Evaluation 4

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

BLOGGER

'www.blogger.com' is the site that allows you to publicly or privately blog with time stamp entries. It was created by Pyra Labs which was brought by Google in 2003. I used Blogger to record my progress including my research, planning, construction of the product and the final product.

 

ADOBE PREMIERE 

Abode Premiere is a video editing software based on a time-line. It was developed in 2003 by Adobe Systems. We used Adobe Premiere to create our video, it allowed us to edit, cut, add effects and many more to help create our video.

GOOGLE - I used Google through out my coursework as a main source for my research as it is a reliable source that I have great experience in using. Google was released to the public on the 19th of August in 2004 and from then onwards has been a great success as it is a reliable, fast performing with excellent results.

 YOU TUBE

YouTube is a video sharing site created by three former pay pal employees in February 2005. On YouTube you can view, upload and share videos and therefore YouTube was extremely useful to research different music videos and recognise the task of constructing our own music video.

MICROSOFT  PUBLISHER

'Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft that enables users to easily layout and design attractive and useful documents' My group and I used Publisher to mash up photos and create diagrams to explain editing processes and development in our video or ancillary tasks for example.




PHOTO SHOOT CAMERA - The camera we used to photograph Elle on the Ancillary Task photo shoot is the camera featured on the right which is a Canon eos 7D the camera was extremely professional which produced high quality images and it was also very easy to operate and lightweight when handling too.





VIDEO CAMERA

The video camera featured on the left is a Canon fs406, it is what we used to film all of our video footage. It is not the greatest of video camera's but it worked for my group and I superbly as it extremely light weight and therefore easy for unexperienced filmers to use. It has good memory storage when the memory card is inside it and lastly it is very simple and easy to use.




RESEARCH

For my research I used various websites, magazines , music channels and even YouTube as my sources to research the information that I required. Watching the music channels and videos on YouTube was the greatest source of research as I was able to witness how music videos are presented professionally and how different genred and themed songs are presented differently.

PLANNING

For the majority of our planning my group and I went back to basics and planned our ancillary tasks and scenes of our music video on paper. We did this by drawing sketches of what we like our magazine advert for example to look like and we would also write out filming time lines and filming schedules. We did this to show our versatility and mix things up a bit so that our coursework was not 100% technology based.

CONSTRUCTION

In the construction of our music video we used all of the above resources which we then combined together to create our music video and ancillary tasks.

EVALUATION

In my evaluation I have again used the video camera to record audience an interview on audience feedback and I have also used Microsft Powerpoint to create an evaluating powerpoint and I have finally of course used Blogger to record and present my evaluation on.

Ancillary Task

FINAL FRONT COVER

FINAL INSIDE COVER

FINAL BACK COVER

FINAL SPINE

FINAL CD

FINAL MAGAZINE



EVALUATION 3

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

ROUGH CUT FEEDBACK

After constructing our rough cut of our music my group and I experienced our first bout of audience feedback on our video. We experienced this audience feedback via one of our media lessons being dedicated for our class to give feedback to one and other. All three of the groups within our class played their videos and after we had watched each video we would have to give two aspects of the video/trailer that we like and one thing that they should improve on.

The feedback my group and I received were very positive. We already knew the parts of our video that we needed to edit further or change as we could recognise that it didn't look right and that we could do better. The improvements that our class gave, that my group and I fully agreed with was that the text message on the Iphone was too dim and therefore impossible to read the message. We also agreed with their thoughts on improving Ellie/Elle lip sinking the words of 'ignorance is your new best friend' as most of the time she was either laughing or out of time with the music.
   The positive feedback on our music video consisted of the actors coming across very believable, the variety of the different camera shots and angles, the cutting of the video to sync with the song and finally the class thought the black and white memory scenes portrayed a very professional look to the video.
   After this audience feedback we re filmed, when filming we took all comments into account and feel as though we have amended and made any required adjustments.

FINAL CUT FEEDBACK

For our final cut audience feedback we uploaded our video onto our Facebook pages so that our video could be shown to all my, Charlotte's, Sarah's and Zoe's family and friends on Facebook. By uploading the video to our Facebook pages our friends and family could either 'like' (click the like button at the bottom of the video link) or they could comment on the video and express their thoughts and personal opinion of our video.

All of the people that commented on our video via Facebook are the target audience for our video. As you can see from their comments, our video was very well received and the viewers liked it greatly.

Our second source of audience feedback was that my group interviewed a selection of girls from the ages of 17-18 from our school, WGSG.  We learnt more from videoing the interviews as we asked them direct questions about our video instead of them simply watching the video and expressing what they thought. Some of the feedback we received stated that we should have made Elle out to act more drunk as she consuming large amounts of strong liqueur but was acting highly sober just fuelled with rage even though alcohol is known to exaggerate the mood and mind frame that you are in. But apart from that the girls interviewed were extremely impressed with our work, especially with the editing as they felt we synced the video with music perfectly. And even the tricky lip sinking that Ellie performed was executed successfully after a second attempt of filming.

Characters

LEADING LADY

Ellie Blancke starred as our leading female in our music video, playing the role of 'Elle' who is a mixed individual due to her paranoia over of her boyfriend who she suspects is cheating on her. This leads Elle  to go on an all night/day alcohol binge which results in her boyfriend Harry throwing her out of his house after a high tempered rowel.

LEADING MALE

Harry Painter played the role of Elle's boyfriend in our music video. Harry breaks up with Elle due to her insane jealousy, Harry is not is cheating on Elle as she thinks he is. Harry and the 'other girl' are only friends, nothing more.

OTHER GIRL

Sarah Brushett (myself) plays the role of Harry's friend, but in the eyes of Elle she is the girl that Harry is being unfaithful with. I am not featured a lot within the video as the friendship evidence between my character and Harry is not required as the video was shown from Elle's point of view and therefore the only scene I was featured in was the scene where Elle arrived at Harry's house and attacked me. My name did feature earlier on in the video when Harry received an incoming call from me which was shown to trigger Elle's suspicion.

Evaluation 2

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND YOUR ANCILLARY TEXTS

Elle, Ellie Blancke is featured throughout both our music video and our ancillary products. At first you the (audience) perceive that 'Elle' is portrayed in completely different forms in the video and in the ancillary products but they do relate.

In our music video the character Elle is presented as a messed up, rough looking youth full of rage and rebelliousness. My group and I created Elle's image but giving her bold, scruffy but stylish clothing. Our inspiration for Elle's outfit was mainly sourced from research we carried out on Kesha, but Kesha in winter as Kesha is known to be seen in hot pants, random tops and t-shirts but anything bold, weird and wonderful. We dressed 'Elle' in dark green Doc Martin boots to bring Elle's boldness out 'stomping around in her big boots', attitude. Elle also wore denim hot pants that she wore with black tights. The denim hot pants introduced the Kesha outfit theme showing her independent sexiness but wore the tights with the shorts not only because it was bitterly cold when filming the outside scenes but it looked more stylish, random and alternate which presented an Indie teenager which corresponds with the song to our video. Elle completed her outfit with an All saints styled designer top with my dark green Parker coat which finished off the alternate indie look, 'teenage girl with attitude.'

In our Ancillary task our character Elle is presented in a whole new light. This wasn't always going to be the case as our first draft of our ancillary task was of Elle in the clothes that she wears in the video, we scrapped this due to the majority of our research on solo female artists are close up glamorous shots of them when advertising their album for example. By looking desirable and glamorous on your album cover and over magazine adverts is likely to increase your sales as young girls will aspire to be like 'Elle', parents are more likely to buy the album for their children with a glamorous image of a young independent women over a grubby, messed up, rough looking teenager and finally by creating a sexy for Elle is also likely to draw in a male interest.

But the link of Elle in the music video and in the ancillary still remains. In both products she is featured wearing the same style of clothes just more glamorous, as she is wearing a black, above knee dress with an indie style which she wears a large thick, fury coat which creates the glamour alongside the professionally done up hair and make up but Elle remains to wear the dark green Doc Martin boots I feel this outfit represents that before the incident with Harry and the binge happened in the video, Elle was a well dressed, fun loving teen aged girl but she has this firing side where she doesn't take no nonsense and is ruthless out to get what she wants.

Evaluation 1

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

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Rough Cut

Filming Location

Our first filming location was located at Ellie's house ('Elle's' house in our music video). The house is located in Hextable. We filmed in Ellie's bedroom, upstairs bathroom, hallway and stairway. Ellie's house was good to film in as there was lots of natural light and was adequately spacious to flim in. Ellie's house was also extremely assebile as it is only 5minutes drive away from our school and a maximum of a twentie minute drive from any of the group members houses.

ELLIE'S HOUSE

The second main filming location was filmed on Rollo road in Hextable, it was just around the corner from Ellie's house and therefore equally acessible. Rollo road is just off Hextable High street but the road itself wasnt too busy with vechiles and pedrestrians so the filming wasn't corrupted with vechiles and pedestrians  getting in the way of the shot. A perk to this locatin was a large white wall which we filmed Ellie/Elle against and it looks very effective as it makes Ellie really stand out against the plain white background.

ROLLO ROAD

The third main location was filmed at Eynsford Castle located in Eynsford. It is an English Heritage listed castle ruins open for all of the public to come and see for no charge. We filmed there as we required a rugged brick walls with open outdoor space and that fitted the demand perfectly, Eynsford is also where I live which therefore makes it acceible to film at. The scenes we filmed at Eynsford Castle where those of 'Elle' binge drinking vodka straight from the bottle and chain smoking ciggerettes.

EYNSFORD CASTLE

Finally the last main location of where we filmed was at my house in Eynsford which is Harry's house in the video. The scenes filmed at my house was the memory scenes of 'Elle' and Harry when they were happy and in love but my house was also the location for Harry and Elle's big argument/break up. We filmed in the living room, kitchen and hallway of my house.



Filmed Camera Angles

Sarah Biswell drew up two sketched plans of the camera angles the scenes were filmed at in Ellie Blancke (Elle's) house.

The variety of different angles in our video adds interest to the video as it mixes things up, the audience won't know what to expect. Also as our film consists of short cuts it is therefore crucial to have a variety of camera angles filmed to make the shorts cuts look effective.

Broadcasting Channel of our Music Video

Like all directors of music video's, the band itself and the bands management want their music video to be broad casted on the best channel alongside the best music to be apart of the top department of their industry.

Sarah Biswell researched into music videos and came up with this:

  "MTV plays all sorts of music from rock to dance, to hip hop and rap. This would be the best music channel for us because it has such a wide audience range. The target audience for MTV is generally 16-25 year olds so this would definitely be the right channel for us if we were to do this idea."

Props

In our music video we feature various props, they are included to bring more interest to particular shots or in particular scenes. Props exaggerate or make the mood of a scene a lot more obvious for the audience to recognise.

VODKA BOTTLE

I feel the most useful prop featured in our video is the two vodka bottles. In the top right photo of 'Elle' just about to wake up, yes she looks rough with her smudged make up and messy hair and still wearing the clothes from the previous day/night but by having her still grasping on to her empty vodka bottle straight away suggests that she drunk that to herself last night which already then tells the audience that she is in a messed up state and has been out on an all night binge. In the bottle left photo is a screen shot of the scene where 'Elle' is on another binge with a fresh bottle of vodka in broad daylight, drinking it straight and from the bottle and being all alone when doing so. The scenes shows anger and depression, drinking her feelings away and expressing her stress with excessive chain smoking. In the other two screen shots 'Elle' is not drinking the vodka but is always shown with the bottle that again suggests to the audience that she isn't totally sober and she is walking around in broad day light with a large vodka bottle which portrays a clear messed up picture of 'Elle' to the audience.

THE LIGHTER

Even though the lighter has a physical use of setting the picture a light, there is scene where 'Elle' just flicks the lighter and watches the flame I feel that shot symbolises anger and danger to the audience showing how angry she is and that she is ready to something about it which she does as she sets alight to the picture and angrily confronts Harry at his house later that day.

MOBILE PHONE

The phone also had a function, the function to take pictures of Harry and Elle and to receive calls from the 'Other Girl'. The phone is also another way of symbolising the past and present as the phone is featured in both the past memories scenes when Harry and Elle are happy together and loved up but the phone is also featured in the present scene when the other girl is calling Harry in Elle's company which kicks off Elle's suspicion which then leads to her great jealous rage.

Filming Equipment

When filming there are four main pieces of equipment required on a standard shoot.
The equipment required is: Video Camera
                                            Tripod
                                            Lamps/lighting
                                           

 VIDEO CAMERA - is obviously essential as no footage would be recorded without the camera. The camera we used to record our video is a basic Cannon handheld, digital video camera owned by our school WGSG. We were content using this camera as it was easy to work, had good battery life, good storage (with memory card in) and its greatest perk was the size of the camera, it was only very small and therefore lightweight, easy to handle which made it easier to film various shots and especially when filming in awkward positions or having to hold the camera freelance for a long time.

TRIPOD - the function of the tripod is to keep the camera perfectly still when filming. It is usually used with heavy cameras or beginner Filmer's trying to produce a steady shot, like myself and my team. The tripod allowed my group and I to produce more professional shots by pursuing smoother camera movements.

LAMPS/LIGHTING - our school WGSG provided my group and I with two lights. The lights were adequate to provide enough light to clearly visualise our characters and indoor scenes.

Magazine Advert Design

After researching various magazine adverts for music artists advertising their new album/single, there was familiar text featured on the majority of the adverts. The adverts I came across in my research all featured the artist's name, the name of the album/single, the release date, contact information and ratings from the magazine.

The sketch featured below is a rough mock up of what my group and I plan to create, but at the moment it is on rough and putting ideas down on paper.

Re-filming and Editing after Feedback

In one of our media lessons with our teacher Mr Mcrae we spent the lesson watching all of the classes videos and then gave constructive criticism and also two good things about the groups video and one thing to improve. My group and I took all the feedback on board. The feedback was all very positive which made my group and I extremely proud of our work.

After this lesson we began editing our video further and taking on board feedback when doing so. We added markers and transitions to our work. Markers were useful when we was cutting certain clips of our video to certain beats in the song. By adding transitions to our video creates fluidity, the different clips flow from one to the other smoothly. 

Final Cut

Constructing the CD

After, the front and inside cover was completed we moved to the CD. The group discussed the possible designs which would link best to what we have already previously created. Charlotte used the program of Photoshop to create the designs:

1) Firstly, the image of the lips, the group agreed, would be a good idea due to many CD's. This links to the research about Rihanna and her CD,  and the idea of using a rose. This also links to the front cover, due to the emphasis on the red lips:

The next idea was to include the name of the artist and name of the song as this would make the design more exciting. However, we noticed this isn't a popular thing to do, so we removed the idea.

2) The next idea was the album title, the name 'Ignorance' to be written across it. This is linked to Ke$ha's album. However, after testing the idea we decided it did not look as good as we first assumed. So we put the lips behind, but wasn't as great as we first thought, so removed that also.

3) The lip idea, however, was a good aspect so we just rearranged the format by adding lots of lips. Combining ideas from Rihanna and Ke$ha. This made the CD more decorative and links with the front cover of the digi-pak. We then selected the background to match the front - consisten colour scheme.

Cuts and Transitions

After the clips were inserted into the timeline and then cutting them to the correct points, we had to incorporate shot transitions and effects for it to:

• Run smoothly
• The story was understood easily
• Indicate flashbacks clearly

After previous research about transitions and cuts we had to take what we've learned into consideration when making the video.

The image above shows the two transitions in action. The group decided through trial and error that the best transition to use was 'Cross Dissolve', due to it slowly blending the two shots together. However, the two shots had to be clearly seperated as they depict two different time periods (past and present).

At the end of the film, the group decided, to add effect, to make the film fade out into darkness. It goes on slightly longer after the character being thrown out to elaborate the effect she's been dismissed from the house. However, the long fade is inappropriate due to there being no music. A short fade ended it quickly, but not to abruptly - making it suitable.

Digi-pack Inside Cover

Zoe took a picture of Ellie, that charlotte edited

As a group we thought that the picture of Ellie was different, exciting and really expressed another dimension of the character being portrayed. To link this to typical media products, such as albums from the artists of Rihanna and Ke$ha, we decided to use this as it is far more interesting. Although, the camera shot doesn't capture the full head, the main focus was to enhance the eyes and lips which are the main focus, keeping it linked.



 The problem with the picture is the fact that the white sheet, in the background, did not cover the whole wall of the bedroom. Charlotte then edited the picture further to delete the error, using the clone and rubber tools, leading to the background being even and suitable.

After editing the image, as a group we thought that the font should be consistent throughout the cover, so we put the same font on the inside cover. However, there did not need to be any text, but we thought to be different and decided to use a quote of 'ignorance' from the song.

Similarly, the artist  Ke$ha's album only showed text on the inside, but we decided to use both picture and text on ours. Also, we decided to keep the colour of the font red, to match the lips, for consistency, that also excentuates the lips against the coat. Then, looking back on our design, Charlotte thought that increasing the font size of 'ignorance' was appropriate to the song choice.

THE FINAL DESIGN:

Re-shoot

When editing we discovered that there were scenes we needed to re-film due to minor hick ups such as one of us being in the back ground of the shot or our foot being in shot or even just the spot lamps being seen in shot. Simple amendments to make but vital to create a professional finish on our video.

We also con corded that we needed more footage just as short clips of Ellie/Elle walking for example as after researching about sped up music videos it looks a lot more exciting when introducing a lot shot cut clips it creates a more crazy, out of control look which is what we want.

Sarah Biswell styled Ellie's makeup to ensure that Ellie looked exactly the same as she did in the first shoot.

Zoe changed the sheets and duvet covers to pink as they were in the first shoot.

We filmed from many different new angles to broaden the variety of shots we already have.

PROBLEMS

One of our previous outdoors filming locations, Eynsford Castle was closed for renovation and we were therefore unable to film and had to decide on a new location which ended up being near Ellie's house in Hextable.

NEW LOCATION

Filming Part 3

On the 22nd of February my group and our two actresses Harry Painter and Ellie Blancke filmed for the third time located at my house in Eynsford. In my house we filmed in the living room, kitchen, hallway/front door and just outside of my house.
   The scenes filmed on this day were the finishing scenes to our video featuring Harry and 'Elle' arguing, leading on to Harry throwing Elle out of his house (my house is Harry's house in the video). On this day we also filmed the memory scenes in the same location, the memory scenes are all happy times between Harry and Elle consisting of day time strolls, cuddles, laughter and just natural young, loved up couple behaviour.

On the day of filming we was extremely prepared and knew exactly what shots and scenes that we wanted to produce. We had already arranged wanted we wanted Ellie and Harry to wear and had arranged two costumes for them, one for the fight scene at the end of the video and the other for the memory scenes.

LIGHTING

Where we positioned the lights were extremely important to prevent them from being caught on camera and to prevent them from creating shadows in the shot.

 As Ellie and Harry are good friends in real life there was no awkwardness when filming as they both felt very comfortable with each other.

FILMING

To produce the required shot/angle we filmed at all different levels and in different positions to achieve the desired shot.

FILMING PROBLEMS

A member of our group, Charlotte Coe was unable to make the shoot due to other commitments. Usually this wouldn't be a problem but Charlotte was meant to be featuring in the video playing 'the other girl' who is Harry's female friend who Elle is extremely jealous of. Last minute I stepped in to play 'the other girl' to prevent us from getting behind on our filming schedule and the filming went well and the problem was solved.

The second major problem was that Harry had work so we only had limited time to film as we agreed to drive Harry to his work in a gesture of gratefulness for featuring in our video. But by keeping to the schedule created above we overcame this issue and managed to get all the filming done, just in time!

The final major problem was that the camera we was using to record was not fully charged when we received it which left us with limited battery time. The camera ran out of battery 10minutes before we had finished filming, so we decided to put the camera on charge while we packed up all the equipment into our cars. By the time we had finished packing everything up there was enough battery on the camera to film the finishing scenes.

Editing Ancillary Task

My group and I went through the photos from the second photo shoot together and picked out our favourites and then short listed them to agree on the photo for our album cover and magazine advert.

After we came to a renowned decision of the chosen photo the editing process began.

In the editing process we gave 'Elle' an icy look by making the photo look a little less vibrant and more saturated but at this point in the editing process the photo looked too pale and bland so we lassoed her red lips and made them the same vibrant red colour that they was in the original photo and enhanced her eye colour to a more vibrant, electric blue. This created a sharp, show stopping image with a very professional finish.