Maya Tyrrell - Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use new technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Maya Tyrrell - Evaluation question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I created a mind map to process and present the significance of audience feedback when producing any product that has a target audience.

This is the full mind map, I will take a closer look at each branch

The target audience

The different forms of audience feedback

Maya Tyrrell - Evaluation question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main and ancillary texts?

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

All three of my products have synergy and are therefore able to promote one another because of specific similarities that are due to the conventions of the indie genre and the song itself.
The most obvious similarity between the music video, digipak and magazine cover is that they all present the main singer of the band, and therefore audiences can easily recognise that the three products are connected.
Not only does each product promote the lead singer, the actual images used are all linked together. The digipak cover of the singer is featured in the magazine advert and the picture used is of a shot in the music video where he is singing whilst leaning against a tree. Therefore when the digipak or advert are seen it by a consumer it could trigger the memory of this scene in the video and influence the consumer to purchase the CD. This could also work the other way and while watching the music video the viewer would recognise that shot from the advert or digipak and so will appreciate the band are trying to put themselves out there and will be happy to support them.

The magazine advert

The music video

The front cover of the digipak

                                  Additionally, by the magazine advert actually including the front cover of the digipak, it allows audiences to view the product it is advertising and therefore promotes it through synergy. This is a highly effective technique of combining the products with synergy in order for them to promote one another because it is so obvious there is no way the audience could not notice the front cover of the digipak on the advert.

As well as the common denominator of the singer on each of the products, I also took the autumnal theme from the music video and included it in the magazine advert and the digipak to add a further visual connection between the three products. The music video is set mostly outside where the weather is a big influence on the mood of the video, so the autumn setting, I thought, was very fitting to indicate the change in the protagonist's life and the fallen leaves can represent his fallen relationship. In order to keep this theme across all of the products and to create a further connection between them all, I made sure the leaves from the floor in the music video are on the lyric booklet and in the background of the magazine advert. On the magazine advert this link is slightly more subtle but I am sure that subconsciously the audience viewing the advert will make the link to the music video by recognising the leaves.

This autumn photo is similar to the walkway the lead singer walks through in the music video

This is part of the digipak where the CD goes and is a further attempt to engrave the autumn theme with the song and band so audiences are more likely to remember them.

Overall I think the products have a shared identity but still each serve their purpose and promote each other. An example of a synergy I have seen in an existing product is in Taylor Swift's album 1989. It has a polaroid cover which links with the lyrics to the song 'out of the woods' and the album title as this was when polaroids were used more commonly than today.

1989 album cover, T. Swift

Lyrics from "Out of the woods" referencing the polaroid theme

Comparing my products to this I think I have successfully used synergy and my only improvement would be to edit the lyrics booklet because in comparison to the video and magazine advert it seems more colourful and therefore is a bit too happy for the sad mood of the song.

The lyrics booklet from the digipak

Maya Tyrrell - Evaluation question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or calling forms and conventions of real media?

              

Evaluation Question Four - Lydia Duncan

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

Research

I used the internet for all aspects of my media project. The two main search engines that I used to carry out my internet research were ‘Google’ (Microsoft Windows Computers) and ‘Safari’ (Apple Mac Computers). I used these search engines to find useful websites for the element of work I was reading into and also to collect images. Overall I did not find one search engine better than the other because ultimately they carry out the same function however I will say I am more at ease with Google because it is the one I use mostly in my everyday life. When researching ideas and concepts for my music video I had to look into specific genres of different kinds of music. For this I used the website www.capitalfm.com/london/ as well as a few others websites. The reason I chose to use this website in particular is because the radio station ‘Capital’ is one of the biggest up to date local radio stations meaning that it will have all the latest and most popular music details. This was vital for my research as it meant that I could see what which kind of music genres were popular at the time and also which artists were considered to be “country” (this was the genre I had been allocated to research). For my digipak and magazine advert I also had to use the internet for research. I used Google Images in order to find existing products. This was so that I could start generating ideas of what my own product could be like and to understand what is seen at appealing visually to an audience so that these particular products sell. 

I constructed a PowerPoint when I was analysing some existing music videos. I looked at three contrasting music videos of high profile artists in order to see if there were any similarities or differences within their narratives of editing techniques. Once I had finished the presentations I decided to upload them onto a website called ‘Slideshare’. This website allowed me to upload my PowerPoints onto my blog as a flowing presentation instead of still images. I feel this was a much better way to display my research because it creates interaction between the viewer and the information at hand making the experience more engaging. As well as this, within the actual presentations, I further enhanced my use of combining new technologies by inserting hyperlinks to the music videos I was analysing and including screenshot images of the specific elements I was referring to. These two factors helped to hugely illustrate my points. 

In order to gain audience feedback we set up a focus group for our target audience. We showed this focus group an animatic of our storyboard. First, we drew out the storyboard images and found a white background to place them against. This was my groups first ever animatic and so we found this task quite tricky as we had nothing to compare it to. Therefore we observed other groups to see how they went about it and followed some of their direction. We took a flip camera and filmed each image for 5 seconds ensuring we had enough space to edit the images together. Afterwards we downloaded the sections of footage on to a mac desktop and used the editing software ‘Final Cut Pro’ to create a sequence for our audience to watch. The music track was inserted into the background so the asynchronous sound followed the timing of the images. To gauge the audience’s reactions we used the flip camera again to record what they were saying and how they responded. We found this very useful because it meant we could quote our focus group directly and also remember what they all said ensuring we didn't miss anything important. Finally, we edited together the audience's responses and uploaded this as a video on to YouTube to present the information in a clear way. 

We used Facebook as part of our research. My group created a Facebook group chat so that we could communicate with each other when we were working on our projects outside of lesson hours. We made important decisions within the chat, for example, picking which unsigned artist we would use. We had a few suggestions from different people and so we inserted links into the chat so that every group member could have a listen and provide their opinion. This worked incredibly well because it meant that no decisions could be made without everyone’s input and everyone could see what direction we were headed in. 

Planning

With the music video my group were creating we had to plan all the elements in detail before filming. This meant creating a mood board and an animatic and organising locations and casting etc. Another member of my group created the mood board and he ensured that relevant images were collected which were coherent to an autumn theme. We had picked this theme together at an earlier stage having noticed that many existing products had an ongoing atmosphere. By doing this exercise it meant we had a first visual representation of our ideas and we could see them presented clearly in front of us. I think this also helped our enthusiasm for the product as the beginning stages were coming together successfully. I have previously spoken about the animatic we created and the end result was indeed successful, the feedback we gained both pleased and helped us. In terms of location we decided to stay in our local area for convenience. We only had a 2 week time slot for shooting and so we would not have been able to travel far and collected all our footage in time. The area we chose was Ealing because we all lived close by and the park matched our expected mise-en-scene. Casting was challenge for us however, we initially had a main actor that had agreed to take part yet at the last minute he was not available for one of the shooting slots and with the time constraints we weren't able to be flexible with him. This is when we got in touch with another potential actor who was able to meet the timings. We added him to the Facebook chat our group was involved in so that we were able to let him know the schedule of events. Social networks were incredibly valuable to us in this instance. 

For the digipak and magazine adverts we already had an idea of what was needed because of previous existing product research. We chose different images from our filming and added effects to them for the back and front covers of our digipak. We used the effect “pencil sketch” for the front cover which gave it a textured look and then just changed the back image to “grey scale” for a black and white effect. This was initially done on the PowerPoint editing tools but the finishing touches were completed on Photoshop. Afterwards we used a digipak template to cement all the single images together into one design. The magazine advert was another challenge we came across because our ideas were not sitting well with our target audience. The first design we had created was on word but they said the page seemed too simple and wasn't realistic therefore we went back to the drawing board as a group and used PowerPoint to highlight the process of the ideas we went through. 

Construction

To film my group used a DSLR camera. In order to use the camera effectively we had to ensure that we corrected setting such as white balance and exposure whenever the lighting changed or if we moved location. This meant that when editing the film looked continuous even if the timings of day were different. It also guaranteed that the footage was of high quality and wasn't out of focus for example. To edit I use Final Cut Pro on a Mac desktop. We used the different transitions and effects this software provided us to help create atmosphere and to keep the music video running smoothly. The main transition used was called ‘cross dissolve’. We only used two effects in the whole of video and these were ‘matched lighting’ and ‘desert glare’. The reason we chose to match the colour of one shot to another was because the difference between them was too poignant and looked odd. The second effect was included because it highlighted a particular pivotal scene within the narrative of our video. The darkened colour added on top of the argument clips meant that the flash back was easily identified and also added to the tense and sad atmosphere. In terms of the sound track my group found the timing difficult. At times our artist’s lip syncing was out of time with the actual lyrics and so we did have to re shoot some of the shots which took up more time. Eventually we managed to piece together the track and the footage manually. We were not able to use the ‘spot technique’ that automatically matched the sound and this was because our filming was often too quite. Doing it by ourselves though wasn't unsuccessful and the audience did not have any problems. 

In the construction of my digipak I used PowerPoint and Photoshop. PowerPoint was mainly used to crop and change the sizes of the 6 images I was using to ensure that they all fit together evenly after being edited. With PowerPoint I also used the image edit tool bar to add light to some dark areas however Photoshop was used to change the overall effects. The two main images (front and back covers) were made black and white but the other 4 images were kept the same with their colours just slightly more exposed. For the magazine advert I made I used the same tools but added a lot more detail. For example, the digipak only had 6 original images yet the advert we were constructing had our own images plus externally sourced images from Google images for example. The logos of well-known music magazine were retrieved from Google. 

Evaluation

The final music video was uploaded onto the video sharing social network, YouTube. This allows anyone who uses this website to view our projects and leave comments, it is an interactive medium. The comment section allowed us to see how successful our final media product was because our target audience were able to get back to us. In terms of my overall evaluation I have used many different new technologies and mediums to present my information. For my first question I created a PowerPoint. I initially uploaded this onto Slideshare to I could present as a flowing show however the bottom bar covered the concluding parts of my paragraphs and so I had to change this and take screenshot of each slide and upload them in a sequence of images and annotations. Between these slides I also inserted hyperlinks to YouTube videos which were examples helping to illustrate my points. My second evaluation question was a podcast. This meant I used my iMac laptop and used iMovie to create it. The podcast was a combination of moving images and text with my voice over. I had to write a narration and record myself reading aloud so that I could add images to the track. Some of the images were relent ones taken from Google but I also included clips and images from my own music video so that I could annotate them and provide specific examples. Finally, the third evaluation question was presented using the provider Prezi. This is similar to PowerPoint but more interactive and engaging for an audience. It includes images, film clips, quotes and text so it is very visual and informative. 

Evaluation Question Three - Lydia Duncan

Evaluation Question Two - Lydia Duncan

How effective is the combination of you main and ancillary texts?