Overview of how I thought our three products turned out

Overall I felt that all three of our products were very successful, and met the targets we set out to achieve. All three products have continuity in themes, colours and styles, and I feel we successfully managed to produce a complete package which looked like it could be sold and promoted within the music industry.

Our Music Video I feel turned out very well, with use of colour and themes being one of the most important key elements. This was one of our goals, which we successfully achieved, due to typical pop music videos having a convention of bright colours, bold patterns, and eye catching themes. Our music video presented the use of transitions, fades, ghosting effects, colour corrections/enhancers, split screens, mirror images and sped up/slowed down movements. All of these conventions are key features, highlighted in real pop videos.I feel we successfully achieved to create a music video which was obvious to it's genre.

Our Digipak I feel looks really effective and professional. The use of Photoshop really allowed us to enhance images and edit them into different forms to create a unique image which the target audience/consumers could also relate to the music video. The use of soft tones, and graffiti patterns I feel works really well, as it presents the softness of the pop genre but also highlights our unique style which is urban. I feel that we have created a distinctive product but also a product which really ties in well with the video and the advert.

Our advert I feel captures the exact theme and style that we are going for. The bold background with the graffiti pattern against the black and white posterized image of ourselves works really well in highlighting our urban theme, and tells the target audience what type of band we are just at a glance. The use of bold text and fonts gives our advert an individuality and also ties it in with the other two products. I feel we achieved all of our goals when creating this product as it promotes both the pop genre and the individual style we have created.

Overall I think we have created a very effective, distinctive package which promotes our band effectively, through the use of simple images, texts and themes, we have been able to create a continuous running theme throughout all three products. This is a very important factor when creating a promotional package, and I feel we have fulfilled this requirement successfully.

DIGIPAK

ADVERT

MUSIC VIDEO

Problems with our products that we worked through

During the making of our three products we faced many challenges that slowed us down, but we overcame them in different ways.

While attempting to film our music video footage in an 'urban' location, we found that the tunnels filled with graffiti that we were using on Newmarket Road in Cambridge were a hotspot for people riding bikes. Many times, we would be in the middle of shooting a scene for our video and a bike would come right through the middle of our shot and ruin it. To overcome this problem, we used short clips that we had managed to film before bikes came through, which worked out well in the end because we wanted our video to seem choppy, and also we had to ask a few people trying to come through the tunnel if they would mind waiting just a minute while we finished shooting a scene.

It was quite a weird experience being on full view in front of many passers by and singing along to a song in front of them while looking really overdressed, but we found that we had to just get over this problem and just go for it and act out our video dramatically, otherwise our video would have looked like we put no effort in and our acting would have been boring for viewers to watch.

While editing our video on Final Cut Express we faced technical problems such as fitting the sound up perfectly to our lip syncing so that it looked as professional as possible. We resolved this issue by using the method of marking our video clip with an 'M' where we first opened our mouth to start singing and marking our backing music with an 'M' where the lyrics we needed started and then syncing up the two 'M' markers to each other.

We also found that while creating our magazine advert on photoshop, we could not open a file of an image straight into photoshop as it would fill up the entire page and not allow us to use a background with it. To resolve this we opened the background image in photoshop first and then we opened the image that we wanted to place over the top of the background in a new photoshop file, and dragged this image across into our first photoshop file on top of our background. We then had to use the editing tools edit>transform and then hold down the shift key to resize our image so that it was the exact size we wanted it to be.

Another problem we encountered was that as half of our group maded the magazine advert while the other half made the digipak, we finished them and then realised there weren't many strong links between the two. To resolve this issue we then changed our background to use the same colour dusty blue background in our album advert as we had in our digipak, we then added in some more graffiti images into the background of our digipak as there was more images like this in our magazine advert.

Overall I think that we did well in overcoming our various problems throughout the stages of making our products and we learned from each mistake and how to correct it so that it did not happen again.

Audience feedback on our finished products

After we had finished making our music video, our magazine advert and our digipak, I asked my friends and relatives, male and female, to view them and answer some questions about how well they worked for feedback.


Olivia (my friend):

Q: After watching our music video and looking at our magazine advert and digipak, do you think that the overall branding of our products caters well to a typical audience of people within our target age group?

A: Yes, I really liked your products and I am in the age group of people you have aimed them at, so I think you have done well. I think that all of your products look very professionally made and if they were real products I would buy into them as they use all the right devices to catch your eye as typical pop products.

Q: Do you think that all three of our products fit together well as an overall package?

A: I do. I can clearly see that they have a good overall colour theme going on and I like how you have included graffiti in all of them as it goes well with the style of the song.


Q: How do you think our band members as a group compare to well known modern girl bands?

A: I think you look like a proper girl band in your products. You look like you have a bond as you work and fit well together as a group and I think you have included Rita Ora's style as a pop star well which is good because you were singing her song, but at the same time you also look like a typical girl band such as Stooshe.



Paul (my dad):

Q: Were you entertained by our music video and would you keep watching if you saw it on the television?

A: I am not in the age group of the audience you have aimed your music video at, but I think you did really well at making it look like a video that most people in your target audience would watch and be entertained by. There isn't any dull moments in your music video so I think that people would keep watching if it came on TV.

Q: Do you think that the costumes features in our products are relevant to modern times and fit with the theme of the song?

A: Yes, I think that your styles in this video all fit together well and make you look like a realistic band. I can tell that you have used the singer of your song (Rita Ora's) style for inspiration.

Q: Do you think that the feedback from 'modern magazines and newspapers' that we have typed up on top of our magazine advert looks like realistic reviews?

A: I think it does looks realistic because you haven't just gone and said 'this album has five stars, it is amazing'. Instead you have given it a realistic amount of stars that a pop artist could expect to gain in a modern review today and this is what made me think that your reviews looked like real ones.

Conclusion of how well our products turned out

Overall I am extremely pleased with how our three products have turned out and I am surprised at how professional and realistic they look now that we have finished everything.

I have really enjoyed creating our music video and brand products because I think it was a project where we were free to use lots of our own creative judgement and express ourselves through our products. I enjoyed working as a group and becoming a 'girl band' as it was very fun to invent a brand for ourselves and imagine how it would be to be real modern pop artists. I think that our music video features a lot of modern looking conventions such as fashionable costumes, close ups to introduce the artists and editing that has made the video interesting to watch. Therefore, I think that our music video would not look out of place on a TV music channel such as MTV or 4Music.

I think that our three products link together really well and create an overall theme for our brand as a modern pop girl band as we have a running theme of close ups of ourselves and bright poppy colours. I think that our album magazine advert would not look out of place in a modern magazine such as Look Magazine or Cosmopolitan magazine as it caters for the kind of target audience that buy these gossip and celebrity magazines. I also think that our digipak would not look out place in a popular music store such as HMV or Fopp, as our themes of colour and branding fit in well with the typical themes that you could find in the pop albums section in these two stores.

Everybody that I showed our music video, my friends and my relatives, had lots of positive feedback on it and this made me feel really proud that we have managed to create a relevant product after all of our hard work.

Sabrina Caruso Evaluation Tasks

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





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







3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?


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

Throughout making our music video, we encountered different stages of technologies that we used to enable our music video to reach a high standard of a proffessional outcome.The technologies that we used are:

HD Video camera

The HD camera was very useful and straight forward to use, and was of a good quality. We achieved the different shots and angles that we wanted to very easily through this digital technology. This combined well when it came to uploading our footage onto the mac because it was simple and fast. 

 Macs

The Mac's that we used enabled us to conduct our research regarding different music video's where we got inspiration and idea's from and compared with our own music video to see what areas could be improved. As part of the whole process of making our video, we used the mac to email the artist to avoid copy right issues. This digital technology was very efficient to use as it uploads video's and pictures very fast as well as uploading other web links quickly.  

Photoshop

Photoshop was used for our digipak and magazine advert as it helped us to create professional and effective techniques so that our products was of a high standard. This digital technology was not very simple to use and took us a while to achieve the goals that we wanted. 

Final Cut

 

Final Cut played a crucial role in editing our music video as it allowed us to edit, add effects, transitions, filters and give our music video a smooth interesting flow. This was essential because it helped us to transform our filming into a good quality standard video. It was difficult to use and took a lot of time and consideration to get what we wanted to achieve, although we did not always manage to do so. 

Speakers

We used portable speakers which was particularly important as we had to play the original song out loud while we were out filming our video so that we were able to match the lyrics up correctly. 

   

Evaluation Questions - Sophie O'Dell

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

 Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 


Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

In our music video creation process we used a digital camera to film the footage, we were going to use in our music video. To use this piece of equipment you have to consider a few things before you start to film. Firstly you have to adjust the camera to the right height and distance. You can use the tripod to aid you in this process. Also, you need to check the focus and zoom on the camera lens. Once you have done so, you can begin filming. This technology was very useful for our purpose as if was easily adjusted and was easy to operate. We were definitely able to achieve all of our goals using this digital technology. >>>>>>

Another digital technology we used was an ipod. To use an ipod you need to upload your chosen song onto the device under the name of the artist and track. To find this specific song you can then search the name in the search bar on the device and select. Click play on the device when you are ready to record. Having a portable device which allowed us to play the song out loud through our non digital technology - ipod speakers. We found this technology very useful as we could take if out to our main location, and use it to remember the lyrics and tune. We achieved all of our goals using this technology.

We used the dolly whilst creating test footage for our music video. The dolly needs to be correctly attached to the tripod before use. To enable you to use the dolly to its full potential, you need to have a large clear area and even flooring so it doesn't shake when it is moved. The dolly can be used for tracking shots and 360 degree shots. We however did not feel this technology worked well for us. Due to our setting being outside the Dolly would not have given us a smooth shot when being used for a 360 degree angle. Therefore even though we wanted to create this effect in our video we couldn't. This technology was not a digital one. >>>>

<<<To create our advert and digipak we used the programme Photoshop. Photoshop is a photo editing programme where you can manipulate your images to look just the way you wanted them to. You can manipulate your images to look just the way you wanted them to. You can import and edit images both from your desktop files and the internet. Some of the editing effects available on Photoshop include colour correction/colour change: sepia, black and white, gray scale, reflection, displacement, dots + linear light,, comic book effect, lomo, mosaic and water colour. You can also select parts of the image to change and leave the rest normal; Tools such as the lasso tool are really handy for this type of edit. When creating something like an advert or poster you can also use layering so you can select one image at a time, and edit them separately. Fading and blurring images using the blur tool is really good also for adverts and posters because you can fade away harsh line and emerge images together creating a really professional look. Text is also available on this programme in hundreds of colour, fonts and textures too. We found Photoshop quite a challenge to use a first due to our lack of knowledge and experience using it. However, as time progressed we became more confident and found it an excellent programme to use, as it allowed us to created really professional merchandise and advertising material.

<<<Once we had filmed all of the shots for our music video, we imported them from the camera onto the digital technology final cut express. Once clips are uploaded to this programme there are many editing function you can  use. Cutting, colour correction, cropping, re-sizing, copying, pasting are just some of the basic edits you can do to your video clips. Once you have edited your clips to the right length and cropped them to the size you wanted you can start adding fades, dissolves, colour changes, ripples, rolls, blade edits, split screens and picture in picture edits. These allow your clips to look fuller and more interesting and proffesional. If you are creating a music video you can also sync up your track to miming acted out on the clips. This can be done by pressing the shortcut key on the key board wherever on your video and music track you want to sync. We found final cut express a really clever and efficient technology to use in order to create our music video. The effects we were able to add really enhance our video and make it look much more professional. Especially the colour corrector. Although at some points we did fine the programme complicated and a bit confusing. But overall we got on well using this digital technology. 

<<<We also used a tripod, a non digital technology, in the process of creating our music video. To use the tripod correctly firstly you have to extend the tripod legs to the desired height. You then need to loosen the screw at the top and adjust the plate where the camera sits to the desired angle. Adjusting the angle helps you to achieve high and low shots. This can can also we enhanced by shortening or lengthening the legs. The use of the tripod is to ensure that the shots you film are clear and not wobbly. We felt this technology allowed us to create all the shots we wanted, especially the long shots in the tunnel and the shots of all three of us. This especially helped because with the tripod you can film without someone holding the camera.