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

Planning and Research Stage
In the planning/research stage we used many technologies. These were mainly internet based because we had to look at existing music videos to analyse and get ideas for our product. During our research phase we used youtube quite a lot. You tube is one of the best websites allowing you to access millions of free videos. This allowed us to find any video that we wanted to analyse with ease. We also used google a lot to find images and information. We used google because as a search engine it has the most accurate results to get the information that you wanted, because we wanted to film on a beach we had to look up the tide times and the sunset times which took no time at all thanks to google. These would be fairly standard uses when researching anything because they are so good. They really helped us in finding the indie videos we wanted to analyse. As a free source it is brilliant to use.

 

                                                     

Also in the planning stage we used myspace.com as a way of communicating with our band. Myspace is a social network where people or groups can display videos and chat. Myspace was brilliant as we were able to find out what the band were like listen to their music and speak to them to see it they wanted to have a music video. When we got our band and were more familiar with them we then communicated over the lead singers facebook page. Facebook is another social network site that does similar things to myspace. Using facebook we were able to arrange filming dates and consult the band about different aspects of the video.

We also used blogger in the research and planning stage to write down and view all of our work so far. As we used blogger last year we were very familiar with it. Setting it up was very easy and posting is as simple as can be. The good thing about using it is that because everything is stored online you can go back and edit/change it or add more whenever you want, this makes it so easy to do a little bit at a  time.     

Construction Stage

We used more technologies in the the construction phase than we did any other. As well as using all the previous websites during the construction stage we also used Cameras, tripods and many other things. We used 3 mini-DV cameras when we went on both of our filming days. Taking 3 was good because we were able to get all the angles we needed in a quicker time. Having three cameras was essential due to the battery life of the cameras. On both of our filming days we had one camera that ran out of battery. On the upside the footage we managed to get was a good quality. The quality of the footage is some part was due to the tripods used. Using the tripods allowed us to keep our footage still and because of the extendable and retractrable legs we were able to get our footage at different levels. The only bad points about the tripods were that the cameras didn't always screw on  properly so they could be quite loose. This meant we had to keep the tripods really still on location to get the best quality footage.

We bought our own taped to use in the cameras. These tapes had well enough space on them to do what we needed. The tapes weren't a problem as long as the cameras worked. 

When on location we used a camera and our iphones to take pictures to use for our CD sleeves and posters. Strangely the iphone pictures looked a better quality than the actual cameras so we used them instead.

We used imovie, to put all of our footage together to create our finished music video. Imovie is a small editing software that allows you to create small films and videos. It is a really good software doing what we needed to do. It was really easy to edit all the clips to the exact time scale we needed as it lets you work down to 0.01 seconds. Imovie would struggle to something on a large scale as it isn't a professional editing software.

Evaluation Stage

Through our evaluation stage we used the internet mainly. We used youtube again to upload our finished music video and to upload our band interview. This allowed us to put it on blogger to be able to evaluate it. Blogger was the main use in the evaluation stage as we used this to do every evaluative thing we have done. On our audience research we used Microsoft Excel to create our graphs.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Audience feedback is very important. The audience feedback allows you to see what people like and dislike about your product. This then lets you edit it so you get a good overall video that everybody likes. As well as this audience feedback gives an unbiased opinion of the video which will in turn find the mistakes that somebody making the video miss or subconsciously choose not to spot. As much as the audience feedback can be disheartening it will improve your product in the long run. It is important to ask members from your own target audience because it is important that you get the correct representations across to your main audience. After this has been achieved it is also good to ask people outside of your target audience to see what reception you get. If you ignore your audience feedback you risk your audience not liking your final product and it will end up being a flop. We had 3 stages of audience feedback. The first stage was research, the second stage was during our editing and the last stage was after we had finished our editing.

First Stage (Research)
We asked 3 groups of people in our first questionnaire. This questionnaire was designed to find out what sort of genre people like and what they liked to see in music videos. This questionnaire was a good start to establishing what we were going to do for our music video. This helped us plan our products to get what people expected on their. This stage also helped to define our target audience and work out who we would be marketing to.

Second Stage (Half Edit)
We asked 8 people to look at our video after we had edited half of it. We had edited all of our narrative scenes into the correct places and timing. This questionnaire helped us to find out what bits people did and did not like. By asking this half way through we were able to look at the results and try to fix some of the things that we could maybe do better, or change them completely.  In this questionnaire we found out that most people didn't understand our postmodernism element. We decided to leave it in because we felt that it was a good shot that showed of some good editing and a few people were understanding it.

Third Stage (Full Edit)
We asked 7 people to look at our video and ancillary texts after we had finished them all. We asked it then because we wanted an overall opinion of the finished products. This also left us a little bit of time to change things if we needed to. This questionnaire gave us better results as we had good ratings and more people understanding our postmodern elements than not. The last stage of the audience research was the most important because if people didn't like it the entire product wouldn't be listened to or viewed which would be a disaster.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ACNCILLARY TEXTS?

The element that links all of our products together is the underlying beach element across the products. I believe that our products are cohesive, the colours matched well and the all the visuals work well together. You would know that our products were part of a set and that was what we were aiming for. This is important from a marketing view in creating an image of the band that needs to be the same on all fronts. This is important because you want to create an image that is recognized when you look at just one of the products. This will help to sell the product as well because being able to recognize the band from one of the products will reinforce your opinion when you see  a different product.

This CD sleeve is the Kooks 'Inside In Inside Out'

This CD sleeve is a dark grey which mirrors the colours in their music video. This gives their products cohesion and has developed into a main point recognised in their band and the indie genre. We have tried to do this with ours so that they look like each other in colour and by genre.

Opposite to this CD cover we have the narrative on the CD cover. This is because our narrative is the main thing to watch in the music video. It also makes for more interesting pictures. We decided to make this our main cohesive element across the texts because it is the most easily recognisable.

What we tried to do worked as both the colours and the visuals worked well.

WHAT WAY DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS OF CONVENTIONS OF REAL LIFE MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Our media product uses the typical forms of conventions of real life media products of it's genre. We have looked at other videos and tried to stick to the typical conventions rather than trying to challenge the typical conventions. We thought that this would be easier to get across in a music video and would make our genre clearer.
Our performance sections use typical conventions of our genre as they are performing in a practise room as if they are rehearsing. This makes the band look relaxed and like they are having fun which is a typical convention of the indie genre. We have also matched the audio and the lyrics to the visuals while thinking about the mood of the song. As well as this we have used videos such as 'Henrietta' by The Fratellis as the typical colour of the indie genre. The dull grey colour and many browns are used in a lot of indie music videos. We have used this colouring in our music video.



We have included a narrative/performance concept to our video which is very similar to the majority of indie videos. This is because the indie genre isn't about the performance as much as much as it is the individuals
and their representations in the genre on screen. A lot of indie band s are represented as relaxed and easy going in their videos. We believe we have managed to do this in the performance section of the video. We have also tried to mirror the indie genre in the clothing of the actor. it is important that you get the right clothing in the genre or you will be sending out a completely different message to what you should be representing.

We have stuck to the typical conventions of music videos in general as well as the indie genre by keeping the pace of the music, in a similar time to the visuals. We have done this while trying to match the lyrics to the visuals as well. Examples of this are when the lyrics say 'falling down' and 'Slipping through my hands' we have quite literal shots of things falling down and slipping through hands.

The Final Products

Music Video
I am really pleased with our final video. I think that with a non existent budget we have managed to create a professional video that looks good. I believe that we have challenged the conventions of the genre and believe we have represented them well. I believe that we have edited to the best of our ability and that we have made a good music video that the band and the examiners will both enjoy.

Poster
I think that the poster that we have created looks professional and matches the genre well. When creating it I thought that we would put special effects on if the picture needed it, however we wouldn't put any on if we could once we made it look professional. I believe the simplistic nature of the picture works well without any effects, I also believe that if it was on a wall amongst any other posters it wouldn't look out of place.

CD Sleeve
Our CD sleeves and inserts only focus the narrative part of the video as we thought that would be the most interesting thing to look at. As well as trying to make it look good so that it makes good marks I also believe that it is good to look at and will make people want to buy the album.

Cohesion
Because we made our video first and had some amazing pictures we decided to base all our other products around the narrative we filmed. This has allowed us to start off with a cohesive element. That was the biggest challenge. Being able to construct the products together in one day allowed us to keep our cohesion to a high standard. We didn't just have similar pictures to create the cohesion, each picture had the same backdrop and after we constructed it all we made sure all had the same style writing 'Rage Italic' for the bands logo and 'Rockwell' for the other writing. Also all the writing was in the same colour. This allowed all our products to look similar and be cohesive. If you showed people our music video and gave them a line up of posters and CD sleeves I believe most people would recognise that ours are linked. This is good because that is exactly what we strived for. We know this from the positive feedback we have been getting about the cohesion.