My evaluation video can be found on a DVD.
Friday, 17 April 2015
Final Thoughts and Video!
Here we are! My last ever Media Studies post! After nearly half a year and over 80 blog posts I have finally finished my coursework. I have mixed feeling of relief and sadness, relief that I know I have finished everything to the best of my ability and sadness because I have enjoyed creating this blog very much and it ending will be very surreal for me.
I feel that I have developed multiple skills throughout the course, especially in editing which I would like to carry into my future career!
To the moderator, hello and welcome! Please feel free to browse through my whole blog, to see how much I have progressed and developed from the research stages right through to evaluation. You can view any of the posts I have made by using the navigation bar and drop down menu located on the right of this page.
Thank you for taking the time to look through it!
Daniel Opie's A2 Media Video
I feel that I have developed multiple skills throughout the course, especially in editing which I would like to carry into my future career!
To the moderator, hello and welcome! Please feel free to browse through my whole blog, to see how much I have progressed and developed from the research stages right through to evaluation. You can view any of the posts I have made by using the navigation bar and drop down menu located on the right of this page.
Thank you for taking the time to look through it!
Daniel Opie's A2 Media Video
Wednesday, 15 April 2015
Evaluation Question 4
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Media technologies were used extensively throughout the construction, research, planning and evaluating stages of my project. Firstly I used the web browser Mozilla Firefox to research existing artists, their websites and general information on making a music video using the browser. Firefox is known as having a lower risk of experiencing problems such as unexpected crashes and viruses, This made research less stressful for me as I knew I was protected from unexpected problems. Firefox also has an inovative tabbed browser system, built in pop up ad blocking and a page bookmarking service which I found saved me a lot of time. Firefox also has a useful location search which meant I could easily find where I needed to travel and how long it would take in order to reach filming locations.
YouTube was also a useful tool for me, it offered free, instant videos which I could watch for research on existing music videos. I could also use YouTube as a video hosting website so that I could publicly distribute my finished music video and evaluation to the public. It is also the second largest search engine in the world with 4 billion views of videos daily, meaning I would have a larger audience base to watch my finished project.
I used my email (Google Mail) several times throughout my project in situations such as contacting my dancers. I found it easy to use and very effective as it had sorting features which meant I could sort emails into various folders for organizational purposes. It was also instant and very popular meaning I could contact every one I needed and would get responses very quickly. The social networking site Facebook allowed me to contact other dancers. And SlideShare was used by me to upload PowerPoints to the internet for my evaluation and research stages.
A Panasonic HC-V210 was used during the filming and construction stages of my video and evaluation. I found the Panasonic to be very useful as it was simple to use, lightweight and compact, and had a long battery life. This meant filming was relatively stress free as I didn't have to focus on how the camera was performing and instead just focus on filming the subject. A useful feature of the Panasonic was also the twist able display, which meant I could film people at different angles whilst easily monitoring what footage I was recording without effecting the quality by constantly moving the camera to see the screen. One problem I did come across with the camera however was that the quality was al little low and I would of preferred it to be of higher quality in order to get better quality images into my video. I also used a Velbon DV-7000 tripod which was stable and had a fluid base so that the movements of the camera were smooth and I used a SanDisc Ultra Card which was used to store my captured footage.
Blogger was used a lot throughout my project. It provided me with a unique and stylish way to present my coursework using many different media types to keep it interesting such as text, videos, images and links. The helpful interface meant that I could easily edit my posts whenever I wanted.
Final Cut Pro X was my only editing software when creating my music video and evaluation and it never let me down. I found all the tools really easy to learn and were very effective in creating a good quality video. Since my video needed a lot of editing the cuts between shots on the beat of the music, I found the blade tool immensely important to me. Furthermore the program easily let me sort out all of my "rough footage" into organized files so that I could retrieve them when I needed. In the end the video could be easily exported using Final Cut Pro.
During the stages of my ancillary text production I used Weebly, Photoshop and InDesign. Weebly was a free to use, website creator and hosting service. I found it invaluable during the production of my artists website as it had templates and easy to use tools that meant I could develop the templates into exactly what I needed. Photoshop allowed me to develop my editing skills further by offering us a very good quality and extensive program to edit my pictures to fit the needs of my digipak. I did however find Photoshop very hard to use with its many different tools that were hard to find. Lastly InDesign allowed me to create a very good quality digipak. InDesign had a good layout and process of placing images into the right positions so that I could create a professional looking digipak.
Media technologies were used extensively throughout the construction, research, planning and evaluating stages of my project. Firstly I used the web browser Mozilla Firefox to research existing artists, their websites and general information on making a music video using the browser. Firefox is known as having a lower risk of experiencing problems such as unexpected crashes and viruses, This made research less stressful for me as I knew I was protected from unexpected problems. Firefox also has an inovative tabbed browser system, built in pop up ad blocking and a page bookmarking service which I found saved me a lot of time. Firefox also has a useful location search which meant I could easily find where I needed to travel and how long it would take in order to reach filming locations.
YouTube was also a useful tool for me, it offered free, instant videos which I could watch for research on existing music videos. I could also use YouTube as a video hosting website so that I could publicly distribute my finished music video and evaluation to the public. It is also the second largest search engine in the world with 4 billion views of videos daily, meaning I would have a larger audience base to watch my finished project.
I used my email (Google Mail) several times throughout my project in situations such as contacting my dancers. I found it easy to use and very effective as it had sorting features which meant I could sort emails into various folders for organizational purposes. It was also instant and very popular meaning I could contact every one I needed and would get responses very quickly. The social networking site Facebook allowed me to contact other dancers. And SlideShare was used by me to upload PowerPoints to the internet for my evaluation and research stages.
A Panasonic HC-V210 was used during the filming and construction stages of my video and evaluation. I found the Panasonic to be very useful as it was simple to use, lightweight and compact, and had a long battery life. This meant filming was relatively stress free as I didn't have to focus on how the camera was performing and instead just focus on filming the subject. A useful feature of the Panasonic was also the twist able display, which meant I could film people at different angles whilst easily monitoring what footage I was recording without effecting the quality by constantly moving the camera to see the screen. One problem I did come across with the camera however was that the quality was al little low and I would of preferred it to be of higher quality in order to get better quality images into my video. I also used a Velbon DV-7000 tripod which was stable and had a fluid base so that the movements of the camera were smooth and I used a SanDisc Ultra Card which was used to store my captured footage.
Blogger was used a lot throughout my project. It provided me with a unique and stylish way to present my coursework using many different media types to keep it interesting such as text, videos, images and links. The helpful interface meant that I could easily edit my posts whenever I wanted.
Final Cut Pro X was my only editing software when creating my music video and evaluation and it never let me down. I found all the tools really easy to learn and were very effective in creating a good quality video. Since my video needed a lot of editing the cuts between shots on the beat of the music, I found the blade tool immensely important to me. Furthermore the program easily let me sort out all of my "rough footage" into organized files so that I could retrieve them when I needed. In the end the video could be easily exported using Final Cut Pro.
During the stages of my ancillary text production I used Weebly, Photoshop and InDesign. Weebly was a free to use, website creator and hosting service. I found it invaluable during the production of my artists website as it had templates and easy to use tools that meant I could develop the templates into exactly what I needed. Photoshop allowed me to develop my editing skills further by offering us a very good quality and extensive program to edit my pictures to fit the needs of my digipak. I did however find Photoshop very hard to use with its many different tools that were hard to find. Lastly InDesign allowed me to create a very good quality digipak. InDesign had a good layout and process of placing images into the right positions so that I could create a professional looking digipak.
Evaluation Question 3
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In order to gain a greater insight into how my audience felt about my finished media product I found three members of the public who fitted into my target audience group. These three volunteers where shown my music video in full before being asked a series of questions regarding what they saw.
Interview Stage
I also asked 27 other people who were various in age, race, beliefs and audience to fill out a questionnaire after watching my video. The aim of all this was to gain insight into what my target audience were interested in and whether or not my video reached their expectations. The interviews and questionnaire confirmed to me that the audience liked my different approach of making the whole video a live dance concept. I confirmed that my target audience were people who frequented clubs and parties, and enjoyed upbeat and happy music. They are mostly aged between 15 and 30.
I also learned through my audience feedback that certain parts of my video could definitely be improved to make it more appealing to my target audience. Specifically the feedback told me that although many people liked the use of writing the lyrics in the music video, they believed the font would be better if it was changed to a more clear and neutral colour, this would make the video feel more professional. Feedback also told me that the video would be better if more dance types were used to keep it interesting and stop it from being repetitive and boring.
At the beginning of my project during the planning I used another questionnaire to gauge the opinions of my target audience. From this I gathered that my audience were interested in concept music videos that included dancing and were in colour. Therefor I matched my video to these preferences so that I could best attract my target audience.
In order to gain a greater insight into how my audience felt about my finished media product I found three members of the public who fitted into my target audience group. These three volunteers where shown my music video in full before being asked a series of questions regarding what they saw.
Interview Stage
I also asked 27 other people who were various in age, race, beliefs and audience to fill out a questionnaire after watching my video. The aim of all this was to gain insight into what my target audience were interested in and whether or not my video reached their expectations. The interviews and questionnaire confirmed to me that the audience liked my different approach of making the whole video a live dance concept. I confirmed that my target audience were people who frequented clubs and parties, and enjoyed upbeat and happy music. They are mostly aged between 15 and 30.
I also learned through my audience feedback that certain parts of my video could definitely be improved to make it more appealing to my target audience. Specifically the feedback told me that although many people liked the use of writing the lyrics in the music video, they believed the font would be better if it was changed to a more clear and neutral colour, this would make the video feel more professional. Feedback also told me that the video would be better if more dance types were used to keep it interesting and stop it from being repetitive and boring.
At the beginning of my project during the planning I used another questionnaire to gauge the opinions of my target audience. From this I gathered that my audience were interested in concept music videos that included dancing and were in colour. Therefor I matched my video to these preferences so that I could best attract my target audience.
Evaluation Question 2
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
By the end of my project I looked back on my main product and ancillary texts to see if they linked well with each other. I discovered that my digipak in particular had the indie feel that I wanted, it used minimalistic features, black and white pictures and an old typewriter style of font to give the effect of an independently and artistically created CD digipak. Although I used black and white pictures while my actual video was all in color, I still believe that the digipak emulates the happy, and upbeat style that i used in my video to represent the emotion of the lyrics. The use of dancers in the video as pictures on my digipak also help the audience to link the digipak easily to the video.
My front cover of my digipak is taken from one of the scenes of the video. This I hope will allow my audience to recognise the digipak to the video they will of seen. I used the logo that I have on the website as the logo on the front of my digipak, I hope this will create brand recognition of my artists name and logo. And I positioned the logo sideways in order for it to resemble more of an Indie digipak.
In addition I wanted to link the digipak to the music video further by adding some of the most prominent lyrics as stamps on the digipak. I feel this will add to the linkage between the digipak and songs lyrics while also emphasizing the message of the song. Lastly I created a logo for my record label Test-Tube Records and added it to the back of the digipak as well as a barcode to make the digipak look real and professional.
I aimed to link my artists website to the video in the same way as my digipak. The website was created to look exciting and interesting to the viewer. For example the front page is all one image to create a large impact. However in the middle is just my music video which adds to the simplicity of the website. I also used the same blue logo on the front page of the website so that it could be easily recognized as my artists website.
I researched many different artists website during the creation of my own, including the websites of Avicii, Calvin Harris and Hudson Mohawke, all of them are in my music genre and aim to attract my target audience so i tried my best to create a similar website to attract the same audience. I tried to replicate the number and content of the pages, images, style and color of the website. In conclusion I believe that both my ancillary texts and video aim to represent each other so that they are all innovative and easily recognisable as my artists work, creating a desired brand and image of my artist.
By the end of my project I looked back on my main product and ancillary texts to see if they linked well with each other. I discovered that my digipak in particular had the indie feel that I wanted, it used minimalistic features, black and white pictures and an old typewriter style of font to give the effect of an independently and artistically created CD digipak. Although I used black and white pictures while my actual video was all in color, I still believe that the digipak emulates the happy, and upbeat style that i used in my video to represent the emotion of the lyrics. The use of dancers in the video as pictures on my digipak also help the audience to link the digipak easily to the video.
My front cover of my digipak is taken from one of the scenes of the video. This I hope will allow my audience to recognise the digipak to the video they will of seen. I used the logo that I have on the website as the logo on the front of my digipak, I hope this will create brand recognition of my artists name and logo. And I positioned the logo sideways in order for it to resemble more of an Indie digipak.
In addition I wanted to link the digipak to the music video further by adding some of the most prominent lyrics as stamps on the digipak. I feel this will add to the linkage between the digipak and songs lyrics while also emphasizing the message of the song. Lastly I created a logo for my record label Test-Tube Records and added it to the back of the digipak as well as a barcode to make the digipak look real and professional.
I aimed to link my artists website to the video in the same way as my digipak. The website was created to look exciting and interesting to the viewer. For example the front page is all one image to create a large impact. However in the middle is just my music video which adds to the simplicity of the website. I also used the same blue logo on the front page of the website so that it could be easily recognized as my artists website.
I researched many different artists website during the creation of my own, including the websites of Avicii, Calvin Harris and Hudson Mohawke, all of them are in my music genre and aim to attract my target audience so i tried my best to create a similar website to attract the same audience. I tried to replicate the number and content of the pages, images, style and color of the website. In conclusion I believe that both my ancillary texts and video aim to represent each other so that they are all innovative and easily recognisable as my artists work, creating a desired brand and image of my artist.
Evaluation Question 1
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
During
the research
stages of my video, I quickly found that the music videos in my songs
genre were almost always concept with unusual and controversial images
to keep the audiences attention. Examples of these are Voices by
Disclosure, King by Years & Years and Storm Queen - Look Right
Through (MK Remix) I also found that a lot of Electronic
Dance music videos often featured a representation of the audience
dancing to the video's song such as Sigma's Nobody To Love and Freaks by
Timmy Trumpet. I realised this was done so that it related
more to the targeted audience which is young people in clubs, and they
do this by resembling the scenes that you would find at the target
audiences favorite place. This in turn reminds the audience of the
enjoyment they have at similar scenes such as clubs and beaches, the
audience then subconsciously recognise the video as a reminder of the
good times they had. Keeping
this in mind I decided during the planning process to keep this concept
theme in order to appeal to my target audience who were already familiar
with the music video conventions in this genre of music, however I
wanted to make my video stand out to my target audience
with a fresh and unique style of various dance types all performing
their own dance to my song. I found that sticking with the typical
stereotyped music video for electronic dance allowed my video to fit in
with other professional videos but it also offered a alternative new
concept of dance video that differs from others since at no point does
it show the artist or any other actors, where other similar dance videos
do, such as Michael Jacksons Black or White video, this has the same
idea of different dance types dancing to the same song. And for that it
was considered a great video as it was far from what was considered a
typical pop music video. However mine differs further as Michael is
present through much of the video and my artist isn't. I believe this
keeps the audience interested and stands
out from other videos that offer the same style and images that are
stereotyped with my target audience. This I hope challenges the usual
conventions of my genre, and offers something new to the audience.However many parts of my video did include conventions of an indie music video, Going back to my blog post detailing the conventions of an Indie music video I found that some of the typical conventions were similar to my own. For example a large part of Indie music is not following conformity, and by using concept music videos to express this. I felt my video did exactly that with its concept style of just dance. Indie music videos often express the lyrics of their song through the visual images of the video, the video I produced had a complete focus on the dancers and the equality of them together, this I felt did exactly that of visualising he lyrics. Also my locations which I intentionally chose to be urban and more easily represent locations that my audience could recognize such as small dance studios, school classrooms and town halls which is a typical trait of Indie videos. I also utilized handheld camera movements which followed the dancers so that the audience felt they were watching in real life. It also made the video feel more exciting, the handheld technique is often used in dance music videos to represent the energy in the dancing. These techniques reached my goal of making the whole video feel more indie. And the dancers performing live in my video follow the usual characteristics of a pop music video or boy/girl band.
Following Goodwin's Theory allowed me to follow the conventions of professional music videos. For example Goodwin suggests that most music videos visuals relate to the lyrics of the song. So for my video I made frequent reference to the lyrics DANCE by displaying imagery of dance. As well as creating a link between the visuals and music by editing the cuts between shots to sync with the beat as well as the falling editing shot with the dropping sound in my song. Lastly I used Goodwin's theory, notion of looking to replicate the typical genre characteristics found in electro music videos with my belly dancers. By using voyeuristic visuals in my video I hope to attract a larger male audience which resembles the aims of professional artists videos. In conclusion I think the use of dancing throughout my video both conforms and challenges the usual conventions of an electro music video. It conforms as electro music videos often use a lot of dancing to better relate to the young target audience that are sterotypically viewed as enjoying dancing at clubs. And I think it challenges the conventions of professional music videos as mine is purely dancing with no narrative, images of the artist or instrument. Both of these factors allow my video to appeal to the target audience while also offering something new that I hope stands out.
Start of Evaluation
After finishing my music video, digipak and website the only thing left to do is the evaluation stage! I will be answering the following questions by writing out the response onto this blog and then by creating a visual evaluation response video using Final Cut Pro X.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Creating my Website
To create my website I will use a free only website builder called Weebly. It is the most popular free website builder and hoster, mainly down to its unique modern templates and easy to use tools.
Starting with it was easy as I chose the picture scroll design that was popular in my website research. I then added pages and started to add things like text, buttons, links and media. I fixed the colour of my website and placed my RAYGE logo in the top left.
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| Editing the page name. |
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| Adding tour dates to my website. |
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