POST 58 - FINAL CUT

To view our finalised product click below...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOksiOnwdAU

POST 57 - FEEDBACK ON FINAL CUT

Click below to view audience feedback on final cut

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jYiKPJHUIA&feature=youtu.be

POST 56 - (EVALUATION) QUESTION 4

Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use media technologies to  in the construction of  research, planning and evaluation stages?

This year indifferent to AS, we learned and gained access to a wider platform of media technology to express our ideas and create a more professional outtake on our final A2 music video. Over this year me and Luke learnt a lot with technology having taken this subject with little experience or knowledge on the technology available too us therefore it was a great challenge but the skills we have since acquired have excelled our ability to produce a music video we are both proud of. This question splits the technology into the construction of planning, research and evaluation where we had to vary our use to make efficient use and creative use of the tasks given. Below is a mind map which shows you what Media Technology we used and in what stage of the music video construction we used those factors.

In this course, me and Luke both split from our groups from As and joined together as a completely new pair with little experience. We both knew what was at stake and did tonnes of  Research  relevant to the course with the target of achieving a high grade professional music video. This included the use of Photoshop and I-movie which suited us better if we understood as for editing purposes, we both had access to a mac book rather than windows which made a more efficient use of our time and helped us develop our A2 grade on a portable level.

Technology examples include uses of Photoshop, I-Movie and modern and more expensive Video Cameras which we had no experience in which we had to learn and improve in order to progress from AS and separate us in terms of quality from last years work.

This is an example of a piece of work which arose from Photoshop which we created as a pair from scratch,being a completely original piece of work with knowledge we only acquired this year rather than last. I believe this work overcomes last years and makes our skills seem a lot more professional and a better standard from our AS end of year work.

In the factor of planning we used blogger, similar to last year to document our progress and show the public what we have achieved and built up over the year which helps us keep organised and up to date. This was a simple platform for our project and was easy to keep track and promote our progress. More so, we used the likes of Prezzie and Photoshop, two things we haven''t used before with no experience in therefore, by gaining the ability to use these tools we could enhance our capabilities and work harder with a better professional and better quality tint to our project. Without these tools we would not be satisfied with our work and would feel pressure as other tools do not contain quality withheld by the likes of Photoshop.

We used the most known tools of the likes of the internet and YouTube to gather research and browse the web to gather information relevant to our A2 course. We used smartphones to gain access to these media platforms and this helped us gain access on a portable level which helped us work away from the classroom. This helped us compare our music video and brainstorm original ideas based on the effort of other videos and with belief on how we could improve. This helped us get attention of Wes Anderson, who's style we implemented on our music video with using the centre of the shot to place characters to make shots seem symmetrical

For our evaluation we used I-Movie indifferent to Adobe Premier Pro from AS which was more simple with advanced editing tools to which made editing more fun and a higher standard of quality. I-movie was more practical for our group as we both had access to I-mac rather than Windows or adobe. More so, the improved camera's which came at a greater expense exposed greater quality shots and visuals which improved our visual representation of our music video but again needed us to learn and understand how to handle and work such a expensive media product.

POST 55 - (EVALUATION) QUESTION 3

RESULTS

Q1 : 11/12 yes

         1/12 no

Q2 : 10/12 yes

         2/12 no

Q3 : 12/12 yes

         0/12 no

Q4 : 11/12 yes

         1/12 no

Q5 : 9/12 yes

       3/12 no

Q6 : 12/12 yes

         0/12 no

Q7: 12/12 yes

        0/12 no

Q8 : 11/12 yes

         1/12 no

Q9 : 10/12 yes

         2/12 no

Q10 :

here were a few answers:

I really enjoyed the music video however, i felt there needed to be more of a point of view from both male and female perceptions and that the narrative was difficult to understand which this would clear up.

To improve this music video, i would add extra locations to improve scenery and more close ups of props like flowers or facial features to add extra clips. the good shots were creative in the sun but i would of liked more.

I didn't like the 1st person point of view shots i thought they were very unprofessional and taccy making it clearly look student made. The filters on flashbacks were also not needed and black and white would of been better suited.

All of our results were by our target audience - young adults, so this should be a true reflection of what the people of who would be watching our video would think. We have chose our target audience to be young adults as we believe they watch music videos the most and they can relate to the characters as they are around the same age. We are very pleased with these results of this questionnaire as people were able to be more truthful in their own privacy and they were still very positive which made them slip away from the Stuart Hall audience theory that people feel inclined to fit in a crowd and follow a answer.

POST 54 - (EVALUATION) QUESTION 2

POST 53 - (EVALUATION) QUESTION 1

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

The media platform i used to present my media project was via YouTube and Blogger which was simplistic and easy to access on all smart devices and on a portable stage.

genre: Indie pop (also typeset as indie-pop or indie-pop) is a music genre and subculture that combines guitar pop with the style and tone of mainstream pop music.

Genre INDIE POP conventions.

·     Relationship featured at some point in the video

·     Adult actors used

·     Artist performance OR narrative

·     Guitar featured in performance

·     Black and white filters 

·     Mixture of camera shots, close and far away

·     Slow motion sequences

·     Most Indie Pop music videos includes a live performance from the artist which makes the audience focus on the talent the artist has. It makes their career about their passion for music rather than success. Live performances promote the artist/s too. This enables audiences to see the atmosphere the artist creates in their concerts encouraging the public to watch the artist/s live Performance is often partnered with a narrative to break up the music video thus, creating the music video memorable

·     Dialogue are often used in music videos either in the beginning or the end to tell or conclude the story.

·     filters are often used over the top of clips or the entire video to give a certain idea to the viewer, such as memory, age to the video or showing the clip in a positive or negative light

here is my plan for the essay question...

The way I conform to the convention to the conventions to modern day stereotypical media products from the genre of indie based on a music video was firstly, a narrative (story line) from which gave my music video a purpose and a story to tell based on the lyrics. I believe we succeeded in conforming to this and i think if the audience was to spot this video they would know the genre of song without the soundtrack as the story line and other visuals all but challenge the forms and conventions of a Indie pop music video. The story line includes a ex couple whom a young adult who is still in love tries to find the confidence to approach this girl who without him knowing till the end wants to try again with a romantic relationship. This relationship expression also conforms to love songs as it is essential with this soundtrack to include a romanticised story line.

To back up the previous point, another way our media product uses the conventions of an Indie-pop genre is the variety of shots and camera angles which provides an insight to the creativity of our production. This helps visually categorise our music video with the relevant genre and helps the understanding of our product to which proves our success in trying to conform to the specific convention. We used many shots such as close ups, long shots and first person view shots to show originality but make the footage more entertaining to film and to watch. the use of scenery more so helps set the scene and understand the setting to which the characters are set in to understand relationships as a young adult. Again, we used another use of shots by changing the filters to help promote a flashback effect and a previous moment other than the present tense story line and moments shown in the music video. The old filter is used like a darker fade over with murky colours to show an old piece of footage.

Another way we contributed to the forms and conventions of a real media product was to include the character in the music video with a acoustic guitar and singing the lyrics which strongly conform and help easily attract the music video to the track as the guitar matches the guitar played on the song and the lyrics whom Sophie the actor was actually singing make her suit the song and made the audience question whether or not she really sung the song. This showed a success as it showed the music video achieved a professional outlook and the character singing helped make the video look a better quality and more creative especially as editing a lip-sync is greatly difficult.

However, our media project also challenges the real media forms and conventions of the relevant genre most appropriately by using young adults or teenagers rather than adults. With adults used in the video it makes it seem more mature and realistic, especially with romance but we planned to challenge this because of our experience and knowledge. We believed as a group to do a romance based on our own age because that's where we most understand and more so, its different and it suits our project more as we felt more comfortable especially as our idea before our rough cut exposed a teenager theme.

Another way we challenged this convention of Indie-Pop was by not using any 'old skool' footage or filters such as black and white and retro filming as we used other filters to make this more realistic but with a modern take on romance we believed the flashbacks were not that old so we used another filter instead but i still believe this was just as effective and successful as it was clear to the audience it was a flashback. Black and white is common in this convention as Indie is promoted as Retro therefore old footage in black and white would conform to the genre as it expresses an old style visual from the footage.

Additionally, yet another way I challenge the forms and conventions of the relevant genre is by not using dialogue throughout the project. This was because we deemed the music more important as the narrative  symbolised the lyrics therefore dialogue wouldn't be effective nor important. We used lip-syncing instead however, the lyrics were like dialogue just song and with great relevance in the lyrics meaning we chose this than dialogue to narrate the project and help make sense of the situation occurring.

We got inspiration from a film director called Wes Anderson who created great films such as Fantastic Mr Fox, to help inspire our music video. His screen directions are so creative and quirky which fits the indie pop style and conventionality therefore with wide scale research, we used his centre shot of characters to duplicate to which worked in our favour as it made shots look symmetrical and the use of symmetry showed quality and creativity to which we could use to our advantage to help achieve a great professional looking successful music project. 

We also, from our ancillary task became influenced by a colouring book called 'Little White Lies' to which we came up with an original idea to have a colour in style Digipak CD cover. this also conformed with original ideas to be quirky and different to suit the genre despite coming up with creative ways to gain attention and entertain our potential audience and consumers.

Another style we used for our Digipak was the inside cover which we coloured in ourselves to show different ideas on how our character was perceived if you didn't know the character and hadn't seen the music video. This offers a variety of insights and an idea to encourage the audience to become involved and to entertain them. We used Pop Art by Wes Anderson who inspired us to draw like him as pop art is different and with his style conforms to the odd style we try to achieve via the conventions of a indie pop genre of real media products.

POST 52 - (FINAL) ANCILLARY TASK 2

This is the final product for our music videos poster. We decided to keep it all black and white hand drawn because we wanted the vibrant colour in the video to be a surprise when they first watched it and we felt that it wouldn't have been a surprise if the poster was also vibrant and colourful. We in included the image of a scene from our video on the poster because we believe that this shot captures the emotions in the whole song but does not give anything away from just looking at it without watching the video. Again, we hand drew this for the reasons above and to link to the rest of the poster but it also makes the audience wonder and guess what is happening as there is little detail in the hand drawn picture compared to the scene in our video. We then decided to use the same image again for our DigiPak as we like it so much and it is a big part of the video but does not look like anything without watching the video as it does not give anything away. We used font which looked like it could be hand written to go with the hand drawn pictures but made the title of the song bold so it stood out to the audience while linking with the poster.