Sam -
All our separate ancillary texts and drafts from myself, Abraham and Zaheer have been linked under the label of DIGIPAK in the label cloud, you should find everything there. I have also completed my magazine advert and is on the scribed presentation you had seen in your office.
misha
Tuesday 20 April 2010
Sunday 18 April 2010
Evaluation - Karisha
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Primarily, we chose the song Technologic by Daft Punk. We wanted to go with an electro theme to match the song by creating a surreal, colour saturated video in a non linear form but found it very hard to produce ideas as the song was very long and repetitive. After remixing and editing the song, we still found it difficult to construct effective ideas, and were quickly running out of time. Therefore, we started the planning process again by choosing a different song, namely ‘Day n Nite’ by Kid Cudi. It is an alternative hip-hop song which was produced in December 2007. Almost instantly we were able to come up with a range of ideas that used, developed and challenged forms of real media products.
Chris Cunningham is a well-known creative music video director and we were influenced by him as his videos were surreal, artistic and challenged generic conventions of music genre stereotypes. Watching the videos that he had directed, gave us ideas for our own. We were also influenced by other music videos from the likes of Kanye West and Jay-Z, who produce music of a similar genre to Kid Cudi. Jay-Z has produced many of his videos in black and white which we liked and wanted to use in our own video. They both use a variety of shots taken from a lot of different locations which we all thought made an effective music video. We found that watching the existing video for ‘Day n Nite’ which was released in February 2008 and directed by a French Director, So Me, helped us brainstorm what we would and wouldn’t like to include in our video as we all felt his music video did not match the song well at all.
We knew we wanted a dark and surreal feel to the video, unlike the original, as this is what we collated from listening to the song repeatedly and analysing the lyrics. We created mind maps to illustrate and annotate what we wanted our music video to be like.
Typically, music videos of a hip hop genre will include contain consist of themes of possession, voyeurism, wealth, glamour and iconography. They are commonly very performance based, so we wanted to challenge that convention by making our video narrative based by intercutting shots of dream and reality. We also had no footage of any generic themes and no constant close ups of the icon unlike a typical hip hop video. We introduced a new Artist the scene called Alter Ego.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts were effective as we included screenshots from our video to connote a dark and sinister theme, just like we had included in our main product. Continuing the same theme with our magazine advert and digipak meant that we provided evidence that we wanted them to be closely linked so that people knew they were part of the same set.
Our aim was not to make the main product and ancillary texts to look exactly the same but to have them of the same theme. We spent a lot of time editing the screen shots we took and wanted to include on the ancillary texts by using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to turn them into effective images that looked attractive and bold, as we wanted them to attract attention.
We wanted to present our Artist, Alter Ego as a new upcoming artist with an edgy, urban look. We used typically iconic photographs to promote this. Our aim was to predominately attract hip hop listeners, and so tailored our designs to their taste. We used a lot of dark colours, but ensured our text and fonts were bright and stood out well.
In the end, the products felt like they were produced individually, but still closely linked with one another so buyers knew they were part of the same set but not the same product.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We gave our music video to a lot of different types of people to watch whilst we were still editing. People that wouldn’t characteristically listen to this type of music liked our video and said they liked the fact we tried to not make our video most of the same conventions of a typical hip hop video. Initially, most viewers stated that it was difficult for them to comprehend the dream and reality aspects of the video. We acted upon this by brainstorming ideas as to how we would make this clearer. We hoped that keeping the ‘reality’ bits of the video in colour, and ‘dream’ bits in black and white would make it more understandable.
Some liked it more than others. They all commented on the fact that it suited the lyrics and theme of the song well and liked our adaptation to the video over the original. Others, like me, felt we had sped up too much of the video, resulting in most of the video using the same effect which became tedious to watch.
During editing, we were unsure about how to end our video. This is because half our group wanted the video to end in the view of our artist waking up from a dream, whereas the other half wanted the video to end in dream form as it was more climatic, and felt that ending it in reality form would be an anti-climax. We used our audience feedback to help us decide how to end the video.
Most of our feedback assured that they were kept engaged throughout the whole video which was good to hear.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Whilst planning, we took pictures of images we found influential as this helped with our brainstorming and mind maps. We used a digital Canon still camera. We produced image boards of our influences and target audience on the computer.
When constructing our main product, most of our shots were taken outside so we had to make sure we took them where there was sufficient lighting, and lots of open areas to avoid unnecessary shadowing and darkened filmography. Due to the name of the song ‘day n nite’, we inevitably needed to take shots in the dark to represent the night. We filmed this effectively by filming in areas in the evening where there was a lot of light available. For example, on well lit streets and near street lamps, however this became difficult because it was never bright enough. To overcome this problem, we filmed inside using darkened rooms and spotlights to create a sinister and dark atmosphere.
We used a Panasonic video camera for all our filming and took extra care when carrying it as it had to be transported to many different locations for filming. The majority of our shots needed a tripod to be used, to avoid a shaky and unprofessional looking video. The tripod enabled us to have smooth, professional looking tracking shots.
When editing, we used Final Cut Pro for making our music video look professional. We included a variety of different transitions and effects to help keep the audience fully engaged throughout the whole music video. We needed to record a log of all our footage, so they were quickly accessible when we inserted them into the programme to be edited.
When creating our ancillary texts which consisted of a magazine poster and digipak, we used Adobe Illustrator to design the fonts we wanted to appear on them. We used Adobe Photoshop to edit all our pictures using appropriate tools and features that the programme offered in contributing to make our images look professional and attractive. We downloaded extra brushes to create the exact effect we wanted.
Primarily, we chose the song Technologic by Daft Punk. We wanted to go with an electro theme to match the song by creating a surreal, colour saturated video in a non linear form but found it very hard to produce ideas as the song was very long and repetitive. After remixing and editing the song, we still found it difficult to construct effective ideas, and were quickly running out of time. Therefore, we started the planning process again by choosing a different song, namely ‘Day n Nite’ by Kid Cudi. It is an alternative hip-hop song which was produced in December 2007. Almost instantly we were able to come up with a range of ideas that used, developed and challenged forms of real media products.
Chris Cunningham is a well-known creative music video director and we were influenced by him as his videos were surreal, artistic and challenged generic conventions of music genre stereotypes. Watching the videos that he had directed, gave us ideas for our own. We were also influenced by other music videos from the likes of Kanye West and Jay-Z, who produce music of a similar genre to Kid Cudi. Jay-Z has produced many of his videos in black and white which we liked and wanted to use in our own video. They both use a variety of shots taken from a lot of different locations which we all thought made an effective music video. We found that watching the existing video for ‘Day n Nite’ which was released in February 2008 and directed by a French Director, So Me, helped us brainstorm what we would and wouldn’t like to include in our video as we all felt his music video did not match the song well at all.
We knew we wanted a dark and surreal feel to the video, unlike the original, as this is what we collated from listening to the song repeatedly and analysing the lyrics. We created mind maps to illustrate and annotate what we wanted our music video to be like.
Typically, music videos of a hip hop genre will include contain consist of themes of possession, voyeurism, wealth, glamour and iconography. They are commonly very performance based, so we wanted to challenge that convention by making our video narrative based by intercutting shots of dream and reality. We also had no footage of any generic themes and no constant close ups of the icon unlike a typical hip hop video. We introduced a new Artist the scene called Alter Ego.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts were effective as we included screenshots from our video to connote a dark and sinister theme, just like we had included in our main product. Continuing the same theme with our magazine advert and digipak meant that we provided evidence that we wanted them to be closely linked so that people knew they were part of the same set.
Our aim was not to make the main product and ancillary texts to look exactly the same but to have them of the same theme. We spent a lot of time editing the screen shots we took and wanted to include on the ancillary texts by using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to turn them into effective images that looked attractive and bold, as we wanted them to attract attention.
We wanted to present our Artist, Alter Ego as a new upcoming artist with an edgy, urban look. We used typically iconic photographs to promote this. Our aim was to predominately attract hip hop listeners, and so tailored our designs to their taste. We used a lot of dark colours, but ensured our text and fonts were bright and stood out well.
In the end, the products felt like they were produced individually, but still closely linked with one another so buyers knew they were part of the same set but not the same product.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We gave our music video to a lot of different types of people to watch whilst we were still editing. People that wouldn’t characteristically listen to this type of music liked our video and said they liked the fact we tried to not make our video most of the same conventions of a typical hip hop video. Initially, most viewers stated that it was difficult for them to comprehend the dream and reality aspects of the video. We acted upon this by brainstorming ideas as to how we would make this clearer. We hoped that keeping the ‘reality’ bits of the video in colour, and ‘dream’ bits in black and white would make it more understandable.
Some liked it more than others. They all commented on the fact that it suited the lyrics and theme of the song well and liked our adaptation to the video over the original. Others, like me, felt we had sped up too much of the video, resulting in most of the video using the same effect which became tedious to watch.
During editing, we were unsure about how to end our video. This is because half our group wanted the video to end in the view of our artist waking up from a dream, whereas the other half wanted the video to end in dream form as it was more climatic, and felt that ending it in reality form would be an anti-climax. We used our audience feedback to help us decide how to end the video.
Most of our feedback assured that they were kept engaged throughout the whole video which was good to hear.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Whilst planning, we took pictures of images we found influential as this helped with our brainstorming and mind maps. We used a digital Canon still camera. We produced image boards of our influences and target audience on the computer.
When constructing our main product, most of our shots were taken outside so we had to make sure we took them where there was sufficient lighting, and lots of open areas to avoid unnecessary shadowing and darkened filmography. Due to the name of the song ‘day n nite’, we inevitably needed to take shots in the dark to represent the night. We filmed this effectively by filming in areas in the evening where there was a lot of light available. For example, on well lit streets and near street lamps, however this became difficult because it was never bright enough. To overcome this problem, we filmed inside using darkened rooms and spotlights to create a sinister and dark atmosphere.
We used a Panasonic video camera for all our filming and took extra care when carrying it as it had to be transported to many different locations for filming. The majority of our shots needed a tripod to be used, to avoid a shaky and unprofessional looking video. The tripod enabled us to have smooth, professional looking tracking shots.
When editing, we used Final Cut Pro for making our music video look professional. We included a variety of different transitions and effects to help keep the audience fully engaged throughout the whole music video. We needed to record a log of all our footage, so they were quickly accessible when we inserted them into the programme to be edited.
When creating our ancillary texts which consisted of a magazine poster and digipak, we used Adobe Illustrator to design the fonts we wanted to appear on them. We used Adobe Photoshop to edit all our pictures using appropriate tools and features that the programme offered in contributing to make our images look professional and attractive. We downloaded extra brushes to create the exact effect we wanted.
Monday 5 April 2010
Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
1) Our music video definitely challenges the forms and conventions of real media products. I say this because the concept of our music video is very unique and different compared to a regular standard music video. The song that we chose and decided to go with was ‘Day and Night’ by an American artist named Kid Cudi. This song has a techno/house feel to it so from the start we knew that our video would be a very fast paced edited video. The concept challenges forms and conventions of real media products because real music product usually tell a story related to the lyrics of a song and usually has an artist singing along with the song whereas our video departs from that because our video doesn’t have the artist singing along to the song and as for telling a story with the lyrics we kept that to a minimum and partly diverted from the story of the lyrics and made our own story about a male being controlled by his self conscience and being mentally kidnapped by his alter ego which is the name of the artist. Our video is extremely random but is not confusing at all as it shows shots of the man and his alter ego doing different random things in the day and night, this also challenges form and conventions of real media products because if another product was to be random we wouldn’t really understand what is going on and why but when look at our video you do clearly understand what is being shown.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
2) The combination of our main product and ancillary texts are very effective as the group all had in mind what we wanted to do. From the begininng we said that we would use images from the music video and do a photo shoot of the artist to present on posters and the album cover. This combines well the artist is visible in all products which are the album cover, poster and digi pack. We felt that it is significant that the audience should be entertained so we tried to make the product have a diversity between them so the products would be boring for them. This was done by the editing where we would use effects to put some style into the images we also tried to use less writing in the digi pack because we know that it probably wouldn’t even get read it the product was to be bought. Overall I do feel that out product does effectively combine with the ancillary texts because they both have comparison between them as they relate to the same thing.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
3) We collected many useful feedbacks from our audience. This was done by showing them the video during the process of editing it. Most of the feedback was very positive as we had people informing us how the editing looked professional and that even though we didn’t t show a story completely related to the lyrics they still can tell what was going on in the story we was trying to show. Although we got some positive feedback we also got some negative feedback, which helped us improve our video. Our initial idea was to make the video in colour when the artist eye was open and black and white when he was dreaming. Because most of the video was a dream this meant that most of the video was in black and white. According to our audience they didn’t think that it worked well in black and white as they preferred it in colour. When a number of people said this I changed it and added a filter which gave the parts which were in black and white (the dream) a dreamy effect called green pearl which was in colour and is very successful. Another negative feedback was that there was too many transitions which ruined the video so we took a few out and made the video flow much more easier.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
4) Throughout the whole coursework from the start to the end we used new media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages. The Internet was very useful as we used it for the blog which was used to put our coursework and our ideas on to so we would never forget/loose anything we came up with. We also used the Internet for research to get ideas for the concept through youtube where we looked at existing music videos and collected ideas from those. Another useful technology which was used in our coursework was the canon still cameras we used it to take images for the album cover and digi pack. We also used it for the blog as we took images for the making of the video from the filming to the editing of the video. Another useful technology which was used was the video camera. This was the most important piece of equipment used because without it there would be no music video to present. Tripods were used with this camera in order to stabilize the camera to give a perfect close up/panning shot as using just a handheld camera would have been successful at all. The video camera was also used for my interview and the evaluation. Final cut pro is another useful technology used. This software was used for the editing process of the video. This is were the effect and visual things came from. Final cut is quite easy to use it just takes patience and time to complete the editing to a reasonably good standard. Final cut was also used to edit my interview and evaluation as well as the music video. Photoshop is another technology used. This software was used for the digi pack and the album cover. It was very useful as there are a variety of brushes which can be used, which gives an image and effective look. It also gets rid of unwanted items in images which is not needed.
Friday 2 April 2010
Group Production Evaluation
THE GROUP:
Misha, Zaheer, Karisha & Abraham:
As a group we decied to create a visual evaluation presentation to combine our ideas, reasons and theories throuh out the project. We first created a presentation that we would be able to connect to a tv screen. This way we would know what to discuss for each question. Below is the Power point presentation we created.
Group Video Presentation - Production Evaluation
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4
Misha, Zaheer, Karisha & Abraham:
As a group we decied to create a visual evaluation presentation to combine our ideas, reasons and theories throuh out the project. We first created a presentation that we would be able to connect to a tv screen. This way we would know what to discuss for each question. Below is the Power point presentation we created.
Group Video Presentation - Production Evaluation
Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4
Tuesday 30 March 2010
Monday 29 March 2010
Interviews - Target Audience Feedback
Interview Questions -
1. What did you understand from te video?
2. Did you understand the concept of dream & reality?
3. Did the lyrical content link to the visual images ?
4. What camera shots did you like the most?
5. What could have improved the video?
6. Did the locations link with the hip - hop theme?
7. What did you think of the effects?
8. Did you understand why the video ended with abraham waking up ?
9. Were you engaged through out the whole video?
1. What did you understand from te video?
2. Did you understand the concept of dream & reality?
3. Did the lyrical content link to the visual images ?
4. What camera shots did you like the most?
5. What could have improved the video?
6. Did the locations link with the hip - hop theme?
7. What did you think of the effects?
8. Did you understand why the video ended with abraham waking up ?
9. Were you engaged through out the whole video?
Misha's Conclusion to Target Audience Feedback:
As we interviewed our targt audience we were trying to establish whether we had achieved on correcting our mistakes from previous criticisms such as;
-The black and white effect through out the dream parts in the video, are now changed ...also the pace of some of the visual images had been slower that the ythem of the song.
By interviewing our targetaudience i believe that w have been able to achieve our goals as they found the video entertaining and unique. They understood that the singer was in a nightmare and also agreeded that even with out the use of voyeurism in the video that many male viewers would be attracted to the ideo due to the axe and kidnapping scenes. To me out video was a success as it captured what our target audience had been looking for without using mnay of the codes and conventions genrally ound in hip-hop and house music videos.
Saturday 27 March 2010
Mishas Final Ancillary Texts Designs
PLANNING FOR MY MAGAZINE ADVERT:
FINAL ANCILLARY TEXTS: As i was incharge of creating the ancillary texts i decided to create a collection of marketing texts that could advertise out products.
For example i have created:
- Digipak Cover
- Magazine Cover
- Poster
- Magazine Advert
Final Digipack Plan
Friday 26 March 2010
Final Video
Below is a comentary video that abraham and misha have
created to explain why some of the editing the editing techniques were used...
Wednesday 24 March 2010
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