Evaluation: Question 4

Evaluation: Question 3

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

To answer this question I'm going to break down the stages for making our video and talk about all the equipment and applications used throughout each stage of planning and construction.

Research 

Before I could begin creating the music video I had to research on what the conventions of a music video are in general and within our genre. For this I had used blogger to record all of our research that I had found and found multiple music videos on Youtube to support our findings and points. 

Here you can a post I had made on Mulvey's theory about the male gaze. 

After looking at the different styles a music video can be approached by, we as a class were given a different task which was lip syncing and creating a very short music video.

Lip syncing task

This was our first time filming this year so it didn't go as smoothly as I hoped, however once we got the footage it was pretty easy, we used Final Cut Pro to input the footage and edit the footage so it would be lip synced with the actual song.
  
Here is our lip sync practical footage.

I wish we had a little more time to get more footage but from what we had it was clear that we could actually use this skill.

 

Research about our music video

After we had finished our lip sync practical and was comfortable with editing other footage to music I then started thinking of our own music video, as a group we had to research and blog about everything we planned to involve within our music video, this included things such as location, concept, costume, synergy, our target audience, social media that we would plan use, draft digipaks, storyboards, a production schedule that we will plan to stick to and more. Whilst making all this research we would use applications such as prezi, emaze, slideshare and powtoon so it was a lot clearer to present our information.

Here is an example of an emaze I had created discussing our target audience.

Here's our production schedule that I created using time toast


Once we had finished research and had a good idea on what are music video will be like we headed onto filming.

 

Filming

Since we was allowed to film during our half-term break our group was lucky enough (and fast enough) to get the college's only DSLR camera, the DSLR is known for being a digital single lens reflex camera. It is a digital camera that has combined the optics and mechanisms of a single lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor as opposed to the normal photographic film. Its this key feature what makes this camera actually able to film in such higher quality compared to other digital cameras.

Our group was fortunate enough to have someone highly experienced with using a DSLR, but as we got it for the first time before filming any actual footage we wanted to make sure that the film would work just as well as footage from the other video cameras with Final Cut Pro, In addition to this we had plans to film some of our music video at night so one group member had gone into a dark classroom to see if the light was strong enough and if the footage files would be good for Final Cut Pro.

This was our test video for the DSLR

It turned out that the files worked perfectly with Final Cut Pro and so we would not have any issues while editing. The camera could also hold two memory cards for film footage and we would always have a third that would be used only for pictures. 

Whilst filming we were at Alexandra Palace, to stay connected with the college we had an instagram and twitter set up for our artist and we would post on both whenever we was out filming.
This was taken from our Instagram.

After just over a week of filming we finally had all of our footage to begin editing.

Editing

We began editing as soon as we were back from half term, in which we had done all of our filming. To edit our music video we was using Final Cut Pro which was very easily to use since all of us had become experienced in using it from last year. As well as being able to cut our clips so we had no unwanted footage on our final piece we also added a lot of effects in our music video.
This started at the opening of our music video, we added a 360 twist blur which was in slow motion and had cross dissolved  from our artist sleeping to being dressed up in our created wonderland, this effect wasn't that hard for me to create as I've previously done something similar but along with assistance from the technician this did not take as long as I thought it would initially. Another effect added was making a certain part of the music video go in black and white, this was a lot easier to do compared to the previous effect as it was just adding in a filter on certain clips. Whilst editing we also had to blog about what changes we were making and what we was creating, we had used a program called handbrake so it was possible to put rough cuts onto the blog and use the footage for blogging at home.

Ancillary research
As we had finished editing and created our music video we then as a class proceeded onto our ancillary work and designing a digipak and poster for our artist. Before we went straight into using photoshop and creating our products we had to do research on similar digipaks and advertisements within our genre and most importantly find conventions for digipaks and advertisements, again to help present this a lot more clearer in the blog I had used Prezi as it allowed me to designate one slide to one artist's digipak and advertisement and compare them to my initial ideas.
Here is a Prezi I created talking about the conventions of artist's digipaks within our genre.


Creating ancillary products
After I had finished researching upon the conventions of digipaks and advertisements I then had to create mine, to do this I used Adobe Photoshop which was an application I was greatly experienced in already due to having to do previous independent work on it before. That being said I only finished my digipak and advertisement on deadline day because I kept making constant changes to make sure it was perfect for my likings. 
You can see my deadline changes and finished digipak here and advertisement here. 

Here's the overall process of making the outside cover in which I used Photoshop to make and slideshare to produce the slideshow:



and here's the overall process of making the inside cover in Photoshop:



After creating the ancillary work I then recorded feedback from classmates using audacity which I then created a video at home using Sony Vegas Pro10 as I don't have access to Final Cut Pro, since I'm experienced with Vegas Pro10 and the video was only consisting of images and a voice over the video was not hard to create.

Here is the video of the feedback

After we had finished our ancillary work all that was left was the evaluation questions

Evaluation
For our evaluation questions will be expected to produce them on our blogs, I'll use slideshow applications such as Prezi, emaze and slideshare for the questions that I think best suit it, this question would not be suitable for an application program as it required a lot of embedded previous work as evidence.

Evaluation: Question 2

Evaluation: Question 1

Feedback on ancillary work

Updates on advertisement

Advert

This is my finished advert for our artist, whilst doing researched it commonly seemed that nightclubs liked to reach out to house artist to do an album release party. So based on that I made this poster which shows our artist collaborating with Fabric nightclub, Fabric is a big name within it's market so with them promoting our artist it may attract more people then what could of been done independently. The changes that have been made are that there is now the front cover image on the advert, going from the album title to the bottom, this creates visual synergy between the advert and digipak as well as this it helps the audience identify who the artist is.

Updates on digipak Inside & Outside cover

Inside cover

This is my final design for the inside cover of our album, as you can see I've added the artist's name and album title onto the cd but most importantly what I've done on the other side is manage to grab a picture of our artist (as we ran into a few problems trying to get a photoshoot done we had to work with what we had before). The picture shares the same filter as the picture used in the front cover and advertisement, this creates more visual synergy between pieces and allows the audience to identify who she is still because it is not that drastic. Along side the picture is also a message from the artist, one of the most popular female house artists today is Kiesza and her debut album was kickstarted from a fundraiser, it feels that in this genre female artists don't succeed as easily as males mainly because there are just a majority of male DJs that can easily fund there album from gigs and any sponsors or deals they pick up along the way. Using the message to show the artist is thankful to the audience helps promote the artist positively, it also tells anyone that has donated towards the kickstarter that they have actually managed to achieve the goal.

Outside cover

Not much has been changed to the front from the last time apart from that I've manage to get a good picture of the artist, the picture shares the same filter with the image in the inside cover, it is also the same image used on the advertisement to create visual synergy between the digipak and advert. Besides adding the image I've also changed the spine so it's more similar to a regular album cover.

Overall
Overall I'm proud of the inside and outside cover of the digipak I've created, using all the research gathered I was able to make one that really fits within our genre and uses a lot of techniques used in all digipaks to create visual synergy for the artist between different forms of media.

Ancillary: Designing the advert

Ancillary: Inside cover

Ancillary: Digipak outside cover

Digipak short list (Planning)

For my digipak I have to stick to conventions that relate to the genre of our artist's music aswell as some synergy conventions that we as a group discussed would be used.

Colours
The colours used in my digipak will be black, white and blue. These are what we have used for our artist the whole time will help with creating a visual synergy between the products. I also plan to have a graphic that is multicoloured (featuring green, red, pink, blue) but this is because house music is known for its bright flashing lights (picture on the right will be featured behind the cd, inside the cd cover, also represents the song "CATS" on the album). The artist will also be wearing. I think these colours are good to use as they relate to the genre of music and create a visual synergy between products for the artist.

Font

For the digipak and advertisement I am only using one font for text which is called Bebas Kai, the font is easily downloadable from dafont.com (http://www.dafont.com/bebas-kai.font) and so can be used on any mac or pc. This font is great to use as its bold but not too fat and extremely clear to see, it also matches what other posters use for fonts within our genre as none like to add anything that is too hard to read. This will be used for all texts apart from the album title which uses a graphic made by myself featuring two different fonts fused together to create and nice looking album title. This is different from the other font so it does stand out and allows the audience to identify what is the album title very easily. I think both these fonts are appropriate to use as it relates again to the other fonts used within products of our genre and allows the audience to identify the album title whilst also being able tor read everything very clearly.

Layout & Design
For the digipak I plan to use a four sided one as I think adding extra would mean a loss in quality and may just use pointless or very low standard pieces to fill any remainder sides. I plan to follow the general conventions of other digipaks as well such as featuring the track list on the back of the cover, the artist's name and album title on the front and am not looking to challenge any of the genral conventions as it would just seem as a mistake more than challenging the conventions if you try to.

Ancillary: Analysis of 3 DigiPaks

Ancillary: Analysis of DigiPaks from previous students

What is a Digipak?

What is a digipak?
A digipak is a modern approach to CD packaging, it allows for inclusion of more information about the aritst or band and help add value to the artist or band. A digipak is to help persuade the audienece to buy the album, this means it will try to meet what their codes and conventions, usually based around different genres, so the audience can indentify the artist and what it is they're buying.

What the outside of a digipak should look like

Front cover
Most importantly the front cover should feature the artist's name, this should be in clear font and a reasonable size so the audience doesn't have to be too close to see it. The font should also be easy to read and should be the same font type repeated throughout the digipak when using the artist's name.

Another thing to include would be an image of the artist, this should not be a long shot as it doesn't help the audience identify who it is and is just considerably bad to do. The best type of shot would most likely be either a mid shot or a close up of the artist so it is easy to see who the artist is and can be indentified from a reasonable distance. The clothing and make-up that the artist wear should be similar to the colour palate of the digipak.

Something to consider would also be adding a promotional sticker, this can promote what is special about the album, whether it's featuring the main hits of the artist or if the album is a special deluxe edition.

Back cover
The most common feature of the back cover of a digipak is the track list, this tells the audience what is on the album and should be done in clear font that is a reasonable size, the font should also follow the same fonts used on the front cover. The back will also include record label logos, copyright information, the artist's website, the distributor, a barcode and any further additional production information for the artist.

Inside the digipak
There isn't much of a stereotypical expectation for inside a digipak, you must keep to the same colour palate and font types as the outside covers, but from that there's no expectations, they can contain addition graphics of the artist or some writing from the artist such as acknowledgments to anyone that helped with producing songs on the album. Some digipaks also like to include another track list, this time include more specific detail, for example the length of the song and mentioning the band and who played which instrument.

Overall guidelines for a digipak
Try to use 3-4 colours max
No more than two different types of font
Include elements of graphic design and not just images taken from the video
Creates a visual link with other forms of advertisement the company has used (visual synergy).

Advertisement
A few things the advertisement must include are as follows; a release date, so the audience know when the album is coming out, in addition to this you can include some retailers that will be selling the album. Also you can include some tour dates, your artist's website, quotes from magazine's and newspapers and the record labels involved within your artist. Some important features are to make sure to stick to your colour palate used in your digipak as well as this your font types, this helps create the visual synergy between forms of advertisements used for the artist and allows the audience to identify your artist a lot easier. Another thing is too repeat graphics used in the digipak or just other images of the artist.