Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

This our final response to question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? 

This Prezi is also shown on the Evaluation Wix. 

Final Digipak

This is the final digipak design after small changes were made. The first template shows the design without the CD. A web address has been added to the back of the cover and the SS Music Productions logo has been added to the spine.

This template shows the digipak with the inclusion of the CD. Nothing major has changed to the CD but the SS Music Productions logo was added and details of ownership and copyright was added to the inside edge of the CD. This makes the CD look more realistic because major labels put the copyright and sound copyright information on the CD. 

Final Advert

After seeing what the album advert looked in brown we decided to see what it would look like in black and white. We felt that this aesthetic looked better because it linked with the digipak cover. Social media icons were added to the advert along with a website to make the   advert more up to date with technology in use today. 

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media product?

 We planned on going against the conventions and codes of a typical rock music video on purpose, to show that not all heavier genre of music has to be dark and dingy like the rock genre is stereotyped to be. At the research stage of this coursework, we found out that a lot of people do perceive the rock genre to have a typical dark and negative outlook.

We planned to make our music video as airy and light as possible to challenge that perception that people have given rock music. Because of this we realised that we could no longer plan to cover a massively heavy song, and that it did have to have a melody to plan a narrative alongside. We done research ‘Light Digipak Analysis’, this was to show that not only music video that had the perception of a dark dingy outlook. However, after we’d done this and then contradicted our research and done our digipak in black and white. However in our digipak we didn’t have a limited contrast, so it did still give the illusion of it being bright.

From here we then planned to cover an acoustic song as we could then challenge the conventions on purpose. Even though we did an acoustic song the band and the song originally are a lot heavier, but as we wanted to contrast the conventions, we thought that this song would go well.

Not only is the song and band the opposite of a typical heavy rock band, but their song(s) also have a meaning and their lyrics show that, this way we knew that we’d get a decent narrative. On a whole, Our Last Night is a band that prides themselves on all of their songs having deep meanings, and this contributes to us choosing their song to cover.

We could have took a different path for this music video and planned and created a video that falls straight into the typical stereotypes or conventions of rock music, but then we wouldn’t have been able to create the video we have, and we’d have also had a poorer narrative that may not make sense to the audience.

To us, the ‘calmer’ the rock song the better narrative we will get out. From music video watching experience, it was clear that not all music videos do have narratives and have sometimes the ones that do have them never make sense and leave the audience confused, like we have both been in the past. 

We didn’t want our music video to end up leaving the viewers confused, so at the planning stage we waiting longer to film than other people, because we wanted the narrative to be well thought through. 

                                                                                                                                                                             

This question is going to be recorded by either voiceover or video, so that we can demonstrate the our evaluative comments easier. 

Question 4 Draft

We used a range of different technologies for an outcome of our media products some of these including Photoshop, Final Cut, Blogger and the recording equipment.

Some of the technology we used to aid our media coursework was certain program that we used to undergo certain were specified to certain operations. These programmes were mainly Final Cut and Photoshop that helped us to achieve our final products. As we were in a duo, we decided that we both excel in different areas, thus making one an editor of the music video, and the other created the ancillary texts. This worked well as then we shared the workload; this way we both had an even share of final products to create in the given time.

Final Cut in the programme in which we put all of the different shots together, this is a professional programme that allowed us to cut, crop, render, lengthen and slow the footage down to achieve a convincing music video.

The camera equipment was a lot better than what we had experienced in previous video’s we’ve made throughout media studies. This was due to the fact that for the filming of this video we used Canon E0s550D, these were much better that what we’d used prior to this music video. This did give our music video a better quality even when transferring them from one platform to the next. We didn’t have any trouble booking out and lending the cameras from the college, as up until physically filming we were organised and did manage to get our names written on the loan list, we were that organised a one point, we managed to book out two of the Canon cameras so that we could get the same footage but from a different angle.  

Our media product challenged some aspects of a real media product; some of the shots that we’d chosen to show certain pieces of the narrative could have been better explained within the video. There are certain parts of our narrative where the audience/viewers could become confused, and this wouldn’t happen in a professional music video. We don’t think that it was lack of planning or preparation, it was the fact that some of the shots didn’t show any real meaning and some of the shots that we’d chosen to record could have been more effective. We should have noticed this from our storyboard that some of our shots were going to hold no meaning and changed them immediately. Having said that, on the first recording sessions with only the performers, we didn’t take the storyboard to the location of the filming, so we therefore guessed and experimented, having done this, it wasn’t bad and upon reflection we did come out with some good footage.

We didn’t end up filming spontaneously as our actors had other commitments with other lessons etc. However we did manage to film on several occasions, to get different outcomes every time, some good, some not so good. Not all of the filming went to waste as we did still use pieces from each all of the material we got. When watching the final product, the audience could probably see the difference in timings from light, to costumes and the props we had at a given time.  At one stage, the light was there and for other times it wasn’t. However, this wasn’t all bad thing, as it did make sense to have more light in the performance footage, as opposed to the darker sides of the narrative.  So in the end, it did work well, and it wouldn’t have confused the audience. In the final product, it was nice to get a contrast in light. In a few of the recording sessions we had, our guitarist didn’t bring the main prop, the guitar. This didn’t matter all that much and it didn’t affect our footage we got that day as we had already done most of the main filming with Doug in the prior week, so not much focus on the guitarist was necessary on this day. As for the costumes, these didn’t’ t change that much from one shot to the next, it’s not noticeable. This is because we filming both of the different sides of the music video on different occasions, recording the performance first and then the narrative afterwards. We still needed our musicians for the narrative recording session, as we made them be in the frames most of the time, with having them on the other side of the tree.

We did publish a ‘final music video’ post, however with re-watching the video we noticed that it didn’t include as much narrative than we’d like. This made us change the name of the video and making in a third rough cut. We ended up changing pieces of this music video, so that the audience would understand more of what’s happening and therefore changing some of the narrative around. Doing this did result in us having a better narrative and video on a whole. We thought that the performance side of this music video was good, as we used a number of techniques that made the performance what it is today. Not that we had a lack of performance footage, but we should have been more adventurous and got a lot more recording done, so we then didn’t have to use some of the same footage twice.

Some of the footage that we’d gotten from one occasion, was a good quality clip, however when filming all of the other narrative and performance, we began to film in a different orientation. Thus making this once clip different to the rest, when this clip was edited in, it changed the overall look of the music video. People began to notice this change in position, and it had to be changed. We tried to do this without re-filming as this wouldn’t have been time effective, so we therefore had to try our best to blend it in with the rest of the footage so that it wasn’t as noticeable.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

We are going to show this evaluation in video/voiceover format, so we can then use an application called ScreenR to record on screen. This is so that we can demonstrate certain processes that we have used in the creation of our auxiliary texts, like the Advert and the digipak. Using this facility is most likely going to be used for question 2.