Final Film

Below is my final film that I created for my Media coursework, feel free to write any comments below as this will halp me evaluate my work.

Final Album (Digipak)

Beneath is my completed digipak. Within the digipak there is the front cover which is noticeable as it contains the title and band name. It also consists of the song list which will feature on the back of the digipak. The digipak will also have a CD holding space so that it doesn't move about in the case. The othere three spaces on the digipak consist of images of the band whilst they were filming. Also included in the digipak was the spine that runs down the side of the case, this was simple to include as it needed just the title of the album and also the name of the band.

The way that I made the digipak was by creating each panel at a time and then moving it onto the longer panel. Their was a specific measurement that I had to stick to and for the single panel it was 14.5cm wide and 12.5 cm high. And for the longer panel it was 44cm wide so I was able to fit three smaller panels into it  and leave two smaller gaps for the spine and the height remained the same at 12.5

Final Advert

Above is the advertisement that I have created for a magazine that will promote the sale of my digipak. For the advert I thought it would be a good idea to include many pictures of the band performing and the band members playing their instruments.

Evaluation Question 1 - 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'

nImage 1: This first image is taken in the singer/actors house, and it shows him laying it bed at the start of his day. This part of the song does not have any lyrics, therefore in this section I put together some clips of him waking up and going to the bathroom as this is what generally happens at the beginning of his day. Throughout this section the song travels at a slower and smoother pace compared to what the chorus and the rest of the song is like after this part.

nImage 2: The second image is taken outside the front door of the singer/actors house. This image shows the singer meeting his friend outside his house. This relates to the lyrics of this part of the song ‘You thought you’d found a friend’, this shows that I have related the narrative of the song to the video. This part of the video is just before the chorus so the clips will still be fading into and out of one another.

nImage 3: This third image shows the two band members playing their instruments both guitar and drum. This part of the film was filmed in a studio where I was able to film the band performing in front of the green screen. The effect that is behind the performers was included afterwards when I was editing the film. The effect is known as kaleida. Just before the kaleida the image that I have used breaks away to reveal the band members.

nImage 4: The fourth image shows two images combined into one that is shown at the same time. It has the singer singing this part of the song a long with the two of them playing football. However this is sectioned into four corners so it is effectively playing four times at once.

nImage 5: Here I have used another programme and not just premiere pro. Here I used adobe after effects in order to use other effects that I cannot use on premiere pro. I used the same effect as earlier which was kalieda, however I used another image for the kaleida  in the back ground, this is because I did not want it to look the same as other kaleida effects. Something else that I done for this part of the video was that on after effect I put a certain effect on the band members, which was called threshold.

nImage 6: This sixth image shows the pair of the actors walking back to the house from the field, in the image you see them walk across the camera and whilst they walk across the camera pans across to follow them. Whilst on premiere pro I put an effect called posterize on the clip so that it would look more interesting to watch instead of it being just a normal film.

nImage 7: This seventh image shows a close up of the singer singing the lyrics to the song. Again I have used an effect in the background which is kalieda, however this time I have used another image so that it doesn’t look like the other kaleida images. I have also used posterize on the singer to make him stand out instead of it being a plane clip.

nImage 8: For the eighth image I used an extreme close up to engage the audience. I asked the singer to grab hold of the camera so that the audience were able to see him holding it, as this would involve the audience. However with this clip I did not use any special effects as I have used other special effects in this part of the song

nImage 9: For this final ninth image, this depicts the singer/actor going to sleep and showing the audience that the film ends just as it starts. With this part of the film the room is darker to show the audience that its night time and to show the audience that the actor is going to sleep he switches the light off as the song ends.

Evaluation Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

nFor this question I will be answering it by using an audio commentary. My audio commentry will also include me speaking about my supporting products. The main parts that I will be talking about are; introducing the song and talking about the origin of the original track, what kind of image did I want to create overall, how does the track link with the digipak and also a final summary of it all.

nHi my name is James

  And this is the final music video that I made for the band, U2, which is called Beautiful Day, which is taken from their album all that you can’t leave behind. U2 came from Dublin but were a massive success here in the UK. They aimed their songs at teenagers and young adults and their music style is varied between rock, alternative rock and post-punk.

  For my bands image, I didn’t follow the rock genre, it was more alternative rock with the different shot variations and the emotions shown from the singers and actors was not extreme. To do this I watched U2s original video of Beautiful day, as I wanted to see if they used close ups of the singer and the people playing the music instruments. After doing my research I realised that I wanted to make sure that the audience recognise that the singer was the main member of the band, I think I achieved this as there were plenty of shots throughout the video where the singer is singing he lyrics.

  Throughout the video I had a clear narrative, and this was seeing the singer waking up, and then following him throughout his day to it ending up where it began, I also related some of the acting to the lyrics in the song.

  Originally before I had even started the video I wanted to film a singer and a band in a studio, so this was fortunate that we had a studio at the school I go to and my three band members were very flexible about when and where they could do the filming.

nDrop Digipak inMy digipak is certainly based on my music video, and from this I was hoping to create an alternative rock genre from the six different panels from the digipak after researching other digipaks of this genre.

  For the front cover I took a picture of the whole band together so it looked like they were playing their instruments and singing. This image along with some of the others included in the digipak were not taken from the scenes that are in the video this is because after researching other digipaks most images are not taken from the music videos, so I feel that by taking different pictures from different places gives the digipak a variation but still links with the video in a sense that the band members are all playing their instruments and singing. For the back of the digipak I thought I would take a screenshot from my video, where the singer is running down the hill, this is where I have pt the songs that will feature on the album, again this links to my video as it was a screenshot taken from my video.

  Two of the six panels feature a compilation of images that I took from a different location to where the video is filmed. I took the images into Photoshop and put certain effects on them so they didn’t look plain. The CD panel was also created in Photoshop, for the design of the CD I took a screenshot of the effect Kalieda from after effects and put it on to a CD, after doing this I put the title of the album and the band name on the CD itself to make it look like a normal CD.

  The final image that I used for the digipak was another screenshot that was taken from the video itself, this is just an image of the singer looking around and links to what I said earlier, which was that I wanted to make the singer the main image of the band.

nDrop magazine advert in

  I created the magazine advert in Photoshop and I had an idea of what I wanted to do which was to put a collage of different images on the advert and again, make the singer the main image.

  I used half of the advert to put an image of the singer on it, with this image I put an effect on it called cut out. Also in the top half of the advert I included a picture of the front cover of the digipak so that the advert can relate to the digipak. I decided to include some quotes from different magazines to promote the band and the digipak.

  For the quotes I had them large and spread across the whole advert. I used different colours to write the quotes in so that it would stand out off the page. I also used a drop shadow and an outer glow on the quotes. In the bottom left hand corner I also included some tour dates and the venues that the band would be playing at, and as the background I used a screenshot from after effects that I used on my final video, so that the advert can relate all the way back to the video.

  Overall I feel that I have achieved what I set out to do, which was to make the singer the main image of the video and supporting products, and also to get the consistency between the video, digipak and the advert. I believe I have achieved this due to the fact that I have used images from the video and effects such as kalieda that I used in after effects. 

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from the audience feedback?

nI was required to gather feedback for my music video, as this would show me where the audience feel I have done well and where I haven’t done so well. My feedback was gathered from three different sources, these sources were, a screening where parents came in to view the different videos and mark them, another source was the year below that are doing media, they did exactly the same thing as the parents did at the screening, which was mark them. The final source was my class mates, they wrote their comments on my blog where I have posted my video.

nThere was a specific system that the parents and year below had to follow, their was a sheet for each students work and it had 8 questions on each sheet, all the same, and then the parents and students were required to mark each question out of 4 depending on how well they thought each one was completed. The scoring system was 1 being the lowest and 4 being the best.

Here is the first question of the eight, it asked the audience if they felt the shots were steady throughout the video. The audience felt that I held the camera fairly steady throughout the video as I received mainly 3s and 4s however some of the audience thought that the camera wasn’t completely  steady throughout the video. I feel that I did hold it fairly steady whilst filming it was only when I tried filming when the actors were moving, that the camera didn’t stay still.

This question asked the audience if the shots were framed well, this means if the actors were in the centre of the film. The audience thought that I had positioned and framed my shots well as I received a majority of 3s and also received over 10 4s. However some people that gave feedback felt that I did not frame the shots well enough, I can see what these people meant after reviewing my video and I agree in some parts that my video could have been framed better. 

This response was asking the audience if they felt that I had varied shots in my video, this means was their a variation of shots for example the close ups, the long shots and the two shots as well as others that have been used. This response is fairly the same to the previous answer in a sense that I received a majority of 3s and then 4s with a few people believing that I needed to vary my shots. I do agree with the 7 people that said that the shots were not varied enough, I could have used some high and low angle shots perhaps, throughout the video.

This question asks the audience if they felt that the locations for the video were appropriate. As you can see from the results it shows that the majority of the audience marked it with a 3 out of 4 and just over a quarter of the people gave it 4 out of 4 so the majority of people thought that the locations were appropriate however just under a quarter of people thought that the appropriateness of the locations were not good or a bit repetitive. I do agree with these people as I have filmed a lot of it at only two separate locations.

This question was asking the audience if they felt the lighting was appropriate for the film. The majority of people that I asked, 90% marked the appropriateness of light either a 3 or a 4, and 10% thought the lighting wasn’t appropriate, I can only think that they marked it with a 2 is because of the certain effects that I used on some parts of the video.

This question was asking the audience if the understood the meaning of the film. 83% of the audience said that they found the video understandable and were able to follow it. The other 17% didn’t find the meaning of the video clear enough. This is strange as I only wanted to film the actor going through his day. 

This question was asking the audience if there was an appropriate use of special effects. 90% of the people thought there was an appropriate use of special effects, I am glad with this as I felt that I used special effects very well throughout my video. 10% of the people thought that there wasn’t an appropriate use of special effects. I do not agree with these people as I felt that I used a lot of special effects. 

This final question asked the audience if they felt that the sound and image editing was appropriate and also if the film made sense. I received good feedback from this question as 86% of people thought that the editing of sound and images was all close and appropriate. I am pleased with this as I cut the video a lot of times throughout the video in order to create it. 14% of people didn’t think that the editing was close enough or synced correctly. I agree slightly with the people who thought that the lip syncing wasn’t close enough as there was a few times when it was out of sync.

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from the audience feedback? Part 2

Above you can see my feedback that i received from one of my class mates, they talk about all the poitives and negatives that they can see in my video.

Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

nThroughout the project I was required to use new media technologies during the construction of the film, during the research and in the planning and evaluation.

nConstruction

  For filming I was required to use a video camera so that I was able to capture the film, along with this I had to use the tripod that it stood on, this was a complete new experience for me as I have never done anything like this before. When I was filming I had to put the tape into the camera to allow me to start filming, once the tape was in I was able to fast forward or rewind through the tape so I could see what parts that I had done and decide whether I needed to redo any parts. For the tripod it was essential that everything on it was locked in place otherwise the camera could have fallen off, I had to ensure that all of the legs were locked into place, and also that the camera was secured on the tripod by tightening the crew underneath. There was a lever on the tripod so that I was able to move the camera feely whilst I was filming, this helped with the following shots.

  For the construction I was required to use Adobe Premiere Pro which is a film editing programme. I had to capture the film on to the programme, I then had to edit the film by putting the pieces of film in the order that I wanted. Throughout the video I wanted to put different effects on the film so on some I zoomed in or out to give a good effect, I also put some special effects on it, for example I used replicate on Premiere pro and on Adobe After Effects I used a range of effects such as Kaleida, Threshold and Posterize.

nResearch and Planning

   For research I was required to look at videos that had been made by similar artists and also by the band that I was using. Originally I had to suggest three potential songs that I thought that I could use for my video, after discussing the choices with my teacher it was conclusive that I would be using U2 Beautiful Day. I used Youtube to choose my three videos for a proposal as it consists of thousands of music videos, this helped me decide on what song I was going to use for my coursework. I am not new to Youtube, so it was fairly easy for me to watch videos that are similar to Beautiful Day and also songs by the band themselves.

  When I knew what song I wanted to use I was required to draw up a storyboard of how I wanted my music video to be. This needed me to draw up scenes on post it notes, this was called the animatronics.

  To help me design my digipak I had to analyse two or three different album covers, this helped me ultimately design my own digipak. For the analysis I had to talk about the different styles and effects that are used in order to make the album eye catching and appealing. I looked at two albums that were not related to U2 and I looked at one of U2s album so this helped me design mine. I also found a website called freecovers.net, this enabled me to gain access to thousands of album covers, that would guide me in designing my digipak.

nEvaluation

  Throughout the evaluation I have needed to use different technologies, for question 2 of the evaluation I used a voice over and to do this I used a camera and gave my answer into the microphone, I then had to take this into premiere pro and cut the parts where I had made mistakes, I then put the voice over, over the top of my video with the digipak and advert showing in the middle of the video.

  For question 3 I had to take down the marks of what the audience gave me after they had viewed my video, they had to give me a mark out of 4 for each question and I then put this on to Microsoft Excel in order for me to make 8 graphs that I was able to talk about and analyse. I have used Excel before so I was able to create these graphs without any difficulty I also used the camera again for question 3, this time I filmed myself asking the same questions to one of my class mates, this gave the evaluation some variation. I had to capture the film on premiere pro and export just like the other videos.