4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Evaluation Activity 4 - (part 1) Aidan
4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
(PART 1)
(PART 1)
Evaluation Activity 3 - Aidan
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Throughout the whole process, we continuously asked for audience feedback on all our music video, Digipak and Magazine Advert. This was because the main purpose of the music industry is entertainment and it is for the audience. This post is about how we used our audience feedback and what we learnt from them.
MUSIC VIDEO
Rough Cut
In this blog post, I listed the things we changed after receiving feedback from it. Receiving audience feedback about our rough cut was really helpful for us because it showed what things we had to change or edit as our video is mainly for the audience and hearing what they thought of it meant we could tweak our video to their wants.
First Cut
We then made a first cut after making changes from the audience feedback we made from our rough cut and asked for feedback on that too. In this blog post, I listed things we changed to make our first cut:
MUSIC VIDEO
Rough Cut
In this blog post, I listed the things we changed after receiving feedback from it. Receiving audience feedback about our rough cut was really helpful for us because it showed what things we had to change or edit as our video is mainly for the audience and hearing what they thought of it meant we could tweak our video to their wants.
First Cut
We then made a first cut after making changes from the audience feedback we made from our rough cut and asked for feedback on that too. In this blog post, I listed things we changed to make our first cut:
Final Cut
These feedbacks resulted in making changes for our final cut:
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK - GENRE
We asked many people of different ages (focusing more on our target audience... (Rap/Hip hop with subtle hints of grime). I found out their age, genre, favourite genre of music and why. This helped us to work out my demographic and gender whom we will attract our video and ancillary texts towards. we found that even our original intention was to capture the male audience however from this research we found an female audience was also growing within our target audience. Overall as tsome of the members of the research was a different age, many prefered rap/hip hop and they were some others such as drum and bass and hip hop. I also found other conventions from other music genres, E.g. 'It is very calming and relaxing.' Therefore we aimed to achieve this in our music video.
PRINT PRODUCTS
Print Products - Eval 3 from Shane
To choose our magazine design we had to ask for audience feedback on what they thought was the better still image. Living in a technological generation, we used social media to communicate with the young target audience in order to receive quick and genuine feedback. We asked them to choose between photo number 1, 2, 3 or 4:
I sent out an online poll because it was easy to make and easy for the audience to answer as it was just a simple click to choose. After using the online poll, I gathered all data and put them in a bar graph as it was easier for us to see the gap of what people preferred against what they least liked. Here were the results:
Hearing this feedback, receiving both good comments and critics, we made further tweaks which led us to creating a better final magazine advert:
To choose our magazine design we had to ask for audience feedback on what they thought was the better still image. Living in a technological generation, we used social media to communicate with the young target audience in order to receive quick and genuine feedback. We asked them to choose between photo number 1, 2, 3 or 4:
I sent out an online poll because it was easy to make and easy for the audience to answer as it was just a simple click to choose. After using the online poll, I gathered all data and put them in a bar graph as it was easier for us to see the gap of what people preferred against what they least liked. Here were the results:
Below is some feedback of reasons why some of our target audience choose each photos. It was from the social networking of Twitter.
So, from this, we used photo 3 for our magazine advert and worked on that. Also, because people liked it so much, we used it for our digipak front cover too. We made our first product and asked for feedback on them too.
Hearing this feedback, receiving both good comments and critics, we made further tweaks which led us to creating a better final magazine advert:
Making a magazine advert cover then helped us in creating a digipak. We started off with using the same still image, as our front cover, and then using similar stills of the artist for synergistic purposes. We received feedback for our first digipak product, which essentially were all positives.
Evaluation Activity 2 - Aidan
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Evaluation Activity 1 - Aidan
1) In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
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Convention of a music video
Conventions of the rap/hip hop genre:
MISE-EN-SCENCE
- Reasonable locations. For a rap video it can follow any location as long as it can connect with what the lyrics of the character is meaning. Sometimes also if a narrative is played alongside the lip-sync location is better to be isolated so that the lyrics can mean more.
- In addition to this a rap video will include mainstream/casual costume design, this is so that the audience do not become so focused on what the artist is wearing and they can connect with the visuals/lyrics.
- 'A$AP ROCKY' and 'Kendrick Lamar are two influential rapper's who follow this stereotype and are some of the rappers I used as a key source of ideas and imagery.
'Dear Lana': LOCATIONS
- Locations were used to highlight the meaning of the lyrics, and to highlight the narrative for our audience to understand and relate to it.
Artist lyric location
- These are just isolated rooms. This is so that the audience are not distracted by anything during the video and can connect and feel the emotion of the lyrics.
Suburban Alleyway
- This was on of the subtle hints the grime genre had on our music video. It is a typical convention within that genre. Due to availability we had to use this rather public area for the fight scene.
Domestic Location- Bedroom
- This is help create the narrative of the ending where our artist wakes up to show 'a day in a life' of the character.
Subverting the Rap/Hip Hop genre
- A convention of the rap/hop genre which I did not include was the extravagant, luxury lifestyle stereotype of the genre. I didn't include this because I felt it was totally the wrong message I was trying to get for my audience to understand and I felt using this was not only give the wrong impression but contradict the message by the artist.
- These are some examples of rap artists that use the extravagant, luxury lifestyle stereotype. This tends to sexualise women, show of designer clothes, and show money as only an object
Gucci Mane - Nonchalant
Rick Ross "Same Hoes"
Meek Mill - On The Regular
- In addition to this we tried to not to focus on some anti-social behaviour usually expressed in a rap video. For example the overuse and focus on Drugs / Guns etc.
- Some examples of this are
O.T. Genasis - CoCo
Slim Jesus - Drill Time
Snoop Dogg & Wiz Khalifa - Young, Wild and Free ft. Bruno Mars
- However some audience members may recognise our imagery of the drug culture within the rap industry. This can be seen through the drug deal.
Music video conventions
Technical conventions
- A final aspect technically which we tried to show was the use of the 'Fourth Wall'. This is when there is an 'invisible wall' between separated between the actor (Tawanda) and our artist. This is too create a direct relationship/contact between both our artist and the audience.
- This works very well due to the lyrics within our track touching on topics of racism, the education system, drugs. By having this technical aspect the audience can feel the message more clearly and find it a lot more meaningful on the audience.
Here is Drakes example of using the 'fourth wall' during his music video of 'Hotline Bling'.
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ANCILLARY TEXTS
Magazine Advert
After researching real media print products in the grime genre, I created this digipak/poster in order to conform to the grime conventions and create a realistic finish.
Font and Design
- Continuous and relatable throughout all final media products (black, red, white) theme
- Big bold for the main information (artist name / title)
- Landscape
Image choice
- Similar photos used
- Tried to incorporate the black and white imagery throughout
- Shots of artists used throughout.
Thursday, 15 December 2016
Evaluation activity 4 - Tawanda
Throughout the production process, we used a variety of different types of technologies.
The hardware we used included:
- Canon DSL 650 D
- IMac
- Mic
- Flipcam
- Lights (and with Filter)
The software’s we used were:
- Final Cut Pro
- Blogger
Hardware
DSLR Canon D650 with an 18-55m zoom lens
Pros
The
zoom lens allows to change focal points between the range of 18-55mm,
this means we don’t have to move to get closer the subject as you would
with a Prime lens. To add the focal length of the lens, allow the
flexibility to do close ups at 50mm, mid shot at 35mm and wide shots at
18mm and the focus ring allows the image to be sharp. The lens had
options to of autofocus, which detects the distance the subject is from
the lens and changes the focal length automatically rather than using
the focusing and zooming ring. Also, the lens has image stabilisation
controls to make video smoother while recording.
The
camera is 18 megapixels this mean the video can be expanded to a
certain extent (3872 x 2592) without becoming pixelated, as there are 18
million pixels in the camera. This is not evident on a small screen
when comparing to a 10-megapixel camera however on a much larger screen
the 18-megapixel camera is crisper compared to the 10 megapixels.
The
camera was also touch screen making the user interface was very easy to
use. The fact that the camera had touch screen there was shortcuts to
many things such as ISO change, aperture, shutter speed and white
balance. The camera only has a couple buttons to change over two dozen
settings, so the touch screen shortened that process.
Cons
Battery
life was an issue for us since we had to use 2 battries. The battery is an 1100mAh battery, this is slower than most
smartphones that are currently out. The battery can only last 2hrs 10m
while continually recording. This was an issue for us because we were
contently switching our camera on and off to preserve battery life. As a
result of the poor battery life, we had restricted the number of taking
per shoot only one take, meaning we had very limited footage to pick
from.
The
Camera performed poorly in low light areas this was evident when we saw
the grain in the raw footage. This was because the ISO was too high as a
result creating the grain, however, we had to do this as it would have
been too dark to see the subject. The lighting we had was not bright
enough to get rid of the grain. Also, the larger the viewing screen is
the more the grain.
Lastly,
the camera had an inbuilt mic that was very poor the mic picked
unwanted sounds such as the zooming and focusing ring was operating this
as a result meant that we were unable to use it for dialogue. However,
we were luckily supplied with an external Rode boom mic.
IMac with IOS X
Pros
The
macs had enough memory to hold all of our footage and other groups as
well, software data and documents we used for our researching and
planning. The mac would also autosave work if anything were to go wrong
e.g. the computer freezing or crashing.
The
IMac monitors had ultra HD retina display this meant during post
production we were able to view and tweak our footage with precision and
accuracy due to the immense detail that was displayed these monitors.
To add the monitors also had front HD cameras, which I used to record
many of video blogs. During the pre-production stage.
The
speaker on the macs where amazing especially for internal speakers, we
were able to listen to audio which was incredibly crisp and balanced.
This was extremely useful in the post production stage as we could use
them to distinguish if the artificial sound such as the breathing
sounded realistic. They honestly exceeded my expectations. The mic on
the IMacs was also amazing because they picked up audio really well, for
example, the audio was so sensitive that people had to be dead silent
while recording.
Cons
The
only con for the IMacs is that occasionally they kept crashing,
freezing or lagging. This was most likely down to the computers having
very little RAM or a slow processor this meant that it was very
difficult to multi-task with the computers not crashing.
Rode mic
Pros
The
mic had an adapter, this adapter allowed it mount on top of the camera
this made it much easier to make what is usually a two-man job very
simple as it is attached to the camera. This also benefited us in the
fact that we could pick up audio directly from where we are pointing the
camera
The
mic also had a noise cancellation feature this meant that unwanted
ambient sound could be blocked from entering the actual mic it's
self-meaning you can concentrate on the sound you want to isolate such
as the music we where rcording to guide us while editng the footage which is the reason why the lip sink was so precise and on beat whith the real song.
Cons
The
cons of this would be the fact that, although there was noise
cancellation, the mic would still pick up quite a lot of ambient sound.
It was so bad at one point we had completely get rid of all the audio
that was in the last shot because of the loud background noise.
Software
Final cut pro
Pros
Used
to edit any footage that was to be put onto YouTube for our blog - e.g.
interviews, focus groups interviews and our music video. That best thing
about this was that it saved everything u have ever edited meaning if
you lose it or are told to re-edit then it’s extremely quick and simple.
You’re also able to keep the editing and videos of interviews, focus
groups interviews and our thriller very consistent.
Simple
concept, in terms of cutting and editing a single footage. This is also
because the final cut pro software’s user interface was fairly simple
to use as it had so many shortcuts that you could use with less than
three simple presses e.g. command + Z undo’s a mistake u just did or
command +B which splits the footage.
Worked
well on Macs meaning the older version was just as good as the newer
one even using the old one on the old computer was still hustle free.
Cons
Sometimes
froze when added too many footages this would often slow down the
overall editing process, however, we are lucky as the iMacs would auto
automatically save the progress we had done, as a result it was a simple
fix.
Quite
difficult to cut to the exact spot you want to cut to solve this issue I
zoomed closer into a single footage and cut to the spot I needed to.
This is also something slowed down our progress.
Another problem we face was the fact that the macs cut our fotage meaning we where unable to edit so as a result w where struggling to recover the fottage
Another problem we face was the fact that the macs cut our fotage meaning we where unable to edit so as a result w where struggling to recover the fottage
Blogger
Pros
Used
in pre-production and post-production, we mainly use blogger to record
everything we have been doing leading towards the production process,
then after we finished we did evaluation such as this. This is because
blogger is so easy to blog on because of the simple user interface.
Able
to alter time and date to have an organised group navigation bar. This
means easy for people to actually view your blog, if it’s extremely
large, due to the organisation.
Able
to upload things from a variety of websites, such as YouTube, Prezi and
Sound cloud. This is due to the embedding codes meaning you codes
upload a presentation from Prezi, YouTube or sound cloud by just simply
copying and pasting the codes.
Cons
The
images sometimes don't lay where I want them to be - however, I attempt
to place it elsewhere where it would look just as presentable. However,
they could easily fix this by allowing more places to put rather than
left right and middle.
Evaluation activity 3 - Tawanda
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Throughout the whole process, we continuously asked for audience feedback on all our music video, Digipak and Magazine Advert. This was because the main purpose of the music industry is entertainment and it is for the audience. This post is about how we used our audience feedback and what we learnt from them.
MUSIC VIDEO
Rough Cut
In this blog post, I listed the things we changed after receiving feedback from it. Receiving audience feedback about our rough cut was really helpful for us because it showed what things we had to change or edit as our video is mainly for the audience and hearing what they thought of it meant we could tweak our video to their wants.
First Cut
We then made a first cut after making changes from the audience feedback we made from our rough cut and asked for feedback on that too. In this blog post, I listed things we changed to make our first cut:
MUSIC VIDEO
Rough Cut
In this blog post, I listed the things we changed after receiving feedback from it. Receiving audience feedback about our rough cut was really helpful for us because it showed what things we had to change or edit as our video is mainly for the audience and hearing what they thought of it meant we could tweak our video to their wants.
First Cut
We then made a first cut after making changes from the audience feedback we made from our rough cut and asked for feedback on that too. In this blog post, I listed things we changed to make our first cut:
Final Cut
These feedbacks resulted in making changes for our final cut:
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK - GENRE
We asked many people of different ages (focusing more on our target audience... (Rap/Hip hop with subtle hints of grime. I found out their age, genre, favourite genre of music and why. This helped us to work out my demographic and gender whom we will attract our video and ancillary texts towards. we found that even our original intention was to capture the male audience however from this research we found an female audience was also growing within our target audience. Overall as tsome of the members of the research was a different age, many prefered rap/hip hop and they were some others such as drum and bass and hip hop. I also found other conventions from other music genres, E.g. 'It is very calming and relaxing.' Therefore we aimed to achieve this in our music video.
PRINT PRODUCTS
Print Products - Eval 3 from Shane
To choose our magazine design we had to ask for audience feedback on what they thought was the better still image. Living in a technological generation, we used social media to communicate with the young target audience in order to receive quick and genuine feedback. We asked them to choose between photo number 1, 2, 3 or 4:
I sent out an online poll because it was easy to make and easy for the audience to answer as it was just a simple click to choose. After using the online poll, I gathered all data and put them in a bar graph as it was easier for us to see the gap of what people preferred against what they least liked. Here were the results:
Hearing this feedback, receiving both good comments and critics, we made further tweaks which led us to creating a better final magazine advert:
To choose our magazine design we had to ask for audience feedback on what they thought was the better still image. Living in a technological generation, we used social media to communicate with the young target audience in order to receive quick and genuine feedback. We asked them to choose between photo number 1, 2, 3 or 4:
I sent out an online poll because it was easy to make and easy for the audience to answer as it was just a simple click to choose. After using the online poll, I gathered all data and put them in a bar graph as it was easier for us to see the gap of what people preferred against what they least liked. Here were the results:
Below is some feedback of reasons why some of our target audience choose each photos. It was from the social networking of Twitter.
So, from this, we used photo 3 for our magazine advert and worked on that. Also, because people liked it so much, we used it for our digipak front cover too. We made our first product and asked for feedback on them too.
Hearing this feedback, receiving both good comments and critics, we made further tweaks which led us to creating a better final magazine advert:
Making a magazine advert cover then helped us in creating a digipak. We started off with using the same still image, as our front cover, and then using similar stills of the artist for synergistic purposes. We received feedback for our first digipak product, which essentially were all positives.
Evaluation activity 1 - Tawanda
CONVENTIONS OF A MUSIC VIDEO:
CONVENTIONS OF THE RAP GENRE:
MISE-EN-SCENE (Visual Motifs)
Dark locations, Black outfits usually consisting of track suits, props that link with the lyrics or stereotype of the genre for example Drugs or gold rings and lastly Dark lighting that is high in contrast lighting.
Dear Lana by Kaner Flex
LOCATION
The locations that were chosen to create my music video are very contrasting. Therefore, I was able to work with a collection of scenes that had different assortment of colours as well as a derelict estate which is typical of the rap genre. I found that this variety of different locations helped create the Dark and thought provoking ambiance that is seen in the Rap genre.
WHITTON HIGH STREET
Perfect scenery to get that gritty vibe we are so used to rap videos as fitness
DARK THEATER ROOM
Surrounded darkness and by a purple backdrop to connote wisdom and strength within his mind this dark type room is quite typical in most rap/Grime songs.
HOUSE
A typical estate house with the typical surroundings of an avid rap listener, used to set the scene with multiple dark colours again typical in grime music especially the high contrast with ba fade type look .
PROPS
This was my initial plan for what props I would have wanted to include in my grime music video... However, due to having a very low production budget, I was only able to get a few. Nevertheless, I still found that the props used in the overall final cut of the video were successful in creating the atmosphere of the grime genre.
PROP INITIAL IDEAS:
these were: fake GUN Fake Drugs Smart Phone
PROPS USED:
In the end I used the smart phone and the fake due to the fact that our budget was rather low, however for the gun we simply used one of the actor hand which was still extremely effective as it gave it more intimacy even though the audience was just looking at hand that was implying he was shooting. These made it more personal because the gun almost detaches someone from a killing. These are all typical convention in terms of props within the rap genre.
1) A convention seen in many Rap genre video There are many low-angled, close up shots in hip hop videos, to imply the artist's’ power over their audience. The low angle gives them the power, because they look down on the audience and the close up gives status because it implies they’re important enough to have a frame to themselves.
These are examples of pop artists that included these shots in their music videos...
Kendrick Lamar - Alright
Joey badass - no.99
Drake - energy
Another convention of the rap genre genre (in terms of mise-en-scene), is the use of quite jeallary.
An example for this is the use of gold chains on many artists in today's hiphop culture…
2 Chainz - Birthdaysong
ANCILLARY TEXTS
Digipak:
Magazine Advert:
From researching real media print products in the rap genre, I created this digipak/poster in order to conform to the hip hop conventions and create a realistic finish.
- The rap genre has a typically a very dark and raw and contrast heavy ambiance, therefore, it was crucial for my advert to include clear, bold fonts and contrast to colour as well as my digipak hence why the heavy use of the black and white colour scheme as well as red to also add synergy to the music video.
FONT AND DESIGN
Keeping the fonts and colours of the text the same for the entire digipak was important to make my digipak look professional whilst still conforming to the genre of our music. Again, I researched real hiphop/grime album back covers to guide me with the design and the end result was quite a professional look.
IMAGE CHOICE
The images used are images of the artist in and is in the centre of the composition adding symmetry to make it look professional as well as make him the centre of attention. Most real media products generally have the artist right dead centre as well. Wee added the painting effect to make him seem as an iconic genius that has word that have been remembered throughout history which is what our artist is all about the lyrical aspect of the rap genre
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