Evaluation 4

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

The way i started to think about how to piece together clips started with the idea from a video that i watched called luv deluxe - cinnamon chasers . The video flows from start to finish with simple editing with the cuts done mostly through visuals. What i mean is that the images on the screen come across, over and onto the camera, blackening the screen which then goes onto the next scene. I really liked that idea so in the filming process i tried to get things to cover the lens to do with the story. I found this very difficult but got some great shots to work with. We began our editing process on the apple mac's, using the software called iMovie. To get the transitions i wanted with the screen blackening i used the simple effect called fade to black. This then led onto the next scene which i really liked the look of. We then had to start putting the transitions into the beats of the song. We were fortunate to have a song with such prominent beats in the music. At each of these beats we cut to the next shot and kept the visuals linked to what you can hear. Then next step was the start of matching goodwins' theory of visuals to lyrics. We had shots of kissing and feet of which were in the lyrics. The start of the song speaks of waking up next to you and that's what happens in the visuals. Then there is the part in the lyrics where it says and when i kiss you and in the visuals we cropped the clip needed to fit perfectly in time with the lyrics. The ways in which we cropped was by simply cutting the clips into the times we needed. We had had our debates previous about the colourisation and had found that most agreed with our choice to keep the camera default. Which from our final feedback seemed to have been the best idea.

Our next task was to create two ancillary tasks to support our video, a website and a Digipak. I began by creating the website through the programmes Adobe photoshop and dreamweaver. Photoshop is a image editing piece of software that i used to create the images i used in the creation process of my website. I started with using images from the Internet to get my draft created and the idea then was to go on and take some studio images in the black and white theme we had thoughts of going with. When the black and white idea was changed we stopped and started to recreate the website on an online website creator called. This meant also we could work from home, school or anywhere we wanted which made things easier as we didn't have the software readily available at home. The online website creator was a very easy site to work with as it had the different templates and layouts on the site available. We then started to collect images from our video and take any images that were firstly relevant and secondly kept to our star image motif. I used MS paint to do most of the editing from home to do some simple text overlays and cropping. At the end we used the iMovie tools to speed up and reverse the whole of our music video this image shows how we did this. We also overlayed the sound of the alram of which gained from a recording already on the mac.

The camera we used was a canon BP-808 which is a very standard camera not capable of a great visual experience. But we worked with it as well as we could and found some great shots whilst we were out filming. We found inventive places to place the camera like on the floor, strapping it to the actors leg and arm to get some different shots. We played with were we could place the camera and started to stray away from the angles and shots we had planned to use. The shot where you can see the actress' face up close as she puts the coin in is on top of the machine itself just laying on top. We really didn't every shot to be handheld or fixed on one position on a tripod so we started to vary the angles but trying to keep loads of shots of feet to keep our star image motif.

i started my work on this website, a site to create a blog on. I used it as an online diary for all my work registering every plan we made for our music video. i recorded all the debates on what song to use and what colour to use in our video and much more. I have recorded my journey to my final product and the problems i faced on the way.

There were a few pieces of software i used within my blog. Youtube was the first piece to hold our videos for our final product. From this we could show people our video anywhere and get our feedback. We obtained the HTML coding to post on our blogs to show our videos. Another piece of software i used was Flickr. An online site where you can put your own images and put them into storage online, put them into slide shows and post them onto blogs and to share with other Flickr users. The basic pieces of software i used were MS word so i could work from home if my Internet failed and get the written part done. Also MS presentation to make the presentation for evaluation 3. Then the site called slideshare.com to post onto my blog.

I also used my phone to record our film pitch. The film pitch was to pitch our ideas to our audience and gain feedback. i used my phone to record this and then post it onto youtube straight from my phone.

Evaluation 3

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation3

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Evaluation 2

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

Image motifs-

At the start, when we had just begun to think of our star image motif we listened to the song a few times through to find a specific word or phrase that stands out. Our first decision was to go with 'strawberries taste like lips do' after filming but we couldn't go back and film because our actress was at uni and we couldn't get hold of her again.

So we went with the idea of feet, as in the lyrics another phrase was 'get our feet wet' and other links to feet throughout. We had plenty of low angle shots and shots of feet so in the editing process we began to use more shots of the feet to make that link. This was the start of our star image motif. We tried to include as much feet in our products as possible with the front cover of the Digipak and the main title being behind an image of the shoes our actor wore in the video. The images used are all from our video accept the one of the shoes that we took at a later date. With the idea of feet as our star image motif its quite a subtle one that you would only notice having watched the video more than once or looking across all three products. This i believe is a good thing as its not in your face with over used shots of feet and nothing else.

House colours -

Throughout the editing of our video there was the debate over three different options for the colouring through all three products. We made a questionnaire for which one the audience thought would work better and came back with the results for leaving the colour on the camera default, the original colours. We had to do some touching up here and there for the darker parts of the video as the colour and lighting were lost in the dark so we had to fix this by editing out the problem. We were starting to make everything in black and white with high exposure but as i said we changed our decision. You can see this with our first draft for the website i created. I went down the black and white route and started making the site. When we had our decision we scrapped that draft and started fresh with the original colouring. The colours we mostly stuck to were the pale bright colours. In the video it starts of really bright and pale and near the end it goes into the dark strong colourings from the arcade and station.

Brand identity -


Visible elements of a brand, such as colours, design, Star image motif and name, together identify the brand in the audience's mind. Its got to be the one thing that sticks in the audiences mind throughout all three products. I believe i have achieved this in the creation of our three products all having images of feet (our star image motif). The images used throughout all three pieces are all our own original images. With all the main titles in white as well to keep that continuity through the pieces.

Typography -

Throught the two back up pieces to my video the images were edited on the programme MS paint. So the text that we used was the default settings that were on the programme and we wanted something quite simple like the text used in the video. The other thing was we wanted the text colour for the title to be in white as it was in the video keeping it throughout.

Genre -

The genre of music Ed Sheeran fell under was 'Acoustic Folk' and his song that we chose i believe was less folk however. The acoustic genre of music is more often used for relationships and 'cute' videos. This is what we have done andwhat the audience has recognised as the genre. So i believe we were successful in hitting the genre.

Images used -

All of the images that we used were original images taken either from our filming or taken away from the filming. We didnt go out and take a load of images for our ancillary tasks as we did want to use screen prints from the video keeping the continuity and making it easier for the audience to link the pieces.

Evaluation 1

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

Within the creation of my music video I have followed goodwin’s theory. Such as matching lyrics to visuals with feet, kissing and waking up next to youe. Goodwin believes this is apparent in every single music video.

Within my video we have generated a star image motif of feet. Feet are mentioned in the lyrics and we have included many low angle shots of the couple’s feet. I have also included it in the creation of the website and the CD cover. This image of the feet has been carried throughout our work and we have tried to include it as much as we could within the visuals of our video. I have followed the notion of looking with the dominance of eye line shots. Having used many hand held point of view shots it holds the theory set by Goodwin. I have followed the rule of matching typography throughout all three products with the text all being in white and the default font style on MS paint.

This flows throughout all our work with the video, website and CD cover. However the problem I face is with the creation of the products the texts have been stretched when trying to paste the image into set sizes for the CD cover and the website. I have followed the idea of fast cut montage in parts of my video, only increasing the speed of our cutting with the increase in tempo. The start of our video is in black and white and changed when the music came on the colour came back. So I began to continue the black and white theme through my website and through the CD cover in my first designs however the first draft my partner handed in was his own design and we considered the different options. We eventually decided to go back to the default colour setting on the camera and began to take screen grabs from the video to use in our other two products.

Audience feedback - For showcase

I gathered the results from our written questionnaires and put the infomation onto Microsoft Excel. I then created a table and made this chart from the table. These results are great feedback with it all mostly positive. We gathered feedback from 10 people and the answers they gave were yes, no or could be improved sort of answers. So i made the chart have three bars over each question for yes, no and could be improved. The only things we dropped on were the quality of the image, which was what we had worried about with the quality of the camera. Also the Lighting in some of the darker scenes, which i also discussed earlier.

Audience feedback - Ed Sheeran

When we asked for permission to use Ed Sheeran's song he asked to see it when it was finished. So we posted on his wall the link to our video on YouTube, he watched it and posted on his wall on twitter the first comment. He has shown our video to his fans and all the people who follow him on Twitter. By the end of the night we had gained 250 views of our video, a few comments and a few people clicked 'like' on the video. The second comment says that he has shown the video to his producer and sat that he got emotional watching the video. This is great! This is just further feedback on video that we needed.








Here you can see the number of people who have viewed our video.


Here are the number of likes we have gained from people watching our video.

Website - the software

The website we made was a struggle to get to as we had to face the problem of limited time on specific programmes such as photoshop and dreamweaver. As i didnt have these programmes at home we eventually decided to use an online web design site that we could create a simple website on and make live on the internet for no cost. This became a much simpler task as we could work from home and all that i needed was the images, to write in the text and also to select a theme and background.

Digipak - The software

I created the digipak on a programme called Microsoft Paint, a simple piece of software used to crop images and do some basic tasks like moving around images or text ontop of each other. The programme is very user freindlyand works in a simple procedure of drag and drop. This meant i could import images onto the programme and simply edit them to the way i wanted easily. This is an example of one of the pieces of software i used in my work. Some of our images we had to edit in further detail to make them look more attractive.

Here is the final Digipak:

Software used in our project

We have used a range of different pieces of software. Starting with our camera, we used this in obviously the filming of our music video but we also used it as a way of presenting our pitch and evaluation. The camera we used was a simple camera that had some issues with recording in certain lights. We also struggled not using a tripod so any of the fixed shots are done by laying the camera on things like a wall or the floor. In the editing process we used the apple mac's to edit the footage we had on the programme iMovie. With the creation of our ancillary tasks we went through a few programmes including, MS paint, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver and Adobe illustrator. For the web in the end we used freewebs.com to create the online web page. For writing any evaluations or pieces of text to go on this blog i used MS Word and MS Presentaion. Other online applications i used were Flickr.com (for image slideshows) and Facebook to gain feedback.

Final video - Ed Sheeran's Little bird

Questionnaire for audience feedback

This is the questionnaire that i created to gain audience feedback when we show case our video. Its just a few simple questions asking the audience what we believed were low points for video and what the audience thought of them. For example the colour we debated for a long while and finally came to the conclusion of leaving it on default and i have asked if the audience think its successful.