Evaluation Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construcation and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies are very importnat today, especially since the rise of web 2.0, user-generated content meaning that audiences have direct access to texts and meaning that the consumer js now the producer. I used various different forms of social media to gain valuable feedback on the work that I have made which gave me direct access to my target audience.


Some of the new media technologies I used are:

YouTube

iMovie

Facebook

PaintshopPro

Photoshop

blogger

wordle

New media technology is hugely important today; with the uprise of Web 2.0 the consumer has now become the producer, and technology now allows you to have direct access to your audience, enabling you to receive fast and direct feedback, and the opportunity to instantly contact and connect with a world-wide audince, something that you could have never done in the past without new media technologies, and it is incredibly useful to have it whenevr we want it.

Evalutaion Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback was hugely rewarding as it gave me a direct connection with the audience and a chance to understand what they thought of my pieces. This was very helpful as when they didn't like something, they were quick to tell me and point me in the right direction.

My first connection with my audience was throught the polls on my blog; they were simple questions such as  "what are your favourite colours?" But they proved very useful as they helped me to understand what my audience would like to see in my music video.

The majority of my audience said that their favourite colour is red; this was very helpful as, as my music video has recurring themes of love, I could use the colour red to connote feelings of love, such as the car the boy drives, or the reds in the leaves in my album release advert.

I also was directly able to ask my audience if they liked my idea; the first time I asked, half said 'no, I don't like it', but the other half said they liked it but it needed changes, which is what I did. When I came back with a new idea and asked my audience, this time I got positive feedback.

My target audience was aimed at 13/14+, so by posting quesions and asking for feedback on Facebook, I was able to receive feedback for people of all ages.

I also gained a lot of valuable opinions by talking directly to my peers and asking what they thought of my piece, as well as posting on facebook and making polls. This was a helpful approach as it was more direct than facebook and people could talk to me and directly give me their opinions on what they though of my work.

After receiving all types of feedback, I found it incredibly helpful into creating my film, especially as a lot of the feedback could be very critical and people aren;t afraid to say what they think of your work. Feedback helped my products develop all the way through up to now, and my audience have directly shaped it through their opinions and expectations. Audience feedback is incredibly important to have, because in order for your product to be succesful, you need to understand your audience!

Evaluation Question 2

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

These are my products (CD package, music video and release poster) all together. I created a house style so that they would all link together in some way and so that the audience would understand this and know that they are all part of and advertising the same products; I used the same font everytime I used the artist's name (Keaton Henson) and similar fonts to complement this, similar colours and scenery, and mise-en-scene and layout to connect them all together.

Fonts: For my products, I used three different fonts, 'Skinny', 'Plain Print', and 'Times New Roman'

Skinny and Plain Print are both custom fonts that I downloaded from 'dafont.com'.

I chose to use skinny and Plain Print as they both look handwritten, which I think both fit in very well to the acoustic genre which is often assocciated with homemade things. They both also look simple which also fits into the acoustic genre, yet at the same time they are blod enough to stand out against the backgrounds to make it apparent that they are important pieces of text that the audience must read; I used this especially to catch the viewers eye as both fonts are 'different' to others you would usually see on a poster, and are more assocciated with the 'art' and 'acoustic music' cultures.
I used Times New Roman for the small-print in my ancillary pieces as they give the product a professional finish as they are seen as formal fonts. I also used Times New Roman on the informative parts of my ancillary pieces, such as underneath the title on my poster; it explains where the audience may download/buy the artists work which is also important for the audience to read, which is why I used formal font. It gives it a more professional appearance.

Colours and Images:

In my pieces, I used a combination of warm and cold colours, suck as browns and soft yellows/oranges (album poster mainly), and blue and green, so I used mainly soft and natural colours. This fit into my acoustic genre which is often associated with nature and peace. The warm colours could connote love and romance, which fit into the the themes of love and relationships.

In my pieces there is also a lot of contrast between darkness and light, for example, the sky is usually white or a light blue, but the bottom is usually a dark colour such as brown, which connotes the boy's inner struggles. This is also seen on my CD back where the sky is a light blue, but my character is wearing dark clothes and contrasts with his surroundings, which could connote that he feels out of place.

I asked my audience whether they thought my pieces fit well together and I got very positive feedback such as "Yes, I really like them!" and "I think they fit in really well together."

Evaulation - Question 1

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

In order for my music video and ancillary tasks to be successful, I looked at various existing media products and the many different forms and conventions that they use.
Different genres follow different forms and conventions, and as I was making an acoustic music video, I looked exclusively at the acoustic genre; this often included a character playing an instrument or singing, often isolated or run down locations, soft and slow paces editing and also slow camera movement. The video often focuses upon the main character and their feelings, for example, singing about a relationship or about a girl.
Examples of acoustic conventions could be:

I have chosen to use some of these examples in my product, such as weather, love, feelings, pictures and colour as I feel they represent my genre and what I am aiming for.
Although I am choosing to apply some of these conventions to my music video, I may also chose to subvert some of the usual forms and conventions of the genre. I maintained conventions such as the presence of sining and instruments, time passing (the date on the photo), a journey (physically and mentally), the weather and natural and ogranic imagery, and a boy singing about a girl and 'lost love', but I chose challenge acoustic narratives. In a lot of acoustic videos, there are fragmented narratives with flashbacks and references to the past, but I wanted to challenge this by producing a linear narrative. My narrative consists of my character sitting at home after his girl-friend left hm, but he then leaves the house and goes on a journey (mentally and physically) to try and overcome his heart-ache and to realise that you can be happy on your own. This is a very straightforward narrative, but I think it's very appropriate and still illustrates the boy's story and overcoming his struggle well.
Also, in most music videos in general, there are usually more than one character featuring in the video, but in my music video the only character is the boy; I chose this because I wanted to illustrate his feelings of loneliness and isolation, there are no other people in my video whatsoever so it shows that now the girl has left him he feels truely alone. This also leads onto my video's type-of moral, and how he eventually realises that he doesn't need other people to make him happy, and he can be happy on his own.

After, looking at different forms and conventions, I have also compared my product to succesful existing media texts.

<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_12563932"><strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/aliice123/comparing-my-products-to-existing-professional-media-texts" title="Comparing my products to existing professional media texts ">Comparing my products to existing professional media texts </a></strong><object id="__sse12563932" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=question11-120416165931-phpapp01&stripped_title=comparing-my-products-to-existing-professional-media-texts&userName=aliice123" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><embed name="__sse12563932" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=question11-120416165931-phpapp01&stripped_title=comparing-my-products-to-existing-professional-media-texts&userName=aliice123" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="padding:5px 0 12px">View more <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/aliice123">aliice123</a>.</div></div>

(link: http://www.slideshare.net/aliice123/comparing-my-products-to-existing-professional-media-texts )


I also compared my ancillary work with existing products:


On my cd cover, like on the majority of cd covers I featured the artist, but I challenged this; although I featured my artist (like Joshua Radin did on the cover below on the left), I only showed my character from the back and facing away from the audience (Ben Howard did on his cover for 'old Pine', below on the right). This may make my character appear mysterious and may make the auience want to look into his music to find out more about him, or it could also connote that he is a shy character; as he is facing away, it may mean that he has something to hide, which may also intrigue the audience.

 

My poster, like my cd cover, shows the musician facing away from the audience, he is holding a guitar which makes it clear that he is the featured musician. The layout of my album advert shares a few similarities with that of the 'Noah and the Whale' advert; it shows clear titles that declare the name of the album and the artist's name, and below that is the important information about where you can buy/download the work of this musician.

As my products share similarities with existing, succesful products,  I feel as though mine would be succesful too.

Final ancillaries

After various rounds of audience feedback and substantial amounts of time editing and changing areas, these are my chosen finished ancillary pieces; in order it shows my CD's back, Cd's cover, and my album release advert.

Feedback

Here I have uploaded various pieces of my unfinished ancillary work and what my audience think about them; after making a potential piece, I would upload it onto facebook and ask for people (13+) to comment on my photo and tell me what they like/dislike/would change about my pieces.

1.

2. 

The above two pieces were experiments into the layout of my track listings, and below is what my audience thought of them:

Below is the font that I changed it to, and I got completely postive feedback.

These are examples of my album release adverts, and they got almost all positive feedback, but I was just asked to change the font for 'keatonhenson.com' and to change the spacing a little.

Below on the left is the original feedback I received:

Above are various experiments into my CD cover and the font's I intended to use and the layout. The only feedback I received was saying that the audience didn't think the bottom font fit with the artist title, so I changed it further.

                                                                                 

After changing my CD title's font, I experimented by added a 'sticker' onto the cover, which explained what songs featured on my CD, by I got mostly negative feedback and decided to remove it.

Final music video

Risk assessment 8 (final)

Filming on 'East Hill' again


Risk: Possibility of tripping on item in surrounding areas
Who may be harmed/how: director and actor - trip/fall and injure self
Precautions taken: Take caution whilst filming

Risk: Filming at the top of a steep drop
Who may be harmed/how: director and actor - may fall and injure self (possibly badly)
Precautions taken: Take extra caution whilst filming and walking around the set, and stay as far away from the drop as possible

Risk: Filming near sharp bushes (spikes)
Who may be harmed/how: director and actor - could catch skin on the spikes and cut/scratch themselves (draw blood)
Precautions taken: Take caution when walking among the sharp bush, try to stay away when possible


Results: No injuries - actor tripped slightly on a rock once whilst walking but no injury was caused - precautions worked well.

New (final) storyboards

After revisiting my past storyboards, I have made new storyboards and these are what my music video follows.

After asking people for feedback on my storyboards and the filming I had done so far, the majority said that "there is too much going on" and "there's not really a clear story"; all of this was true as my previous idea for a music video was mainly imagery and ideas simply to make the video look 'pretty', but there was too many things that weren't connected and the video didn't tell a story, so I changed my ideas one last time.

In my new video, the story about my main character will be more apparent; my original idea was to tell the story of a boy (young adult) who is trying to 'get-over' the end of his relationship with a girl - he leaves his house, and all the unwanted memories of her, and goes outside to feel more free. He ventures into a dark forest with a lot of trees that block out the sun and a lack of plants and flowers, but after a while he comes out of the forest into an open area where the surroundings are green and have plants and flowers and the sun is shining.

Grey house - living with memories of lost love, dwelling, alone.
Leaving house and goes outside - first step to being free.
Driving away - escaping memories and unhappiness.
Dark forest (quite barren) - troubles and personal struggles.
Coming out onto open plain - 'coming into the light' and overcoming struggles, coming out of the sadness.
Sunshine, green plants and flowers - Free, overcame troubles and the past, moved on and happy.

Also, there is no female starring actor (only a few photos at the beginning of a girl - meant to be his 'ex'), this is because I want my video to emphasise the male's loneliness and the fact the girl really isn't with him anymore - this links into my video and how the boy tries to escape this isolation and loneliness, and overcome his sadness and move on.

ancillary tasks - chosen photos and potential edits

This is one of the photos I took of my actor whilst I was filming; I loved the lighting and the colours in the surroundings (oranges and browns) and the whole photo has a general warm feeling. I like the sun coming through the trees as, whilst it gives a light effect and makes the surroundings warmer, it also make the top of the photo lighter; this would be ideal to make a space above the photo that fades to white so I could add text for the album release poster. I edited this on paintshop pro to make the white space for the text above the picture, and from the people I have shown, I have received good feedback.

(upload photos from facebook and deviantart)

Photography on 'East Hill' for ancillary tasks

Recently I went back up to East Hill for a final filming session and decided to take some photos as the lighting was so sunny and warm and I though it could fit in perfectly for my ancillary tasks.
Here are a few of the photos I like the most, and I will use a few for editing and for my final projects.