Question 4

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

Displaying the work

My media blog was the most useful device to display my work and easily update its current stage and the progress being made. 

It was easily accessible throughout the year and saved me having to carry around heavy folders and papers and keep my research and planning organised with the use of Labels. The teacher's ability to leave comments and constructive feedback on the blogs also incredibly helped the process. 

Research for Music Video and Digipack

Finding my band 

Most of my research was done with the use of the Internet. 

I browsed through various unsigned band websites, but mainly my source was youtube. In the end I chose to ask my friend Nick if he and his band The Upgrade were willing to be part of this media project.

Digipack + Advert

The Internet, mainly websites like Google Images and Wikipedia was very useful in accessing images of past albums and their release dates/ genre specification and lead me on to similar artists.

For the research concerning my magazine advert however I relied mostly on print magazines since the internet websites of these magazines do not always show adverts for upcoming albums and singles.

Music Video

Youtube enabled me to watch past music videos by old and current bands who were very influential in the process of making this video.

The TV (also on demand catch up TV websites like BBC iPlayer) and DVDs were useful to the research to watch documentaries about bands and media-related films like the Kitchen Sink Dramas that influenced our work, and the feature film about Joy Division called Control.  

Planning

Websites like Facebook were also incredibly useful in arranging a shooting schedule with the band and the media "crew", since it would have otherwise been even harder to cooperate between 6 people's timetables and activities.

  Microsoft Office programmes such as Word, Powerpoint and Excel were extremely helpful to create files, tables and lists (for ex. Shot list/shooting schedule) and have an overview on the situation and progress.

Since at home I use a MacBook Pro computer, I had to convert files from Microsoft to Open Office or iWork 08. This was easy to do and made a wider range of programmes accessible to me.

I used the scanners which my school offered me to make a virtual copy of  the storyboard, which I had drawn onto paper, and publish it on my blog.

Construction

Music Video

I used an HD digital Canon video camera to film the footage for my music video. The touch screen technology of the camera was easy to use and its use of Memory Card rather than a tape meant we didn't risk accidentally filming over a scene and didn't have to keep fast forwarding or rewinding the tape.

The High Definition quality was perfect to create a professional looking music video. 

The editing was done with Adobe Premiere Pro. I didn't use many special effects and when I came down to the actual editing I didn't feel the need to lower the saturation or turn it black and white like I had originally planned to do because I felt the colour fitted nicely with the jokey outtake scenes in the video with music and the colourful lighting on the stage in the performance shots made the footage more interesting to the eye and more exciting to watch. 

I contemplated editing with iMovie, which was the programme I used to edit my thriller for last years AS part of the media A-level, but then decided that the facilities and the layout on Premiere Pro was better suited and easier to understand.

I chose mostly not to use transition editing because I liked the quick and sudden cut from scene to scene. It emphasises the speed editing nicely and makes it look more exciting rather than if the scenes were slowly fading into each other.

Digipack

I shot the photographs for the digipack with a SONY HD DSC-HX200V Cyber-shot Camera.

The editing for my digipack was attained through a combination of programmes. The school offered me to use Adobe photoshop to edit the photographs I had taken, which was my main editing programme. However I also used Apple's iPhoto on my personal computer to crop, flip and annotate the pictures, which I then uploaded to a USB memory stick and transferred to the Microsoft-operated school computers.

Evaluation

Social Networking websites such as Facebook and twitter were very useful in gaining immediate feedback from a wide audience or at wish a selected audience. 

The available Blog archive our school has set up was also of use and helped inspire and guide us and if we ever didn't understand a certain part of a question maybe look at what past students had written or how they had laid their work out.

The screenshot function on my MacBook Pro made it very easy to screenshot certain scenes from youtube videos and upload them to my blog.

Completed Music Video

Digipack - My Explanation

1. How I wanted to present the band and how I did it

When spending time with The Upgrade, it doesn't take long for anyone to realise that these three boys make up a rather charismatic band. Individually each of them are already a character of their own and put together they have a certain exciting chemistry, which makes their band very fun and entertaining. Any journalist could interview them and come out with a funny and interesting article which many teenagers, and mainly the target audience, would enjoy reading. They are the sort of bands who the consumers would love to have as mates and this was what I wanted to sell about the band - its character. 

Shooting the video proved rather easy since you can put these three in any street anywhere and they will just be entertaining without trying. Whatever the location they always found some way of running around and messing about jokingly kicking each other and fighting that makes them very easy to watch. They don't need a big show around them to be interesting. This is why in the video, I used a lot of outtakes.

2. How I responded to what I think male and female consumers are drawn to.

When buying CDs and music by a band, male consumers are drawn to different aspects than female consumers. The male demographic of the target audience looks for the style of the band and also the music-  upbeat, energetic and angry.

I responded to the style aspect by asking the band to wear dark clothing, jeans (possibly ripped), visibly used trainers and leather jackets, which would conform to a grungy, rock style of clothing. 

The angry and authentic music was reflected through the locations and atmosphere of the shoot - in the dark, in slightly dirty urban locations.

These aspects also help the consumers to relate to the band members, which is a very important point in the marketing.

Girls however respond to the meaning of lyrics, wanting to relate to the emotions, they like to have a connection with the band members as people rather than musicians. 

The digipack provides this sense of closeness and connection through the close up shots of the band members on panel 3,4, and 6. 

The end product: 

The digipack was a way for me to introduce the band in a simple, straightforward and authentic manner, as they are as band members and as their music is.  This is why I didn't feel the need to make a lot of fuss around them. The locations for the photoshoot were urban, in the city centre of their hometown Norwich. I used buildings and stairs that could be found in any other British city as a background rather than famous Norwich-specific locations, because I wanted to show the band as typical (common) british teenagers which the target audience can relate to. Also the urban locations are a generic convention of alternative rock music, reflecting the poverty of its roots: music made by working class unemployed young men who didn't have anywhere else to "hang out" than their inner city.

For the cover, I told the band members to stand in row in the middle of a bandstand situated in a park and look straight at the camera - no big fuss around them, no big dramatic scenery.

I kept up the simplicity and authenticity whilst editing the pictures on photoshop by only making small changes to the picture, like lowering the saturation and making parts black and white.

Panel 5 holds the CD. I chose to make this all black, so it didn't distract the eye from the other panels and also once again to keep things simple. 

The same idea was used for the track list on Panel 2 which I gave a complete black background and listed the tracks in simple white writing.

For panels 3,4 and 6 I used three close ups of each of the boys' faces as a panel each and again the only edit I made to the pictures was to lower the saturation to nearly black and white. 

The close up shots establish a closeness between the consumer and the band members promoting their characters and selling the idea of them as normal people rather than big untouchable divas or rockstars.

The 7th panel is a picture of the band members sitting on stairs. These could be stairs in any urban location in any city in Britain - where any teenagers of the target audience would sit as well.

For the back panel I took a picture of the band in the same position as on the cover just taken from behind. This was useful to give the consumers a sense that the digi-pack provides a view of the band in its entirety: front and back, close ups and casual so as to emphasise the established connection between the consumer and the band and to give the consumers a sense that they can relate to the band.

Digipack Layout

Here is an explanation of the layout of my digipack, which consists of 8 panels rather than three.

NOTE: These are made with the panels from my rough draft digipack. After putting them together and letting them be evaluated, I made changes to the Tracklist Panel 2 (adding more song names onto the list), and Panel 8 (adding the barcode and record label info to the bottom right hand corner). Those changed panels are to be examined, these rough drafts are to be used to explain the layout only.

 This is the first panel and the front cover of the digipack:

When you open it, it opens into two panels, panels 2 (Tracklist) and 7:

These two then each open into 4 panels. Panels 3 (close up of Solay), 4 (close up of Sam) 5 (the CD) and 6 (close up of Nick) :

Folded back together, these make place for the back cover (behind panel 5):

Similar Artists

Similar Artists to our band are Alternative/Metal Rock bands such as:

- Manic Street Preachers
- Nirvana
- Ash
- Feeder
- Muse
- Rage Against the Machine

Print Productions: Digipack and Advert




Front Cover - Panel 1

 


Tracklist - Panel 2

 


Sam, bassist - Panel 3

 


Solay, Lead singer and Guitarrist - Panel 4

 

Plain Black CD - Panel 5




Nick, drummer - Panel 6

 


Groupshot- Panel 7

 


Backcover - Panel 8

 


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