Friday 21 May 2010
Friday 23 April 2010
Evaluation(Written Version)
Evaluation
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The song I chose was called ‘Hounds of Love’ by an indie rock band called The Futureheads. Kate Bush originally sang the song and The
Futureheads covered it in 2005.
When thinking how to go about my video and what to include, I had to think hard because the obvious concept would be canines fornicating. I thought outside the box trying to bring together a pitch that made perfect sense yet wasn’t too cheesy. The idea I eventually came up with was a love story with a twist and wanted to also include some parts of the band playing so that I could follow the conventions of a indie rock music video, including a variety of narrative and band shots.
I wanted my video to be amplification as it would still retain a link to the song but the storyline doesn’t fit exactly to the lyrics. I challenged the forms and conventions of my genre as the typical video would include both narrative and meek shots of the band. My video included more narrative and I also linked the playing of the band into the narrative to be more creative.
There is a few parts in my video that do actually link directly to the lyrics, for example; I referred the line “I’ve always been a coward” to the boy in the narrative being too afraid to ask the girl out who he likes although she blatantly likes him back.
My music video uses conventions of real media as I tried to stick as closely to an Indie rock video as possible and my song was this genre. My actors and actress wore indie style clothing, which would consist of things like skinny jeans, shirts or tight t-shirts. My actors also had longish scraggy hair, which is a concept of indie style media.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My ancillary tasks consisted of a CD/DVD digipak, and either a web page, which would be designed on dreamweaver, or a magazine advertisement.
I tried to replicate a real CD/DVD Digipak by getting a few example digipaks together and taking some ideas from them to keep it realistic and sticking to the conventions of the genre. It has a main picture of the artist, or in my case, the lead singer. It also contains a logo, and I stuck to the same font throughout, this font is a downloaded font from “Dafont.com” and I chose this font as I believe this is a nice font that goes well for the genre of my song.
I then tried to make my magazine advertisement as close to the digipak as possible, keeping the same colour scheme and font. The background colour is the same and the pictures I have used for my ancillaries were stills from the video to keep a strong link between the three products. I then edited them in Photoshop so that they would be more effective and easy on the eye, it also blended the pictures to the background a bit more.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The feedback I got from my audience was really helpful as the stuff they said was just helping me to make my music video that extra bit better. many people said that the scene in the school where the teacher gives a detention, that I should’ve used an actual teacher instead of one of the school kids acting as it didn’t look very realistic. I tried to change this although I was unsuccessful in getting a teacher in the short space of time I had left. Also I was told that the lip-synching wasn’t all that great, but this was because my actor was not as enthusiastic as I had hoped. By the time I had gotten this feedback I was unable to go back and change this as I was behind schedule anyway so this feedback I was getting was just so I knew my positives and negatives of the video.
The feedback I received that I consider positive were the fact that my storyline worked well with the song, some of the locations I chose to shoot were good, such as the street where the lead actor was walking to school, and the school corridoors.
The feedback I received of which was negative were things such as bad acting for the school teacher, and lip synching which I have already mentioned, the placement of the band as there was lots of artistic pictures in the background so it didn’t seem as real, and also the cutting out of scenes too quickly, which I was able to sort out. From the feedback I realized that I should’ve put more effort into the actors and the locations. I also think I could of used a place that had better lighting for some of my shots, because some of them were either too dark or too light.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The first piece of technology I used was for my research and planning, this was blogger.com. I collated all of my work together on a blog so that it could be seen by my teachers and it made it easier for me to get to my work at home if I needed to catch up with some work. I edited the settings on my blog so that it was more aesthetically pleasing and didn’t look just thrown on in any old place.
Once my research and planning was over with came my video. To create my music video I obviously needed to film so a tripod and a camera were used. Seeing as though I didn’t finish all of my filming in one shoot, I ended up using more than one type of camera. One was a Canon mini DV, MD216, and the other was a Sony HDV 1080i. When I had finished filming for my video I had to use a firewire, which gives a quick way of uploading the footage. The footage was placed into iMovie where I could edit and cut down the parts I didn’t need and then I imported it into a programme that I had never used before which is very complex, “Final Cut Express”. In Final Cut I put my music video together using markers which give a really accurate mark of which bits I needed and if I made a mistake I could cut the video down using the razor blade tool. I was also able to add effects on Final Cut by using the effects bar at the top and then going to either “Video Transitions” or “Video Filters”.
To create my ancillaries I used a programme called Photoshop and I made them on my own laptop, as I do not like the elements version that is on the Apple Mac’s. I already had an understanding of how to use Photoshop but when creating my ancillary tasks I developed further skills by just playing about trying to make them look that little bit better.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The song I chose was called ‘Hounds of Love’ by an indie rock band called The Futureheads. Kate Bush originally sang the song and The
Futureheads covered it in 2005.
When thinking how to go about my video and what to include, I had to think hard because the obvious concept would be canines fornicating. I thought outside the box trying to bring together a pitch that made perfect sense yet wasn’t too cheesy. The idea I eventually came up with was a love story with a twist and wanted to also include some parts of the band playing so that I could follow the conventions of a indie rock music video, including a variety of narrative and band shots.
I wanted my video to be amplification as it would still retain a link to the song but the storyline doesn’t fit exactly to the lyrics. I challenged the forms and conventions of my genre as the typical video would include both narrative and meek shots of the band. My video included more narrative and I also linked the playing of the band into the narrative to be more creative.
There is a few parts in my video that do actually link directly to the lyrics, for example; I referred the line “I’ve always been a coward” to the boy in the narrative being too afraid to ask the girl out who he likes although she blatantly likes him back.
My music video uses conventions of real media as I tried to stick as closely to an Indie rock video as possible and my song was this genre. My actors and actress wore indie style clothing, which would consist of things like skinny jeans, shirts or tight t-shirts. My actors also had longish scraggy hair, which is a concept of indie style media.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My ancillary tasks consisted of a CD/DVD digipak, and either a web page, which would be designed on dreamweaver, or a magazine advertisement.
I tried to replicate a real CD/DVD Digipak by getting a few example digipaks together and taking some ideas from them to keep it realistic and sticking to the conventions of the genre. It has a main picture of the artist, or in my case, the lead singer. It also contains a logo, and I stuck to the same font throughout, this font is a downloaded font from “Dafont.com” and I chose this font as I believe this is a nice font that goes well for the genre of my song.
I then tried to make my magazine advertisement as close to the digipak as possible, keeping the same colour scheme and font. The background colour is the same and the pictures I have used for my ancillaries were stills from the video to keep a strong link between the three products. I then edited them in Photoshop so that they would be more effective and easy on the eye, it also blended the pictures to the background a bit more.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The feedback I got from my audience was really helpful as the stuff they said was just helping me to make my music video that extra bit better. many people said that the scene in the school where the teacher gives a detention, that I should’ve used an actual teacher instead of one of the school kids acting as it didn’t look very realistic. I tried to change this although I was unsuccessful in getting a teacher in the short space of time I had left. Also I was told that the lip-synching wasn’t all that great, but this was because my actor was not as enthusiastic as I had hoped. By the time I had gotten this feedback I was unable to go back and change this as I was behind schedule anyway so this feedback I was getting was just so I knew my positives and negatives of the video.
The feedback I received that I consider positive were the fact that my storyline worked well with the song, some of the locations I chose to shoot were good, such as the street where the lead actor was walking to school, and the school corridoors.
The feedback I received of which was negative were things such as bad acting for the school teacher, and lip synching which I have already mentioned, the placement of the band as there was lots of artistic pictures in the background so it didn’t seem as real, and also the cutting out of scenes too quickly, which I was able to sort out. From the feedback I realized that I should’ve put more effort into the actors and the locations. I also think I could of used a place that had better lighting for some of my shots, because some of them were either too dark or too light.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The first piece of technology I used was for my research and planning, this was blogger.com. I collated all of my work together on a blog so that it could be seen by my teachers and it made it easier for me to get to my work at home if I needed to catch up with some work. I edited the settings on my blog so that it was more aesthetically pleasing and didn’t look just thrown on in any old place.
Once my research and planning was over with came my video. To create my music video I obviously needed to film so a tripod and a camera were used. Seeing as though I didn’t finish all of my filming in one shoot, I ended up using more than one type of camera. One was a Canon mini DV, MD216, and the other was a Sony HDV 1080i. When I had finished filming for my video I had to use a firewire, which gives a quick way of uploading the footage. The footage was placed into iMovie where I could edit and cut down the parts I didn’t need and then I imported it into a programme that I had never used before which is very complex, “Final Cut Express”. In Final Cut I put my music video together using markers which give a really accurate mark of which bits I needed and if I made a mistake I could cut the video down using the razor blade tool. I was also able to add effects on Final Cut by using the effects bar at the top and then going to either “Video Transitions” or “Video Filters”.
To create my ancillaries I used a programme called Photoshop and I made them on my own laptop, as I do not like the elements version that is on the Apple Mac’s. I already had an understanding of how to use Photoshop but when creating my ancillary tasks I developed further skills by just playing about trying to make them look that little bit better.
Wednesday 24 March 2010
Ancillary step by step
Digipak
My digipak I made for one of my ancillary tasks was made on Photoshop and looks quite simple although was very complicated to make and includes many layers. On the first page at the top is the logo, I was unable to recover this from previous pictures so had to recreate it once again, this was made by using a font which I had downloaded that would look good and then I made the font black with a white outer glow, I then dropped a shadow and edited the shadow to look professional. For the main picture on the front I had to get two still images from the video, as I was unable to get a photo shoot with my actors. This was a bit fiddly but I managed to make something from nothing, merging the two pictures together then changing the layer style to luminosity making it black and white. I also added lots of effects to this image, including a stroke outline with a similar colour to the background so it’s barely visible, a white outer glow and also I dropped a shadow on it. The “PG” and “DVD” images were from the internet to make it look a bit more professional, images are not meant to be found from the internet but with these there was no other way I could get them so these were an exception. Same goes for the bar code image. The side strip text was just made using the same font as the logo but without any effects added to it, as I thought I needed some simplicity as well as complexity.
The image of the heart with the dog inside it, is the same image I created a while back for my CD cover draft which is also on my blog but I edited it by changing the layer style to luminosity to keep to the same style as the opposite picture, and then changed the opacity down to 50% so that I could write the text over the top of it, making it a background image.
The text used for the back page above the heart image was another downloaded image that I got at home and I added lots of effects to the text, such as inner shadow, stroke outline and dropped shadow. I made the text colour a similar one to that of the background but made sure it was still clearly visible. I then create a straight line to go inbetween the two sets of text, making it the same colour and put an outer glow on it.
The inner pages look very basic, although there is various editing skills used on Photoshop, the logo and text are the same as previous pages, although the CD holder was made using a circular shape inside another circular shape, once the second circle was made the first would disappear so this was a problem for me, but I just merged the two layers and then the first would reappear and then I put a grey stroke outline on them both, and changed the colour to a similar one to the background and changed the opacity so that the background colour would show a bit more.
For the four pictures, one of each band member, I changed the opacity down to 60%, put a black stroke outline of the thinnest line possible, and also put the layer style as “screen” so that they did not stand out too much, it made them blend in with the background a bit more. I also had to get a black line down the exact middle of the two pages, so I had to make a line going horizontally and check if it fitted the same on both sides, which was just a pure case of trial and error.
Magazine Advertisement
For my magazine advertisement I decided to stick to the same colours and layout as my digipak as the two should converge together well. I used another still image from the video of the lead singer singing, and made this picture to the majority of the size of the advertisement, leaving only a bit of background colour at the outsides. I then edited this picture by bringing the picture forward and adding a shadow, so it looks like its been framed. I then added an artistic filter and changed It about to make it look the best I could, I also had to change the opacity down to about 75% and changed the layer style to hard light. I then placed the logo image, which I had saved separately after recreating for my digipak, and put at the top of the advertisement, and then used the same text style as the digipak, as I said before I was trying to keep the two ancillaries as closely linked as possible. I was not permitted to use real music stores such as HMV so had to make my own. I made one up called Niall Smith Music, NSM so I created a little logo for it, using a downloaded font on my Photoshop and then put a stroke outline on and added a gradient text of a mixture of red and orange. I added some text saying “Their best work yet – NME.” I kept the same font style as the digipak to retain that link. I needed to add four stars but I couldn’t find a star shape on Photoshop so I went onto paint at home and drew a star shape and then put it onto the PSD and pasted the layer style another 3 times and then merged the layers and made the layer style the same as the above text. To finish it off I added two websites at the bottom and they fitted perfectly, one of which I made up and the other being their myspace page and I kept this font plain black because I tried having it the same as everything else and it didn’t look too good so I thought simple was the best option.
My digipak I made for one of my ancillary tasks was made on Photoshop and looks quite simple although was very complicated to make and includes many layers. On the first page at the top is the logo, I was unable to recover this from previous pictures so had to recreate it once again, this was made by using a font which I had downloaded that would look good and then I made the font black with a white outer glow, I then dropped a shadow and edited the shadow to look professional. For the main picture on the front I had to get two still images from the video, as I was unable to get a photo shoot with my actors. This was a bit fiddly but I managed to make something from nothing, merging the two pictures together then changing the layer style to luminosity making it black and white. I also added lots of effects to this image, including a stroke outline with a similar colour to the background so it’s barely visible, a white outer glow and also I dropped a shadow on it. The “PG” and “DVD” images were from the internet to make it look a bit more professional, images are not meant to be found from the internet but with these there was no other way I could get them so these were an exception. Same goes for the bar code image. The side strip text was just made using the same font as the logo but without any effects added to it, as I thought I needed some simplicity as well as complexity.
The image of the heart with the dog inside it, is the same image I created a while back for my CD cover draft which is also on my blog but I edited it by changing the layer style to luminosity to keep to the same style as the opposite picture, and then changed the opacity down to 50% so that I could write the text over the top of it, making it a background image.
The text used for the back page above the heart image was another downloaded image that I got at home and I added lots of effects to the text, such as inner shadow, stroke outline and dropped shadow. I made the text colour a similar one to that of the background but made sure it was still clearly visible. I then create a straight line to go inbetween the two sets of text, making it the same colour and put an outer glow on it.
The inner pages look very basic, although there is various editing skills used on Photoshop, the logo and text are the same as previous pages, although the CD holder was made using a circular shape inside another circular shape, once the second circle was made the first would disappear so this was a problem for me, but I just merged the two layers and then the first would reappear and then I put a grey stroke outline on them both, and changed the colour to a similar one to the background and changed the opacity so that the background colour would show a bit more.
For the four pictures, one of each band member, I changed the opacity down to 60%, put a black stroke outline of the thinnest line possible, and also put the layer style as “screen” so that they did not stand out too much, it made them blend in with the background a bit more. I also had to get a black line down the exact middle of the two pages, so I had to make a line going horizontally and check if it fitted the same on both sides, which was just a pure case of trial and error.
Magazine Advertisement
For my magazine advertisement I decided to stick to the same colours and layout as my digipak as the two should converge together well. I used another still image from the video of the lead singer singing, and made this picture to the majority of the size of the advertisement, leaving only a bit of background colour at the outsides. I then edited this picture by bringing the picture forward and adding a shadow, so it looks like its been framed. I then added an artistic filter and changed It about to make it look the best I could, I also had to change the opacity down to about 75% and changed the layer style to hard light. I then placed the logo image, which I had saved separately after recreating for my digipak, and put at the top of the advertisement, and then used the same text style as the digipak, as I said before I was trying to keep the two ancillaries as closely linked as possible. I was not permitted to use real music stores such as HMV so had to make my own. I made one up called Niall Smith Music, NSM so I created a little logo for it, using a downloaded font on my Photoshop and then put a stroke outline on and added a gradient text of a mixture of red and orange. I added some text saying “Their best work yet – NME.” I kept the same font style as the digipak to retain that link. I needed to add four stars but I couldn’t find a star shape on Photoshop so I went onto paint at home and drew a star shape and then put it onto the PSD and pasted the layer style another 3 times and then merged the layers and made the layer style the same as the above text. To finish it off I added two websites at the bottom and they fitted perfectly, one of which I made up and the other being their myspace page and I kept this font plain black because I tried having it the same as everything else and it didn’t look too good so I thought simple was the best option.
Monday 8 February 2010
Friday 5 February 2010
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