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

I have you a number of different types of technology, including hardware and software.  To make our music video, we used SD film cameras and a HD camera to film all of the footage for our music video; we used tri-pods and a fig-rig to get a number of different and interesting angles to make the video look more professional. To edit our video we used Imovie to up-load our footage on to the Mac computers, we did this so we could optimize for final cut express. We used final cut express to edit all of our footage; we also used it to apply a number of effects to our footage; including color correction, reflection, fades, ECT. For example, we used color correction on the shot with the flamethrower to energize the flame, also we used a reflect effect because the left side of the shot was empty and we didn’t what to leave it like this, as it may lose use marks.  When it comes to the ancillary task we used our friends SLR camera to get the photos we needed, this was to get the best quality image. To edit the photos, we used Photoshop; with this we could do all sorts of things, including filters, changing the hue, transformation, color modification. For example, with the CD base image I turned down the hue of the image to get the image to look darker and took up the lighter colors to get an even darker effect.  


here are some examples of different websites that I have used while I was doing my work 


Blogger: I used this as the main way of producing my work, I allowed me to type out my work and put in pictures and videos to help show what I mean.

Youtube: I used this to find examples of similar work and to upload my main media product. also, to upload clips to help explain piece of work.

AllCDcover.net:  Again I used this to find examples of other CD covers for help with my work and to use in my blog for examples.  

DaFont: I used this for the text on my CD cover, to give it a more professional look and to make it stand out from normal default text.

also we used a number of different programs to make our work look really professional, these included:

Final Cut: I used final cut to edit our music video and put on effects to make it more professional.  

Photoshop: I used photoshop to manipulate of images for our digipack and Magazine ad.

Imoive: we only used this to import of footage and then to optimize it for use of final cut.

evacuation - How effective is the combinations of your main product and ancillary texts?

The elements that are found in both the music video and the ancillary are similar. For example, we are all wearing appointive clothing to the genre; consisting of dark jeans, t-shirts with big logos and some piece of accessories. Also, we have tried to give both pieces a feeling of dormancy over people, for example a lot of the shots in our video are from a low angle and I am performing, angrily, straight at the camera. Then on the ancillary task, the shots are from low angels and I am pointing right at the camera in the poster; then on the inner covers of the CD there is a picture of me shouting with both my hands painted red. With both the music video and ancillary tasks, we tried to make everything seem a lot darker, to do this we used filters on Photoshop, to effect the ancillary, and on final cut we used color correction and changed the hue/saturation; the effects that we used work very well and give us the results we where looking for (example found below). So overall I think that our music video and ancillary work together well. then for our ancillary task we wanted to have a whole band picture, to go along with the genre of music; from the examples below it easy to see that we did this quite well. 

example of editing 

examples of CD cover editing:

CD covers 
These are examples of professional CD cover compare to ours, as you can see it is similar to the examples so seems to be just right for the chosen genre.

                                   

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

Our music video is very stereotypical to the genre of metal, using a lot of band playing shots and main vocal close-ups; then a few story cutaways. By keeping to this for our filming it made it easier to get a range of shot types and angels, as filming the band need to be from different angels because other wise the audience would experience viewer fatigue to just see the band from one angel all the time.  To try and develop the conventions we did a number of shot of me sing the song from different locations and then some with tape on my mouth, this was to give the video an interesting look and feel to it.  I don’t think that we tried to challenge any of the conventions of a normal metal music video, with our uses of extreme close-ups and band based performance. Also, to go along with the pace of the music we edited the shots so they would go with the tempo of the song. The mise-en-scene of a metal video is very important, we wanted to do the whole band shot in a abandoned warehouse but we where told that we couldn’t use this due to a number of health and safety rules. To over come this we decided to use one of our drama rooms, this is because we wanted to do it in a black area and this was the most appropriate for the genre. Then we wanted to film somewhere there was water to go with the lyrics in the bright sections, so we when to our local park and filmed there, as this was the easiest option available to us. One of the most important parts of the video was our performance in the video; it is very common in our genre of music for lots of perform, as the music is very aggressive and the lead singer portrays this. Also, as most of the lyrics are screamed I had to try to make the lip syncing as care as possible, to make the editing easy; this hard as after a while is began to hart my mouth.   


example of whole band shots:

examples of close ups

evacuation - Show your learning of audience feedback?

The feedback that I have been getting from people has been all positive, but there were a few exceptions. Some people think that we could have done with a lot more cut away or some more narrative to the video. Also, one person, I recorded after watching my video, said, “I thought that the locations you used really suited your film because they looked really dark, but at some points It went out of sync with the music”, we have changed this the best we can and it sync is a lot better.  Also, people think that our ancillary task looks really good for the genre of music we have been working on and that is would be easy to shot out in a shop. Also, one person really liked the text on the ancillary, saying “it looks like writing from the devil” which is really good because it shows that I have a made a produce that suits our genre.  For the feedback, I think we could have done a lot more work on getting footage for a narrative for the video and make the overall video flow a bit better, but on some of the problems we ran out of time and could not change them before the final hand in date. Getting this feedback is really important because without the views of those in our target audience, how could we create a produce that they would like.

evaluation - draft 1 feedback