Sinead's A2 Blog

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

Before it is cross dissolved
so the girl disappears

My media production for The Killers' song All These Things That I've Done uses and develops forms and conventions of narrative music video (more so than an abstract or performance music video). A narrative music video basically tells a story and it usually relates to the lyrics; as a result, my music production relates to the lyrics also. For example, when Brandon Flowers (the vocalist from The Killers) sings "...and affection, well it comes... and goes." In this scene, I showed the main boy starring in the video in a park with his girlfriend "my attraction" and they are sitting on a bench together. Then it shows the girl disappear, through a Cross Dissolve icon on the Apple Final Cut Pro programme.

After it is cross dissolved
so boy is left alone

The song I have chosen to re-create is an indie genre song. Indie video's are usually quite "real" looking and pretty dark. However, this is where my production challenges the conventions of an Indie music video, as my video isn't that dark at all. In comparison to The Kooks video 'Naive', my video is quite bright, the message itself is rather dark, but the look of it is not ( as you can see below).

One shot in The Kooks video

One shot in my Video

Indie music video's also use a lot of realistic narratives, stories that the audience can relate to somewhat. They are believable - I believe I developed this convention, by making my music video believable up until the end, where the boy is killed my his psychiatrist. I use a lot of pans and tracking shots, and this is much like the conventional narrative Indie music video. I tried to conform to the Narrative Indie video convention, by making the music video seem much like a video diary almost, tracking the boys daily routine almost - much like Narrative Indie videos by Indie artists like, Keane, Coldplay, The Kooks and many more.

Extreme Long Shot of boy walking down street.

Extreme Close Up of eyes

The most obvious of my usage of the forms and conventions of a music video is the position of the song title, the artist and the album cover in the bottom left-hand corner, which appears at the beginning and end of the music video for a few seconds. However, I manipulated and changed the speed of certain scenes, using fast and slow motions throughout the production, this wasn't really challenging, although music videos of this genre don't really have much special effects; I would class my decision of using filters and colour correction, as well as changing the speed of some scenes to match the different tempo's of the song as developing these conventions, rather than challenging. I still used a variety of different shots, like Extreme, Long and Medium shots, as well as Close and Extreme Close-Ups to show emotion changes. My choice to use tracking and panned shots were another use of ways to meet the conventions of an Indie Narrative Music Video and tell the story without much ambiguity, but just enough to keep the viewer intrigued.

The Killers album cover

Keane album cover

Coldplay album cover

I had to create two print artefact's also, I chose to produce a CD Album Cover for The Killers Hot Fuss album, where the song is taken from. My second artifact was a HMV Promotion Poster. I had to understand how to create these artefact's and allow them to look professional, without copying the original or any other for that matter. I looked at a variety of different album covers in and outside of college.

MY ALBUM COVER!!!

I noticed that whilst looking through images of Indie artists and bands Album covers, there was a particular style. The artists or bands name is usually slightly bigger than the name of the album. The font is usually quite simplistic and plain. And the writing is normally just above the center of the album cover. It is usually fairly plain regarding to colour. I chose to finally use and develop this convention and format also in my own artefact, I used this format of the plain font and artist name bigger than the album cover name slightly above the center, but i developed this further by using actual images from the production of the front and back of the album.

Back cover of the Day and Age album by The Killers

I then made my back cover of my album, I used the conventions of the usual Indie genre album cover of pretty structured song names, I also numbered them so I developed this convention by allowing it to be easier to find your desired song choice.
I have also challenged this convention of quite plain and unrelated background picture of the back cover by using an actual freeze frame image from the production.

Back of my version of the Hot Fuss album by The Killers

Back of the Viva La Vida album by Coldplay

Florence and the Machine
HMV poster

I had to then create the second artefact, which was a poster to promote this "new album". After much confusion about not having access to "Abdobe Photoshop

My HMV poster

However, I finally found a way to access Photoshop on my computer and then after much research into HMV promotion posters, I used this convention of a quote from the band (which is sometimes lyrics from a song) and the "My/Our inspiration" title in the top right-hand corner. This magazine poster is usually in black and white the quote is subtly highlighted in a lighter grey - I did the same. I wanted to challenge this convention of having the whole band in the picture, by just using the main singer Brandon Flowers, as the music video's focus more on him anyway. I then developed this traditional format of the poster by adding the price of the album, a picture of the album cover, the iTunes rating etc; I also added a grainy affect I wanted to distort the original picture to make it more original, as the other posters are very clear and have a crisp finish.

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


Image used in CD Cover, from production

I believe my combination of my main product and my ancillary texts is quite effective, I have used images from my production in my CD cover by using Apple Final Cut Pro and choosing my desired moving image and dragging in into the editing box where I pressed the "modify" icon and then chose the "make freeze frame" icon, then the "File", "Export" and "Using QuickTime Conversion" after that you have to open where you keep your files and save it as a "Still image" and then you can use it in Pages or PhotoShop.

This is the page that comes up when I altered the colour of the shot,
I could de-saturate it, over saturate it or keep it the same
This is from the same scene of the production where I use the image for my CD back cover

There isn't really that much of a correlation between the music video and the ancillary texts. The font on the CD album, the poster and the video are all different - but they all come together with the darkness of them all. The music video has no saturation, so it is in black and white.

The poster is dark, the only colour in it is the traditional pink colour of the HMV logo and everything relating to HMV. The CD cover has a dark feel again, but the writing is red to show confusion and alertness. My poster has a effective combination with the CD cover and the music production because it contains a condensed re sized image of the CD cover in the bottom showing that this is what it is promoting.
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Before and after version of the POSTER
Pages original above left and PHOTOSHOP FINAL above right!

Before and after version of CD COVER
Pages original above and PHOTOSHOP FINAL below!

3) What have you learned from the audience feedback?

We had to complete feedback forms in class, where we would critique each others production and two artefact's. I had two sets of feedback forms, as my work was shown in front of class prior to the group session of every ones work. I had feedback on my CD cover first. My fellow classmates needed to answer the following:

1) How has student USED (pre-existing) codes & conventions in making their particular print aretfacts?
2) Has the student DEVELOPED (adding to) traditional codes and conventions of real media products OR, CHALLENGED (broke conventions) of established codes and conventions of their print products?
3) What are the strengths of students print artefact's (what have they done well)?
4) What are the weaknesses of the print artefact's (what could they improve)?
Overall, the feedback was constructive, for the first question I saw that my class noticed the fact that I conformed to the codes and conventions of an Indie artist's Album by using a larger font for the band name and a smaller one for the album title, also the majority stated that the dark colours used conform to the Rock/Indie stereotype.

Question two's results varied, some said I challenged the conventions and forms of the stereotypical Indie album, as my original CD cover had the Band and Album name aligned to the left, whereas the usual connection is to be centered just above the center of the album cover - this allowed me to alter the CD Cover to conform to this stereotype. all 13 students asked, said that I have developed the conventions of an Indie album by making the album background more detailed and less simplistic than a usual album cover - so I used this to my advantage by allowing it to have more detail but preventing it from looking "busy".

The third question was about my strengths, the results consisted of the students liking the bar code added, as it was traditional and realistic and the images used from the production itself, and I learnt that even though this isn't a traditional form to use, it worked well, as you really get feel for how the album is going to be - the feet, show that the boy is on the run, or walking away from something or someone - its ambiguous and it obviously worked.

I understood after the feedback that my font colours were blatantly to dark, as it blended in too much to the backgrounds dark colours. This helped as I changed it straight away and now it looks so much better. Also, i changed my original CD cover after working out that a 7/13 students said that I have not kept the consistency of the font throughout the back and front cover, so I changed this and it works much better.

I also had an A2 Media Advanced Portfolio Feedback Sheet where I had feedback and ratings on various aspects of my whole production and the two artefact's. They had to rate the success of my production in terms following terms and conventions of a music video; 70% of my class chose to rate this as an "excellent" the other 30% chose "good" - I learnt that people actually did understand and enjoy my production, as nobody chose "average" "poor" or "very poor". Again, the results were very consistent and positive, the class rated that I had a high imagination and creative flair, that out of "1" being the highest and "5" being the lowest, I scored 1's and 2's in my shot composition, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and music and use of fonts. They also had to say what I could improve; I read in e few of the feedback forms that when I use repeat shots, I use it too many times, so I changed this, and instead of using 4 repeat shots of one action (e.g. the boy getting up out if his chair) I used one shot that was the original speed, then one which I altered the speed to slow it down. From the results, I deduced that the print artefacts related well with the main production in terms of conventions etc, the colours were the main aspect of how the artefacts tie in well with the video, the darkness and offset colours are consistent throughout.

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

This is the Blogger Homepage,
where i had to log in and create at account

I used media technology throughout the entirety of the coursework stages of media, From the planning stages I have used technology, I had to create a blog on "blogger.com" and create a template with a background design of my choice by going onto the "Advanced Settings" icon and personalised my blog. I chose a colour scheme of pink and black, a different font, and a background of a close up of a person holding a camera.

This is a screen shot of the "advanced
template designer" page

I used popular sites like Google, Wikipedia etc for my main research, I would use this mostly to look at existing products, like album covers etc. However, I also used these sites to find out information about different genres so I could really understand what I was trying to produce. When I found any useful information, or had to update my blog, I would post it by clicking the "new post" icon, giving it a title and then writing away. I sometimes even open Microsoft Word and copy and paste what I write onto a post.

Screen shot of transformation into JPEG

To show evidence of what I am writing about, I used screen shots from the video itself and Google Images. I needed to find out how to use Apple Keyboards and how to create screen shots - I had to get screen shots to show different ways that I have used technology, for example, I had to press the Apple key, Shift and number 4 to create a screen shot. Working on Pages at the star of the course, I had to learn how to transfer images that I had made on Pages into a JPEG, however, to do this I went through a long winded, yet successful process of: Apple, Shift, 4, then find it on your browser, open it up with Photoshop, save it as JPEG and then go back onto your post. click the "edit HTML" icon, and then upload the picture from your area.

Screen shot of blog post

I needed to also upload images from Google. This was the same process, but I would just transfer the picture into a JPEG after it is saved into your area of files. I embedded a video onto my blog from YOUTUBE also, this was done by getting the code to embed the video and pasting it into the post using the video icon. I would also take screen grabs of videos to show in my analysis of music videos and I did this at home, where I would pause the video on the desired shot and then take a screen shot of it, paste that into "Paint" crop it so it was just the video and nothing around it, save it as something memorable and upload that.

In the construction stages I used a lot of technology, obviously I used a:

Mini DV Tape, Mini DV Camera and a Tripod as you can see below..

I had to record all of my shots at least 4 times each, just in case they had any imperfections. As soon as I had all of my footage, the "logging and capturing" had to begin on Apple Final Cut Pro, this is where I watched through all of the footage I had recorded and then chose the parts I wanted to use by saving them onto the video tab and then get ready to edit them on the time line at the right place.

I had to add the soundtrack to the timeline, so I did this first, I used YouTube Converter to change the song into a MP3 file with just the music and not the video, I put it onto my MP3 player via the USB port and then transferred it onto the Apple Computers at college and added it to my timeline on Final Cut Pro.

Evidence of the use of Cross Dissolve tool

I could add effects to the shots to make them look different, or instead of using invisible editing, I could use different ways to link the shots together.

I would just tick the icon filter or dissolve I wanted and place it on the timeline where I wanted it.

I changed the speed of shots from faster-slower or slower-faster by changing the duration of the particular shot.

I used LIVETYPE3 for the titles of the Song name, Song title and Album title to come up at the beginning and the end of the video, and chose a suitable font that was red and black to theme. I then saved this onto my server and imported it onto the timeline at the appropriate place.I definitely used technology in my Print Artefact's as I used Final Cut Pro for the second time and modified shots as still images, exported them using Quick Time Compressor, save them onto my server and then I opened it up in Pages - this was to make my CD Cover. However, I finally managed to transfer this Pages version of the CD Cover onto PhotoShop where I used the filter tool to change and embolden the text and background images. I used Google Images to find an image of a bar code, the anti-piracy logo and The Killers' record label to save and import onto Pages in order to give it an authentic look.

I also used Pages to create my first promotion Poster, this was a struggle, however the poster did possess all the aspects needed for a promotion poster. I then managed to find Photoshop on the computer, where I made my final HMV inspired promotion poster (after research on the Internet of existing products) by finding images from the Internet. I needed to research the HMV posters and see what conventions they follow, like the HMV LOGO, and the "Nipperwolf" logo.

Following the forms and conventions, I also used Google and Bing Images to find an image Brandon Flowers (singer in The Killers) for the poster, I narrowed done the search my using clicking that I only want Black and White images that were portrait. When I found the image, I saved that picture onto my server as a JPEG and opened it up in Photoshop to create the poster which was weird as I had never used PhotoShop prior to this, so it was a challenge.

Finally, I used media technology's in my Evaluation by typing up a draft of my evaluation essay on Microsoft word at home and then I saved the Microsoft word document onto my memory stick, and then opened
it on the college computer, found the file and copied
and pasted it onto my blog, so I could add relevant screen shots. When I had pasted the essay onto my blog, I could change the colour and font of the words and then Publish the post.