FINAL POST (L)

Goodbye media courseworkkkkk, even though we have hated you at times (most of the time) we are pleased with you now, but i can't say we'll miss you too much. Although when we're doing theory we probably will :)
Anyway very glad it's all finished :) :) but this will be our final blog :( byeeeee.

Enjoy looking at our work.. be kind,

much love, sades and dais xxxx

Video on you tube.

I've put our film on you tube so other people can see it, here it is.. It doesn't look like it is very good quality on here but just thought i'd put it on :)



x

Evaluation.

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

For inspiration for our media product we researched into similar styled music videos through youtube and google. We looked at Hey There Delilah by the Plain White Tees, You’re Beautiful by James Blunt and James Morrison videos. We chose to look at these because they feature a male solo artist of an indie/acoustic genre and have very similar voices to Joel. Their music could be considered as easy listening and shares the same target audience that we are aiming to appeal to which is teenage males and females but could also appeal to an older generation as it isn’t offence in any way. The way his music is and how we presented him meant that it would not just be aimed at a niche audience as his style is respected and in no way too different or far out there, this is really good for marketing him as an artist as although there will be key audiences who will favour him, he could appeal to anyone.

We noticed that in these videos, they focus a lot on the artist and use very simple mid shots or close ups on the artist. They usually follow a narrative to tell the story of the song so we have followed this generic convention and done the same for our media product. We have used simple shots of the top half of Niall (as Joel) and filmed him singing to the song in front of different backgrounds. We have used black and white shots to represent Niall’s thoughts and flashbacks and to act as the narrative to the song. We did want to include a split screen shot because we saw this being used in Hey There Delilah and really like the effect, however, we’ve had lots of difficulties with our filming and after losing our work, we had a limited amount of time so stuck to a simple theme throughout.

We researched on google, the album art for James Blunt and Jason Mraz. We had originally wanted to use a hand drawn design of Joel for our front cover but found this too difficult so used an image of Joel that we took instead. We chose this image because it represents Joel as a clean cut, attractive young male and will appeal to our target audience because females could be attracted to him and males could relate to him and his style. For our ancillary tasks we wanted to maintain a similar style through all of our products so we have kept a very simple design and used black and white images of Niall for the front and back cover as well as our poster.

Some key shots in our video, show our variety in mise en scene, narrative and different camera angles. We chose just afew varied shots from our video to analyse;

We chose to do this shot because it was really clear and good lighting and we set it up so it looked more personal, Niall is singing right to the camera and it's like the camera is another person and he is telling them to "please come back tomorrow". We initially had him push the camera away to show him trying to be alone but when we watched it on the mac's it didn't look how we wanted it to and just looked like who ever was holding the camera had fallen over or something! Anyway we really like the set up of this shot, the hand held camera ties in with the memories where he is with the girl and the background looks like he is in the middle of no where on his own.

We chose to have some shots of Niall singing on the stairs because we liked having the background change and although that highlights our editing skills it was very simple camera angles, so here it is nice to look up to him. The mise en scene is also really nice because of the large window behind him, the audience will picture him sad, alone and looking out the window. The large window also helps with the lighting, because some of the inside shots can be pretty dull.

This background is my favourite I think because it is really different, it is just a photo wall and it shows good times behind him looking pretty down. We would have liked it if just the bottom right handcorner had been filled too but we ran out of time and photo's! However because it's just white it still looks good and the whole shot is a real contrast from the plain backgrounds.

I really like this shot because it is so clear with the lighting and everything, this is because it was another outside shot. We chose to use one of the walls outside Daisy's house to show even more variation in his location and the backgrounds, because even though he is singing about going nowhere the stuff around him is changing and it's like places are passing him by without him noticing.



We chose to do this shot because again it was changing the angle of the shot and was almost like a birds eye view. We wanted to do this so the video wasn't too boring and didn't just change the backgrounds. Originally we had a proper birds eye view shot of Niall singing lying down but we found when we uploaded it, it was far too dark and you could see the shadow of us filming with the camera over him. So this shot is a high angle shot to make up for not being able to use that. He is really looking up into the camera, he looks very vulnerable as high angle shots will always take away status from the person/object in the shot and we wanted him to look like this, as if he was pleading. It also is another varied background and it is on the stairs near the window so we benefited from the natural light.

This shot was really just to use another background for our editing, we chose this background because it looked a bit unusual and different to just a plain wall. There was also a spotlight above him so even though it was inside it was still plently light enough. We also wanted the spotlight to be a literal representation of him feeling as if he was in the spotlight and thats why he wants to be alone etc. It's a simple shot with him just looking pretty sad and singing the song but with the editing and cutting it was made more interesting.

This is a shot taken outside of me (daisy) and Niall in the car. We wanted to show a flashback of Niall arguing with a girl to show why he may be sad during the song and to represent their relationship troubles. We think this is a key shot as it creates the narrative to the song and by showing a scene where Niall is having relationship difficulties is something our target teenage audience can relate to and empathise with.

This shot is another of the flashback shots taken outside in my garden. We tried to make it look as if Niall and his girlfriend are walking along together during a happy period of their relationship. We wanted them to be holding hands to represent their closeness.

Here we have done another shot for the flashback scenes. We wanted to include a shot of me looking happy and walking along and then a shot of Niall looking sad to show the contrast in moods and make Niall seem more alone and to create sympathy from the audience to understand how he is feeling.

Here is a shot of the clock which we have focussed on at the start of the film. We have slowed down the pace of the video to represent that time is going slowly for Joel (Niall). We have entered a title of the song and the logo in the bottom right hand corner and used a simple white font to fit with the ancillary tasks. By adding this title it makes the overall video look more professional and shows the audience who the artist is and the name of the song.

Ancillary tasks, here we have evalutated our ancillary tasks - click on the picture to make it bigger :)

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


Script:
Hopes and main aims for how our end product would turn out.

Sadie: When we decided to do a music video we did this because we knew we could use copyright free good music, my brother - Joel Owen. We pictured it being a narrative video and to show Joel in a vulnerable light, making it a video that audiences could empathise with. We wanted our ancillary tasks to premote our video and to reflect the video in some way. We also wanted them to be eye catching yet look simple, not too quirky as it wouldn't reflect his soft style music.




What research we did and how that helped us with chosing what are tasks would look like.
Daisy: We researched similar artists to Joel, their video's and album covers etc to give us idea's of what are target audience like and what works well. We researched James Blunt, James Morrison and more accoustic male artists and saw that a lot of them have narrative video's and are really focused around the artist, by this we mean unlike some abstract video's they almost always feature the artist acting or singing rather than another storyline or something different. We used youtube, wikipedia on how video's were made, and google images to look at album covers etc. Similarly with CD covers for these artists they were often very simple and focused on showing the artist, so we knew that we would be using a photo of Joel on the front for definite.

How they worked as a campaign together.

Sadie: Originally we wanted to include more key images from our video in our ancillary tasks however, when we tried this by using the clock it didn't look right and we had to consider audiences who may be buying the CD but not have seen the video it would have looked random and it really took over the whole backcover and didn't have the effect we would have wanted. Our tasks have linked in other ways, we have used black and white clips in our video - these represent memories and flashbacks. We made our photo's on our poster and CD cover black and white cos they looked more effective and proffessional against the background but then they also linked back to our video and gave it the same theme and mood. Advise from our audience was to keep the colour scheme through out in all our ancillary tasks so all the backgrounds for the whol CD case and our poster are cream. We have used the same fonts and similar page set up. The font we chose for 'Joel Owen' is a loopey handwriting looking font, this was to look like it remsembled his signiture, it sort of adds personality to them. Where we have the other text we have used just a simple clear font, this is like the font we use in the video as the titles, this is because we are just showing information and again our whole theme is simple and more subtle.

What worked well, what might you change if you could?
Daisy: We really liked our end products as a whole and think they worked really well together, if we were to do it again though we would definitely have stuck with using Joel as he would have fitted the role of himself much better, obviously! We may have taken more varied pictures to have been more experimental, but in the end we did like it and although it was hard work making the video and ancillary tasks around Niall it worked in the end and they made a really good whole product together.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Here is an image I took of Sadie showing fellow media students our filming during editing:


Here is an image of a group of students. (Media and non media) viewing almost the whole final product.)

We have shown our work throughout every stage to our class to receive feedback on what they think works and what changes we should make. We have listened to their feedback and made any changes necessary and it has been a great help to know what appeals to our target teenage audience. We have shown them our ancillary tasks and asked them to chose between different images so we could find the perfect one and in the last stages of designing our album cover and poster, we asked fellow students from media to chose which ones they preferred and adjusted the image and text on the poster to get it perfect. We followed the advise about colour schemes and used the photo's that the class preferred.

Throughout filming and editing our main product we have shown it to the class and received their feedback on what shots they think we should include and whether they thought our idea worked and fit with the genre of music. Overall we received really positive feedback and after showing our final product to friends and other media students, they have really liked the idea of having Niall sing in front of different backgrounds and many have said how good the editing is between shots to get the timing perfect. They also said they like the idea of using black and white shots to represent Niall’s thoughts and that it works well to convey the narrative of the song.

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

Here are some images of us working on our editing using iMovie:

We've created links to the technology that we used and written about how they helped;

Originally we were using the VLE it’s learning to blog, and this is the site we used last year but we transferred our blogs onto blogger and it has been much easier to work and present all our work. On blogger you’re able to have comments, share your work with more people and set it out with video’s and photo’s in an interesting and clear way. We can also add links and attachments to other websites and it’s easier to navigate around.

We uploaded our music onto itunes from Joel's album and then selected the track and cut it to the length we wanted as we didn't use the very end of the song because it was the chorus being repeated lots of times and it made the song really long so we cut it to the legth we wanted with just the chorus once at the end. We then took the track from itunes to put onto imovie.

We uploaded all our filming onto imovie where we were able to edit all our clips and put them together with the track into the music video. We used the time line to get the editing and lip syncing in time. It allowed us to put effects on our filming such as slowing down and speeding up clips and also making some black and white.

Throughout working on our products, media technologies have been a great help to us. We used google and youtube to research into generic conventions of our indie styled music video aswell as wikipedia to research into the artists for extra information. By using the internet for help and inspiration, it gave us some really good and useful ideas into what we could do for our own product and has helped us to appeal to our target audience by following these similar styles.

Wikipedia was really helpful as there was information on how video's were created and cost's, planning etc so we followed typical rules and generic conventions from the information we found.
We used slide share to upload or powerpoint on planning and research when we first started this was a really good piece of technology as it enabled us to actually have the slideshow on our blog and looked better then people reading our blog don't have to open up the file or look at it one slide at a time.

We have used photoshop for all of our ancillary tasks and to be able to use the software included has helped us to create a final product which is to professional quality. Through the use of the software on photoshop we have been able to make quick changes to any area necessary aswell as use the effect software on texts and images to enhance our products and make them more exciting and appealing to our target audience.

Without the access to all these techonologies our media would have really suffered, especially without imovie and photoshop. These were the most important programmes and how we created all our tasks. The other websites provided us with research and images and video examples. Without these we may have not made our video suitable for our target audience or have fitted in with generic conventions of acoustic music video's.

Overall product analysis.

We were very pleased in the end with our final product, although we've had toubles and worried about it, it turned out okay and we were able to get it all done and finished in time. If we were to re do it we would have got all our filming done earlier so we could have had more time to re do shots so the editing would have been perfect. However we are glad that we didn't get all our filming for our original idea's finished because we prefer it now and we have spent much more time on it and our idea's and shot's have got better every time we have filmed. Our ancillary tasks did look better with the pictures of Joel on before but that is because his style and look suit our theme because our theme was created around him, but saying that I think we made them look as good and as close to how we wanted them as possible with our pictures of Niall. Our products worked really well together and when completed look like a successful marketing campaign. We had the background of a lot of research to work on and help us with our making of our products and that helped with deciding what worked and what didn't. Our blogs were always kept up to date and have been a successful way of keeping track of the whole process of making our final music video. Overall we are pleased with our work and after changing our mind a fair few times all our products have turned out how we'd hoped if not better.

x

Starting our evaluation.

Now all our tasks are completely finished we have been starting our evaltuation, we are filming parts of it together tonight and then we will be doing a directors commentary on our video, and then upload pictures and write about the rest of our tasks.

x

Actual final poster.

Today when we looked at our poster again and showed it to Mr Nicole we made some slight alterations because i felt that ONE OF THOSE DAYS needed to be bigger and more obvious so this is what it now looks like and we just need to print it off to hand in.

x

Music Video finished :)

Our video is now completely finished and we have showed it to Mr Nicole and Mr Ford and had really good feedback. The main thing is the fact that at times the miming goes out of sync which we know and have tried to get as good as possible but there are times when Niall actually wasn't in time with the music so it can't be completely perfect but we do that and will have to talk about it in our evaluation. It was really hard to get it perfectly synced and I think if we had been able to continue to use Joel i think it may have made it easier but i am pleased with how it has turned out in the end and in my opinion it is as close to perfect timing as we can get it.
I've put it on my memory stick and will upload it to youtube tonight so people can watch it and we will be able to analyse it for our evalutation. We just need to put it on a DVD for tomorrow to hand in with our print outs of our ancillary tasks.

x

FINISHED FINAL CD COVER & POSTER, AWH YEAH :)

Today we have been able to get so much media done, our video is very very close to being complete just a few minor tweeks to be done and we have completely finished our ancillary tasks changing it to Niall etcccc.

CD cover: (front, inside and back)

Front:

Inside:

Back:

We added some more tracks to the back of Joel's cd to make it an album rather than a single because now it doesn't look so empty and it premotes more of Joel as an artist.

Poster:

Our first poster design people really liked as it showed our technology skills and was eye catching, but now with the changes in our video we felt it didn't tie in as well. Also it wasn't at all similar to our CD case so the products didn't seem to be helping each other and working in promotion together, so instead of our first design which was this:

We started pretty much completely again and came up with this:

This poster really links in with the theme of our CD cover and is again really eye catching with the big photo of 'Joel' (Niall) he comes across really happy interesting artist, the information is simple and yet effective. When showing the class again, although they had originally liked our poster before they agreed that this tied in really well and looked proffessional.

x

Editing.

Our film is very nearly finished being edited it is just the last verse that hasn't quite been done. This is because someone else needed our mac but it's so nearly finished and has gone really well, I added some black and white parts as memories and linking to the story line of the song. Tomorrow we just need to finish the very last part and it should be as easy job cos i know the shots i'm going to use they just need to be synced and then add the titles at the start. Whilst i was editing Daisy was changing our original designs from Joels CD cover to the one with Niall as Joel using the pictures we had taken earlier, all our ancillary tasks are done now and we have decided together on our final drafts and definite idea's so now for our evaluation. :)

x

Back Cover designs - JOINT BLOG

Me and Sadie have just come up with a new design for the back cover. Originally we wanted a large image of a clock and a small image of 'Joel' (Niall) looking up at it but we decided we didnt like this design and made a new one.

Here is our first design:



We then changed it to this:




We preferred this design because we thought the image of the clock and Niall looked abit out of place so instead we made the image of Niall slightly bigger and moved the text into the left hand side.

CD cover.

Daisy uploaded the pictures that she took of Niall earlier while i was editing, we wanted to take pictures similar to the ones i'd taken of Joel before cos we had really liked them and then we needed a full length picture looking up that we would use of the back cover.

This is that picture -

He is looking up because i think he will be looking up at the clock in the top corner.

We chose this clock picture:
Because it was the whole clock, then we were able to cut it to the size and shape we wanted to go in the corner or at the side.

And cut it like this to fit in the corner:

This is what our first finished backcover now looks like:

Although it links to the video etc I'm not sure that I really like it, it looks a bit random and for audiences just buying the CD who have heard the track and not seen the video it wouldn't make sense. We also couldn't get the fuzzy edge away from around the clock so it doesn't look perfect.





However we have just tried it with no clock.. and it looks really plain but this is what it is for now.

We have kept the colour theme right the way through and set it out like the front cover as this was what our class feedback advised us to do. We have our company logo "DS09" (Daisy Sadie 09) on it and his name and the track.

x

Editing.

Today me and daisy have been in the mac room all day editing and it has gone really well. The first half of our video is completely edited and looks really good. It took us ages to get the miming perfectly in sync with the song, we had taken lots of shots of the same line in different places so we were able to find the one that fitted the best, although sometimes it seems to fit right then Niall goes a little out of time but when we listen to the actual shot it's Niall going a bit out of time with the music when we are playing it for him. This is because he didn't know the song very well so we have got it as good as we can but on the odd occassion I can see Niall go wrong and it messes up the timing a little, but we can't blame him so we have tried to use the best takes.
We have had a little break from editing because another person is using the same mac as us so wants it just for this lesson so we are using this time to put those photo's of the clock onto the back cover and also upload some pictures that we took of Niall earlier to finish our ancillary tasks.
Us editing our CD cover and blogging :) i wasn't falling asleep i think i'm mid blink ha
x

Photo's

At home I took some photo's of the clock that we used in our video so we could pick one to use on the back cover of our CD.

I have taken pictures that aren't the full clock because we want it in the top ledt hand corner really big and a full length shot of Niall smaller in the other corner looking up towards it. People who see the video and the CD will see the connection between the two and should recognise the clock.

I'll save these to the computer at school tomorrow and addd one to the back cover.

x

Editing.

Uploaded all our shots today and have began to cut some down and start to fit them together so it is looking good, there are one or two shots where the lighting isn't very good against the pink background and the white background so we might not use them or see if we can alter them to look better but the rest seem to have worked well. Our original opening to the video still fits in so that is ready and edited the rest just needs to all be synced with the lyrics which will be the hardest part, but i am having a day of media tomorrow and staying after school so have plenty of time to get it PERFECT :)
I want to do some more scenery shots though for the instrumental parts linking to time passing by so tomorrow at the end of break we will set up a camera on the crowds of pupils to then film them dispurse when the bell goes and we can fast forward that to make it more interesting and also get some more shots of the sky, birds etccc and we have the clock clips from our previous shots.

x

Filming.

We did our new filming with Niall last night and it went pretty well, although our video has changed a lot from our original idea's, we still want the element of time going by but him feeling like he's going no where, so we have filmed him miming but in loads of different places so with all different backgrounds and then for the instrumental bits we still use the clock going round shots and drink going down and then we filmed the sky and we want to speed it up and crowds moving round etc.
I am about to upload our shots onto the mac now so hopefully it will look good :)

Some pictures of our filming yesterday,

I am doing this face because Niall was giving me back chat.

Niall in the first background - trying to learn the lyrics!

x