What have you learnt from the evaluation feed back?

Rough feed back from friends on the Music promotion video

It was clear when asking friends and family to watch our footage and comment that there was clearly not enough footage and although it seemed to role together it could have been put together better to create a more flowing video.

After mentioning that our original idea was to have an interview mixed in with the footage, it became clear that  the percentage of views believed that this would have made our project more sucsessfull.

 After this first viewing we knew we needed to add alot more footage and then we did go film again, ( yet we lost this footage as our photographer (james) broke his arm at the concert and still has the filming to this day.)

Digipak feedback

The main thing said about the poster and DVD cover was that you could see the link, the audience liked the way that the colour scheme linked and that the pictures were also linked. They also said that they felt that the DVD cover worked better than the poster, that it looked like it had more work put into it as the poster was in a way bland and a bit empty.

I also, before the feed back, had left of a age limit on the DVD cover, which as noticed by the audience, to compensate for this i put o warning on the DVD cover saying  “parental guidance, explicit lyrics”. then i showed it again to the same audience who said that this completed the cover and was now a complete sucsess.

Social networking feed back

On completion of our digipak, i went onto my facebook page posting a message to all my freind, ( some studing a-level media and some not) asking a few questions about my whole project including the blog.

In what ways does my digipak including the dvd cover, poster, promotional and video remind you of a real media?

It follows a real promotional video time line, using titles coming in to advertise the DVD and the bands music over the top which is commen in the promotional music video. The way that it is fast pace, and to the music also ment that it kept the audience interested. It was also said that the fact we filmed it live was sucsessfull for the genre of the baand, but would not of worked with another genre.

What do you believe are the strengths of the whole project ?

•  the colour scheme
• the photos
• the union jack theme
• the music

What do you belive where the weaknesses ?

• the filming ( this came up the most when asking this question, it was felt that there was more film time needed )
• the editing ( however we argued that we didnt want to change to much as we wanted that realistic edgy feeling to fit the genre of indie rock )

Overall the feeling was that our work was good but we should have spent more time working on the filming. in my personal opinion i feel that this is in some way true, it is not that we didnt spend enough time on the filming and editing but more that we lost footage and then when trying to re-film it was cut short ( due to james breaking his arm ) and also that we did not communicate as a group as sucsessfully as possible. we seemed to each take certian roles, mine being the blogs dvd cover and poster and we all shared the pre-production. i believe we ould have worked better as a group improving our over all project.

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

Our Media project used alot of technologies in all areas to create a sucsesful digipak, this was written in our bibliography, these included :

• Mac computer (construction,reaserch, planning production and evaluation)
• Camera ( video and still photography) (constructiona dn production)
• Hard drive ( construction and productuion)
• Youtube (research, production and evaluation)
• Blogger (Construction, Planning and evaluation
• WordPress (evaluation)
• paper and pens/ scanner ( construction and planning)
• Myspace (research and planning)
• google (research and planning)
• photoshop (construction, production and planning (drafts of poster and DVD cover)
• Microsoft word ( Proposal, Pre-production, planning, deconstruction and research)

These all influenced our project strongly.

Especally the software on the mac including photoshop, imovie and the acsess to the internet, it ment we were able to cut and edit our footage and edit our photos, add words, chang colours, deblur ect. if these technologies had not been so advanced our project wuld have been alot harder.

Using websites such as google, myspace and youtube ment that we were able to get different ideas fromworldwide meaning that we had a vast view of ideas and feedback. We also acsessed blogger and wordpress, this ment that we could keep on track with outr projects, realise what we had left and get feedback.

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

Our ancillary tasks consisited of a DVD cover and a poster advertising the bands new DVD.

we decideed to use a local band for all of our tasks in out digipak, this was because we knew the memebers of the band, they were easy to contact, and work with amd we wanted to be able to use them in the video, so we could have live footage, rather than using actors to play there parts.

As a group we decided from the begining that we wanted all of our tasks to link. to be able to to theis we wanted a theme to run throught that wasnt just a photo of the same band.

When reaserched into , it became apparent that the band had a type of logo of the union jack. Thi gave us the thort that this will run through as well as the theme fof what we were advertising . we also decided that we would expand on this using the colours red white and blue to interweve with the union jack, and futher linking all the products.

we did alot of reaserch into the venue for shooting the video and ended up filming in a couple of different places, we felt , although not intentional to begin with that it was a good idea, it ment that the audience would think there is different gigs on the dvd. which is what we want to achive. we first laned to use screne shots of this filming for our ancillary tasks but when put on to photoshop the photos werte blurry and did not tye in. so we later used photos of the band posed, ( after getting permision from the band) as shown on the group blog at http://mjcproductions1.blogspot.com/ 

we decided to keep both the DVD cover and poster fairly basic, inkeeping with the indie genre of the band, yet linking them all through pictures and colours.

although the font is simillar theought it is not the same as we felt that different things and to been shown differently and that the way words such as “The Hype” were written would be different for the words “availible now” as we wanted the name of the ban dand other various things to stand out more.

we also did alot of pre-planning and production to create the cover and poster, doing sketches and brainstorms to get ideas flowing. this prosses was also usefull when it came to filming as we sketched a story board and brainstormed what we thort would be needed. it was obvious from our pre=production that all three items in our digipak would intertwin.

when creating the poster and DVD cover i tryed to keep the same theme and scheme running through out so that people can relate and recognise the bands advertisment, meaning that fans would recognise them more easily in the shops. we also decideed to use one of the bands real songs to give it more selling potentional.

In what ways does my media use, develop and challange the conventions of real media’s ?

Our media project uses, develops and challenges the forms and conventions of real media projects. My group have managed to do this by originating our ideas and building on them by researching into products that are already on the market.

My music promotion video uses the conventions of other media’s in the contemporary market, even down to basic design.

To develop and improve our video we used real media videos to contrast with, and borrow ideas which we agreed were satisfactory and appropriate for our project.

Below are examples of real music promotional video screen shots that we have used as representations of the media we were looking at. These music promotion videos are specific to our gene of Indie rock.

By looking at these real contempory media’s I was able to use them to take idea’s for our product, this also meant that our media would challenge, develop and use real media’s. This has improved my groups media.
The first examplw is of “The Killers” music promotional trailer for their album “Read your mind”,( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7tsVI2jNHk). In this screen shot there is a shot of the band playing together, we liked this idea, as it shows the unity of the band. However this video is more about the lead singer as it has allot of shots of him on his own singing, this it not that appropriate for our band as in our band they are all equal. Another idea that we all contemplated on was the idea was a banner across the bottom of the video, advertising their new album and website. This was a possibility for our video but we wanted to focus more on the band and their music .
The second picture is of Kasabian’s promotional video for their album. (I mainly based my ideas on Kasabians promotional video)

By looking back on last years work I was able to use this to get ideas for this project. As last years project was also based on music ( although a different media and genre of music). Noticing that in my evaluation I had stated that my product was aimed at girls I was able to compare what I had done there and realise that this wasn’t appropriate for this indie rock genre. This meant that I had to be specific when deciding on colours, fonts and pictures. Also by looking at last years work, as a group, we decided that we wanted live shots for our cover and poster as posed did not seem to fit the genre, which we found by comparing and contrasting to real media products.

Our Poster also used real media’s. we took basic idea’s such as a title, background photo and logos. We also looked into other conventions such as dates for the DVD realise and tour dates which also appear frequently on posters. For this we all looked at many posters, to get idea’s for our own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTlMl9n2tF4). this promotional video differs greatly from the others we looked at, it was not the band playing live. This video is shots of their music video to writing advertising and quotes. The idea of embedding quotes and writing ( for example stating the production name) gave us the idea of having a title at the beginning and maybe writing shots throughout. The quotes gave us the idea of having their words in our promotional video however we wanted to take a different approach and we decided to, instead of embed quotes, to replace this with shots of an interview with the band. This idea was confirmed when we looked at another promotional video for kings of leon(http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=9421958

).
The third example is of the “Arctic Monkeys” promotional video. The screen shot shown here is of the lead singer singing, this is a good shot as it is a close up. This video is also a live video , however it is different to the live gig promotional video’s as it is a live video of them in a studio recording a song, this is effective as it shows then in there true light.

As we all agreed that we liked the thought of live performance in our music promotional DVD, we decided that this would be or main aspect, meaning we attended quite a few of “The Hypes” gig’s. We also decided that to make our media challenge, use and develop contemporary media’s we needed to look at live performances from other bands, as shown below.

(put in screen shots)

The first shot is that of “She’s so lovely Scouting for girls live London 2010 Party”,(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Zw1tg1vGw&feature=related”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Zw1tg1vGw&feature=related). This Screen shot, like the video, is a live performance by the band.
It begins with a shot of the crowd that has gathered to watch the band, this idea is good as it shows the popularity of the band and advertises them more, as our videos is a promotional video this may have been a use full technique to sell the DVD of their tour, however as the band is a local Portsmouth band their crowds would not reach this scale and therefore would not be appropriate.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTlMl9n2tF4) using there ideas and developing them to fit my genre, and target audience. Developing them by portraying more of the bands image and how the band wants to be portrayed.

Our DVD cover is linked closely with the poster, again using a live shot and keeping the colouring and font the same. However we also considered a price tag and bar code as these are commonly found on DVD covers. We also used the idea of having a list on the back of the gigs that they play at and who and were they are interviewed.