Finale!

So that's my A2 coursework, thank you all for your comments and for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Thank you!

Evaluation Question 4

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

I think that technological determinism had a say in production as we were stretched to get together the equipment; as well as having days when the equipment we had, such as cameras didn't work or perform as well as they did on a previous day. However i also think that I as an individual and together as a group we handled and controlled the technology skillfully so we could do what we hoped to achieve. Our groups creativity as well as my own throughout this course was expanded through the use of various technological equipment such as, Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Express. As we were able to create things from our imagination with ease and experiment with different techniques, especially in Photoshop.

One way in which I used technology was by using Blogger throughout to present my coursework. Presenting it in the form of a blog meant that the receiving of my work was in a chatty, laid back style. A way rather like that of which my target audience would be attracted to read. As they as a group tend to read blogs such as these more than say teenagers interested in country music, this i found out through my research.

Research
For the research of my coursework i used various technologies such as the Google search engine, YouTube, Tumblr, a poll device for my blog and camera and video equipment. By doing this i used multiple ways of gathering research and audience feedback from my target audience. I also used Microsoft Word to put together my research so as to make it easier to read when on my blog. Microsoft PowerPoint and Prezi were also used for my research as a way to put what i had discovered onto my blog in a more interesting format.

Planning
During the planning of my coursework i used Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook, using the latter for emailing my group within college and Word for creating a timetable for time management. By using a timetable we were able to effectively plan our weeks of filming, editing and blogging.

Production
Technologies that we used during filming/production were Mini DV Sony Cameras and our own cameras such as a Samsung X5 digital SLR. Production has been improved because of different technology such as HD cameras and having access to better equipment. Software that we as a group and myself as an individual used included Adobe Photoshop; used for editing photos, the album advert and the digipack. As well as Final Cut Express which was used for editing our music video. Other technologies i used personally included my Ipod Touch, which i used keep in touch with my group when out filming as well as to keep track and make sure we kept to schedules. I used media technologies such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word to create and edit information and various pieces of research in the construction of my coursework. I also used software such as Photoshop and Paint.NET to edit and change photos, the digipack and advert for my coursework.

Evaluation
I used Blogger, Prezi and Microsoft PowerPoint in the evaluation stages of my coursework. By using these different techniques i hoped to show that i have the skills to use different software in an effective and useful way. As well as presenting my work in various ways, not only is it more interesting for those reading it but it also allows me to add in information such as images, videos and links, using different formats of visual evidence to back up what i have been saying.

All in all i believe that we as a group and myself as an individual used different media technologies well and to the best of our ability to create our video and print products.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

Audience feedback powerpoint

View more presentations from AlexandraJade1357.

Evaluation Question 2

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

Question 2 on Prezi

I was going to present this in the form of a video but sadly i don't have the technology available to me to do so.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation; Question one! on Prezi

Print Product Package!

Here is my finished print product package, enjoy!

Audience Feedback on questions

Here is some audience feedback on questions like, What genre of music does the video reflect? 

Finished Digipack

Finally, i have finshed the digipack. The only changes  have made are small details such as the spacing of words, i also took out the Sally J Johnson from the front as i felt it was too crowded and so did my audience.

Audience Feedback

Here is our audience feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgMH-TL_xU8&feature=youtu.be

Advert-Finished!

I've made a few subtle changes such as the size of the picture text. Overall, i think it looks quite good, hope you agree.

Audience Feedback on Advert

Here is the feedback i received form my audience on Facebook. The overall comments seem to be good but that i should re size the image, a correction I'll be only too happy to comply to.

Feedback on Digipack

Feedback on digipack.

2nd draft of advert

Here is the 2nd draft of my advert.

Digipack updated

Here is my almost finished digipack.

Audience feedback from digipack

 Here is some initial feedback i received about my digipack as well as the improved back panel of my digipack which is shown below.

Digipack, improved!

Here is a nearly completed draft of my digipack, all i need to do now is add on the information onto the two left side panels. Below is the back of my digipack.

Digipack

Here is a next example of my digipack. At the moment i am experimenting with different pictures as well as text.

Audience reaction to Advert

Here is some feedback from my first draft of my advert. I will look to improve upon features and aspects that they have picked up on, so that my advert can appeal to my target audience and look the best that it can.

First draft of Advert!

First draft of my advert. For the advert i wanted to use only a quater size as i know through my reserach that my artist wouldn't be able to afford a full page or even half a page advert in amusic magazine.

Fonts for adverts and digipack

I have chosen several different fonts that ti could use for my advert as well as the digipack, 

If you could give me some feedback on any of these fonts i would greatly appreciate it. 

Filming!

We have finished off our filming, at long last! Going over our music video so far we can see that we have less to fit in than we initially thought. At most we only have to film a couple of lip syncing moments and then we just have to edit our video! I'll be posting soon!

Print Products-Introduction

Now i am looking at developing my initial ideas about my print products. Which were that the album should show the genre of the artist and also appeal to the target audience. I was thinking of using a font that was different and went against the typical mainstream media products. For pictures i was thinking of using location shots (shown edited in a previous post) for promoting the single Dreaming Out Loud, but i am still thinking of ideas for and advertisement. 

Our Music Video

At last! Our music video! This is our final video, after all the corrections and edits. Hope you enjoy it.

Facebook Group!

I have created a Facebook group, where i have and will post ideas about my digipack and advert as i create them so i can gather audience feedback from my target audience. There are also three examples below of some of the audience feedback i have already received from members of this group. This feedback will provide me with some guidelines as to what to include and what to get rid of as to my audience's taste.

Rough cut-our video

And here is our rough cut of the music video. There are of course some parts still to be added, which they will, later on. So for now, enjoy!

Print Products

Here is the outline for my digipack that i will be using so as to keep to the right size. 

Chosen font!

This is my chosen font for my print products; i have listened to my audience feedback and have found that this was a generally liked font. 

As you can see the font was chosen by my target audience all for different reasons such as being abstract, elegant, easy to read, suits the genre of the music video and artist and appealing to my target audience. 

Photos!

Here are a selection of photos that i will hopefully be using for my digipack. I have used the location photos as i want to give my adverts a more niche feel through the use of nature. Let me know what you think of them. 

An Update

Hi, just a little update for our time management and overall feedback to you about our progress. Unfortunately our time management isn't as good as we would have liked due to bad weather, illness and missing equipment. We have managed to film more scenes in a new location which works well as well as gives us more range as to our background for our music video. The difference in location helps us to achieve the sense of a dream. We weren't able to film any parts including myself as i was ill for one day of filming, so we have yet to film two scenes as of yet. I have been editing a few photos for my Digipack at the moment so that i can put it together easier than if i wasn't prepared. We should have some more interesting developments soon. 

Narrative Theorists

Narrative Theorists on Prezi

Time Management-March

At the moment we have been trying to manage our time well. However looking onto the March Calender we can see that we are going to run out of time to get all of the different elements of our coursework completed. We have run into trouble as two of us (myself and Emily) have been involved in our drama exam and so haven't been able to do as much work as we would have liked.

27th February Filming!

So, today we made some progress! We filmed odd bits of our music video, we filmed scenes/moments with Emily and myself. This is a movement forward as we now have footage to edit and we have also taken pictures which we can now use on our Digi pack drafts. And...we have the masks! So next time when we go out to film we can take the masks and film the boys in their suits as well. See you next time. 

Update after filming

Today we went to film the dancing scenes as we set out to do when we first set our calender. We managed to film these however due to the lack of costumes and actors this is all we managed to do. We have also run into problems regarding editing as the camera/or tape has filmed static when movement appears on the film. We shall try to right this as we will be hopefully filming on Wednesday morning with Elliott and Tom to capture the "villain" scene. 

Update on Filming

We are filming today! Unfortunately Sarah is ill and therefore can not be with us, but we will be adding to what we have already filmed (the first 14 seconds) of our music video. We plan to be filming scenes with the ballet dancer in (myself) as i have brought my costume today. In reality that gives us more leeway as to what we can film later on as this gets bigger sections of filming done first. 

Update

Just giving you an update on how things are going. Unfortunately not very well, myself and Emily are involved in our college production and so because of the tight schedule we have we are not able to do much work. However we have media on Monday and so we will get together in our group and try to work out an action plan in order to get filming done as soon as possible. Because the show is this week most filming will most probably have to be done during lesson time. Hopefully we'll have something to edit soon.

Costumes/Props

For our music video we will be having different costumes and props. 


Main; a white dress  or floral as well as white shoes, tights and a cardigan.

Ballet dancer; a different black and a separate white outfit for the dancing sister of the girl (she might be referred to as the ballet dancer later one in my posts). 

Animals;  animals masks.

Guys; black suits. 


We have also thought about giving our music video an odd touch by adding in woodland creatures...but as people wearing animal masks. These will be bought soon as we have already found some to buy. The only prop for our music video is a picture of myself which is used as the picture of the main girl's sister who has died. Below is a screen shot of the animals masks we hope to buy. 

We thought that if we use contrasting colours such as white and black that would give separate identities between the two actors. Because of the content we are using in our music video such as the symbolic use of costume we can see that the narrative theorist Barthes' codes has come through in it. Barthes has 5 codes, action, enigma, cultural, semantic and symbolic. These are all features of music videos which are more typically narrative based and are almost used automatically and without thought. (I'll come back to Barthes and the other Native Theorists in another post). 

Shot lists and Story boarding

We have created our animatic storyboard! Hope you like it. 

Time Management-update

Today we were hoping to film as well sort out our actors. Unfortunately we are unable to film today because of weather conditions. So we are updating our blogs with information such as costumes, our Tumblr page and our song. We are also making our animatic storyboard. 

Our Song!

I only just realized that i haven't posted the actual song that we are going to use just in case you can't open  the prezi. So here you go!

Our Tumblr.

We have now got a Tumblr page! 


We have opened one so that we can reach our target audience via different technologies. 

http://dreamingoutloudmedia.tumblr.com/

Now our target audience can reach us and give us feedback regarding our ideas and decisions about our music video. This way our music video will be better suited to our target audience. Hopefully we'll get some feedback. 

Poll

Where are you most likely to view a music video?
	YouTube
	TV
	On your phone
	On your Ipod
pollcode.com free polls

Casting-Our Actors

We are planning to use ourselves for the actors for our music videos. This means that we can film parts of our music video even if some of our actors (group) aren't available. 

  

We are planning to use both Elliott and Tom (these top two pictures) to play the 'bad guys' in our music video. They are suitable for our target audience because they are within the same age range therefore more appealing to our audience because you can identify with them.