EVALUATION: What have you learnt from audience feedback?

EVALUATION: Audience feedback

EVALUATION: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Soundcloud Recording
Within this evaluation, I will be comparing my use of media technologies.

When initially starting the project, I used technologies in a much more basic way. A specific example would be that at first all I used was simple tools on photoshop like colour correction and blemish removers to create brighter photos and giving the models the image of 'perfection'. I improved by learning about more complex edits through watching tutorials, which included making my own backgrounds using the blur tool and adding glitches to my pictures.

I also used online technologies in order to distribute questionnaires on google forms so that I could retrieve data quickly and easily in order to create graphs on what my target audience would most prefer from my products. I also used other google applications such a google docs and google slides in order to create plans for my layout designs.

As well as this, we used different camera technologies in order to create the best sort of shots. For the music video, we used the Canon 760D and used two different lenses in order to get the right focus that we needed for particular shots. For medium shots, we used the 50mm lens as we wanted the artists in the front of the shot to be in focus, and with this lens, it would make the object at the front the clearest. When doing long shots or shots where the camera is being moved, we used the 105mm, which allows you to zoom, in order to change the distance between the artists on the camera during the shot. We used this camera for the photos for our digipak and magazine advert too as it enabled us to take the most focused pictures. The camera itself was a DSLR camera, ensuring that we could take high definition footage, creating a professional look for our products overall.

When editing our video, we used Premier Pro to create and fit our footage together. This software helped us to easily place together the videos and add in the special effects of glitch's and TV static in order to create a professional looking product. To edit my magazine and digipak, I used two programmes, Adobe photoshop and InDesign. I did my main editing of the photos on photoshop as there is a wide range of tools that can be used. I then used InDesign in order to make the final layout of my print products as this software is easy to use and produces professional looking print products when the final product is finished.

EVALUATION: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

PRODUCTION- Digipak and Magazine advert design

Front Cover - I have kept the front cover simplistic yet eye catching using a bright pastel green as the background. The model is wearing modern clothing that my target audience wear and the pose makes the model look approachable which is appealing to audiences. The typography is shown to be both sans serif and hand written font. The sans-serif font of the album title 'sorry not sorry' gives a modernised look to the front cover, which is what my target audience prefered in questionnaires, and the handwritten 'Lewis Roberts' gives a personal touch, which attracts people as they believe the artist has put more care into the product. I edited the photo in order to make it brighter and have the colours within his face stand out more. I used the properties of brightness and curves in order to do this and believe the overall outcome was more effective.

Inside left - In my final design for my inside left panel, I have used multiple pictures as in the questionnaire my audiences said that they prefer to see more photos. Again I edited the photos using the curves and brightness properties within photoshop in order to make my photos more visually appealing and the colours more vibrant. I used no text on this page as I wanted to answer my target audiences questionnaire responses and keep text to a minimal without the digipak as it can become visually unappealing. I have also carried on the colour scheme of using background colours on the blue and green spectrum as too keep with a house style.

Disk panels - As I have created a six panel, I wanted to create a deluxe album that had two disks within in.  Each page was a different colour, either pastel blue or green, to keep to the colour scheme that has been carrying throughout the digipak. I also use the same handwritten typography as used on my front panel to keep up the personalised style, this time however both the artists name and the album title are in the handwritten font.

Back panel and fold Panel - These two panels are taken up with the song title on both the normal disk and the deluxe disk. These have the most text on throughout the digipak however it is neat and centered and is still visually appealing to the audience. The typography is a vary between the sans serif font and the handwritten font on the front cover and also another handwritten font that I used on my magazine advert. The variation makes the song titles easy to read as I kept the simplistic sans-serif font for them but made it more interesting to look at with the handwritten fonts at the top of the page. I also used the smudge tool in order to create an interesting an original shape for my audience to see whilst looking at the tracks.

Editing - As mentioned before, I used the properties brightness and curves in order to edit my photos. I started editing each photo by increasing the brightness to make the skin of the model have more of a healthy glow to it. I then clicked on the curves option and did different alterations in order to get the best overall colours to match my house style of being bright. I also edited the track list background by creating a white circle within a blue background and rasterised it so that i could change the shape of the circle. I used the smudge tool to create

PRODUCTION- Final Music Video

PRODUCTION- digipak and magazine advert final draft

PRODUCTION- Digipak design

PRODUCTION- Tuesday 19th December - camera

In today's two hour recording session, we managed to get many of our shots filmed. I feel like we were able to do this as we are all starting to get a much better understanding of how the camera works and what kind of camera shots give off the best views of our models. We also used different settings within our piece today rather than being stationary like in previous sessions so the camera had to be adjusted to make sure that it wasn't too dark and also the focus was correct.

One part in particular I believe worked really well was when Lewis, our lead, was against the full length windows and he became a silhouette as this worked really well with the camera. Similarly was when he was standing in front of the lightsaber lights it gave an overall glow to the room. This was not the desired effect as we again wanted a silhouette but after looking back on the recorded footage, we decided the dancing actually looked better with the glow of the lights.

One section that was hard to get a good shot on was when Lewis was walking down the corridor due to trying to keep the lighting strong without it being in the camera shot. We resolved this by  using the setting to hide where the lights were being kept and also used natural lighting to give the lighting a more real look to it on the camera.

Here is a link to the photos and videos that were taken. All the footage will be added into here.

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Digipak and magazine layout design

Within the colour scheme, I have gone for pastel colours in the colours blue and pink. These colours are popular within my target audience so I believe it would become more appealing to look at. They also conform to the pop genre and was proven popular through the answers of our questionnaire. I have also used minimal text on my digipak as I didn't want it to look too cluttered and also teenagers and young adults are stereotyped as not liking to read so it might become a reason to not look at the CD. The typography will be in a sans serif font so that it appeals more to the teenage target audience. The photography on the front cover will be the artist posing in the middle underneath the title in a naturalistic pose in order for the artist. In regards to professional digipaks, I am taking inspiration from both Little Mix's 'Get Weird' and Ariana Grande 'Dangerous Woman'.

RESEARCH & PLANNING - script

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Permission Email

PRODUCTION MEETING (Researching & Planning) #3

PRESENT: Henneha, Dannit, Izzy, Katie

APOLOGIES: n/a 

AREAS FOR DISCUSSION

• Looking into what song we are going to use

We looked into a lot of song and took inspiration, these are some of the songs we looked into.

We looked at this song, we really liked it as it was a pop song and followed the structure of one very well. However, Hennesha and Katie suggested that the dancing may be a little hard and we did not know where to put in the dancing. Dannit and Izzy suggested we looked int some pop song with dance and see what they do. Therefore we looked into theses songs. 

After seeing these Hennesha had the idea of splitting the screen and trying to play them in sync. From doing the Dannit, Izzay and Katie could see some possible places where we could have dancing and how we could do it. Therefore knowing that it is possible we chose to do the song Sorry Not Sorry - By Demi Lavato

• Izzy's feedback from the questionnaire analysis 

We were all told and informed what the audiences liked and what we should included in our music video my looking at the analysis that Izzy had done, so that we could all have it in the back of our minds when we did these other tasks

• Allocation of tasks

Storyboard (Izzy and Dannit)

Script (Katie)

Shot List (Hennesha)

RESEARCH AND PLANNING - Institutions research

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RESEARCH & PLANNING - Audience Profile

PRODUCTION MEETING (Research & Planning) #2

PRESENT: Henneha, Dannit, Izzy, Katie

APOLOGIES: n/a 

AREAS FOR DISCUSSION

Allocating other researching and planning tasks. The tasks that we need to allocate is one person to do the audience profile and the Institutions Research;  one person to do the Questionnaire Analysis; and two people to do the Genre Research 

• Audience Profile (allocated to Katie)

- Need to look into the Demographics and Phycographics

-  See how representations attract an audience

- look into personal identification 

- Look into which stereotype would our music genre attract 

• Questionnaire Analysis (allocated to Izzy)

- Analysis the results of our questionnaire both the music video and digipak/magazine

• Genre Research (allocated to Dannit & Hennesha)

- Research into Daniel Chandler /Steve Neale/ The uses of gratifications theory's

- Explain how the theories could be applied to the music genre (including examples of     digipaks/magazine adverts/ Music videos

- Explain how our genre research will effect the ideas of production done for our groups music video

•  Institutions Research (allocated to Katie) 

- look into the Record and artist

- Look into the Record Lables

- Look into the Producers

- Look into the disributers

We would like to have theses all complete by next week

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Theorist Evaluation (Michael Shore)

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Music Video Analysis

Music video analysis - youtube video script

The music video I am going to be analysing is Ariana Grande’s song ‘Focus’. This is a music video that sticks to the stereotypes of a pop music video and uses a lot of dance and is based heavily off the director’s artistic approach.

First, I will be analysing the mise-en-scene. There is lots of differents sets and lighting used within the music video which keeps the audiences engaged throughout. The setting is very simplistic, each one is a block colour and often just has Ariana Grande in small shape. Each of these shots uses the lighting in order to create shadows or show off the artist with bright lighting. The shadow effects show off the figures of Ariana and the other dancers and is used for male gaze theory.

Next, I will be Analysing the sound. The music itself is computer generated and has a repetitive sound to it. The first line in the lyrics is 'I know what I came to do and that ain't gonna change.' The iconic sign of colloquial language is recognisable to the audience, for example it says ‘gonna’ instead of ‘going to’. This makes the audience relate to it more as they use this language on a daily basis and find it sounds more natural to say for them.

The preferred reading of this line in the song would be that Ariana Grande is talking about that she is not only aiming to entertain, but to love and share everything with the world and help to make people feel empowered and happy. I can see this as Ariana Grande says in an interview.

The first line of ‘Focus’ is: ‘I know what I came to do and that ain’t

gonna change.’ What I came here to do in this world is not only to entertain but to love, to share, to listen, to improve, to learn, to share music, to share experience, to share feelings, to make people feel happy and empowered.

However, the oppositional reading of this is that the song is sexualising what she is saying and the audience could be thinking that all she has on her mind. The lyrics that infer this are the chorus where it says ‘focus on me, you know I like it when you focus on me’ as to many listeners, that would mean focus in a relationship and people wouldn’t necessarily get the Idea that Ariana Grande and the producers were aiming for.

The camera angles tend to be close ups or long shots. The close ups suggest sensuality and that Grande is flirtatious with audience members, further playing on the male gaze theory within the video. The camera brings out the focus on the eyes on the lips and these will entice male audience members as they are the facial features they are drawn to, she is also biting her lip and ‘batting her eyelashes’ which are seen as quite sexual movements. The long shots in the video are often when Ariana is dancing and the camera is showing the whole of her body. This along with the revealing and short outfits creates an oppositional reading of having to dress in very little amounts of clothing and being sensual to younger audiences. The preferred reading of this however is that they are just playful and costumes that are, as the audiences would say, ‘cute’ and ‘fun’.

RESEARCH & PLANNING - Digipak and Magazine advert analysis