Print Artifacts

For the print artifacts we have to create a DVD cover and Album cover and advert for our music videos. The theme of my music video is all about love and heartbreak and my artifacts illustrate this.

My CD cover represents themes of love by having the picture of the heart, and the romanticised view of love. The CD cover has the name of the band, album and songs that are on the disk. I produced this on photoshop by copying/pasting images on photoshop



The DVD cover is slightly different with the choice of colours as they are quite bold and dramatic whereas the colours on the CD cover are quite relaxing with the mix of the shades of the sky. The DVD cover has logos of HMV, bar codes and certificate age logo to make the product seem as real as possible.


The advert cover links in with the rest of my products as I have used the same image as the DVD cover to have the same themes running through my products. The advert cover is to promote the music video, CD and DVDs.

Evaluation

For the evaluation process I answered four separate questions about my media product (music video) and excillary products (CD/DVD cover and advert). My teacher then recorded our answers on a mini DV camera, below are the questions and my answers.

What ways do your media products use develop or challenge forms of conventional real media products?
Firstly for our coursework I created a music video, DVD/CD cover and advert, for the music video I followed normal conventions of a performance/narrative based video which is quite common with general music videos featured on channels such as MTV. I followed normal conventions of a performance based video by having my character miming the song throughout the video and by having titles appear on my music video, such as the name of the the band, song and album. Which is often used on music channels with any song that comes on.

For my CD/DVD and advert cover I followed general conventions such as having bar codes, the price and HMV logos, to make the products seem real as possible as HMV would be the shop that I would want my product to be sold in, as HMV represented my target audience. As my music video is aimed at the younger demographic, who are teens and read magazines such as NME.

How effective is the combination of your main products and excelliary products?
All of my products have a common theme of love and heartbreak, so for my DVD cover I used an image of a red heart and black and white silhouetted girl which has connotations with the lyrics of my song as my character is heartbroken.

My CD cover links in with my music video and DVD cover as it has once again an image of a heart, but someone making a heart with their fingers against a sunrise, this all links in with m y romanticised view of love within the video.

My advert is the combinations of the two images and I did this by using photoshop where I used existing images and overlapped them together.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
At the start of the year I conducted a questionnaire on what students liked about music videos, the questionnaire featured 10 questions and was distributed to 10 individuals, the questions asked whether students preferred narrative,performance or abstract based videos, what genres of music they liked, and whether they had heard of the band Paramore. I concluded that people preferred a combination of a performance/narrative based video, as they liked watching their favourite artists performing the song, I also gathered that my target audience were between the ages of 18-19.

A version of our music videos were shown in class and another set of questionnaires were given out to the rest of the class, consisting of questions such as mise en scene, editing- what effects were used, filming-what shots were used, and whether the song was a good choice. But At that time my music video was completely finished at that time but we knew we had to have more types of editing, such as having different colours, transitions and more variety. Once our video was fully completed I gathered a couple of students to have a look at the video for more audience feedback, and I learnt that the synchronising of the actress singing was a bit faster then the audio, so I slowed down the speed of the shot so that the shot would fit in with the rest of the song.

How did you use new media technologies on the construction, research and planning and evaluation process?
Firstly from our preliminary task to now I have learned that for the research and planning process how to use Blogspot.com once again. In which I learned how to embed video clips from youtube.com and paste them onto my blog, I learned how to scan my storyboards into the computer and apply them to my blog. This resulted in using various search engines such as google.com, ask.com and yahoo.com which meant that the Internet played a big part in the research and planning process.

For the construction of the music video I learnt how to use a mini DVD camera when filming different types of shots such as over-the-shoulder, high/low angle, pans etc. I then learnt how to use Final cut Pro by editing. I learned how to capture my footage from the mini DVD camera and put onto the computer, how to use the timeline but piecing a sequence together cuting down shots etc, add effects such as slow motion, crops, dissolves, transitions etc.

For the evaluation process my media teacher filmed myself answering these four questions about my media products and excelliary products.

I believe my evaluation went well as I was prepeared with my notes.

Construction

Role Allocation
For our music video I worked in a team of two, (including myself) but I came up with the choice of song and the idea/storyboard. My partner did some of the filming while I did the majority of it (because of timings) and we both did the editing of the music video.

Casting
For the casting of our music video we only needed one character to perform in the video, so it was quite simple in terms of numbers. I then arranged a friend to act in the video as she fitted the criteria for what I was looking for. As she was able to portray the characters feelings of sadness and misery. Our character was a female aged 17 who was Caucasian.

Filming
For the location of the music video we filmed in West Brom at my friends house in her bedroom, and outside so their was more then one location. We produced a production schedule which features the location, dates, props and scene descriptions so there wasn't any confusion. We also created a logging and capturing sheet so that it would be easier when capturing the footage on the computers.

Problems did arise when filming as not everyone was freely available, we then had to abandon our original idea due to cast not turning up, this presented us with our second idea for our music video. So we had problem meeting up and setting dates. Our location was also very far away from both me and my partner so getting to and from West Brom took a lot of time, which meant the majority of the day was dedicated to travelling. This meant that filming was split into several days.


Editing
For the editing process I learned how to capture footage from the Mini DV camera and put it onto the computer, I then learnt how to use Final-Cut-Pro. As I did the majority of the editing I learnt numerous skills such as piecing a sequence together by cutting down shots, I learnt how to superimpose shots by layering the shots on top of each other and by changing the opacity, I learnt how to crop different shots by having four separate shots on one screen, I also learnt how to use colour corrector, tint, emboss ect.

The editing Process went well as I knew what I wanted and was able to edit my music video without difficulty.

Props
These were the props that we used in the music video;

• Photo frame
• Photo of character
• Phone
• Headphones
• Bedroom