Evaluation Question Four

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




The prezi above briefly shows all of the media technologies of which I used throughout the coursework. Below I am going to concentrate on one of the main technologies.

Blogger:


Blogger has many strengths and weaknesses as to why it is a good and not so good way to present all of the coursework.


Strengths include the fact that all of the work can be separated into labels, clearly showing the 'Research' 'Planning' 'Construction' and 'Evaluation' sections. This helps to organise the entire quantity of work into an organised and chronological order.
Secondly another good aspect to blogger is that a wide variety of different media technologies can be embedded onto the one blog, these include; prezi, slideshare and soundcloud. Soundcloud allowed me to embed voice clips onto my blog, which I would of been able to achieve if I was to produce a paper copy of the portfolio.  Again this keeps the presentation well organised and completely together.
 Using blogger allowed our group to have access to each others progress and to ensure that nothing contradicted one another.


The main weakness was that Blogger was alien to me at the beginning of the portfolio, so therefore I have developed the skill to be able to use it effectively.
The page layout of blogger is designed by the owner of the blog, and therefore I needed to ensure that all of the content on the blog fitted onto the page using the design element, this was difficult to do as many tables didn't fit onto the blog, and if it width of the page was made bigger, other elements of the blog looked lost.
Finally if a piece of work was to be added in, the time of the post had to be altered to ensure that the blog flowed properly without the newest post actually being at the beginning and maybe not quite fitting in.
Overall I feel that blogger was a fantastic site to display all of the work and to also communicate between the group.

Evaluation Question Three

These clips were some recordings of which I took when I asked people what they thought of the second draft of my video. They are very positive and this meant that I was able to tweek slight things. Having the feedback recorded meant that I could listen to it at any point so I didnt forget what they had said/suggested and it also includes a different technology in my coursework.

Joe Davis Feedback;

Audience Feedback 2 by Jessica Langley


Beth Parrish Feedback;

Audience Feedback 1 by Jessica Langley

Throughout the portfolio I have used many different types of audience feed back to ensure that the final product I made was as effective and would appeal to the audience I intended, below is some feed back of which I got from a social networking site about my first draft of my video.

This feedback really helped me to understand that I was on the right tracks for my video to appeal to my audience. I really appreciated the fact that people gave me good points and constructive points, this meant I was able to evaluate accurately what my target market wanted.

I did produce a survey which I posted onto many social networking sites, but unfortunately only one person completely this survey and therefore this didn't provide me with any relevant information as to how to improve my video.

Overall audience feedback has played a major roll in making sure that I produced a good quality video that would appeal to my target audience and therefore promote an album. 

Evaluation Question Two

To ensure that I created a brand identity for The Racoons, I made sure that I linked all of the products together. This meant that if someone saw one piece, then another, they would automatically link the pieces together. I did this mainly through the logo, costumes and images I used.

How effective are the main tasks and ancillary tasks together?

View more presentations from jessica_langley.

Overall I feel that my ancillary and main tasks gel really well. They create and icnic style and one that would catch the attention of the intended audience. The style is consistent and therefore makes it all look very professional.


Combination with institutions:

I feel that my CD cover and poster would be published by EMI music, this is because they have a very wide label list and mine could fit in with these, EMI would then sell the CD onto other retailers for the public to purchase and they would also provide the same retailer with the corresponding poster to keep with the brand identity. 

The music video itself could be shown on any music channel, especially music channels such as VIVA or 4music. 

If the song was to hit number one, these music channels both show the UK top 40 and therefore this makes them ideal for my music video. The video could also   be shown in other selections of music and on many other music channels.

Evaluation Question One

In the research I carried out at the beginning of the portfolio I discovered all the conventions that makes a successful music video, magazine and CD cover. Below is a prezi presentation that covers the conventions I used, challenged and didn't use in my music video.

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

Conventions are also present in the production of the CD cover and poster. Below I will analyse how I did this well.

On the left we have Lady Gaga's Cover for telephone and on the right there is my cover. From these we can see many similarities. For example, following the route of the eye, we see the image of the band first, followed by the artist name and the song/album title.  These are conventions I found from all of my research and ones that I felt it was necessary to use. Along with this route of the eye concept I have also used costumes, which feature a lot on CD covers. I have also created a logo for 'The Racoons' and used this throughout my ancillary tasks to create an identity. Another convention I noticed in my research is a colour scheme, and I have also tried to portray this convention as well. 

Lady Gaga's tour poster had a distinctive image of her which is very central. A very bland colour scheme of black and white has been use to create a dramatic look and appeal to the audience. Because this poster doesn't relate to the CD cover, there aren't many similarities between the two, but there are similarities between them in the concept of Gaga's style. Both use bold white text, and have a very distinctive image, Lady Gaga has created a brand identity through her appearance more than a logo and this is reflected in her products. The use of the conventions is very strong and makes a very appealing poster.


My poster uses the same logo, colour scheme and image as the CD cover, this was to provide consistency but to also stick to the conventions of the ancillary tasks. By using the same colour scheme and Logo I have stuck to the conventions of a typical poster, keeping it simplistic yet effective.

Video Second Edit

For this edit we decided to make the video more conventional by removing all of the transitions. In a music video there doesn't tend to be transitions, more jump cuts from clips, we have tried to do that in this edit. We feel that this version works better than the previous version.

Video First Draft

This is our first attempt at the music video. Our overall opinion is that it works very well and we were very pleased with the first draft. We worked very hard to get the lip syncing perfect to create a professional look but to also keep pace in the video. I got some feedback from a social networking site:

From this feedback we can see that the overall feel from our target audience is that the video works well. The like the locations and techniques we used. Although they commented on the good use of editing we felt like we wanted to remove the transitions to see if that improved the overall professionalism of the video.

Reconsideration of video

Once filming had commenced, we soon realised that what we wanted to film was too ambitious in the time scale we had to complete the video. We therefore sat down as a group to discuss what we could do to still produce a good quality video but to also actually finish it.

We decided on:

Using band scenes for the chorus', we had already filmed them at this point and felt they should be a strong aspect of the video.

Focus on Ben and Aimee being the couple that want to be together, which relates to the lyrics.

Use clips mainly of Ben and Aimee, (both together and alone) these should be ones where they are acting natural  to show a connection between them.