Evaluation Question 4

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

Construction and Research

Media technologies has been very important at all stages of my project. For the construction and research into creating my own music artist, I needed to be able to have access to media technologies so that I could look more in depth into my artists needs to reach our target audience. Websites like YouTube was a huge help into looking at existing music artists of the same genre as the music artist that we wanted to create, and being able to do this would help to give us ideas for music videos and what we should be including in our own videos in order to be able to reach the target audience's needs. Another website which worked well for us was Google as it was the search engine that I has used to search into current music artists history, theorists such as Goodwin which would help to make our video make sense and get the right conventions.

Being able to use 'Blogger' as a main way to present our work into creating a music artist had a huge involvement in our work. Without being able to use Blogger, most of the work which I have produced would have taken a lot longer to produce such as presenting feedback sessions with my teacher Shaun where we did a voiceover of the current blog which I had to be done through a computer. Blogger was the main place where all of my work had been uploaded onto and so it was a huge part of my project. By publishing all of my work onto Blogger, I was also able to keep well organised as I could arrange the different pieces of work into different sections and make it easier to search through if I needed to recap over my work.

As a whole, the internet was especially important for my research into making a music artist especially for creating my digipak and poster. Using the internet, I could look at current and old digipaks for inspiration for my own work. By being able to look at these digipaks I could now see what other artists of the 'Indie Rock' genre were including in their digipaks and posters to attract their target audiences which was the same as my own which was an extra boost in being able to create my ancillary tasks to the tastes of the target audience.

Planning and Evaluation stages

For filming my music video, I had used a few different pieces of technology to create and produce it. To create the ancillary texts, I had used a 500D camera to take pictures of different locations and also the lead singer in high quality and so helped to make my artist look very professional.

I continued to use the 500D for the first drafts of the music video until I began to re-film the whole of the live performance pieces again where I started using a 1200D camera which was a pleasure as the shots that I could get with the camera where so much clearer in comparison to the 500D camera. By using the 1200D made the video look even more professional and so I believe made the music video as good as it was. Another piece of equipment that I used to film some shots in our music video was an iPhone 6 slow-motion camera which helped to create some really intense and emotional shots of the band whilst they were playing. If it wasn't for these media technologies, it wouldn't be possible for me to be able to get these shots which I was desperate to catch to try and add something new into my music video.

The use of the Apple Mac computers was also especially important in the creation of my media product. The Macs I needed to use for both the music video and also the ancillary tasks in order for them to look realistic and professional. The Macs had applications such as Photoshop which was used heavily for the ancillary tasks so that I could put fonts over the top of images and also importing new images to layer such as social media logos.
Final Cut Pro was the main application which I used to edit my music video. this was especially important as it enabled me to be able to create the music video and make it into a fast paced video as I could precisely cut the footage at specific places which was needed in order to make the beat of the music go in time with the footage that I had playing next to it.

As a whole, media technologies were very important for this whole project as they helped to create both my main task and ancillary tasks completely and without them I couldn't do them at all. They were very important for keeping all of my work organized and also creating the different tasks to a high quality, professional standard.

Evaluation Question 3

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2

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

For my music artists poster, digipak and music video I wanted there to be a consistency within them all, so to bring them all together I wanted them all to be quite simple and use the same colour scheme throughout. The colours that I used were all dark blues and blacks which helped to reflect on the bands genre of music and costumes which they wore. The music genre 'Indie Rock' involves dark colours a lot such as The 1975 who mainly wear black, with that colour being involved in their jeans, shirts and also leather. In the music video, the band are playing in a completely black room with quite low key lighting and so this is showing the consistency as we look into the colours used in my digipak and see that I have also used a black background on the front cover. Also for my poster, I have continued the dark colour scheme by using a photo that was also used for the back of the digipak which had low key lighting due to its location of a car park. This consistency helps to bring all three together nicely and to all look relatively alike. Another consistent factor which I have used throughout my work is the text font for the band. I used the font                 in the poster, digipak, and music video for the bands name and also small key details such as the track list, social media links and also record company information. I believe that by using the same font all the way through my work helps to create a smooth feel to it and will help to make my target audience feel comfortable with it as they will easily recognise the bands well known image.

I have also focused specifically on the lead singer throughout my main product and ancillary texts as I wanted him to be the main face of the band which relates to well known bands of today which also have a 'main' band member. Bands which have this 'main' group member include The 1975 who have Matt Healy as a main band image where many people 'fan girl' him, also bands such as Arctic Monkeys who have Alex Turner as their bands main image. By looking at these types of bands who are also 'Indie Rock' genre like our own band, it was easier to try and get an idea of what our band should be like. I feel that the combination of my main project of my music video and also my poster and digipak works quite well. I feel that because of the consistency that I have kept throughout all three projects, it has worked perfectly from using the same font to the same colour schemes and that this helps to bring the target audience closer to recognising and enjoying the band.

Evaluation Question 1

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

We chose to create a music video for Two Door Cinema Club's 'Undercover Martyn' as we enjoy this style of music genre as well as other specific features such as the fashion wear which comes along with the genre and wanted to re-create this theme. Me and group partner Christian both enjoy this music and wanted to be able to create a video with both live performance and a narrative with it so that we could attempt to tell a small story. The genre of music 'Indie Rock' is becoming more and more popular and is beginning to get larger audiences with bands such as 'The 1975' breaking onto the music scene successfully in recent years, so this is why we wanted to use the same genre and use 'The 1975' as an inspiration for ideas for our own music video. After analysing other music videos including my favourite 'Robbers- The 1975' I began to get ideas of exactly I wanted for my own music video, and what I should include into my own using specifics from existing videos. To help gain a better image for our band that we created, I analysed existing digipaks for our genre of music and this helped to create our band from the style of fashion which they wear to the personalities which each member has. Other than the fact that our band was indie rock genre due to the song that we had chosen, what we dressed like for the video was in my opinion one of the most important factors that was involved so that the music video was believable and really created the bands image, giving the audience the information to be able to know what the bands genre is. We chose our costume after looking at 'Two Door Cinema Club' and 'The 1975' and decided that our band would wear indie fashion such as skinny jeans, undone shirts, Dr. Martens and darker colours in general which helped us to reach our target audience of a more youthful age. Once our band had been created, we began to look into theories of music videos and came across Goodwin's Theory. We applied this into our work using the 'music with visuals' and used this with our lead singer miming the lyrics to the song, other band members playing instruments that go in time with the song and also using shots which actually related to the lyrics of the song such as 'To the basement people' and then showing a shot of a window with writing on saying 'basement people' or when the song says 'she spoke words that would melt in your hands' and then I added a shot in time with this of the lead singer and his girlfriend holding hands. Due to the song being quite fast paced, I had to make sure that the editing which went along with the music was fast and went in time with the beats of the song, further adding to the use of Goodwin's Theory. I ensured that there were close ups of the band, especially of the lead singer for the purpose of Goodwin's theory so that it would help to bring an attraction to a female audience which we wanted our band to reach. Through this I believe that we have slightly challenged the 'Indie Rock' music genre as we have applied Goodwin's theory throughout the video and using every aspect which an 'Indie Rock' band doesn't always do, but due to being a new and upcoming band, we felt that this would be necessary for our music video to do this as it helps attract an audience to a new bands video.

Feedback for final music video cut

Waves- Undercover Martyn (Final Cut)

This is the final version of our Music video 'Waves- Undercover Martyn'.  This version has all of our new shots added in with completely new live performance footage. I am extremely pleased with the outcome of this. I edited all of this using Final Cut Pro which was already downloaded onto the Mac computers and didn't need an outside source to add any effects onto the footage. This version is the third of the drafts which I had previously created and I believe to be the best of them all as there are no gaps in the video at all, and the shots that were used were much better.

Second shoot for our Music Video...

This is the second shoot for our music video which has new footage for the car driving scene with new people acting in it, being Christian (the lead singer) and his girlfriend Amelia. We used new actors as we needed there to be more emotion put into the car clips and it also still makes sense as it is as if Christian is going to watch himself play at a gig.