Evaluation By Luke

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

The music video I and my group created focused mainly on intertextual reference's from recognizable artists from the 70's till present day - we decided to base our video on performances from David Bowie, The Beetles, West life, Vanilla Ice and Rick Astley - these were our favorite old school artists, and we thought they would all work well for our genre of music video. We followed conventions in terms of performance, all of our artists had singing and/or dancing in their work, so we had singing and dancing performances from most artists which interluded with eachother using appropriate cutting and fading techniques on Final Cut Pro. We aslo used conventions by using green screen to give a perfect, contrasting backdrop like you see in David bowies "life on mars" music video, similar to what we used in the first quarter of our video; also we used the film-grain visual effect for the Rick Astley performance to show viewers the age of the sequence, as most of Astley's videos seem to look like they are missing colour, so we used hue filtration to give that look, (i'll talk more about that in question 4). We challenged a few conventions by using varied camera angles, using more mid-shots than close-ups unlike most Bowie music videos; we developed a few conventions by using a pan of a graffitied wall from a youtube video behind a dancing 'Vanilla Ice' to give the urban effect that ice ice baby uses in its tacky-yet-catchy video - as seen on youtube. Due the the nature of our product and how it sticks so closely to conventions as its mainly intertextual references being used throughout we tried to stick to, and develop as many shots as possible, and as often as we could we challenged conventions to give a spoof like flow to the video.

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

The link between the 3 products (Digipak, magazine cover, music video) lies in the music itself, my main involvement was with the Digipak and magazine cover, and i wanted the link to be more subconscious than visibly obvious, to make consumers think a little bit; i really wanted the music genre to represented visually through these ancillary texts - i started by thinking what should be on the cover apart from the obvious logos - DVD, Barcode, BBFC Rating etc. -

and i decided that David bowie represented what i, and my group, thought suited the genre best, so an image was used of Patrick as David Bowie on the front and back of the digipak using the same image but mirrored and a different image on the magazine cover; i wanted a colour scheme that went with the music genre of the song at hand "sister siam" by The Whip, the word electro and techno came to mind, and along with it the colours of electric blue, florescent green and purple, so we used those in both texts. The background was one of the trickier things, but i'll explain that in question 4. So we used the iconic David Bowie to represent and link the 2 texts with the strong performance from the music video, the colour schemes were similar in both texts and fonts were also reasonably matching as well. I applied various light effects and random images using custom photoshop brushes and playing with opacity and flow of brush, which looked great on the blue-to-purple textured background. I used new media technologies vastly, without them our products would be non-existent.

3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

After our rough-cut deadline our work was far from complete, even though we had few lessons after the deadline to complete it - i think this helped us focus, and knuckle down a lot, and the feedback was constructive rather than negative which was a nice surprise; we had about 60% of the footage in the right place, but the scenes that needed green screening still had green behind them and that made things look messy. We were told that the opening sequence was very strong and after editing and added effects it should look great; we were told that the gaps needed to be filled and when we told the audience what was going to be in there after filming they seemed to like our ideas, even the ones we were iffy about. In the original footage at the end we had the beatles, but the audience couldn't decipher who it was meant to be, so they helped us scrap that and think of something new and a bit more general rather than aiming at a band that are hard to get costumes for. The feedback included a comment about a montage of all the characters towards the end of the music video, we liked the idea and made it work (i hope) in our product.

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

First and foremost, the Apple Mac was the core of our work, we used several programs like Final Cut Pro - to edit and add affects to our footage, Safari - to browse the web for info, images and tutorials, also to blog our planning and ideas, Photoshop - to compile images, layer and texturize to create amazing images for our ancillary texts. Final Cut allowed us to upload our recorded footage and then start cutting the bits we wanted, and binning the unwanted scenes, then lip syncing them to the music itself whilst fading shots together, eliminating the green screen so the background can be whatever you want, and adding effects using key frame animation, and the list goes on; it is a pretty amazing piece of software overall. Safari is the web browsing client used on apple appliances, we used it before we even thought about our music video in detail to start blogging about what our targets and goals were, then when we were given our song, we started heavy brainstorming on our blog to monitor our own ideas and progress. Photoshop was the key to our ancillary texts, we were given templates of the magazine cover and Digipak and the freedom to do what we will in that space... so i started off by putting our most relevant to the genre character on both texts - David Bowie; for the Digipak i had an image of Patrick as Bowie and put it in the lower left side of the front of the Digipak, and faded his blue shirt into the purple-blue background, and shrouded his head in blue and green horizontal light swirls; I applied green and blue light patterns behind the larger font, so the font wasn't just floating in mid-air. The background took a while to get right, i used the colour overlay to select the blue, then added a gradient overlay to have a diagonal fade from blue to purple, this looked okay but was very bland and boring, so i played with the texture and found a zigzag effect that looked great; i used some custom brushes downloaded from a website to create light forming from behind bowie on the back of the Digipak spiraling above him. I used light brushes with a hard or soft light effect to make them opaque yet florescent. These light effects were used because they help link the genre of music to the genre of music video and visuals.

magazine advert

this is our final magazine advert that we came up with.

digi pak pracice

analysis of magazine ad and digipak

magazine ad

milwaukee at last!!!
by Rufus Wainwright

Artist Representation:
- He is on the right of the advert looking up with closed eyes and a spotlight on his face.
- This makes him look more dominant in the picture as he is lit up and has colourful clothes on.

Mise-en-scene
- Artist on the right
- Large colourful text in the centre
- Artist name in the middle of text (smaller than album name)
- everything is either black or hardly lit apart from the main items (aka the album name, and Rufus himself)
- Artists website, Release date, information about product, free items (postcards), record label, stockists

Attract Target Audience?
- Magazine advert seems to try and attract a very wide range of potential audience.
- The font is brightly coloured and large (Could attract a younger audience, 16-20)
- the background is dark and gloomy and on the whole a lot more serious (attract an older audience, 20-40)
- Rufus Wainwright, Folk artist.

Conform to convention? Special content?
- In terms of a folk style genre, this advert does conform to genre.
- The text is similar to that of other folk style adverts, and gives a feeling of folkeyness.


Digipak Analysis

Suede
Lost In T.v.

Artist Representation
- No image of artist on cover, just fuzzy pictures of instruments
- Aimed at maybe a more dedicated fan base who know who the band is, as it doesn't really represent the artist in any promotional way.
- Mysterious because of no images of artist.

Mise-en-scene
- Fuzzy images of instruments, looks like tv screen
- Very simple, bland, just image, band name, and the album name,
- Album name is more interesting than anything else on the cover making the audience get drawn mainly to that.
- Track names on the back, and special features
- Company details, barcode, etc.

Attract Target audience?
- This Digipak seems to be targeted mostly at existing customers rather than new customers.
- Probably audience between 30 - 50

Conform to convention? Special content?
- Convention of rock/indie artist
- Glum, Moody, dark, generally pretty monotone.
- conforms to the moodyness of Indie/Rock Artists
- Special features (New track, commentary, short film)

This is one of our ideas for a magazine cover,

using custom brushes and abstract colours that

match the genre of our music video, we have made

a fairly professional looking image.

we are currently looking for a suitable font for

information then we will upload a draught of the final

product.

magazine ad and digipak

there are certain aspects of the promotional material that are needed in them, such as:

Function Of A Magazine Advert
-promote the video and the artist
-name of the artist
- album
-reviews from
-celebs
-music press
-newspapers
-name of labels with logos
-where the product is available
-eye catching visuals
-websites
-myspace
-official


DigiPak
-showcase the artist
-menu
-collector items
-limited edition
-special features
-out takes
-video documentary
-making of the video
-interviews
-live performance
-interactive content
-guitar hero
-competitions
-bonus tracks
-exclusive
-uncut version
-short film
-artists work/personal work


these are some of the things that we are going to be thinking about and including in our products.

editing.

so far me and Ollie have change the vanilla ice section Agni and put a video behind him as he sings of a wall of graffiti. just like in there video. we got the cideo from youtube and then copied it in to out sequence.
we have also put small freeze frames in on the beats before the vanilla ice section to fill the gap and to show the audience the next artiest.
we also changed the fade we had on the artist to a blast of white colour from the artist and then a zoom in to the artist and then the screen goes completely white for about 3sec as you begin to see the slow-motion boyband, walking down the stairs.
we have edited the 'westlife' footage by slowing it down and making it more stylized by making it black and white and putting a blue hue over the top to give it a boyband stylized feel. We put small clips of all the artistes featured, on the beat at the break-down. Then when the singing comes back we show the boyband singing for the last time and then we will have 'Rick Astley' in the court yard singing and small bit of dancing, then it will jump to 'Madonna' dancing and then singing the last bit of the chours, then it will finish with her turning her back to the camera and her walking way or of her slowing fading in to the distance.

The Rick Astley section wont take long to edit all it will need is cutting up in to section of footage and then possibly putting a grainy effect over the top.
The Madonna section will need a little bit more because it will need to be green screened and then cut up and hen put in with the rest of the footage. if anything goes wrong then will need to just put some old footage in instead. it will be a shame.
we have planned it enough to get it all done just in time.

we have the last lesson to finish the rest of the video.
- 40mins filming
- 20mins cutting it up and getting the right bits of the footage
- 30mins eding it together and making it look good.

last lesson

We need to film one more act from 3.00 til the end at 3.30.
we've got ideas of -Madonna
-Rick Astley

We will do Rick Astley from 3.00 till 3.17
then Madonna from 3.17 till 3.30


this will be doing 2 chours and 2and a half instrumentals with Rick Astley, and then Madonna doing half and instrumental dancing then singing the last chours.

costumes-
Madonna- Patrick- dress and lots of necklaces and we will mess his hair up in to a poofy style.
Rick Astley- Ryan- plain black top with possibly a cream coat then ill style my hair so its slicked back and possbly with some glasses.

location-
madonna- will be green screened and then a picture of the river behind, but we will also shoot some short dance bits.
Rick Astley- will be outside in the tennis corts, agains a fence. like in the video.

editing

We have started the final stage of editing in our last lesson, we moved some footage about and we started editing the new footage we shot in the early part of the lesson.
We have booked our computer after college today so we can finish all of our editing and make sure that we have the last lesson on Friday to polish it and make it the best it can be.
me and Ollie have started the editing in the previous lesson and we know what needs to be done to get it up to scratch.

reshooting

last lesson we re shot our top layer on our 'vanilla ice' section, so it fitted with the lyrics and fitted together smoother. We also re shot the whole of the 'westlife' section because the footage before wasn't very good and it would have looked rubbish. so we planned our footage out this time and made sure that we had the right green screen.
We are planning to have another time to shoot another artist like 'Madonna' because at the moment the footage finishes at 2.20 and the track finishes at 3.30 and 'Westlife' would become abit boring and repetitive, and it wont fit the the speed of our track and editing so far.

Rough Cut

Here is our rough cut.

re-shooting

our rough-cut deadline has been meet and we have some blank spaces where we were going to put different sections of footage, but some bits of footage weren't long enough and some bits really didn't look good. But we had already decided that we going to re shoot some bits of footage, like the westlife section because we didn't really have enough planning time (after being told that we have no time in the music room).

Plan: i think that we should us the dolly and pan round a the group and get close-up shots of us in the camera, this is conversations in some westlife videos. also we will shoot a long shoot of us as a group and a moody shoot of us. They will all be conventional shoots from different styles of boyband videos.
costumes: They will be very similar to last time, just smart shirts and jackets and shoes. But i think that we should so one shot with us more casual, and more like a group of Friend in a boyband. also in videos if convention.
location: i think that we should shoot it in the same location as last time, up of the stage and in the main hall, you get allot of natural light and we can mix it with artificial lighting, to make it look brighter.
booking: we will need to book a time to use a camera, lights, tripod and dolly.

This will fill the spare time that we have in the middle for the boyband section that we already have.

so far...

So far we have filmed everything and made a good start in the editing. We still have a bit to do on it, but mainly just getting the green screen perfect and the shots slotted together. we have been lucky enough to be given one more day of editing because we miss a day due to the friday being a holiday.
We did have some trouble with filming because we booked the music room for lunch and a small section of the next lesson on the monday, BUT when we got there cut it down to abit of lunch, so we couldn't get all of our 'Beatles' footage, so we decided to add in a small boyband section to also have more contract with the other footage and to also replace the other half of the 'beatles' section. The boyband we decided to do was 'Westlife' because there are a big, well known band that fit to the stereotipical boyband image.
Because we were filming our 'Beatles section on the last day of filming, and we couldn't finish it all, we had to pretty much make a rough plan of our 'Westlife' footage and the go by it because we only had limited time left. The footage came out good enough so we known that we need to reshoot it, but we know what we need to shoot.
The current order for our footage is:
-David Bowie -footage really good and all the editing is done. The green screen is really good with these section because it looks all retro and slightly old and this looks just like the Bowie section of 'life on mars' that we aiming to achieve.

-The Beatles -A small section of close up to medium shots of the drummer to fit to the beat. looks really good and the editing is finished on that, it was green screened as well but it doesn't look as good as the Bowie footage. But i think that we should put an image behind instead to make it more apealing and more bolder, we can make it fit to the retro 60's age of the 'Beatles' instead of a plain edited background. The costumes were just smart suits and we gelled our hair if we had hair that was to long to make them look like bowls.

-Elton John -The footage looks really good and quite cheesy and funny, but not intentional. we haven't green screened it but we have done many different shots, long, medium, close up of face, close up of feet, close up of keys. Just so we can get the right but of footage. So far we have only used a medium shot at the beginning and a close-up at the end because we wanted to make it it like the 'crocodile rock' video. We have put some colour hue and saturation filters over it and other editing techniques on it to make it look colourful but still keeping to the conventions on the video. The costume was smart suit and some pink heart shaped glasses and i styled my hair to make it look like his. The footage also looks effective in the way that the ginger hair is really eye catching.

-Vanilla Ice -the footage is good, but it could be better. But it looks really effective because the background is of the stage and we have lots of different props on the stage to make it look like an abanded warehouse, and we have put no natural lighting on it it all artificial and its been put only in sections, so it like light is just seeping in, it looks really effective. we also put a dance to this and there are bits that look really good and bits that don't... we have finished all the editing on this but we have the last lesson to finish this section for the rough-cut deadline. The costumes were just trackies and baggie top, a retro hip-hop look.

-Westlife -This was done on the spot because of the music department. We know what we have have to shoot, we just need to re-shoot it because the footage looks pretty bad, but on a whole it looks really effective. We all had our costumes because we had it from the 'Beatles'. When we re shoot it and finished with a slow motion editing it will look really good but for the rough-cut it will look average.

So far the editing has gone together really well and it all seems to fit. We have green screen quite a lot of our footage so it takes that little bit longer to edit because we need to get the right quantities green edited out without cutting any of the artist. The timing is good so far we just need to put it all together for the rough cut and see what we need to do to make it better or to add on more of a certain section.

Personal at the moment i am really pleased with the footage and i am really looking forward to getting it all together and finalized. It should really good and it bit quite funny but not intentional. All we need to do now is to finish all the editing on 'Vanilla Ice' and 'Westlife'.

General Update

Today we are uploading the remaining footage, yesterday we filmed the elton john section & vanilla ice dance performance; we added westlife into the mix as we thought we lacked the boyband image, and cut down the beatles section due to location difficulties, so ollie will be playing ringo starr on drums instead. While Ollie and Ryan upload and edit, i will be working on the DVD cover. Ive been experimenting with custom made photoshop brushes, quite a few from http://abduzeedo.com/11-great-abstract-photoshop-brushes-light-effects. Templates and mood boards will be uploaded shortly!

thinking ahead!

This is Patrick as Bowie, i've used photoshop to add a opaque broken glass effect frame, with blue contrasting cracks coming from outside of the image. These sort of effects are affective for stills, but can be used in video aswell. Our upcoming designs for the dvd cover and magazine advert could definitely use these tools.

planning and booking

we went to the music room and booked a time when we can use the drums, guitars and piano so we can film our Beatles section and our Elton John section. We will also shoot our other pieces on the Monday but outside the booked time. Then we will spend the rest of the week editing so we can meet the rough-cut deadline on the 23rd Oct (end of lesson). Then if we need to we will re shoot any footage that we feel needs doing or changing.

this our some images of us at work on the final David Bowie shoot and us at work.

green screening

we shot our final David Bowie shot with make-up and full costume. we learned how to edit green screen by going on to youtube and searching for a tutorial because we wanted to extend out knowledge of the software.. we got our footage and the youtube video and simultaneously edited it till we got it how we wanted it.



this is the video we found on youtube.

The Beatles section

from 0.43sec we are cutting to The Beatles section.
costumes:- suits (black).
-bowl hair cut (flickie) and make-up
set:- green screen, then edit a retro black and white floor.
- lots of artifical lighting.
-fan.
-camera.
props:- *2 guitars.
- drum kit.
- mic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzIeVyBKbsE

this is the look and feel that we want to achieve at the end of The Beatles section.