Finished Music Video

Finished Digipak and Advert

Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation Question 2

How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Evaluation Question 3

What have your learned from your audience feedback?

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.

Twitter
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

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