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

In my music video, I think that I followed conventions to a certain extent, although I did also challenge them in some ways.
For example I followed the conventions of a typical music video by using a variety of camera angles and shots. I did this with both my band and my main actress. I used close- ups, long shots, mid shots, shots from the side, and shots from above. The use of a variety of shots makes the video more entertaining and more interesting for the audience to watch, so in this aspect I believe that it is a good thing for me to have followed this convention. I used close ups to show the emotions of my actress several times throughout the video, and this helps make the story more apparent to the audience. As well as this I used close ups of my band in order to emphasise the lyrics at particular times in the video. This helps the audience to recognise the more important lyrics that need to be emphasised, whilst being a very subtle way of doing so.

I used the lighting in my video mainly to show the emotions of my actress. I used black and white lighting at the beginning, and right at the end of the video, to show her being upset, and not herself, and I used bright colours for the middle of the video on clips of her in her second look, which was more gothic, in order to show her as much happier and more comfortable. This technique is often used in other music videos in order to show emotions, as well as to show time in videos, (using black and white for the past). So therefore I also followed the conventions in this respect, however by not using any lighting techniques on my band during the video, I did not follow the conventions, as I was showing the audience the contrast between the two parts of the video.

I used editing which is often used in music videos as transitions between the clips, such as fade to black and dissolve or cross dissolve. This is very common as they are very subtle and effective transitions to go from one clip to the next without the audience realising. Although I did use some of my editing to challenge the typical conventions of a music video. I put some of the clips in reverse to add effect to my video, which is not something typically used, and it did go down well with the audience, as I had specific comments that they 'liked the reverse shots'.

I used mise en scene to emphasise some of the lyrics in my video as well, and to signify this importance to the audience. This is quite typical to see in music videos, however I felt that it was important to include.
For example during the lyrics "So I can burn up bright", I had a shot of my actress going through a path of tea lights in order to who the element of 'burning bright'.

Also during the lyrics "would someone meet me on the other side", I showed shots of my actress leaning against a fence, looking over to the other side, and climbing over this fence, to show her going to the other side.









I also think that my digipak follows the typical conventions as they tend to have a large and eye catching image on them, which is what I have included on mine with the whole of the front of my album as an image of two pictures merged together in black and white, which is very eye catching.
And it includes all of the typical information such as the artist name and the name of the album.
The back of the digipak typically contains a list of songs which is also what I have included on mine. They also usually have the artist or the album name, of which I have included the album name, and a barcode which I have also included on mine.

For my magazine advert, it doesn't follow all of the typical conventions, as it includes screenshots from the actual video, which these adverts do not usually include. However it does follow the conventions in the sense that it contains all of the necessary information such as the artist name, album name, release date, and any reviews or ratings from music magazines.

Finished Magazine Advert

Below is the final version of my magazine advert:

I believe that since the planning my design for the advert has not changed, as when putting together the design I had initially described I liked the way it looked and decided to keep it.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I created a questionnaire in order to gain feedback on my video and ancillary texts, I showed my peers the video and the ancillary texts and then asked them to answer the questionnaire containing the following questions:
1. What do you like most about the video?
2. What do you think the genre of music is of this song?
3. Do you think that the video fits with this genre and why?
4. What do you think could have made the video better?
5. What did you think of the effects used in this video?
6. Do you think that the video links to the ancillary texts? If so how?
7. Do the ancillary texts look like a professional album? If not how could they be improved?

Here is the feedback I received:

1. What do you like most about the video?
The feedback I recieved was that the audience liked the reverse shots I used, and they enjoyed the storyline of the video.

I am happy with this feedback as it shows that the audience understand what is happening in the video, as I did have to change some aspects of it to make the story more understandable after the initial feedback I received. I am also glad that they liked the reverse shots as I was trying to add extra effects to the video and it's storyline to make the message more effective.

2. What do you think the genre of music this song is?
The audience said that they thought the song was alternative, or rock/pop.

This feedback tells me that the audience did understand the song, as they did say the correct genres.



3. Do you think that the video fits with this genre and why?
The feedback was that it did fit with the genre because of the gothic costume of the girl, and the casual costumes the band wore, and that it fits with the genre because it was about freedom and being who you are.

From this I have learned that I suited the video well to the genre, although as the comments were mainly about the costumes it tells me that I could have still done more to suit it to the genre. I could have perhaps thought more about other mise en scene. Although there were comments about the concept of the video fitting with the genre which enforces even more the storyline of the video.

4. What do you think could have made the video better?

The general feedback for this question was that there could have been more shots of the girl getting
changed into her gothic costume.

These comments tell me that I could have thought more about clips to film before I started filming, as I did not think to include any shots of the girl getting ready into her second costume. Although Inam glad that this was the only thing people would change about the video.


5. What did you think of the effects used in this video?
The audience said that the effects were 'very cool!', and that the lip syncing was well timed with the lyrics.


From this feedback I have learned that people tended to like the lip syncing in my video which I am
pleased about as I did spend a lot of time trying to get this to work. I am also glad that hey found the effects interesting as it means that they found the video entertaining to watch.



6. Do you think that the video links to the ancillary texts? If so how? 
They said that it did because it shows parts of the video, with the same costumes and fonts, and that it did fit with the video because the cd cover showed the story well.

I was trying to get the ancillary texts to link to the video as much as possible, so it I'd good that they thought they linked together well. They again mainly commented on the costumes which means that I could have also thought more about other mise en scene.

7. Do the ancillary texts look like a professional album? If not how could they be improved? 
They said that it did look like a professional album as the photography was good, the monochrome/ black and white was creative.

Finally this tells me that my ancillary texts do look professional and would therefore appeal well to my audience. They did not say any ways in which they could be improved which tells my that overall my audience like the product.

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

I believe that my video and my digipak are clearly linked in several ways, I have used the same actors as the band and as my main actress in my video, digipak, and in my magazine advert. On the front cover of my digipak I merged together two pictures of my main actress, as it shows the two looks she had in the video, and therefore clearly links to the audience the texts together.

As well as this I used full body shots of her in the poster wearing either similar, or the same outfit and makeup to what she was wearing in the video. I have used the side plait in my actress' hair for the first look, which is visible in all of my texts. And through the use of dafklipstick and a beanie hat in her second look, I have made it as clear as possible how they link together.


In the poster I used screenshots from throughout my music video in order to include pictures of not only the actress, but also the band. This provides an obvious yet subtle link to the audience between the advert and the video, as well as showing them parts of the story in order to make them want to watch the video. I only used small images as the screenshots so that I could fit a lot of them in, whilst also making it not too obvious, and to almost subconsciously allow the audience to link the two texts together.












Although I did not use the same font throughout my digipak and magazine advert, I did use the same font in the magazine advert, and the album cover

And I then used the same font on the back of the leaflet as I did on the CD and the back of the album.

And although the fonts were not exactly the same in all of the parts of the digipak and advert, I did try to use similar fonts in order to provide a link between them.






The main link between my ancillary texts was the colour scheme, I decided to use a black and white theme, in order to make it simple and so that they easily connected together. It clearly shows the audience that they are all part of the same album, and the feedback I received for this from my audience was that they liked the monochrome look of the album, and that my ancillary texts did look like a professional album.

Also, through the use of the same clothing and look of the band in the back of the leaflet picture and in the video, it shows them to be the same people, and through the image I used on the back of the leaflet it portrays an image of the band to the audience as very fun and different.






In comparison to the the texts I analysed during the planning stage, they tended to show the artist as the main focus of the digipak, which I have not done, which helps portray the image of my artists as different, as i did not want them  to be the main focus of the digipak, I wanted to storyline of the video to be more prominent.
As well as this, the other texts that I analysed usually kept a consistent look and font throughout their magazine adverts and their digipaks. I believe that I have done this to an extent, by including the same people and the same overall look throughout both the digipak and the advert, although I did not make my advert black and white as I did with the digipak, however I do not think this is an issue as from my audience feedback everyone agreed that the ancillary texts looked professional and linked well, as well as having comments that the poster was 'very creative'.

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

Blogger: 
I used blogger throughout the planning/ research, and the evaluation stages. I used it in order to plan everything to do with my video and my ancillary texts in order to make it easier for me to create my product when it came around to this point. I am also using it during the evaluation stage to look at what I have done well and what I could have done better in the creation of my product. I have created a blog for my planning and one for my evaluation in order to do this. I have found blogger easy to use as I have used it previously in my AS Level media, therefore I was familiar with it when it came to using it this year, and I have been able to use it effectively and post regular updates. I feel that during pre-production I used it effectively, as I kept on top of the work the best I could have, however during the evaluation stage I haven't been as efficient with it, and perhaps been better at posting to blogger. I did not encounter any problems with blogger and it was very easy for me to use throughout the process.


Adobe Premiere elements 13: 
I used Adobe Premiere elements in order to construct my music video. I used it to edit my video in the production stage of creating my product. I used this in the school as I did not have the software at home, which did restrict me slightly as it limited me to only being able to edit my video during lessons. I have not previously used this software, although during my media btec I did use a different version of Adobe Premiere elements, so this software wasn't completely new to me, although it did still take me a while to get used to it. I did encounter several technical problems with Adobe Premiere elements during the production stage, in that to start off with I was unable to insert any music into the video, and when I did it didn't play any sound. As well as this I had problems with not being able to actually open the software, and several other problems, such as after I had the sound working it would begin to sound 'jumpy', and miss parts of the song out. This resulted in the technicians resetting my profile a few times, and deleting my Adobe settings. All of the technical issues I had did put me behind where I wanted to be in creating my product although I still managed to complete it within the time frame. I have learnt new skills from using this product such as being able to reverse clips, and I managed to figure out how to do so fairly easily. Overall I found Adobe Premiere elements easy to work with once I had solved my technical issues.

JVC Everio Camcorder: 
I used this camera to film the clips for my video. I used my own camera to do this rather than borrowing one from the school so that I could keep on top of it myself and so that if it was necessary for me to do more filming I could do so easily. I found this camera very easy to use, and also very simple to upload clips to the school computer. I did use the camera for 2 days of filming as I had to film my band and my actress, and I only had to use 2 batteries to do so, which made the process even easier. The camera isn't of the best quality, although I didn't find this to be an issue as the clips still looked god as I was editing them. I didn't encounter any issues using this camera so I am happy with how it went.


Adobe Photoshop: 
I used Photoshop in order to edit the pictures for my digipak, I did this to get them how I wanted them to look before creating the digipak in fireworks. I used Photoshop because I could do a lot with it to edit the pictures that you can't do on much other software. It meant that I was able to give all of the pictures the same colour schemes, and edit out any marks in the pictures that I didn't want in them. I wasn't very familiar with Photoshop as I don't often use it, and as I don't have it at home I also had to use it within lesson times. I was able to use the basics of it although as I didn't know much about it I was unable to do anything particularly complicated to the photos, however I am still happy with the result as I did what I wanted to do to them. I encountered the same problems with this as I did with Adobe Premiere elements, in that I was unable to open it for a while, which did pouch me back and meant that i couldn't get work done when I wanted to. Although I did resolve this issue by going to the technicians several times until eventually I had no more problems with it. I did learn new skills through using Photoshop which I didn't have previously, such as being able to remove small marks from pictures and to sharpen parts of images that were slightly blurry. I did use photoshop briefly last year when creating my magazine, although I used it much more this year and did fin it fairly easy to use.

Adobe Fireworks:
I used Fireworks to create my digipak and my magazine advert, I put the photos in that I had edited in photoshop and then combined them with any other pictures or text that I wanted to create the final ancillary texts. I also had to use Fireworks in school as I didn't have the software at home and I did encounter the same issues as both Photoshop and Premiere elements as there were issues with Adobe in my school account for a few weeks. I have used Fireworks in school quite a bit before, therefore I thought it would be good for me to use this year as I am already familiar with the software. I didn't encounter any other problems when using this and I found it easy to use. I did learn new skills in how to merge two pictures together, as I had to do so for my front cover of my digipak due to my initial idea not working. Overall I got on with using Fireworks very well and I am happy with the end result of my digipak and magazine advert I used it to create.

Finished Digipak

Album Cover:

Above is the cover of my album, it is not the same as my initial design idea which was to have to halves of her face as a before and after joining in the middle, although from the photos I had taken of my actress I couldn't get it to line up properly, therefore decided to merge the two pictures together instead. I beleive that this is still effective as it shows the two sides of the story.

Back of Album:

This is slightly different from what I had originally planned for the back of my album, as I was planning to have the board with the list of songs on it as the main focus, although when editing it this looked more effective as it incorporates the music video better with the digipak as you can see the actress from the video.

Back of Leaflet:

Originally I was not completely sure on how I wanted the back of my leaflet to be, although I knew I wanted it to show the band, although not make them the main focus of the digipak. I decided that as their band name was the monkeys and they are known to be a fun and unique band, I wanted a simple picture of them enjoying themselves for the back of the leaflet, which is black and white to in keep with the rest of the digipak.

CD:

I wanted my CD to be very simple, and to be a block colour of either black, white, or grey in order to keep the digipak simple. I believe that the CD I have created fits well with the rest of the digipak, as well as telling the audience all of the information they need to know about the album.

My Finished Music Video

Above is my finished video for You Me at Six- 'Lived a Lie'.