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

the art of giving by kate fleury

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

Ancillary Task: Magazine Advertisement for the Digipak

Ancillary Task: Digipak

Ancillary Task Photography

When picking a location to shoot our digipak and magazine images in, we wanted to create a recognisable setting which created synergy and links to our music video. This being an isolated setting.
Charlotte and I took ourselves to Sale Canal due to its isolated qualities and photographed a wide range of shots, as you can see from the raw pictures below. To make sure we had a large choice when it comes to editing my digipak and magazine advert we shot images from a selection of angles and backgrounds.
Our artists costume and makeup was also an aspects that we took into consideration. We thought it would be effective to slightly mirror the costume used within our music video, this being a puffa coat and striped pants. The makeup follows its conventions by being quite simple with subtle pops of colour.

Final Music Video

Shooting Day

In order to produce our digipak photos choosing the location and costume was the most important aspects. The idea of creating recognisable synergy within our artists campaign influenced our decisions as we wanted to allow the audience to easily identify each media text as a whole, which would give our artist more opportunities such as merchandise due to a franchise being made through synergy.

This is created as the actors within my music video wear a similar costume, this being oversized, unique and vintage clothing. Also it allows for us to follow the codes and conventions of the genre whilst still creating an artist with an image the target audience want to identify with (Dyer). The location within my main product connotes isolation and seclusion in which to create cross media convergence we wanted to mirror this with the location of our ancillary tasks, digipak and magazine advert. We chose a quiet, enclosed canal, this fits within the ideas created by the music video and also conforms to the conventions of the alternative genre.

Costume:

Location:

Editing 4

As we become closer and closer to the end of our editing for the music video we feel the need to continue making improvements in order to make the video more interesting and impressive.

During this editing sessions we added more footage in order to fill in any gaps we had and to continue making the narrative flow. After doing this we made sure everything matched and made sense before continuing.

We also worked on the beginning of the video by adding a 'logo' for our artist so the audience will instantly recognise the artist.

To make our video more fascinating we added different transitions and effects on to our footage, for example the 'earthquake' feature and the 'trails' effect:

I thought it was a good idea to experiment with different aspects of Final Cut Pro X within our music video as such effects like 'Trails' conveys ideas of distortion and unstable which links nicely within the representation of our characters and their teenage codes and conventions.

From certain feedback of our rough edit we were told some of our shots weren't as visible due to the use of the natural low key lighting, therefore taking this on board we lightened up the dark shots using the editing tools on Final Cut. This makes it much easier for the audience to see what is going on in certain parts of the narrative as the shadows are removed.

Our Final Steps:

• We will continue to add more experimental effects on to our footage in order for the video to be as exciting as possible and be different throughout.
• Make sure certain parts of the video are perfect, for example the cuts of footage on the beat of the song and the lip syncing.
• Add more footage of our actresses singing along to the song whilst looking at the camera towards the end of the video in order to conclude the narrative.

Our product so far:

Editing 3

During this editing session, Charlotte and I completed a great deal of the video as we placed the majority of the footage into the areas of the song that fit nicely, for example, the lyric "There's something about hanging out with the wicked kids" we placed the footage of our actors entering the car encoding the idea of the group of girls 'hanging' out together. We really liked the idea of creating meaning to the lyrics and visuals (Goodwin) so therefore thought of a way in which we could incorporate symbolism into our video. To achieve this we created a pulse of red (using the filter 'Colour' which added a red tint to the footage) in order to emphasise the meaning of the word 'love' and convey the idea that it is being shown through these group of teenagers.

To successfully create this we used the 'Fade' transition whilst using the blade tool to cut a section of the footage to place the red filter on, this created a pulse like effect.

We also layered our footage and the sound in which we suggested would be a good idea due to our past experience with our AS coursework as cut and deleted some of our footage which meant that it was hard to get a continuous narrative throughout.

Synergy Research

How I might edit my Images

When producing my digipak it means I will have to edit my the images I take, so in order to be prepared for this, experiment and gain knowledge I took some sample images of our artist and used 'serif draw' in order to edit them.

I used inspiration from existing media texts like 'Tove Lo' and 'Lorde' to create these due to the fact that they fall under the same genre, alternative genre, as my artist which means that if I recreate some of the aspects from certain examples in means I follow the conventions of this genre allowing the audience to decode this and identify my own work as part of this genre.

In order to create synergy with my music video to the song 'The Love Club' I thought it would be a good idea to use a red tint to the image as throughout my video this occurs when the word 'love' is sung. This would connect both media texts and be very effective for the audience identifying the artist and her campaign of the video, digipak and magazine advertisement.

Rough Video Feedback

Following on from our Rough Edit my group and I thought it would be a good idea to gather some feedback from out target audience. Here we sat down three people between the age of 17-18 (fitting with our target audience of teenagers) to ask their opinions on our music video after watching the video on YouTube.

This helped us with changing up areas that our audience did not enjoy or thought needed improvement.

We concluded from this piece of feedback that our music video was easily identified as an alternative/indie genre which is useful to identify as it means we are producing a conventional piece of media text.

Our focus group told us that they enjoyed the montage aspect of the video alongside the red filter used to connote love and symbolise the friendship within the video, these are definitely areas in which we will keep.

However, in order for us to use this feedback and improve our music video they gave us some criticisms. They advised us that more lip syncing of the artist may be needed throughout the music video as there isn't much of it towards the end of the video. Also they noticed a vertical shot was place in the middle of the narrative which needs to be removed as suggested it would make it "flow" a lot nicer.

My group and I also thought it would be useful to ask some of our friends for their opinions on it due to the fact that they also fit within our demographics:

It was seen that the same opinions and suggestions were coming through and we will take this on board as a group and improve on this feedback.

Institutional Information on Digipaks

Research into Digipaks

Research into Magazines

Rough Edit

Editing Day 2

struggled finding song

match shotwith beat

importance of beginning -u&g, Goodwin

font

what we achieved and used

Due to complications from our last editing session we had to re upload our chosen song 'The Love Club by Lorde', it took us a few tries in order to get a good quality version of the song. As a group we then listened to the whole song all the way through before placing in our footage on Final Cut Pro X, this allowed us all as a group to come up with ideas of what effects to use and how we would place certain pieces of footage.

To begin with we added a rough title sequence at the start of the song as this is what conventionally happens at the beginning of a music video, I then acknowledged that there was a strong beat throughout the song and thought it would be beneficial to empathise this by matching the footage with the beat. This not only puts focus on the song but fits really nicely with the edgy style we wanted to achieve. I feel this decision is helpful as the beginning of a music video is extremely important in the aspect that the interests of the viewer has to be taken into consideration and created such an exciting start to a video gratifies the audience. Not only this but the fact that our footage matches with the songs distinguished beat reinforces Goodwin's idea of the 'visuals matching the song' coding for an interesting video and fitting with its conventions.

In terms of what we used on Final Cut Pro X, we used a lot of the blade and zoom tool in order to get our shots cut precisely in order for certain parts of the narrative to fit with the beat and the lyrics. We also chose the font to introduce the song with which it a basic and plain type of font as this is conventional for our genre, alternative.

Editing -Session 1

Following our final day of filming it meant we had to begin editing the footage. The majority of this editing session was spent putting on the footage along with our chosen song Lorde's 'The Love Club'.

This was extremely time consuming due to the fact that we hadn't of had a great deal of practise with this which meant we struggled.

However, this gave us a good starting point for the rest of our editing sessions as all our footage was on the Mac along with the song.

Due to the fact that this was all we had time for we just familiarised ourselves with Final Cut Pro X to again make better progress in our future sessions.