Friday 16 March 2012

Evaluation 3


Monday 12 March 2012

Evaluation 2

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


Wednesday 8 February 2012

Evaluation One

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


When choosing my song, I decided on an acoustic song as I felt I knew the most about this genre, being the kind of music I listened to and enjoy. I decided I wanted to include a narrative and performance based video, and began my research looking at some of my favourite artists, and their ideas. This initially lead me to Xavier Rudd, an australian artist. However, his videos consisted mainly of stage performances and back stage clips therfore lacked the narrative I was looking for.
Here is an example below.


Finally the artist and music video that inspired me the most was Ben Howards 'Old Pine'. The video consists of performance based shots of the artist singing, and others focusing on the beauty of the landscape. This idea of focusing on the landscape I loved, it gave the video a sensual aethetically pleasing feel, and I wanted to achieve the emotion I recieved when watching this video, in my own music video.

However, I needed to still incorporate a narrative within my music video, therefore I decided to create a direct correlation from the lyrics to the visual images on the screen. This allowed space for performance, narrative and landscape shots to be used altogether.

for example the lyrics over this shot was,
"every night she kisses someone new"


I then began to compare my ideas to the band, 'Mumford and Sons' and what I gained from this reasearch is that most acoustic songs focus on performance within a beautiful landscape. Lighting, shot position and scenery is key in music videos to give the video a sensual feel, and make it aethetically pleasing. Here are some examples of my findings when researching this.





From these images you can see that lighting and scenery is key to a aesthetically pleasing music video so from this I began storyboarding to create this effect, but in my own way, allowing the visual image to reflect the lyrics.

Following on from this, I decided to look at what kinds of poster's and digipaks went with these music videos to help me decide how to approach my own. Mumford and Sons particularly approached the simplistic ideas with a relaxed approach. All band members were included and their dress sense reflects their image and genre. This in turn helped me to create shot formation ideas for my poster.


Other posters such as Muse used this relaxed approach aswell and this helped me with my idea to have the band with their backs to the camera walking through the forest, as this connected with the forest scenes in my music video.


Another factor of my poster which links to my music video and Ben Howard's video, 'Old Pine' is the Autumnal colours used. The change of white to orange in the text linked with the colour scheme of my video, aswell as allowing it to be easier to read.


I then looked at the range of album covers that the acoustic/folk artist Xavier Rudd has. One thing I noticed is the clear choice of colours, mostly autumnal and earthy for our shared genre. Here are some examples of this:



It has become clear that using a marketing image of just the artists face is only used mainly within R&B genres as this markets the music well as they focus on the artists image and style. Acoustic/folk genres tend to focus mainly on the image, and the colours used to portray an image of nature and landscape. This is something I decided to focus on within my digipak.














 

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Changing Poster Ideas

 When looking over my poster, and the previous comments I recieved from a year 10 class saying that the 'Devastation Girl' was hard to read, I decided that I needed to change my previous ideas. I went on a website that told me what colours went well over black and white, and after trying a few, I decided that the brown/orange went best with the colour scheme of the poster, and how it matches the colour grading in my music video.



Here is the transformation between the two.


















The comments I recieved were:

George Russell : The writing is easier to read, really good!

Alice Clark: Stands out more especially the writing.

George Attwill : I like the warmth of the colour scheme. The colour of the text chosen works with other parts of the image.

Alice Griffin: The orange writing is far better than the white writing, it stands out more and is more pleasing to the eye.


Here is the Final Poster:




I'm really glad I decided to go back and re-evaluate my poster. In doing so I have created a more eye pleasing poster, with better colour schemes, and is easier to read. Overall, it is a success!

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Final Digipak


I really like the colour scheme of my digipak, and I think the different pictures compliment eachother. The font on the ront cover and back cover is the same as the poster, I chose to do this so that the font of the band is like their logo, and would be recognised instantly.


Here is another image of my final digipak with the template over the top as a guidline to what the sections are.



Friday 13 January 2012

Audience Feedback

After posting my music video onto youtube, I started recieving comments from viewers. To my surprise all of these comments were positive and suggested good ideas, and also complimented the ideas I'd already used!
One commenter suggested that I incorporate more slow-motion shots into the piece as he liked the slow-motion shot I'd done before. So with this advice, from a previous student at ringwood media who had also made a music video, I went back to the edit and started playing around with possible slow motion ideas. After experimenting, I decided to just change one more shot into slow motion as this mirroed the first half of the video well.

Two other comments I recieved both mentioned that the video reminded them of a mungo jerry song. Here's what they said:

"Loved this one. Good visuals, use of setting and lighting. Reminded me in many ways of an old Mungo Jerry type song (Ask Mr Wallis who Mungo Jerry were... 8-)! ) It flows very well, keeping the action and story going without any pauses. Really enjoyed this - good stuff!"

I'm really happy with this feedback, I feel myself that I made good use of the settings around me and tried to make the shots as eye pleasing as I could.

The other comment said:

"I liked this one because of the old skool feel to the whole thing it is like a mungo jerry song defiantly the setting is chosen well also just can't tell if the song is a sad story or not so not sure on a full opinion as of yet but editing and stuff is cool"

This is exactly what I was going for, 'the old skool feel' with the lighting and shot types. This person also comments again on the Mungo Jerry aspect of the video. In some ways I agree with the fact that they may not be able to see or determine wether its a sad story or not, however I feel the music and lyrics determine this and I have followed the lyrics to match the shots, and create a discrete story.

This is my draft music video, where the comments were posted onto.

My Chosen Record Label

Island Records

When experimenting with my original label, Brushfire Records it became apparent that it would be more difficult to use than originally thought. The intricut image of the instrument with the white background was hard to put onto my Digipak, and therefore after many failed attempts i changed my record label to Island Records.






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My Digipak was now successful in using a correct Record Label for the Genre of music, and the logo also looked good. Overall, the change of labels worked for the better.

Music Video Feedback

After 4 days of filming, I had finally got enough footage to cover my music video. I followed a storyboard for the first half of the video, which helped my confidence grow as I felt I knew whatI was doing and where i wanted to go with this music video. As I progressed through the shots and different scenes, different ideas would come into my head, and gradually everything I filmed became spontaneouse ideas that I would think of during the shoot.
I think having a balance of scripted footage and spontanaeity is a good thing to have when filming, it could either look too scripted, or just too random, and I think I achieved a good balance of this.

Overall, I am really glad that I did this coursework on my own. At the beginning I wasn't confident at all about my abilities, and feared I would fail. However, by pushing myself into something, I feel I have learnt alot about myself and what I am capable of achieveing.