Q4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Above are pictures of us using new media technologies, with the macs, macbooks, final cut pro, tripod, SD camera, SD memory card uploaders.

I felt in the research, construction, and planning and evaluation stages of our products that we used new media technologies for a variety of reason. In our research stages new media technologies were used to help inform us as the creators the successful conventions of our real media texts – in order to successfully appeal to our target audience. In the construction stages we used new media technologies to help us create the best possible outcome for our text’s, applying numerous edits, effects that would enable us to appeal to the audience in the best aesthetically pleasing way. In planning stages of our products, new media technologies helped us plan and communicate effectively so our products would be executed by the correct deadlines. Finally in the evaluation stages new media technologies helped us receive constructive feedback for all our products and to help us evaluate our products effectively in order to enable us to apply media theory to our text’s and learn from our strengths and weaknesses.

RESEARCH AND THE USE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES:

http://www.myspace.com/music/?pm_cmp=nav

Myspace: In the research stages of our production we used Myspace numerous times it was one of the most helpful technologies in aiding us with research and understanding of the band and their fan base. Myspace is host for thousands of signed and unsigned bands and allowed us to choose a song from an unsigned band, which would be easier to get permission for. Myspace also enabled us to directly get in contact with the band asking them for permission to use the song. Myspace also helped us in how we would define the genre of the song and how we would appeal to the audience of this genre. For example as Myspace has a information section on the band, where we saw what genre they classed their music as, in this case ‘alternative’. Myspace also allowed us to browse pictures put up personally by the band and analyse how they presented themselves through appearance. This is where we realised the genre of the band we were producing a video for was of the rock- pop/alternative genre. We could tell this from the mise en scene of the band, skinny jeans, cheque shirts, dress sense typical to the rock-pop/ alternative genre. It also gave us insight into the bands target audience, by evaluating the way they portray there Myspace page in order to entice and appeal to fans.


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

Google as a search engine for millions of websites from millions of users and publishers also helped us with our research. For example it enabled us to do quick and sufficient research searches on our stereotypical representations we wanted to incorporate in our video. Also the image search as well as the web search, allowed us not only to do textual research but visual research into our stereotypes. This makes our representations stronger and more visually effective.

http://www.youtube.com/

Youtube’s ability to host millions of videos from various people’s points of views and uploads, helped us significantly with our research into similar media products. It allowed us to be inspired by real music videos and incorporate their own successes into our own work. We got nearly all our inspiration of Youtube, with is function to access any video content at any time at any place with internet access.

http://www.4music.com/



http://uk.viva.tv/

4Music and Viva: are broadcasting channels for music videos of various genres and is a different type of technology compared to rest of technologies being mainly PC based. 4music and Viva’s content helped our research as we were able to view how a normal real life media music video would be distributed to its audience. This allowed us to see what conventions were used in order to appeal to the audience, and also provided us with feedback and information from how successful the music video had been, from figures of numbers of downloads and purchases.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/

iTunes is another new media technology that allowed us to further research into the song that we would be promoting and providing video for. This being as by going onto itunes store - a store purely based online, with only online buyers – we could see what genre they stated under ‘rock- pop’ on itunes. We could also read feedback from fans that had already purchased their music, and see what buyers of that music also bought.

Also within iTunes, we used the new media technology of Genius - a feature of iTunes which searches for similar music to the music you like to listen to. This was very useful when researching into similar artists and how they were marketed and what conventions they used in their products.





CONSTRUCTION AND THE USE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES


SD Video Camera
SD Memory Card
Tripod
Dolly
SD Memory Card Reader
Apple Mac

Above is the list of equipment we used in order to actually construct our products. All these elements were used in order to make the process of filming and creating as sufficient as possible. Equipment such as the dolly and tripod – although not essentials, specifically helped improve the construction process, by making the quality of the footage better, for example being held steady.

Isquint is programme which allowed us to upload are footage in the correct format in order to be compatible with the editing suite – final cut pro. Isquint is also a shareware file, which meant that I used a file which would allow me to add and change it at my needs.

Final Cut Express is one of essential new media technology programmes, as it allowed us to precisely edit and craft our video to the best possible outcome. Allowing the final video product to be of a high standard with many visual effects to visually and aesthetically please the audience. Also allowed us to include effects and visuals to how we wanted them to be represented, so we could appeal to our target audience more efficiently, by applying affects and conventions typical to the rock-pop/ alternative genre.  

iTunes played another role in our construction stages of the products, as iTunes enabled us to purchase the content quickly online. So we could then import to iPod, CD disks, so we could play the song out loud for the band filming, practice lyrics with, examine and listen to the lyrics and tempo of the song, in order to fit the video the best we could to the audio.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 is another new media technology that was essential to the construction of products, especially the ancilliary tasks; digi pak and magazine advert. It similarly allowed us to create the best visual effects possible in order to promote our product to its target audience.

PLANNING AND THE USE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

http://www.facebook.com/

Facebook, allowed us to plan more effectively, as it helped with the communication between me and my partner significantly, swapping ideas and visuals with each other - to help plan and sort the construction of our products. We also used it as a way of communicating with our actors and people who we borrowed props off, in order to plan where and at what time thing would take place. Without this quick and vastly used social networking site, with its additional features to chat instantly to people and upload and share pictures, our planning would not have been as effective. Facebook also aided us in keeping up with our time management and planning, as we set up events via Facebook, to make sure the date was official and would work well in order for us to finish by our deadline.

http://www.blogger.com/

Blogger is another new media technology that helped with the planning stages, particularly as we could create posts that specifically set out what dates we would need to do activities in order to carry the construction of our products forward. It also allowed us to created structure to our work, so it was kept well organised, writing down our thought process step by step.

EVALUATION AND USE OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES

http://www.youtube.com/

Youtube was used in the evaluation stages of our products, we used Youtube particularly to broadcast our music video and see how many views it received and what feedback in the comments it received. This helped us evaluate our product in terms of its successes and weaknesses and meant we got a variety of viewers of all different ages and in different locations.

http://www.facebook.com/

Facebook was another new media technology that helped our evaluation stages, as when we uploaded our music video, we then received feedback on our video from the people we know. Facebook also provided a good host for the video, as it meant that we could ask people for their thoughts on the video quickly via Facebook chat and receive the comments quickly as well. Facebook particularly helped us on question three of the evaluation stages.

Final Cut Express also informed our evaluation stages, as I used final cut pro to create question two of the evaluation. Allowing us to evaluate our work, whilst using technology to assist us in what we are evaluation, for example having moving image alongside our audio analysis of our work.

Photoshop 7.0 similarly helped my evaluation stages, as it enabled me to present images and writing in a creative way and then transfer onto my blog as a JPEG file. This improved my evaluation by having effective visual links to coincide with the written analysis. Making my analysis stronger and backed up with visuals and evidence.

http://www.blogger.com/

Finally Blogger had significant impact on the evaluation stages, as it is the primary host for all my evaluation questions. It features that allow me to upload images and videos means that my answers to the evaluation questions are communicated effectively to the audience. Also blogger acts very sufficiently as a virtual diary, allowing me to reflect over all I have done over the process of making my products, and allows me to evaluate them with detail.


Overall I used a variety of new media technologies to inform, improve and construct my final products. The main function of new media technologies was that they effectively allowed me to transform an already existsing media text 'Searching For the Sun in the Dark' song, and transform and created my own personal new identity to it. And then going further and getting feedback on my interpreation and effectively created subgroups of the song Searching For the Sun in the Dark by Lost in Colour.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have received alot of feedback from our products and during the process of constructing our products.

Our first batch of feed back was from our rough edit of our music video; when the ending was unfinished. We showed our rough edit of the video to fellow students and teachers, as our primary audience for giving feedback. We choose media students and teachers as we felt in terms of getting a more informed media opinion about the construction, affects and conventions of our video. Allowing us to have more detailed feedback to improve on.

From this feedback the most successful parts of our video was:

- The overlay effect of the drums over the singers face whilst singing, as it matched well with the tempo, and manages to capture the vocals and instrumentals close up at the same time.

- My teacher particularly liked the pan up the body of the prostitute to introduce her character. From the successful feedback of this shot we then decided to add a similar pan of the body to introduce another one of our characters.

- Positive feedback was also received about the performance shots, especially the way they evoked energy and fun.

- Also the use of signs to help convey meaning and themes through the video was especially liked by both students and teachers.

The more unsuccessful parts to the video which were highlighted from the feedback were:

- The off beat foot tapping of the lead singer. When then used the feedback to correct this error and we elongated (extended) the shot so the amount of taps on the ground of the foot, matched the amount of beats until the lyrics started. Which matched the visuals with audio very effectively.

- Feedback that the lip syncing in some places was not accurate and did not match the lyrics, meant that we re filmed the lyrics that were not sang in time, and therefore we could get spot on. This really paid off, as a lot of our feedback on the final product mentions how professional the accuracy of the lip syncing is.

- We were also advised to reconsider the structure of the narrative, so it went in order or severity. We then used this feedback, and decided to re order the narratives, so the anti social scene occurred first, then prostitute and the homeless scene. So it shows fluidity and a sense of journey of destruction more.

- After feedback that the homeless scene was a bit random, we decided to introduce the character better, so the horizontal split screens would not seem as random. We then incorporated the successful elements of the introduction of the prostitute by panning down the body into the tramp scene. So similarly we panned down the tramps body on the bench.

Post production feedback:

After are construction of our music video and ancillary tasks we asked people for feedback in order to see if we achieved our goals of producing a professional looking video, producing products that fitted the alternative- rock pop conventions, produced products that enticed the audience and produced products which communicated the meaning of our video effectively.

To see if we had met our aims i carried out feed back of individual interviews, asking the questions; 

-What did you like about the ancillary tasks?

-What improvements do you feel could be made?

- What did you think the meaning of the video was?

- What are your thoughts on the ancillary tasks?

- Overall do you think the combination of our products looked professional?

Below is some of the interviews recorded, i selected people with good age range and range of interest in music. For example i used a 32 year old who does not like alternative music, 15 year old who was keen on alternative music, and a 47 year old who liked a variety of music. I used this age range to see if their ages made any difference to the feedback they gave. 

This feedback made me realise that our products were appreciated by ages beyond our target audience group. This piece of feedback highlighted that the most successful parts of our video was the visual effects; for example the black and white and the overlaying effects. This feedback is also evidence that the use of signs in our video helped construct meaning - however also highlighted that improvements could be made in expressing the meaning of the video, as the older viewers of the video, struggled more to interpret the meaning that the girl represented young and people in bad situations as a whole, rather than just a journey of a young girl deterioration in society. Feedback also told us that as a whole our products looked very professional and fit the conventions of a alternative rock band producing music products and distributing them to their audience.

We then went on to make tighter research on our target audience male and females aged 14 - 22. We did this by uploading our music video on Facebook; as Facebook is a very good base for reaching our target audience, as an enormous amount of young people use Facebook and are keen to express the opinions by 'liking' and commenting on pictures, video and other comments.

Below is what our video looked like when uploaded:

We asked people to tell us what they thought and these are the comments we received:

The comments we found were the most useful in terms of how effective our music video had been:

From these comments we concluded that the most important elements of our video were the use of black and white as 5 out of the 6 comments mention the effectiveness of the black and white colour theme. Other successful areas pointed out are how the visual match the tempo of the song, for example the chorus, where three people have positively commented on this. Another notable area of success is; the editing of split screens and overlays and the use of signs and text in the video and the success of re doing the lip syncing. All these people are within our target audience age range and give us a good indication that our video would be very successfully in appealing to our target audience. However as the comments are very public on Facebook means that the audience are less liking to make comments suggesting unsuccessful elements.



Because of this we then felt it was necessary to get more secluded and more tighter research by  specifically asking people who liked alternative /rock pop music what they thought of our video:

Here are our results from the questionnaire:

We asked an equal number of males and females to make the research even.

Overall what we learnt from this feedback, is that generally we did fit to the conventions of the alternative music genre, and the elements that best show that in our video are the use of black and white and the performance shots - which also ties into the feedback that we got previously, with peoples preferences to the performance shots and desaturation.
Also we learnt that our ancillary tasks also overall fitted to the conventions of other alternative music products, with most of the feedback suggesting that they fitted to the conventions or some of them. Also the feedback showed that the use of slightly odd imagery was the most successful convention followed by the photographic imagery of the band. Also our feedback highlighted that our ancillary tasks were very professional looking, with 0% percent of our focus group answering 'no' to the do our ancillary tasks look professional question. This suggesting that overall both parts of products were very successful in appealing to their conventions as a genre and looking professional, but the ancillary tasks just look that little more professional as a product than the video. Our feedback also suggested a mixed reaction to the last question; would you as a alternative fan be inclined to buy our products. The feedback clearly demonstrated that alternative fans would be inclined to buy our products and therefore shows that our products are effectiveness enough to secure the sales of its target audience. However the feedback for this question does also show that a portion of people would not be inclined to by the products whether that is down to lack of fondness of the song or the actual production of the products is unsure. But with the majority of the feedback stating that both our products do fit the conventions of real media alternative music conventions and that both products primarily look professional and on the whole would secure the sales of alternative music fans, taught us that we have been very successful in the production of our products and in appealing the correct target audience.


In conclusion from looking back on all the feedback as a whole we had learnt a lot from the feedback from our rough edit of the video, this allowed us to make our final video very effective, with some of the elements we changed being the most like able parts of our video in the post production feedback, for example the lip syncing. However from our feedback we have learnt that our products would be successful in appealing to their target audience, males and female aged between 14 - 22 with a particular interest in alternative music. However we have also considered that maybe in the production of our video further improvements could have been made to promote the meaning of the video more effectively. As the feedback showed us that the older viewers of the video 30 + did not quite fully understand the message we were trying to convey. And suggested that maybe more effort should have been made to construct the meaning of a whole youthful society being judged and falling into bad ways better, instead of giving the illusion that it is a singular person journey of the unfortunate events and judgment.

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?



Below is the script:



R: Hi I’m Rachel
A: And I’m Amelia
R: For our A2 media production we produced a music video to the song called searching for the sun in the dark by lost in colour, we also produced a digi pak and magazine advert as ancilliary tasks to go with the video.
A: We feel the combination of our main product and ancilliary texts works effectively together because there are similar links and reference between the music video, digipak and magazine advert.
R: The links are mainly created through the imager. For example the composition of the imagery on the album cover is a recreation from a still image in the music video. This is a direct link between the two products and effectively allows the audience to identify the two products together, with each product reminding the audience of each other.
A: The back cover of digi pak also creates effective visual links. As the back cover uses the same mise en scene of a red scarf wrapped around a brunette woman’s face also seen on the digi pak front cover and in the video.
R: However the composition, positioning and framing of the back image is completely different, with the character facing a side view looking into the blank space instead of front on. This image is therefore original to the digi pak only rather than being an image taken from the music video.
A: This is effective as the back cover image is seen as an extension to the original image and concept explored in the music video and album front cover, creating a sense of fluidity between all images on the products. The fluidity of the back and front album images is particularly seen in the magazine advert, where the two images combined look as though their one image.
R: We thought the image on the front cover is affective as it is relied upon to be directly recognisable to the music video, so it secures the sales of people who have seen and like the music video. We found this works effectively combined with the back cover of a digi pak as the back is not primarily relied upon for enticing audience, instead extends on the imagery on the front and provides the audience with something new and creative.
A: This we know to be effective as many real media alternative rock bands albums rely on the front image to be recognisable with the back cover being made up of new and creative imagery. (EXAMPLES)
R: The use of matching font in the magazine advert and digi pak is another element that suggests to the effectiveness of the products working together as a whole.
A: We used the same font for the album title that we used for the contense of the album on the back of the digi pak and for all the text on the magazine advert – even the promotional text, for example the date of release.
R: This was effective as it created fluidity and direct references between both products. However by using the same font for promotional text, for example the date of release, can be seen as less effective, as the promotional writing that matches the album title font is very rarely seen in similar real media album products. (example) Real media texts tend to do this so the font for the product is specific to that particular product only.
A: The ancilliary tasks and music video also work effectively together as they both promote the same message.
R: For example both the ancilliary tasks and music video connote the feeling of isolation and the sense of being trapped, this shown by the use of a scarf wrapped round a woman’s face signifying a sense of suffocation.
A: We felt this particular message was portrayed successfully across all our products when appealing to the target audience, of males and females aged 14 – 22. This being as the image is surreal, unconventional and slightly weird. These types of images appeal to this particular age group as they have a tendency to stand out, be different and non -traditional. So a cutting edge and strange images like this would grab the attention of the target audience.
R: Also the use of surreal and cutting edge imagery to promote a message is very typically effective for the alternative music genre. (EXAMPLE... ARCTIC MONKEYS)
A: We felt the message of isolation and corruption in society is more strongly defined in the music video than to the ancillary tasks, as stereotypical characters are used in the video to help promote unfortunate situations in society. These areas have a great significance in the music video, however this is not presented on the ancilliary tasks, which may be seen as ineffective element to how the products appeal and work as a whole.
R: Our products also worked effectively together when promoting the band. For example, in the music video we had many long shot of the band performing and taking part in the narrative, promoting them as a professional, successful alternative band. This we know to be effective part of our products as performance shots are a widely used convention by many alternative and rock bands real media music products. (EXAMPLES)
A: We carried this representation of the band further, within the inside pages of our digi pak. We did this by having a striking head shot of each band member and their name in capital lettering next to their shot, also a convention widely used in real media products (EXAMPLES).
R: We felt the energetic, youthful and lively portrayal of the band shown in the video and the images used on the inside pages of the digi pak worked very effectively in promoting the overall image of the band. As they both suggested energy, fun and a youthful nature, which will help appeal to an audience with similar characteristics, playing on the illusion that the audience of the product will aspire to be like the band members.

A: Overall the combination of our music video and our ancillary tasks work very effectively together as a promotional pak. Although the effectiveness of using font could be improved and more representational links could be made in the ancilliary tasks from the video, there are high level of effectiveness with n the visual links and themes between the products, and the effectiveness of the youthful lively representation of the band being signified through both products, means that overall our products would appeal to their target audience and do professionally fit to the convention of their music genre in order to make sales.

Q1. To what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My media product is a music video made to the song Lost in Colour - Searching for the Sun in the Dark. I felt I used, developed and challenged a variety of conventions that are used in real media products.