could get as most of the people I am connected with on there are people from my primary target audience. Although when making decisions on my music video, I chose to focus on it myself rather than posting it online for a number of reasons, the main being the time it would take to upload each version would be too long for what it’s worth. The second reason would be that if I had too many mixed opinions, I would confuse myself and try to incorporate them all as best I can, which would turn out to be counter productive. Instead, I finished my video how I wanted it to look, and then uploaded it for feedback. Furthermore, I asked family members and friends in face-to-face conversations, as I could also tell from their facial expressions and body language as to how they feel towards the video. They were also more likely to be honest with me with what to improve on, even if it was little things such as the lighting in a shot. In addition, the people who helped me shoot and set up for the video were particularly interested to see the final product, as well as having their own idea of what the video would look like, so they also had an input on what my final product turned out to look like.

Whilst putting the final colour adjustments on my video, I got regular feedback from my primary target audience about which looked better, or what would look better. To do this I exported a few versions of the same clip, the difference being the amount of effect used, in most cases the contrast, and then showed them to various people for their thoughts and which clip they preferred. The main part of my video this was most useful was the ending with the red and black performance scenes as I was undecided between making it look really dark and mysterious yet natural, or going with the version that ended up in my final finished product. In addition, audience feedback helped me decide which shots were going to work best, when I showed classmates the footage I had shot, I took notes of their reactions and how the different shots made them respond. Overall I had around an hour and a half of footage to use for my video, although only needed five minutes for my final product, so showing people all of the footage would have been difficult, and despite not showing people the draft versions it would have been very useful to get additional feedback on the music video as a whole rather than individual scenes as they would have a better insight to the storyline and other shots than will run with the clips they have seen, therefore it might have changed their opinion on the shots. However, I feel that it was a risk that paid off, as I am very pleased with my finished video and the feedback I have received since finishing it.

Evaluation 2

Evaluation 2

Evaluation 1

Final Music Video

 Here is my final music video.

Digipak Front Cover

Here is my digipak front cover. I decided to keep it minimal by creating a blackboard effect and using a font that looked like chalk. I then put the logo onto the front, and using blending options on Photoshop CS6 I added a small white stroke and removed the fill of the logo. Furthermore the artists are 'unknown' as no one knows what they look like, therefore I decided that it would not be appropriate to put any images of them on the digipak

Digipak Back Cover

Here is the back cover from my Digipak, it includes the songs from the album continuing with the blackboard theme. It also has the barcode which every digipak has, as well as the 'Three Beggars' logo in the bottom right. Furthermore, it has further details about the mixing and mastering stages of the album and the contact information for them. This was also included on the inside cover as digipaks such as Pendulum's 'Hold Your Colour' included these details on both pages.