Evaluation task 2

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

During the course of the last few months i have used a large variety of different technologies to aid me in the making of my music video, technologies that were really helpful are Final Cut pro, YouTube, Google, Mobile phones, Photoshop and Sony NXF cameras. The digital technologies have helped me hugely in my research to look into existing products and similar artists, in my planning for sourcing props and looking for inspiration, and in the evaluation stage to edit the work we have done to make them fit together.

Research:

We split up into our groups and began thinking up ideas for our music videos, for this we did use Google a bit to get some inspiration, it's something i've grown up using so find it very easy to get my way around it and with the almost unlimited source of information it's been a very useful way to help research and develop our ideas. But to start off the ideas development process using technologies we used Power point presentations to pitch our ideas to the media department and rest of the class.

The Microsoft Power Point (2010) program was a really helpful way to produce our ideas as we could use pictures and videos to try and convay what we were imagining for our videos, with the use of annotations. For our anti love song idea it was really helpful as we could put a link to the Dior Adict advert video which is where we got our inspiration from. And then we included different photos which expressed the theme, colours and tone we wanted throughout our projects.

With our ideas up on a big screen in front of the class it was easy for everyone to see and understand our thoughts so we were able to get helpful feedback. Presenting the idea to the class was extra good for this idea as they were our potential target audience age group, so their responses was a bit like the beginning of our target audience research. While we presented one person took notes on what everyone was saying so we could refer back to them.

The Internet was a huge part of our planning process. We easily chose which idea to do, but we hadn't decided on a song yet so we went to Google to look up a certain style of song. Typing in '60s french pop song' straight away linked us to lots of different websites with actual old French songs, but we knew doing a song with french lyrics would be too hard but would have been great. The main site it took us to too was YouTube where we were able to search for more songs and then while watching a video it comes up with similar songs, so we weren't just stuck to one artist, this is an incredible too to use. It allowed us to search through as many songs as we needed to, while being able to refer back to the Advert that we had seen on TV. This meant we could watch the advert and listen to another song to see weather the tone and rhythm of the other songs worked or not.We did this until we found the one we all thought sounded he best and went with the image we wanted for our girl.

For the casting of our girl we didn't really use any technologies to start, because we were choosing from the girls in our school we just picked a few girls from their look and knowing they had modeling experience. We then thought it would be a good idea to do some screen testing to see what each of them looked like and how they moved with the music, so for this we booked the studio in a free activities time and asked each of the girls to come. For the filming we used a Sony NX5 camera, and we just asked them to do a couple of poses after listening to the song just as a quick way to see what their first impressions of the song was and to be able to look through photo if we needed help choosing. Then we gave them a chair and jumper individually to work with, at this point we hadn't finalised exactly what we were going to do in each scene so we couldn't give them details about that but it was interesting to see what they came up with by them selves. This was a rather simple activity because of modern technology and the camera being digital meant it was virtually free to film all we wanted, and it is a fairly straight forward camera to use. Doing this also allowed us to refresh our memories with working with the camera, music, directing and lighting.



We also used this later on once we had chosen our girl (Emma) and some boy characters to be in the photo shoot room and cafe/bar area. this allowed us to see how she looked with them and weather they were confident enough for it to work and look good with what we had planned for them. It worked really well because we were able to go back over our footage to concentrate individually on which guys looked the best, and we were now beginning to put together an image of what it could actually look like as the final product.



Again we used the internet a lot to look up styles for our different set rooms, but i also used the camera on my phone to take a picture of my mum's dressing room and show the group. I did this because I thought it had the style that we were trying to find (very pure white/creams with a girly/pretty table and mirror decorated with jewellery, make up and perfume) and everyone else agreed so this was very helpful. It's so instant taking a photo on your phone, and then you have it for as long as you want and can share it with who ever you want.

Although we used a lot of technologies to help us on the way to our product, we did do a lot as a group on physical copies, like the timeline we made using post it notes so we could shuffle them around while we were working out our layout and timings, but to make sure this was involved in my blog i used my camera on my phone again. Because people use their smart phones on the go so much, so many applications have created ones for phones, and Blogger has, so I downloaded it and used it to do some quick posts if i had a photo on my phone to upload i could do it via that which made it very quick and easy.


Using our storyboard we created an annimatic by filming the individual pictures for about 10 seconds and then cutting it together on iMovie Maker on a Mac computer. This gave us more physical proof of what it would actually look like, so we could see which parts we wanted longer and which areas needed more going on. This defiantly aided the development of our video as is moved on a lot more after doing this.

We did a lot of referring back to the Dior Advert to help us with our set styles, and when we began finalizing what little things we wanted in each set we used Microsoft Word to write lists for everyone involved in bring any props. Word is a very simple power points that allows us to digital write notes, the way having our notes on a digital copy benefits us is they are neater and clearer, and we don't have to worry about storing them and losing them because they save where ever we want them too.




Another technology we used a lot on the computer was emails. It was a very helpful way to contact all of our actors and anyone involved in getting or making our props instead of having to rush around waisting time trying to find them, we could just simply send and email and then get on with other important things until they emailed back. We used it first to email our girls to meet us in the studio at separate times because we didn't want any of them to be watching each other and interfering, this worked well and they all did as we asked. With the boys we were able to do group emails which made things quicker. So we used it for a range of different tasks : finding out when our cast could do rehearsals, telling them when and where they were, thanking them after rehearsals, giving them the song or lyrics, asking drama and music departments for specific props, and then all the information for the actual shoot day.

Once we had done our filming day the four main technologies we used were Blogger, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and Wix.com

Photoshop was used to create our Digipak, as it was the easiest way to play around with and edit different photos together. We knew we wanted to have a big close up of Emma’s face as the front because she is the star and because she is so beautiful she would stand out on a shelf. We also wanted to have a bit of sex appeal in the photos to attract her male fans and inspire her females. A number of photos had been taken on the day so we went through and chose a few of the best ones to use, but we didn’t use the whole of any, the photos were cut on the area we wanted and too fit the template for a digipak that I found on the internet. Because all the photos were from the same set, we thought it looked a bit strange as we had so many different sets it could get a bit messy and confusing if we used different ones. Taking a look at the digipak all together it gave a really nice affect with the breaking down of her body parts, along with being flirtatious, it fit our target audience aims of being all about her fashion and beauty.

We hadn’t planned taking these photos well enough so that when we managed to put the chosen four edited photos together on the digipak template, although they had been taken with the same back round, the photo with Emma’s face had a darker shade of blue in the back round because we obviously hadn’t concentrated enough on the rest of the photo. So to fix this there is a tool called ‘Magnetic Lasso’ which allows you to cut round any object (we cut round her face) and then we layered it ontop of a section of back round from one of the other photos, so that all the colours matched up, which helped complete the product as that had been standing out to all of us as something that didn’t look professional enough.

Evaluation task 3

Evaluation task 4

How well do your products work as a combination?

the few main purposes of the main product and the ancillary texts are to :

• help to construct a star image
• to target the potential audience
• provide fans with an intimate connection with an artist
• cross promote the other products
• create a strong release strategy

here is our mix media video:

final products

I have been tryin g to help with both the Digipak and the Website, this was helpful seeing both and trying to make sure there was a clear link. After feedback from some people, and looking at the two products together as a group we made some final tweeks, and so this is the final Digipak:

 





With the colour scheme and theme of the website, we really liked it so we adjusted the digipak to fit with it more than the other way round. There were a few final touchs like getting ride of the 'Hodgson' after Emma because it didnt sound right and because we didn't put it on the Digipak.

behind the scenes video

i took lots of videos on the day of filming so to document it well, and i wanted to put it all together. But after having many problems with imovie and my computer not allowing me to add the videos, i found another one that squished all the videos and i couldn't change that so i was really stuck with what to do. After disguising it with the group Mina said she would take the footage and try and see if her computer would work as its a more modern version than mine, so hopefully that will work.

Mina has managed to do it very well and this is the final behind the scenes video :

the new website

After talking we have had a massive change around and re-designed all the pages in a different style. We were having problems with it being too blocky, so we got rid of all the seperate blocks and changed the back ground to a picture of Emma, i think this will look much better because it feels less structured and serious and should hopefully fit more with her character.

here's the home page which has lots of things on the side that you can click on and it will take you too a link.
This is a page written as if Emma did it about herself and how she got to where she is.
















I really like this fashion page, we added a load of pictures that were taken on our filming day and we also added some other ones of Emma from a small Burlesque shoot.






There is a tour page which also has a write up from each performance as if she was writing it, we did this because it gives it much more of a personal feeling and because she is only just starting up its more likely she would be writting it.


I really like this fashion page which has normal photos of Emma doing normal kinds of things like going ut with friends, with her boyfriend, and a photo of her with 'fans'. i also added the last photo just resently which is a photo of her in and Advertisment which i made on photoshop.









This is the improved merchandies page, the first stuff i did was very quick and not quite professional enough. For her merch we thought it would be could if she had designed her own stuff, so i got some actually nice clothes that i thoght fitted with her style.





This final page took a lot of work which we only just did. i have already talked about the making the perfum on photoshop, and so as a way to involve it we thought up a little competition to do to make it more interesting and really get her fans involved.

editing the website

 for the home page of our website we have a bit with Emma's name and then a picture of her from the beach scene, but this doesnt' look quite right as it is all too blocky. To try and help this i fiddled around with the colour of the block to try and make it the same as in the picture. But wix is quite confusing and i couldn't quite work out how to change it so i searched on google for some help.
And found this help video:

This is fiddling with different colours trying to get is as close as i can but it was very hard to get it exactly the same. i then had an idea to change it instead of having a block colour there, i need to try anc cut a photo that size and have it across the top.

perfume

Sarah and I were talking about our merchandise as we think it needs to be more glamorous, so we were thinking about what other kinds of merchandise stars have and a lot of girl celebrities have their own perfume. It's a good way to target girl fans as they will want their idols smell.
So i began on google and i wasnt exactly sure what shap of bottle i wanted but i thought we should just chose a simple shape that was unknown and girly. I started looking at other celebrities perfumes as just a bit of insparation. It wasn't hard to find some bottles as there is such a massive variety of choice:

feedback

In friday's lesson we asked a couple of A2 students and an AS student to come in and take a look at our draft versions of our products. this is a really helpful tool to find out how other people see and interperate what we have done. It also worked well for us as they were teenage girls which is our target audience, so what they say could be very influenctial on the changes we need to make.

the first thing one of the girls says about the Digipak was that it reminded them of Lily Allen which we were really pleased as she was one of the main artist we had studied in a research.

Firstly they felt that Emma’s name wasn’t clear enough, the front Mina had chosen was a bit too swirly and small, so had to read, but they did like the girly swirly style of the font. On the front they also thought we should have the album name bigger than Emma’s, I understand this and think it’s a good idea, because we have a big photo of Emma on the front its obvious who the artist is. They seemed to get a good feel for the digipak as when we asked about what genre of music she was without showing them the video or the song they guess a fun, indie/pop style which is the sort of genre we are working in.

Next we showed them the website, it was more clear to me that we hadn’t been working together enough on the digipak and website because they all agreed that they thought the digipak was for a different artist, which I think we could all see too. As a main picture on the front of the website we had a lot more professional modely photo which showed her in a more serious light which throughout the rest of our products we hadn’t. the website was a lot more blocky and had a more sophisticated look to it where as they thought the digipak was very fun with its colours and swirls. They felt the website would target a slightly older audience, I think that the fact that we had a lot of black and white photos from the filming day linked to this. They thought it could have been a models website so I think we need to re-think some of the modely photos we have put up, the problem with this is that Emma is actually a model in real life so she is naturally photogenic but it makes her always look professional.

Moving on to the video, one of the girls immediate reaction was that it reminded her of the Dior advert and we hadn’t told them how we had been inspired by this, this is good because we did want it to have a similar style and look to it. Out of the two we asked, they thought the video went more with the 
digipak

getting on

it really feels like our group is getting on well with our products, i'm confident we will produce good finial pieces.
Layla has been getting on well with the editing, here is a screen recording of what she has done so far:

this isn't quite finished yet but you can really see the potential in it to be a really good promo, i think we could do with all discussing how we think it is looking to make sure we all agree with how it is going.


Mina has been doing some final designs to the digipak as we have been discussing trying to make it link more with the website. she has also been coming up with ideas for other song names and the album name which we have all been throwing ideas around for, Sarah, Mina and I sat down and had a talk about names, we didn't want it to be too lovey dovey but it needed to be sweet. Mina had a packet of Skittles and it inspired us for a possible name as they are little and sweet and their phrase is "skittles, taste the rainbow" which kind of links with our summery girly theme.

Sarah has been working further on the website, looking at ways to change the fonts more because we weren't quite happy with the one we had. this proved to be quite difficult but im sure we will be able to find one we all like that we can use on the digipak as they need to be the same.

tour write ups

As a part of the website there is a tour dates page, and underneath there are paragraphs for write ups about the event so I’m going to do that. Im not completely sure what to write so will do some research first. I tried to look on Arvil Lavigne but her website was blocked from the school internet for some reason. 

so i went onto Lily allen's website to see if she had anything smilar:

but there wasnt really quite what i was looking for so i tried

and then i remembered looking at an up and coming girl singer so i had a little look at her website and it was helpful :

So i began writing and this is what i got so far, i will show it to Sarah and see what she thinks:

'London

: Wow I can’t believe I got to perform at the Forum! It was the most amazing night, the perfect way to start a really exciting tour. I can’t tell you how incredible it feels to come out on stage and see all my fans! It’s going to be hard to top a London crowd, just wow thank you everyone who came, so pumped for the rest of the shows. I’m now on my way to Portsmouth; I’ll try and make sure I post afterwards as soon as I have a minute. I really feel like I’m living the star life, living off a tour bus sounds pretty bad but we’re all having so much fun. So nice really getting to know everyone who is here helping me, we already feel like one big family.

Here’s a little picture of outside the front of the Forum before I went on.

Portsmouth: here’s a picture one of my fans tweeted from the night, you can see Theo really getting into the concert, and I love it when we all get involved with the audience. I’d never been to The Pyramids before or Portsmouth for that matter so was really cool to look round. I was looked after really well and had another great few nights there, thank you Portsmouth I hope to come back soon!

Bristol: phew feeling a bit tired this morning after such a crazy night Bristol you are amazing! Was so great being so close to home so had such great support from friends and family last night I miss you guys! I’m defiantly missing everyone but I’m not ready to come home yet I’m having too much fun on stage, feels like I’m living in a dream.

Birmingham:

tweeting

this is a screen grab of Emma's twitter. we created this account so that when you go onto the website theres a twitter area and you can see all her tweets and get onto it. so i have started tweeting and will keep it up. i am using my account asking friends to follow her trying to make it look like she has lots of fans.

Creating tour dates

I have been helping Sarah with the website by doing things like researching and making the merchandies. on some of the products i wrote some names for cities for tour dates, but as a part of the website we needed proper ones with dates and actual locations so i did a bit of research into this.

I went onto ticket master to look at some actual artists dates and what sort of locations thery were performing in, i looked at less famous artists as its her first album she wouldn't be performing in top places like Pink.

i went on to look at Avril's tour dates to get an idea of how far appart the dates are and how long she would stay in each place. i chose to start our dates in April as she is all girly and pretty io thought it would be good for her to be performing in good Spring weather.

merchandising

today im going to continue to look into the merchandising for the band. first i typed into google, but i didn't know names of any good personalised clothes making websites so just tried this:

first i just tried some simle girly tops :

i didnt like the pure pink top, but they may because that isnt my style so i will keep it as an option.
i think these white tops with girly flowery hear type style could work but then i realised there was no indication of Emma so i added her name.

i thought back to when i went to concerts and would buy merchandise, the t-shirts often had tour dates on the back as a way of remembering the tour. so i made one, but then i did some research to see if any similar artist did this but i couldnt find girl artist with this so maybe it more male artist that do this.

i then found this breast Cancer symbol  and thought we can say she was doing some work for the charity and then have it on a top, this would be amazing for her brand image. being link with asuch a big and great charity would make her look really good.

im not sure about this item but i found it in thew women's clothing section.i thought i might as well make one. their a bit different to the normal tour tops being long, people often go to lots of concerts and buy merchandies everytime so sometimes they may get to the point they make feel ' do i really want to buy another top' so this one could fit in there.

these trackies are classic and i think could sell well.their a style thats very comfortable, cool and people always want trackies. i didnt think it would be nice to cover them with girly stuff or photos of Emma so i just subtly put her name horizontally as i thought thats a good way to still involve her but nopt over crowed it.

this is just a standard plain top with a large photo of the singer. I chose this type of photo because it shows her off well, she looks stunning and classically stylish.

these are some screen grabs from some examples of other students website work.
i think Influx has some nice simple stuff but you can't really tell what the band are like just from those t-shirts, and with ours i want you to imediatly know who it is and what kind of musicain they are.

i wasnt very impressed with this American band, yes the logo in the middle is cool but its very common. there are lots of tops out there like them, and the only difference they have made is to have different colour sleaves. they could have atleast put the image onto other products in different places.

i like how the xyz have their logo on  the tops, that links it straight to the band and if you are fans you will be able to spot that. but i still think we can make better ones.

i thought making an ipad case is very relevant to modern times because everyone seems to have some kind of tablet. it wouldnt let me put a picture of Emma on so i thought a large girly kiss would have to do.