Brief

Our A2 Media Studies coursework was to create a music package which consists of our own chosen genre and producing a music video with print based texts which was a poster and the front and back of a CD cover to make it appeal to our chosen target audience.

Music Video

Ancillary Text: Poster

Ancillary Text: CD Cover and In-Lay

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Research & Planning

·         Blogger Blogger is a social networking site which allows you to upload your own personal preferences; this can range from written articles, school work or information about a certain hobby or passion you may take interest in. I chose this site to showcase my work over the past two years as it has an easy format to work with and in terms of displaying your work it enables you to move things round if you want to reorder pieces of information you've already uploaded to your blogging site.  ·         Survey Monkey   Survey Monkey works as another form of communication as it allows you to create your own personalised questionnaires which you are able to send to your friends if you wanted audience feedback for any type of project. This was useful within my production work as I was able to gain feedback in which direction I need to go within my music video so that I can provide what my audience was looking for.  ·         Slideshare   Slideshare enables you to upload powerpoint presentations of your own personal interest and you can embed these onto other social mediums such as Blogger. Using this format within my research and planning made presenting my work easier as I could upload visual annotations of my work with it being visually stimulating and also the site is easy to access and it’s another way for people to look at your work. ·         Whatsapp  Whatsapp is a social networking app where you can send instant free messages to your friends and family. I was able to use this to send photo to members of my group, or to make arrangements for when next we were going to meet up and to record my productions logs so that I could write it up and post it on my blog later on during the day.

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

Construction

·         Canon Camera  I used this Cannon camera to take still images with various shots and angles for the opening sequence of our music video, CD cover and poster. And what I learnt from using this instrument was being able to use the manual focus to get sharp images without having to repeatedly take several different images to get one perfect. ·         Panasonic Handheld Camera We used this Panasonic Handheld camera to capture the footage of our music video. And what we learnt from using this instrument was that even though it has a low megapixel of 2.3, we were able to produce a good standard of different shots and angles in comparison to the Canon which has a 12 megapixel camera.  ·         Tripod Using the tripod also helped us with our still images as we did not need to take them by hand and it enabled us to capture focused quality images without them being blurred. ·         Gorilla Pod The gorilla pod is seen as a development of a tripod but a miniature version. This product and the tripod can be seen as media technologies as they are effectively used in schools as part of the equipment and also many amateur film makers use them as they are efficient and reliable.  This was how we got all our shots and angles from the first perspective and by using this instrument I learnt that it is easy to use as it is light in weight and provides more stability rather than holding the camera in your hand or using a steady cam as it is more compact. ·         Adobe Premiere CS4 Being introduced to this software this year has really helped me progress as a media student as I have been able to learn how to use this programme effectively and create quality work. Though our video camera was 2.3 megapixels the use of transitions, filters and editing tools enabled me to enhance the appearance of certain parts of our music video and by using certain tools such as the “razor”, I was able to cut and paste different pieces of footage that I wanted to use or throw away so that throughout the video there was a good display of continuity. The advantages of using this software is knowing the effect of the features and what they can do to make the video look neater or clearer , such as the transitions. In particular the “dissolve” tool enables you to dip from black/white from one scene into the next. And in regards to using this software it enabled me to find more ways to be creative i.e. splitting the screen into three even though that wasn’t an original idea but we as a group wanted to show more versatility within our video and demonstrate our knowledge of Premiere. So by using this programme I’ve increased my knowledge and skill ability within using a new form of media technology and these new skills can be applied to the next project I do. ·         Adobe Photoshop CS4   Using this software I found it easy to craft together the ancillary task as I’m familiar with photoshop from my experience of using it last year. My technical skills have improved as I’ve been able to experiment with different filters to make images and backgrounds look better, for example I came across the “colour pencil” and “water colours” filters which I experimented with and saw what worked well with the selected colour scheme we went for. Using the “magnetic lasso” tool I was able to cut around images and use the “smudge” and “blur” tool to soften the edges to give the image a softer look.   Lasso tool   Blur/Smudge I have learnt how to criticise my own work and readdress the way I display my composition and layout on the page and I’ve done this by creating different layers and reshaping certain images to fit my objective. ·         YouTube   We used this user generated site to upload our video on to it as it’s a mass form of communication and a good way to gain feedback from our audience. It is also easy for people to access and search for videos of different genres and different time periods. People can also leave comments and share the links with their friends to increase the amount of views a video can get and this allows users to become well established within the public eye.

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

Evaluation

·         Soundcloud   Using soundcloud was another way to demonstrate my versatility within different media technologies and by using this site it is quick and efficient to use, plus it is more personalised as you get to record yourself and others as a way to gain feedback. ·         Powerpoint   Powerpoint is visually stimulating so by using this software I thought it was a good device to use within evaluating my work as I would be able to give clear indications and annotations around my work and explain the reasons for my ideas and why I may have changed certain aspects. ·         Word   Using word also helped as it has a simple format, it is easy to read and understand without complications and it is a good way to simply communicate with your audience on what you’re trying explain and achieve.

Production Log

Today we had to re-do the beginning of the house scene. And then later on I went back to editing more of the CD covers and poster.

Production Log

Today we filmed the house scene but didn’t have much time to finish as our actors came later than what we expected.

Production Log

I ended spending more time editing the ancillary task, I worked around with more colours and played with the compositon.

Production Log

Today we re-filmed the begging of our video as we later on discovered that some of the framing was off, so we wanted to try various different shots and angles.

My Vox Pops

Production Log

Today I we started shooting the begging of our story board. We didn’t get much done because the camera battery wasn’t charged enough so this delayed the process. But we plan to continuing shooting this week.

Production Log

Today I completed scanning my Story Board and uploading it to my page. I forgot to do my ancillary task, so that will be done by next week. The problems I faced today were trying to find a scanner which worked, once I was able to do so another problem occurred on Photoshop. Saving the photos as a JPEG was difficult because once they were saved it still came up as a Photoshop file on my USB so I had to delete and resave, which really slowed down the process of getting things done. When it came to trying to upload the photos I wasn't aware that Blogger had changed their setting on how to upload photos. Once creating my Picasa Web account I was able to get my pictures up. 

Story Board Photos

Story board Photos Part 2