Tuesday 30 March 2010

Evaluation.


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


Most of our video wouldnt have been possible without software such as photoshop, imovie and final cut.
Throughout the shoot of our video we played the song through an ipod, we gave this to James (the actor) as he could get a feel of the song.
Our whole video was based around a set of burst photos from a dslr. We then transfered them onto to photoshop were we could add effect such as cutout, up contrast and organise. We brang them altogether on imovie. This was a god software as it was like a storyboard where we could order all the scenes, cut down sections. I-movie however was very basic so we transfered it on to final cut pro where we added music and the finishing touches.

I documented the whole process on this blog which is like an online diary. It gave me a chance to see what i have done and what is needed to be done. Also i could upload photos and animatic, through youtube, to show the process. Researching the genre was manily done on sites such as google and youtube, this gave me the chance to watch the videos and understand the conventions.

The whole process of this project was down to new media technology. If we didnt have software or internet then it would be virtual impossible to do.




3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have screened our music 3 times to an audience and also post it on youtube. Every time we did screen it we tried to fix the critism. One of the main problems at the beginning was the start and the end. They liked the idea however didnt feel it fits in with the rest of the look of the video. Therefor we played around with the colour etc. we did think about reshooting however we had everything in time at this stage and feel it would set us back to much. So we changed the contrast so it just made it looks more crisp.

Another comment was that some shots were held just that little too long. We agreed with this comments, especially on the band section. We tried to mix it up and cut as much as possible, there is still some shots that are to long.

We did get postive feedback, people understood the look that we were going for, they liked the use of photo animation and thought it fit in well with the sound of the band. We kept our storyline very simple, which is a bit risky of being boring, however it was so we could focus on the techniques. Audience feedback did get the cyclic of the video where the couple meet and end up together, making it to complex story and having the animation means it would be hard to compress in first viewing which we wanted to stay away from

Doing animation for our AS they could see that we have improved and understanding more of the technique. That our editing skills have improved and the process of the animation was alot more smooth. Audience didnt feel that any of the performances were fake, they believed the band and the couple. I think this was helped as we didnt want them to "perform" we wanted the whole video to have a natural look which i think came across.














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

I created my Digi pack and poster after the shoot of our music video. Our video being photo animation we had over 500 photos to choose from. Although we didnt show the bands image in the video i think it is important when buying an album to have more on the band and the connection therefore i had a few profile shots. The style of a few of the photos in the music video and on the ancillary text is Cutout. We both liked this style as it adds a carton effect and simplify the image. My favourite image was the three together dancing together. I liked it as it was natural and not set up. I used this as my main image on my poster and in back of the cd cover. Also the title of the album and single being Moth's Wings i wanted there to be a connection with Moth's. The poster i had the background made up of Moth's but turned down the oppacity so there were not the main focus. The other photos i used were of the south bank, i liked them because of the colour and light on the day. I put this beind where the cds go as i didnt want a main image to be covered up. Lastly i used on page dedicated to thank yous, because i like that personal touch on a album and you feel that closer to the band. Having the same imagery means that as a package it could be well advitised. As myself being part of the target audience i think it is appealling. As i have explained, i wanted the audience to feel connected to the band from the album and having mini posters and a special thank you note brings them that little closer.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre of our music video is Indie. In my research into where our Music Video would fit into the music industry at the moment, it was clear that our video follows the conventions of the indie genre. The conventions being that there is not much focus on the band members. The band is representing to be a organic band ,that they make there own music and perform to an audience or just privately, in comparison to where it is performed to the camera. Also the a indie music video has not gimics for example no boy and girl dancers. However we challanged the conventions not just to the genre but to general music videos in doing part photo animation. Animation is rarely used in music videos as it dosent show the appeal of the high gloss, latest gadget and body image society we leave in. Most videos now are all about showing the image of the star. If you was to see it then it would be the indie genre. Also photo animation is used even less, i think this is as it does have that jumpy look that some audiences dont get, which we came across. However we wanted to put both styles of animaiton as it is so rare.
The band image we kept to the conventions of the Indie style, not showing there identity. This was manily as it was "The Crimson Cucumbers" second single and was established in the music indusrty. Also we liked the idea that they were not all about there image, they want to sell there music for the musicians not for the celebrity image.








We presented our evaluation as a powever point. Here are the slides along with notes and pointers we talked about.



Monday 8 March 2010

The Crimson Cucumbers!! Moths wings

This is near enough the finish video. We mangaged to change the bit that really needed changing which were the beginning and ending. Also there was a few photos missing when we showed it in the crit which made it say "media offline" in some places. Im partly happy with it and partly not. All the ideas we set out from the begginning we completed which i was really suprise with and we added effects which i really liked, like the cutout effect. However little things annoy me like some clips drag just for a few seconds too long, and at the begginning the layering of the photos jump around. Also i think the beat is lost a bit HOWEVER i dont think i will ever be happy with it. Now we have uploaded it onto youtube and this blog we will hopefully get some feedback!

Friday 5 March 2010

Digi pack- new design (6 panel 2 disc)

We found out that our digi pack now has to have 2 disc, so i have changed it to a 6 panel. I have filled 4 of them so far, the only two that are missing is the slots were the cds are going. Also i am adding text to the bottom left slide. My favourite picture is of the three of them ( vv below vv).





Monday 22 February 2010

mini crit/screening

Today we screened all our music videos. The week before half term we managed to fill the full 4.13 minutes of our music video. With the beginning and end with the spilt screen. Which went well, however in my mind as usually it looked better. But for the rough cut i was semi happy with the result.

feedback

Mostly everyone liked it, the liked the song and the colour with animation. A few things were said about the band section as it holds for a bit too long. However me and rebecca knew this but we are now worried if we was to try changing it about it will full out of sync. However as we noticed that aswell we will give it ago over the next two weeks. I want to show it to people now who dont no the idea, style or anything and get there reaction!.

Friday 19 February 2010

Monday 8 February 2010

Work in process.

This is my digi pack at the moment. My favourite bit is the back as i think it look believble, but im not total sure of the other two? i think they work but im going to play around with other photos to see what other ways i can come up with. The front cover is like Passion Pits front cover as i thought i would carry on them and fit in with the genre. And i think it is important that there is moths at the front as the album is named after the song we choose "Moths Wings".
This is the beginning part of my poster. Because i like the background i kept the photo the main image, also it is of the band so makes sense to promote the album to have the band. I also added moths in the background and turned down the oppacity to make them not 100 % noticable. However i need to decided on text and what information.


I am going to keep with the Crimson in a crimson colour but im not intirely happy with the text, i think it is a bit simple and looks like a letter heading at the moment. So i think i need to develop that, and maybe make the text bigger?



This is the best text overall at the moment. I think the style matched the quaint style of a moth and i kept to the crimson being in a different colour. I had the date in a different colour as i think the video, and to an extent the poster and digi pack is serious ( our band is meant to be a young band). So having the multi colour adds a bit of fun and also makes it stand out. I also adding the information on the song at the top of the page.




The section between the title and the information at the top i feel there needed to be something. However i dont want anything to heavy to take the attention from the rest of the poster. Therefore i turned up the contrast on the main moth in the background. Also added a green tint. Im still deciding where to go, i think i might as other people opinon before i say it is the final one.

Ideas for Digi pack.

Needs to include
-The band.
-List of songs.
-Photo from music video.

I want there to be a hint of animation or the style cut out as i think it is an important style to the band. There music is not the norm and i think it should reflect it in the digi pack.

For the poster i want to have a photo from the cd cover as the main photo so the two ( well actually all three,including music video) have a running thread.

Why do you need promotion?

what is promotion ?
deffintion

Promotion involves disseminating information about a product, product line, brand, or company. It is one of the four key aspects of the marketing mix. (The other three elements are product marketing, pricing, place.)
Promotion is generally sub-divided into two parts:
Above the line promotion: Promotion in the media (e.g. TV, radio, newspapers, Internet, Mobile Phones, and, historically, illustrated songs) in which the advertiser pays an advertising agency to place the ad
Below the line promotion: All other promotion. Much of this is intended to be subtle enough for the consumer to be unaware that promotion is taking place. E.g. sponsorship, product placement, endorsements, sales promotion, merchandising, direct mail, personal selling, public relations, trade shows.

Beginning and the end.

The storyline is loosley based around this boy and girl. At the beginning James looks at the video on the wall, then it goes into the music video. And the end it is sarah looking at the film finally walking of together. We was originally going to have it projected onto the t-shirt however we somehow got led to do it this way. Which works aswell. We tried on a white background and on black. The white area didnt turn out the best for what we wanted it for. As they walk of to the left and where we were there wasnt enough white wall to cover the whole section , so basically we are sticking with black. The beginning and end will be the last thing to do as we need to put it on final cut to be able to the the split screen. It should be simple though as it is only a picture being transfered onto the wall.Fingers cross!

re-re-shoot



Okay we have decided last minute to reshot our band sequence. Just have something simple without an effect with close ups on the band. The day we decided to do it was actually a really nice day. It was sunny with a little layer of snow which gave a bright reflection. As it has been a while since we done the first go they knew the song much better, which is what we needed as we was not adding an effect so they synch had to be perfect.




This was the look of it - but once again when putting it into the music video it really didnt go. So once again we went back to the orginal footage. We spent a little time on editing and trying out different effect, but still keeping the edge look. We turned the brightness up high so it is mostly white now. It looks like this..


I like it mainly for the performance and also it is the closest we have got to our original idea. To date we are sticking with this as it fit almost perfect, theres one scene where we had to add some stills, overall it goes with the music.

Sooo hopefully this means the band section is complete!

The band.



A few post back showed/and talked about the band sequence. Eventhough it is only a small bit of the music video it is important as it breaks all the photographs up. We were told and thought it was to create a silhotte in finale cut by having them in front of a white background. However i didnt work out, one reason was we stupidly put the camera on the side not thinking that it would be turned up on the screen. So most of Ross's shots looked like this.



It was/is extremly fustrating. But even more annoying the the silhotte didnt work. We tried uping the contrast but it just isnt what we had in mind. Ideally we need a massive thing sheet ( that is pinned up) with a huuggee light behind the person. But i think we are running out of time and its just not working. We thought of different ways to present the band. We have got some photos of the band to carry through the transiton if each section but like i said i think we need real footage. We also tried a photomontage, inspired by the The Reeling, Passion Pit song, and also Kings of Leon CD cover where sections of a face builds up one.



But i think it dosent fit in the video so we cut it out. Still trying to find something to fit in and runnig out of time! As we need to know where everything is going, we decided to return back to what we done. We used an effect called Edge which basically just shows the edge. It is the closest we could get to a sillhote without having one. However it is very dark. And is a big contrast as most of the video is still light. Argh have to think of new ideas !

update.


Since we filmed we have put all the footage into sections, this is so it is easier to sort them out. Also some of the scenes were are going to edit using photoshop. It is a long process however it is much more easier doing it with photographs compared to last year when it was starting from scratch. In the beginning shot we have James walking across the right of the screen. The colour creeps up eventually making the whole screen colour to set up the rest of the video. How i did this was to marquee the background and bit by bit bring more colour into the shot.





At the same time rebecca took the moths section in the instrumental part. Our first ideas was to have the moths throughout the music video however having over 250 photographs i think we was being to ambitious. So we choose the instrumental as it is a slow bit in the song where the song or music dosent really change. We used a filter called "cut out" on the instrumental part ( also the stills of the band) because when we watch passion pit first release, the real band, they had an effect of magazine ripped so we wanted it to be contious and having it a bit different. The same as the walkin across, the moths move by section by section moved. We also have been doing a cut out city. This was our first idea for our music video we saw an advert and like the storybook pop up look. However we did a tester ( admittly with cardboard) and it just didnt look write. So we decided to have each photograph appear to make up a picture. At the moment we are having trouble with getting them to appear on the beat of the music. I think that it wont never be perfect, but i really want it too so just going to have to try new things.












Target Audience.

We have decided that our target audience would be anyone between the age of 16-30. It is a broad age range as music interest is subjected, however our style of the video would be more for the younger/middle age. This is because i think animation and cartoons are more of a younger thing.
However it would be liked by older people but maybe just for first look, i think 16-30 would reutun to watch it again.

Friday 8 January 2010

Bands/Artist promotion. Analysis of CD covers

This is Passtion Pits album cover, the band who sing moths wings. I like this cover as it is simple. But also the marks on it, it sound silly but when look at the colour you keep looking at the minor detail. Also it is dark and dosent reveal much. So is interesting if you are a fan, as you know then name and artist and if your not a fan it look myseterious.
Madonna celebration is based on Andy Warhol pop art work, which i like. It fits with her being in that pop culture and sums up the changing faces on madonna. This one she is immating Marylin Monroe. I also like the newspaper magazine look.
Ive always loved this album cover, the inside bit aswell, as it just so interesting to look at. He is everyone down to the smallest person on the right. Also he has a running theme of having his name down the side which i like, it is like he has branded it. Also i think it is perfect which is why i like it. It isnt just a profile picture of the artist, it has fun and somethig to look at. The cd cover is matching the cd.
This is an example of the profile pictures i said previously. They do work though, the simple and black and white works well for this album. Also being the greatest hits you can not apply it to one album so for a stretch of time it works.