Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

After meeting to generally discuss this question we managed to break it down into seperate sections:

• Our use of Goodwin's theory
• Our use of Vernallis' theory
• How we used Levi-Strauss' theory of binary opposites
• Videos that are similar and so inspired us
• Videos that are comparable because of the genre

With those main points in mind, we set up a camera and filmed a group discussion of the question. The following is a slightly shortened version of that discussion.

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

We did this in a similar way to how we did Question 1 except with the employees of Live Records Ltd.



Just to explain a little bit more about what we meant by synergy across the products, I've constructed this flowchart to show how each product links to the other.

A simple summary of how synergy works across all our products.

Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback, we learnt that our audience is actually slightly different to what we thought it was.

Back when we were doing our treatment, we all established our ideal audience member as:

• Male or female
• 16-24
• A fan of the indie rock / emo genre
• In a band
• Styled around a specific artist
• Somebody who listens to music online
• Someone who attends their favourite band's gigs

With our music video finished, we hosted a 'premiere' in the Media block.



During another showing of the music video, we asked our participants to fill out our questionnaire. When everybody had left, we asked two volunteers, Rachel and Alissa to talk a little bit about themselves and their impressions of the track and music video.



With all that information, I spent an evening looking through it and creating some graphs. Here are some of the trends I found:
 

From this and the rest of the responses to the questionnaire, I believe that our ideal audience member has changed slightly:

• They're 16-24
• They're male or female
• They are a fan of indie-rock, emo, punk and alternative music
• They're probably not in a band but want to be
• They listen to music whenever they're not doing anything else
• They listen to music streamed online, as well as from bought MP3s/CDs
• They'll go a tour or concert if they're favourite genre is being played

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

Initial research for me mainly consisted of listening to lots of tracks on Spotify and YouTube to find songs we could have used. Then, for inspiration concerning music video, I watched some on TV channels.

Once we started learning about the theories, I analysed some music videos from YouTube to get a further understanding of how they were applied in industry. Research into album covers and websites meant using the internet a lot as well to find out what was typical of the industry.

When it came to planning, we used considerably more video than last year. Whilst I was still developing ideas for our music video, I wanted to see how practical my idea to include stop-motion was. So I used my own camera, a printer and Adobe Premiere Pro to make a short stop-motion video in a few hours. This is explained more in this post.



As well as sketching shots onto Post-Its to make a storyboard, we also took it upon ourselves to go around London in pairs to film every shot of the narrative we thought we wanted. When we came back, I spent a couple of days editing it into a visual storyboard. This was the first time we got to film footage in HD which showed us a lot of the issues that this caused despite the advantages of higher quality. More information about this can be found in this post.



When I was initially considering what our record label could be, I made some logos to go with them at home. This was done with Techsoft Design Tools, design freeware to render bitmaps in quality of 300 dpi. The colouring in itself was actually done in Microsoft Paint.

Screenshot of how I constructed the logo using lines and geometric shapes.

This was also the technique I used to make the logos for Cracked Headphones and No Inclination before we settled upon Erwin's Felicide as a name for the band.

Over the half-term, I had used the internet to set up our band's three social networking sites; YouTube, Twitter and Facebook however they only really started to look professional once they had some content in the form of videos, photographs and news.

The next week mainly involved shooting the narrative on our HD camcorder, capturing in school and finding the best takes in Premiere Pro. We couldn't produce our music video much without having filmed the performance.

When we did the film the performance, we did get to use a lot more technology. For a start, we used the computers and specialist software to control the studio lights to create the blue background seen at the end of the video and to generally illuminate the band. We also made use of two floor lights to make bold shadows on the walls.

Something closer to what we actually wanted to do

Also, during the performance, I took a few photographs for the website and Facebook but also I spent time operating playback which meant using my MP3 player with the track loaded on with the overhead speakers in the Seaward Studio.

During post-production, it was initially very similar to last year's post production except it took more time because:

• The sequence was longer
• There are more cuts
• Using HD footage slows down the computer's rendering abilities

After a few weeks, we had a finished music video but the performance was all in colour. To get the video to look as it does now, with Angus in colour and everything else in black and white, we had to learn and do rotoscoping. Here's a short video explaining how we did it:


In the production of our ancillary products, we sketched Erwin's Felicide's logo, used Paint Shop Pro to make several versions of our logo and finally exported it as a jpeg image. So that we wouldn't lose image quality in making it larger, I personally used Adobe Illustrator to convert it to a vector image. This was particularly useful in making the inside of our album cover as each cat had to be about 400 pixels wide and I would have had to extract the background manually if Illustrator hadn't done that already.
 

The evolution of our logo

For the album cover, we only used the logo for one page but for all the others, we used photographs of our band members. During the photoshoot, we set up a three point lighting system in the Seaward studio with floor lights. By using floor lights, it was easy to illuminate our band effectively whilst creating controllable shadows on the wall behind them which we decided not to edit out of the album cover.

To ensure high quality shots, we used a 9.1 megapixel Sony camera on a tripod which provided us with pictures of about 4 times higher quality than they needed to be. The main problem that we had on our shoot was the actual subject of photography. Either band members facial expressions changed too much or the action was too fast to time properly (this was definitely the case with the back cover). As a result we used continuous shooting mode or the 'burst' setting on the camera to take shots in rapid succession until we got the right one.
  

The burst setting capturing Tom performing a forward roll.

With the best photographs chosen, I touched them up in Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop with these 6 steps:

1. Crop down to approximately the right size.
2. Change curves (as seen below) to make the wall 100% whilst trying to brighten everything else up minimally.
3. Use a clone brush to edit out the darker shadows in the wall created by extruding bricks, etc.
4. Increase brightness and contrast to make the colours 'pop'.
5. Use a noise reduction filter to smooth out textures such as peoples' faces.
6. Touch up any small areas (such as Angus's cheek) with a paintbrush set to a low opacity.



The unedited photograph used for the front of the album cover

 For the rest of the album cover,we arranged the touched up photographs, logos and text over the digipack template. The text took a little bit longer because we had to find suitable free fonts on DaFont.com. We eventually settled on Underwood Champion and Bicycle although we had to edit the text in Bicycle because the original font is outlined. As for the Live Records Ltd logo, I made a digital version of a sketch that Claire made in Microsoft Publisher because it only had to be about 100 pixels wide.


The logo for Live Records Ltd.



With the album cover finished, I started working on the website. This was done on the new platform, Wix. Because Wix is flash-based, we were able to do so much more than on a HTML site such as Myspace:

• There was no need to scroll down the page itself to find out information.
• There are links to everything (music video, album cover, behind-the-scenes video, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) which can be seen without leaving the site.
• We could add special beahviours to items on the page; such as the 'About Us' photographs expanding when somebody clicks on them and text being circled or glowing if the mouse hovers over them.

Just a few of the behaviours on our website.

In our evaluation, we also used a range of hardware and software to make it more interesting than an essay.

For Questions 1 and 2, we used our camcorder but set to film in PAL DV because we didn't need to be high quality. In a couple of days of cutting out parts and adding print screened pictures, we just had to export it, put it on YouTube and embed it on our blogs.

For Question 2, I also made a flowchart into Microsoft Publisher which I saved as a gif and also uploaded to the blog.

For Question 3, I first used the questionnaires and Microsoft Excel to collect the information and summarise some of the questions in graph form. After print screening the graphs and cropping them in Paint Shop Pro, I made a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation to present the trends I found and uploaded it to Scribd.

For Question 4, we had to use CamStudio (video screen capturing freeware) to capture the process of rotoscoping before Claire and Wanda helped me to complete the video by narrating and acting for it. In the end this post used 3 videos that had to be embedded again and 8 pictures including the one below.

Question 4: The longest question to evaluate.

Completed Behind-The-Scenes

After getting the footage off my own Kodak Camcorder, I've spent a few study periods editing what I filmed during the narrative and I've now finished a video showing off what happened behind-the-scenes with a few informal interviews with Angus.

This video is now on the band's website and I hope it adds some more realism to the website and the YouTube.

Reflections on Project 5

Everything is almost finished!

Today, we got to export the music video to complete our production with the album cover and website.

Honestly, I'm very proud of everything we've produced for the project, especially the album cover partially because I put most of my effort into it and also because it seems the most realistic in comparison to real industry products.

Although it took a couple more weeks than expected because of the rotoscoping, I think it was worth the effort because it solved the problems of distracting colours whilst also making it look a lot more stylised.

I'm glad our project is almost finished although there's quite a lot to do:

• Host a screening to find out more from our audience
• Script, film and edit videos for our evaluation
• Create other media to complete the evaluation

Overall, I think it's going to be tight because the music video took longer than expected but we should still get everything finished before the deadline.

Reflections on Project 4

Now that our music video footage is all captured, I really feel like it's all coming together.

To be honest, I'm really surprised at just how much footage we have to work with so I'm optimistic that we'll have a finished music video after some weeks of post-production.

As no more than two people need to be editing the music video at the same time, I've been using time in lessons to make some progress on the album cover. Unfortunately, there's only so much I can do without photographs of the band.

When the music video is done, the album cover should be done as well which means I can finally start editing the behind-the-scenes video to make the website seem more other bands' websites.

Comparison of Social Networking Sites - Green Day

By looking at these three sites next to each other, I can clearly see a few similarities across them:

• The same imagery (avatar) is used to represent the band.
• This imagery often advertises what the band is trying to sell.
• Anything important (such as a new music video) is announced on all sites.
• Fans can interact personally and are encouraged to do so.
• The band doesn't respond on a personal level to their fans.

Reflections on Project 3

The big news is that half of our music video is filmed!

Honestly, today was very tiring; to wake up at 5:30AM, be at somebody's house at 7:00AM and spend 9 hours working. I am glad though.

On the shoot, we decided to completely cancel the shots that we agreed weren't entirely necessary to ensure we stayed in time with the schedule although I think we could have shot more although I doubt much of it would have ended up in the final cut of our music video.

For the most part, the footage we got was great and we probably have enough to make an entire music video out of without having done any of the performance yet.

As it was such a long day, I did notice that everybody started to feel exhausted towards the end but we still managed to get what we needed before the sun went down.

We didn't encounter any problems we couldn't resolve, most of them were in the form of other people being very concious of the strange costumes and make-up our antagonists were wearing, one person really didn't like being filmed and a few people advised us to film in other locations although we still think that we were allowed to since it was in a public place.

As I said I would, I managed to get a few minutes of behind-the-scenes stuff filmed on my own camera and I'll edit that into a video in my own time once the performance is shot and the footage is captured.

Social Networking Sites

Over the last two days, I've been setting up a YouTube, Twitter and Facebook account for our fictional band, Erwin's Felicide. Currently, I need to discuss with the group what colours and themes they should all have but this is just how I've temporarily styled them:

Record Label Ideas

After looking through a list of independent UK record labels for inspiration, I have come up with 2 ideas for our band's record label based on the fact they would probably specialise in producing alternative music:



Re-Recorded Records



Illusionary Records

Website Key Imagery Ideas

"Photos" page: Band members throwing Polaroids in the air which link to larger images.

"Bios" page: Each band member gets a quarter of the page, a 30 second video interview and a short paragraph of information.

Banner at top: Band members interacting with a bar code.

Our Two Storyboards

To give our actors and ourselves an idea of what we want to achieve on next Friday's shoot, we drew up this storyboard.

In addition to this, we also did a second reccie in London to find specific shots to take. In pairs, one of us filmed whilst the other one acted as if they were an antagonist or Angus or both. Recently, I've been editing the footage from this reccie into a sort of "filmed storyboard" after overcoming several technical problems with the fact that we were using HD footage. The actors have all just seen this and I've advised them to watch it again to make sure they get an understanding of what's expected of them next week.

Potential Website Fonts

As we're starting to think about our website's design elements, we've decided to post any ideas about fonts to use on the website. Here are my 3 suggestions:

Jack Input

I chose this font because it relates to our idea of a bar code in that the edges are geometric and square and the letters have a fixed width. Additionally, unlike quite a few fixed width fonts, it is still easy to read.


City Burn



I think a 'destroyed' font such raises some connotations of aggression and anarchy which are both associated with the rock music genre. The reason I chose this particular 'destroyed' font is because it has a lower case alphabet and it's not destroyed to the point of it being illegible.

Bodoni XT

Partially inspired by Nirvana's band logo, I think a formal serif font would do a good job of subverting the genre conventions of aggression, etc. that I mentioned above. This should help brand our band as an alternative to the typical. Furthermore, it ties in with our idea of styling the band's costumes in a formal fashion. Bodoni XT does a good job of being more formal than most serif fonts and it looks good in most sizes.

Behind-The-Scenes Videos Analysis

Over the half-term, when we're filming the narrative part of our music video, it would also be a good idea to make a "Making of" or "Behind-the-scenes" video which we can place on our website as other artists have done in the past. A few of these videos are below:

By watching these, I have found 9 conventions to have in mind when I'm filming / editing our behind the scenes video.

1. Feature the music of the music video
2. Showcase how fun it was to make the video
3. Usually about as long as a music video
4. Edited in chronological order of filming
5. All cast and crew acknowledge camera
6. Focus on the artist or director
7. Cutaways to what was being filmed
8. Shows the process but doesn't explain
9. Longer takes than a normal music video

Album Cover Ideas

This album cover is inspired from a scene in "Inception" where gravity shifts yet everybody is unaffected. Recently, I managed to photograph something similar with objects on a desk so I have several ideas of how to do this practically with real people. Should we be unable to get our band to lean against something and remain composed then we use a fan to blow them from the side or invisible thread to pull their clothes sideways. What makes this a good album cover is that it plays on the convention of showing the band but has them in a quirky position.

After hearing Claire's idea for a bar code on our album cover, I combined that concept with the knowledge of how printing works or the basic principle that we see a clearer image from a distance. Here it would be possible to read the name of the album and see the band in between the black bars on a printed album cover from a distance or as a resized digital image in Spotify or iTunes, etc.

One idea I had was to have all four band members holding up a sign saying the name of the band, for some symmetry, I think each arm should come a corner of the album cover.

Inspired from a magazine cover (see right) advertising Portal 2, I thought it would be a cool concept to create the illusion of transparency in the album cover. The front would be of the backs of the band members pointing up at the album name. The back would be of the fronts of the band members pointing up at the track list. Again, this works by subverting the convention of showing the band's friendly faces on the front.

Music Video Making Tips

From an article in "Media Magazine", I have found some great tips that I think we should remember when it for the planning, shooting and editing stages of transforming our idea into a music video:

• We need to plan a lot, especially since the narrative part of it takes place in many different locations with several actors. This means we have to design a schedule factoring in things like transport issues, setting up the camera / lighting and so on.
• As well as this, we should really need to make a call sheet with contact details, locations, etc. Hopefully between now and half-term, we'll have had enough meetings with our cast and crew to get all the information we need.
• We need to know what to film, after having another, more refined reccie this weekend in our 5 main locations, we should be able to write up a shot list with a few photographs / videos showing exactly where we want to film from.
• Around about the same time we're creating our schedule, we have to make a storyboard that clearly shows our actors and crew what we want to film. As we're filming outside, it will have to be durable and portable.
• Although, we have most of them, we'll have to secure all of our props and costumes prior to the shoot.
• By the shoot, we'll also have to find a way to playback the music on demand in a way that is loud enough for the performers to hear but also with the capability for it to play loud enough for the band to lip-sync to it without feeling embarrassed.

• Ensure the camera is set for the best video quality. This means using manual focus if necessary or a different white balance to give the video a sense of 'warmth'. Also, the ensure the depth of field / exposure are good then the aperture and shutter speed may need to be customised.
• Check the tape regularly to make sure the footage recorded properly and that nothing has to be shot again.
• Shooting more than you planned can be extremely useful for cutaways in the editing.

• When we finally capture the footage, we should split up the clips and name them to make it easier to work out where everything fits into the sequence.
• We need to plan which special effects we're going to use if any and not just add them to create the entire music video.
• Avoid long shots and cut a lot of times, this is also why we need to film a lot of different shots on the actual shoots.
• Work to ensure our material is lined up for lip synced before anything else, in our case, the narrative.
• Apply filters to make sure the footage looks consistent.
• Consider transitions, cuts are advisable but perhaps fades could be good at other parts in the sequence.

Website Notes

Although, we're not doing this until after half-term, I think we should think about our website, specifically how it should have the following:

• A theme (related to the album cover art running throughout on the background, icons, etc.
• Photographs and videos of the band such as the music video, behind the scenes, our competition, wallpapers, etc.
• One or more media players to show the videos or perhaps a slideshow of pictures.
• Opportunities for the audience to buy into the band such as a merchandise store or a link to their iTunes.
• Ways for the audience to communicate with the artist such as a comments section, social networking sites, e-mail button, forum and so on.
• Information about the band / individual band members (which would really work with our idea to give each member a different 'scene')
• Details of upcoming performances (at small gigs around London, e.g. Covent Garden, "Rough Trade")

Reflections On Project 2

The last 4 days have been very busy concerning this project...

Friday

On this day, we went around London from 10:30 to about 17:00, to find and inspect possible locations to film the narrative aspect of the music video on. I believe that today was incredibly useful, because it's one thing to look up places on Google maps but it's another to actually hold the camera in position and safely say that it would be a great place to film. Below are just some of locations we're considering.



Saturday

On this day, Wanda and I held a test shoot with some of the cast to be in our music video. Initially, we photographed two of our four potential band members.

Angus and Izzy trying out our initial costume ideas.

Then, we made them practise lip-syncing and guitar-playing respectively in front of the camera to assess their suitability. In my opinion I think that they'll both work in the band but that they really need to know the track otherwise it's not going to look at all convincing. As Angus is the lead singer of our band, I think we need to have another lip-synch with him.

Afterwards, we got some friends to try out our antagonists' costumes so we'd know what it would look like on a person. Personally, I like the concept although it seems too conventional for villains. It's typical for them to wear black, hoodies, etc. and they honestly seem more like muggers than figments of our protagonists' imagination. This is one area that needs to be adapted in my opinion though I'm not sure what I'd change about them.

Sunday

For a few hours at Kerry's house, Kerry, Claire and I worked out the details of treatment that we weren't sure of as a group. We also went over the information that had to be in the treatment so that me and Kerry could pitch to the class on Monday and got some more ideas as to what other things we could include such as pictures on the handout and video on the blog.

Monday

We finally finished the handout and I think we can be quite proud of it:

• It gives all the necessary information
• It's quite easy to find any specific information you want
• It's simple to understand
• It's visual with our use of photographs, illustrations, lyrics and flowcharts

In my opinion, the actual pitch went well. Obviously, we had to make a few changes before we were green-lit but I'm glad we got it out of the way and got the feedback we needed to know how to advance to the production stage.

Summary Of Album Art

The challenge of an album cover is that it has to do so much with such limited space:

• It has to stand out amongst other CDs.
• It has to be memorable.
• It has to suggest the genre of the music.
• It has to have an iconic and original image.
• It has to sell the artist behind the music.
• It has to have a constant concept running throughout.
• It has to instantly have an impact in the audience.

1. There are many different features of album covers but the 8 most relevant ones are:
2. A good album cover has the right combination of following and subverting conventions.
3. Modern album covers may be 'post-modern' or have referential or ironic qualities.
4. Some album covers attempt to shock or surprise the audience.
5. They use colour and language to relate to everything mentioned previously.
6. An artist's first album is typically named the artist.
7. It may be useful to base the album cover on something else to link the two in the audience's mind.
8. Elements of the album cover may suggest the theme of the album without illustrating it.
9. Because of digital music consumption, it has to understandable when it is made smaller.