Goodbye Blog.

So its been a long journey, two years of blogging. I can say that I've learnt alot throughout this process and I think I'll miss blogging (just a little though) and I want to thank the teachers for teaching me and to everyone I worked with. It was fun. And I'm kind of glad its over. BYE. :D


I think this is the shortest sign off ever. Oh well.

FINAL GOODBYE

This is the end of a long journey, and I have had a roller-coaster ride through the two years that I have done media, and I am sad to say that it is going to end. I am really going to miss blogging, and I'm glad that I can say that I have learned a lot by doing this course.  Thank you to all my teachers through out the two years I've been in City and Islington Sixth form College, it wouldn't have been possible without them. I have made a little video for this momentous occasion.... 

SIGN OFF!

Well, we come to an end of this whole coursework process - and I'm glad.

Here's a video illustrate how I feel (well for the most part).

Expect I won't see you again because I'm in A2 and won't be doing this again next year.
Anyway, Goodbye now!

FINALLY MEDIA IS DONE. BLOGGING, MUSIC VIDEO AND ANCILLARY!

WOW! COME A LONG WAY AND FEELS GREAT TO GET THIS PART OF MEDIA DONE. BEEN A VERY TIRING LONG COURSEWORK. MOST EFFORT NEEDED FOR THIS. AND HOPE AT THE END WILL BE WORTH IT. TIME TO 'KINDOF' RELAX AND LETS CELEBRATE TO THE FINISHING OF MEDIA COURSEWORK 2012. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY !! :D :D :D :D MY LAST EVER EVER EVER EVER BLOG THAT I WILL EVER DO YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

BELOW IS THE MUSIC OF CELEBRATION- COME ON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Evaluation: Question 4

4. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

On Tuesday 6th December all the A2 students went to 'Screen on the Green' in Islington to watch all our music videos. I remember it being fun from last year when we went to watch our thriller openings, so I was excited to see everyones music videos. Our video was the second one shown and it caught all of us by surprise because we weren't expecting to have ours shown until near the end. So I didn't manage to record it but people generally enjoyed it. It was interesting because I could spot all the little things that were wrong with the video.

For the most part everyone really liked the faces we had in the chorus as we used people from our college and the shots that we had of the London Eye at night. No-one really had anything for us to improve on except that the faces could have been all in equal space, as some had more background space than others.

I think its important to know how the audience feels about our video, because if this was for real you would definitely want to know what they think before you release it to the world. And because this is our first video, we would want it to be perfect in order to show our artist in the best light possible. Obviously we didn't have enough time to ask lots of people but in general if I was able to make changes and improve on it I would probably spend longer filming the shots I filmed, especially the moving ones of the London Eye, as they aren't steady at all. I would also film in better weather (obviously) and have more costumes and different looks for our artist as we only had one. If I had more time, I would develop the storyline in more depth. I think this wold make it look more like a conventional pop video. 

Here is Viet and Mehdi giving me feedback on my advert and album cover. They had similar opinions that my album cover and advert were quite good and there is a clear link between them. They also had the same view about my inside cover, that it could have been better because it looked plain. I agree with them as I already knew the outside cover was much better than the inside, so I was prepared for them to say this. If I was going to do it again then I would get a really good picture of the London Eye and make it spread over both covers. I would also give the CD a design that linked to both my ancillary products.

When we finished our video on final cut pro, before we published it we got some feedback from people just to make final checks that we hadn't missed anything. We asked throughout the process of making the video, as we didn't want to make the whole video and then realise or have someone tell us that something didn't match up or a shot looked a bit dodgy. Some of the things people told us to change was to mix up some of the faces because we had at first put lots of faces from one location together. 

Overall, I think our video was executed quite well despite all the obstacles we had.

EVALUATION QUESTION 4 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Music Video

Tuesday 6th December at 12:30 all us A2 media student went to 'The Screen on the Green" to watch our music videos on the big screen. 

Although I didn't catch the part before our music video actually started playing - that is because the sequence is done at random - we did get a warm welcoming applause. As you can see from the video, we did get a good reaction after our video had finished. The chorus especially received the most reaction, as people were enthused by the fact that they were seeing familiar faces, or their face, on the big screen. These audience reactions led me to believe that our music video was effective in engaging the audience, thus teaching me that the idea of including familiar faces was successful. My target audience then would be interested and engrossed in the video as they can relate to it and feel more included. 

After the screening was done, I went outside and asked some people, whom I thought would be of my target audience, some questions about my music video so that I could establish what worked and what didn’t work. 

Malika supported my comment about the chorus (different faces) reaching out to my audience. She confirmed that my choice of locations were good is showing the beauty of London. Most importantly, she told me that music video looked realistic/common of other music videos and that she would be more interested on the son after watching the video.  Her feedback ensured me that my target audience was being attracted and interested, which was my goal. 

Zahra gave me a lot of feedback. She agreed with our choice of shots, our costume and our locations – which were all chosen in attempt to show the beauty of London. She also acknowledged our amplification structure of which is why we went from night to day. According to Zahra editing was effective, especially the chorus, it was just enough and was also kind of humorous. From this I learned that my music video was effective in reaching my target audience through editing, mise – scene and camera shots.    

Jade informed me that my first shot set the scene really well and it evoked anticipation in the audience – as Dan told us it would before – that was really good. However, she also told me that the costume let my video down, and I understand this. If I were to do this video again I would change the costume and make her more stylized, to make it more conventional of a music video. We chose that costume because it was floral, but we could have still stuck with the floral idea and still been more extravagant and eccentric – as most music videos do. For example, in Katy Perry – California Girls Katy Perry was very stylized wearing a costume that over exaggerated her theme or candy.

     With the locations, she informed me that the wide range of locations was a good choice and she got what we were trying to generate to our audience – the beauty of London through lots of different locations.  She also understood the message behind the chorus – they beauty of London through the diversity in it. Her feedback inferred the success of our music video, however her feedback also enlightened me to the fact that the stylization of the artist is vitally important as in some ways it could make or break a video. 

Response on Vimeo

Ancillary 

I interviewed Chloe who is not a media student. When asked about any visual links, she was able to recognise the guitar and the colour scheme as a visual link throughout my digipack and also realized that it linked to my video and complemented that the choice of colours were well chosen. She felt that my goal to portray the guitar as an important aspect was successful.

     However when asked about the costume, similar to Jade, she felt that the costume let us down.  She explained that it could in a way be acceptable as it makes my artist more relatable, but she then went on to say, as I said before within Jade’s feedback reply, it’s conventional for artists, especially on their digipacks, to be heavily stylized.

     As I agree the front cover, as she noted, “can look a bit boring.” This because it’s very plain and bland, so if I were to do this again I would think of trying to be more creative with the front cover – not so much in terms of the images or props, but the design and graphics on it, to make it that little bit more eye catching.

     She informed me that she felt that the best panel was the back panel, because it was very creative and looked good on the page contrastingly she felt that the inside left panel lacked creativity, thus labeling that panel as her worst panel.

     Overall she advised that biggest improvement could have been the costume – which I totally agree with. 

Sorry about all the noise in the background – it was immediately after lesson, so a lot of people were still in the room and more were coming in for workshop.

Questionnaire of promotional package

To gain more feedback for both my promotional package I composed a questionnaire and generated it to both media and non-media student to gain a more general view by asking people who are not aware of things through a 'media eye.' A questionnaire is a good way to gather feedback because I am able to collect both qualitative and quantitive data.

This was my questionnaire:

These were the results:

Most of my participants were female and between the ages of 16-19 and listening to mostly Pop, R&B and Grime. 

The main message behind the music video was about the beauty of London.

a) On a scale on 1-5 how accurate was I portraying that message through my use of:

Generally the feedback of the thing that they thought worked best in the music video was the chorus of different faces. My feedback of the things that worked least in the video were; costume, the lip sinking, and the artist's performance as some said they lost interest towards the end because of this. 

My responses to the think that worked best in the ancillary were mostly the girl sitting on the guitar. Other responses included the incorporation of the colours and just the colours. On the other hand the they mostly felt that the weakest thing was the costume. 

In conclusion the thing that I believed worked best in the music video and ancillary as a whole was the prop of guitar because this set me out from the rest. What worked least me was similar to the opinions to the audience – the costume. Therefore if I were to do this project again I would try to make the link between music video and ancillary even stronger by drawing more on the prop of the guitar in my music video so the prop dominance is equally as that in my ancillary, as this is what my audience feel worked best in my ancillary. Also, to hopefully decrease those statistics of people that wouldn’t be more interested in the artist and her music after seeing the music video and digipack and advertisement, I would recognize the vitally of the artists stylization. As this appeared to be a significant fault, next time round I would put more into her image and trying to portray her as a music artist, rather than an ‘ordinary person.’ Another thing that I’ve realized was lacking is the artist performance. I do notice that she does get more fed up with the video as it goes along, and this was probably because the whole construction became tedious for her, and she maybe wasn’t so enthused because it’s not her work, so she won’t feel the need to push herself. The avoid this problem next time round, I would chose the artist that is within my group, so that they don’t become unmotivated, and also I would try to keep the artist more interested by not packing on work too much but filming in acceptable amounts, so it doesn’t become over bearing. In order to do that I would have to be VERY well planned.
      Although I didn't record it, Dan did mention to me that my artist on my front cover was too small with might make her harder for a shopper to identify her. This criticism I believe is true. The fault lies within the picture of the guitar, I took that picture at a wrong angle, so they guitar looked too big. I notice notice it until I was trying to put my artist on the guitar but I couldn't do anything about that because I didn't have the guitar anymore. To avoid a similar problem in the future, I would take more alternative pictures of the guitar and also be more planned so that I schedule in a date where I could take the guitar again in case my pictures didn't turn out so well.

Lastly a main issue of my promotional package is that my target audience is a bit too specific, and it is harder for my products to reach people outside of my target audience. This is a big problem because her music and image is being very refined, thus her promotion is not as successful as it would be if the products reached a more boarder audience. Therefore to me more successful next time round I would try to included elements in my promotional package that can entice a wide, diverse audience, for example I would included conventions that are found in other genres not just pop. 

EVALUATION QUESTION 3 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Here's a video of me answer question 3 :)

JVC Cameras – Because we wanted to get the best quality images we used JVC cameras, which are HD. The camera allowed us to capture motion images and audio. We used the audio recording to mark the words that the artist is singing to the audio on Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Pro – Through this I could add in videos and blend different scenes together with effects like cross fade for seamless transitions. I could also add in an audio, them mark to beat so that I can cut the music to the beat and make one music video.

Photoshop – Photoshop contains tools that enable me to cut out the artist from the background and place her onto the guitar. To add realism, I painted in the shadows and added in the Gaussian Blur to soften the edges.

On my inside left panel to get that wall background I got a grudge texture off Google, then drew lines for perspective then faded out the grudge texture so that its not so clear so that we can get the feeling that she is leaning against the wall.

Illustrator (I forgot to talk about this in my video) – I used Illustrator to draw out the artist name and floral graphics using the ‘pen tool’, which allows me to make any shape I want.