Final Blog Post

I quite enjoyed this coursework, a lot more than I thought I would. Even though I'm still not taken to the idea of being in my music video and being the face of the main products, it was a good and fun experience. Thank you to all the teachers who helped out during this coursework (especially Rebecca and Mary) and I would like to thank Micky and Trevor also. I happy this is over, so I get to relax a little bit and No more Blogging!!

Final review post

In comparison to my AS blog I have done a lot more work and in a lot more detail. I was more laid back in AS and that meant I missed out a lot of blogs and it wasn't to a good standard and not all that I had to do was on the blog. This year I took on a new attitude towards my work as I saw the error in my ways. One thing I have done well is used more and a wider range of technology as I didn't know much in AS about good sites to use to present my work and how to properly use technology. My research, planning and production blogs are quite detailed. There are a few gaps in my work but i think I have the most important blogs that I need up and in terms of individual blogs, i have a few not too many but that's just down to me and my POOR time management.If I had another chance to do this, I'd spend a little more time blogging and plan my time better so that my blogs were better and also more detailed planning and I'd take more advantage at the research stage.

Evaluation Question 3

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

Music Video

Research

At this stage the main sites that I used were Youtube, Vimeo, Google. I used the Google search engine to gain greater understanding and more information about the theories than what I learnt in class. Youtube was use to look at videos which linked to the theories and to gain ideas from existing music videos to use in my own. I also used Vimeo to look at previous student work in the same way.
Planning

Animatic: The animatic was a good way to structure the music video so we'd know which type of shots would be used at a certain point of the song and also the mise en scene and camerawork.We didn't use actual images for the animatic but hand drawn images (courtesy of Anthony).
Digital Storyboard (Quark): We used images to create a storyboard with details of the types of shots, location and camerawork.

 










Construction
Camera (+ memory cards): We had the opportunity of working with professional, state of the art JVC camera's provided by the media department. This piece of technology was very important in the construction of our music video as if we did not have them we wouldn't have been able to make our music video. We used them to film our footage for our music video at the Barbican. At first, most of our footage were normal shots and cutaways instead of base tracks but after we realised we shot quite a few base tracks. All of this footage saved onto the memory cards and later transferred and saved onto our hard drives.

Sony still camera and Flip Cam: These 2 technologies were used mainly for behind the scenes to provide visual evidence of our filming sessions and how they went and what we actually did on the days we went out to film.

Final cut pro: We used Final Cut pro during the editing process of the music video. The footage that we shot using the cameras was transferred onto final cut and we went through and chose the shots we wanted and that looked the best. We had base tracks as well as cutaways and they were both used to create a sequence and cut accordingly to add structure to the music video and put the right shots in the right place.  When placed onto the sequence they were layered in the style of base track editing.We also used final cut for colour correction to bring out our make up and jewellery and we added slow motion to some sections of our music video.

Ancillary products

Research
Google search engine: This is the main way I researched digipaks and advertisements to gain ideas for my own and to be analytic of others.
Planning: Looking at pre-existing digipaks by previous media students through the blog and looking at actual digipaks by searching on google images to look at typical pop digipaks and advertisements so that I can use that in the construction of my own.. Also using external websites like dafont.com to try and find a font for my digipak. We also did a photo shop exercise in class recreating a digipak for photoshop practice and to be familiar with the conventions and the do's and don'ts of digipak and advertisements.
Construction
Canon: We used a professional canon camera to take pictures for our digipak and advertisement.
Photoshop:For my digipak I used a template to create a four panel digipak. I added the colour I wanted for my background (black) and then my font (fonts from photoshop).All the images that I used I didn't add any effects as I thought I didn't need to add any. The cd was created using the shape took and adjusted the opacity so that the image on the back would be visible and the hole in the cd was created (with the help of Trevor) cut out tool in photoshop.

Blogger (research, planning and evaluation)
Blogger was a good way for us to keep track of our work, for the teachers too and also a way to present my work in a more creative way. Using blogger I was able to create detailed posts on research, planning and evaluation, not only written posts but using external sites like: prezi (powerpoint), animoto, slide.ly and gifs (to present images rather than just posting them) go animate (animation). Also added video's filmed using the flip cam, especially at evaluation stages when we're getting feedback from others.

Social Networking (Twitter & Instagram)
We used twitter so that our teachers can keep track of us while filming and also as a way to engage with possible fans/ to gain fans by talking about what the Candi hearts are doing and getting into character of being a girl band. We also used instagram to put up pictures of our prodction

Evaluation Question 4

We have received quite a bit of feedback from our peers, teachers and target audience members throughout the process planning, production and final products. It really helped to get the opinions of others to see what worked well, what didn't and what could be further developed/improved.

The reaction to my music video at the cinema wasn't what I expected. The response was very good, there were a lot of cheering (which got weirdly louder when I was on screen) and clapping to the beat of the song so from that it seemed like people enjoyed the music video - even though I found it quite embarrassing)- but I was happy with the response. After the screening of all the music video's I asked a few people what they thought of my video

Youtube links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFrxAfFgQ6o&feature=youtube_gdata_player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDe323sq93w&feature=youtube_gdata_player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE2laH5kBfE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

What would I change after hearing what people thought?

One of the things that I picked up which was quite interesting was  a comment on our performance. we need to be more confident with our performance. I understand where this person was coming from with this comment and it did seem like we weren't as comfortable and confident with what we were doing so I think this is one thing I would change. I think if we got more comfortable with the performance aspect it'll look more realistic and not amateur.

Digipak and Advertisement Feedback

What have I learned from this feedback?

The one comment that they both made as a way to improve my work is the image on the inside of the digipak, as it covers both panels the cd covers my face and it takes away the group aspect as you can't see me. It is something I wouldn't have noticed myself and it's definitely something I would change so that all members of the group are visible as that is  really important.

PROGRESS REVIEW: End of Project

Looking back at my blog this year, I realise that I have had to put a lot more detail into my posts than in the AS year. I added a lot more technology to my blog than last year, and I think this adds depth to my research and planning and makes the blog more interesting.
I think that I could have had an even better blog, as I know that leaving things to the last minute and not blogging constantly throughout the project lowered the quality of my posts. However, I believe that my blog contains quite a lot of useful information which shows the steps I have taken to reach the final stages of my production work.
My blog could have been better if I had accounted for my research in even more detail, and the planning posts are probably not as complete as they could have been. If I could do it again, I would try to keep up to date with everything I do as I do it and not try to remember it when I finally decide to blog about it.

Evaluation question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I decided to do a camtasia showing the feedback for our rough cut, final video and my ancillary work. The main thing I have learned is to not be so judgemental over my products, as the camtasa will show below. I wanted to be a little creative with this question.

Evaluation question 3

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

I have used technology in many different ways for media, for example whilst planning our video we created an Animatic storyboard. Below is the creation. We used this to structure our video, although we did change a few things during filming.

We also used prezi to create a pitch presentation. You can view this in the blog post for it from last year.


Below are embedded powerpoints and prezis I created to show how I used technology.

A2 media evaluation 2014 from Larah Yearwood