SCRIPT FOR EVALUATION FOUR

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

During the research stage of creating my products, media technologies played a vital role.

YouTube was the main media technology we used from beginning to end. We first used this during the research progress to find the song "Teenage Fantasy" and we carried on using it to research further into the contemporary R&B genre by watching similar music videos, as well as videos from other genres. This helped us know what conventions from this genre we wanted to follow and challenge. We also used YouTube to download the song so that we could start editing in iMovie.

I also used Spotify because it has a "similar artists" section on musicians' accounts. This allowed me to find other singers that are part of the same genre as Jorja Smith which gave me a wider variety of music videos to watch. As well as this, I looked through playlists that are made either by Spotify or other users to find similar songs and artists. Having a wider range of musicians to research also gave me more digipaks and magazine adverts to look at for my ancillary tasks.

Also, I used Google throughout my coursework to research into artists, music videos, genre conventions, what digipaks consists of, examples of magazine adverts, along with other information we needed to research. Google images was also useful when it came to looking at inspiration for colour palettes but for this I also used social media sites and other music videos mostly on YouTube but on Vimeo too.

When planning, blogger was used from the beginning to the end of the year as it was crucial for putting all of my thoughts together. This website allowed me to create blog posts explaining my inspiration, ideas, and plans. With an easy-to-use layout, it was very simple to organise everything I needed in the labels I want. I was also able to change the look of my blog so that it includes handy links on the side, which includes the school youtube channel (where I uploaded most videos). 

Another software we used to plan was Microsoft PowerPoint to create a pitch for our music video idea. This simple application allowed us to explain our ideas mostly through images. We then presented this pitch to our class to receive feedback which turned out to be extremely helpful.

Furthermore, since we were using someone outside of our group as an actor, we needed to make sure that we were organised with everything. We mostly used Microsoft Office Excel for this as it was easy to organise the timetables for shooting days, locations, what actors we'll need on what days, what costumes, and the props we will need on certain days. Since Excel is easy to share with other people, it meant that we could all be connected in the plans which allowed us to be more organised. In addition to this, we also used WhatsApp to create a group chat with the three of us who were working on the music video together, along with the actor. This meant that we could let each other know if we were going to be late, have to cancel, if we needed a spare SD card, or any other last-minute messages we might have had to send each other. We also messaged each other on WhatsApp to share inspiration and ideas throughout the year.

When it came to the construction of our products, we used different hardware as well as software. Originally, we wanted to film our portrait shots using a camera called "Super 8". This would have achieved the perfect look we wanted and other music videos that include this camera are Dodie - "You". However, Super 8's are extremely expensive and difficult to use so we had to find an alternative that was more realistic. After researching on Google, we then came across the app "Fyuse" which allowed us to create short videos that go back and forth, making a 3D feel to the portrait shots. Unfortunately, this app was downloaded on Julia and Lucy's phone because it's only available on iPhones which became an issue as I couldn't film any portrait shots if I wanted to whilst I was out on my own. Although it was possible to do this without me filming on my own, we could have got it done quicker if I was able to have it on my own phone too. The only other downside to using this app was that it decreased the quality of the videos. However, the rest of the music video was filmed on DSLRs cameras which meant that the high quality hugely contrasted to the low-quality shots of the portrait shots. Since there was a clear difference anyway, it didn't become a problem because it seems as though we purposely wanted it a lower quality which is an effect used in quite a few music videos, for example, Tigers Jaw: "June" (although this quality is a lot lower than our Fyuse shots)

The other hardware media technology we used are mine and Julia's DSLR cameras which were a Nikon D3300 and a Canon 60D. Using these cameras gave us the quality of video that we wanted and having two DSLRs also meant that we were able to capture a lot more footage throughout the day. Since Julia and I had our own cameras, it also meant that we could film whilst we were on our own. For example, I took a few filler shots of trains whilst I was in central London without the rest of the group. This allowed us to take advantage of the limited time we had, rather than sticking to the few days we could all film together.

Once we had footage for the music video, I started to edit it all using iMovie. We had the option of using this or Final Cut Pro and although to begin with, I wanted to use Final Cut, I ended up deciding that iMovie would be a better option. This is because I used iMovie for my AS film opening so I was already confident in using it. This meant that we wouldn't have as wide of a variety when it came to editing techniques because iMovie doesn't come with much but with the variety of cameras and software we were using, we didn't want to use too much "fancy" editing.

When it came to editing on iMovie, I used a range of editing techniques including cropping, split, rearranging shots, saturation,  and contrast. Another editing technique I used in the majority of the shots was stabilization because since we filmed mostly handheld rather than using a tripod, I had to fix the shots that were extremely unsteady. Finally, I downloaded the song from a YouTube to MP3 converter website to be able to insert the audio onto iMovie.

To create my ancillary tasks, I tried out a range of software before finding the ones that I felt comfortable working with. I first tried to edit the screenshot I took from the video on an app called "Afterlight" however since I have never used this before, I quickly went back to the app called "VSCO" which I use regularly for my media work as well as for editing other photos. After this, I took the screenshot to "Picsart". This was going to be where I would design my digipak and magazine advert. I've used this app a few times in the past but I've never needed to use it for anything important, or anything that I wanted to be extremely good quality. Once I finished editing my album cover on there, I sent it to my laptop to then find out that since it was done on my small phone screen, the quality was nowhere near what I wanted it to be. This app also adds a green tint to photos which wasn't the look I was going for. This meant that I had to find another software that would enable me to design my ancillary tasks. After a quick google, I found a website called "Fotor". Although I've never used or heard of it before, it was extremely easy to design exactly what I wanted. It also had enough fonts available for me to use that meant that I didn't have to use the apps I downloaded on my phone (which included "Phonto", "Font Studio", and "AppForType"). Overall, Fotor was extremely enjoyable and is definitely a media technology I will be using in the near future.

To receive feedback to help with the progress of creating my ancillary tasks, I first used a website called "surveymonkey.com" which let me create surveys that I could easily share with whoever I wanted, to receive as much audience feedback as possible.

When it came to creating the evaluations, I used different media technologies for each question.

Since I don't have iMovie at home, I downloaded an application on my HP laptop called "Animotica - Video Editor". This allowed me to put voiceovers over videos and pictures which helped me create evaluation questions one.

For my second evaluation, I used a website called "Powtoons" which although takes a while, I think it's worth it. The problem I came across when using this, is that I didn't realise before that the free trial means I can only have a video of 5 minutes maximum. Since my voiceover was roughly 8 minutes, I knew that I couldn't cut it down to 5. To fix this, I realised that I had to do it in two parts but the only way to export the videos was to upload it to youtube so I then had to use a youtube to MP4 website again and edit the two together.

For my third evaluation, I used a website called "Prezi" which is similar to powerpoint but it's more complicated and looks a lot better.

Finally, for this evaluation which is the fourth, I'm filming it on my Nikon D3300 which is the same camera I used to film the music video.

In conclusion, I used a wide range of media technologies through every step of my A2 coursework. I went back to old technologies that I am familiar and comfortable with, such as iMovie and VSCO, as well as trying out new technologies that I now love, such as Fotor.

SCRIPT FOR EVALUATION ONE

This (as well as the other scripts for my evaluations) are just roughly what I'm planning on saying but I might change it slightly when it comes to recording myself.

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

After choosing what song I would be making my music video for, the first thing I researched was the genres it fell into. To my surprise, "Teenage Fantasy" - Jorja Smith can be categorised as contemporary R&B, alternative R&B, dancehall, and pop music. This meant that I had a lot of options when it came to the conventions I wanted to research. However, I decided to stick mostly to the contemporary R&B genre as this was the style of music videos I enjoyed most. I then looked at different music videos from other artists from this genre. To find similar artists, I first looked at a few I already knew which includes Frank Ocean, Sabrina Claudio and Mura Masa. However, I then realised I don't listen to a lot of R&B so I looked at the "related artists" section on Spotify which helped my find other artists including Shy Girls and Willow. After knowing what the music videos typically consist of, I have deliberately chosen to use, develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media products from this genre.

One of the ways in which I used conventions is through the colours of the music videos. I noticed that in these professional music videos from the same genre, there tends to be a large amount of highly saturated shots including the primary colours yellow, red, and blue. I specifically made sure that we were filming in locations with bright colours and told Lucy and Julia, who were the main characters throughout the narrative, to wear bright colours. However, I chose to contrast this slightly with some monochrome colours throughout too. Although bright colours are often used in R&B videos, it hugely contrasts with the colours of the original music video of Teenage Fantasy as it is all in black and white.

Another convention I noticed is that a lot of R&B videos are based on performance. For example, Oliver Baxxter - "So Slow", and Sabrina Claudio - "Unravel Me". I wanted to challenge this convention by having a video that's heavily concentrated on the narrative. However, I decided to develop it slightly by having the last shot be performance. During this shot, Lucy is also breaking the fourth wall which leads to her having more engagement with the audience even more. To create a narrative for our music video, we took most of our inspiration from the lyrics. After researching narrative videos, I found out that this is what videos tend to do from the indie music genre. For example Amber Run - "I Found". This research that I did out of my genre helped me expand my ideas and challenge the forms and conventions of real R&B media products meaning that I could combine the conventions from R&B videos as well as other genres.

A huge part of my music videos were the portrait shots I chose to include scattered throughout the video. This is often used in R&B videos as well as Indie videos. I did this so that the narrative can seem more "relatable" for the audience For example, Declan Mckenna - "The Kids Don't Want To Go Home", and Mura Masa - "What If I Go?"

Furthermore, after receiving class feedback, I found out that I had to include the song title and artist name. Originally, I didn't want to do this as I thought that not a lot of music videos did. However, it was part of the specification so I included it anyway and I thought I'd research and find some other music videos that also include it. I found that "So Slow" by Oliver Baxxter includes it at the beginning, as well as the original music video for teenage fantasy.

DIGIPAK: FINAL

After receiving some audience feedback, I changed certain things such as the position of a few shapes and images.

Somebody also pointed out that I accidentally wrote "Teenage Fantasy" on the spine instead of "Strangers". Although this is just two words different, it caused a lot of confusion since on the rest of the digipak the album it was titled differently to the spine, it didn't correlate.

Also, originally the top half of my digipak was upside down and this was because I saw an example of a real digipak which had the top like that so that when it's printed and folded, it would be in the correct position. However, to show the design on my blog it looks a lot neater when it's all the correct way up since it's easier to see and read.

Finally, part of the feedback I received was that I made a mistake in spelling "photograhy" as just "photograph" so I fixed this.

Here is my final digipak design:

DIGIPAK: PROGRESS

For the same reason as why I did it for my CD design, I decided to frequently save the progress of my digipak design. Below is the album cover and CD tray I have already designed and following that is the progress of my digipak design.

Finally, this is the draft that I'm going to send to people for audience feedback to find out on what I can improve.

MAGAZINE ADVERT: SURVEY RESULTS

What I liked most about using survey monkey, is that it automatically compiles all of the responses and organises them to make it easier and quicker to analyse. It also lets you chose what type of graph you would like to view the answers as and I chose a pie chart for most as I feel like that's the easiest to analyse.

The answers from my survey are as shown below.

MAGAZINE ADVERT: SURVEY QUESTIONS

When sending the link to people, I'm planning on sending it along with these two versions of my magazine adverts:

This meant the the questions I was writing were going to be based around those two designs, and how to combine the positives of both to create one final product. I thought it would be best to only include closed questions because this meant it would be easier for the respondents to answer and it would be more efficient to compare results. However, I thought that it would be useful to have a last question available which was open ended where people can include any other thoughts they had.

To make sure I received as many responses as possible, I made all of the questions compulsory to answer apart from the last one. This meant that the respondents weren't able to skip any questions. This is why all (but the last) questions have a * at the start.

The question I included are as shown below:

THIS IS MY SURVEY

MAGAZINE ADVERT: SETTING UP A SURVEY

Throughout my coursework this year I wanted to receive as much feedback as possible to help me achieve the best end products to my ability. Audience feedback is extremely useful as it will help me find out what the potential audience / customers will be looking for if this was a real product. The results will also come in handy when creating my evaluations as I need audience feedback for that to speak about how I improved my products over time.

I've already had some feedback on my music video but I thought I'd get some for my ancillary tasks too. I wanted to get as much feedback as possible from different people and I thought that the best way of doing this would be through Survey Monkey since it's easy to set up, send to multiple people (of different ages), and receive the results all organised.

Another benefit of Survey Monkey is that all of the responses are anonymous which will hopefully lead to people being more honest and this will help me more with knowing exactly what to improve.

MAGAZINE ADVERT: TWO PLANS

I created a plan on paper of my two ideas for my magazine advert. I will make both variations and then ask for feed back on them and find out which is best.

MAGAZINE ADVERT: RESEARCH

To make my magazine advert look as realistic and professional as possible, I have decided to research other magazine adverts to take inspiration from. After looking at a variety of magazine adverts, I came to the realisation that they all have common conventions. These similarities include:

• Date of release
• Artist name and album title
• Different ways of being able to access the album
• Artist's website or social medias
• Record label logo
• A single from the album
• A link to the album (same colour scheme, album cover, fonts, etc)

However, although they all have similarities, there are still a lot of differences between them and certain reasons as to why I like them more than others.

What I like most about this album poster is that the release date is a huge focus. It's in a different colour to stand out, and it's in a larger font size than the rest. However, it is still in the same font to match the album and keep a consistent theme. I also like how the album cover is in the centre quite large, to cause attention and so that the audience know what the advert is for. Other than the cover, there isn't much going on in the background of the rest of the poster. I think I'm going to take huge inspiration from this advert when it comes to the bottom half of the poster: a plain back ground to make the text stand out, and a larger font for the release date.

This has a plain background as it's just black and this makes the white writing stand out more than if it was over another photo. The use of the album cover to take up most of the screen is also very effective as it makes it more noticeable. The use of the album cover and the same font throughout the advert also adds to make it more recognisable and memorable for when the potential audience are in a shop and see it on the shelf, or see it online. The record label logos are also placed small in the bottom corner. I think I'm going to be heavily influenced from this advert when creating my own as I really like how it has a minimalist style, yet still includes all the information it needs to

(not) FINAL VIDEO

After receiving feedback from the class and my teacher, I found out that I need to include a title at the beginning. This is the main thing I changed from the draft however I also altered some of the colours in various shots to be more consistent. This is my final music video.

update: I have since updated my video and re-uploaded. There is a more recent blog post explaining why along with the FINAL video.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

"I really like the whole overall look of the video, it's feels a very current teenage style especially with the coats and shots of the shoes and just the general look of the characters really suits the message/ feel of the song about youth etc. Also I thought it was clear that your character wasn't completely happy but it wasn't overly obviously like the way you mixed in her looking bored with her actually smiling was good, it wasn't like always looking bored. I think it would be too obviously done if she was sad the whole time"

"Narrative: I really liked the contrast between the two narratives, Julia the one who wanted the teenage fantasy and then you being the one who has it but doesn’t want it. Fitted with the song - really clear.

Song- my favourite part solidified your story especially when you spoke directly to the camera mouthing the words - my favourite camera shot.

Visuals- I liked the switching between the two girls and particularly liked briefly bringing in other teenagers in shot making it a more universal theme of ‘teenage fantasy ‘ more relatable.

Loved the close up shots of both you and the guy laughing as well as your emotionless expressions showing that you didn’t want to be in a relationship I thought the juxtaposing of this worked really well.

I like the quick shots between you and Julia (when she’s sat in front on red tiles)"

"Love the shots of you under his arm, very natural and the end lip syncing is done naturally and fits well with the narrative being more focused on you. Cleanly wraps things up. Really like the fast forward rewind shots of diff people - links well to the narrative being relatable and applicable to the audience listening. Could maybe have more shots of Julia explicitly looking at couples since if you didn't know the story line of books she was looking at it may not be so clear. But good parallels between both 'story lines' e.g. shots of both you and Sam on train and Julia on train. Makes narrative clearer."

"Knowing the focus of the music video as growing up, I think this was effectively achieved in many ways. The contrast between the couple and single individual was particularly evident with the fast paced shots between the two states of relationships - like at the train station. Also, I really enjoyed the cutaways to the surrounding environment, which was perhaps to show isolation felt by the single individual. The direct address to the camera at the beginning at end ultimately summarised the narrative of such contrast in wanting and rejecting a relationship. I think this tied up the video very well."

I also messaged someone who gave helpful feedback on how to improve in the future:

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS

We will be showcasing our music video to our class and teacher later today so we thought it would be important to put together a set of possible questions to ask our peers to receive the most useful feedback possible.

• What age range is the music video applicable to? 
• What do you think about the use of portrait shots? 
• Do the different settings and scenarios suit the lyrics of the song? 
• What do you understand from the video's narrative? 
• Do you like the inclusion of two narratives alongside one another? 
• Does hand-held camera work suit the video and its narrative?

CLASS FEEDBACK

Here is the feedback my class gave for our music video draft.

MUSIC VIDEO DRAFT

We've now finished the first draft of our music video so we have uploaded it to get some audience feedback.

PITCH FEEDBACK

After we delivered our pitch to our class, we received feedback from a few people. This includes what they thought will work well and what they think can be improved.

PITCH POWERPOINT

WHAT IS "GENRE"?

Genre is described as a category of either art, music, or literature.

This is what Wikipedia explains music genre as:

A variety of different theorists describe genre in their own way and have their own thoughts surrounding the idea of "genre". For example, David Duff explains it as "a recurring type or category of text, as defined by structural and thematic criteria" Another theorist, called Barry Grant says that "all genres have sub-genres, which means they are divided into a more specific group for that particularly song. This allows the audience to easily recognize the song specifically by their characteristics which are easily recognizable." In addition to this, Steve Neale states that "genres are not systems, but rather a process of systemisation."