Liv Robinson A2 Evaluation

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

In order to create all three media products, I had to do a lot of research to see what was already out there on the market and learn about the music industry.

Music Video

Before we even started planning our music video we researched different genres to see which one would suit us. We looked at video after video to get some idea of what sort of style we wanted to go for and of course, the genre. After we had spent a lot of time discussing genres, we decided we liked R&B but thought we wanted something slightly different and harder to work with. We found R&B very mainstream, and that is why we then changed our minds and went for something a bit softer and chose the song 'Make You Feel My Love' by Adele, from the pop genre.

Inspirations for the Music Video

We were inspired by a fair few videos that we watched but the one we favored the most had to be Natasha Bedingfield's video 'I Bruise Easily'. In the video, we see her dressed up as a Geisha taking off her makeup and eyelashes etc. We thought this was so effective and when she cries it looks very believable and displays such powerful emotion, yet so simple. As our song choice is a song about love, and fairly sad we decided this would be a good element to include in ours, obviously with some changes. So we decided to have me, (as the singer) to begin with full makeup at the beginning and by the end of the song I had removed it all. This was hard as we did this all in one take, so if anything went wrong we had to start again.

Here is a clip from the video, and the part we were inspired by. In the video, we see Natasha looking natural with hardly any makeup on, and in our first draft we switched between me without makeup singing and then to full makeup and crying but then decided to merge it into one and have me sing the whole way through to make it more interesting.



We also looked at the Adele video but found it fairly boring compared to Natasha's. Nothing seemed to happen other than Adele looking upset in her apartment. However we did like the emotion on her face, and the way she looked down with her eyes. The mise en scene made a difference to and one aspect we liked was the lightning. There was very little light so it was dark and presented Adele to look very lonely which was what the song was trying to portray. The shots used were also ideal for the song, the long distance shots showed Adele alone and made her look isolated to everything around her and the close ups showed us the pain she was going through. Here is a clip of heightened emotion from Adele.



Overall, I think if we hadn't of looked at so many different music videos, then ours wouldn't have been as good as it is, as we needed some good ideas and inspiration to helps us.

Digipak

When I got allocated the task of creating a Digipak, at first I thought it would be fairly easy. I was yet to discover it was fairly hard. For starters, you have to make sure the Digipak has some similarities to the video and follows the same theme. As we all did individual Digipak's I wanted mine to be different to the others. I decided to follow a black and white colour scheme, as I think it looks sophisticated. Taking photos of the Digipak was hard, as we didn't want the photos too be too revealing and wanted to create a innocent looking image. We all worked together for this and experimented with different poses in order to take the pictures and then individually picked which photos we wanted to use.

Digipak Inspiration

I looked at various Digipaks, mainly ones that I liked and wanted to achieve a similar outcome. One I liked a lot, was the Katherine Jenkins digipak from her album Believe. I loved the pictures of her on the Digipak, and loved the colour scheme.








I love this close-up of her face, it makes the image very personal to the audience and attracts attention.

I like the natural pose here, and the look of her hair. I also like the font that has been used for the song titles and think it looks simple yet very professional.

Poster

For preparation for the poster I looked at different artists posters and mainly promotion posters. Most of them I looked at were not that interesting, so i wanted to make mine quite simple but make sure it attracted my audiences attention. I decided to go for a close-up image of my face and then some text below it as I didn't want the text to take over the image.

Poster Inspiration

I especially like this poster of Rihanna's as the image is very striking and attracts your attention. I like how it has sort of a blue edge to the black and white colour scheme. I also like the fonts used and the way they are displayed at the bottom of the image. We looked at several different posters to get different ideas and then created our own. I didn't want mine to look like any other poster so took different ideas from different posters.

Question 2.

Presentation1

Question 3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

During the media process of making our video and then creating my ancillary products i have learnt the difference feedback makes and how to use it correctly.

From the very beginning when thinking of ideas for our video, we presented our idea with a pitch and got a lot of feedback from the class when presenting. Although we got positive feedback from the class, such as they liked our idea and thought it would work, we didn't like the idea in the end and decided to change it. After facing a lot of problems due to different reasons we decided to change our second idea and after a lot of thinking we came up with a final ideal. After discussions with our teachers they agreed the new idea was the best.

During creating our video we were given tips along the way to what we could do and we had any problems we could ask our teachers or other students for some advice or possible help. When we handed in our draft, both teachers watched it and gave us some feedback. For one, our first video was too jumpy and the transitions were not smooth enough so the video looked unprofessional and of a bad quality. We were also told that it would be better if we filmed the video in one shot and didn't pause the camera at all. This would be hard, but beneficial in the long run. If we made a mistake we would have to start again, which we did have to do many times when filming, but it saved us a lot of editing and also avoided bad quality transitions. Here is an example of the transitions we weren't pleased with.




Another piece of feedback was that I had too much makeup on in the video and it was too exaggerated and didn't seem to have any true meaning to the video. As we were inspired by Natasha Bedingfields video ' I Bruise Easily' we realized that she was dressed up as a Geisha so therefore the makeup was necessary and decided to calm ours down slightly. Both teachers told us that the makeup would look a lot better if I looked more natural more like everyday makeup so the video was slightly more understandable and the artist looked better.

Draft- Too Much Makeup

Final-More Natural Makeup
When comparing the two we can clearly see how the more natural look worked a lot better and looked so much more sophisticated and not exaggerated. With the feedback we received we were able to make the video looked better so it turned out useful. To begin with, I disagreed and thought the full makeup look was creative and thought it added some interest into the video but after watching both videos several times, in the end I was pleased with the changes we had made.

After watching the video we noticed there were several shadows around me, so we came up with the idea to use three point lighting so there was no shadow. This, when perfected, which took a while, looked a lot smoother and professional when we had no shadow. This was hard to achieve, as we had to make sure the lights were very bright and all in the right position.

Ancillary Products

When I completed my first draft of my Digipak I was told to improve some of my images and change them around and also to just improve my Digipaks overall look. Here is my before and after Digipak. My cover image had to really attract my audience. Although I liked the cover image of my draft, the image wasn't in good quality so I decided to use another one.

Before



After

After looking at my before and after Digipaks, I can see why the second one is better. The quality of the images has improved and the overall layout is so much better. I think the fonts used in the second one are a lot nicer, and I like the style of the final one.

Poster

For my poster, I decided to use the same image as I used on my Digipak and from several students, I got some feedback.

' I really like the way you have used the same image as the cover on the Digipak, it shows consistency and the image is great for attracting attention'

' I think it looks good how you have used the whole page for the image instead of a smaller image, it looks very professional'

' I like the font you have used for your poster, I think it looks goes very well with the whole style'.

Conclusion

Without feedback I wouldn't have been able a piece of work that was of a good quality. With feedback I have been able to identify areas of improvement and incorporate new ideas into my work in order to make it better and improve it to the best of my ability.

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

Prezi- I used Prezi to present my ideas at the beginning of the course and show my inspirations, and the media I have learnt and used. I used this mostly last year to show my findings and knowledge.

Animoto- Again I used this mostly last year to present work and to present one of my pitches. I found it helpful but limited on the things you can put on to it and I find the limited use of words inconvenient.

Blogger- Blogger I have found extremely helpful and always used it to blog my work and show my progress, mostly in research and planning but also to present my work.

Email- Email I have used to contact members of my group but mainly my teachers if I need to ask them for advice or for some help.

Internet- The Internet has been really helpful for all aspects of my research and planning and to look at different artists and many examples of Digipaks and posters.

Video Camera= Mainly used a video camera to film my video.

Flickr- I think Flickr is extremely useful for uploading images and displaying them in a professional looking way.

Slideshare- I have used Slideshare for presenting my pictures and have created some nice slideshows to display images I have taken for the setting of the video etc.

Scribd- I wouldn't have been able to upload most of my work to Blogger if it wouldn't have been for Scribd. Found it very useful and good to upload Word documents and also Powerpoint documents. Easy to embed into blogger.

Photoshop- I used Photoshop to edit all of my images taken for my poster and Digipak and also to create my Digipak and poster which was very easy to do using Photoshop. It's a great photo editor and I feel comfortable with the software.

Digital still camera- I used a camera for taking all the images for the Digipak and Poster, but also to show examples of us preparing to film the music videos with all of the props and some images of us actually filming.

Blackberry- I also used my phone to contact members of my group and to organize dates for filming and taking pictures for our ancillary products etc.

Facebook- Facebook has been very useful for contacting members of the group but also been easy to chat to them on Facebook to organize things and sometimes to send pictures over Facebook email to put on the blog.