Evaluation

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

With our video and digipack we tried to relate the imagery to the song, it is a bright and cheerful song so we tried to theme that by using bright colours that stand out. When we were filming the video we used bright coloured props. We had big

bright coloured letters, had the people in the video wearing bright coloured clothing and top it all off, we filmed the major

ity of it outside so portray the brightness of the sunshine. Even some of the inside shots such as the miming of the lyrics were filmed on bright backgrounds.

So to continue with that theme we took some pictures outside in the sunshine for the Digipack and the magazine advert so that we could get some bright and colourful still shots to tie in with the video. With the Magazine advert, what I tried to do w

as make the colour stand out from the background, making it so the main focus of the advert stood out more. Also, by sticking with this same theme with the Digipack it shows continuity within the advertising and publicity pack.

Another thing I tried to portray within the digipack was a twist on the original advertising for Jackson 5's ABC song, which was superimposing people

onto letters.

Above is the original Jackson 5 image

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

I think that the combination of the music video, digipack and the magazine advert work well together because of the codes and conventions that have been used to try and keep the theme of the bright colours running throughout the project. We decided in the early stages of the design that we were going to kind of intergrate the advert and the digipack together as in using the same sort of themes from the digi pack on the advert. When it came to making it we actually made the advert before we made the digipack so it ended up working in the reverce order of what we intended it to. Making it, we used some of the pictures we took in the preproduction. As there is alot of bright colours in the video for the song because it is a bright and bouncy song and to emphasize the colour in the digipack and the advert we grayscaled the background and left the foreground colourful. We also coloured the writing in five colours so that the writing is colourful and stands out and also there is five colours because there is five of the Jackson five.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have learnt alot from our audience feedback both pre production and post production. A couple of the main things that we took away from the pre production feedback is that in era the song was written the videos were very non linear and did not have a story line of any sort, they would have mainly been performance based. Also from the pre production feedback we got the fact that from listening to the song, people automatically came back with the thoughts of bright colours. As for the post production feedback, we received that from comments left on YouTube.com and all of the feedback is either really good or constructive criticism or a mixture of both, like one post from "missLuda92" who posted "Amazing video, I love how bright and colourful it is (matching the happy style of the song) and the use of the large letters/numbers makes it exaggerated which makes it stand out. I really cant think of any criticisms for it! the only one I have is that maybe the panning shots could have been a bit smoother, but thats the only one" and also a comment from "SuperRingodog" saying "Liked this one. Good interpretation of the lyrics. Well constructed and filmed. Made me smile" so i think that from the audience post production feedback, the video was well received.

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

During the production of our overall project we used many varieties of new media technologies including digital cameras for still pictures and video cameras for filming the music videos. We also used the computers to edit the videos and pictures using the adobe suite. In the construction and research stage we used the computers to digitally record a focus group as part of our research, this then helped us into the audience feedback and also the planning of what to put into the content of the video. After we planned the what we were going to put into the video we scanned the story boards into the computer and then used a video camera to film the footage we were going to use and then we used Adobe Premier to edit the footage and string it all together. We then took some of the pictures we had taken with the stills camera and edited them in Adobe Photoshop CS3 to create the magazine advert and the digipack. This then lead us on to the documenting and evaluating stage of which is written in the form of a blog on the internet. This shows a massive amount of convergence as everything in the project is tied together with media technologies because without the recording on the computer we wouldn't have been able to analyse the feedback from the focus group then decide what to put in the video and film it then edit it and upload it to the internet and then put it on the blog so media technologies have played a massive part in this project.

Digipack

This is the final version of our digipack 

Above is the Front Cover of the Digipack

Above is the Inside of the Digipack
The white circles are where the CD/DVD goes

With this, I took elements of the magazine advert and incorporated them into the Digipack. On the front of the digipack i used the top of the poster with the guitar and the title on it. for the back page, I found another picture that would go well with it and to tie it together made it black and white. The picture of the guitar on the outside of the digipack is in colour to tie it to the inside and the guitar that is in colour on the front cover of the digipack. 
For the inside, the middle section with the letters, i took pictures of members of our group and cut them off the original pictures and superimposed them onto the letters that you see there.

Magazine Advert

I created the Magazine advert to advertise the album that has our video on it. At first i threw around a couple of ideas like putting a picture of a person on the front of the background image as displayed here 

This was the initial idea but we decided as a group that it didn't look that good, so we changed it and tweaked with it some more, getting rid of the picture of Jess in the foreground of the advert. 

This was what came out of it, but we came to the conclusion that it was a bit bland and boring and the text was sort of hard to read. This made me think, what could make it stand out a bit more, make it contrast. So i tried a different idea; making the background black and white, but making the guitar and the socks in colour and also change the font and the colour of the font slightly. This is what I came up with as the final finished magazine advert.

Above is the picture of the completed magazine advert.
The idea of the black and white background to make it stand out, in my opinion, has worked well. This makes the colour parts of it stand out more, such as the text that is on there. What i did with the text was i took two of the colours out to make it more legible because originally it was all of the colours of the rainbow but i took away the two shades of purple and it has brought it to life a bit more. Also I changed the date on it so that it wouldn't be released on Christmas day. By doing the advert first there is aspects and ideas that i can take from this and use to tie it together with the Digipack cover.

Pictures for the Post Production

We took a session going out and taking still pictures for the digipack and magazine advert, I have put a few examples up on the blog for viewing.

Finished Film

Here is the finished film, I personally didn't have much to do with the editing process as I was involved heavily in the creation of the other post production aspects such as the Digipack and the Magazine advert. So here is the Video embedded and a link to Youtube to watch it there if the link fails.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IySpnxO56RM

Above is some of the feedback we got from viewers on Youtube when we posted our video up on there.

Filming Log

We had a great time filming, we set up on the Wednesday morning by coming into college and collecting all of the equipment we needed for filming. The Camera, Tripod etc. We then made our way to our shooting location for the day, Emily's house. When we got there we set up in the garden where we set up the Camera and the Tripod and the big wooden letters and numbers that Emily's boyfriend made and painted for us. We then proceeded with the filming, filming on the grass with the moving the letters and then filmed the bit with the numbers and the letters in and around the trees. It all went well, and mostly went according to the storyboard, and we didnt run into any technical errors. We came up with a couple of shots as we went along that werent on the storyboard because we had the oppertunity and we took it. Shots such as the sitting on the steps with the letters and numbers, i almost got very wet filming that bit as i was pearched on the edge of a wooden platform filming upwards, any further back and i would have fallen in the river behind Emily's house. Thankfully, no accidents and it all went smoothly. We then broke off for a quick cup of tea and a discussion about what we had filmed that morning and what we still had to film that afternoon.
We then set on with the rest of the days filming. We shot the sequence with the afro wigs and the letters, the heart on the tree and also the miming of the song lyrics. To do the miming, what we did was got some different coloured paper and stuck it to the wall, got one of us to wear a contrasting colour t-shirt and filmed the head and shoulders of the person miming the lyrics. To do this in time, we had to play the song and get the miming in time. This took a fair few takes to get this right, even though it is quite a small task its getting the precision and the lyrics right. Between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, we had filmed all we could film at Emilys house and the rest we needed to film could be filmed at college so we packed up for the day and went home with the intention to carry on filming on the Friday. Although we were only filming for about six hours we had a very productive day and got most of what we needed.

On the Friday, we set up filming again but this time in college. We found an empty classroom and used it to film the rest of the material we needed. Filming the close up shot of the clock and the other classroom based shots. The pointing to the whiteboard and the students looking bored. This didnt take much time at all it only took us about an hour to film the rest of what we needed. In total i think we got about half an hour of useable footage that was good for turning into a video and about another half an hour to three quaters of unusable footage that included failed shots, shots that didnt look right and shots that didnt go to plan or look right.

So all in all the filming process went well and was also very enjoyable at the same time. Now onto the Editing process.

Shooting Schedule

Here is a copy of our shooting schedule, what we aim to film on which days.

It has Locations, Times and Days on it, aswell as contact telephone numbers.