My A2 Media Blog is now complete, due to me editing alot of my work it is not in chronological order however i believe all that needs producing is below.
Ben Scott
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Audience Feedback
1.
"Yes, it has the conventions of other music videos of similar genre."
"Yes."
"Parts did, although some parts did not really feel relevant to the rest of the video."
"Costume, characters, locations all seemed to fit in well"
"Similar to other videos I've seen in that genre"
"Yes but what was with the bath!?"
"I really liked it, the combination of expressions, body language and costume all fitted in with the genre of the video!"
"Yes it worked well"
"Yes, although the bath didn't fit in with the rest of the video?"
"At times."
"LOL"
2.
"Everything - camerawork, editing, costume, lighting etc fitted perfectly!"
"The stripping haha"
"I like how it kept switching between the stripping and the performing"
"Mitchell without a shirt :P"
"The editing was really good, and the film flowed very well"
"It was really funny and I loved it"
"Best. Video. Ever"
"The fact I didn't stop laughing all the way through it"
3.
"I don't think the bath was relevant"
"Wtf was with the bath guys??"
"I loved the video but I didn't get the bath part"
"The bath"
"Although the bath thing was well done, I didn't get it"
"The fact it ended"
"Didn't understand the bath"
"Too little stripping :P"
"I didn't quite understand the bath"
4.
"People our age"
"Teens"
"Females"
"Anybody"
"girls lol"
"Females aged between 16 and 30"
"Everyone"
"teenagers"
"teens"
"teen girls"
5.
"Get rid of the bath"
"More stripping!"
"Parts were abit repetetive"
"I'd change the bath bit"
"I think it would've been better without the bath"
"The screen sometimes had lines across it :S"
"I think the bath sections should be taken out."
6.
"LOL"
"Great video guys"
"made me laugh"
"MORE NUDITY!"
"Hilarious - well done guys"
"So funny!"
"Yes, it has the conventions of other music videos of similar genre."
"Yes."
"Parts did, although some parts did not really feel relevant to the rest of the video."
"Costume, characters, locations all seemed to fit in well"
"Similar to other videos I've seen in that genre"
"Yes but what was with the bath!?"
"I really liked it, the combination of expressions, body language and costume all fitted in with the genre of the video!"
"Yes it worked well"
"Yes, although the bath didn't fit in with the rest of the video?"
"At times."
"LOL"
2.
"Everything - camerawork, editing, costume, lighting etc fitted perfectly!"
"The stripping haha"
"I like how it kept switching between the stripping and the performing"
"Mitchell without a shirt :P"
"The editing was really good, and the film flowed very well"
"It was really funny and I loved it"
"Best. Video. Ever"
"The fact I didn't stop laughing all the way through it"
3.
"I don't think the bath was relevant"
"Wtf was with the bath guys??"
"I loved the video but I didn't get the bath part"
"The bath"
"Although the bath thing was well done, I didn't get it"
"The fact it ended"
"Didn't understand the bath"
"Too little stripping :P"
"I didn't quite understand the bath"
4.
"People our age"
"Teens"
"Females"
"Anybody"
"girls lol"
"Females aged between 16 and 30"
"Everyone"
"teenagers"
"teens"
"teen girls"
5.
"Get rid of the bath"
"More stripping!"
"Parts were abit repetetive"
"I'd change the bath bit"
"I think it would've been better without the bath"
"The screen sometimes had lines across it :S"
"I think the bath sections should be taken out."
6.
"LOL"
"Great video guys"
"made me laugh"
"MORE NUDITY!"
"Hilarious - well done guys"
"So funny!"
Final Storyboard/Shot Breakdown & Podcasts...
Final Storboard/Shot Breakdown
(Click on image for full size)
Podcasts
Our group had alot of problems trying to upload our podcasts, we have only just managed to upload our podcasts thanks to getting some help. The links are below (and hopefully working!)
(Click on image for full size)
Podcasts
Our group had alot of problems trying to upload our podcasts, we have only just managed to upload our podcasts thanks to getting some help. The links are below (and hopefully working!)
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I think that our final media product adapts to the coventions our group set out to do.Upon completing research,
we knew what codes and conventions we should try to include in our final products to make them meet a specific type of
product.An example of this is in the magazine adverts i analysed i found that they all featured a large image of some sort
either as the background or to accompliment the text, the text and background were always contrasting, either light text on
a dark background or dark text on a light background, to make the text stand out and draw your attention. These are examples
of things i found in my research which we tried to incorporate in our final magazine advert. The use of colour on a black
and white blackground was really effective and made the text stand out more, with the main image of the advert as the background.
1. The use of media company logo's makes our magazine advert look even more realistic. HMV, Itunes and Play.com were the ones we chose and shows the audience where they
can download, order or view information on the track we used for our music video.
2. Most adverts advertising artists or songs these days have a website where you can find out information on the artist(s) or download their music, so we included a website.
3. CD Cover's are made to have age rating's on them in this day and age, so we thought we would include our chosen age rating for our video on the advert incase an audience would like to know before hand.
4. The main image of the advert is a large black and white background image which dominates the advert, the person on our image is Mitch from our group, the way he is sitting and the expression on his face
suggests erotic connotations and objectifies him, this also features at some points in our video. This could link to Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze' Theory however it does not objectify a female seen from a male viewpoint but objectifies a male, seen from a female viewpoint.
5.The light brown banner contrasts from the yellow and red text, which attracts more attention from the audience.
6. Adding a different colour border to the 'features' star makes it slightly more attractive for the viewer to look at.
As mentioned at the start of the evaluation i feel that our final media product accomodates the codes and conventions i found through my research. When i was watching Foo Fighters Featuring Jack Black video for the song Low, i felt as if i was watching it for diversion purposes, with not much in common between the viewer
and the artist(s), this ties in with the terms of the Blumner and Katz Theory, like escaping from a day to day normal routine. We wanted to interprete our video in this same way,
sharing parody style conventions of videos.Along with this theory we also looked at Andrew Goodwin's theory, Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features which distinguish the music video as a form such as a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics and
a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music. We feel that our video reflects this however it could be argued that we did not accomodate to this convention as we were not always miming or saying what the lyrics were saying (See number 7 in image below), this may be down to us also including outtakes in our video.
We did follow Goodwin's theory in the sense that the main singer (Rob) was shown alot throughout the video and were always from close up angle's, which was one of his theory's aspects, following the continual close up of the main singer (See number 8 in image below).
As for our DVD Cover, inside we used two images on either side of the cover rather than having a pattern, the front and back of two of the featured characters, this goes against the conventions of the genre of the music we did where there is usually
pictures of the artist/band playing live or as mentioned a pattern or blank. From both the inside and out of the DVD cover, people may be able to guess the genre of the video,
because of this the audience are likely to guess what the video will feature before they've even seen it, which helps us to draw in an audience. Our video and products did not fully turn out how we wanted them to due to limited equipment and funding,
an example of this is that the pixel quality of the video is not great, so it was hard to make it look proffesional, this may be due to the quality of the equipment or the fact that alot of the video was rushed. However a good point is that it challenges the conventions of
a normal music video because at the beginning there is other music instead of there just being the main song or random noise. The problems we had for time, equipment and funding also works against us as this does not meet the normal conventions of our chosen genre.
However, our video does have a strong relationship between performance and narrative, switching between scenes of performing and the comedy side such as the stripping scenes, this backs up Steven Archer's music video theory that a video needs a good relationship between performance
and narrative, it also needs to market both the song and the band in general.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our DVD cover and magazine cover compliment our music video very well, as they keep in with the genre of our video. An example of this is our magazine cover features my group on the front cover wearing stupid hats and standing in a silly posture. As for our magainze, our finished product contains all the stereotypical codes and conventions of a music magazine cover, with large headline, barcode, price, issue number etc. The DVD cover also features a funny picture of Joe cocker on the front, which as said goes in line with the spoof side of our video. If our magazine were to be made real, similarly to our music video our audience would read it for escapism purposes.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The majority of the audience who gave us feedback to our video found it very amusing and gave us positive feedback, saying it fitted the purpose of the genre. The outtakes were also mentioned for adding more comedy to our video and that the only improvements to be made was less of the bath scene where time lapse is attempted quite well. People said that they thought the target audience of our video was mainly for females, particularly to those of teen ages. They would have also liked to have seen more stripping in the sense of more people stripping as opposed to Mitchell going any further than he already did. However, Rob and me did not feel comfortable enough to take our clothes off. As a group we believe that the video is aimed at no particular audience, however the content is more likely to be attractive to females. As the video is a parody it is hopefully appealing to anyone, particularly fans of Joe Cocker and the full monty..
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The use of websites like you tube were vital to the success of our video, we used examples of other peoples funny videos to come up with ideas and the use of editing with final cut made our video look even more funny, such as the scene where the video freezes and zooms in on the guitarists face. Since our video has been on you tube it has received over 2,500 hits within a month which a 4.5 out of 5 rating which we consider to be very good. We also used the internet to research age classifications so that we knew what sort of age ratings we should give our music video and DVD, and found a useful document on the BBFC website which led us to rating our video 18 due to some of the explicit content. We also used the internet and Film books in an attempt to research camera techniques that we could use in our music video, to make it more interesting.The internet was also helpful for finding pictures for our magazine and DVD covers.
I think that our final media product adapts to the coventions our group set out to do.Upon completing research,
we knew what codes and conventions we should try to include in our final products to make them meet a specific type of
product.An example of this is in the magazine adverts i analysed i found that they all featured a large image of some sort
either as the background or to accompliment the text, the text and background were always contrasting, either light text on
a dark background or dark text on a light background, to make the text stand out and draw your attention. These are examples
of things i found in my research which we tried to incorporate in our final magazine advert. The use of colour on a black
and white blackground was really effective and made the text stand out more, with the main image of the advert as the background.
1. The use of media company logo's makes our magazine advert look even more realistic. HMV, Itunes and Play.com were the ones we chose and shows the audience where they
can download, order or view information on the track we used for our music video.
2. Most adverts advertising artists or songs these days have a website where you can find out information on the artist(s) or download their music, so we included a website.
3. CD Cover's are made to have age rating's on them in this day and age, so we thought we would include our chosen age rating for our video on the advert incase an audience would like to know before hand.
4. The main image of the advert is a large black and white background image which dominates the advert, the person on our image is Mitch from our group, the way he is sitting and the expression on his face
suggests erotic connotations and objectifies him, this also features at some points in our video. This could link to Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze' Theory however it does not objectify a female seen from a male viewpoint but objectifies a male, seen from a female viewpoint.
5.The light brown banner contrasts from the yellow and red text, which attracts more attention from the audience.
6. Adding a different colour border to the 'features' star makes it slightly more attractive for the viewer to look at.
As mentioned at the start of the evaluation i feel that our final media product accomodates the codes and conventions i found through my research. When i was watching Foo Fighters Featuring Jack Black video for the song Low, i felt as if i was watching it for diversion purposes, with not much in common between the viewer
and the artist(s), this ties in with the terms of the Blumner and Katz Theory, like escaping from a day to day normal routine. We wanted to interprete our video in this same way,
sharing parody style conventions of videos.Along with this theory we also looked at Andrew Goodwin's theory, Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features which distinguish the music video as a form such as a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics and
a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music. We feel that our video reflects this however it could be argued that we did not accomodate to this convention as we were not always miming or saying what the lyrics were saying (See number 7 in image below), this may be down to us also including outtakes in our video.
We did follow Goodwin's theory in the sense that the main singer (Rob) was shown alot throughout the video and were always from close up angle's, which was one of his theory's aspects, following the continual close up of the main singer (See number 8 in image below).
As for our DVD Cover, inside we used two images on either side of the cover rather than having a pattern, the front and back of two of the featured characters, this goes against the conventions of the genre of the music we did where there is usually
pictures of the artist/band playing live or as mentioned a pattern or blank. From both the inside and out of the DVD cover, people may be able to guess the genre of the video,
because of this the audience are likely to guess what the video will feature before they've even seen it, which helps us to draw in an audience. Our video and products did not fully turn out how we wanted them to due to limited equipment and funding,
an example of this is that the pixel quality of the video is not great, so it was hard to make it look proffesional, this may be due to the quality of the equipment or the fact that alot of the video was rushed. However a good point is that it challenges the conventions of
a normal music video because at the beginning there is other music instead of there just being the main song or random noise. The problems we had for time, equipment and funding also works against us as this does not meet the normal conventions of our chosen genre.
However, our video does have a strong relationship between performance and narrative, switching between scenes of performing and the comedy side such as the stripping scenes, this backs up Steven Archer's music video theory that a video needs a good relationship between performance
and narrative, it also needs to market both the song and the band in general.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our DVD cover and magazine cover compliment our music video very well, as they keep in with the genre of our video. An example of this is our magazine cover features my group on the front cover wearing stupid hats and standing in a silly posture. As for our magainze, our finished product contains all the stereotypical codes and conventions of a music magazine cover, with large headline, barcode, price, issue number etc. The DVD cover also features a funny picture of Joe cocker on the front, which as said goes in line with the spoof side of our video. If our magazine were to be made real, similarly to our music video our audience would read it for escapism purposes.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The majority of the audience who gave us feedback to our video found it very amusing and gave us positive feedback, saying it fitted the purpose of the genre. The outtakes were also mentioned for adding more comedy to our video and that the only improvements to be made was less of the bath scene where time lapse is attempted quite well. People said that they thought the target audience of our video was mainly for females, particularly to those of teen ages. They would have also liked to have seen more stripping in the sense of more people stripping as opposed to Mitchell going any further than he already did. However, Rob and me did not feel comfortable enough to take our clothes off. As a group we believe that the video is aimed at no particular audience, however the content is more likely to be attractive to females. As the video is a parody it is hopefully appealing to anyone, particularly fans of Joe Cocker and the full monty..
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The use of websites like you tube were vital to the success of our video, we used examples of other peoples funny videos to come up with ideas and the use of editing with final cut made our video look even more funny, such as the scene where the video freezes and zooms in on the guitarists face. Since our video has been on you tube it has received over 2,500 hits within a month which a 4.5 out of 5 rating which we consider to be very good. We also used the internet to research age classifications so that we knew what sort of age ratings we should give our music video and DVD, and found a useful document on the BBFC website which led us to rating our video 18 due to some of the explicit content. We also used the internet and Film books in an attempt to research camera techniques that we could use in our music video, to make it more interesting.The internet was also helpful for finding pictures for our magazine and DVD covers.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Net Drawing & Final Magazine Advert
Net Drawing
Final Magazine Advert
The Magazine Advert has been completed, and will be posted below. The Advert was edited using Photoshop, on an Apple Mac. We decided to use an A4 sized advert as opposed to a double spread, as the majority of adverts researched only consisted of one page:
Final Magazine Advert
The Magazine Advert has been completed, and will be posted below. The Advert was edited using Photoshop, on an Apple Mac. We decided to use an A4 sized advert as opposed to a double spread, as the majority of adverts researched only consisted of one page:
Production Demonstrations & Age Ratings
Production Demonstrations
To make our ancillary texts we used Macromedia Fireworks CS4 because of our previous skills learnt on the program producing other projects for media and personal use in the past. Fireworks is a professional program that allows the average consumer to produce industry standard artwork and imagery on a workstation that is considerably easy to master.
(Click on images to make them full size)
DVD Cover
Production Demonstration
1. After taking multiple images we agreed on the best one to use for our design work. This is imported into a blank canvas. Using the magic wand tool as seen below, the image can be modified so that just a selection of the photo exists with the background removed. This allows the image to be layered on to another image and still look authentic.
2.The image had to be rotated because the angle it was photographed at was not the desired angle.
3. Step 1 and 2 was completed for both the front and back covers of the DVD insert and both images were pasted onto a net canvas of size 1600x1072 pixels as seen below. Auto colour level was first used on both images to accentuate their natural colours. I then adjusted the brightness and contrast of the images to give them an aesthetically pleasing and romanticised effect. The contrast was altered significantly while maintaining a relatively neutral brightness balance.
4. After altering the hue, noise was then added to the images to take some of the natural skin tone out of them. This gives the effect that the model is less flawed.
5. A pink background was then inserted by altering the canvas colour. Pink was chosen because it reflects the sexual and somewhat feminine-appealing mood of the work. By reducing the opacity also, the images blend into the background with greater flow and consistency, as can be seen below.
6. After this the rest was a breeze. Film related logos were found off the internet, ‘magic-wanded’ and inserted onto the back cover of the DVD. Print screens from our music video were used to make the short storyboard on the back and the billing block was made using the Universal 39 Condensed font to add an authentic look. An age rating courtesy of the BBFC was also added along with a barcode to accentuate the DVD covers authenticity.
Magazine Advert
To create the magazine advert we did a photoshoot with me semi-naked in an attempt to create a professional looking model shot that we could use as the main focal point of our magazine advert. Again Macromedia Fireworks was used as the tool for the job and the sepia-style effect that we eventually settled on was created by experimentally adjusting the contrast, saturation, hue and brightness. The blur tool was also used softly on parts to accentuate certain features.
Original Unedited
Finished Edited
After the image had been agreed on, the advertising features were placed over the top. The common theme throughout our advert and DVD cover is the brown/yellow strip across the bottom of both products and also the font style and placing of the headings as seen below.
Age Ratings
We used the BBFC Classification Guidelines when creating our music video, so we could understand more about classifications, and what sort of age rating we would have to give our music video and why.
We found a PDF document containing all we needed to know about age ratings, found on the British Board of Film Classifications' website.
Due to it's suggestive content and nudity, if the video were to be released to the general public we would have to give it either a Parental Guidance or 12 certificate.
To make our ancillary texts we used Macromedia Fireworks CS4 because of our previous skills learnt on the program producing other projects for media and personal use in the past. Fireworks is a professional program that allows the average consumer to produce industry standard artwork and imagery on a workstation that is considerably easy to master.
(Click on images to make them full size)
DVD Cover
Production Demonstration
1. After taking multiple images we agreed on the best one to use for our design work. This is imported into a blank canvas. Using the magic wand tool as seen below, the image can be modified so that just a selection of the photo exists with the background removed. This allows the image to be layered on to another image and still look authentic.
2.The image had to be rotated because the angle it was photographed at was not the desired angle.
3. Step 1 and 2 was completed for both the front and back covers of the DVD insert and both images were pasted onto a net canvas of size 1600x1072 pixels as seen below. Auto colour level was first used on both images to accentuate their natural colours. I then adjusted the brightness and contrast of the images to give them an aesthetically pleasing and romanticised effect. The contrast was altered significantly while maintaining a relatively neutral brightness balance.
4. After altering the hue, noise was then added to the images to take some of the natural skin tone out of them. This gives the effect that the model is less flawed.
5. A pink background was then inserted by altering the canvas colour. Pink was chosen because it reflects the sexual and somewhat feminine-appealing mood of the work. By reducing the opacity also, the images blend into the background with greater flow and consistency, as can be seen below.
6. After this the rest was a breeze. Film related logos were found off the internet, ‘magic-wanded’ and inserted onto the back cover of the DVD. Print screens from our music video were used to make the short storyboard on the back and the billing block was made using the Universal 39 Condensed font to add an authentic look. An age rating courtesy of the BBFC was also added along with a barcode to accentuate the DVD covers authenticity.
Magazine Advert
To create the magazine advert we did a photoshoot with me semi-naked in an attempt to create a professional looking model shot that we could use as the main focal point of our magazine advert. Again Macromedia Fireworks was used as the tool for the job and the sepia-style effect that we eventually settled on was created by experimentally adjusting the contrast, saturation, hue and brightness. The blur tool was also used softly on parts to accentuate certain features.
Original Unedited
Finished Edited
After the image had been agreed on, the advertising features were placed over the top. The common theme throughout our advert and DVD cover is the brown/yellow strip across the bottom of both products and also the font style and placing of the headings as seen below.
Age Ratings
We used the BBFC Classification Guidelines when creating our music video, so we could understand more about classifications, and what sort of age rating we would have to give our music video and why.
We found a PDF document containing all we needed to know about age ratings, found on the British Board of Film Classifications' website.
Due to it's suggestive content and nudity, if the video were to be released to the general public we would have to give it either a Parental Guidance or 12 certificate.
Net Drawing & Final DVD Cover
Net Drawing For DVD Cover
Below is the net drawing for our DVD Cover
(Click on for full size)
Final DVD Cover
The following is the Joe Cocker DVD Cover that the group created in conjunction with our Media Video using Photoshop:
Below is the net drawing for our DVD Cover
(Click on for full size)
Final DVD Cover
The following is the Joe Cocker DVD Cover that the group created in conjunction with our Media Video using Photoshop:
Final Music Video & Album Cover
As seen above you can view our final music video, we decided to upload it to YouTube because we wanted worldwide feedback as well as class feedback, as it stands it has a 4.5 stars out of 5 rating from 8 rater's and over 4,500 views which we are quite surprised at.
Album Cover
Above is a prototype album cover our group created using photo shop...
Although the Album Cover has no particular relevance to the course, it has enabled us to get a better understanding of how to use Photo shop, which will hopefully become useful when we get round to producing our two Print Texts - the DVD Cover and Magazine Advert for the DVD.
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