Evaluation Question 1

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

Frame One:

The location in this frame was taken from our music video and this scene was set in Marble arch. We believed that this would help us conform with the conventions of a dubstep video as these videos are not just set in one place and are often on the streets of London and this is exactly what we did. We did keep this convention in mind whilst filming and I believe this is why we decided to stick to just filming in London and this was a very easy decision as both my partner and I live in London. The cat that there are a lot of different memorable locations in London we wanted to use that to our advantage and the fact that this is such a big city which is quite busy and everything is always moving forward links to our video as loads of things are going on we show different aspects it should be seen as very exciting and entertaining for our audience.

Frame Two:

The costumes that we used were very casual and I believe that this did also conform to the conventions of a dubstep music videos as they are never really showcasing an artist as much as some pop videos or RnB videos bas the majority of the videos are narrative and don’t have the artist performing in it at all and is very laid back and relaxed. This is why we have young teenage boys wearing casual clothing as anything else would not have looked normal at all and would have subverted to the stereotype.

Frame 3:

We also used bikes and rollerblades for props as it is a typical seen for teenage boys to be using these things as forms of transport rather than getting in the back of their mums car. We believed that this would appeal to our target audience and it also conformed to our chosen genre. Many dubstep videos in the past have used these objects in there video such as Modestep and DJ Fresh.

Frame 4:

We used different camera skills and editing techniques throughout the video as it was something that would be more entertain to look at whilst showing the audience the story. We used techniques such as some point of view shots to give our audience a true sense of being in our characters shoe making the audience interact in a way. The way we edited our music video also conformed to the conventions of a music video as we made sure it was cut to the music at a fast pace and even sped it up when it come to certain parts of the song. This is something that my partner and have seen in many different videos whilst doing our research and this is the reason why we decided to use this effect. We used various camera angles and other techniques to try and make it as entertaining as possible. We know if we did do the opposite and attempt to make it so paced it wouldn’t have had the desired effect and would have been very boring and would not have been appealing to watch.

Frame 5:

The story line was based around the text that one of our characters had received from one of his friends; this is why we felt the need to include a close up of the phone. We made sure it was a text because this is a common thing that teenagers do and the fact that they are very sociable compared to other age groups this really did work in our favour. This is to show the beginning of this epic journey, trying to get this free before the shop closes with his friends. We did try to put some humour into the video at two point, one being when the song says “I can’t stop” and one of the actors has come to a complete stop and the other being when our main character gets to the shop it is closed. This story line does subvert to normal dubstep videos, however not all dubstep videos have a story line at all.

Frame 6:

This is an image of one of the techniques that we have used in our video. The technique that we have used was graphic match and we used this to keep our audience interested in what was on screen. There are many different techniques that are used in music videos and this is the main reason why we chose to do one as well. In most dubstep videos techniques are used to display distorted images however we didn’t need to use it for that reason so we decided so use something different. Never the less we still do conform to the conventions of a dubstep music video as not all dubstep videos are the same and there is no fixed technique to use.

Frame 7:

Another thing that we have used in our video is titles. This is the consistent words that you see appearing throughout the video and you even in different languages which separate the footage frequently. This has been done in quite a few videos before but I do not believe that it has be done in an dubstep videos (Haven’t been able to find any whiles doing me research) and for this reason I believe that we have subverted to this convention as it’s not a common thing to see in this genre. I like the fact that we did use these titles as it brings life and colour to our music video.

Frame 8:

This is an image of our main character running down the stairs. The fact that our music video was based on a dubstep track we tried to put as much conventions in it was possible, this is why we decided to play with the time quite a bit. The fact that everything we did had to be cut at a fast pace we were able to take certain parts of our footage and rewind some parts to give variation so the audience were able to keep up and get a chance analyse what is going on.
We also used transitions where made throughout our video to show passing of time or even to hide little mistakes that were made.

Frame 9:

The characters in our music video are presented as your average teenager boys that make their way through London. They are not seen as trouble makers, not wearing black hoodies, they are not related to anything form of crime nor doing anything bad which is something  dubstep videos like to include as some sort of conflict. For this reason I believe that we have not conformed to the conventions in this way.

 

Evaluation Question 4

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

My partner and I have used many different forms of media technology throughout this course and have used them to our advantage in various ways

Youtube

We used YouTube to do our music video research. The fact that YouTube is a video sharing website we were able to find a range of different music videos at analyse from many different genres. We were also able to view their results and look at the ratings and comments that they had received. This allowed us to see if the majority of views no matter what age liked the video or not and this is how we came to the conclusion that a slightly humorous video had more views and/or likes, depending on the content. This was a very helpful website for us to use as is helped us see the conventions of music videos for all the different genres and we were able to pinpoint what conventions that we should used in ours.

Not only did this website help us with our research but it also provided the tutorials we needed to produce our digipak, making our Photoshop experience a lot simpler when we tried to make different effects.

We even uploaded our finished video to this website to showcase our work to get feedback.

Premier Pro

 This was a very used full program as this is where we did all our editing. As we had used this for our AS project it was a lot easier for us to use. We were able to play around with it a lot more as it wasn’t just a story we were trying to tell there were different elements to it for example, with a music video we had to sync the song with the actual video, cut to the beat and edit the chips in time with the pace. We also used the program to do the different coloured titles in our video. There were a lot of different effects that we could use on our footage and this is what makes it such a good piece of software.

Photoshop

This was the most difficulty media technology that I had used and I really did struggle. However my partner and I did manage to achieve quite a lot with our digipak as well as our advert. Without using YouTube we would have had quite a basic final piece as our knowledge was very limited even though we did use this program for our AS course.

Survey monkey

Survey monkey is the website we used to get our research. It’s a website which allows you to create questionnaires and allows people to fill them out online; making it very easy to access, so any and everyone could get to it, it also made collecting the results very quick and easy and both my partner and I could collect the results no matter where we were, making our feedback a lot easier to get.

Blogger

This is the website I used throughout my whole project to publish the majority of the research that I had done and any other information that was necessary. This was really good as we were able to incorporate a wide range of media on it was we could upload videos, pictures, links and quite a lot of other things.

Twitter Facebook

Twitter Facebook are online social networking services. These are the two that I had used to gain awareness of our questionnaires and everything else. I wanted to get everyone we could to participate in our work to get a real feel for what everyone expected in a music video especially as the majority of people that are on these social sites would have been our

target audience anyway.

QuickTime

This was what we transferred our finished video to so that it was in a format that we could upload onto youtube.

Prezi

Prezi is a bit like survey monkey in a way. The site allows you to create presentations in a unique way which is very different to a PowerPoint presentation and a lot more entertaining for the views.

Camera

We used a Sony handheld video camera to do all our filming and I believe this was the easiest way for us to get the footage we need for our music video. The camera that we had used had quite a lot of memory space on it and even had a playback feature which was very helpful as we would see whether we had to re-film anything there and then without having to upload it to a computer to realise anything, so this in all saved valuable time. The fact that it was very compact it made it very easy to manoeuvre especially with the shot we wanted to get. This devise was very simple to use so we didn’t have any problems at all. On top of all that the quality was quite good so it was a nice experience.

Our Digipak

My partner and I had decided to make some changes to the front cover of our digipak for quite a few reasons. We realised that it was very challenging to make our digipak look appealing to our target audience so we changed it up so that it was very eye catching.

This was one of our original covers.



Final Advert Design

My Photoshop Experience

I only have one word to describe my experience with this software and that word is TERRIBLE!!!

Never felt so incompetent with a computer program in my life. Forever making mistakes which can't even be undone - you can only press the undo button ONCE - unless you delete the layer which was utterly frustrating, especially if your not one to remember to make these multiple layers every couple seconds. To call the steps you make "baby steps" is a total understatement! Each time you do something new you have to make a new layer which feels so stupid because your getting nowhere fast, however if you do make these layers I guarantee you will get lost in that web that you create. There will come a point where you will forget which layer is which and struggle to get any further than you started off with making this process long and tiring just sitting there staring at a computer screen for a good couple of hours and having nothing to show for it. I would call this a mix between a memory game and a puzzle all mainly based on trial and error which is something that not all people like doing so often. Trial and error requires patience and it is not fun when your only allowed to make one mistake at any given time. This is the most difficult, tedious and just out right faulted program, no words can actually describe my hatred for this over priced product!

The time and effort I have spent on this idiotic program makes me want to cry and which hurts the most is that this is the second year I am using it. Believe it or not the first time I used this Adobe Photoshop was a lot worse.

Fortunately I was about to do a lot better this time round than my previous attempt but I am still not satisfied with what I have produced even though I know this is the best I am going to be able to do. I do not wish to mess it up again (Yes, it has happened before) so I will settle for what I have.

I am not sure if I am just not happy with my work because I have seen what other people are about to create on Photoshop or what I have made is genuinely rubbish

As you can tell I had VERY limited knowledge on how to use Photoshop and had to search through many different tutorials just to do the simplest of tasks. Eventually I was able to find some very helpful tutorials which was able to guide me through the long winded process and allowed me to get something along the lines of what me and my partner has draw in our plans.

I encounter many different problems along the way and now believe I have made so many different mistakes along the way that I know what buttons to avoid, things I shouldn't try on certain images and basically what not to do and there are many different things on my list.

Not happy

What is the purpose of a digipak?

Digipak is a form of packaging for any type of CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc; the outside of the digipak is usually made from paperboard/cardboard/card stock whilst the inside is a standard plastic, shaped in a way that would hold a CD that is attached to the card that looks like the image below.

 This is a typical set up for a six panel digipak:

 



An example of a real six panel 

The whole purpose of a Digipak is to attract I believe. Reflects the type of music that is on the album/single.

I have been doing research on the digipaks that are in the same genre as ours and I have realised that There are barely any digipaks out there. The only reason I could think of is that the way we consume media is different now and  the fact that dub step is a fairly now music group this may be the reason.

Below is a Chase and Status Single cover.

This is relevant as it has a clear colour scheme and clearly states the name an d this is something I would like to incorperate in my digipak

Editing Techniques

We are planning of using quite a few different editing techniques in our music video. One example of the editing technique we will use would be match on action which helps with the continuation of the clip. This is done by cutting to another clip just as one has finished which is in the same sequence of events making the movement and shot seem fluid and masking the cut. This would be explained better in the following clip.

Graphic match is another technique that we will be using. This is when you cut from one shot to another with something like an object that has correspond image (the objects having a similar shape). For example, my partner and I are hoping to achieve this why using the round circle shape of a bikes wheel and a watch/clock. The picture below if from the film Psycho which is quite a good example.

The shape of the plug whole has a similar/same shape as the iris in the eye.