Project Finished !

I have now completed everything on the music video project, Thank you for reading, Goodbye !!

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 4

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

In this project we used a range of different technologies that helped us create our video and printed products, without them we wouldn't of been able to complete the complex tasks needed to create anything for this project. The first obvious piece of technology we used was the computers and 'Blogger', after being introduced to blogger last year I was quite quick to start on the work this year not being new to the technology like the previous project, the computers we used this year were different though and to be honest they did cause a few problems with progress on our work. The new Apple iMacs were incredibly difficult to get used to and we still aren't totally used to them even now, simple tasks became exceedingly difficult because of the Mac's systems and sensitive mouse, there were also problems logging in where some computers never got a connetion and when others did they kept asking for a product key that I and no others knew. Blogging also became difficult because of filtering, some pages would allow you to edit whereas others did not, some researching was made difficult by this also.
The next piece of technology was Final Cut that was the software used to create our music videos from the footage filmed on our cameras, I was new to this software so I found incredibly complicated and at times very frustrating, getting the footage into sequence was simple when used to the program but it was getting used to it that was the problem. Footage at times caused problems when placed into sequence like when dragging it into place it would create a gap in the music track and sometimes shortening the clip so it fit into place caused some problems as well, most of these problems did disappear once we got used to the program though.
To film the footage we did use college cameras and caught stills for the animated sequence using our own, this was simple because we had got used to our own cameras, getting used to the college's cameras came suprisingly quickly because there settings were similar to our own. Filming the footage was alot of fun but we did feel limited because of the fiddly tripod which seemed to always be out of shape in some way, the quality was quite good on the cameras though so we weren't overly disappointed when the angle wasn't quite right. We also didn't feel limited when filming our ideas, it was difficult to get them filmed but our ideas came out quite well in the final cut of the video.
We didn't however use Web 2.0 technologies as efffectively as we could have, facebook was a technology that we all had access to but none of us used it to it's full potential, none of us really knew how to set up a focus group on it and how to gain members this was a big problem that we should of went into more detail on. We did however try to use YouTube for our videos which was also difficult when most of us didn't have an account and when we did create one uploading our video took an incredibly long time and this became frustrating.
I don't think that I felt limited by technology, it didn't define what I created for the promotional items, I used a few artistic techniques to create my items including watercolours, drawings and sketches, this is the way I like to work and the drawings came out very well when scanned in onto the computer. I did edit them slightly on Photoshop which is a program i'm already familiar with so I had no problems changing things on the drawing that I wasn't sure about. Photshop and Gimp are both programs that through my graphic design and Art & design work, I have got very used to, creating my digipak and advert came quite quickly once I had my intial ideas, I decided not to use photographs due to the animated sequence in our video, I thought due to this scene it would match the video well if I was to do the promotional itens in the same style, I believe I accomplished that and they do match quite well.

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 3

• What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

For the audience feedback I decided to use Facebook to it's full potential and created a focus group to collect all of my feedback, I was very suprised at how simple it was to create the group I was worried becuase even though I am part of the technological generation I am not fully confident with using Web 2.0 technologies, in fact I am a bit of a technophobe.

Once creating the group I added as many of the A2 Media students as I could from both classes, I was pleasantly suprised at how quickly comments started appearing on my posts for the digipak and advert all of them were very positive too and I was very pleased to see this. I also posted the final music video on the group to so that students who had still not seen the video could view it easily and comment if they wished to. I believe the printed products are being read better by our target audience than our final video, comments on our video have mostly been focused on the narrative which people have commented as being "confused", this is a shame but we are proud of our final video and we are not sure what could improve it, the main thing that's affecting me about the video is the animation part which I do not think flows quick enough, it steadies the pace of the video which is not what I wanted it to do, I wanted it to mean something to the audience, seeing that the narrative has been said to be "confused" means that we have not accomplished this.

Using Facebook I then added some questions to the group for them to answer, again answers came very quickly and were all quite positive, for the first question I asked whether they thought that the acting in our video was convincing, all the answers were 'yes' which I was pleased to see it meant that the actor playing the only character was doing it to the best of his ability, I made sure to put more options than yes/no including whether or not there wasn't enough acting in the video to comment and an option that said from time to time which proves that his acting was effective throughout the entire video. The next question I asked was for the music video I wanted to know whether the style of the video fit our chosen music genre which we planned on being indie/rock right from the beginning of the project, again the answers were positive with 100% answering 'yes' to the question, again I put other options including 'at times' which meant that it did not fit the genre throughout the video. The other question I asked was for the printed products which asked whether the style of my products worked with the style of our final video, the answers again were very positive and I also got many comments on the individual posts to prove their answers.

Throughout the group I have got many positive comments on my printed products including comments like "professionally done" and "amazing" which would please any designer creating products like these, the audience has read the products very well in some ways better than the final video, the images I illustrated on the covers match the narrative of the video very well and the drawings are all focused on the idea of escaping from a continuous cycle which is what I aimed at and I believe the audience has understood this better than the video.

The audience is taking something from my products and our video which is something I wanted to aim at, I did not want this video to be forgettable like so many being released these days in the music industry, I wanted the video to mean something to the audience because it's based around feelings that we all experience sometimes in our lifetime, to illustrate these feelings in the video and on my products was the real challenge but I believe our group have all done well to create very professional products.

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 2

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

Throughout our work on our printed products and on our music video there is a theme and colour scheme that looks very similar, the colours in our products seem to be mainly yellow, green and blue, the watercolours on the digipak complement each other very well making it all match together, on the advert the yellow rays of light work well over the black fine tip pen drawings that have become constant throughout all of the 'George Barnett' products.
The fonts I chose for the products are all of a hand-drawn style that fits with the drawings that appear in the music video, they also work well within our chosen genre which is the indie genre which features many bands with their own unique styles and imagery. I chose hand-drawn fonts because I believed they matched well with the animated sequence of the video, It also works with the imagery on the advert and digipak making the whole set suit each other for this particular album, this style works well with this album but the artists next album may have a different style that takes ingredients from this album to make the artist seem recognisable, for example the band 'Coldplay' has a different style for each of their albums like the old-fashioned Georgian album style of 'Viva La Vida' to the modern graffiti style of 'Mylo Xyloto', it makes their new releases fresh to their audience.
Originally the only defining prop we were planning on using was the symbolic red scarf that the main character wears, this however changed as we got further into the project, now the only real props are the drawings that feature in the video, there were close to 200 seperate images in the animated sequence.
Costumes is a difficult topic to comment on because the only person to appear in our video is only our nameless character, the character in our video is lonely and drifts through life thinking and aspiring he is also artistic and creative, he does however have a sense of style that would be recognisable to our target audience and that is the indie look that has grown in popularity since the mid 80's, he wears clothing like scarfs, khaki trousers and boots, these are typical stylings in the indie look, this style is constant throughout the video and works in our chosen genre.
The visual themes in our work are loneliness and creativity which appear in most of the promotional products, the front cover features the lonely stick-man making his way through a forest and the advert features an image of the stick-man again walking towards a light, the theme loneliness is the key element in our music video. Creativity does feature in our video like in the beginning there were the pieces of art that the character looks upon and admires, and then there are his drawings that feature elements of escaping reality.
From audience feedback it has been mentioned that our video can be a little confusing at times especially the beginning but I believe this to be because it's the opening of the video and I think introducing the character and setting can be the most difficult part of any kind of media, videos, books and film, we did respond to this though by editing in more clips of the main character from the class feedback earlier in the project, this worked very well and we appreciated the suggestions brought up by the class.
Throughout our video and printed products we have a recognisbale house style thats constant throughout, the text and imagery would become instantly recognisable with fans of the artist as well as recognisbale in the music industry. A constant style is important because it will become iconic with the certain artist and when ever that artist has a new release people will recognise the persons work. Our video does however break typical conventions with storytelling which may become a recognisable style with the artists work, open ended videos will make people ask questions about his work and this will gain him popularity as well as criticism, that is the risk with entropic themes. George Barnett's image of animated drawings and edgy text that I have designed will become as recognisable as his work and it will become his brand image in this particular genre, it breaks the typical conventions of cliched stories and eplicit imagery, and will get him recognised in the competitive music industry.

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation question presentation

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Front and Back Cover Version 3

This I believe will be my final version for the front cover, I added watercolours to the image and now it fits the style of the back cover very well, the image of the forest works with the setting of our video and again it features the stick-figure that appears throughout the video and the advert becoming something of an icon for the singer.

Inside cover and Disc Version 2

For the next version of the inside of the CD I decided to leave the image of the tree because i'm happy with that, so I added an image of birds flying in the sky drawn by me and then watercoloured, I believe it works much better than the sunshine effect and it's drawn style fits with the overall style of our entire range so far.