The final magazine advert

Here is the final magazine advert I made this lesson. I said DIGIPACK instead of album so it make it clear there is more to it, Ive included the record label and ways to download the song as well as ways to view it and review it e.g twitter. I thought it was important to add ratings to show just how good the album really is. I added the cute little bird to link everything together and the black lines make it bold to catch peoples eye.

Magazine advert

Here is an example of a magazine advert. The colour are uit dark and contrast each other so it is bold lie the music featured on her album. Its simple but still effective.

Deadline Lesson

Today We are adding the final touches, Hannah took the didgipack home yesterday to finish the notepad effect herself otherwise we wouldnt have time, Rob is adding the logos and codes to everything to make it look professional and i am going to start and finish the magazine advert with help from hannah aswell if everything goes to plan. We havent really thought about the magazine advert as much as the digipack which is making it harder.

Back cover

Here is the back cover i made in todays lesson. I used the burn tool to make her eyes and lips bolder and dodge tool to make her eyes bluer. I changed the HUE of her cheek to make it pink, giving s small platform for the lens flare on the gems on her cheek. I added the album names to the side following convention and still need to add the codes and logos etc.

Expermenting with photoshop

This lesson we had the images in photoshop trying to find the right effect we wanted for the album cover. I did the photoshoot this weekend with my cousin and did the make-up as discussed. We wanted the make up to be quite colourful and vibrant so its almost like an alter ego- in keeping with the dream theme. WE wanted to give her some depth, so put her hair in a simple pony tail- but back combed it. This would look good from a side angle.  We gave her quite simple facial make-up and concentrated on the eyes, with eye liner and a little eye shadow so you eye is drawn to them, even if they are not looking at you. Then i stuck some gems on her cheek, just below her eye following the curve of her cheek bone, as again this draws your eye in.
In photoshop, we coiuld edit this to look like they are actual stars not just a flat image which is what we want. This is another reason i took the pictures on a plain background so we could do what we wanted with it in photoshop.
Whilst in photoshop we looked at getting the background darker, but keeping her still the same. We wanted to give her an outline so she stoof out, just like we did with the girl walking in our video. But we couldnt find that effect as she wasnt in black and white. We made her a lot brighter, with a little bit of contrast again so she stood out but not looking flat. I burned the eyes and the iris, to make them dark and attract the eye, this also made the blueof the eye more vibrant.
It was a struggle getting the background all the same colour without interferring with the image e.g not straight lines or cutting into her shoulder/eyebrow. SO we decided on paint bucket, and although at first we didnt want to interfer with the image, it did. but we liked it. The paint bucket not only change the background but some of the hair as well, so it would look like the image in interacting with cover itself as it is part of it.

Evaluation draft

Evaluation draft

For our animation we used the software ‘Istop motion’.  The process of using istop is fairly straight forward however it was finding out what settings would work best for our ideas. For example the amount of photographs to create the right pace (we generally used two) and the focus.  Get the right focus consistently with our varied shots was difficult as the quality of the camera found it difficult to focus on the drawings (despite doing the drawings in marker pens). Another issue was lighting. When we put anything onto istop the vibrant colours became muted and darker. We used lamps and reflectors whilst filming to make it lighter however it still didn’t match the real depth of colour and light.

In editing we used ‘final cut’ witched helped pace our footage better, such as the clock sequence which was sped up, it also varied our shots in the footage we had to repeat by flipping it. Colour corrector was entail part as well because the camera on the istop turned orange at some point which we needed to alter. This proved difficult as it was very temperamental and was very hard to find the exact settings for our shot. It also didn’t help as we animated a sweeping shot (instead of doing through editing) so it also changed the colour of the bright blue sky. Generally, using colour corrector greatly improved the piece as we could make the colours more vibrant and the contrast between whites and blacks greater.

To show our planning we have used ‘blogger.com’. It has been good in showing the planning process as it dates each post and is easy to explain using pictures from the internet or uploading photos.  As I have done the art work for the video it has helped me express my planning process and presents the ideas in an effective way as there is evidence of all the prep work. I also found that when anaylising other videos or look inspirations from all types of film (like when I looked at opening credits ) it is easier for me to explain with being able to embed the footage of what I wanted something to look like or have a similar style with.


Hannah, this is a good draft for this question. You obviously need to add images and you should add more tool terms to it such as how exactly did you speed things up? describe the process. step by step.

Final Evaluation

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

Here to start the music video we followed convention by cutting on the beat. This emphasises the music through the visuals drawing attention to both. Its good because it gives the audience something to look at as well as listen to working together in unison.

Here we have followed convention by sticking to the genre characteristics. The pop genre videos tends to be quite abstract, with a storyline with an interesting twist to it. In our case the twist is that the video is i-stop-motion and instead of having real photographs we have photographs cut out, interacting with the animated background creating the 'dreamworld' effect instead of a real life one.

Here this is demonstrating a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. We wanted to have a literal meaning of time passing and what is more literal than a clock. However having her acting as a clock was very fiddly, cutting out each photograph of her separate movements as well as making the numbers of the clock move a little was hard to do but  I think it works well in creating a sense of time and the music video passing.

The lyric mention station so we wanted to follow convention by making the lyrics match but challenge it by not making the match completely obvious, making the audience think a little . We wanted it to look like a train had just gone past and get the hair to that effect, this was harder than first anticipated getting it to look remotely similar but I think the audience will understand as it is repeated. We were considering adding an effect making the lines glow  to make it look like a gust of wind, but then we decided that would ruin the i-stop-motion feel of the video, we didn’t want it to look edited. This is one of the few close ups we have in our film, which caters to the demands of the record label.

I think the chorus works well, despite being repeated because the screen is flipped it does not get boring to watch. If the photograph didn’t disappear into the clouds or the bird didn't appear then I think it would’ve been so interactive. Having our star photographs interact with the background definitely paid off, this is following a more modern convention making the video a whole with the interaction, rather than a simple background and the focus being on just the artist. Not only this but having the word 'fly' being repeated amplifies the meaning, and the visuals do the same by being literal.

This puts emphasis on the word love, obviously being a love heart but it has a twist being drawn almost drawing the audience in because it is more personal. Often in music videos words such as love, have emphasis out on them, so we followed this convention.

Here we have followed convention by not having the focus on the artist. As our artist is known for her music, not her private life it is important to not only focus on her, but also the story line in the music video, putting emphasis on the lyrics as they always strongly relate, something we have done throughout the video. But I think it is still effective as it is still i-stop-motion.

Here more than ever, there is a strong relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.  'Heartbeat'  was the lyric so we took the idea literally, but turned into a drawing theme throughout the end of the music video. I feel this challenges convention as although it focuses around one word, it expands into the line drawing with the heart so it all links, rather than it just being the heartbeat.

This is our magazine advert. As we had followed convention throughout the music video by having the lyrics relate to the visuals and meeting demands of the record label, we wanted to do something different. Following the same idea of 'dreamworld' we made her part of the animation with the hair and the glow, but this is then contrasted by the black strips going across the middle. I feel like challenges convention for this genre as it isn't soft, but the focus is still on Effy White and the promotion of the digipack with the ratings and ways to buy the album/digipack.

This is our digipack, and although not finished we have all the keys concepts on there following convention for example having the artist on the front and back cover, but because of Effy Whites persona her eyes are avoiding the camera but she is still the main focus. We have the track list at the back with the bar codes and companies who helped with the album. It is a shame we couldn't get the digipack finished as i feel now it would've looked really good following the 'dreamworld' note pad theme.

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final cut express – Helped us colour correct our film, this was harder than I thought it was going to be because you have to manually correct and when it doesn't go how you want i.e there is still a flash it gets frustrating. It is very fiddly but very effective as although there is still a flash, it is not as noticeable as before. By using the colour palettes and changing the hue, this helped us make the flash as unnoticeable as possible.  Not only this but using in and out pits in final cut express made timing the video incredibly easier, it saved a lot of time. Putting the footage together was easy because we filmed the video in order, although we later realized we missed some of the second verse out, this shouldn’t of happened as we planned the shot list around the song, but now we know we should've added timings.

I enjoyed using i-stop motion as it is very easy to use. The simplicity of the seeing each frame as you take makes it easier to spot shadows and hands whilst filming improving the end result. I like how you can watch you video bit by bit in ISM, what you have just filmed and can see if you need to film anything again, this saved a lot of time as there wasn't a delay. As we filmed our video in two documents, we forgot to manually change the screen settings of one of them like we did the other so sometimes during the video the screen cuts smaller and bigger which is something to improve.  The only problem was the delay of the camera as it kept turning itself off and disconnecting from the programme, so we then had to reconnect to i-stop-motion but that was not the fault of the programme itself.

Before the video I was familiar with program and some of its effects but I learnt a lot experimenting with our digipack images. Using the Brightness and Contrast tool to manually  adjust shadows in order to get the glow effect. The Magnetic Lasso tool was used a lot whilst in the editing process as it picked up the shapes of the image without you being to precise and this saved a lot of time. At the beginning of the A2 course we followed youtube videos to get certain effects and t showed me what photoshop can actually do and how i can get more from it. 

Q4 Media Technologies
by: JessicaEloise

Q4 Media Technologies
by: JessicaEloise

Before Editing

Plan for the digipack

Digipack Photoshoot

 Here is my cousin, the model ready for the photoshoot.  These photos havent got any specific light on them they are just to show how I did the make-up and hair as planned.
The hair in a simple smooth pony tail, but back combed to give her an edge and would be interesting to edit in photoshop to see what was could do.
Her facial make-up is quite simple, with all the concentration on the eyes. The smoky eye shadow with a thin line of eye liner drawing your eye in, which is important as she isnt going to be looking into the camera.
I put glitter on her cheeks so it would catch in the light and the gems again because it would be interesting in the editing process.

Rough

Here is on i have done at home on my own, i know its quite rough but i had a few ideas i wanted to try out, for example the lens flares on the gems on her cheek and experimenting with the shadow cast in the photo naturally.
Im glad i used the lighting in this photograph from the top right, so it cast a shadow down. I like how the background is one colour and the shadow seperates the image from it. I like how the lens flare looks as it makes the image more interactive and i like how it makes it less plain. She is avioding eye contact but your eyes are still drawn to her.
Obviously to improve i would get rid of the sharp edges and blend it in more but i think the ideas work well together.

Progress on digipack

So far today I did all the small text writings that are on the cover of the album, such as the copyrights, languages, etc. Also I got all the logos for the recording companies, type of disc etc. We also got all the photographs that we need to include in our digipack and magazine advert. All we have to do now is edit any of the photographs using Photoshop and then add them to the digipack and also tweak anything left out.

Digipack

Our final product is going to have 3 discs.
An acoustic version of the album or a set that has been performed.
A live performance including a interview backstage.
The actual album Cd.

2 out of the 3 can be played on all media platforms appealing to a wider audience for example you dont have a Stereo or Tv, you could play it on an xbox for example. This shows value for money and gives you soemthing to watch as well.

Songs on our album

The songs on our ablum so will be shown on the digipack are...

1. Daydream.
2. Little Bird.
3. The balloon that popped
4. In the stars
5. Its like a cartoon
6. Talking faces
7. Broken wing
8. Walk away
9. Fly
10. Over.

All of these songs all link to each other but would be different types of music just like any other album. But as you would listen through them, they would become a story and we like that idea.

Digipack

We have named the Digipack Fl, as it is a convention to name the album after one of the songs featured on it. Examples of this in todays market is

Katy Perry - Teenage dream.
The one of the left is the single cover and the one on the right is the album cover. Although completly different they are linked, for example the strong vibrant colours, the font used on both is the same and they are both quite abstract.



And Ellie goulding herself how called her album 'Starry eyed' after the single featured on it.

Homework for Wednesday 28th November

You need to have an attempt at two of the evaluation questions by next week. I apologise for not going through this in lesson today but any start you can make with this will benefit you. The FINAL DEADLINE FOR EVALUATION IS 14TH DECEMBER so the sooner you start the better. I would like to see something significant from you next week for FOR QUESTIONS 1 AND 4 ONLY. See text in red below for extra guidance with this homework.

Word Count should be approximately 400-500 words per question (excluding question 3 which is in video form)

G324 Evaluation Tasks.

 

Below are the 4 questions you need to answer for your coursework Evaluation. The task for Question 3 should be done in your group. The other tasks are individual. When you have completed the tasks post all 4 onto the same post and tag it with YOUR NAME.

 Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks (you cannot annotate ancillary tasks just yet obviously). Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to indicate which conventions you have used at which point. Explain which conventions you followed/challenged and how/why? Use Goodwin's 6 points as a guide here.   

 Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Task: Create a Prezi which makes clear links between your 3 products.

 Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback.

 Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Task: Create a video presentation which discusses the technologies you used at each stage of the project. This video needs to be different from the Director’s commentary in terms of its presentation and content ie. Presented as a ‘How to use…’/ Teaching (in character?) style of video that could then be used as a future teaching aid. For homework for wednesday, you need to write the script for this and try to collect relevant screen grab images. Choose 3 technologies that you used and explain how you used them or you can 

Album

The album shoud be called fly after on single on it, that is the conventin to follow such as Katy perry who called her album Teenage dream after the single on the album and Ellie Goulding herself 'starry eyed' with that track on i

t.
Our album shot

Star Persona

Names

We like Faye with an E as we think it is more unique and people tend to remember words ending in an 'e'.

We like Effy as it is quite a youthful, fun name it almost sounds as a nickname encouraging the audience to identify with her.

We like the name Estelle for its meaning 'a star', it actually sounds like a stars name, but we dont want it to sound to close to Adele, we want her to stand out.

We think for her surname it should be White, Whittley or Wild.

Faye White.

Faye Whittley

Faye Wild.

Effy White.

Effy Whittley.

Effy Wild.

Weve decided to call our star, EFFY WHITE. It stands out and id different from what stars are called today simply for the fact we have a surname. Like Britney Spears is known. Its youthful and fun.

Marketing

One of the most important aspects in getting our song heard would be the different marketing strategies to promote our music video. One of the ways it would be getting it uploaded to YouTube and if it would get popular enough we could rely on word of mouth which would be passed on to other people. Another way is getting it played on different music channels. Also magazine adverts would be an effective way such as the Q magazine which is a music magazine that promotes a lot of artists, even though it promotes mostly the artists not music videos it would still be a good way of getting people to check out our music video. We could also promote our music video through making a Facebook page.

Equipment used for our sequence

For taking photographs we used simple camera that is actually for recording instead of taking pictures, and this caused some issues. One of the issues was colors changing on photographs from normal to really bright orange and made it seem that we were using a bright light on it. Another issues was occasionally the camera would turn itself of because it wasn't actually recording but taking pictures on iStopmotion. We only managed to get around the camera shutting down issues, however we still had random colors on pictures in the sequence.

We used simple desk lamps for our lighting which was fine since it provided enough light to be bright enough anyway. We didn't use it throughout out the sequence, the only parts we used it on were the end bit of the sequence the "night time" in the video, which with light made it seem really weird and bit too bright.







Lastly we used light reflectors, which don't seem to affect the coloring of the background much but it made a huge difference on the look of the shots. It provided a lot more light on our background and also gave us the ability to make the shots seem different, for example gold color reflector would give it a warm light which would make it look sunny.

Software used for our sequence

We used couple of software programs in the making of our music video. One of them was the iStopmotion which helped us capture the images for the sequence, the program is easy to use therefore we were able to take our photographs quite quickly.







Another piece of software we used was the final cut, more complicated than the iStopmotion, however it provides a lot more as well. We managed to get all of the sequence color corrected without any problems. Only problem that we did have was the correcting transitions that we made ourselves in the iStopmotion by taking photographs therefore it was quite difficult color correcting the part as we would have edited two different scenes.