Final Pieces

Main Task

Ancillary Tasks

Magazine Advertisement

Digipak

Evaluation Question 4

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

Software

Computer programmes we have used throughout our project :

Internet

The internet was used mostly at the start of our project. This application is safari on the school macs and explorer on our computers at home. We used youtube right at the start to analyse existing music videos and to find our song. Without youtube, we would have had to analyze videos on tv. This would have been nowhere near as useful as we would have had no choice in the videos we watched, and without sky + (I still live in the dark ages) , there would have been no way of stopping and rewinding the videos.
Also without youtube we would have struggled finding our song. We used the suggestions panel to find related songs to the genre we wanted. Although we did eventually choose a song which Charlotte suggested after seeing it on a tv show, without youtube we would not be able to compare it to other ideas, therefore would not be fully sure that it was our correct choice of song.


The website uktribes helped us with our research into our target audience, making sure that our video was exactly what our target audience wanted.

We used the interactive communication site facebook to dicuss with one another about our filming schedule.

The internet was also important in the presentation of work. We used blogger, an interactive blog site, to present our portfolio. We already knew about the magic of blogging through our AS media coursework, and some of us also visit blogs outside of school. Therefore, we know it is a brilliant way to present all sorts of information and technologies, as we could upload videos, slideshows, unlimited pictures etc. Without blogger, we would not have been able to create such interesting and technologically developed pieces of work.

I used the website "quackit" to find html codes to present my work in a creative and interesting way. It is a brilliant website with lots of information about all sorts of html codes, including a scroll box and drop down boxes.

We also used slideshare and scribd to upload documents from our computer, making our blogs more intereactive.

Photoshop

We used photoshop, an image manipulation programme to create our two ancillary tasks.

Photoshop has an amazing array of tools ready to manipulate images and create a product exactly the way we wanted it. Some of the tools we used included :

History Brush Tool Clone Tool Photo Edges Filter ToolMagic Wand ToolTransparency LevelsColour Adjuster (Desaturation)

We used this software to create the perfect compliments to our video.

History Brush Tool

This was used in the magazine advertisement to ensure that the rose remained in colour while the rest of the background was black and white, maintaining the vibrance of the rose. After selecting the history brush tool, we painted over the part of the photo we wished to keep in colour, then made the rest black and white. This was similar to the use of chroma keyer in our video.

Clone Tool

This was used on the back of the digipak to keep cloning and repeating the image of the rose torn up on the floor. This was effective as we could continually paint this pattern and achieve an image of thousands of torn up roses on the floor.

Photo Edges Filter Tool

This was used to alter the images' look, to make it look more intricate and detailed. The vibrance of the rose was important in our advertisement to juxtapose with the other pictures and the black background.

Magic Wand Tool

This was used to cut the images in our advertisement out from the background, without this tool we would not have achieved a professional looking image as we would have had to cut each picture out manually. They would have had a disjointed and erratic edge, therefore not looked smooth and professional.

Transparency Levels

This was used to edit the pictures surrounding the red rose in the magazine advertisement; having these images at a less transparency ensured that the rose remained vibrant, and the images of me also created the impression that I was 'looming out of the darkness'.

Colour Adjuster

This was used in the digipak to desaturate three panels, and enhance the redness of the rose on the back of the digipak. It successfully altered the colour to achieve the mood which we wanted.

Without photoshop, it would have been impossible to create anything near the image we were aiming for, without tools such as clone tool, history brush and photo edges. Photoshop is a highly professional piece of software and I am so glad that we have had access to it throughout our coursework!

Final Cut

For the editing stages, final cut was the software to use. It had all sorts of technical features which we couldn't wait to get our hands on! Comparing this to basic software, such as windows movie maker, I can see how lucky we are to have had access to this software.
We did find final cut very hard to get to grips with. None of us had ever used any software like it before! However, through many tutorials and a lot of scratching our heads, we finally got the gist of it. And actually, once you know what you're doing, its not all that hard :)

Would you believe, me being the technical dinosaur I am, I actually struggled getting the video from the tape onto the computer at first. However, finally I learnt that you have to go on file > capture > capture now, and most importantly make sure the tape's rewinded! Then we're all good to go!
Once the software was downloaded, we had to select the "in" and "out" points of each clip, then drag onto the timeline and cut using the 'razor blade tool' as appropriate. Then, we could rejig the clips as we wanted to create our video!

We quickly learnt how to add cross dissolves which would play a leading role in our video, and how to desaturate clips. These featured a lot in our rough cut.

To add a cross dissolve, we made sure that the two clips we wanted the transition between were next to each other. Then we clicked in between the two clips to highlight the join. Then we went on effects > video transitions > dissolve > cross dissolve, which created a cross dissolve transition in between the two clips.

To desaturate a clip (make it in black and white), we double clicked on the clip so it was selected, Then clicked on effects > video filters > image control > desaturate. This made the whole clip immediately black and white.

However, to create the professional vibe which we really wanted, our final cut skills had to come up a notch. Therefore, we spent evening after evening and early morning after early morning trawling through tutorials on youtube. Here is another instance of when the internet was useful in our project and, should we have not had access to it, our success in final cut can be questioned and we could have even been prevented from succeeding in some of our effects.

Our biggest success story was with the chroma key - you can follow a link to a blog post all about it here. Using the chroma key, we were able to transfrom clips like this:

To clips like this!

How did the chroma key work?

Firstly, we double clicked on the clip we wanted. Then we went to effects > key > chroma keyer. Making sure that the clip was in the second frame as well, we selected the colour red and altered the

image blur and filter edges to make sure

the area we wanted to keep in colour was covered. Then we clicked the trapezium button which took out the rest of the picture. Then we pressed ctrl + shift and dragged up, creating a duplicate layer right above the first and made sure the top clip was clicked off the trapezium button. Then, we desaturated just that clip. This created the effect which left just the rose in colour! This meant that we could convey that while my whole world was falling apart, the rose and hence love was still retained.

We also made use of the colour corrector tool. To show the transition from happy to sad times we did not always want to use plain colour or black and white, therefore opted to change clips using this feature to make them inbetween black and white and colour, showing the gradual transition to death with the very end scene of the graveyard being in black and white.

First we double clicked on the clip, then clicked Effects > Video Filters > Colour Correction > Colour Corrector.

Then the screen below came up, and we dragged the slides for 'whites', 'mids', 'sat' and 'blacks' levels to successfully adjust the colour.

Here are some examples of how we changed clips using the colour corrector :

We also used an overlay which had a similar effect to the cross dissolves. In the overlay my shadow is picking petals off the rose and in the background is my dead face. This is a prolepsis of my death due to the love which is slowly being destroyed through the metaphorical rose.

This was really easy and simple to do, we just made sure that the two clips which we wanted to be over layed were on top of each other, then pressed ctrl + clicked on both so they were both highlighted. Then we went on modify > composite mode > overlay and rendered it, so the overlay was created.












I have done another blog post about the effects we used in final cut, which I updated as we went along the project. You can get to it here .



Hardware

The sony handycam was what we filmed all our footage on. It proved very useful, as it was light and compact, easy for us to film everywhere and anywhere we wanted. Additionally, the high battery lifespan meant that we could get all the footage we needed outside. We quickly got to grips with the basics of the handycam, ie. how to record, pause while recording, stop and play/edit. We toyed with the idea of using night mode to record a scene in the dark, but in the end this did not fit our story. Accompanying the handycam was a tripod which we could fit the camera onto. We quickly learnt that it was very different using a tripod and not using one! However, we decided to not use the tripod for some scenes where we particuarly wanted a shaky effect, for example the facebook scene. The idea behind this scene is that it is a point of view shot, seeing it through my eyes and the shakiness represents how I could be sobbing while reading it. We also used a handheald camera for the scene of me running, this effectively conveys how shaky and unstable my world is at that precise moment.

Alysha's camera was a sony cybershot 12 megapixel camera. She used this to take high quality pictures for the digipak and magazine advertisement, as well as location photos. The fact that it was 12 megapixels meant that the photos looked very professional. Furthermore, we all learnt our way around this camera and had fun altering the light settings, close up settings and more.

At school, we use mac computers. Year 12 meant a lot of scratching our heads at these computers, because the majority of us had never used one before. However, we quickly learnt, and by year 13, being the (ahem) professionals we were at apple technology, we thought there was nothing more we could learn. We were so wrong! There is a long long list of what I have learnt this year on apple computers, including aligning all the windows so they fit neatly next to each other, how to open new tabs on safari and how to correctly eject a memory stick! But nevermind all that, I have also learnt a great deal which was actually applicable to my coursework through the programmes we used. The main one being final cut which I have detailed above.

This is me using a mac computer at school.

My computer at home is a windows vista acer laptop and I used this to create slideshows and word documents, plus update my blog at home. This is why I love blogger, it is so easy to access from anywhere, including my horrendously slow laptop!

Finally, I used my phone, an iphone, for a lot of the coursework. Being always connected to facebook meant that I could easily drop one of my group members a message. While out and about, I did not always have my camera on me so when we were taking location shots, I often used my phone. My phone has a 3 megapixel camera, auto focus, auto white balance and auto macro so while not as good as a digital camera, it sufficed for location shots. I also used the italk application to do a voiceover for my evaluation. This consisted of me speaking into the phone and recording it, then connecting it to a wifi network and putting that on the computer through the computer programme italk sync.

To Conclude.....

A great range of technologies were accessible to us throughout our coursework; which was really useful and I don't think that our coursework would have achieved the same amount of professionality if we had not had access to these technologies. Both modern hardware and software were avaliable for us to really express our skills in their finest potential, and without such technologies we would have not been able to create
a) such a professional looking video, with all the effects such as chroma keyer and colour corrector and such intricate and high quality ancillary tasks with photoshop, as in a more basic photo editing programme we would not have had access to features such as the history brush tool and the filter edges tool
b) such extensive research as we were able to use websites such as uktribes and youtube to research every aspect that we wished to include in our music video, and
c) discovered all the ways to present work in the evaluation, this included websites such as slideshare and scribd, where we learnt we could host word documents and slideshows, and the website quackit, which helped me find html codes to present work in a creative and professional way.
These technologies maximised our work to its full potential and we really have learnt a lot about them throughout. For example, we had never used final cut before and now we feel like we know it very well. We learnt a lot about html to present our work in the best way possible, and although we used photoshop last year, we now feel much better acquainted with the software. We have made full use of the hardware given to us, appreciating the use of the sony handycam and the sony cybershot 12 megapixel camera, and learnt about the functions on both these pieces of apparatus. Technologies were a very important part of our A2 media coursework, and without the level of technology which we had, it is safe to say we would have been lost!

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

A massive part of our A2 coursework was audience feedback. There is no point in creating a product if the target audience does not understand and enjoy it, therefore when we were at the stage of creating a rough cut, we showed it to our media class, who fit our target audience.

Here is the feedback we recieved. Our first rough cut did have far too many gaps, which was the main criticism we recieved. Obviously we worked hard for the couple of days after to ensure that we filled these gaps!

The next step was to ask some people who had not already seen our music video what they thought of it. Some of these people were media students and some were not, therefore we gained a wide variety of opinions and interpretations. We videoed it to achieve an authenticity of people's opinions, as we thought it was easier for them to express their feelings in talking rather than writing.

Here is the feedback video :

(Thankyou to Natasha Davies, Faye Grundy, Bethany Hobbs, Sophie Jones, Sarah Newnham, Megan Painter and Lewis Baker-James for appearing in this video.)

Another step we took was to post our video onto facebook to get some feedback from people who fitted our target audience description, this was handy as we could quickly display it to a large audience and any of our acquaintences who wanted to could comment on the video, therefore it would not just be our close friends who we have asked to give feedback.

What did we learn from this?

Here is a table of what the audience thought about our video as we showed it to them, and what we did to build on their constructive criticism.

We also asked these people who were interviewed to fill in a booklet about the ancillary tasks, which asked them for their comments and opinions on our digipak and magazine advertisement. This is what they said (i've also typed out what they said underneath because its quite hard to read) :

• In my opinion I feel that the way there are logos and representations of other companies on the magazine give it a very realisitic feel. Alongside his I would also say that the use of colours make the adertisement stand out. The text is very easy to read and the advert gives a lot of information without using a mass amount of text, keeping it simple was a very good idea.
• The magazine advert goes well with the CD cover. I like the way both images are quite dark and shady. I like the way the reviews lie (ie. star ratings) are below the images
• The magazine advert is similar to the CD cover, which creates synergy within the campaign. THe images are well edited and the text is easy on the eye.
• The layout is very professinal and the colours, fonts and lighting match the digipak creating a strong house theme. The professional touches such as the itunes and hmv logo work very well.
• I like the combingation f the dark background, suble images + light, clear, easy to read writing.
• Beautiful images, the upside down rose is distinctive and symbolic
• Maybe pictures better aligned.

• The digipak almost tells a story through the pictures used, I would say this is very good as it clearly builds from the music video. Again the use of logos make it look realistic and credible. It is kept very simple but at the same time very eye catching for the buyers. It definatley looks like an album to buy and keep.
• I like the saturation - could poss edit further?
• The dark imagery gives a hint as to the lyrical themes of the video. The sense of foreboding is conveyed through the open gates and tree shapes.
• Dark contrast makes it seem very gloomy and mysterious. I like the barcode positioned at the bottom right.
• The gothic theme indicates what the genre of the music will be.
• The use of dark low key ighting is amazing, the saturation of the pictures and lighting emphasise the message and tone of your vdeo. The front image works really well as it is a scene from the video and entices viewers as it does not give too much away. Also love the continual symbolism created by the rose
• I like how dramatic the pictures are. The front picture has mysterious elements that draws in audiences.
• The lighting makes it very atmospheric. The open gate draws you into the picture making you wonder what will happen next.
• Atmospheric - sets a sombre tone. Pictues are excellent, perhaps bottom right could have zoomend in on graves a bit more to distinguish it from bottom left.

We took some of the improvements which they suggested on board and this enabled us to create our final pieces. For example one person said that they pictures could be better aligned with each other in the advertisement, whereas another person suggested we edit the saturation further on the inside panels of the digipak. While we did not neccessarily do everything that they suggested, we discussed their opinions within our group and we decided on the best route to take to create the most appealing and professional looking product possible.

Other feedback which cannot be forgotten was the survey right at the start of the coursework! This was a survey which we gave to 10 members of our target audience, which contained questions about what they liked in a music video. Here is the sheet of pie charts which containted the results :

This was vital to the creation of our music video, as it was the first feedback we recieved and, as this was during the time which we were shaping our ideas, it influenced what we eventually decided for our music video.

To conclude, we asked our audience for feedback at every possible stage of our video. While editing, we would always ask another media student who wasn't in our group what they thought of various things we had done. This is so we could gain an outside opinion of our music video. We also asked non - media students for opinions as they would see the video less analytically and more as if they were really a member of the target audience. The feedback was vital in decision making, and we always asked people who we knew would give an honest and unbiased opinion.

Evaluation Question 2

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

Script for the Video:

Throughout the project, we had to remember that we were not just making a product, but a brand. The brand was the band, “band of horses” and the task was to create a promotional package for the release of their album “cease to begin“, including a Digipak, a promotional music video for their song “the funeral” and a poster promoting the release of the Digipak. This brand had to maintain a consistent house style throughout. This meant using related fonts, colours and images which gave our brand its own identity. This identity would cause the target audience to remember our brand and recognize it.

I feel that our main and ancillary tasks compliment each other really well. The main link which all three tasks share is the icon of the rose. This rose is shown throughout to be a symbol of the love, the cause for the character’s suicide in the video. The fact that it is used so constantly throughout our video, magazine advertisement and Digipak shows how constant this love is. It is a brand icon and the use of it would instantly remind the target audience of the band.

We used the desaturate tool a great deal throughout our coursework. Firstly, it was used in our video to give a real funeral istic tone to the video. It was used for many shots, primarily the ones which were shots of despair and doom; such as the writing of the suicide note, the argument and the funeral scene at the end. This gave a sense of the blandness of the character’s life without the love of her partner, and was used as a prolepsis of what was to come. Furthermore, the chroma key effects which we used throughout captured the vitality of the love which the two characters shared. The contrast of the red against the black and white really showed how the love had been taken out of the characters’ life and showed no escape for the character without it.

These ideas were continued throughout the ancillary tasks, through the desaturating of three panels of the Digipak. Furthermore, although we did use colour for the back of the Digipak, the redness of the rose which we used for the back of the Digipak linked with the use of chroma key in the video, where just the rose was in colour. We carried this theme onto our advertisement, where we used a black background and the only prominent colour was that of the rose. We carried on this colour theme by making the rating stars red as well.

We made sure our ancillary tasks connected by using the same font. This was called 'You Won't Bring me Down' and was downloaded from dafont.com we used it for the majority of the writing on the advertisement and for the writing on the Digipak, including the song names on the back of the Digipak and the title on the front. We considered using it for the title at the start of our video, but decided against it because most professional music videos have a plain serif font for the title.

The use of cross dissolves in our video was vital to reflect the slow pace of our song. We carried this on as we made sure the images in our ancillary tasks were not too harsh so edited the transparency.

We also had the task of choosing the album name. We eventually chose a name which had actually been a band of horses album name, however, not the album which our song “the funeral” was actually from. We looked at other names, however eventually chose this name because “cease to begin” actually fitted in very well with the song “the funeral”, as the death which was suggestive of the song in “the funeral” literally meant that it “ceased to begin. We could really imagine the song being on this album in the media world.

Finally, we maintained our house style by using location shots for the Digipak. The gates were a feature of our music video and would remind the target audience of the video. We also used a picture of my shadow picking the petals of the rose for the Digipak, this linked in with the clip where I am actually picking the petals off in shadow. The use of shadows created an eerie and ominous tone. We also used the same picture of the rose on the actual CD and the advertisement.

The use of similar effects and icons throughout our three products resulted in a strong link between all three products. This created an effective combination as our target audience would really recognize all three products as being linked and the combination really emulated the tone of the video. It was important to use the icon of the rose throughout as this represented the love which the characters felt for one another, therefore through using this we displayed how constant this love was.

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our first step in creating our A2 portfolio was research. Here, we used the internet to find forms and conventions of real media products, to ensure that we created a product with all said forms and conventions.

Motifs

Many music videos seemed to use motifs to convey a message throughout the video. We decided to develop this convention as we used the recurring icon of the rose in our video.

This short video shows the use of the rose as an icon throughout the video. This develops the media convention of using metaphors to portray to the audience the main message of the media product.

We have used this rose religiously throughout the three tasks, as it was important for us to get across the message of the importance of the rose. Research prior to our project showed us that metaphors are an extremely useful part of any media product, and our use of the chroma key effect etc. really helped us put across this message.

Editing

Cross Dissolves

We use cross dissolves a lot throughout our video, to reflect the plausible gloom and slow pace of the video. These are a conventional transition used a lot in the real media world. They are vital to create a specific nostaligic mood. We wanted to use them specifically to represent how much I am hanging onto hope, as using cross dissolves blends the scenes together.

We made a concious decision to include lots of cross dissolves after seeing them in a variety of music videos and other media products, including television programmes and films, where a reflective mood is present.

One of these music videos was Usher - Burn.

Syncing

We specifically edited our product so it resembled a product in the real media world. One of the things that was most important to us was making sure that everything was in time with the music. When we recieved audience feedback, they said that they specifically liked they fact that it was all in time with the music, especially this clip, which shows the hand crashing onto the pills:

It beared a similarity to this clip from a Saturdays music video for Forever is Over, where the door crashing syncs with the crashing of the cymbals.

Black and White

We used the 'desaturate' tool for a lot of our video. This was because we wanted to create a gloomy atmosphere and thought that black and white was the best way to go to create this.

We were inspired by the use of black and white in famous videos, including Amy Winehouse's Back to Black ,Beyonce's If I were a boy and Robbie Williams' Feel

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black MUSIC VIDEO

How did these videos inspire us?

We wanted to use black and white for the scenes where I am clearly dead, like in the graveyard, one of which is shown below:

However, we also used it for scenes such as these, to show the death of the relationship:

Finally, we used it for the arguement scene to show a prolepsis of what this arguement will lead to

We also partially saturated some scenes using the colour corrector tool on final cut. This is to show the journey to death which the character has embarked on, for example we used it in the suicide scene.

Here is an example of where we edited the saturation to create a more gloomy effect:

Connection of Lyrics to Visuals

"to know you is hardly wonder"

Here, we challanged the lyrics by putting a romantic scene ontop of the line "to know you is hardly wonder". This means that the song line could almost act as a warning for what is to come, as it seems like "wonder" at that current moment but there is a hidden warning that it will all fade away.

"really too late to call so we wait for it"

This line is sung with the arguement scene, we see how it is indeed 'really too late' for anything, for the relationship. It is a pivitol point in the video where all the motifs and hints used at the start come together and it is realized that suicide is imminent. It represents the last chance, and from then on it is shown how I am just 'waiting' for death.

"to the outside the dead leaves lay on the lawn"

This line occurs during the suicide scene, as I reach for the pills and grab them. The importance of this line is the metaphor of 'dead leaves' because I am indeed 'dead' by that point, as next it is shown as I am walking to the graveyard and metaphorically dying.

There is also an overriding connection of our lyrics to visuals as our song is called 'the funeral' and the video is about a 'funeral'. This gives a literal connection between the narrative and video, after listening to the song we discussed and realised that there wasn't really anything else it could be about but a funeral.

Lighting

We mainly used ambient and natural lighting in our video. This was because the aim of our video wasn't to give a polished, preened, artificial tone. It aimed to create a realistic setting where we could tell our narrative best.

We did ,however, use one of charlotte's professional lights to shine on the wall in order to create a shadow for the scene where I am picking off the rose petals in the shadow.

This had a certain eerie quality that we wanted to use, the shadows being suggestive of death already.

Eye Contact













Eye contact directly involves the viewer, giving them a more intimate experience as they feel that the actor is relating to them.

In love the way you lie, Megan Fox (sorry about the fact that my blog is basically a shrine to her by the way), looks at the camera directly in the video. It gives the viewer a sense that she is telling the story directly to the viewer, and gives the narrative video an extra sense of story telling. This is what we aimed to do through the clip above.


Firstly, we desaturated the whole clip. However, we decided to make the second half in colour so my dead face bursts into colour as I open my eyes. This gives an eerie sense to the video, as there is a question of - is she dead? - and really involves the viewer through the story . The half saturated half black and white also emphasizes how hard the decision was to commit suicide, and how easily my life was destroyed.

Colour Scheme throughout the brand

Although obviously it is impossible to just contain two colours in our brand, we made a concious effort to mainly use red and black. This was because these colours represented the evil, death and dying love which we were really trying to convey. While researching the use of these colours, we came across this page showing the importance of these colours. Here are screengrabs showing what they represent.

We used these colours because our research showed that people linked black and red with ideas of death and destruction, and from our audience feedback we learnt that they did indeed recognize these colours as such and it helped with the overall tone of the video.

Facebook Scenes

These scenes did challenge typical media products. Whilst doing our research, we found lots of narrative videos, however, rarely with such a haunting message as ours. We feel that the facebook scenes made our video stand out and they really addressed an important issue at the moment. The use of colloquial language highlighted the teen age group which we were talking about.

It must be remembered that our video is very controversial, addressing a sensitive and not often talked about subject. Therefore, in this way, our video on the whole challanges conventions of media products.

Another music video which addreses controversial and sensitive issues is pink's "fucking perfect". This addresses typical childhood and youth problems such as bullying, fitting in, eating disorders and self harm.

We decided to create a music video with controversial messages to raise awareness about our topic, which was cyber bullying and the harm it can cause. We feel that we successfully did this as our target audience commented how meaningful and emotional our video was.

What about our ancillary tasks?

Ancillary Task Question 1

Our media product both challenges and uses forms and conventions of real media products. We wanted to create something different, that hadn't been produced in the same way before. This is why we wanted to create such a controversial product, whilst using the conventions of music videos as well. Hopefully we raised awareness about such an important issue through the forms of a typical video!