2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? This is effective because it inter-locks all of the products with one another therefore making it clear that they are all part of the same production. This technique helps in the exhibition aspect as it promotes sales of the single. This is one of the images used from the music video. We have kept a consistent colour scheme throughout the video and prints; this was achieved through the use of props (Macs, wellingtons and umbrellas) Joel – this page promotes the artist as it gives an insight to his personality. This may help promotion of upcoming singles/albums as the fans get to know who he is. This page is also relevant as the artist isn’t shown much within the video therefore this page tells the audience that he is actually in the band. The pages within the CD promo pack are all linked back to video as the theme is kept consistent and the content is relevant.
3. “The story is really original.” What have you learned from audience feedback? “The black and white transition looks really professional” We asked several people to give us feedback on our video; therefore we would have a wider range. A few people said that the black and white works as it contrasts and adds interest. Also it fits in with the story line. The change in colour at the end has also come across as very effective. “The video looks really fun!” What Works? We also learnt that the four main colours work and the matching ancillary texts make it very effective. The album art work was very popular as the drawings done by hand are very individual and creative. In order to stick to copy right laws, we changed the name of the band to ‘Vampire Weekday’. This is very similar to the Original name which is ‘Vampire Weekend’. This also came across as a good idea and is an interesting name. “The colours work really well”
4. The print mainly had good feedback, however the text on the front cover of the single was said to be unclear and odd. Therefore we changed this to make it easier to see and stand out from the bright background. What doesn’t work? A few people said the video didn’t fit the song because all the characters are female whereas it is a male voice on the track. Through further feedback however we discovered that the video may not make sense or have a clear story line. However we disagree with this as often music videos are quite outlandish. Because we filmed the singing after we had edited the majority of the video, it was hard to get the music in sync with the singer, therefore we improvised with what we had, and this means some of it may not fit – which shows in the feedback. However this is just small extracts of the video. Some people said the pictures didn’t mesh well together at the beginning however this is because of our relative lack of experience, if we had done some experimental projects this may have been avoided. Therefore we edited our video – we filmed a whole new sequence to put in the video.
5. What we changed after the feedback We realised our video didn't fully make sense with a full Female cast and no male in sight despite the male voice. Therefore we added a male artist in small sections throughout the video. We also added an insert about the artist which we have named Joel. The rest of the band aren't featured, we would have liked to change this but did not have time. The CD pack is for a single only, and therefore doesn't have to feature the whole band as they are often just a sleeve with little information unlike an album.
6. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? The main editing of the pictures and video was done on adobe, using this programme taught us a lot about editing as it allowed us to edit sizes, lengths, colour, music etc. The time line allowed us to see the length of video and rearrange images easily. The short clip running around the field was entirely pictures, however because of the computer we used it began to freeze because of the size of the file. Therefore we made it into one video by merging the clips - we could then alter the length of the clips by altering the whole sequence. We learned a lot about continuity whilst editing. Our video is quite jumpy as it is mainly pictures in sequence however it does take quite a lot of patience to make the pictures follow on from each other so each movement looks fluid - as we have in the field sequence.
7. The pictures we took for the video, advert and CD cover and inserts were edited on adobe Photoshop to remove blemishes, shadows and generally lighten the pictures to make them more appealing. As you can see the picture changes significantly, the colour of the umbrella, brightness and contrast and the background. By doing this we were able to put it onto a new background freely and make it look professional. We used a graphics tablet to edit the CD inserts and advert. This enabled us to draw like you would normally but then it appears on the screen. This enabled us to have the effect we wanted without having to use images with copy rights. These are an example of some of the graphics we drawn on the tablet. As you can see, they are very “doodle-like” and light-hearted which was the desired effect. New Media Technology Using the stills and video camera taught us a lot as we made several mistakes towards the beginning of our project. The beginning of our video we believe is not as good as it is towards the end, as we learned that we needed to take a lot more pictures to achieve the effect we desired. We also learned about camera quality. The clips in the video were filmed on quite a low quality camera which was a mistake, however we did not have time to rectify this.
8. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real existing media products? However it does not look like anything we researched, we used the idea of a white board to relate to the doodles on the CD cover and used a landscape format. The magazine advertisement contains the usual date of release, sponsorships, images related to CD cover similar to those we researched.
9. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real existing media products? The CD sleeve we have created is very effective and conforms to most media conventions. The cover doesn’t contain too much detail only the name, images and album name. Which is common on most CD covers, we also used bright primary colours in order to have shelf appeal. We researched CD sleeves by looking at the ones we had at home and noticed there was a reoccurring theme of lyrics being featured in the package. The back cover however contains more detail with several pictures, the back of the CD sleeve contains the name of the song, and the inserts contain detail and lyrics. Including an interview with the main artist featured in the video.
10. Music VideoThe most noticeable thing about our music video is the fast pace, in our research we noticed a lot of the videos were very fast paced in order to keep the attention of the viewer, and also to fit in all the details in the relatively short video of about 2-3 minutes. Music video’s often use a wide variety of angles and shots, however they often use close ups to view the artist. However we have mainly used long/medium shots, this is because the artist is not in the video until the very end, the focus is therefore not on the image of the artist but on the story and movement of the girls in the video, this is one way we have challenged the usual convention. Music videos with well known artists in main focus often work because the artist is well known and adored. However because our actor is only pretending to be an artist, we thought it would be much more successful if he wasn’t the only main feature. We also challenged usual music videos by using some black and white which isn’t used often because it isn’t thought to be eye catching or present the celebrity in their full potential, however with the transition from black to colour it is very effective.
