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.