Monday, 27 March 2017

Evaluation Question 4

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




Sunday, 19 February 2017

Evaluation Question 2

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











Wednesday, 25 January 2017

Evaluation Question 1

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


I studied Andrew Goodwin's conventions of music videos before filming my project to better understand how to make my music video as professional as possible. Goodwin has six conventions of music videos:
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics, for example a dance routine in a girl or boy band.

I followed this convention as it is typical of indie or alternative songs to have a video that tells a story that holds meaning related to the lyrics. I spent many hours designing a story that would demonstrate these genre characteristics and made the video black and white to follow the theme of sad, meaningful videos that is typical of the indie/alternative rock genre.

2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.

Most of my pre-production planning for my media product involved coming up with ideas that would result in my video being able to tell a story, which is typical of indie music. The lyrics are about two men who used to work together and one of them received a brilliant opportunity and left to live his life and made loads of money, leaving the second behind with nothing. My video focuses on the now unemployed of the two, focusing on unemployment and desperation which is conveyed in the lyrics, "It kills to know that you have been defeated
I see the wires pulling while you're breathing
You knew you had a reasonIt killed you like diseases"

3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals.

From my research I discovered that the band whose song I chose to make a production of, tend to follow certain themes when making music videos. One way in which I followed this convention is by making the entire video black and white, as The Neighbourhood do in all of their productions, which gave the video an emotional feeling that relates to the dark and slow music throughout the song.

4. There is likely voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of women, and usually include close ups of the main artist or vocalist.

One shot type which I found to be extremely practical in following conventions of real media products is close ups. This is particularly useful when creating a music video for indie or alternative songs, as these tend to tell a story and close ups work well to convey emotion. The Neighbourhood's production 'Let it Go', another song by the same band, conforms to this convention and is a prime example of the importance of close ups. The shots in this music video focus primarily on the emotions one of the characters is experiencing and does this by giving the audience a clear, extreme close ups of either the character's face or eyes, as well as various close up shots of money to signify that the song is about materialism. I also included close ups of the character singing/miming the lyrics to indicate that he is the vocalist.

Here is the use of close ups by The Neighbourhood's "Let it Go" that I incorporated into my own production:











Here is the use of such shots in my media piece:

















Since there were no females included in my production, I subverted this convention of Goodwin's, as there was no voyeurism concerning women in my video.

Friday, 20 January 2017

Magazine advertisement

Below is the final version of my magazine advertisement.

Digipak Final Draft

After speaking with my teachers, I realised my digipak still needed work. I went away to research other album covers and studied how they use font sizes in order to showcase their album as well as other conventions they all tend to use. I found that the cursive font I had used for my original draft was not, in fact, anything alike to the font The Neighbourhood use on their album covers. In fact, on some, they don't even have the band name - just their logos. I decided to include the name and album title, however, as it makes it clear who made this album.

Tuesday, 10 January 2017

Friday, 16 December 2016

Digipak fist draft

To start creating the first draft of my digipak I first had to open the template containing the dimensions in Photoshop. I then opened up my music promo to select the pictures I want to use for the digpak, which was a close up of the money used in filming and the closing shot of leaves used to finish my video off. I decided to use this as the picture for the back of the digipak because it was the closing scene for my promo and will therefore also be the closing for my cover.
I opened the dimensions for the digipak in Photoshop and then brought up the picture of money I intended to use for the front cover. I had to stretch the image in order to fix the front cover box and since I did not want to ruin the image by stretching it, I had to hold the shift key whilst repositioning the picture to keep the correct shape.
I then did the same with the back image and altered the layers so the dimensions were on top of all other images, allowing me to ensure each picture fit the boxes perfectly. It was then I realized I would need a new image for the insides of the digipak and did not want to reuse the photos of money and leaves as I already had because it would remove any interesting features and just appear boring and repetitive.
For the back and inner panel I chose to use an image of the road I had taken as a large amount of the inner panel would not be visible due to the CD, and the back would require information that may be difficult to read if it was written over an eyecatching photo.
I then added the band and album name on the front cover and chose a white font as it stood out nicely against the black and grey image and positioned the writing the same way it is on their other albums to ensure there were not many differences that would make it clear that this album was not one of The Neighbourhood's. I then included the logo as it is iconic of this band and placed it in the centre of the front cover to ensure it stood out.