Sunday 23 December 2012
Saturday 22 December 2012
Evaluation Question 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Friday 21 December 2012
Evaluation Question 4
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
YouTube
The main function of youtube for my work was being able to upload videos, such as my draft, final video and outakes, for displaying on my blog. I also used it initially in the research phase of my project from watching videos of other artists and other videos that students had mad for inspiration and ideas for my video
Story Board
I created a storyboard for my planning stage to help me better create an idea of what individual shots I would film and where exactly they would fit in my video. This help me plan what locations I had to use and actually how many ideas I had designed. However, I don't think I used this to the full potential since I never completed it and some of my shots came from inspiration whilst filming and around the band members.
Photoshop Elements 5.0
Photoshop was probably the tool I used the most for contributing work outside of the video. I used it to construct my digipak and advert. Although I had some previous experience on photoshop I still found it challenging and often went back on my own ideas and changed details of each.
iMac
The iMac that I used at college was the centre of all of my work and from it I used a lot of the other media technologies such as twitter, blogger, photoshop and Final Cut Pro. I had not used an iMac before and initially found it difficult to adapt to the differences that it brought from a standard computer. Overall, I found once I understood it well it made my work an easier experience
iPhone
I would of uploaded a picture of my actual iPhone but unfortunately it is broken. I found it a very useful tool that brought many uses. Firstly, I was able to contact the band members during the filming process to arrange dates and locations to film shots, without this benefit I would have struggled to arrange anything. Secondly, through the iPhone app I was able to access Twitter from my phone and update the bands Twitter page with just little posts about the stage of the video using conventions of a real band. Finally, I was able to capture photos on it and post them directly onto my blog which meant I had a quick access to post insightful pictures
Final Cut Pro
I was able to use Final Cut Pro on the iMac. The use of it to me was editing my video clips and adding the music to make a few shots into a music video. I had little prior practice, only from the Busted video we did a preliminary task, but I found simple to use and was able to easily upload my videos and effectively add them to my music video.
Since I wanted Lego Monkeys to follow the conventions of a famous band I decided to create them their own Twitter fan page. I kept it authentic by by often posting about what the band was up to. It was also a method of showing the band members the final product by tagging their individual Twitter accounts on each post since by the end of the project they became genuinely interested.
This is a tweet I sent from the account to display the final advert
Existing CDs
CDs helped in my work through giving me ideas of what the convention where and how to apply them to my work. As part of my research I looked at lots of CDs and how their digipaks where layed out. The two covers bellow where the ones that gave the inspiration and I ended up adapting the ideas from them into my final digipak.
Blogger
Blogger played a key role in my work since it is where I kept track of and displayed all my work. I had previously used blogger for my AS coursework and my Extended Project so I already was clear on how to use it. I found it easy to use and without it my work would be made up of single documents without a proper record.
Sony DCR-SR58 Camcorder
The Sony camcorder was crucial in my work since it allowed me to record my video which was the main focus of this project. When planning my video I considered how the college offered camcorders but luckily I had access to a hand held Sony camcorder from home which allowed to film in a slightly higher quality which was important to me. With it I also used a tripod in order to maintain still shots.
Digital Camera
Since I wanted to picture the band on my digipak and advert I would also have capture still shots of them rather then videos. Initially, I used my iPhone camera to take the test shots of the band but found that although it was ok that the quality was not as good as it could have been. Because of this, I decided to borrow a digital camera from college to enhance the quality when I took my final photos
Tuesday 18 December 2012
Evaluation Question 2 Script
This is the text I have wrote to go onto a prezi presentation for this evaluation question:
In the research and planning stage I identified the common conventions of kind of indie rock and how they are used in real media products and I decided how I would incorporate these into my own ancillary texts and music video. I researched these conventions on the internet and found out how they are used and why. I used some indie conventions but didn’t necessarily follow them all from how I wouldn't brand Lego Monkeys as being purely indie, despite the song I chose.
My digipak ideas have changed a lot since my draft version. When I was creating my draft I just wanted it to be exactly like Bombay Bicycle Club and so did not use any of my own ideas and just went along with ideas I saw. This lead to a massive divide because I decided that half should be black and white and half should be beige. Since my advert didn't change much it meant there was little link between my ancillary products. I chose my album name as a purposeful link to my video and particularly the song by naming the album 'Endless Shuffle' after the song I used for my video 'Shuffle' which helped tie everything together. For the inside panel with text on I took a lot of inspiration from Kings of Leon's album Youth and Young Manhood since it also incorporated a lot of black and white.
The idea for my advert purely came from wanting it to match the digipak thus linking the ancillary texts once again. It uses most of the same features such as the header, album name text and images which essentially is the cover.
Costume is a very important convention to include in both the ancillary texts and the music video. The consistency of the band’s style entirely determines how well they will be recognized. To make my photos consistent and link them as a brand i used the same photos for the advert as for the front cover panel of the digipak. However, this becomes an issuee from how I couldn't use this in my video because it was still photos.
Overall, with the same 4 band members being used throughout the video slight changes to costume are not as big a factor.
Despite black and white being a key part of the digipak and advert from all images on them being this way, I wasn't able to work a link to it in the video without making some of the scenes black and white. I didn't want to do this because black and white is known as being kind of sad and gloomy where as my song and band represent fun and enjoyment so it would cause of a clash of ideas.
One of the strongest links between my video and my ancillary products is the actors used. This is one of the only factors that never changed throughout the whole production and the character that they display in the video makes them one of the most memorable factors. They worked effectively because they all had great chemistry together before the video which I knew would come through when filming. This was one of the most crucial factors to me
In the research and planning stage I identified the common conventions of kind of indie rock and how they are used in real media products and I decided how I would incorporate these into my own ancillary texts and music video. I researched these conventions on the internet and found out how they are used and why. I used some indie conventions but didn’t necessarily follow them all from how I wouldn't brand Lego Monkeys as being purely indie, despite the song I chose.
My digipak ideas have changed a lot since my draft version. When I was creating my draft I just wanted it to be exactly like Bombay Bicycle Club and so did not use any of my own ideas and just went along with ideas I saw. This lead to a massive divide because I decided that half should be black and white and half should be beige. Since my advert didn't change much it meant there was little link between my ancillary products. I chose my album name as a purposeful link to my video and particularly the song by naming the album 'Endless Shuffle' after the song I used for my video 'Shuffle' which helped tie everything together. For the inside panel with text on I took a lot of inspiration from Kings of Leon's album Youth and Young Manhood since it also incorporated a lot of black and white.
The idea for my advert purely came from wanting it to match the digipak thus linking the ancillary texts once again. It uses most of the same features such as the header, album name text and images which essentially is the cover.
Costume is a very important convention to include in both the ancillary texts and the music video. The consistency of the band’s style entirely determines how well they will be recognized. To make my photos consistent and link them as a brand i used the same photos for the advert as for the front cover panel of the digipak. However, this becomes an issuee from how I couldn't use this in my video because it was still photos.
Overall, with the same 4 band members being used throughout the video slight changes to costume are not as big a factor.
Despite black and white being a key part of the digipak and advert from all images on them being this way, I wasn't able to work a link to it in the video without making some of the scenes black and white. I didn't want to do this because black and white is known as being kind of sad and gloomy where as my song and band represent fun and enjoyment so it would cause of a clash of ideas.
One of the strongest links between my video and my ancillary products is the actors used. This is one of the only factors that never changed throughout the whole production and the character that they display in the video makes them one of the most memorable factors. They worked effectively because they all had great chemistry together before the video which I knew would come through when filming. This was one of the most crucial factors to me
Monday 17 December 2012
Evaluation Question 1 Script
Origianlly I had wrote this question as an essay but on advisment from my teacher I have decied instead to make into like a poster using Microsoft Publisher and add this essay too it:
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The Research and planning that I completed for this project played a played a vital role in the success of the final video from how I had to be clear with how each individual step would be constructed to complete the video to the highest quality from which I could portray the genre and style of the band.
Originally I had listed Lego Monkeys as being an 'indie rock' band. I did this because I couldn't exactly work out to myself what genre it was and the band the song originates from Bombay Bicycle Club are considered to be highly Indie. Because of this it felt like I was just going to just use the convention of bookmarking the band. However, whilst filming the video it became clear to me that Lego Monkeys was not going to be an 'indie' band and brought elements of Rock and particuarly Pop in the video which could be considered developing the convention by creating its own genre rather then blindly following one.
In regard to video shots, I mostly tried to use Mid-shots when filming the band scenes since I looked to try and imitate shots done in the original video which I spent a lot of time watching. Particuarly with Danny's (Lead Singer) singing shots I often tried to straight copy as many fcators as possible such as angle of camera, movement of guitar and length of shot. An example of this is how I keep a very long shot going from 1:24 to 1:36 in the video because the original video gets away with it. This is a clear example of me doing my best to completly follow the media conventions in an atempt to make my video as authentic as possible.
As far costume is concerned, when thinking whether the costume matched an indie band I would say to some extent. One of the most obvious and key pieces of clothing in the video is Danny's 'rainbow' tie dye tshirt. This is from the brand Dope Chef which is fairly small in the UK and would therefore match the indie theme, this could be said for brands that other members of the band were wearing such as ONLY NY, Mishka, The Hundreds and Carhartt. For this reason altohugh there is not a set clothing style for being indie wearing less known brands would contribute to this so could be argued that again that I followed another convention.
When starting my digipak I researched other exsisting digipaks and particuarly CD covers. After only looking at artists I knew and liked I decided ont he theme of black and white and then looked for covers to adapt that used a band and black and white. I then adapted this specification to covers from Razorlight and The Crookes. I then mirrored some of the factors displayed on each for my own digipak. This could be seen as an example of following conventions so strictly that it is only doing exactly what has been done on other CDs
After my teacher had seen my draft for my video and digipak my teacher told me that some of the acting looked a bit stiff and staged. He advised to look at the work of Arctic Monkeys since they are renound for having unstaged, black and white shots which tied in both elements that I needed to look at. Despite not being much of a fan, I looked at their video 'R U Mine?' which is entirely in black and white and looked like it was just randomly filmed rather then planned which is the look that I wanted. I think when I came back to re-shoot it allowed the actors to loosen up since I was more confident about the direction I wanted it to take. This again is me just using the conventions that I had seen in a new video and trying to apply it to mine. It also made me briefly consider making my whole video black and white.
However, one of the main issues with my product working is how besides actors that are not really any other clear links to the ancillary texts that I completed. My digipak and advert tied in really well since they are made up of essentially the same elements and in black and white, but this leaves it hard to see how they all tie together as one brand. This could be considered going against the convention without meaning to since normally the 3 products are made to be ties together.
Overall, I think generally my video followed convention through replicating other video in certain elements which I think helps the authenticity of the video since it will make it more similar to a real video
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The Research and planning that I completed for this project played a played a vital role in the success of the final video from how I had to be clear with how each individual step would be constructed to complete the video to the highest quality from which I could portray the genre and style of the band.
Originally I had listed Lego Monkeys as being an 'indie rock' band. I did this because I couldn't exactly work out to myself what genre it was and the band the song originates from Bombay Bicycle Club are considered to be highly Indie. Because of this it felt like I was just going to just use the convention of bookmarking the band. However, whilst filming the video it became clear to me that Lego Monkeys was not going to be an 'indie' band and brought elements of Rock and particuarly Pop in the video which could be considered developing the convention by creating its own genre rather then blindly following one.
In regard to video shots, I mostly tried to use Mid-shots when filming the band scenes since I looked to try and imitate shots done in the original video which I spent a lot of time watching. Particuarly with Danny's (Lead Singer) singing shots I often tried to straight copy as many fcators as possible such as angle of camera, movement of guitar and length of shot. An example of this is how I keep a very long shot going from 1:24 to 1:36 in the video because the original video gets away with it. This is a clear example of me doing my best to completly follow the media conventions in an atempt to make my video as authentic as possible.
As far costume is concerned, when thinking whether the costume matched an indie band I would say to some extent. One of the most obvious and key pieces of clothing in the video is Danny's 'rainbow' tie dye tshirt. This is from the brand Dope Chef which is fairly small in the UK and would therefore match the indie theme, this could be said for brands that other members of the band were wearing such as ONLY NY, Mishka, The Hundreds and Carhartt. For this reason altohugh there is not a set clothing style for being indie wearing less known brands would contribute to this so could be argued that again that I followed another convention.
When starting my digipak I researched other exsisting digipaks and particuarly CD covers. After only looking at artists I knew and liked I decided ont he theme of black and white and then looked for covers to adapt that used a band and black and white. I then adapted this specification to covers from Razorlight and The Crookes. I then mirrored some of the factors displayed on each for my own digipak. This could be seen as an example of following conventions so strictly that it is only doing exactly what has been done on other CDs
After my teacher had seen my draft for my video and digipak my teacher told me that some of the acting looked a bit stiff and staged. He advised to look at the work of Arctic Monkeys since they are renound for having unstaged, black and white shots which tied in both elements that I needed to look at. Despite not being much of a fan, I looked at their video 'R U Mine?' which is entirely in black and white and looked like it was just randomly filmed rather then planned which is the look that I wanted. I think when I came back to re-shoot it allowed the actors to loosen up since I was more confident about the direction I wanted it to take. This again is me just using the conventions that I had seen in a new video and trying to apply it to mine. It also made me briefly consider making my whole video black and white.
However, one of the main issues with my product working is how besides actors that are not really any other clear links to the ancillary texts that I completed. My digipak and advert tied in really well since they are made up of essentially the same elements and in black and white, but this leaves it hard to see how they all tie together as one brand. This could be considered going against the convention without meaning to since normally the 3 products are made to be ties together.
Overall, I think generally my video followed convention through replicating other video in certain elements which I think helps the authenticity of the video since it will make it more similar to a real video
Tuesday 11 December 2012
Evaluation Question Planning
I decided that before starting my evaluation questions I would first decide what form of media I would use to display each of my questions, here is my decision
Q1 - Use develop or challenge forms: I think I will just type this one up on my blog as an essay style question to be clear when explaining.
Q2 - How effective is combination: For this i think I will create a Prezi presentation to explain my thinking behind it by adding pictures to it.
Q3 - Audience Feedback: I have decided to make a powerpoint for this using microsoft powerpoint with print screen and photos of feedback I have recieved.
Q4 - technology in construction and research: For this I think I will create an Animoto presentation accompanied by pictures with description of each bellow.
Q1 - Use develop or challenge forms: I think I will just type this one up on my blog as an essay style question to be clear when explaining.
Q2 - How effective is combination: For this i think I will create a Prezi presentation to explain my thinking behind it by adding pictures to it.
Q3 - Audience Feedback: I have decided to make a powerpoint for this using microsoft powerpoint with print screen and photos of feedback I have recieved.
Q4 - technology in construction and research: For this I think I will create an Animoto presentation accompanied by pictures with description of each bellow.
Monday 10 December 2012
Music Video Outakes
Whilst making my video I noticed that i had a lot of outakes that were funny so when I had a bit of spare time i decided just to stick them all together into a video. As well as having comedic element, it also gives the viewer an insight into the production of the video
Monday 3 December 2012
Posting the Band Advert on Twitter
I felt as if I hadn't posted anything on the band twitter page in a while so I decided to upload the final advert onto the account. This is a print screen of what the post appear as on twitter.
Also, to make it more authentic I have tagged each of the band members individual twitter accounts, this makes it seem more realistic because a famous band would do this to promote the individual accounts. But in reality I have just done it so the lads have a solid copy of it sent to them.
Evaluation Questions
These are the evaluations questions regarding my project that I will be completing in the next week:
- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- What have you learned from your audience feedback?
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)