How Did You Use Modern Technology in Each of Your Stages?

In the planning, I used Microsoft Word and Microsoft Power Point Presentation to put together my collages of images (some examples below) and to create my Shot Breakdown.
They were both easy to use and efficient as well - I never had an issue with either of them and so my planning, research and evaluation all went smoothly from that respect.

I also used Microsoft Power Point to print off and place the images to give to my audience for feedback regarding my digipak - although something simple, it did help me a lot with the development of my designs and for the efficiency and easy ability to use I am incredibly grateful. it also enabled me to give a professional feel to the layout of the images. 

The internet and particular websites also contributed a great deal to the development of my three products - YouTube enabled me to find video inspirations for the video itself, and then later on what kind of dancing I wanted in the video. Furthermore, I was able to post my finished video onto YouTube and then onto Facebook, allowing more members of my audience to view it and try to make it as popular as possible.



   

To edit my video, I used Adobe Premier Elements - a video editing software that is available on the computers at my school - so there was no danger of me not being able to get it in time for editing my video.
This software allowed me to trim my shots down to the sections that I wanted, it made all my clips easily accessible and it allowed me to put the audio over the top of my video so that I could upload it to YouTube straight away.

   

To edit my photos for my digipak, I used a website called 'Pixlr Express', which was really easy to use and allowed me to make many changes over the course of the creative process. It is a free website, with advanced tools and the option to place images over the top - for example light drawings or geometrical patterns.

This website has some other branches too - Pixlr-o-matic and Pixlr Editor - but these weren't as easy to use or didn't have as wide a variety of tools, so Pixlr Express was definitely the right choice for what I was after, a quick yet professional photo editing website. 

Lastly, I used blogger to post all of my decisions and keep track of my creative decisions. Because it's online I could access it at school, at home and on my phone. This made it really easy to post something when I got inspiration or had a sudden idea of what I wanted to do and how I planned to achieve it.
I was also able to change posts if I had a change of heart, and this made my planning a lot easier. 

Problems and How I Overcame Them

When we were in the drama studio the first night that we filmed, the lights wouldn't change colour. So we had to film the whole first night under red light and I was really self conscious that we would have a lot of red filming and not enough white and blue - but the next night I managed to get my friend Shona (who knows how to work the lights) to show me how to change them, and then we did both blue and white filming in the next shoot.

Another problem was the smoke alarms. Using my smoke machine there was always the possibility that we were going to set the smoke alarms off - so we had to make sure that the room wasn't filled up with smoke and we frequently ventilated the room (keeping the windows and doors open) to make sure that the smoke didn't get high enough to reach the alarms. This was a big problem that me and Mrs Bailey (Head of Drama) had been speaking about a lot in the lead up to filming. 

I also had an issue with the camera - at first I didn't have a tripod, but then I found out someone else had taken it so I borrowed it off of them for the two nights that I filmed. Then the camera turned out to be booked, but it wasn't charged - so I then had to bring in my own SLR (Canon EO5 1100) to continue filming on the second night of the shoot. 

Audience Feedback

I have gained a lot of helpful feedback from my audience!!
Along the creative process, I frequently conducted quantitative research to found how many people found which designs or ideas the most suitable and appealing. Without their feedback I would have chosen different designs and then the album designs and the video itself may not have been as a good a success, because the decisions I may have made may have been the wrong ones.

The research above was what I conducted for my digipak designs. I printed out pictures of all the possible designs that I was considering and I asked various people who fit the description of my target audience to simply put a line next to the ones that they liked the most. This I feel was a good way to conduct this research, because it was quick to conduct and to consolidate - meaning that I had more time to make sure that my designs were as good as they could possibly be, rather than rushed.



I also conducted qualitative research, where I texted some peers who fit the audience I was aiming for, and they responded with longer answers. This screenshot was at the earlier stages of my research and planning, and was in regards to my music video itself - trying to get an idea of what kind of videos my audience would be interested in. This allowed me to make informed decisions on what areas to focus on and which genres, so that it wasn't guesswork and hoping that it would work out - I knew what would work and what wouldn't, and I was able to make the correct decisions.

I also consulted my audience members yet again once all three products were finished. This made sure that I was getting a first hand opinion on what they enjoyed and what they didn't - this way if I were to do this again, I can avoid making the same mistakes.

A lot of the audience members liked the reverse shots and the editing pace - it made them feel as though the dancers adrenaline was running through them as well - Sarah (an audience member) even stated that her breathing got a bit quicker with the editing!

I made videos with the audience members as well to try and get some more qualitative research from them, as a lot of my research and planning was done with quantitative data. I also asked them individually and wrote down their answers on previous blog posts. 

This feedback from my audience members really helped me to shape my designs and my final ideas - as well as informing me how much my initial feedback paid off with the success of my final three products! I believe that the most effective elements of my ancillary texts was the artwork - the tiara and the wings. I think that because my audience had never seen anything like that before that it really appealed to them. I believe that the best element of my video was the editing that moved with the beats of the music - without that change in pace the video wouldn't have had the same effect on the audience.

The audience received my products how I had intended them to - they believed it was all different and yet still worked. Of course there were criticisms on how I could better them, and everyone will have something that I could have improved on, but to have the general consensus that the final three products were an appealing, interesting, unique and different set that was still successful is something that I had really hoped for in my research and planning.

Back to Planning

In the connections between previous digipaks that I've looked at, all the magazine adverts and the digipaks related to each other. For example, in Florence and the Machine's Lungs, the designs and imagery were all very similar.
I also took the inspiration for my drawings from this album - on the back cover is the drawing of a pair of lungs, and that's where I decided to interpret that onto my own album, with my own twist.

I also got the idea of using a border from this design, of course I decided to make my border white to fit with my colour scheme and to balance out the contrast between black and white - however I took my design from the magazine advert of Kasabian, Empire. This is because I believe that it fitted best with the lay out of my magazine advert - even though the Kasabian advert wasn't in the same lay out as mine.

These designs really helped me to develop my own ideas - and although Kasabian isn't in the dance genre, in rock they are considered experimental and different, and so I think that the inspiration from them is appropriate - they're different from me, yet different from others like them, which is something that I was trying to achieve as well.

The connection between the ancillary texts and the music video

There isn't really a noticeable link between the ancillary texts and my music video, and I didn't want there to be. I wanted my video to be as different as possible in every aspect - and that includes being seperate from the album design as well. Artist's such as Ed Sheeran have unlinked products, for example his album 'X' doesn't feature any of the design work in his music videos either.

I think that this can work in my favour, because being different from everything can boost success by increasing the individuality of this video, and that is something that my target audience would find appealing.
Below is a video that I did of a small intereview that I conducted with three people that fit the description of my target audience, and so this will give me an accurate representation of whether the video and ancillary texts would be successful.


The video is of the question, "Do the digipak and the magazine advert link together?", and they all responded with positive answers, which has made me really happy. With this positive feedback and I am now assured that my designs would have been a success.
I did another video below, of the question "Do the digipak, magazine advert the music video link together?" and, again, below are the responses from the same three people (to try and keep it as accurate as possible).

The video features Sarah, Zoe and Joe who are all fitting of my target audience. To know that they liked the synergy between the magazine advert and the digipak has filled me with relief - because trying to appeal to an audience who don't really like the norm has turned out to be quite difficult! 

The link to the video was a question that I asked them as well, and below is the second video of their little interview that I conducted; the question was how do the magazine advert, digipak and video all link together.

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

I believe that my video fits many conventions for music of this genre. For example, with my video the song is in the dance genre and a lot of the videos in this genre are performance based, featuring a lot of dancing and singing.

The inspiration for this video came from the song We Disappear - Jon Hopkins ft. Lulu James, where the concept for my video came from. The same idea - dancing, singing, reverse shots and bright lighting - really caught my eye and I decided to base my video on the conventions of this one.
This way my video fits into the conventions of this genre - especially through the changing of clips between her lip singing and her dancing I really feel that this video fits the normality of a performance based music video.

I also think that my video stands out - although it fits with the typical conventions of a performance based video the fast editing it something that isn't used very often for fear of looking unprofessional. I think that my faster editing pace really boosts the individuality of this video, as well as allowing it to grow based on the conventions of a dance genre music video.

With the ancillary texts, the connection between them isn't very clear. Although the two texts synergise with each other very well (through artwork and colour scheme etc), they do not link to the video as clearly. This was a conscious decision made by myself because I wanted the video to be completely different - from what people would have expected the video to be and from the album. This way the video stands out even more from the digipak and advert, and although there may be less recognition between the ancillary texts and the video by the audience I believe that the success of the video will be improved by how unique it has turned out to be.

Music Video: The Process

I decided that I wanted to not have the actual artist in the video, but someone else. Although many people asked me why I wanted to do this, I had a simple answer. Artist's such as Elton John and Sia have both used this technique - and because Sia is in this music genre I felt that it could work with my target audience.

This video features model Chantelle Winnie lip singing to the lyrics of Sia's sections of the song - and that is something that I wanted to incorporate into my own video. 

Elton John also did this with Robert Downey Jr. in his video 'I Want Love'. 

I used Adobe Premier Elements to edit my video together. This was really easy to use, and allowed me to use tools such as time mapping and reverse speed. These effects made the video more visually interesting, but I really enjoyed making the video and putting it together, I had no problems with the software and the end product was exactly what I wanted!

The blue sections show the visual clips of Tabby dancing, and the green is the audio of the song (Confess To Me - Disclosure ft. Jessie Ware). It was really easy to cut and edit clips to the length I needed them, a small sign such as this [ came up and you just cut it down to the points that you want, and that's it! 

To put some of the frames into reverse, I had to go onto the 'Tools' bar at the bottom, which then led me to this page. This page allows you to select which sections of the clip you would like you to slow down, speed up or put into reverse. Simply allocate the section you wish to change in yellow, and then that's where the effect will show. For most of my clips, I covered the whole frame in yellow and put an effect on it but for some I did only use a section, for example when the lyrics are "Don't get lost in" and she straightens her back, and I selected on the section where she comes back up to be quickened, and the effect is noticeable yet subtle. 

Another way that I put shots into reverse without going into the 'time mapping' tool (the section above) is to simply right click, then click 'Time Stretch' and a small box comes up into the middle of the screen, as shown below. 

Although you can also change the speed from this box as well, it isn't as easy to use and doesn't produce accurate results efficiently. 

To play a clip forward and then play it in reverse - looking like one fluid clip - was quite hard. I had to play the clip normally, and then crop it from the exact same moment it finished on another clip and then play it in reverse. This took me a while the three times that I did it, but the effort was worth it. 

The last effect that I used was the mirror effect, I only used it once but I think that it worked really well. I also sped up the clip too so her movements are more defined and 'jerky'.