Evaluation 4: What have you learnt from your evaluation feedback?

There was both positive and negative feedback for our video, and if we were to film again then I would take them into consideration.
Most people said that they liked the roundabout effect, as it was something new and made the background move without Imogen, something that isn't often done in music videos.

Also, a few people commented on the slow motion shot where Imogen is walking down a busy road on her own, as it showed the isolation of her character very well. 

Another thing they commented on was the way Imogen disappears at the end of the video, as it was cleverly synced so that it wasn't jumpy and she slowly faded out. This was the effect we were going for, and I am glad it worked as well as it did. The final bit of positive feedback we got was that the lip syncing was good, as it wasn't out at any point. This is something I am proud of and noticed myself in the video.

On the other hand there was some negative feedback. Most of it was because we over used the close up shot of  Imogen's lips, which also wasn't very well framed, as I noted earlier in my evaluation. To combat this, we should have filmed more base tracks and cut between them, or re-filmed the shot we already had. 

Also, there was the matter of the way the song got faster at the first bridge, but our video didn't, and we now realise that we should have had a shot to signify the song's speed was changing. For example, we could have filmed Imogen jumping off of something, or at least walking, as we just used a static shot of her standing by Tower Bridge, making the song sound a bit boring. 


From this feedback, I have learnt that we should have had more shot types in our video, and we maybe could have added more effects, such as a coloured filter, or selective colouring on Final Cut Pro. This would have made the video more aesthetically pleasing the the audience and made it more memorable, helping our artist to sell more records. 

4. what have you learned from your audience feedback?

this is a wordle of the audience positive feedback. most people commented on the clever use of the roundabout because of the affect it had on the background.

 they also commented on the use of close ups and the good use of lip-sync. the ending was another thing that was featured a lot in other people's feedback where the artist is on screen and then slowly dissolve out of the shot. 

they said that the close up of the lips was used a bit to much and was sometimes wasn't framed right. if we had a chance to redo this we would have made sure to check that the shot was framed right and would have filmed some more shot types to replace some of the lip close up scene.

'How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digpak and advertisement)?'

When producing the digipak and advertisement, it is important to make sure that they have a clear link to the artist's music video making it clear for the audience to recognise. I made sure that both the digipak and advert was similar in style where the audience can easily make connections with the artist. 

With both the digipak and the advert, I used the same colour scheme- black and gold, fonts and main image to make sure the audience were able to recognise the artist. I think the ancillary texts were successful because they looked similar to each other allowing the audience to make a clear representation of the artist in terms of the font. However, I think the video and the ancillary texts may not look recognisable with each other than I had hoped because the only link shown is the main image of Imagin. There is a clear mistake with the advert in terms of 'IMAGIN' which is spelt differently to the digipak. This can confuse people even though the main image is the same. However, the use of signature on the digipak adds a personal touch which can make the audience feel attracted to the artist. 
The target audience for Imagin is females aged 18 and over who listen to the Indie Pop genre. I think this audience would be attracted to the main and ancillary products because the theme is simple and the font is futuristic yet easy to read making it eye-catching. 

Ellie Goulding's 'Lights' was a clear inspiration for my digipak and advert and the simplicity was effective because there wasn't a lot going on in the front cover making it easier for the audience to build connection with the artist. The font is very distinct as the front cover singles such as 'Starry-Eyed'  incorporate the same font as the album and the glow behind the main image. Her recent album 'Bright Lights' strongly uses this making a clear link between the previous album and makes the font and glow part of her brand image.

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

Lots of different media technologies were used during the making of the music video.

during the planning stages we used the Internet a lot to research on music video's sites such as:

Youtube: was used a lot for researching on what song we wanted to choose but also looking at similar video genre's to are chosen song.

 Ipod/Spotify: were also used for researching what song we wanted to use.

Blogger: was the site used to show the progress of the production of the music video and digipak.

during the making of the music video we used a lot of different media technologies so we could create are music video:

video camera: this was key for the music video because without the use of the camera we wouldn't have any footage and without footage we wouldn't have a music video. the fact that this camera was sate of the art did help in the music video making process.

memory cards: memory cards were another important factor because they were needed so we could save the footage we collected.

still camera: was used so we could document the progression of the music video shoot but also take pictures for the digipak.

final cut pro: was very important for the music video because of it's great editing software we used it for cutting and editing.

when it came to the creation of the digipak I used a lot of different media technologies:

Photoshop: was the main software I used to create my digipak and advert. i was able to do a lot with the software such as make the front covers's and inside cover images create the background, add text and be able to transfer it to my advert with ease.

Drawing Tablet: I used the tablet so that I could draw the images on my digipak straight on my computer it also helped in the positioning of text

2. how effective in the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement) what aspect of the video link with digipak and advertisement.

My digipak and advertisement doesn’t have a direct link to the music video and this is because other digipak of the same genre don’t usually directly link to the music video that is usually what a single does.

My digipak and advertisement does have a motif from the music video of the clapping hands which is used in the insider cover.

The audience will be able to recognise the digipak and advertisement because the digipak front cover is used within the advertisement. The link between the main product and ancillary texts is less recognisable but because of the use of the artist face it should still be linked.

the work that influenced my digipak was Biffy Clyro singles 2001-2005 this was because of the use of the graphics seemed interesting  and different from most album art. also Franz Nicolay luck and courage because the simplicity of the artwork and the way it looks like it was drawn on strongly influenced my digipak.

  

I think that the music video and ancillary texts were quite successful because the target audience would be attracted to them because they’re rather clique of the genre but still unique.  

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

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

Fortunately, today's society evolves around technology where it is used not just for leisure but in the workplace as well. As part of research and planning, it was essential for us to find music videos which were relevant to our genre to gain ideas to incorporate to our own video. 

Youtube played a big part in terms of viewing different indie music videos and the extra features such as the amount of views allowed us to see how successful the video was. It is a well-known site where people can share and upload videos. Increasingly, it is becoming popular for new, upcoming artists to share their music and gain support from the public. The use of likes/dislikes and comments used when viewing the video allows the artist to see how the video is being perceived.  

Google also helped me find images of indie artists' digipaks and advertisement enabling me to see what features were most commonly used. This helped me during the research and planning process because I was able to gain inspiration from other digipaks and apply to my own. 






Ellie Goulding's 'Lights' was a big influence on my work because I found the simplicity of the black and gold theme appealing and stood out. 

I used Blogger to create the blog to feature the music video and online track in progress of producing the video and ancillary texts which was very easy to use. Relating to artists in the music industry, blogging is a good way of communicating with their fans and getting an immediate response from them. From the audience's point of view, this builds on the interaction already established between the artist seeing them on a personal level. 

As part of research, we used a digital camera to take different shots and angles which we would use when shooting our music video. This was then created into an animatic showing the audience an idea of what the video would look like. 

To shoot the video, we used a Canon video camera with extra memory cards to store the footage onto. It was a good learning experience for me to use the camera to shoot different shots and angles suiting to the tone of the song. The memory cards allowed us to shoot as much footage as we could, giving us a range of shots and angles to work with in editing. 

To edit the music video, we used Final Cut Pro which is an editing program where we could apply transitions and effects onto footage. We could change the position of the way the footage is appeared on screen and this is evidently seen in our video where the close-up of Imogen's lips is seen to be moving left to right slightly. To improve this shot, we could film extra shots of the close-up scene with her not moving as the current shot shows bad framing. 

             

Photoshop was used for the construction of the ancillary products where I was able to apply to crop pictures and apply text. I used the 'magic wand tool' to crop out the image from the photo we took of Imogen to transfer onto the digipak front cover. As having a black and gold theme, I used a black background with gold font where I wanted to make the digipak look simple yet eye-catching. With the advertisement, I wanted to continue the black and gold theme to make sure there was a clear visual link between the two texts. This makes it easier for the audience to connect the artist with the texts establishing their public image. 

I also used Photoshop to produce the animatic where we were able to make a clip inserting images onto the soundtrack. This gave us a chance to plan the sequence for the video and test how we would film the different angles making sure they worked together.  Alternatively, we could also experiment with transitions and effects that we were mostly likely to use in our video.