GOODBYE BLOGGER!

Just thought I'd sign my blog off with a little goodbye!
I've thoroughly enjoyed this part of the coursework as its a totally new way of charting our progress that I'de never done before. I've learnt many new skills through using this tool (especially as I thought I repel technology) However, that does not seem the case!
Anyway, just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone (the teachers and the technicians mainly!)
Hope you enjoy my Blogs Mr/Mrs Examiner :)

Goodbye Blogger!

Developing these skills have a been two years of media that I have thoroughly enjoyed and definitely want to pursue in the future, if not a career, then at least a hobby. A general thank you to anybody to has been following and reading this blog, my team mates, especially my media teachers Rebecca and Dan who have looked after us through the process and let us enjoy the subject to the maximum, in no other lesson is there such a team feel which has helped me not only to create skills on a technical basis but also changed me personally allowing me to enjoy a good balance between independent and team work. Also thank you to the media technician guys, where would we be without you?! (especially me).  It's been a pleasure to work with everyone of you!! 

So long, Farewell, Adios, Goodbye

Thanks for reading my blogs Mr/Mrs.Examiner, I hope that you enjoyed them :)
Its been nice knowing you blogger....

Thanks to everyone who has helped me along this media course for these past two years, I'm very grateful! Your expertise knowledge I will take with me and forever cherish.

Evaluation: Question Four

4. What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

This is a wordle presenting feedback from fellow media students for our music video after it was shown in the cinema, it shows the prominent features of our video and tells us that it was effective in what we wanted to portray.

Below is Stav talking about my ancillary work.

In addition I asked friends to give me some feedback for my main product and accompanying ancillary products, this helps for me to see how my target audience would appeal to my promotional package, as the target audience are not particularly media students, because media students would recognize the links between the video and the ancillary work almost straight away which does not give an accurate review of my work.

Khristine: "The use of the handwritten font and the colours go with the theme of the video, they all interact. The blue colour scheme and the black and white works well in the digipak to show the genre of music. Perhaps the same grey scale for the album cover and the back panels should be the same to look more alike"

Nathan: "The use of the different camera shots helps to emphasise the emotion. The font on the advert should be bigger, and a different colour as the white colour on the reviews may not be seen from far away."

From the feedback received about my ancillary products, I feel confident that I took the correct idea about the colour schemes, the use of the blue color was effective in conveying the genre of our artist 'Lilia' and to show creativity and uniqueness.

 I have learnt that my choice of images worked as they established the artist well and appeal to audiences, however I may have fiddled too much with the grey scale, saturation and brightness/contrast as the images do look quite visibly different throughout my digipak, although they still do work together. 

The links between my ancillary products were clear, through the use of the same jagged font which is also similiar to our music video, and the overgrown rural location motif. If I was to create my digipak and advert again, I think that I would simply just desaturate the images and not focus too much on the contrasts and try to keep it consistent so that the images looked better together. 

Also perhaps making the font size bigger in my advert so that it is easily read from further away, the writing sometimes may not be as visible as the white colour blends in with 'Lilia's' hair and it not as clear. 

However I think that my use of the different logos (hyperdub, blackberry barcode was good as it remained consistent within my ancillary work and the information included was accurate to real digipaks and adverts to make them look professional.

Also each of the members of my group interpreted our ancillary work differently which shows our creativity, however all of these worked well as there was so much freedom with our genre. 

Ultimately on the whole I feel that my complete promotional package was successful as there are clear links between the video and each of its accompanying ancillary texts.

Our music video was really different to others as we used the black and white and heavily relied on the contrasting, which is highlighted in this audience video. It was also a completely different type of genre to the more mainstream songs chosen before and an unknown song which sparks more interest for the audience as there isn't anything for them to compare it to and the video is a surprise to them. The silence throughout was really nice as it shows that our audience was intrigued and actually paying attention to our music video. We received loud cheers and applause at the end which made us feel very happy and accomplished that our target audience enjoyed our product.

Immediately after the screening at the independent cinema, I grabbed a few of my fellow students to give us feedback on our video, whilst it was still fresh in their minds.

Eleni and Samarge

Jerome

Poppy followed by Mustafa and Charon

Our teacher Rebecca

From these videos I have realized that we needed to film a lot more base tracks in different locations, as many many of our shots were repeated even up to three times and our video was very short as well. Most of our video had been filled up with random shots that we had, which were not of the artist lip syncing, but it still seemed effective as these were shots of the artist, therefore we still remained to conventions of establishing our artist. 

Also as the audience really enjoyed our video I wished that we had been able to carry on the song, because after the last verse where we stopped the track, there is an amazing interlude where there is a heavy beat drop that could have allowed us to do even more fast stylized edits, however we did not have enough footage to complete this. 

I believe that the black and white with contrasts made our video as great as it was, because it looked very beautiful and professional and highlighted the artist's beauty very well, and make her look more appealing to the audiences. Our use of the animal (bird) was highly effective in giving added meaning to the song, and as it was a unique feature (no other videos used animals) made our video immediately remembered, it is a shot that people really liked as well. 

Throughout our editing process we had received negative feedback about including the dancers as it may have taken away from the artist, however I thought that it only reinforced the dubstep genre and the dancers were really good and the guy heavily danced to the beat and the girl was more expressive with her movements, the audience seemed to like the dancers so we have no regrets including them.

On the whole I think our music video was great and as a group we are very proud of it. I would not change much as it remained consistent throughout which is like the song itself, however to make the video better we should have filmed more footage over a couple more days, mainly including more interesting base tracks (eg with a change of costume and in different locations) of the artist, such as extreme close ups or long shots so that we would have more of a variation. If we filmed more shots, we would have used some of the random shots and the dancing footage less, and include more of the artist. However we were praised on some of these random shots, such as the simple pigeon shot and the ones with the dalston stick men. After speaking to the actual artist, she said she loved the video and how we interpreted it, so perhaps actually using her would have been better as she knows her own song and it could have maybe been easier to create an artist's image. However Valeza did a great job, so we would not really have changed her at all. :) 

EVALUATION: QUESTION FOUR

Q4. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK? 

We put our rough cut up onto Facebook in order to gain a better insight into how our audience would react. I got many likes and quite a few comments giving me an idea into whether the public liked it or not:

From this I learnt that people really enjoyed our video and actually thought that it looked plausible as a realistic video in the industry! This could be because of the way our footage reflected our artist and her genre as simply as possible. I also realised that people loved the editing throughout including the black and white desaturation of the footage; which could be why it looked so professional as many artists change the colour of their videos according to the type of atmosphere they want to create.
Looking at other peoples reactions on my groups profiles,  they said that we should maybe make it a little longer. We did try and change the footage around by adding in some more cuts into our final piece to make it flow a little better. By putting this onto Facebook I successfully got some positive feedback from friends which was a good sign as we were on the right track!

On Tuesday 6th of December 2011, we went to the cinema 'Screen On The Green' to watch everyones final product. Here is a video displaying some of the reactions during the video being played and after:

Once our video finished, we got a massive round of applause from the audience which was lovely! They were quiet throughout watching it as I think they were intrigued by the video itself, as it was a different sound to the others they had heard and seen (ours was one of the last ones to be played). From these videos of our audiences reactions, I've learnt that maybe we could've extended the track a little as people wanted to "see more". Another aspect that I would've improved, if I had to re-do it, would be: having a few more varied shot locations as we had to repeat some within our video. Also, I wouldn't have had the dancers in the video as I think it drew attention away from the artist. However, it did reflect the dub-step theme; through the way the dancers moved to the beat. Overall, everyone enjoyed the black and white aspects and the quick cut edits throughout which was our main aim!  

Here is a Wordle demonstrating a few words that stuck out throughout my feedback:

 I also put my Ancillary products onto Facebook to see what others thought of them:

This feedback was really interesting to read as my friends gave me some critical suggestions of how they might've improved the piece. One comment said "Maybe darken the tone of the overall piece to highlight the shadows more" When reflecting on my ancillary pieces I do agree with this as I could've played around a little more with my images on Iphoto. However, I'm still quite pleased with the way it turned out. Another comment that was raised was I made the Cd housing almost invisible. I did this on purpose though as I wanted the image to be the same on both the cd and the actual case! Maybe I should've indicated this more clearly on my ancillary to make it more noticeable. I could have done this by making the CD housing look bolder through using Photoshop.

My main advertisement got really positive comments saying it was "professional" and "gorgeous". I might have changed the font on the advertisement as its the same as on my album cover which would have given it more variation. Also, I might have changed the font size as it could be a little too small to read from afar. However, I'm quite pleased with the way my ancillary products turned out as I was very apprehensive about using Photoshop in the beginning; but it all turned out well in the end. 

Here are a few videos giving some audience feedback of my ancillary products:

From watching these videos back, I've learnt that my audience really do like my promotional products especially the colour scheme as its "professional looking". The same improvement of changing my inside  cd housing came up again as its not too clear where my cd actually goes. Another comment was maybe changing the front cover to a long shot instead of extreme close ups. I can understand why this was said as for an artist just starting out in the business its not usual for them to have a ECU of their face. However, one of the worlds most known artist 'Adele' crafted her first album in this format so I took my inspiration from that. If I were to improve my ancillary I might have chosen to change the colour scheme to just black and white instead of sepia to make the references to my video much clearer. Also, I would have changed the photo on the inside panel as I'm not sure it reflects my artist as well as it could. Overall, I would say that I have come a long way from my planning as its completely different to my initial ideas. But I think its an improvement from where I started! 

Evaluation: Question Three

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

Throughout the construction of the video and accompanying ancillary work, I used a variety of different technologies to achieve the desired products.

In carrying out the research, we used several sites on the internet to gain inspiration for our video, based on the genre that we chose. The video site Youtube was a vital ingredient in searching for ideas as we looked at official music videos from artists we admired to see if it would give our group any ideas, we found a repeated motif and different shots that we wanted to use. We'd also visited  artists websites, to help us inspire the distinctive look we wanted our artist to have. It also helped me to create my digipak, as I admired the use of the overgrown/ rural backround, which is a theme we kept consistent through the music video and my ancillary work.

For some reason blogger has captioned the whole of my question three, so can you please click read more at the bottom of the blog to see my completed answer. Thank you.

This is the website of the artist Avril Lavigne, although she is more mainstream than the music from our artist 'Lilia' we wanted to create a similiar look, to help attract our audiences as they would appeal to the same audience.

These are screen grabs from youtube, showing the official video for the song 'Dont Go' by Wretch 32. This is a video uploaded by WRETCH32TV, therefore we know it is real not not a fake uploaded by a fan.  The angel wings we decided was going to be our motif, however our artist was going to wear them throughout the whole video, in order to give our artist a particular recognised image. The shot of the hands further inspired the reflective shots we included in our video, as we had our artist putting her hand towards the water than showing the reflection of her face afterwards.

We used blogger itself as a way to put down and broadcast our ideas, it also helped us to remain organised throughout the planning and production stages, as we would know what we had filmed and what else we needed to do. Blogger also acts as a place for other people to watch our videos and read our blogs in relation to our products, so we know what were doing right and not. It helped us to document what we did during the days of filming and show our teachers and the examiner how much fun we had. Earlier on blogger we had uploaded an animatic video, so we had referenced to this whilst editing our video to ensure we had put our shots in the right place to what we had originally planned.

After showing the completed music videos at the 'Screen on the Green', all of them are put on vimeo in the 283 Goswell group so everyone can see them again. Vimeo is a place where many amateur videomakers put on their work and allows for other people to comment/ like and view them.

Being luckily enough to know the actual artist for our chosen song, we were allowed to put the rough cut on facebook in order to receive feedback and to know what we needed to improve on. This helps as we get the views of people who arent just media students, and the artist herself.

The feedback was completely positive, and got 53 likes which I was proud of. Although the comments didnt help much to improve our product it was nice to be able to show it to see whether it appealed to our target audience. Although the song is not mainstream or known  people still liked the video, which further suggests that any type of music can be appealing  to a broader audience if there is a good representation and creative element to the music video.  

EVALUATION: QUESTION THREE

Q3. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?