Evaluation Question/ Answers

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

My media product mainly uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products. It does not really challenge any forms or conventions.

My media product follows similar themes that are in other music videos. My music video follows the theme of alternative rock. The band members in m music video wear clothing that is similar to what the typical alternative rock bands wear. The typical clothing is quite casual, mainly being jeans and a t-shirts, an example of this is shown on Prezi on my blog. The band members in my music video wear this type of clothing, but make it more original in the way they wear it, to create their own image and not some other bands. In this context my media product uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products.
My music video also uses the theme in the original music video of Jimmy Eat World of having the odd person out, and made them to be stuck in ‘the middle’. We have shown this by filming the scene at a school, having all kids in their uniforms and the girl in the middle wearing hers differently, with the blue tights. In the original video of jimmy eat world everyone was in their underwear and the person in the middle was fully clothed.
Most music videos have something that the audience can relate to. Our music video also does the same. We have used the main character, which is the girl in the music video look the typical age as our audience and used her to tell the story of the music video. Our music video shows the story of the difficulty a person faces of being stuck in the middle, but then later manages to solve it. The music video tries to send out the message saying ‘don’t give up, and everything will be just fine’.

Other ways in which my media product uses and develops forms and conventions, is by following the theme of having a storyline to the music video, like most alternative rock bands do. I have realised this theme of alternative rock bands by looking at different alternative rock music videos. Most of Jimmy Eat world’s music video has a story to it. My group members and I have used this method as we thought this was a good idea, as it puts an image to the lyrics, and shows people what the lyrics are trying to say.

My music video also has similar text placement in the music video like other alternative rock. The original video of The Middle by jimmy eat world has the text placement on the left hand corner. My group members and I have also done the same.

My magazine advert and album cover have a common link between them, so that it is easy for audience to recognise the product. My magazine advert and album cover follow a colour scheme and has the house style of arrows, colour and fonts. Other products also have a similar theme between them.

If I were to put my magazine advert on any type of magazine, it would most probably be NME as that is more of typical place to publish it, as most alternative rock audience view things like NME. My target audience are people who read things like NME magazine. I would also advertise my advert online to get the attention of my target audience who spend a lot of their time inline. My product and magazine advert would be on things like iTunes. I would also advertise in stores like HMV to get the attention of my target audience in all ways, and also to get other audiences to listen to the music.
This is also a way my media product uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products, as the distribution method is also of the typical genre of alternative rock.


2) How effective is the combination of your media product and the ancillary tasks?

There is a common link between my album cover, magazine advert and music video.

My album cover has the main character of the music video to emphasize individuality and to show a common link between the music video. The album cover also has arrows to emphasize this individuality and the title ‘THE MiDDLE’. The arrows also are a part of the house style for my ancillary task. I have used the same font throughout my magazine advert and album cover, as it is a part of my house style. As part of my house style I have also kept to a colour scheme. I have kept the arrows on my magazine advert and the album cover the same. I have also kept some of the colours of the text the same. For the background colour rather then a black and red background like my album cover, I have used the same colour as the blue tights of the main character in the music video so that everything else stands out more.
I have put my album cover on my magazine advert so that it is easier to show people what to buy. I have also put images of the band on the magazine advert to show who this group are, and to advertise them. The advert is there to sell the artist, and in order to do that, images of them were required. The images gave a picture to the name and the audience. The band image and the album cover on the magazine advert kept a link to the music video, as it was using characters from the music video. For the title of the album and the band name I have kept the ‘I’ in the word middle and Jimmy in lower case to show individuality.
From my audience feedback, people have said that the combination of my media product and ancillary task was effective.

In conclusion I believe that the combination of my media product and ancillary task was effective.


3) What have you learned from audience feedback?

I made a survey in order to get audience feedback showing them my ancillary task and the music video. I have received constructive criticism from my audience, who are people mainly at the age of 16-18 years. I have asked people of this age group as they were my target audience. We have used the main character of the story in the music video to link to the audience, as she is of the same age group as our audience, and the audience could relate to it.

The audience feedback has helped me to realise what I have done well for my media product and ancillary task, and what I could have done better.
For my music video, the positive comments I have received were that, the camera angles were good and still. People have said that the lip syncing was very good as it was on time. They have said that the music video flowed well with the music and the shots weren’t to long.

The comments I have received for the music video on the things that my group members and I could have done better were mainly about the instruments not being played on time. However we were aware of this but could not do much about it. The biggest problem was the drummer, as she could not play the drums properly and so didn’t really know what she was doing. Due to the lack of time we could not re-shoot the band shots, and so had to make do.

I have had my entire class who is doing this project also to look at my music video and they have also had similar comments. They’re comments were important as they knew what things to look out for when making these comments.

For my album cover I have received good comments. People did not say much about the album cover so I have assumed that it was good.

For the magazine advert I have received an overall of good comments. However there were comments that made me realise the things that I could have improved on. One comment was that the band picture on my magazine advert looked squashed vertically, but that was because of the position that the band members were sitting in. another comment was that the blue background for the magazine advert was a bit dull, but it had kept to my colour scheme.

Overall people have thought that my music video and the ancillary task were good, and people had given my product an 8/9 out of 10. However there things that were a bit lacking that I could have improved on and done better.
The feedback has helped me be to be more aware of this and in the future I will try to be more alert.


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

For the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages I have used different media technologies.

I have used Blogger.com in order to keep a record of everything I have done during the process of research, planning construction and evaluation stages.

I have used media technologies such as YouTube, Google and Wikipedia to research and plan my music video. Using YouTube I have looked at other alternative rock music videos to find a common theme between them. Most alternative rock bands like Jimmy Eat World have a storyline to their music videos, and my group members and I have also done the same.
For the planning process my group members and I have visited lyrics websites, and used the lyrics to create a story for the music video. We also used the lyrics to find to create a plot of where we would have the band shots and the story shots. The lyrics have helped us to create a story board, so that we would know what to do when it came down to filming it.

For the construction part of the media product I have used media technologies such as the camera to take pictures for my album cover and magazine advert. I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements for my Ancillary task to create my album cover and magazine advert for the music video. Using adobe Photoshop elements, I have edited the images I have taken with the camera and altered the size in order to fit the size of the CD cover and magazine advert. I used a video camera for the filming process of the music video. I have used imovie HD in order to edit the shots me and my group members have taken with the video camera and to produce the music video.

Using Prezi I have created the evaluation of my media product. I used YouTube to post up my music video on my blog and on Prezi.com. I have also used it to get audience feedback of my music video. However this was not very successful.
I also used Facebook to get some audience feedback for my music video, album cover and magazine advert; however it wasn't very successful either, so I used Microsoft Word in order to create surveys. I’ve had to individually ask people in order to get audience feedback.

This is how I have used media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages.

Prezi- Presentation

This is my individual evaluation of my media product presented as a presentation on prezi.com. i have done an individual prezi because my group thought that it would be a easier to show our individual work this way. I have attempted to answer all four evaluation questions set. I will be writing up my full answers soon.

A2 Media Evaluation on Prezi

My group members and I have also done a group presentation using prezi in order to present it to my media class. Below is our group presentation.

Our Media evaluation on Prezi

I had been off sick when this presentation had started, but i later caught up with Luis and added my parts to this group evaluation, and later as the whole group finished the presentation off.

Evaluation Questions

Yesterday we were given the evaluation questions that we will be required to answer for our production work. For the next couple of weeks we will be evaluating our work by answering the following questions:

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

2) How effective is the combination of your media product and the ancillary tasks?

3) What have you learned from audience feedback?

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

We have been given the choice of answering these questions in a powerpoint presentation or as a prezi on www.prezi.com

My group members and I have decided to do our evaluation on prezi.com

Me and charlotte have planned out on how we will be answering the four questions during class. Due to luis being on a school trip, he could not participate in this, and has to catch up when he comes back.



The above image is Charlotte's and my evaluation plan. The pink writing is my work, and th eorange is charlotte's. On some of the questions we kept to one colour as we both had the same ideas.

Our Music Video

Below is our music video completed.



I feel that our music video has turned out very well in terms of its editing, camera angles and lip singing. The shots fitted and flowed well with the music. The video wasn't boring and kept people interested till the end. There was a few problems with the band shots, as the Drummer could not play the Drums and wasn't very in sync with the music, however this is a problem that we could not change but are aware of. If we had more time we would have re-taken these shots, but due to the lack of time we have in our hands we would not have been able to organize and re-film these parts, and edit it. Also we have had to finish all our production work a week before as Luis has had to go on school trip, and we would have had missed the deadline by the time he comes back. We are very happy with our overall work with the music video, and in the future we will have to be aware of these minor problems.

Story Board

Below is the story board we have made inorder to make our music video. We have made our story board in two parts. One part is for all the band shots that we would take and the other is for all the Story line shots that we would take. We have done this so that it would be easier for us to keep track of what we are doing while we filmed and edited.

Story line shots- Story Board






















Band Sots- Story Board













We have now completed all or filming and editing. We have used our story boards during the process of filming and editing. Editing the music video was quite stressful as the iMovie maker kept on breaking down on us. Thankfully none of our data was lost during the editing process as we had saved after every section of editing. We had to re-do some of our filming as some shots did not turn out as well as we had wanted to. We had to change the location, and retake some of our band shots many times because of problems. However because we were ahead of time, we had time to solve these problems and finish our music video. We have managed our time very well and are pleased with the work we have done. I will be uploading our music video onto the blog soon.

Magazine Advert

I have now completed my magazine advert. The Magazine advert took me a lot more time to create as the image I used was more difficult to edit and also because it took me a lot more time deciding on the colours for the magazine advert and how the text should be placed. My magazine advert and my album cover needed some similarities, and also I needed to keep my album cover and magazine advert similar to the rest of my group members. Charlotte, Luis and I decided that the common theme in our album cover and the magazine advert should be the arrows and the font of the text which is Myriad pro. I have kept the colours for my magazine advert similar to my album cover. I have used a blue background colour for my advert, which is the same colour as Charlottes Tights on the album cover. I have used The same colour on the arrows for my album cover and Magazine advert. The Font on my advert is the same as the one on my album cover as well as some of the colour of the text.
To create my magazine advert i have used Photo Shop elements and created my Magazine advert the same way I have created the Album cover.
Below is my magazine advert.

Editing Image for the Album cover

For my album cover i have chosen the the picture below.



I have used Adobe Photoshop Elements to to edit this image. Below are print screens of the process of how i went about editing it.

I have used the magic wand tool to select all the unwanted areas of the picture and erased it.


I then zoomed into the specific areas of the picture, like the one above and erased all the unwanted details.


here again i zoomed into the image in order to erase all the unwanted areas and make the image more defined.



After editing the image this is how it looked. After this i took the picture and put it into the correct album cover size, which was 14cm (width) by 12.5 cm (height). I then added background colour to the image and added the text for the album cover. Then i added the arrows for the album cover as it is part of our house style. I have followed my draft drawing of the album cover to make the final one.



Above is my final album cover design.

Band pictures for Magazine advert, and album cover pictures

I now have all the images to make my album cover and Magazine advert, and i have now started to make the advert and the cover for the music video using Adobe Photoshop elements.
Below are the pictures that i have taken.

Album cover images











These are the pictures that i retook for my album cover as my previous pictures did not turn out as well as i had wanted to. I have taken a couple just in case one does not work out.

Band shot For Magazine advert
I have taken quite a few band pictures so that i have a variety to choose from. I have started to create my advert as well. Below are the pictures that i have taken.

End of Filming

We have now finished filming all of our band shots and the story line shots for our music video and are now concentrating on editing the music video.

Below is a picture of me filming a side-angle close-up shot of Luis singing. The shot turned out wel and so did the lip singing. We played the song, 'The middle' by Jimmy eat world in the background so that it would be in time with the music video.



In the picture above i am filming another band scene using a tripod in order to get the camera to stay steady while filming the scene.

Below are pictures of me Luis and charlotte editing our music video. we have all taken turns in editing parts of the video. we have used the story board to help us put the scenes into correct order.
For our Music video, we have now uploaded the song onto imovie maker adn have started puting the scenes in the right place with the verses.

Filming,Magazine advert

Today we have completed most of the filming for the music video, and we have uploaded all our clips to a laptop and have now started editing our music video using imovie maker. We have a few clips that we will need to re-film, as they did not turn out as well as we would have liked them to be. we should be finishing filming the few shots that we need to re-film by the ned of this week.

Today we have also taken our individual band pictures for the Magazine advert. My images have turned out very well and i will be posting them up on the blog as soon as they have been uploaded on the computer. I have taken varried shots, just incase some images do not work out like i want them to, and so i have a variety to pick from.

H/W- Personal home pages and the construction of identities on the web

For home work we have been asked to summerise a paper given to us on personal home pages and construction of identites on the web by Daniel Chandler in 500 word. We have been studying about online identity in class. Below is my summary. Sorry if it isn't very good and not exactly 500 words, but I tried my best =D.

Summary

It has been discussed by many media theorists that the adoption of new media seems to be ‘blurring’ the boundaries of the public and the private. This can be seen in the new genre of the personal home page on the world-wide web, where whatever is written on a web page automatically becomes published on a global scale revealing what is private to the public also. The very name ‘home page’ is revealing in this context. Media theorist John Seabrook said that ‘a home in the real world…is a way of keeping the world out…An on-line home, on the other hand is a little hole you drill in the wall of your real home to let the world in’ .

The web is often misleadingly defined in terms of being a global source of information; however when exploring the subject of personal homepages it undermines such a description.
Media theorist Thomas Ericson noted that personal homepages and the World Wide Web aren’t being used to publish information but used to construct identity and useful information are just a side affect of these. Creating these pages offer an individual the opportunity for self presentation in relation to any aspect of social and personal identity to which one chooses to allude. These virtual environments offer a unique context in which one can experiment with shaping one’s own identity.

Personal home pages are like bedroom walls for young people but larger, allowing them to post up information about their every day lives, with text, pictures, poster and such. “The personal home page is a self publishing medium in both senses of the term: being able to produce a web page like owning your own printing pres, and what some might call ‘self advertisement’”. People judge a person based on the presentation of themselves on their home pages. Many critics even compare web page interactions.

The web offers mass communication between people as the web is now more widely accessible. Before the web would have been only available to the privileged. As Martin Ryder notes the web is a mass medium. Unlike other mass mediums such as television or print publishing the web is open to producers and consumers.

Constructing a personal home page involves bricolage (using whatever materials at hand to make something). Graphics, sound, texts and the code used to generate a particular format are often copied from other people’s pages. The virtual and digital nature of the web as a mass medium supports the reuse in bricolage of existing materials. Bricolage involves more then simply the seizure of materials: it also involves the construction of the bricoleur’s identity. Although it may seem that personal home pages seem to say very little, the use of confusing layout and added multimedia is a way of individuals differentiating themselves from others. It is their way of making a personal statement. The consistent use of certain signifying practices is certainly a mark of membership of particular sub culture groups.

Creating homepages can be seen as creating a virtual identity. The content of a home page can be recognised as ‘drawing on a palette of conventional typical elements, most notably: personal statistics; interests, likes and dislikes etc’.
Sherry Turkle notes that ‘in a home page ones identity emerges from whom one knows one’s associations and connections’. Where such links are to the pages of friends or to those who share ones interests can be seen as involving the construction of a kind of virtual community by home page authors. The web allows synchronous communication between people.

Home page authors can decide how much information they reveal about themselves, which may involve intentional an unintentional exposure. A web page can show one side of a person’s identity. Many people present themselves differently online then they do offline, during face to face interactions. Some people sow a desired identity online, and others keep their identity similar to their real life. Authors create home pages for many different reasons. Some critics have expressed anxiety that web pages may lead people to manipulate their public identities more than what has been possible with traditional media.

There is a worry especially of the youth, as they are becoming more involvd with the media and the web and could be losing site of reality and find it easier to be themselves online. Some feel that the younger generation are using the web as means of escaping from the real world, and could lose the confidence of going out into the real world and communicating with people as it is musch easier to be behind a screen then be in a face to face conversation.
People have a different views about whether the web is a useful or a problem.

Pictures for the Album Cover

I have Now uploaded the images for the album cover, and below are the pictures I took. Unfortunately the pictures did not turn out as well as I had hoped it would, when I had started to edit it using 'Adobe Photshop elements'.




The images seemed fuzzy and didn't really fit with the background like i intended. I will be retaking these images and post them up on the blog.


Above is the draft of my album cover . My album cover won't be exactly the same as my draft, but it will be similar.

Working on the music video

Below are the pictures of me filming some parts of the parts for our story line of the music video.



In this picture me and charlotte are trying to help explain what needs to be done in the scene to our actors, so that they know what to do when we film them.


This pictture is of me filming charlotte, while she is acting the part of the girl who is in the middle trying to get the attention of her peers.


In this image, charlotte was helping me get the correct angle for the filming. It is important that we get the correct angle while filming as it will have a big impact when it comes to connecting each scene togother for the video. By making sure that each secene is captured well the first time saves a lot of time from having to redo scenes.

Album cover, Magazine advert and Music video

My group members and I have now completed our story boards and have now started filming the storyline part of our music video. We have gathered a group of people who will be in our music video and planned our filming times. The parts we have filmed for the music video, we will check over by uploading it onto a computer and check for any errors and reshoot the scenes. We will be filming the band shots on tuesday. We have organised the locations of our music videos and hopefully the video will turn out well.

while filming our storyline part of our music videos, charlotte luis and I have taken pictures for the parts each of us have filmed. We thought that this would be a good way to show evidence of our individual input into the work. I will be posting up these images as soon as they have been uploaded.

For my album cover, I have taken pictures and will be uploading it on the blog soon along with my draft drawings. the pictures i took did not turn out as well as oi had hoped it would when it came to editing it, therefore i think i will have to retake them.

For the magazine advert, my group members and i have decided to make the advert around the size of three quarter of a page as seen in other magazines. An A4 size advert would seem too big and for an advert, so we decided to follow the trend in other music magazine adverts and keep it similar to their sizes.

Preliminary Task- Music Video

We have created a music video and a movie swede for our preliminary task, but unfortunately my group and i were not able to upload the movie swede onto a disc.

For our preliminary task for a music video, me and April were put in a group to make a music video for the song 'Teenage dirtbag' by Wheatus. We originally had three members in our group, however due to the lack of attendance and cooperation of our third member we became a two member group as we did not want to waste any more time.
Our original song for the music video was 'As long as you love me' by the backstreet boys, but because it became difficult to find a group of boys to be in the video we had to change our song.

We had created our music video similar to the original, based in a school. our editing and storyline of the music video was good. We had good locations for our music video and we have followeed the story line well The bad thing with our music video was that in some scenes, because of the lighting we were not able to some of the peoples faces and some scenes were a bit long. The song was quite fast and in the future we need to consider making the clips meet the rhythm of the music.
I think that with the lack of time we have had, our music video turned out well.

I think that having made a music video as part of our preliminary task has helped me in becoming more aware of the problems that could arise, and has helped me get a better understanding of using the equipments. This will help me show an improvement for our main task in creating a music video.

Below is the music video that me and April had created. I have had a lot of problems uploading this video, but have managed to finally upload it.
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PSA- Underage Drinking video

We were set the task to make a Public Service Announcement (PSA) on underage drinking.

This is the PSA my group and i had made at the begening of the year on underage drinking for children aged 13-15. I thought that our idea for the video was good as we have used children of the same age group of our target audience. However due to the weather conditions and the lack of time our video did not turn out as well as we had hoped. Because of the rain the sound in our video did not turn out well. Our editing was quite simple. To improive our group needs to consider better time management. At the begening we had problems in choosing what type of story we should go for to meet our target audience. Therefore it took a long time for us to make our story board. We had little time to edit the video. In the future my group and i will need to consider these issues of time.
For our music video we are managing our time better.

Album cover, Magazine advertisement and looking at continuity

For the album cover Luis, Charlotte and I decided to have a person looking into the mirror but there would be no reflection. However we changed tis idea and thought it would be better to have someone else's reflection on the mirror instead of no reflection at all.
Below is the completed draft of the album cover.


I thought that our idea for the album cover was good, but we could have added more with the text within the album cover. We also neeed to use photoshop to edit it better as the image looks a bit stretched. In the image the the reflection in the mirror doesn't use the same hand to touch the mirror as the person on the outside like the reflections should. I will need to consider these things when making my final album cover. I will aslo need to consider the size of the album cover. Doing this draft cover has allowed me and my group to consider how we should make our album cover for our music video.

The Magazine Advertisement
Today in class we were looking at magazine advertisements, to help us to decide how we will make our adverts.
We went into a classroom in order to look at posters. This has helped us to identifiy continuity within all the posters. The house style was all similar, the font of posters, and the size and image of the posters were all similar. the only difference were the colours and the images within the poster. this has been useful to look at as i will need to consider continuity when making my Magazine advert and Album cover. I will also have to keep this in mind when deciding on these similarities with the rest of the members of my group, as we will have to keep to a similar theme. Below are a set of posters we have looked at showing continuity.




All of the posters have the similar house style, font and theme in its pictures. The only difference is the colour and the images itself. When looking at the posters you can automatically tell that there is a connection to all of the pictures and it was all made from one place. This is the effect that me and my group members will have to create whn making our album cover and mgazine adverts. We will have a common theme in our album covers and magazine adverts like the ones in the posters.

Our group has started to draw out our individual album cover designs and magazine adverts. We have looked at different music magazines in order to get an idea of how to make our adverts. We have also looked at measurements of the adverts and identified that within music magazines the adverts for an album and band are usually very small. They are usually smaller than half a page. Even though we have identified this we will be making our advert on an A4 sixe paper, as we thought that it would be more appropriate. We have also taken measurements of the size of the album cover so that when we make it we will have the correct size.
Charlotte Luis and I have decided to keep to a theme of arrows for our album cover and the similar fonts.
I will post up my ideas as soon as i have uploaded the drawings onto my computer.