2. 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The picture above on the left is a front cover of a CD Digipack for the same genre as I was doing which is R&B. The picture on the right is my creation of a front cover for my Digipack. I think some aspects of my creation develops conventions of existing media product as I have used the same idea of having a close up picture on the front cover of the artist, however I have not made mine to fit the entire frame as they have done in the existing media product. My product challenges forms of real media products as in this genre there are hardly any existing products that have an busy background/pattern which I have done. I think this makes the photo of the artist stand out, which would help the CD cover to stand out on a shelf alongside other CD’s.
3. This is the inside left I designed for my Digipack. It is very simple as most existing media products also have simple designs or a picture of the inside of their covers. The design I used for the inside left is the logo I used for my website, so I decided to enlarge the logo to fit the frame and add colour and a different design to it without having it plain. As you can see I used the same effect I used as the background on the front cover for this page as well, this was done to keep a house style through out my products so that it shows that all of the products I designed fit together and come as a whole.
4. This is the what I designed for my inside right of my Digipack. This is a picture of the artist which I made to fit into the frame and added a cartoon type effect which I think challenges forms of existing media products as there are hardly any existing products that I have seen in this genre with a cartoon type effect on its pictures. As you can see, I used the same background effect as I did with the front cover and inside left, this was also to add house style which lets the audience know through out all four covers that they fit together as one.
5. These are two back covers of existing media products. The one on the left is most common seen these days which is the back cover with a picture of the artist. However, the one on the right only has text on it. I have challenged the idea of having a picture of the artist as the background and used the logo in black with a grey background. In examples shown of the two existing media products, the names of the songs is not the first thing you see as you look at the covers. I used the idea of have the text aligned in the middle and developed the idea of making the text stand out so that the first thing you see when you see the cover will be the text, which is not the case with two existing products shown. In one example the first thing your drawn to is the artist featured and in the second it is the word “REVOLUTION” that you are instantly drawn to.
6. This shows that my music video uses similar conventions as existing media products because of the clothing. The girl in the video I created is wearing a short black dress. This is similar to most R&B videos, where the girls are dressed in minimal clothing so that it would appeal to the male audience. This shows a screenshot of my video which I added a black & white effect to. This is seen in many existing videos especially videos that tell a story rather than performances, as the video I created tells a story through out the song I decided to use conventions of real media products.
7. I used different types of lighting when filming the video to add variety to the video. There are come scenes which are filmed with just natural light (bottom right), some scenes with street lights (bottom left) and some scenes with indoor lights (left) to make sure the character’s actions and costumes are seen clearly.
8. These screen shots show the different type of camera shots I used to film scenes for the video. There is a long shot, close up, long two-shot and a over the shoulder shot. All these types of different shots adds variety and makes the video more interesting. Existing media products have these kind of different shots so I decided to use the existing forms of music videos in this genre. Most videos have close up’s of females in the videos to clearly show their facial expression if they are acting out a story.
9. This is the website I designed to accompany my Digipack. I challenged existing forms of media products when designing this by having the layout vey simple. Most websites in this genre have very busy backgrounds or a lot going on in the home page with either text or pictures. I used a plain black background for my website, the text is not a fancy font, it is simple and clear. I used forms of existing media products by having links in to social network sites on the homepage. This is seen on almost every website so that the audience and fans will grow bigger throughout the different networks.
10. How effective is the combination of your main product (music video) and ancillary texts (the website and Digipack)? The two pictures above shows a screen shot of my video and the front cover of my Digipack (on the right). I used the same actress who I used as the main artist in the video for my cover so that the audience will know that these two products go with each other as they will recognize the same face as the artist in both products.
11. Font – same colour Same logo in both products.
12. The four pictures in previous slide are pictures of my Digipack and website. I made the Digipack look like they a package by using the same effect on the background. This is an unusual background to be seen on a CD cover however I decided to design mine a bit different. On the front cover I used a bright orange to colour the text “Firework”, I used this same shades of colours in the logo for inside left cover. This creates house style as the colours match through each design. I also used grey as the background colour for both the front and the inside left cover to add to the consistency throughout the package. The website I designed has the same colours as the Digipack. I did this to make sure to stick with the colour scheme. I used shades of grey for most of the text apart from the text “login” where I used the same shade of orange from my CD front cover to add consistency and to make sure that the target audience has clear and easy navigation through the website. I also used the logo I used for the website on the inside right cover of my Digipack. This strongly shows that these products I designed are in one package.
13. What have you learned from your audience feedback? As my Facebook account has people of different ages I made sure that the products I uploaded were only visible to the age group of my target audience. This is a screen shot shows the inside right and back cover that I uploaded on to Facebook to get feedback and it shows some results. The target audience as commented on the back cover with “bold and eye catching” which shows that the design and layout of my design stands out. Another comment on the inside right of my Digipack says that the effect I used for the background was nice. This shows that the audience are open to original designs and that they are not all looking for the same forms of existing media products. The audience also likes how I used the same effect through out my package to make it seem as a whole package.
14. This is my front cover and the inside left of my Digipack which I also shared on Facebook to get some feedback. The audience finds the front cover different to existing media products but they did say it was a “good different” which I think is positive feedback. I did design my Digipack by challenging the existing forms of media products, I did this knowing some of the audience will not like the change however, some seem to be open to change from the feedback I received. The picture on the right is a close up version of the feedback I got on my front cover.
15. These are some close up’s of the feedback I got from the target audience.
16. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Research and Planning For this stage of my coursework I used the search engine “Google” to research into music genres and existing media products. I also used “Wordpress” to present all my work in. I created a separate blog for this specific coursework and created new posts with the information I found out through research and published the posts in order. I also used “YouTube” to search for exiting music videos to research and analyze which I then uploaded in to my blog as a new post. Another piece of equipment I used at this stage was a video camera to film target audience members to record our Vox pops. This was then edited on “Final Cut Pro” which is a software that I used to get all the clips of the interviews on to one whole video.
17. Construction Media technologies I used for this stage of my coursework are shown in the picture on the left. I used a monitor to to see what I was doing with editing of my video. The small TV screen was used to see how the video would look like on normal TV without being a part of the editing software, so it would be like watching it on real TV. I used speakers to get the lip synching as accurate as I could with the track of music we were using. The keyboard was used to enter commands while editing the music video. The hard drive seen on the picture was used to save all my work on which was used every time I had to edit my video. The mouse was used to navigate through the software which made it easier and quicker to get the editing done accurately. The USB stick was used to transfer the completed video from the hard drive to my user area which could then be uploaded on to YouTube.
18. I also used “Photoshop” to edit my photos that I used for my Digipack and website. Without this software I would not have been able to crop out any items I wanted to or to add effects which was a main part of my deigns. Another software I used was “Illustrator” which I used to edit all my text which I used for my Digipack and website. All the text was edited on this program and placed into “In Design” where I completed the full design of my Digipack. My website was Deigned on “Photoshop” and then placed in to “Dreamweaver” where all my links were put in place so that it would navigate accurately to all the pages I linked them to. Evaluation For this part of the coursework, I used Facebook which is a social networking site from which I gained my audience feedback. I also used Wordpress to present my evaluation on. I will also be using “Slide Share” which is a neater way of presenting a PowerPoint presentation on a Wordpress blog.
