Creative Evaluation

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

Evaluation Stages:

Throughout my evaluation I have used several screenshots. These have been accomplished by selecting the keys: cmd, shift, 3 simultaneously to gain an image of what is on my screen, these have then been saved instantly to my desktop as picture files and uploaded onto my blog. In addition to this, I have created Powerpoint slideshows using 'Microsoft Powerpoint' for Mac. Once the presentation has been completed, I have uploaded it to slideshare, a website which allows you to upload your own personal presentations. Once the upload has completed, i copied the code under 'Embed' and pasted it into my post which will appear on my blog, embedding the file for viewers to see. Also throughout my evaluation, I have used YouTube to upload a rough cut of mine and Ian's music video.

The most effective technology I have used throughout my evaluation process would have to be Slideshare. It made my blog more attractive and allowed me to contain lots of information on small slides so there was not too much detail in one single place. Slideshare was effective and easy to use and I would definitely use it again when wanting to convey large pieces of information and images.

Creative Evaluation

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

Summary List of Technologies used throughout my entire process:

- Movie Editing Software:

iMovie

-Cameras and equipment used:

Blackberry Mobile 8520

Nikon D3000

Canon Digital Video

Tripod

Websites used:

http://www.google.co.uk/

www.blogger.com/home

http://www.slideshare.net/

Software used within Blog:

Youtube

Slideshare

Screenshots

Creative Evaluation

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

Construction Stages Continued:

When it came to our music video, I wanted to ensure that we were using a software that allowed us to be precise with our editing, mainly due to the fact that we were incorporating a large proportion of lip syncing within our product.

When we started filming, we used one of the schools cameras which was a Canon Digital Video Camera. This camera is extremely easy to use and enabled myself and Ian to both use it whilst filming. The camera was easy to turn on and to playback footage we had already shot so we were able to look quickly at what was filmed and make modifications if they were needed. Personally I would like to have used a different camera if myself or Ian had one. This is due to the fact that our final outcome is quite grainy in some shots. On several occasions I would experiment with the lighting in order to make the footage less grainy, however this only worked on a small scale before making the video seem off coloured. I also found the camera to run out of charge very quickly even if it had been charging all night long which interfered with our timing on some occasions when trying to film. Although the camera proved to be a nuisance on a few occasions, it was simple and easy to use and nice and small meaning it was very portable so we were able to carry it around with us to different locations. Also when filming, we used a standard tripod which we would attach to our camera. This tripod had 3 levels, allowing us to film low down to the ground up to a height of around 7 ft. This enabled us to film low angled shots and high angled shots, however we often chose to use normal height shots as this would not belittle the characters in any way. We did however use a low angled shot to show the girl getting out of the car, and a shot angled down over the shoulder when the girl picks up the fallen lovehearts.

When it came to editing our footage, we uploaded what we had filmed via USB cable from the camera to the Apple Mac Desktop Computers in the editing suite within school. We used the programme 'iMovie' which enabled us to upload and edit our music video easily and efficiently. We were both familiar with this programme after using it during our AS task of filming and editing the opening sequence to a thriller film. This allowed me and Ian to edit our music video without teaching ourselves the basics and wasting time. In order to suit our genre of music, we did not want too many transitions, however to ease the continuation of quick cuts, we used a 'cross blur' transition which blurs the end of a frame into the beginning of the next frame. iMovie allowed us to place our song over our selected footage, however background noises from me and Ian filming could still be heard. To overcome this, we individually highlighted each shot, selected 'Audio Adjustments' and muted the volume on each shot so no background noises could be heard. I found iMovie extremely easy to work and the 'Precision Editor' allowed us to match the lip syncing scenes to the lyrics of the music extremely well. If i were to do this task again, I would use iMovie to help me edit.

Creative Evaluation

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

Construction stages:

For our ancillary tasks, it was important that myself and Ian selected the right software that we were comfortable with using in order for us to achieve high quality, professional products. For our Digipak and Magazine Advert we first attempted to use 'Photo Serif'. We chose to use this as it was convenient and available to us on the school computers. However this programme was hard to maneuver and I found it challenging to achieve the look we had hoped for. Whatever we tried to do, we couldn't achieve properly without hindering the appearance of the product. So we decided against using this software, and looked elsewhere to create our ancillary texts.

Following this, we wanted to use free editing software, as we were both unwilling to download expensive editing programmes that we were unlikely to use again in the future. As a way of handling this, we found 'Picasa' which was a byproduct of Google. I really liked this software, however I found it very basic and was more suited to lightly editing photos and hiding blemishes or merely transforming the image to Black and white or Sepia. 'Picasa' offered little features when it came to editing on a larger scale eg. text, font, colour radius, exposure, tint and contrast, so as a result we strayed from using this. To combat this, we used 'GIMP' however disliked it within half an hour of using it. The software was extremely complex and we did not have the time to teach ourselves how to use it. It was frustrating by this point, as we had not yet found any editing software that we found easy to use, was free and offered a broad variety of features that would enable us to create a polished, professional product.

Ian thankfully found a 30 day free trial on Adobe, this was called 'Photoshop Elements 9'. Photoshop is a prestigious editing software and we were able to use this freely for 30 days which came as a great relief. I found this programme to be extremely easy to use and it offered many features that we were able to use. Photoshop Elements 9 allowed myself and Ian to achieve the high quality ancillary texts that we have and I would certainly use it again if I was in a similar situation.

Creative Evaluation

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

Planning Stages continued:

After drawing up our storyboards, myself and Ian now needed to find out where our music video was going to take place. We set out to take photographs of possible locations and locations we were interested in, in order to upload to our blogs. As we did this during school hours, we were not well equipped with a high megapixel camera or tripod to take high quality photographs. Instead, we used my mobile phone - a Blackberry Curve 8520. Once we had taken the photographs, I uploaded these to my computer using a USB cable that plugged into my phone. This allowed me to select the appropriate files within the 'Finder' application on the MacBook and save the ones I had selected. From here, I proceeded to upload them onto my blog.

Creative Evaluation

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

Planning Stages:

When beginning to plan our music video after deciding upon an artist, me and Ian began to draw up storyboards which we hoped to follow when filming and editing our music video. Once we had completed our storyboards needed to film our product, we had to show evidence on our blogs that we were ready to film. In order to do so, our storyboards had to be put onto our posts. For us to do this, we used a Canon Scanner which uploaded the materials to our chosen computer. From here we saved these files into a folder and accessed them using the 'add image' icon on the editing page of our blogs.

Creative Evaluation

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

Research stages continued:

Whilst researching artist websites and artist branding, I was using Web 2.0 as a way of researching fast and efficiently what I wanted to know. When previously looking at the artist 'Lady GaGa', I used the popular search engine 'Google' to find the image I wanted. I wanted an image of her with the trademark lightening bolt, to do so i simply typed in to google images 'Lady GaGa lightening bolt' and found the image I wanted. From here I merely copy and pasted the image into the particular post I was working on at the time.

When researching artist websites, I wanted to show on my blog an exact image of what I was looking at. In order to do see I needed to print screen the image. As I am working on a MacBook, there is no 'prntscrn' button that would normally be found on a conventional PC keyboard. Instead, i had to press simultaneously, the keys: cmd, shift, 3. This took a snapshot of what I was looking at and saved automatically from my desktop. From here, I simply uploaded the image onto that post.

Creative Evaluation

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

Research Stages:

Earlier in my blog when researching about digipaks, myself and Ian took several photos of the product by 'Damien Rice'. To do this, we used Ian's DSLR - a Nikon D3000. I especially liked using this type of camera as it took clear and good quality photographs, allowing people viewing the photograph to see the detail very well. Once the photograph was taken, I uploaded it to my mac and saved it to my schoolwork folder. From here when writing that particular post for my blog, i clicked on the icon 'add image' and selected the appropriate files, positioned them in my post, and uploaded them from there.

Creative Evaluation

Audience Feedback:

After showcasing our music video during a lunchtime in the main hall at school, me and Ian received overall, positive feedback from the audience after we handed out questionnaires. From these, we were able to see what people thought about our video, how it could be improved, who they thought it was aimed at, and any other comments.

I was particularly pleased to receive the feedback that said our lip syncing matched the lyrics within the song. This was a great relief for both myself and Ian as we struggled with the precision editor on iMovie to get our lips to match the lyrics at the right time. Ian was particularly worried about the lip syncing, as he felt it should not be overpowering over the narrative concept of our video, however i pushed the idea as i felt it would break the video up, allowing the audience to see the artist more clearly and to also relate to our Digipak.

Me and Ian were also worried that the audience may not grasp the them of love strongly enough, however we were reassured by the results which told us that 100% of people who answered our questionnaires, noted that there was a strong theme of love and romance within our music video. This made me especially happy, as we steered away from Goodwin's Principle of Voyeurism and created our own way of establishing a romantic connection, meaning people may not notice this as well, however we were proved wrong by the results.

After extensive planning, me and Ian had came to the conclusion that our video's target audience were both male and female teenagers and young adults. I was slightly worried that the audience watching our video may not have grasped the age group, possibly thinking it might be for a more mature viewership. However, the questionnaire results proved us wrong, and the overall response from the audience was they believed our video was aimed at a demographic of teenagers aged 14 and above into early 20s. This is exactly what we had hoped for and I am particularly pleased that the audience viewing our video were able to make the connection with our video to it's target audience.

The negative responses we had received were all similar in what they found hindered our video. The audience watching our product said there could have been more variety in shots, more towards the end of the video. I personally feel that these are fair comments and I have discussed with Ian that if we were to do this again, I would prefer to have a broader variety of footage. The reason why we were lacking in extensive amounts of footage is due to illness, outside work and weather, all of which made great impacts on the amount of time we had to film before deadlines.

Overall, I am thoroughly pleased with the results we received from our questionnaires, despite the few negative comments, I feel me and Ian were able to achieve a good music video that audiences were able to enjoy and understand clearly.

Been having problems uploading the video of myself discussing my audience feedback. Blogger has been unsuccessful in uploading it for over 24 hours now. I will continue trying 17/1/2011

It is now 29/1/2011 and my audience feedback video has still been unsuccessful in uploading. I have tried every day since the 17/1/2011. I will continue trying

Creative Evaluation

Creative Evaluation 2

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Creative Evaluation

Creative Evaluation

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Our Video - Rough Cut

Below is the video me and Ian created to go with our chosen artist 'Frank Hamilton' and his song 'You, Your Cat and Me'. This is almost completed, however the upload you will see has various background noises of me and Ian talking and this needs to be muted using the audio controls on iMovie for Mac. Please watch and enjoy the rough cut to our music video, the final edit will be up shortly.

Magazine Advert - Our own

To improve our Magazine Advert as part of our ancillary task, myself and Ian decided it best to start anew and make the advert more personal and professional.

Here is an image we used as a basis of our Magazine Advert:

On top of this photograph, we placed our artist's name 'Frank Hamilton' with the font 'Pristina' which has been shown on our Digipak, following the branding of our artist. By using photoshop, we kept the first name 'Frank' in bold, and slightly faded the surname 'Hamilton' in order to create a unique look. We decided to place the artist's name here instead of at the top as it is more central and identifies the artist more clearly.

Here, we then added the name of the album, 'You, Your Cat and Me' directly below the artists name. We positioned it this way, so that the audience are able to clearly distinguish what the album is called and who the artist is. I feel this is effective having the name of the album in a slightly smaller font as it draws the audience in closer wanting to know the name of it, grabbing further recognition and attention.

After adding the name of the album, we then proceeded to add quotes from two different magazines. I feel that using the magazines 'Kerrang' and 'NME' are far more effective than using quotes from bands that we used previously in our first draft. As they are both music magazines, audiences will be more familiar and may also be a part of their readership, enabling them to feel attracted to our artist as he has been recognised by leading music magazines. The star ratings next to the quotes are small, showing that our artist is modest and not boastful, relating to his laid back appearance. The star ratings are high and will therefore appeal highly to those interested in this advert.

After adding the quotes from the music magazines, me and Ian then wanted to focus on the availability of the album. When researching how people buy their music, it was clear that web 2.0 had a huge part to play in the download of tracks. We decided to display that this album as 'Available on iTunes' rather than 'Available in all Music Stores' as our target audience are most likely to use the internet as a source to download their music from. We kept with our original basic template by positioning this information at the bottom of the advert, similar to that of 'Gwen Stefani's' Magazine Advert shown previously.

After the information on the Advert was positioned, I thought we should then focus on the appearance of the advert. We decided to follow the original black and white theme by recuding the colour surrounding the artists face, but keeping his still in colour. To do this, we selected 'Colour focal point' on picasa 3. By doing this, it was easy for us to establish where we wanted the colour, and where and how far the areas of black and white should spread to.

After we had focussed on the colouring of the Advert, we retracted back to the information of the availability of the album and it being on iTunes. Although most of the audience would recognise the programme iTunes, we decided to incorporate it's logo onto our advert in order for audiences to establish where exactly they can access our artist's music. However, you can clearly see that there is a white box surrounding the blue music note, making our product look less professional. In addition to this, I was unhappy with our final colouring and thought the black and white dominated the colour, making it less appealing and more dull in appearance.

To get rid of the obvious white box surrounding the iTunes logo, we had to blur out the white areas on a small scale using a blurring tool on the programme we were using. This made the box less apparent and eventually began to blur itself into the plain background. To overcome my issue with the colouring, we experimented with the different colour tools and brightness. We enhanced the contrast and exposure of the image giving the face a bolder and warmer look, this enhanced the appearance of the artist and I feel it makes him look more appealing to the audience. By boosting the contrast, the blurring of the box surrounding the iTunes logo was made almost invisible and it eventually blended into the shirt Ian is wearing in the photograph.

Overall I am extremely pleased with our final Magazine Advert, I feel it is displayed clearly and relates back to our Digipak through it's use of font. I especially like how within the Digipak, only the artists legs and feet can be seen, whereas this Advert shows only his face, revealing more about the artist himself. For the audiences who view both of these, it allows them to view our artist from different points of view. This being his more serious side, and the Digipak being a more fun and laid back approach. This Magazine Advert also links to our final music video that myself and Ian produced, as within the video, Ian can be seen in several shots lip syncing with only his face and shoulders in shot, wearing exactly what he is wearing in this advert

Magazine Advert - Our own

After looking at three other Magazine Adverts from large artists and creating a basic template for our advert, me and Ian produced this as our advert through using the programme 'Photoshop':

Here we followed the template by creating the clear and bold artist's name. Below we also followed the template with the positioning of the quotes from two famous musicians. We also followed the template by positioning the image of the artist on the right and also took inspiration from 'Razorlight's' advert by following a black and white theme. This magazine advert looks sophisticated and I feel it catches the eye. However, there are several faults about this Magazine Advert that lead to myself and Ian rejecting it and using it as a more developed draft.

The image used is of the artist himself, 'Frank Hamilton' and was not taken by either myself or Ian, this would not work as the image that has to be used must be generated by ourselves rather than taken from the internet. In addition to this, I pointed out to Ian that we used quotes from bands rather than newspapers or magazines. This is a flaw as more people would have heard of widely read newspapers over two indie bands. This magazine advert does not include any detail on the release of the album or any other information apart from the two quotes from 'Brandon Flowers' and niche indie band 'Foals'. In order to overcome these obstacles, me and Ian decided to start again.

Magazine Advert - Our own

Now I have researched other magazine adverts and gained ideas about how they appear and are displayed, it will be easier to create our own Magazine advert.

Here is a very basic template I have created as a base to start forming our Magazine Advert. (This will only be used as a very basic guideline). I created this using the programme 'Paintbrush' on my MacBook.

Magazine Advert

After creating our Digipak, myself and Ian wanted to keep with the simplistic theme for our artist when it came to creating the magazine advert. We wanted the advert to be eye catching and different, but to still keep elements of a normal magazine advert so it would be easily recognisable to those viewing it.

I have looked at 3 separate magazine adverts in order to gain inspiration for our own one.

Here is the magazine advert for 'Gwen Stefani' and her album 'Love.Angel.Music.Baby'. This is the kind of advert me and Ian did not want to follow. The image is very regal and dominates most of the page without revealing much about the artist's work or any information surrounding the new album. The font is fairly hard to read and the information towards the bottom is also unclear, making the viewer slightly uncomfortable with what they are looking at.

The one thing me and Ian could use from this magazine advert would be it's boldness and colour. It instantly attracts attention and that is something we are looking for, however the overall composition of this advert would not work well with our chosen artist.

This magazine advert for 'Friendly Fires' is more inspirational for me when creating the Magazine Advert for our artist 'Frank Hamilton'. The advert clearly shows each member of the band underneath a bold and easy to read band name. Below this a quote is used from a well respected newspaper portraying the band in a good way. This advert has an appealing colour composition and is easy on the eyes, also giving a clear idea that the band are based around an indie/pop genre.

From this advert me and Ian will be taking the themes of an easy to read artist name and well laid out quotes from other newspapers and magazines reviewing the album. However we will use a more simple backdrop to reflect the acoustic genre for our artist.

This magazine advert is entirely different to the other two I have looked at by 'Gwen Stefani' and 'Friendly Fires'. The advert only includes the name of the band and an image of its members. I find this advert to be successful in portraying who the band are and what they look like, revealing that they are a young, indie/rock group.

However, this advert gives no information whatsoever on details of the album, it's audience feedback or any hint of it's release date. Me and Ian will use 'Razorlight's' idea of a bold heading and plain backdrop, however we feel that much more information is needed about the artist's work in order to give the audience a better understanding of who 'Frank Hamilton' is.

Digipak

Please watch this video detailing the processes myself and Ian took in order to create our Digipak for our artist Frank Hamilton.

I used the programme iMovie on my macbook to produce this 5 minute long video. I used still images we took when creating our digipak and used my built in microphone to explain what we did at each stage of creating our product.

Here is an image that Ian took in order for us to create our cover for our digipack. The turn up of the jeans and casual footwear suggests an artist with a laid back and youthful presence, aiming to appeal to our younger target audiences. The print in the background was created by using a bed sheet but gives a classy and almost sophisticated look to the cover, reaching out to a broader demographic.

I do like the image for our cover and overall, I think myself and Ian have done very well in capturing a photograph very quickly that we both agree on. The only aspect of this cover that I realised did not work well was the font. I feel it is a font that is often used within school work and posters and is fairly unoriginal, thus not enabling the audience to fully appreciate and feel attracted towards the cover. In order to create a better album cover, myself and Ian have been looking on the website 'http://www.dafont.com/' which offers thousands of fonts which we will eventually select to feature on our album cover.