A2 MEDIA STUDIES

Blog Closed

My blog is now closed as I have completed all of this years work. I am happy with the standard with my research planning and construction and feel we have all worked well this year and our work is a true reflection of this.

Evaluation Question 4

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

This is the camera which we had access to use for our music video filming. The camera is the Canon Legria FS200, as it was a school camera the quality was not the best, but as we had no alternative we made the most of it. One good aspect of the camera was that it was very mobile as it is only a small camera and also it was very suitable for the job we needed to do. We got to grips with how the camera worked very quickly and developed our skills with it by using different techniques such as; zooming in and out, panning and a variation of different camera angles. Also the good thing about the camera was that after we had filmed a clip we could watch it back. This was because of the small screen attached to the side of the camera. Due to the fact we could watch it back it became easier to look at what had gone wrong in the clip so therefore we could shoot it again if we needed to. As well as the camera we also had to borrow a tripod from school, these were also quite temperamental and often broke while we were using them or we were given a broken one in the first place.

This is the software which we used to help us edit our music video. It is Adobe Premier Pro, it was a very good software to use and once we got to grips of how to use it, it then became very simple and effective to use. However to start with it is very hard to work because it is so detailed. Due to the fact that we used this software our music,very good and have the effects needed instead of just clip’s being shown after another clip. This software was good in the fact that the different techniques we used on there made the music video flow better.
Other technical websites we used were blogger and Youtube. These sites have been vital in research and planning. Blogger was used to post about our whole production. It was used as a diary to post about research and planning, construction and anything else which happened in our process to complete the project throughout the year. It was simple and easy to use, we even had apps on our phones to make it more convenient to blog. It had good features to allow us to embed presentations and videos when needed which were vital to show our ideas and research. Youtube was great to research, we used other music videos to gain inspiration and to compare to ours and our ideas. We also used it to gain advice as we made Youtube channel and gained feedback and advice from the public which really helped us to progress. Again it was simple and straightforward to use we were very pleased with how reliable and easy it was to upload a video and never had problem with either sites and they were both easily accessible.

We used the internet and predominately Google to help our research and development progress and helped us analyse similar products to ours, we used it in the construction process to construct our website and Digipak, Google has always been very reliable for us and helped us overall adapted our Blog. Google allowed to gain vital information we needed for our whole media piece quickly and efficiently this was either form research digipaks to gaining emails for production companies we may need to email. It made everything a lot more quicker and convenient for us when gaining any information we could not secure anywhere else but the internet.

We also used Prezi to present most of our ideas and presentations. This is a great website and software to use to present in a new interesting way, it allows things to be shown in a more abstract image. The way in which it works keeps the audience more engaged whilst presenting as it jumps from slide to slide in different ways and using different shapes and images. This is alot more fun to work with and to share information than a power point It was simple for us to make an account after our school registered on the website. Its clear intructions meant we got the hang of how it works very quickly. We then realised it had a great feature which allowed us to get the HTML so we could actually embed the presentation on our blog so that you want have to leave our blog whilst looking at it which made it convenient and an interesting feature on our blogs.

To create our website we used a website called Weebly. This website enabled us make a homepage and have tabs leading off of that to make our actual website look as good as possible. This website was easy to use and even easier to make ours website look professionally made. It had very advanced features that we were not to sure about, but the simple ones were all we needed to produce the website at the level of our standards.

To make our Digipak we used a program called Adobe Photoshop, this is a very good but technical program, with all of its functions and advanced options, at first it became slightly daunting. After a while of tweaking and trial and error we began to get used to the way in which it works. We used Youtube videos to guide us through how to use some of the settings this helped loads and allowed us to use some of the settings on Adobe that we before didn't even know how to operate. We began to get used to Photoshop and used its many options to our advantage when putting our Digipak together. We feel that the imagery and professional look we were after and we were pleased with how reliable and professional Adobe Photoshop turned out to be.

Evaluation Question 3

Q3.What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Firstly we made a questionnaire for people in our class and our families to complete, the questionnaire consisted of different questions ranging from ‘what is your favourite genre of music’ to ‘who is your favourite singer/musician’. This was good because it gave us some idea of what people liked and what would be good to incorporate into our music video.

Secondly of all we had several ideas in mind, that we wanted to do, we had to eliminate this down to one. To do this we had a class discussion on the different ideas. The class was asked which idea they thought sounded the best. Then we did a Q+A on the one they thought was better. They took it in turns to ask us different questions about our idea, E.G What does the drink represent? These questions were good because we could establish a good idea that people did like and what they thought would look good in a music video. It also allowed us to determine whether our idea was strong and what improvements we could possibly make to make the over all out come more attractive to the audience.

Thirdly we had a draft version created early on for our teacher to have a look at and advise us on anything that would make it better. From the advice we were given we changed and in some cases re- filmed a lot of the footage to make it as good as possible. The advice from our teacher was really good because he is the one who will provisionally mark our work, he gave us the idea to change to black and white in some of the clips to make it look rustic as if it were in the past.

Aswell s all of this we also used Youtube to receive feedback from the general public. Uploading our draft on to Youtube allowed everyone to view it and to comment their own thoughts and opinions. We were open to constructive criticism and took any comments and advice given on board. By allowing such a broad audience to view our work it really gave us an insite as to how well we were achieving our goal, by the standard and representation of the music video through others eyes. on the right is a print screen from a comment we received on YouTube a while ago from our draft. This really helped us and used the good comments as motivation and to know we were heading in the right direction.

Overall I believe the feedback we received from everyone was very valuable. It helped us to decide on our final idea and even more so when we had started the work when the advice allowed us to change things around and hopefully improve our grade overall. We developed what we feel a solid Idea and production from all of the feedback. We hope we took as much as we could on board and listened carefully to what everyone had to say when it came to improving and progressing.

Evaluation Question 2

Q2.How affective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?

I believe that the combination of our main Production (Music Video) and our ancillary texts (website and DigiPak)have both been very effective and successful because they all have similarities and a relationship. Each of our media texts are linked together! For both the DigiPak and Website we have used screen shots from our main production (Music Video). In these screen shots we have included the characters from the music video,this is effective because as an audience, the ancillary texts offer more advertisement of the main product. Unlike the Music video, and even the website, a DigiPak can be read/seen, passed through other audiences, such as family and friends. The website also is very effective because it offers more information on the band/artist, for example new music coming out, tours, interviews or simply pictures of events and concerts. In the society we live in, when we like a media product we tend to want to know more about the background it came from. For example if someone hears the song they will want to watch the music video, and then from there they will be able to access the website of the band/artist and then from there they can order albums, singles and DigiPaks.

This is a screen grab of the inside panels of our DigiPak and the main screen of our website. They are similar because they follow a similar theme of have the same background with the wall. Also we have incorporated the same props, we have got the guitar which also features in our music video and so does the alcohol. This is effective because it links all our music video production and the ancillary tasks together.

We researched into other websites and digipaks to help us make ours, this was useful because it helped show us that most DigiPaks incorporate a common theme, whether it be colour theme (we used black and white in our video and for our DigiPak), or it could be Props, like what we have used. Due to us looking into similar products it enabled us to understand what is effective for these construction processes.

The common theme that can distinguish our products is the incorporation of the black and white colour scheme and also the props which we included, which all come together and link with the music video (main Production) and the DigiPak and Website (ancillary tasks).

Evaluation Question 1

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

Final Music Video

This is our completed music video, it has taken a lot of time and effort to create, however we do feel it has been a very enjoyable experience as a group and we have all learnt something from this exercise. The music video shows that not all relationships work out and that you need to move on when it doesn't this music video is about how one guy made a mistake with his girlfriend which meant he lost her for good, there are scenes when he is thinking back to how they used to be, and scenes of him on his own drinking to try and overcome this pain. This is the official music video for Ed Sheeran-Drunk by NeonCloud Productions.