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

We used a variety of new media products during the creation of our music video. We used Final Cut, a video editing program, which none of us had experience in using previously, to create our music video. By experimenting and teacher tutorials, we quickly learned how to create a professional looking video which flowed effectively, due to the ability of  us being able to overlap videos and cut them together with a greater ease, and one which had a variety of appropriate effects, such as faded edges and speed changes. We felt we utilized this new technology extremely well, being able to use it to construct a well flowing video.  To gain audience research we used Google Documents to create questionnaires which we digitally distributed.  This use of digital technology to research our audience made it quicker and easier for us to draw parallels and make understandings based on the information as it was speedier, neater and more professional for finding out audience perceptions. We digitally sent our surveys to those who fitted in our target demographic to see what we needed to include to make sure that our video was effective in portraying the wanted genre-specific ideas.
Another new media product we used was Photoshop. I personally have had experience through Photoshop before, so took a leading role in creating the digipack, and teaching the other members of my group effects to use, such as how to create shadow effects and the use of distortion. However, I still needed to use online tutorials and teacher directed tutorials to create an exciting and genre specific digipack. One of the techniques I discovered that played an important role in the digipack design was the 'energy lines' that flowed through the 3 inner panels. To achieve this effect I created lines using the Line tool and then, using multiple layers, I was able to add colour, multiply and layer them so that they created a professional looking affect. Another technique that greatly helped in my creation of the digipack was the discovery of the mask function. This function allowed me to blur out my photos and then highlight areas that I wanted to be clear, instead of moving around the object with a blur tool that can lead to an unprofessional looking result.




During the initial stages of our creative process we created a animatic to give our storyboard more depth and allow us as creators to see how we expected our video to turn out. This is somthing we had not done before and was a different approach to how we planned creating our Foundation Portfolio opening sequence because it allowed us to explore different technologies in showing the planning of our main project.

Evaluation- How effective is the combinations of your main product and ancillary texts?

To combine both the main product and the ancillary tasks we made sure to incorporate common themes through both. One theme we decided to include in both was graffiti. As part of the hip hop culture this allowed both products to be easily identified to the genre, also tying the two together. Another tie we made was  utilizing our artists face as an important factor to all aspects of the digipak poster and music video by "branding" our products like this we established the artists importance to the products and thus made it easier on the audience to link them to each other.

Our Final Digipack Design 

We made our artist wear similar style clothing in both products and used similar settings and locations, although we decided to go more urban than our actual music video. We tried to portray our given personality through both products by having shots of our artist sitting down or with his hands in his pockets to show how he has an 'E-Zee' carefree attitude. Also, in the music video and ancillary task, our artist keeps a serious expression on his face, connecting the determinations shown in the song to the artist himself. This is also a strong convention from the hop-hop genre. In most Hip Hop videos and promotional packages the artist looks down on or away from the viewer to show an uninterested and somewhat superior look over those watching/listening to them. This tries to intimidate the audience and gives the artist more power over them . we choose to do this in both our video and our poster/digipack, as we felt this was a genre specific aspect that would tie the two together.

Costume used is the same as in the music video

Our poster location shares a similar look to one of our location from our music video.  We chose to do this as somebody who consumes the video and then sees the poster will automatically connect the two together, thus helping the video to market the digipak release. The locations for both have a graffiti theme resinating through them to show the link between them and to emphasize our chosen genre of hip-hop. The main themes of both was an street/urban theme, which we showed in our digipack by taking roadside photos and photos of large crowds. One of the locations for our music video was at a skate park allowing the shared urban theme to shine through but also showing graffiti, a key element in the posters design. We tried to use similar looking locations for both our ancillary task and music video to allow the hi-hop genre to show clearly through both and connect the two, as well as showing the correct conventions needed to link the artist to the promotional package.

Evaluation- What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the creation of our Media product we have undergone a variety of changes to correspond to audience feedback, such as with our poster for the ancillary task. After asking various people if they felt they could identify the genre and the artist easily around half of them said that both were not clear through our poster. To develop this we changed the positioning of our artist to make him the greater focus, and changed the colour scheme and font types to relate back more to our digipack and towards the audience.

Audience feedback on our video helped us to identify where we failed to express the genre effectively, not showing enough of the artist in a variety of shot types and locations. To remedy this we filmed our artist performing in more genre appropriate areas, for example a skate park and a recording studio, and used closer angles to create a greater feeling of connection between the artist and the audience by filling the screen with the artist.

Evaluation- What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses a variety of forms and conventions that are typical of existing media products. One of the aspects we include is on our digipack design, in which we use the convention of having our artist as the main focus, filling the cover. Like other media products, we felt that we needed to sell our artist, and to make sure that he was well known. To do this we made sure to feature his face on the front of both the media products we created, putting focus on him in both the poster and the digipack. We used a mid shot of him standing in front of a crowd to emphasise him standing out from everyone else, while still being an elusive face in the crowd. We filled the back cover with a large close up of his face to show him with a greater importance, and wrapped the text around him to show how important he is.

Another way we utilised the forms and conventions of existing media products was with the working of the locations we dominantly used. The three main locations of the recording studio, the skate park and the water front, all show our intended conventions successfully. The recording studio gave a feeling of wealth and status towards our artist, two things that are commonly hinted at or implied in existing media products. The high tec equipment also helps us to mirror the idea of power and importance used in existing media products. The graffiti covered skate park gave the music video an urban feel, showing that our artist is 'street' and therefore relatable to our audience, but also gives homage to the original concepts of hip hop when it was first developed. Graffiti played an important role in the development of hip hop, as well as a skateboarding culture, who grasped the original style for their own. We felt that we would develop our conventions by subtlety hinting at hip hops historical background in the locations of our video. Lastly our final location gave a feeling of power and also put emphasis on our urban 'street' persona we tried to portray, showing our artist in a street environment whist having a blank sky backdrop, giving him an extremely high status by having nothing else to distract the view.

Finally the costumes we used in our music video and ancillary task were effective as they used conventions of our genre quite well. Our artists costume consisted of a dark coloured jacket with jeans or chinos. These suited our genre well as the dark colour scheme is like that of artists from our genre and the clothing styles are also typical of our genres existing artists. I believe this helped our music video and ancillary task follow the conventions better as well as matching to each other, by having the same style of clothes being worn in both. Our female artist Angel wore two costumes, one dark and one light. We predominantly used the lighter coloured costume to contrast the genres typical colour scheme. We wanted to show angel as being sexy, but not as being a romantic interest for our main artist. Thus the use of the light colours created a feeling of separateness and disengaged the audience from seeing the two as a romantic couple.