EVALUATION QUESTION 4

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

CONSTRUCTION

To construct our media product we used a variety of different medias (as shown above). To film the footage we used mainly the Pentax camera as it had the best quality however when we couldn’t get hold of it we used a Fujifilm DSLR. One memory card was used throughout so we didn’t get any footage mixed up. Both of the cameras were really good quality and produced some great footage that we later uploaded onto the mac. The Macs had iMovie and iTunes which we used to create the final product.

By using iMovie the footage was edited together to create the final music video, it took us about 6-7 weeks to actually finish the project but overall we managed to get a really good finalised video. By transferring the song onto iTunes from a disc, we then uploaded it onto iMovie which made the video ever so slightly more easy to make from then on as whenever we added in a clip, the rest of the song carried on from where it left off rather than us having to add the song in piece by piece. We opted to use a black and white effect for the music video as it gives it a sentimental feel and adds a bit more emotion. We had a lot of experience from AS level on how to use iMovie so it made editing a lot easier and gave us a lot more time to play around with what worked and what didn’t.


RESEARCH

YouTube was the main tool we used to research the indie/folk genre, we looked at loads of music videos and picked which ones we liked, which ones we didn’t and which ones were the most similar to our song/ideas for music video. However a lot of our research was done in sixth form, where Youtube is blocked, so we had to settle for VEVO which actually had all of the music videos we needed. We focussed on Ben Howard as our main influence as he has a very similar to C.A and when we interviewed the artist, they said that they have been compared to him many times before. Google was also the main tool in researching everything like album covers and music videos and provided us with pretty much all the information we needed to know. Obviously Google was the main search engine in providing us with genre conventions and information about artists that C.A compared themselves to – a lot of the time Google lead us to an artist’s main page that gave us an depth analysis into their genre and why they used generic conventions in their products.

EVALUATION
During the evaluation stage, we used cameras to film the audience's responses which i have included on a post entitled 'audience response'. By having a camera enabled us to be more creative and use editing tools when evaluating our video. A video is a lot more exciting and interesting than just a written response - it also enables the audience response to be a lot more thorough as when they are writing things on paper, it may not be as detailed. We also used Facebook when getting an audience response, which was really useful and it was good to hear what our peers thought of the video. Having the use of social networking sites is important as people can 'share' the product which enables you to get more feedback from people that you wouldn't necessarily contact directly. All in all, it helps publicise the video.

EVALUATION QUESTION 2

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE MAIN COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

Both the music video and the digi-pak work well together as the black and white colour scheme runs throughout them. The colours of the video and the digipak is the main thing that link them together, we chose to use these colours as they represent nostalgia and give the audience the impression that the artist is reminiscing and thinking deeply about events. It is clear which image is the main album cover as it is the only one to have the colour red featured on it, which clearly stands out as the rest of the pictures are all black and white. The lyrics are on the side which has a hand written title suggesting that the artist has written it themselves.

 After researching digipaks from other artists, we discovered that most of them are cohesive. For example, Rihanna's Talk That Talk album is cohesive with her music videos as the colour scheme (black and white) is consistent and she is also blowing smoke out of her mouth in the You Da One/We found Love video and on her album cover.

The front of the cover looks more like her character in 'We found Love' and on the back of the digipak, it looks like her character in 'You Da One'

Another example of a cohesive music video is Jake Bugg, as in his videos he used a black and white effect and the cover of his album is a portrait picture of him in black and white.

An example of visual cohesion in our music video and digipak is the font that appears at the start of the video when presenting the name and artist, which also appears on each of the sides of the digipak in the bottom right hand corner. The font we used was Baskerville and the main colour scheme we used was black and white. The theme of black and white runs throughout both the digipak and the music video, which links them together showing signs of cohesion.

Our video is classed as an illustrative video, as the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals exists. For example, when the lyrics 'come and go' are sung, the female character is shown going down a set of escalators, implying that she is leaving to go somewhere. A lot of the filming was done in London, which supports the idea of the girl leaving as whenever the artist is shown on his own he is in the studio whereas the female is always walking to different places. When the key change occurs, the couple are shown together for the first time however they are arguing which presents their relationship as negative. Another example to support the fact our video is illustrative is the ending, "where do I start, i'm tripping over my head and my heart" portrays a montage of the female which suggests that the song is about her.