Evaluation - Activity 4

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

Throughout the making of our music video we

used digital technology in many different ways, such as the methods and equipment used. Below are the stages we went by in making the music video where digital technology was use

d.

Research and Planning

Firstly, digital technology was used by creating our blog. This was necessary as having a website is involved in media. By having a blog we were able to upload all our research and talk about how and what we were doing in order to crate a pop music video. A googlemail account was also created so that we could use the blog and send an email to Lily Allen's record label asking permission to use the song 'Knock Em' Out'.

Before constructing the music video a lot of research in to video and the planning of our own

music video. We look into the history of music videos in general and then took down the typical conventions which help make a music video successful. We gathered this information from the internet and then wrote about it on our blog. Before choosing our song for our own creation of a music video, we went onto youtube and analysed a variety of music videos which contain different conventions and the use of special effects when they were edited.

Before we could construct our music video planning needed to be done. We had to work out what the narrative of the song was and how to include performance. We done this by a group discussion, then made story board containing each shot of the song. However, using story boards doesn't always go to plan. They are there to help with the filming process and give a rough idea to what the music video will look like. Once the storyboards had been drawn up we used a camera and a tripod to film each shot drawn, which as them uploaded to the Apple iMac we are using onto iMovie HD.

On iMovie HD we were able to edit the shots of the story and create a video which would give a rough idea of what the final product would look like. As we needed to incorporate the image of Lily Allen into our music video we used the Internet with websites such as wikipedia and Lily Allen's own website to gather information on her. We also watched some of her previous video to see how we were able to represent her within our music video.

After the final product had been filmed and put together on YouTube, so we were able to put it onto our blog, we hadn't quite finished our coursework. we had to undertake 2 ancillary tasks, which were to make a Digipak for our song and to create a magazine advertisement which would help promote Lily Allen and her song. However, when creating thes

e we had to base it on what he had done for a music video, such as images used. The research and planning for these 2 tasks were similar to the planning and research for the music video. We needed to get the conventions for both and design them to give an idea of what we wanted them to look like.

Below is a image of Sinead designing the Digipak:

Construction

During the construction of our video, we used several different means of digital technology to film our video, this was because of many different factors. Firstly throughout the filming process we used a camera with a tripod and also another small digital camera. This enabled us to be able to produce good shots and a range of different angles. Throughout the filming process we regularly updated our blog putting on all the different processes and evaluating how we could have improved things and what we intended to do next. the blog has helped us highly in the process of our music video as it has logged all of the different processes and has also been useful information for us to return to when looking at different conventions. While editing our music video we used imovie to cut clips, and edit overall. This program helped us a lot in the editing process and although some aspects were still difficult the precise timings that the program shows particuarly helps in the editing process, especially the lip syncing aspects in our music video. In the process of making our music video advertisement and digipak we used photobucket to edit images, add effects and resize images to make them the typical conventions of a normal advertisement or digipak. Photobucket enabled us to create effects and images that we would not have been able to having used such programs as powerpoint or microsoft word.

Below is a image of Ellie editing the music video on iMovie HD using a Apple iMac.

Evaluation

Overall we are happy with our final products, the music video, the digipak, advertisement and blog. We gathered audience feedback by making a short film of other students in our class who answered a series of questions relating to our video, digipak and advertisement. They gave us a variety of feedback, what they liked and what they believe could have been improved. Through digital technology we had good feedback on the variety of shots we had used in our video, and the editing was generally good however some of the lip syncing could have been improved. We feel that this is true also and if we had filmed some more clips and had more footage this would have been possible to change, we have further explained this in our own evaluation film. We received positive feedback to our advertisement and digipak, however something that we feel we could change is the fonts so that they look more similar to one another as the font used in our magazine advertisement is different to the ones used in our digipak. This is something that we could change through photobucket. We also filmed ourselves evaluating all of our product and what we though the strengths and weaknesses were and what could have been improved. We also mention how we used digital technology throughout all stages for our finished products.

Evaluation - Activity 3

Audience feedback

After showing our final product to the class we recieved audience feed back which helps to answer this questions. Firstly we asked some people to view our product and feed back this included the task itself and the ancillary tasks, secondly we fedback on the audience comments as a group.

Evaluation Activity 2

When creating both our digipak and music advertisement we ensured they both had similar conventions to link to our video, the artist and to one another. We did this by using similar images, fonts and colouring.

Evaluation - Activity 1

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

The song we chose was Lily Allen “knock ‘em out”. The style of the video is quite quirky and upbeat, it reflects the song genre as well as the artists tastes and attitudes. The style is mainly narrative with performance revolving around the main character within the narrative. It is a normal narrative and doesn’t contain anything abstract, which makes the story more prominent and allowed us to create style, flare and character within the performance side. We followed conventions of a music video by using lip synching and having a narrative.

Evaluation

We used a number of settings and locations for out music video including a pub and a local estate as well as blank walls to do the majority of the lip synching we also used some other minor locations such as filming the local A road for the opening of the video. The settings and locations are typical of a music video as they directly reflect the narrative and story line. The settings and locations for our video were chosen to relate to the narrative and all add a character for the song.

The costumes and props we used were carefully though out to reflect the settings and the songs. For the lip synching we used a variety of quirky outfits, dresses and props such as the flowers and in some unused shots we used hairbrushes etc. we did this to reflect the style of the artist as well as what was happening within the song and narrative. For the pub setting we used casual outfits for the boys and smart-casual outfits for the girls to present that they were trying to impress without going over the top. Other props we used included the picture of the house on fire at the end and magazines, each adding to the song in different ways so it wasn’t boring and just lots of plain lip synching. The final outfit we used was at the estate, we dressed our main character (who represented Lily) down in a tracksuit, it was supposed to be casual to reflect the setting as well as what she says in the shots such as “I’m pregnant” , to represent her uncaring nature. Another key outfit we used was our main character in the wedding dress scene, we did this to represent what she was saying at the time and the extra effort of finding this shop and this outfit added an extra effect and really made the shot.

We used many types of camera work within our music video, not only still shots and frames but a range of pans, zooms and many shots where our character moves in and out of the shots as well as to and from the camera to create variety. We had a range of shots like close ups and long shots, each serving a different purpose and creating a style for our video. We used continuity to create a flowing story line which made sense to the audience.

The editing within our sequence is edited to the beat of the song with the lip synching in time with the song. This took us a long time to perfect but we think it works well with the song as performance is one of the main elements of the song. The editing was straight forward as we used normal cuts, no transitions or fades etc. we decided to do this as we felt, if we did, it would have removed the focus from the song. However, we did edit a few shots slightly, we brightened up a shot as when we filmed it, due to the angle, the lighting wasn’t bright enough and the second edited shot was a clip we made slightly faster to make the lip synching in time.







The performance side is a key area within our music video. We filmed the entire song a number of times in many different locations as to find the best shot, encase the shot we had planed didn’t fit as well when we edited the song together. The performance took place in a number of locations, this included the pub (for some of the speaking parts); the local estate for the introduction; a number of blank walls to create a studio like atmosphere for the personal performance parts; and some minor places like Ellie’s car.






The song is a quirky, upbeat pop song, typical of the Lily Allen genre. Her songs tend to be about serious/everyday subjects which she turns on the head to create a flare which includes her personality. Our video suggests the genre of the track as our main character is upbeat and has a real personality which reflects the song choice. Using costumes we made our main character pop-y and young to represent the artist. As well as this, we kept the theme of the video quite light, using a pub scene and a light hearted situation.




The artist doesn’t have many videos, including the song we chose but some of her videos shown on youtube.com include: Smile and 22. Smile in particular could show how we conformed to her videos, as it revolves around the artist’s performance and story. She is the main character within the video and also does all the performance. However the video Alfie, contains a number of cartoons and plastic models and the Artist playing a fictional character, dressed up in costume in a obviously created set, so it could be seen we subverted in this way. However she does lip synch, another conformity our video followed.

Our Music Advertisement

Final Design of Digipak

Extra Panel of Digipak