Evaluation 2

Evaluation 1

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

1. A shot that shows a link between lyrics and/or music and visuals?

1. In the song the artist says 'Ah Yeah' several times throughout the song as the artist says it we have a shot of the words 'Ah Yeah' on the phone and above the artists name itself appear, as if he is messaging the people partying while they play that song.

1. In the song 'Blurred Lines' by Robin Thicke the same link between lyrics on screen and visuals. As the artist says 'I got those 'Blurred Lines' the word in sync with the lyrics appears on the screen.

2. A shot that typifies the way a record company would want their artist to be represented?

2. This is a shot of our performers who typify the genre of house/electro and the artist. The mise-en-scene of the shot of popular brands, snapbacks which is estimated that 46% of boys 12-20 own a snapback/flatcap which is our target audience typify the artist and genre. The artist himself Will Sparks is 23, Australian, who also would typically be seen in this sought of outfit. The performers are also dancing which is what Will Sparks the artist would do when DJing. This is a shot that the record company would want to see their artist being represented. This already would target a audience of 16-20 if that is not already the target audience due to the Mise en scene and age of the performers.

2. This is a snip it from 2 Chainz song 'I'm different' is a typical shot the record company would want to see their artist being represented by the mise-en-scene and what he is doing. The leopard print clothing is extravagant which reflects on the artist and the genre, all the bling also helps create this overall picture.

3. A shot that illustrates how your video uses music genre?

3. Both these shots from the song which covers a few of Michael Shores theories such as adolescent male fantasy, seeing girls in bikinis and simulated experience, people imagining themselves being there. The genre in this shot is typified as it obviously can be related to our target audience which is 16-25 any genre. The song and genre is about having a good time and partying which hopefully this shot portrays, a man having a good time with two lovely ladies and vice versa. The shot below is of everyone dancing in a circle which is typical of the genre which we have chosen, almost stereotypical shot of people dancing so people can relate easily.

3. This is a shot from the song 'ket if for horses' by the Organ Donors which typifies electro/trance music genre. This shot typifies the genre of electro/trance/drum&bass which is for a niche audience, they are dressed up in eccentric clothing that humorous and is ironic of the song name.

4. A shot that shows an intertextual reference?

4. This shot of one of our performers in front of a disco light creating a silhouette was a shot which we wanted to include ever since we decided to do a party music video. We got the inspiration before we had even picked a song or genre we just wanted to include a silhouette shot.

4. This was a shot from a song by Kanye West, which gave us the idea and inspiration to do a silhouette shot. The reason why we knew of this video was during the time we were story boarding this song was in the top charts and the music video was always on tv.

4. Above is a wordle that was created in a earlier post using our audience research to highlight the words that came up the most(the bigger the word the more frequent it was written down). As you can see silhouette was in the top 5 as it is a very unusual shot, we also emphasise its presence by having appear in the video about 5 or 6 times.

5. A shot that demonstrates your use of camera?

5. This shot demonstrates our use of camera, most electro house songs show people dancing from normal eye level hight looking at the performers, instead we wanted to change the angle to enable the audience to picture themselves in the video. The birds eye view of people dancing in the circle is a unique shot, typically you wouldn't see this angle.

5. This shot was taken from the song 'Hey Brother' by Avicci this shot is unconventional in the sense that it is a extreme close up and slow motion on a guy grinding metal and the camera hasn't focused on the sparks which is a really unique camera angle. I've never seen a shot like this and the angle of the camera is perfect, capturing everything in the frame.

6. A shot that demonstrates your use of lighting?

6. This shot from our final music video really shows the different ambience of lighting, which was edited using our editing program Sony Vegas. We used the effect light saturation to bring rout the rays of light on the left and right of the performer, we also darkened the picture to make it more mysterious and fit in with the dance atmosphere. 

6. This is a shot taken from one of Lady Gaga's song, the lighting here is particularly interesting with, due to the unclear picture of it being actually in black and white or if that is because of the spot light used to shine on the performer. Arguably this picture is similar, or dissimilar to some of the shots in our video.

7. A shot that demonstrates your use of mise en scene?

7. This shot shows the performers creating the music, DJing with the music. The mise en scene is similar to a house/electro party as there is a element of humour portrayed by the masks and the hoodies hint the age of which the performers might be. The lighting as well compliments the genre and the soundboard being used also is typical of the house/electro genre.

The mise en scene in this shot is very deliberate to reflect on the rock genre. The unshaven beard and long hair is stereotypical to the rock genre of being a true rocker. On the main performer, on his right hand he has a bandage, this again reflects the genre as only people who play the guitar wear them to stop their hand slipping when it gets sweaty. 

8/9. Two shots which  you feel demonstrates something which you have watched other music videos.

8/9. The top photo is from a electro/trap genre which is reflected in our music video with a very similar shot. Both shots have horse masks in and the performers are both DJing on mixing tables.

Magazine final idea

This first picture is just playing around with a border around our yellow template (which links with the yellow on the digipack) and just seeing if it works. Generally the 3 of us didn't like it but we tried it just to see if it works.

The second shot shows our change in idea, we decided perhaps the yellow background wont work, so we tried using a blurred photo we got from the location whilst filming our music video as the magazine advert. Also its more conventional as its an advert so when someone of the house music genre see it they can relate to it better.

After playing around with the yellow background template we decided maybe we should have a more obvious visual link from our magazine advert and our music video, so we looked through the photos we had from the party, which plays a large part in the video and found a blurred one we really liked. Firstly, we played around with the effects on Photoshop itself .



This again is just showing the development of our ideas and how the magazine advert draft is evolving, were trying to link that yellow which makes our digipack and link it with the magazine advert.

Feedback from our video and digipack showing

These are all the A4 sheets of feedback we got from 10 people. The concluded feedback will be posted soon, were just in the process typing up what was written down into steps of action.

Video and digipack feedback

Music Video Feedback
Pros:

•      Editing with the beat is nice and adds some pace to the entire music video, fits nicely with dance convention.   Nice use of colour and lighting- favourite part lights flashing behind black silhouette.
• ·      Very intime.
• ·      Great location and party scene.
• ·      Mise-en-scene quiet appropriate to the genre, camera is controlled.
• ·      I love the shots with horses and also the flashes of light.

• ·      I liked the use of the jump cuts within the beat of the song
• ·      Mise-en-scene was good I could understand what was happening.
• ·      Good use of quick cuts to the beat of the song
• ·      I liked the horse mask, it made the video unique.
• ·      I also liked the shot of the man infront of the light which is slowed down and brings in a sense of tension.
• ·      Good editing with music and shots
• ·      Good use of lighting
• ·      Good editing with beat
• ·      Good transitory between scenes
• ·      Use of people good
• ·      Works well as a music video
• ·      Nice editing- good tempo throughout, keeps with the beat
• ·      I like the silhouette of the dj
• ·      Mise-en-scene: costumes and setting work well with the video
• ·      Camera: good range of shots used
• ·      Editing: quick editing, split screens, works as well
• ·      It does work well as a music video
• ·      Silhouette works well

·   Cons:

• ·      Could used more types of shots.
• ·      Perhaps add more of a variety of shots, the shots become repetitive after a while.
• ·      There wasn’t much of a narrative it has very confusing at times and the jump cuts were a little bit out of sync with the beat of the song.
• ·      At the end of the video the shots speed up with the drop but it is slightly out of time.
• ·      Could improve the party scene, doesn’t look very legit, change the lighting?
• ·      Too dark at some points in the video
• ·      Could improve the party scene, doesn’t look very legit, change the lighting?
• ·      Too dark at some points in the video
• ·      Some shots are a bit fast to see
•  

Digi- Pack Feedback

• ·      Doesn’t tell much about the video it is a bit random/fun
• ·      Good use of the space available
• ·      Good use of space, everything is quite central
• ·      There is almost to much going on, maybe a bit more simple
• ·      Good handmade feel
• ·      Like use of finger print
• ·      Well spaced out
• ·      Fits with theme of video
• ·      Like the font, would change colour of the background
• ·      Nice idea I like the track numbering and the cover looks fun which suits the genre of music
• ·      Could do with making some of the text easier to read.
• ·      Front and back covers suit the genre
• ·      The fonts are well done
• ·      All space is used well in some way
• ·      Looks professional add all links together
• ·      Good use of space
• ·      Like the confetti and flags but don't see the reason for the fingerprint.
• ·      More variety of colours
• ·      Make it more friendly for the eye to read
• ·      Very welcoming
• ·      The use of fonts is very effective though, the shadowed letters work very well

Digipack analysis

This is a digipack I found at home which really caught my eye, even though it was covered in dust. The colours and font and creativity is what makes this digipack stand out from normal conventional music digipacks, straight away assumptions can be made on what genre(dance, R&B, pop) due to the covert and obscure imagery. The photo below is the front and back cover, the front cover is some repsect is very conventional and simple, it has the artists name and a few illustrations. The back cover is fairly conventional in that it produces, copy right information, names of the tracks and the artist's name again. The reason why the digipack is uunconventional is you have to look at it as a whole not break it down into each side.

Magazine Advert Development and Rough Cut

Editing progression- light issue

A problem which I have found is some shots whilst editing in Vegas are really dark, and I cant really alter the light filtering in Vegas, however on Windows Live Movie Maker I can adjust the brightness and light filtering which makes it a ting bit lighter, whilst maintaining

a pure image not a grainy shot.
Below is a screen shot of the brightness tool on Windows Live Movie Maker, once I have made the shot lighter I than can upload it onto Vegas and it wont be too dark.

Below is a shot of the dark version on Windows Live Movie Maker before i have adjusted the brightness, the next step is the following image where i have increased the brightness only slightly.

This is the picture once the brightness has been increased, you can see a major difference between the two, because our location was very dark most of the footage is dark so i have had to adjust the brightness on many frames.

Today's editing

Creation of digipack

These are some photos of yesterdays production, we spent 3 hours devoted to starting our digi pack concept on Photoshop and just seeing the possible outcomes. We found it a very productive session especially in terms of getting to grips with Adobe Photoshop.

This first picture is of us getting used to applying our specific yellow from when we drew our ideas down. We wanted to consistent so all four sides of the digi pack template will be that specific yellow.

Here we were just playing around with text types and fonts, and using shadow to add depth which makes it seem less 2D. Changing the conventional square and making it into a diamond shape, was quiet cool, from there you could create a kite and have bunting hanging down. Again, a kite is reminiscent of a children and a toy associated with children .

Here again is just a shot of me paying around with shadows and which way they can go, and changing the colour. This inspiration for the big bold font was from Robin Thicke we thought that his large font is really in the audience face which passes the information efficiently.

This is what we agreed on for our front cover as a working prototype, instead of having it diamond shape we want to stay conventional for the shape on the front cover.

Here is the back cover which has space for the bar-code, our symbol and our track lists, this still needs to be finalised but its a work in progress. 

This is a photo of us putting our symbol in which will also be in our video. This is our first time using Photoshop so it took a while for us to work out how to crop it in a circle and put it onto our back cover template.

After 3 hours consecutively this is what we finished with, front cover, back cover and a CD. This perhaps wont be the final idea as we might want to change but it shows our concept develop from start to a working prototype.

Editing progression

These are two screen shots of what editing I have done so far using Vegas 12. A lot of the editing has been trial and error getting used to the program but now i know how it al works, so i can get on with getting all the shots in at the right places, I would say half the song has been edited accurately but the rest is still very rough. Editing is taking a while due to the nature of the song, it being very fast paced, therefore a lot of footage is very short and changes with the beat of the song. Hopefully we will have a full rough cut eary next week, this weekend hopefully the whole song will be edited for a rough cut preview so we can start getting some audience feedback.

Creating a logo for our Digi Pack, Magazine Advert and Music Video.

I thought sooner or later we were going to have some sought of logo but didn't know what it would include (obviously the song name and artist). The Rabbit and Horse mask were always seen as a humorous part of our video even evident in the survey we did for our audience. Therefore, it would be a big mistake not to incorporate in the logo. The rabbit mask was particularly iconic as no one has seen anything like it before because its unconventional. I used Photoshop on my laptop to create it and these are a few photos showing the process. I used a graphics tablet to cut the rabbit mask from a original picture i put on my blog when we first got the masks. The logo itself was just paying around learning how to use Photoshop and getting to grips with developing a iconic emblem for our digi pack, magazine advert and music video.

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Testing Marshmallow shots

From the very beginning when we did the story boards, our group have al wanted to video a marshmallow burning slowly with different lighting effects. We were surprised at how good it actually turned out, we tried different shots medium/ close and close ups and than we fiddled around with the lighting on the camera and on Vegas. Even though we might not include this into our  final video it still looked pretty cool. 

Testing animated stick man- further progression.

This is another attempt to try and intertwine our digi pack concept and visual to our music video. We have plenty of ideas but some just didn't work like the one below. At first we decided to have a misted window and someone leant against it and accidentally pressed their thumb against it, than the camera would zoom into the finger print and a animated face would appear. We took several shots and videos but the mist that we created would only last about 2 seconds because it was so cold. Therefore, we filled a mug full of hot water to see if that would supply a sufficient supply of hot air, which it didn't, so the ideal method we wanted to do, failed. However our alternative solution was using a board pen which worked really well.

Digi Pack concept.

With our digipack we want to create something warm and inviting so it stands out to our audience. We've decided tot take the traditional conventional children's party invite innovation and link it with our magazine and digipack concept. Our genre is house music which has many different digpack ideas, colours and messages, we really want achieve simplicity.

This is a very stereotypical children's party invite, we want to take that image and intertwine it with our concept. Making it stereotypical might mean the audience can relate to it easier, therefore we would need to include the conventional props like balloons, bunting and confetti. 

  

The font which Robin Thicke uses is very distinct, no other artist uses big block capital font. I think its really conventional its right in the audiences face. If we took the same concept it would come across as really power and efficient. 

We decided to use the colour yellow as a background colour, because it is warming and inviting for our audience.

This was a quick drawing of a possible idea to cover the front of the digipack. 

This video is trying to link our digipack idea of stick figure finger print people with our music video, therefore we tried to animate a finger print stick figure and link it into our video. This is just a test seeing if it works or if it wont be executed properly, but it will take a while to perfect.