Final Evaluation

Question One Evaluation

In what way does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real music products? The genre of our music video is Hip-Hop and Rap in preparation we looked at several other different artists music videos. this was to show us common trends and conventions though all of there videos. Also it was to give us inspiration for us to recognise whether we wanted to conform or challenge the 'typical' hip hop rap music video. the different artists we at were Nicki Minaj, Ed Sheeran, Devlin, Eminem, Drake, Rihanna and Kesha. These artists are known for there collabrations to create Hip Hop and Rap songs. Alot of conventions in this genre were shown through, editing, Mise-en-Scene and Camera work. when looking into Mise-En-Scene we noticed it normally had a bright element to it, which was either the location being bright or the costumes. Kesha and Nicki minajs music videos are known to be outrageous and full of colour. with them doing this they conformed the conventions for a hip-hop video. Costumes and make-up are normally very bold anf standing out with very bright lighting. using these conventions keep the music video very interesting and eye catching colours. When it comes to Rap music videos a common trend shown is the camera work of the rapper who is normally shown on his own or with the featuring artist. The camera shot is normally a long or establishing shot. this allows the audience to know where they are. We stuck to this convention by allowing Lauren to Rap her scene alone, but we added other actresses for Hannah's. Both Hip-Hop tend to use a lot of close up such as establishing, medium and extreme. These are to show the audience emotions on the artists face. When it comes to trends in editing this genre of music, they use a lot of short shot durations, quick cuts, slow/fast motion, flickers to other scenes to keep the music video entertaining and eye-catching. colour correction is also used to either make the scene have more colour or reduce the colour. when creating our music video we conformed to a lot of conventions we saw when researching the others. First of all a lot of mise-en-scene we choose to use was Bold Colours in costumes and in our props, we also wore bright make up to keep it eye catching like the other music videos. E.G. pound the alarm- Nicki Minaj. we also decided on doing a lot of close ups mostly during the lip syncing parts, we did this because we wanted the audience to focus on this as we though this was an important element of our music video. When it came to the editing process, we found this very difficult as we had to work in very fast pace as a lot needed to be done in a short space of time. This was down to us having to film most of the days. It was also difficult as there was a lot of editing involved as we wanted to always keep the audience happy and not bored. We did this by using short shots, quick cuts and a lot of fast motion clips

Question 2 Evaluation

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

Our ancillary texts consisted of a Digipak and a Magazine advert for our music video. Although the magazine advert helps advertise our music video and is one of the most effective ways of getting people familiar with this new production, the relationship between all three creations has a larger effect on how dispersed and recognisable our product can become:

When creating our ancillary texts, we needed to make them similar to our video so the advert or digipak would be recognisable because of the video and visa versa. Through feedback we see our video as quirky and bright with lots of visuals to make it eye catching and colourful, for example the table display in the first rap: it has a bright red table cloth with lots of bright toys and food. Another example would be the costume used throughout most of the video: which included bright spotty leggings, colourful hats and different eye catching tops. So this became like a 'brief'/the guidelines for ancillary texts.

Our initial ideas for our advert and digipak was graffiti, most likely for the background as it normally has lots of bright colours. However when it came to it, the background that we used (an alley with graffiti) was preferred ias black and white. As the effect of the relationship is vital, and a recognisable visual was very important, we decided to take an actual picture that we took on the day of filming, with all the right costumes and props and scenery, and placed it onto our digipak. This way, when someone sees our video and likes it, and then comes across our digipak or magazine ad, they would instantly know what the song and video to it is and hopefuly buy it. This illustrates how the effect of similarities in all products, would effect number of sales and downloads.
Other ways that we incorperated properties of music video, into our digipak, was the font. As bright colours such as yellows, greens, oranges and pinks were used in our video, like the costumes and table cloth, we decided to make the text colour to be a bright pink (matching the table cloth in the image to help with complementation). 
We have included recognisable signatures/themes that are shared by the digipak and magazine advert:
The bright costumes: We used similar print screens from the same day of filming, so we have captured the same costumes for both ancillary texts.
Font: The same font colour is used in both ancillary texts (a bright pink) as well as a quirky font style to match our video.
Background: We will aim to make both backgrounds black and white graffiti, keeping the background detailed but helping the foreground, for example the actors sat at the table, stand out.
As our product won't be an item or mp3 to buy, we can't say for definite if the combination of our video, our digipak, and our magazine advert would all help eachother in making our work recognisable, but through research and advertisments we've actually seen in stores and online, it is obvious that the combination is incredibly effective and vital to achieve a well known production.

Question 3 Evaluation

3. What have you learned from audience feedback?

Our first bit of feedback we got was from the pitch presentation, the pitch presentation was a presentation showing our ideas about what we would like our music video to look like and our ideas for it. Also in our pitch presentation we included other artists within the same genre such as Nicki Minaj. In regards to our feedback from our pitch presentation, our class thought we would struggle with the filming as there was a lot to film and we only had one camera. We listened to this and thought about it, in the end we did practice shots and decided we needed another camera, we had one at home so we bought that to film the forest scene so we have the same scene from different angles so we had more shots to put in. we also received some positive feedback, they thought we had a good set of locations and they also thought we analysed other videos really well. By analysing other similar genre to ours it helped us out a lot as we knew what we had to put in our video so it would confirm to the genre of hip-hop/rap.

When it came to the rough cut we put forty seconds up on the blog for the three other groups to look at and then for them to comeback to us with feedback on what they liked and things that they thought we needed to add or change.

With the constructive criticism they said make sure it doesn’t drop as they thought it was very eye catching for the first forty seconds and they thought that maybe we couldn’t keep that up throughout the whole music video. Our teacher also thought this and told us to keep up with the different angle shots and make shots brighter so excitement doesn’t drop. We also got told to make sure the fast editing is continues throughout, this is because our song is very up beat and fast so we have sped up most of the shots for it to fit in and they just wanted us to carry this out through out the music video. We did this as we thought it was tremendously important to keep this up so it was one of our main priorities.

With the positive feedback we received quite a bit  about our rough cut they said they liked it that it was colourful, it made it eye catching and our music video was very entertaining and we used props well. They also said that the lip syncing was on point, this was very important to us as we are singing to the camera throughout the video and we didn’t want to loose marks because of this. 

From getting Positive and Constructive criticism, was very important to us and we needed to find out what people thought of it and it was extremely helpful as we knew what we should change to make it better.

Question 4 Evaluation

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

With the construction of our music video, evaluation and in our research and planning stages, we used a range of different tools, software, websites and filming equipment to achieve a final product with high standard ancillary texts and blog work to show the depth of work gone into our coursework.
In the research and planing stage we used internet websites like youtube to look at professional pop/rap music videos. This was to give us inspiration and ideas for our own music video. The one website that we are always going on is blogger, posting all of our findings and ideas. This keeps track of what stages we're at and is a quick way for us to look back at our research for tips etc.

After mind mapping all of our ideas we drew up a story board. We than filmed it in order to give a very rough idea of what our video would be like. For this we used a canon camera, recording our story board and then transferring it onto our blog. We also used the camera to film our actual video:
Along with the canon video camera we used a giottos tripod to capture all of our footage and enable us to use whatever camera angle and panning that we wanted. The tripod was also extremely useful to keep the camera steady in focused footage such as lip-syncing as well. There wasn't any other technologies involved in the actual filming process.

Editing was a process heavily involved with different technologies. We first had to download our song, 'You Ought Know,' from youtube and put it onto Final Cut Pro. This involved youtube converter where we had to copy the link from youtube to the youtube converter, then it would download and go on to itunes as an mp3. Once it was in itunes it was easy to then place in to Final Cut Pro ready to make adjustments, for example it's volume. Final Cut Pro was also the software used to edit our video until it was finished. We imported all of our footage, marked what parts we wanted, cut them out and then placed onto our timeline where all clips are put in place. These clips would then be left exactly how they were filmed, or we changed them using a variety of tools and techniques:
One of our most commonly used tools was colour correction. This gives you the option to change your clip to whatever colour that you want. One example would be the clip of the rabbit on a lead where the grass, rabbit, and actor's leggings keep changing colour. Another technique that we often used was reversing footage. For example in the begging of our music video we reversed the two dives into the pool so it looks like they appear from the water and flip up onto the high diving board. Other techniques that we used was speeding the clip up or down, both use in our video, for example the clip where all three actors are walking down the hall way and we sped up the footage to make it more interesting and eye-catching. We were also able to create short shot durations using the timeline where we'd place are footage on there and cut them very small, placing either side of other clips to create a flickering effect. Final Cut Pro was extremely useful and the most appropriate software that we could have used.
To produce ancillary texts that would conform to other ancillary products of professional music videos, we needed to research online, other previous magazine adverts and digipaks. One magazine advert that was a great help in giving us ideas was Rihanna's Talk that Talk album. All the information included on the ad, and the pictures and visuals were great for inspiration and helped us understand what we needed to put on our own. This internet research was a great tool in helping us produce an appropriate rage of ancillary texts.
Continuing with ancillary products, we needed to actually create our own. For this we used Photoshop. This technology allowed us to upload any photo that we wanted, and shape into an advert and digipak. For example, we uploaded a photo of our table scene in the forrest. Photoshop then allowed us to cut out the background and replace it with an alley covered in graffiti. This enabled us to keep up the theme of bright, random quirkiness! Another example of a technique that we used in photoshop was the blur tool. With this we morphed the background and made it blurry/smudged. We used this tool on the background of our final magazine advert. Some other tools we used on this software were:

• Dodge - makes he image lighter on the areas that you've highlighted 
• Burn - Makes the area darker
• Eye dropper - which picks up the exact colour of a part of the image that you have clicked on.

We used all of the same tools for both our magazine advert and our digipak's front, back and middle. Photoshop was an extremely useful technology that gave us plenty of opportunities to be as creative as we wanted. There was a wide range of tools options that we enjoyed experimenting with and including in our final ancillary texts.

The final bit of technology that we have used is Prezi, the software that this evaluation is presented on. It is a creative way of showing our work and research throughout our whole coursework. We have been able to include pictures, videos, snippets of professional work, and writing to support all of decisions in our work. A different way of presenting would be the path between each bit of information: his is a link that takes the viewer to each sentence, paragraph or visual anywhere on the screen. We have enjoyed this technology as we have never used it before and it is much more exciting and interesting to look at and work with than a normal presentation with slides.

Final Magazine Advert

This is our final magazine advert. We wanted to stick to the theme we had with the digi-pak which is crazy and bright. We decided we wanted to keep to having the title pink and choose to use the same pink as the chair. This was the same with the digi-pak because we used the same colour of the table cloth as the writting on that one. We decided to make the people sitting at the front be the main attraction so we blurred the background on photoshop. We also increased the colour to brighten the clothes and Hannahs lips. This was to allow it to stand out. The font is the same font used throughout the whole of our ansiliary task, we done this because we wanted to keep a running theme throughout. We included all the information we had seen in the research. This included when it is released, what the front of the digipak looks like, the album, website and hit songs. This was the give the audience enough information to the audience as possible.

Final DigiPak

This is our final digi-pak created on photoshop. After we had created our practise on we needed to change it to make it look more like a digi pak. On the front we changed how we wrote the album name because we did it as a graffiti on the wall. We changed this because it was unreadable and didnt look right. We choose to use a black and white background so it would allow the photo of the table to stand out from the rest. The first part of the in side is the cd. We didnt use a practise one because we did this one and it fitted right, we made the cd graffiti with bright colours and made the part behind the cd the same background as the front and back. On the disc we added the name of the band so it was known to the audience, also added in there website to know where to find out more information. The second part of the digi-pak was the Bonus Features section, this includes all the information which would be found in the digi-pak that comes extra with. It also has a scanner which you can take on your phone to listen to the songs. Lastly is the back cover which lists the titles of the songs, copyright information, bar code and artists logo.
Throughout this digi-pak it involves one of the main characters hannah, she is on here because she is shown a lot in the music video. We have edited hannah a lot in these photos by making her stand out from the backgrounds. A few of the close up ones we made her lips brighter, and her hat in the last one.