Goodbye!

This will be my last post on blogger as our project has come to an end. I had a great time during this project and learnt many new skills which will stay with me forever. My group was amazing and i will miss working with them. I want to thank all my teachers for all the help and support they have given me during this course. they are truly wonderful people!

Fair well Blogger, till next time...Goodbye!

Final Review Blog

I am extremely happy with the whole project! All the work that myself and my group have produced is a great accomplishment.

I have learned so many skills throughout this project such as camera work, using editing software's such as Final Cut Pro, making my own creations on Photoshop and using other ICT technologies such as SlideRocket and Prezi's to present my work.  I did not know how to use any of these before starting this project and the skills that I have gained through September to January are amazes me.
I now have a greater knowledge about the media industry and know how successful products are created, also the process before the creation of actual products.

During this period I have created a Music video by Emeli Sande 'Read all about it pt3' i have created my own Digipak and album advertisement to promote our artist. In totoal i have 78 posts. My blogs in A2 has developed compared to my blogs in AS. I have used more ICT technologies to present my work such as Photoshop, Prezi, Photobucket and Sliderocket which created a professional look and I made sure I was more detailed. I am pleased with the amount of posts i have done however if I was to be given another opportunity I would  try to blog more during the process of filming the music video because during this time we did not blog as much. The reason for this is i think we discussed ideas in person rather that blogging about it afterwards.

Overall our music video we created was a great success and we were all happy about the final product.
My group was amazing and every member was hard working and added great contributions to the project.

Goodbye!!!

This is the last blog that we will be posting On our blog regarding our coursework, I would just like to say thanks to all of the teachers who have helped us all the way from the start, I also would like to thank all the members of the team for their contribution.

I hope that all of our hard work and dedication pays off, BYE!

Final review blog...

Overall we are really happy with the outcome of our project because we really put a lot into it so we are happy that it was a big success. i think most of the ideas that we first came up with worked really well in our music video, i think the highlight of this project has to be when we merged two of our shots together to make it look as if the artist was looking back at herself, remembering the good old days.

I think I have learnt a lot throughout this project from camera skills to editing skills, I am now much more knowledgable about what makes a good media products so I feel that if I continue my study of the media I will know what I'm doing. I think my editing skills have defiantly improved compared to last year.

As as group we all worked really well with each other which I think was the key to our groups success, we all knew straight from the start what all of our roles were within the group, and i think that because we were not constantly shouting over each other and trying to have it all our own way meant that we were able to listen to each other and implement each others ideas into the music video.

THE END:

THIS IS MY VERY VERY LAST BLOG!!!!!!!

As my coursework has now come to an end it is time to say goodbye to group 11 and my blog. I have enjoyed blogging and working with these guys on creating a music video as I felt that we worked well as a group and manged to create a successful music video which I feel proud of. :)

....However it is now the end soooo....Goodbye blog and Goodbye media coursework September 2012- January 2013
Sasha Powell.

Final progress review blog:

My blog for A2 media shows blog entrys from September 2012 to January 2013 in this space of time I have created a group music video to Emeile Sande- Read all about it part 3 and a digipak and advertisement used to promote our artist. The journey of the blog from September shows the research, planning and creating my final products. I have successsfully mannaged to incorporate 88 blog entrys which presents my progress throughout the course. My blog in A2 in comparrison to AS has developed as I have more detailed entrys which I have also experimeted with as I have used a range of more different technologies such as photoshop and camatasia. I also found that more thought and organisation took place when researching and planning before creating my final products. I also think that my planning and research is effectivley shown as it is clearly visible where the planning and researching is shown in my final products.

However I feel that a few gaps where created in the process of my blogging, I found that these gaps occurred in places where I should have had a self reflection on my blog so far, evaluating my progress and thoughts. If I was to include more blogs I would include more blogs of our day of filming such as 'behind the scenes' to give an insight to what we got up to when filming and the journey and locations which we chose.

Overall I am pleased with my blog as I felt that I have worked hard to produce good work which would refect my final products.Having a blog has also been a useful way to document and review and keep up to date  on the work which I have produced. I also feel that I have done a reasonable amount of blogs which also shows my progress through the different stages of planning, reseaching, editing and creating and evaluating.

Goodbye

Goodbye Blogger :')

Goodbye old freind. I shall miss you.. We have been through a lot, however now this relationship has come to an end. Who knows? We may cross paths in the near future. But for now, so long friend it has been a good journey.

*loading...*

Mohammed has now permanently logged off.

P.S. Do me proud old friend

Final Progress Review Blog

Final Progress Review Blog

This year I am very proud of my blogging and feel that i have done really good in producing different blogs.

I believe the standard has changed a lot in how I would blog in AS and how i have blogged this year. The ICT use differ very much in the two years as i have used more this year. I believe this is because i was able to take on the skills i had learnt in the first year and develop and only make them stronger this year. 

One thing i had noticed was that i have used many other different ICT techniques in producing particular media blogs. I had used different media such as prezi's, sliderocket, photobukcet and also camtasia 2. I believe all of these were fun to create and also added a unique feel to my blogging. I really enjoyed using camtasia 2 as it was really interesting in what could be done with it and also the voicing that goes along with it.

I believe that my blogging really effectively shows the different aspects and techniques i had used and out into the work to show research, planning and production. As i have done a lot of research and done things such as presentations and prezi's to show research into digipaks. I believe my research into digipaks were really much in detail as i had really enjoyed in finding different unique factors about different digipaks.

I believe the gaps in my blogging are mainly around the area of when we as a team were going out filming. After we had thought of our video plan and other aspects of our project I think during this time the numbers in my blogging decreased. However this is mainly due to our group and we would mainly talk in person or over the phone and totally forget to blog about it. However i believe that the blogging i have done are really well and really thought out as i had  worked hard on them. All together i have done  88 blogs excluding this one. And after individually counting each blog that i have done myself is 54. I am more happy with this amount as i realize the rest of the group blogs i had contributed a lot they were also part of my achievement. 

What i would change if given another opportunity is that i would have added many extra blogs to do with research into our video and genre. This is becuase i believe if i had blogged what me and my group would speak about in our spare time, the ideas that we came up with, I believe that i would have a very much higher amount of blogs that i have done now. 

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 4

During our video in the cinema i believe the audience really liked it and got really into the video itself. Throughout the video the audience stayed really quiet i believe as they did not want to miss out on the video as it almost tells a really emotional story.

From our feedback we heard many nice things from people who really liked our video. 'I LOVED IT' is what many students reaction was about the video. This really was nice to hear as it showed the hard work we put in for the work had actually paid off.

There were two parts of our video that the audience really liked which were the flashback scenes and the scene were we had merged two scenes together. I really liked hearing this as it showed that we had worked hard even when coming up with the storyboard and had actually stuck with it and made it come to life. I had learned from the student feedback that we had worked really hard and that our teamwork was superb.

Below are screenshots of the merging scene that i personally thought was really good and was best by far in editing of our video:

Below is one person we had interviews after the filming:

After watching our video we had interviewed some students about what they liked abut our video and what improvements that we could make. Below is a clip of one student who's we feel reaction to our video was rather amazing. The first that she had said is 'I loved it!' This made us as a group realise that we had actually really done well and it turned out how we wished it to. We asked her what was her favourite scene/effect that we had done in the video. Her reply to this was 'i loved the moving bit of the camera.' This specially got me smiling as i had come up with the idea to do specific shots as point of view of one of the characters in the video.

Another thing that really moved us as a group is when she had said 'it nelly made me go into tears' this was said and we as group could not believe it. We did not know that we would be able to create a video which almost made a view go into tears. Below is a screenshot of one of the moving scenes that our 'fan' really loved:

After listening to the feedback it gave me a really different view to the video that we had created. I had first thought that we had done okay and maybe could've made a big improvement. However after listening to the feedback and hearing things such as 'best of our chosen genre.' Hearing these things really made me realise how well we have actually done and how we have come up with something almost amazing.

Another thing that shocked me is after we had finished our video the reactions from our teachers really excited me. I remember the teacher had said 'it is just of perfect', saying this really made me and my group feel proud of what we had done.

Evaluation Question 3

Below is a video of how 'PHOTOSHOP' and 'FINAL CUT PRO' Really helped us in the production of our music video and digipak.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation question 4:

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback which I have recieved from others after watching my music video has been useful as they successfully pointed out the aspects which they liked and places in which we could improve or change. The overall feedback which I gathered generally showed that people liked our music video as they warmed to the genre of the song which gave an emotional tone throughout the music video.  Our video was also screened in front of a big audience in the cinema "screen on the green" reactions which I saw showed that the audience was engaged throughout the entire music video as they felt drawn to the storyline which was portrayed through the flashbacks.

From audience feedback I feel that the strongest part of our video was the merge scene which was used in the second verse. I think that this was our strongest part of the music video as many people seemed to like this part as they was intrigued to how we created this scene. I believe that the audience also felt it that the merging scene was a good way in which to reflect the singers feelings on past encounters. Another aspect of our music video which memebers of the audience felt worked well was the choice of the black and white effect which we added to our music video once creating it. This worked well as it suited our genre and created an atmosphere which was shown to reflect her feelings and the past.

Also looking on feedback from the audience I now feel that the weakest part of our music video was the pace of our editing as some of the shots were used for too long. However I feel that the number of edits was down to the song being slow as it we felt that having too many edits wouldn't suit the pace of the song. Reflecting back on this feedback if i was to create or re edit our music video I would shoot more basetracks so the number of edits will be a lot more and shorter.

After my finish products of my music video, digipak and advertisement I have now seen them in a different light as it has caused me to view all products as a connection with each other as for the album and artist to be successful it has to relitivley link with the other products. The products also have to mirror eachother to successfully appeal to the correct target audience. It also caused me to view that the research and planning before creating the product effects the outcome of the product. As successfull planning and researching is shown as you can clearly see how the product relfect each other and how it attracts to the target audience.

Evaluation question 3:

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

Evaluation question 2:

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?

Evaluation question 1:

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

Evaluation Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For me audience feedback was one of the most important things after creating the music video as I took vital roles during the production of the video and couldn't wait till here what other people thought about our music video. I think that by the feedback it is the only way we can know if our music video was a success or not and if we met our targets or not.

During the cinema screening  of our music video the audience was completely silent and focused on the screen which i believe meant that they were engaging with the music video. We  did this by deciding to add flashbacks and change the colour of the music video to black and white (Tint was the name of the colour effect on final cut). The flashbacks created a sense of emotion and reality and using the black and white effect added to the mood of the song.

One of the audience comments after the cinema screening were 'I loved how you portrayed the emotion of lyrics by showing a story' another comment was 'Best music video in your genre!'
Also one of the female audience members said that they shed a tear. This was amazing feedback and it meant that we met our targets.

Most viewers seemed to be intreged by the merging shots and POV(point of view) shots we used. I too was impressed by those shots in particular because the shots and merges we did I believe were very creative.

Here is some images of the making and the final editied version of the merging shots and the POV shots:

The making of all the park scenes

Original shot before the merge of the two shots

 

Merging shot

From the research we did into target audience for our genre we found our that young women and teenaged girls were more likely to be connected with are artist and listen to our genre which is RnB/Soul. This was vital information for us because we had to make our music video engaging towards our target audience and create something that our audience can relate too, as they our the people who are going to be buying the product.

Also I have realised that there is a slight gender difference as more female audiences felt more engaged to the music video. I believe that the reason for this might be that the artist in the music video was a female and also in terms of Mise-En-Scene the female was shown more throughout the song which only made the audience see the females side to the relationship. Ultimately female audiences felt more connected.

After listening to all the feedback, I would make more changes next time. For instance I would most importantly in the process of creating a music video will take more close-up shots so that the artists  facial expressions can be seen which will portray the artists emotions.

Below our some of the feedback that was given to us by our audience and also our own group feedback about our music video:

Evaluation Question 3

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

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of you main media product and ancillary products?

Evaluation Question 1

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

At first before we started to decide on what we were going to do for our music video, we read about Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwins theories  on music videos to help us get an understanding of different ways that music videos are portrayed.

Andrew Goodwin believes that there are three relations in songs and music videos, these are as follows: illustration, amplification and disjuncture.  Firstly he thinks that music videos can use a set of images to illustrate a meaning of the lyrics and the genre, which is most common. Amplification is also similar to repeatability for example: a certain shot or effects is manipulated and constantly shown in the video so that it could be stuck in the audiences vision. In disjuncture, the meaning of the song is ignored as the video has nothing to do with it.

As a group we decided to use illustration and amplification in our music video. The reason for this is because we wanted to create a story for the audience can connect to instead of doing disjuncture which will detach the audience from the lyrics and meaning of the song.

Below is two the music videos that influenced me:

Eminems song 'When I'm Gone' uses illustration and amplification. throughout the music video it we are shown a story which the artist is explaining in his lyrics. which illustrates a meaning to his lyrics. This made me more connected to the song and feel the emotions. I thought that using this method would work even more for our music video too, as the song we picked 'Read All About it Pt3' is a slow song and lyrically emotionally effective.

Ed Sheeran's song 'The A-Team' Uses the black and white effect (Tint effect) throughout the song which creates a mood and adds to the visual effect which creates even more emotion. Because we wanted to create the same effect to our target audience we too decided to use the same effect for our song, which I think worked.

Carol Vernalis main thoughts are that in music videos the editing and camera work is different compared to films and also genders and in general. She realised that often the editing was mostly in rhythm with the song and beat.

Carol Vernalis also saw that in music videos edits such as 'cross dissolves , 'fades in/out' and 'wipes' were used to create a flow to the music video and to make it look as if the video were seamless.She also figured that many jump cuts were used to imply time change.Because it is a music video the camera will move in time with the rhythm.  Many edits and effects are used in music videos to grab the audiences eye.

Also she found out that use of  Base Tracks creates a layout to music videos as it is frequently used throughout music videos. Also the shooting is taken in one place and there are usually more than one base tracks.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Before creating our music videos we had looked at theories by Andrew Goodwin and Carol Varnallis. We had researched on them individually and had to discuss and come to a conclusion in our group in who's theory to go with. 

Andrew Goodwin came up with 3 different theories that relate the music video to the actual song itself. These three things are;

-Illustration : When the video itself relate to what the singer is saying in there lyrics. 

-Amplification : This is when the video relates to the song however it may show something else, however these extra's add meaning to the video. This relates to most video's as it is much easier to create and also add's a storyline to video.

      Below is an example of amplification:

-Disjuncture : This is when the video and the song have nothing in common and adds a whole different meaning to the video itself.

     Below is an example of disjuncture:

In our video we chose to follow his theory however using illustration and amplification. We chose this as a group because we thought it would be easier to create and we could add a very chique story line which would make our video stand out. We did not want our video to follow the rules of disjuncture as we wanted our video to relate to our song to add visual meaning.

Above i had put the video 'Ed Shereen - The A-Team' I believe this came of great help as we also decided to make our video black and white. We thought it added a really smart effect. We so then used this when it came to editing our video on final cut pro we decided to make our video black and white.

Carol Vernallis studied music videos in terms of editing and camerawork. She realised that editing was more frequent in music videos than in film and often fitted with the rhythm of the song.

She saw that in music videos, edits such as wipes are used to almost draw the audience into the video by showing them different scenes in the videos. She also recognised how edits such as jump cuts are used very frequently to show a time change in the music video our to jump into another scene without making it seem wrong. 

We used Vernallis's theory in using edits such as 'wipes' and 'cross dissolves', to almost show a change in time to show a story in our music video. we also had used jump cuts to go to the next scene and not pause on any scene for too long as then the video may be 'boring'.

Below is an example of a cross dissolve that we used in our music video.




 A screen shot from our video











A screen shot of the cross dissolve to go to the next scene.











My digipak and advertisement and had a real effect to real media products. The purpose of our digipak and advertisement was to give the audience and viewers a quick insight to our artists. We decided to make it stand out as it is their debut album and we need to make it stand out.
 For my advertisement i had decided to follow the conventions of a real advertisement that i had researched which was the advertisement of 'Plan B'. When i had first seen the advertisement it had caught my eyes in how the writing and pictures were places on the advertisement. Below is an image of Plan B's advertisement and my own advertisement done for our star.

Plan B

My Advertisement

What i had got inspiration from is how the artists image is on the right of the poster/advertisement. I also really like the relation oh the advert in the way we had chose to make it black and white. Another thing i had done is used the idea of having the digipak in the bottom left of the advert which i personally think is a really good idea.