Our Presentation

On Friday, in class everyone had to give a presentation on what they had done for their media work.
My partner and I worked on our presentation to produce a brief summary of our work that we showed to the class.

I am going to upload each slide and write our notes that we read out to class about our work, which is a brief summary of the evaluation questions we answered. Both my partner and I took it in turn to read each bullet point.



Slide 1



Slide 2

- It uses forms and conventions of real media texts because it focuses on the aritst as the main feature of the video as do a lot of music videos today.
- It also uses forms and conventions because in our video we have created a story that relates perfectly to the lyrics in our video. This is also a similar feature in a lot of videos.
- We feel we have slightly developed forms and conventions by combining both, one being the artist as the main feature, and the other being the story. We linked them together because we felt that teh song was quite descriptive and emotional, and therefore felt that it was important to highlight the artist, but also link it to the story.

Slide 3

- From our audience feedback we found that most people could see that the film must have been well planned and not rushed. Some people commented on how it must have been well planned due to the shots of the instruments, combined with the shots at the house and also the shots outisde, as we used a variety of shots and were determined to use the best one with no errors.
- Due to the delicateness and the mood that our song portrays, we decided that we would try and keep our editing as simlpe as possible, and again, from our audience feedback we were told our editing was good and well done, and it was really effective that it was kept minimal, and that it suited the song really well. The simple effects such as making a few scenes black and white were also said to be effective and suitable
- Unfortunately something was pointed out to us in our feedback that we did not notice at all. One of our shots wasn't framed all that well, and the framing showed that the top of the character's head was actually cut off a bit. We were disappointed that we hadn't noticed this before.
- From the previous mistake we were told about, another one was pointed out to use. One piece of feedback told us that one of the shots were quite shakey. We noticed this during the editing but it did not seem so bad to us at the time, and this scene was of great importance so had we not had included it we would have missed out something quite important. Again we were disappointed but felt it didnt effect the video too much, and it was lucky it was just one quick clip.
- Our target audience were teenage girls of around 14-16, because of the emotion and rawness of the video and a few teenage girls commented our video. They said that they felt they could really connect to the artist and the emotions in the song and that they totally related to the song completely. We were really pleased with this, as it meant that it connected to our audience the way we wanted it to.

Slide 4

For this slide I wrote my own part as I was discussing how effective my ancillary texts were combined with the finished products, this is what I wrote:
- During the planning process of trying to create a good image for my album cover to go with our video and song, I decided before we began filming to incorporate the guitar within the album cover as I knew it would be a feature in the film. A lot of Kate Nash's videos are based on her playing the guitar, also her album covers are quite random. I had originally planned to have the character peering around the corner of the guitar however when I took the picture it did not look right so I changed it to this.
- I believe that my advert and album cover is quite effective with the main product as I have used the guitar to show in the pictures as it did in the film and tried to represent the song in the album cover.

Slide 5

This is my partner's slide and this is what he wrote for his:
- Again I wanted to incorporate the guitar as I felt that it gave the image more of a focus. The image is based in a tree which is something I thought would be creative at the time and would make the artist stand out within the environment. I looked at an album cover of Kate Nash and it was her jumping in the air in the middle of a green field, it gave the impression of a relation to nature and kindess.
- I've tried to keep consistancy by using the guitar because it plays an important part within the music video and wanted it to be related to the album cover and the advert.

Slide 6

- To aid with our planning stage we used YouTube to research any current music videos for our song choice, however we found nothing. We then looked to find videos for similar song choices to attain a flavour of the different styles that have been used. We found it better to have not found anything because we know we do not have anything to base our ideas upon and everything is our own innovation.
- For the filming process of our project, we used a video camera to record our shots.
- We used Photoshop for the editing of our album cover picture and advert. Once we had the pictures we were able to manipulate how the image looked using the tools within the Photoshop, for example the colour contrasts and using a black and white effect.
- We also used iMovieHD which we used on the Mac for the editing process of our video. This programme allowed us to use numerous effects including changing clips from colour to black and white, slowing down clips, cutting out unnecessary shots, cutting down shots and actually putting the filming together with the song.

Slide 7



- We used Blogger to keep a record of our planning process and our filming process and every last thing we done, from mistakes we made and had to rectify to showing the pictures to give evidence of us working and also upload our drafted images of album covers etc. Blogger was our main feature for our planning and evaluation stages.
- We used the internet for our research and again as previously mentioned our planning and evaluation stages due to using Blogger. We used the internet to research Kate Nash and other videos that we thought might relate to our song. We also used this to research how Kate Nash represents herself in pictures to try and capture a way of how we wanted our character to portray the song we had chosen.
- And finally, we used PowerPoint for our presentation, creating a housestyle and trying to make it informative for a summary of our project.

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

My partner using the Mac to edit our film - using iMovieHD

Myself using the Mac and using ImovieHD

The first part of our production process was the research, using the computer and the internet we were able to look at current music videos (on youtube) and assesed their different styles, and finally helping us to narrow down our decisions. Once we had narrowed it down we looked for more in depth research to our song choice and looked at the artist and how they represented themselves. Furthermore we used the internet to download the lyrics and images of Kate Nash to compare her individual different styles.

The next technology we used was the video camera. This is how we recorded our entire footage and a still camera to take pictures for our album covers. These we relatively simple to use from our previous experience and there was no real challenge here.

Another piece of software I used was photoshop, again from previous experience it was easy to understand what I was doing and how I could manipulate my image.

iMovieHD was the software I used on the mac laptop. With this programme we were able to input effects such as black and white transitions, cutting clips, and easily syncing the instruments and vocals.

Blogger was how we kept planning and evaluating our work. This has allowed me to keep a diary of each thing I have done through my production portfolio.

PowerPoint was the final technology I used to create and present a presentation to my class. Answering these evaluation question in brief with brieft input on the slides and speaker notes to inform what was on the slide.

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

During the planning process we knew we had to keep a good house style and create everything with a lot of details repeating. For example we extremely keen to incorporate the guitar within our album covers as many images of Kate Nash, including her album cover picture has a guitar with her.
Furthermore her album cover seems quite random and I feel that my album cover suits that criteria, better suited than my origanl draft.
I feel that my advert is appealing and would stand our in a magazing like NME which would be where this kind of advert would be placed. Ive tried to include attactiveness to my advert with the stars and the brief but imformative texts.

Although I'm please with both my advert and album cover, looking back I think I would have tried to do more editing on photoshop, I know now that I could have been more risky in transforming the image, for example making it black and white and just some colour, possibly on the guitar.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our target audience was a typical teenage girl aged around 14-16. We chose this because it was stereotypical for girls of this age going through teenage love storys and having romance into their lives. There are areas of the song where you can see the emotion of the artist and this was continuing the trend to attact our audience, as if it were to appear that they are not going through it alone.

Our feedback from our target audience was that they could clearly relate to what was happening within the video and that we represented the emotion clearly and delicately, this was a huge boost for us as its good to know we did have the interest of our target audience. Other comments outlining that we must have planned it alot as the work load and effort is noticeably high. On another high note we were informed that the syncing of the video for the words and the instruments was impeccable, and it could not be faulted at all.

From the very start of the video editing process we agreed to keep things simple and not have to many special effects happening throughout. This paid off for us as we had comments regarding our precise editing and that we captured the mood well in the song. The simple effects that we did have such as black and white transitions were suitable to the pace and the structure of our video.

We did also get some constructive critism. This was that some of our shots were not frammed well. It appears that during one of the shots the top of the actress's head is cut out, this was not intentional and it was just something we missed when reviewing it. This was unfortunate and we did not have any footage to replace it, luckly it only occured once.
Another critism we had was that another shot was quick shakey, the camera could have been more steady. However, again, it was something that we slipped up on and would need to improve on reviewing shots in depth and looking at everything angle.

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

I feel that my media product uses conventions of real media texts. For example from the research stages we continuely based decisions around the current media texts, such as other music videos. From these decisions we were able to identify that we could focus on the artist or we could focus on a video that tells a story, related to the lyrics of the song. We decided to mix and match any use some of each and we then had the focus on the artist and a story being told at the same time. This is how we used conventions of real media texts. We did not want to challenge real media texts so much as we did not want to take the realism away from our product.
As we had the artist in quite a lot of focus, we also added a story to be told, of how a girl loves a boy so much and she wants him to know. The lyrics were well written by the orginal artist and gave us a lot of space to elabourate.
Most videos current around tell a story but not directly related to the singer, for example Nickleback - Photograph. A unique story is being told however it does no directly involve the singer, they are just the "story teller". We challenged real media conventions by using our artist to tell the story which is happening to them. I believe this was a good idea and we are proud with how we represented the song.

Music Video

For some reason I had a problem uploading the video to my blog, however I have created a youtube channel

And all of the videos I have worked on this year including the recent music video are uploaded.

www.youtube.com/chriscA2MEDIA

Advert for Album Cover

This is my advert for my album cover:


I kept the advert simple after looking though the NME magazine and studying the adverts to find that most of them are quite plain and not much in them. I'm pleased with how it turned out and feel that it was a good idea to keep it simple. If I were to publish this, it would be within NME as Kate Nash's previous album was represented here.