Question 1 in more detail

How does this relate to existing media?

Our product can relate to both of these existing products. We used the idea from the advert on the left for their style of text. Eg. 'Includes...' and also the link to a website of theirs.

Evaluation video and transcript

Transcript for evaluation video

This is the video for our evaluation, we incorporated ourselves into a newsroom setting to answer the key questions we were asked. We feel as though we answered these questions appropriately.

Introduction

Tiffany: Hello and welcome to media news rom

Abby: At the beginning of the second year of media we were given the task of creating a moving image product, along with ancillary tasks varying on which product we chose to do. As a pair we chose to create a music video and a digipack that included a cd case design and a magazine album advertisement.

Tiffany: In the last 24 hours we’ve had loads of questions flooding in on our twitter account to do with this evaluation, we selected the four most appropriate,
Question 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Abby: The genre we selected for our product was Indie Alternative, the reason for this was because it was a music category we could both agree on. Doing some in-depth research we decided that our target audience would be for 15 – 24 year olds but had a discussion that this could change depending on the music tastes of various generations. We looked at a variety of artists and music videos, some not within the genre we were looking at but we used for inspiration for our future product. The artists we looked included: Ed Sheeran, Maximo Park and Beyoncé.

Tiffany: Our product uses these conventions of current media products such as Ed Sheeran’s music video ‘The A team.’ This encouraged us to use effects such as Black and white on our product. We were then inspired by the music video where special effects were used that’s when Maximo Park was brought in; with different style of music video they incorporated bursting colour effects in the song “the coast is always changing” in sections of their video. However, we discussed this matter and we didn’t have the right software to do this type of effect within our video.

Tiffany: Question 2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?

Abby: Our main product and ancillary task, combined together were effective in a way that the design was consistent throughout the album cover and magazine advertisement, and our production logo was present in all three products. Our two ancillary tasks bared the image of a colourful macaw with outspread wings; this constant image will appear to the audience and create a memorable image in their mind.

 Tiffany: This makes the image powerful and effective to the reader of the product. The effectiveness of all three products together highlights the aim of the video. The aim is to portray the equilibrium theory by Tordorov by doing this we created an appropriate storyline to suit this area chosen, and we believe the use of the indie genre was a perfect way to represent this.

Tiffany: Question 3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Here’s a short clip of some feedback we were given by different audiences

-show clip-

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

Abby: In the creation of our media product we used a range of different technologies such as:

Photoshop

iMovie/Premier Pro

Powerpoint

Font websites

Use of camera

We used these different technologies to create all three products effectively.

The two main pieces of software we used were Photoshop and iMovie on the Apple Macs. Photoshop was used more in the making of the two ancillary tasks where we created the bird image to represent being set free from lifes problems

Tiffany: iMovie was used for the making of our main product and this evaluation, we used iMovie to edit, cut and create our music video by also adding effects to make a transitions between different parts in the video

when creating our music video, we tried to use Adobe Premier Pro, however we decided iMovie would be easier because of access to the software.

Abby: We used a website named ‘Dafont’ to find a perfectly suited font for the making of the ancillary tasks, for example the logo for our production company.

Tiffany: We also used Powerpoint to present our music video and some of our ideas to an audience of various ages to get a wide range of views and opinions.

Conclusion

Abby: Overall, we feel that the music video was quite successful! We don’t feel it was perfect because there is always room for improvements. We understand that if made again we would make a lot of certain changes such as making the story line clearer and eventful, and also sorting our technical issues when finalizing the product!

Tiffany: Thank you for watching and hope you enjoyed our video!

Final Product

Location Photographs

These are the photos of the places where we decided to do our filming.

This is a shot of the first scene in our music video on the left. On the right is the actual scene in the video. We chose this location because there was a large road/pathway we could use for out main character to storm away from the car after the argument. This made filming the clip that little bit easier as we could use a tracking shot for the following of the character along the path.













This was another shot we used on the left. Our main character was shown here to be confused and stressed, we used this location for the use of the waterfall. We felt the waterfall could represent her flow of emotions.

We used the shot of the stairs as a joiner of scenes to show how our main character made it to the ending spot.  We liked this shot because we could position the camera and film from the top of the stairs and have the main character walking towards us.

This is part of the ending scene in the video where we cut between the girl and the boy. We liked this shot because we could again use tracking shots to follow the characters to the spot in which they meet again.
















These are shots where we were originally going to film in Washington at the Arts Centre, however we decided on a new direction for the storyline as shown through our storyboards on the next post.
The reason for the change in storyline was the availability of the characters we were going to use and this hit a point where Myself and Abby would need to rethink our idea.

We did like these shots because there was a lot of space around the building where we could film and have room for our character to express herself.

Digipack

For our digipack we decided to use the conventions of a bird, this giving the idea of freedom. The bird we have chosen has widespread wings to bring this feeling into action, this we have incorporated into the cover.



The main reason we took this as inspiration is we decided on the idea of a bird ourselves, when looking up existing CD covers we came across this one. Friendly Fires' album cover was interesting and just what we were looking for, we liked the use of the colours against the black background as they are very effective and vibrant. The choice of colours for the particular bird are ones we were looking at also, we thought that the blue being the dominant colour looked the best choice because of the many different shades used.

This was our first go at the production of the CD cover. we have also used the idea of the bird with widespread wings, giving the impression of the freedom surrounding the CD which we are aiming for that kind of scene and music.
We like using this idea, this being our first go, there were bits which needed perfecting, such as the colour around the end feathers of the wings.

This was the next idea for the cover, we added a filter to the bird to make it look different, we like this effect as it blurs the colours into one, we chose the bird to be central as we wanted the main focus to be on that as a whole.
We decided to add the album name (Lost Souls Call) in different writing to the band name, we chose the writing for Lost Souls Call because it was interesting and we felt it would stood out on the cover. However, we put the band name Bleachbird behind and quite faded as we felt wary about putting it on the front. This then lead us to our final design...











This was our design for the front cover. We chose to put the writing at the top of the page and took away the name of the band. We felt a simpler option was a better way to go which is what we were looking for with the idea of Freedom.









Using the idea of just the name wasn't just our idea, we found a CD that made theirs with only the CD cover on the front, we liked this one to give off the simple impression. Also we felt, if somebody was to look at the CD and could not find the name, they would simply look around the CD cover to the spine and the back, therefore checking out the CD meaning there is more of a chance for somebody  to buy the album!

These are the final designs we decided on for the front and back cover. We decided to change the font and the placing of the writing on the front cover. We did this because the writing looked bolder and stood out more on the cover over the top of the bird and the black background.  For the back cover we decided on a different angle for the bird by using half of the body with one wing spread. We chose this because we wanted to involve that style into the Magazine Advertisement. We made the writing and the artwork of the bird darker than the rest as we decided we wanted the song names and the production logo to stand out more than them. 

Magazine Advert

We have gained new inspiration from advertisements such as the Bombay Bicycle Club one, and The Maccabees. We like how the background is the CD cover itself and how their backgrounds are mainly scenery.
We like both of these covers, firstly we like the use of colours on both, the use of blue and white against each other show a contrast which is interesting against each other. Also the use of the fonts being both regular and bold are useful to see as the more important writing is being bold such as names and 'out now'.

We have looked at a range of fonts for the name of the album 'Lost Souls Call' 

some of our ideas are as follows: 

This is the font we have chosen to use, we like this font because it worked well with our production of the magazine, and CD cover, it stood out better over the bird, the boldness and the colour of the font worked better over the black background.

This is the finished Magazine Advertisement.
We have used the idea from the CD cover to put half of the bird onto the magazine page. We have made it bigger as it is the bird needed to fill most of the page, it is the artwork that needed to be mostly focussed on. We chose to use the same font for Lost Souls Call as the CD  and also the bold grey font for Bleachbird to initiate continuity.
There is the addition of their Facebook page under the band name so it is more likely to be read. There is release date and the information about the CD at the bottom.