This is the front cover of my album showing the band logo on a midnight blue background. This simplistic design was inspired by Ed Sheeran's album 'X'
The inside holds the disc and continues the blue colour scheme from the front. I also created a mock up of what the CD would look like again keeping it simple to suit the theme of the digipack its held in.
My back cover consists of an image of a midnights sky with all four members of the band in the four ground, this helps identify the band with the album. I also put a list of songs that will be included in the album numbering them in the order they would play.
Evaluation 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Research & Planning
The technology that I used during the planning stage was online based, mainly because websites like YouTube had a large variety of existing music videos to watch where I could find inspiration, by looking at these examples I gained a better understanding of how music videos are made and what their purpose is. I also used a wide variety of web tools during this stage such as Slideshare and again YouTube, these tools helped me to display my work in a format that other members of my group could easily understand and copy into their own preproduction stages. By using these web tools I hope to improve my grades as their multiple use will show that I have a good understanding how to use web tools and he technology that I used during the planning stage was online based, mainly because websites like YouTube had a large variety of existing music videos to watch where I could find inspiration, by looking at these examples I gained a better understanding of how music videos are made and what their purpose is. I also used a wide variety of web tools during this stage such as Slideshare and again YouTube, these tools helped me to display my work in a format that other members of my group could easily understand and copy into their own preproduction stages. By using these web tools I hope to improve my grades as their multiple use will show that I have a good understanding how to use web tools and
I have developed my skills with them further during this planning stage.
During the planning stage I also used software like PowerPoint to create an easy to follow table which displays the shot list. And I also used Google search engine to research the equipment that we would be using when completing the equipment list.
To help improve my final products my group asked questions to Ryan Cashburn of Cashburn media and Ian Haughton of Handsome Design via Skype call they each gave use vital information on how to improve. Ryan helped us to develop our treatments of the music video ensuring we had an interesting narrative and Ian helped us with design and typography ideas for our ancillary tasks.
Production
My main role during the production stage was to act as the boyfriend character to help me do this I used Websites such as YouTube to watch characters similar to mine to get an understanding how I should portray this character myself. although my main role was acting I often took a directing role and filmed many scenes that I was not featured in as a cameraman. When filming we used a Canon 700D which was perfect for our filming requirements as it is able to film in HD ( which is a massive upgrade from the Canon Legria we previously used ) but it is small, light and portable meaning that we were not restricted on filming locations.
When filming the performance scenes we had the song playing through speakers for the singer to follow. This meant that their singing was in time and would make the lip-sync much more accurate when it came to editing. This scene was also filmed in a studio where I used stage lighting to illuminate the singer making the scene look like a professional performance.
When creating my ancillary tasks I used the image editing software adobe Photoshop, this software helped me to create a high quality poster and digipack. The main reason for using Photoshop was that it allowed me to create effects and images that I would not have been able to do on simpler software such as PowerPoint or GIMP. I had some experience with Photoshop from previous school years however I think this year I really developed and improved my skills when editing the photos from our band photo shoot by doing new processes such as airbrushing.
Post Production
To edit my music video I used Final cut pro on my own Apple Mac Pro. I originally started editing on Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects however I found that the computers at school lacked the Ram and processing power to fully render the project and the consistent lag meant that lip-syncing was almost impossible. This is why I decided to move to my own computer as it is powerful enough to edit without trouble and I can continue to edit at home instead of being restricted to school hours. Final Cut Pro was a fairly new software to me and it took some time for me to be fully confident with it however over the course of the year I believe I have improved dramatically and the fact that this software has some very similar elements to iMovie helped me to understand it quickly.
Blogger was a big part of this section as throughout it had been used as a platform to display all my work and I posted my completed Ancillary tasks and pop promo onto this website and I found blogger very easy to embed these products into. Blogger also laid out all my posts in a easy to view format which meant when completing my evaluations of my work I was able to quickly look back and remind myself of my previous work.
All of these technologies I used helped me to create final products that for fill there purposes and targets. By watching examples of existing music videos on YouTube to making a professional looking film on a household DSLR and having easy access to editing software I have become as Gauntlet said a 'Prosumer' of media.
Evaluation 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
For any media product audience feedback is crucial to gaining an understanding how your product will be received and is one of the best ways to find inspiration for improvements as the audience knows what it enjoys and wants to watch. To understand any audience you must first work out the best forms of advertising to reach them for example to make your product more accessible to a younger audience you should consider putting your products online on websites such as Facebook and YouTube. If you did not research your audience you may advertise yourself in areas that wont reach your target audience resulting in your marketing being pointless. Therefore to successfully market your product its key to know your where best to reach your audience and what is most likely to catch their attention.
It is important to gain audience feedback as it will provide you with a better understanding of how to improve your product to make it appeal to the audience more. Through feedback you can receive useful information about which scenes work well and which don't, advice about what to change and what worked well and should be kept and how to make your product have more of an effect on your audience. The positive feedback received is just as crucial as the negative as it reveals what scenes the audience thought worked well this means that when editing you can ensure that these elements remain I the video and we have a chance to really emphasise them to make the product even more of a success. Without this information your product will not be as effective at pleasing your audience meaning the video will be less successful.
To gain some feedback we gathered together a group of young people who would be included in our primary target audience and showed them a draft our pop promo. we decided to gain feedback during the production stage as we wanted to have the outside input of our audience to reflect on when creating our final product.
The feedback we received was extremely useful as they picked out and confirmed many issues with our video that we had highlighted to not be effective or necessary. A great example of how feedback helped us improve our video was the that in our first drafts we had the singer placed into the narrative shots in an attempt to clearly portray him to the audience as the narrator, however in the feedback it was raised that this point was already clear and we did not need to emphasise it as much. These shots also restricted the flow of the video as lip-syncing became a nightmare in editing therefore we decided to re film the singer in a studio performing the song which ensured the video flowed to the music and included another change of scenery to make the video more interesting.
During the feedback our focus group said that they enjoyed the idea of the narrative and that it was an interesting concept to work with however many of the shots "dragged on" for too long which resulted in the video becoming boring to watch and they said to improve it we should include some faster cuts and to add another scenery to really keep audiences watching. We took this into account and went back to editing and made the scenes cut on the beat of the music making the audio and the visuals connected also by filming scenes in different locations and adding the studio performance scenes with Fateh Khaled singing.
Another positive for our promo was that the audience immediately was able to identify what the genre was (pop). This meant that the video had achieved its main objective to be an advertisement for the song Pompeii (changed to 'If close your eyes' for our coursework). The video completed its purpose by including enough conventions of a standard pop video to be easily recognisable. These conventions included jump cuts, close ups of main characters and performances of an artist.
Knowing the conventions of music videos is key to answering this question therefore I have added a slide share that outlines the main conventions in terms of editing, Mise-en-scene and camera, which I will then be able to compare to my own video.
It will be important for my video to follow these conventions as it will create a recognisable format instantly telling the audience what the video is and in turn make the narrative much easier to understand. This commonness of the video will allow it compete with others of its style and genre, however if all these videos followed these conventions in exactly the same way then each video would look almost identical and audiences would soon get bored, this is why my video must also break conventions. By breaking conventions my video will gain its individuality and have something that puts it part from all the other pop promos already out there.
My music video does follow conventions a main indicator of this is that the narrative is based around a relationship which is a very common feat in pop videos, the main decision for this was due to the lyrics as the speak of a struggle to stay hopeful in difficult situations, which is represented by the argument between the couple and the Boyfriend dealing with his own thoughts. The lyrics of a song often influence the video created for it and you can find many relationship songs with promos show casing the relationship between two people, an example of this is Conner Maynard's 'R U Crazy'.
The location is also set to keep in with the conventions of pop music videos. We have done this by setting the house to be middle class, appealing to our target audience, and to match the continuity of the characters that are wearing smart clothes, making them middle class.
Music videos commonly either illustrate, amplify or contradict, the visuals and the lyrics. Our video amplifies the lyrics as, we are trying to portray the message of the lyrics, while not literally showing characters acting out the lyrics. In our first raft a singer was seen in the same shots that the narrative characters appear in. This physically shows the audience how the singer is narrating over the events being shown to them on screen and could be used to argue that our video does not follow conventions as it both illustrates and amplifies the lyrics.
However from feedback that we received it was soon realised that this was not popular with our audience as they found shots 'too long' And consisting of too much to grasp', therefore we decided to scrap the idea and simply interject between narrative scenes and sots of the singer performing the song.
Our video also uses a wide variety of shot types, including long shots, medium shots, close ups and match on actions. Music videos often have a large variety of shot types in order to keep the audience interested in many ways we have followed this convention as our video consists of many different angles and shots, our video also consistently flicks between narrative and performance scenes in order to keep the audience engaged. Our video also includes shot reverse shots, over there shoulder shots and tracking shots all of which add diversity to the piece and further enhances the audiences interest.
I have also included transitions such as jump cuts and fades such as cross dissolves which are dominant forms of editing in music videos.
This image shows a jump cut where the character seen on screen appears to jump towards the camera as he walks along. the original clip was far too long and boring so I edited it in a way which would reduce the overall time of the shot.
Continuing to follow conventions Mes-en-scene is used to represent the feelings of characters throughout the video. One example of this is the clothes that the male character is wearing after he leaves the house for the first time, he is wearing a dark coloured jacket, dark jeans and dark shoes. This represents a feeling of sadness and anger amongst the character which is true for him as he has just had an argument with his girlfriend. However not all of the video follows common conventions of pop promos at the start of the video a short dialogue made up of shot reverse shots showing the main couple in the narrative arguing. This is not something commonly featured in music videos and by adding this dialogue is breaking conventions, however I believe that the dialogue used in our video is a necessary intro to circumstances that the narrative takes place giving the audience a clear understanding of why the male character had to leave.
This is a poster advertising our band (Bangladesh Bangers) and our new album (Midnight in Dhaka) it does this by showing these titles and images of each band member, this information gives the viewer the main things they need to know about the album however it is a little simplistic and I believe it could be improved by including a list of songs that will be featured in the album possibly positioned as if written on the support structure of the bridge.
The background depicts a night time urban scene where the lights from passing cars have been time lapsed to produce the line effects that can be seen now. I used this as I liked the way the contrast between light and dark colours and shades which worked in unison with the shading on the photos of ourselves from our photoshoot. I edited the text so it looks like it follows the two main white lines of light and I then faded the edges to make the text look part of the background.
The images of the band members I had to use Photoshop to accurately remove the backgrounds therefore making it look like we are part of the cityscape.
I hope to continue the theme of this poster into the digipack.
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