Final Products

Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 3

EQ3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

All throughout the project, in order to determine whether or not our products were done to a good standard, synergistic and appropriate for the intended area, we had to collect feedback and then make changes accordingly. Much of this involved small changes and decisions that were influenced by other members of the class throughout the project, but also we also had a couple of group feedback sessions during the project to collect a large amount of insight at once.

We had 2 of these feedback sessions, first for the rough cut and then second for the final cut. For each of these we all watched each other's cuts and wrote notes on the good points, bad points and ways to improve them. The feedback from our rough cut was particularly useful as it revealed to us the main fault that it had at the time. The lead singer was not looking at the camera enough and so could not engage with the audience enough. This allowed us to remedy the problem when we went to our next shooting day by getting many more shots with the singer looking directly at the camera. Other problems that were highlighted at this stage were a couple of instances of lips being out of time, slightly off editing in parts, dark lighting in some of the shots and the need for a greater variety of shots. These points were all taken seriously and we addressed each of them at our next recording session so that we could make the final cut as perfect as possible.

The second feedback session where we discussed our final cuts went very well for our group. We received a lot of positive feedback with only a little of negative feedback that focused on lighting issues. Some shots were a little darker as we were using mostly natural light which diminished towards the end of the shooting sessions. People who left positive responses were particularly impressed with the lip-syncing and good editing of the video. This was relieving as there had been some concerns about these elements in the rough cut responses. We also posted the final cut onto social media sites (right) to get more instant feedback from people around the target age group. The responses were again very positive (although they could have been a little bias since we knew the people who responded).

The overall very positive response to our final cut shows us that we achieved our objective of creating a professional looking video. Before making the ancillary tasks we made initial sketches on paper to use as a template. These templates were useful not only to guide in the creation of the pieces but also in collecting initial feedback from our classmates. In doing this, the designs that we settled on were already approved by the rest of the class. We also interviewed a couple of our friends to see what they thought about our final cut and ancillary task work. This video was planned and developed together with the rest of my group so it will appear on all of our blogs.

Evaluation question 3 feedback clip from Jamie WGSB on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 2

How Effective is the Combination of the Main Product and Ancillary Tasks?

For our media project we produced a Music Video, Digipak and Magazine Advertisements of an album to promote our chosen band, OneRepublic.

In order to get professional standard and marketable products out of the final music video, the digipak and the posters there has to be visible and effective synergistic links between them. With this in mind we created a house style that is present across all three platforms.

 Early within our project the group brainstormed ideas and themes to link in to our song choice and came up with the idea of secrets of which our song is named, we then linked this to the idea of confession and religion which became the bone theme for our project. This all became evident across all of our projects.

Our music video was set in a church which was an ideal setting which could portray our themes of confession and religion. The video was also a full performance based production, since this is typical of the indie rock genre that we had chosen. This also allows us help the audience easily identify the band and what instrument that they play.

With the video being a performance based theme we empathise on the illustrations of instruments and portrayal of the lead singer, who is commonly the most well known member of the band.  Therefore we used many close-ups of the singer to connect him to the audience.

After creating the video, me and the group decided how to plan out our Ancillary Tasks, beginning with drawing them and seeing how they would look and if they fitted what we want to present. We also used the planning to make sure we would include aspects to each task which would link them together and help our target audience recognise the band and link the three platforms together after seeing any of the three projects. We mainly achieved this through chosen images of the band that can be seen within the music video.

The Digipak shows the entire band on the front cover wearing the same formal clothing that they wore within the music video, and although on the front cover they are cut out of the background, the inside cover of the Digipak has an image of the band before their performance with the church setting visible.

At first, the chosen images were not used originally on our Ancillary Task. Instead we used a dove pattern and a simple black and white colour scheme. We thought the dove and the black/white contrast would tie in well with the themes of religion and confession, due to the doves being a symbolism of freedom and purity and often referenced within the bible. The black and white colour scheme works with the bands formal wear within the video, which became the house style of all three tasks.

The same fonts were used across the Magazine Advert and Digipak since this would create familiarity and be easily recognisable by the audience, helping the the two products to be associated.

Ultimately the aim of our project was to create a promotional package for the band. We was able to achieve this through using shots and close ups of the band within the video, my group and I then decided to cross-reference the Tasks and transfer across images to the Ancillary Tasks.

We also kept the colour scheme and imagery consistent across our print products that we created to co-aside with our house style.

In order to improve our task more images of the church could have been included in our print products for example a stain window effect could have been used as a pattern. This would have given the audience another clear link to our video and would have also helped represent our chosen themes.

Evaluation Question 1

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

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? From the beginning of the project it was clear that the products that we were going to make had to in some way use, develop or/and challenge the conventions of similar products that already exist. Before even starting our work on this project the work we did for our AS grade showed how important it is to make a product that would fit in with existing products. The cello plays an important role in the song so it is showcased. The first choices we made that directly influenced the forms and conventions we had to look into were the initial choice to make a music video of 'Secrets' by One Republic and the follow up choice that it would be a performance style video. One Republic is an American alternative rock band who released 'Secrets' in the album 'Waking up' in November 2009. Focusing our research on the alternative music genre was the first step on way way in the project. Due to the high diversity, alternative rock as a whole is a very wide genre of music so finding conventions that occur in every single video is impossible. However, there are many conventions that are common among them. Performance videos (or semi-performance videos,) for example are quite common among alternative rock music videos. This could be partly due to the fact that alternative rock bands often have diverse and interesting instruments, not generally found in regular pop or rock bands. For example both a violin and a cello are used in 'Secrets' by One Republic and 'Bittersweet Symphony' by the Verve. These instruments define these songs and make them unique and so we decided to showcase them in our video. This also occurs in the official video for 'Secrets' with many close-ups and medium shots. More so than the violin, cello or any other instrument, the singer has to be showcased. This is a broad convention that is important throughout any genre of music. The singer has the most attention of all of the band members and usually is the star of the video even if it is narrative based. This is because the lead singer acts as the 'face' of the band. A band's image is formed through the energy and appearance of the singer in videos and at concerts as well as through the music itself. Another common theme is to have the singer look directly at the camera for much of the video. This creates a connection between the song and the audience and makes the video more enjoyable to watch. We included this aspect in our video (shown above) to great effect. The other band members that were shown in our video did not look into the camera like the lead singer as this was also common throughout alternative rock videos. They are depicted focusing on their instrument, moving their head to the music and sometimes closing their eyes. Instead of focusing on their gaze, the instruments and the manual dexterity of the musicians were outlined with close ups on their fingers whilst playing or shots of the drums being hit etc. This is another common convention among performance videos as it shows of the musicians' skill and has potential to emphasise each instrument's key moments.Setting was another key choice in the making of our music video. Many performance music videos are set in wide open places with the band in the center. This creates a cool effect and we wanted to do something similar. Early in the development stage we created a mind map linking words from the song to other things that we could use throughout the project. One of these themes was the idea of 'confessions' developed from the title, 'Secrets'. This word gave birth to the church setting idea that went on to become the final location of the video. The church we eventually did the filming in had a wide area to work with similar to the open areas in existing music videos such as Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Fortune Faded' and the Kaiser Chiefs' 'Never Miss a Beat'.