Evaluation!

We filmed our evaluation and here it is :) We have also uploaded our questions as well which are extended answers of the answers that you will see in the video. Enjoy :)

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

My question was: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


We were aware how important it was to have a consistent design, therefore we included the gritty background on both the blog and website creating continuity between products. As the templates on blogger didn't match what we were looking for we teamed a different template with our background to create the right mood.

We used links to the website to the blog and visa versa to make it easy for the reader to see all aspects of our project, we used a widget on Blogger to do this and simple links on Wix.



To link all the tasks visually we used widgets at the side of the blog to show the pictures we took on filming days, these are included on the website and digipack booklet. They prove effective in linking our music video to the blog as they serve as snapshots, compelling the reader to watch the final product.

The Prodigy fits into a dance/electronic genre. Their dark and gritty style is included in all our products an examples of this is the black and grey palette. To link our media product to the real Prodigy’s music and branding we included the ant they use frequently. I first noticed this reference when researching their past albums, http://roadmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2009/11/ancillary-task-cd-cover-design_06.html. Therefore using a bit of old school Microsoft Paint I managed to put this onto the ROAD sign to incorporate their conventional designs.



The dance genre usually connotes colour, something we've included in using yellow for the icons on the website. Whilst this is generally bare from our layouts in both products we were sure to keep our pictures mostly in colour to give a vibrant edge.




Our CD cover is a picture of Olivia with her hand towards the camera, as if reaching out to the potential audience. Whilst The Prodigy has a tendancy to go for more artistic design approaches, we felt using a picture straight from the filming days made a more interesting cover. As this cover can be found on both the blog and website it means they all interlink. Once again we have incorporated the offical Prodigy name art & title design linking the real band.

The website and blog look appealing as they have colourful pictures and no block writing making them inviting to read.

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

My Question: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We spent a lot of time in pre-production watching over previous Prodigy music videos from a DVD I bought, we concluded that a lot of their music videos were quite dark and had the grey/ urban/ industrial setting that we tried to include in our final video. Although, their new album, ‘Invaders Must Die’ is more mainstream than their previous albums so we could take more of a risk in what we tried to create in our video, as we had a wider target audience to play with.
By following Goodwin’s Six we established that the most important concept we had to follow was the Music to Visuals, even though there aren’t many lyrics we still used them to influence the narrative, bringing in a teacher to play the part of the ‘Boss’ for the protagonist which was really effective as we used lip syncing to make the line sound like it was coming from him.
Our music video was narrative/ performance based therefore we deliberately picked out a dance student and used her as the main character, something that proved effective when receiving audience feedback.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

EVALUATION
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To receive audience feedback, we decided to run a focus group at a lunch time. We asked several of our fellow students, not necessarily students that are studying media studies, to come and preview our music video and give us feedback. We also showed them our digi pack to receive audience feedback on that as well. To further our audience feedback we also asked our friends from social networking site Facebook, to view our music video on YouTube and their opinions on it. During the focus group a student found that the music to visuals synchronisation was something that caught their eye. It felt good to hear that it was noticed and enjoyed, as we focused heavily on incorporating this element of Goodwin’s six conventions of music video, into our own project. An improvement that was discussed amongst the group was the realism of the fight scene which they said looked staged and slightly amateur. This was something we tried to combat when filming, but obviously we did not want to harm our actresses too much, so restrictions were in place. Camera movements which the group enjoyed were the contra zoom’s used in the fight scene, which was a key part of the “western” style standoff, and possibly the most complex piece of camerawork in our whole project. The editing technique of shooting Olivia in reverse motion, the group thought was very amusing and thought it fitted our genre completely. Comments on mise en scene were that they loved the cape, especially in the slow motion shots and also the contrast of Olivia’s hair and the scary eye lenses. Finally, most of the group commented that they could follow the narrative of the music video easily and that it was a very fitting storyline, with a different concept idea that they enjoyed. They commented on how there was a clear progression throughout the video and the build up to the fight scene was intense.

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

In our research and planning stages we first used Google to research directors of music videos that we thought had good techniques that we could use in our video like Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze. We uploaded our ideas and research onto Blogger, which can be viewed by the public to see our progress into creating a music video.

We have been up to date with our blog and have been continously writing posts for the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages. Quicktime enabled us to upload videos onto YouTube and Blogger so our work can be viewed internationally.

We have also made our Wix website live so people across the world can view it, we first decided to use iWeb but the choice of styles and layouts were limited and it became quite frustrating to use, so we decided to use Wix as it has much more choice of layouts and we had more freedom.

We used Photoshop to edit our photos to make them look more proffessional, it was very difficult to use Photoshop as even the most simplest things were a confusion to use.

Hooray!

So we have finally done our music video yay!! :D We haven't burnt our cd yet because we will put our commentary onto the disc as well, but we hope it's okaaaay, it would be awesome if you guys could leave comments both positive and negative so we can see your opinions!! We have finished all of our tasks in time! We did the finishing touches this week e.g. putting a few more pictures onto our website and adding the title of our song at the beginning of our video. We just need to create a DVD menu on iDVD and hopefully the commentary will be done by the 29th :D, we are all very pleased but probably never listen to this song again!!! (The amount of times we have listened to it is unbelievable!)

We have successfully downloaded our video onto YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDoIVhHYI-g so check it out!! Or just watch it on here :D

Finished CD Design

When deciding on the design for our album cover we looked at other album designs, such as my Will Young album ;)

As you can see it has a simplistic theme, something when we reviewed it we felt didn't reflect our genre and band.

Today me and Danielle spent all lesson & lunchtime & sadly, after school aswell making our cd design, it's now compelete and here are the pictures :)

When templates failed on us, we ended up finding the right sizes through trial and error, taking ages and using up lots of trees - but we recycled! :)

Eventually we got there, and printed it off in colour.

We took lots of photos on the filming days whilst Olivia and Vicky were in costume which left us with lots of great material for a booklet.



Mozza suggested we put the 'cage' photo of Olivia and Vicky under the CD to create an edgy feel, something we feel was rather effective.

The front cover was designed by Roish using Photoshop, we were keen on the idea of using the close up hand from early on in our planning, which we blogged in December.

We were rather happy with our first draft.. even though it was slightly mishaped and in black and white!















So we're all done, just got to burn our video to the CD!! Woo!
Final, FINAL photo's coming soon...

Monday 1st March

Today we have continued making lots of progress for our production and have filmed our final shots! Mr Mills was very helpful and the shots look great. We all cant wait to see everything put together now!! Today we did some more editing on clips, making everything perfect! I did a few adjustments on our website and uploaded our photos on to that. So we now need to get cracking on our cd case which Roish is hard at work editing photos for!!
One week to go to the deadline and we are working til the last minute of each lesson and working through lunchtimes and studies, making sure we are using our time productively and I am hoping we should have everything done by the deadline at this rate!!! :D

Final Shooting

We are progressing well with our music video and ancillary tasks, however have a few final shots to get. In the planning process we decided as a group we would like a superior male to be the "boss" figure. We came up witht he idea of having Mr Mills play this character. So it is all arranged for Monday after school, we shall be shooting in the auditorium and Mr Mills shall be looking like Morpheus from the Matrix ( he looks scary and very dark/mysterious). We hope to use a black backdrop and then create a form of chiaroscuro lighting to create a shadow an element of mysetery to who this man is, yet still look powerful and devious. I think these shots will give a dark and more serious edge to the music video.

However, we shall be unable to use the lighting in the auditorium so we shall need to find and provide our own resources. Im on it now!

Also I want to congratulate Roish's hard work in producing an amazing new image which we may choose for the cd cover. It was taken on the last filming day and it is fab! Im sure it will be up on here soon for everyone to see!

A bit of editing here and there....

We are now doing our editing from filming in half term and the shots that we got from Cambridge. We still need to gets some shots of Mr Mills though and hopefully we'll be filming him on Monday but Danni will go more into detail. We have managed to edit about half of our music video but still we need a few touches here and there, we have edited some clips which were too long or were too slow for the pace of our video, we have used a lot of jump cuts to sync in with the music to create that pace and excitement. We have also used a lot of fast and slow edit techniques to allow it to sync with the music, we have related to Andrew Goodwin's 6 key features of music video, we definately know that we have included number 2 and 3 of the key features which are the relationship between lyrics and visuals - this happens in our video when 'the boss' tells vicky (superhero) that 'invaders must die' this then goes to me (villain) looking quite freaky and then theres the relationship between music and visuals - this basically happens throughout our video as because there is not a lot of lyrics it creates that attachment between the music and the lyrics and being able to make the video relevent. We have also split up as we only have a week left so we are doing different tasks, roish today was using photoshop to create pictures/covers for album from the photos she took of me and viki and they look fantastic, Ali firstly was doing a bit more on the website which again looks awesome and then her and danni switched around from editing with me, and we have managed to do a huge amount of editing in the last couple of days. So all is looking good and we are all very proud of our progress so far :D

Website Design

Today we've been working hard in the media room all doing different aspects of our task. I concentrated on the website for most of the time, and we think its coming along nicely :)

I used the same background as the blog to ensure product continuity. The colour scheme of grey black and white are all very gritty - perfect for our genre.

We used the picture of Vicky and Olivia on the front page as it's striking and provides a great colourful visual.

The yellow on Vicky's top breaks the darkness of the picture, showing her 'good guy' side. I then incorporated the yellow in the links at the top for Blogger, Facebook etc.
Due to our layout design we do not have a lot of room to work with yet we are certain we want to put the 'new CD' advertisement on the front page along with uncoming tour dates, something that is conventional of a band website.
We have included an ant on the layout to link to the blog and to The Prodigy on a whole.
For the 'news' part of the website I used a RRS link from the Prodigy's website therefore we don't have to keep manually updating it, this also helps us with the problem of space on the page.


For the moment i have used the same photo here as on the font page but this will change soon.
The biography is copied off of The Prodigy's website as we are aware that only one page is being marked, therefore we can spend our time doing more important aspects of the webpage.












In this snap shot of the official Prodigy page you can see the features i've included in our website:

- The main focus is the new video for Run With The Wolves

- The three images below the video are all updates and news, and as explained earlier i used these in an rss presentation

- Bottom right they're advertising the new album, we have allocated room for ours on our website.

- To the right are Upcoming Events - we've included this is the main part of our website.

- The links at the top are all on our website also.

- The three boxes at the bottom are focused on Tweets, something we didn't feel was essential on our website, but as mentioned we do have the Twitter link.

Self Assessment Pt 2

Construction: Film/Video

These are the reasons why we believe we deserve a level 4:

Where appropriate, we used a tripod to enable us to capture key dance and fight scenes as steady as possible. for the contra zooms and the 360 degree panning shots we felt it would look better hand held to create a sense of built up tension as it is the moment before the fight scene. Most oft the production was shot using a tripod to get a clear and steady set of clips where both Olivia and Vickee are dancing as having unsteady shots would have probably looked a bit messy and uncontrolled whereas we wanted the audience to be able to focus on the performance aspect of the cinematography.

The Framing for our production varies as some of the Urban settings were very conventional for a Prodigy video so we wanted to focus on the scenes such as the galley of graffiti and try to get as much of the art work in frame as possible without dominating the frame to a point where both Vickee and Olivia were not the main point of focus. the Staircase scene is particularly important as the framing was intended to get both characters in the shot and make it evident that they were not aware of each others presence.

We used both wide shots and close ups to establish both setting and performance. the main close-ups are to show reaction shots of the characters, for example: in the contra zoom and the over the shoulder panning are used to mimic a Mexican stand off which is effective in bring a sense of intensity along with the music.

The material we shot is appropriate in conveying both performance and narrative style which we wanted to bring to the music video. The dancing which is incorporated throughout the video is both expressive and revealing as to what we are trying to achieve.

The costume design for our production is very specific to the concept of 'goody' vs 'baddy' as Olivia specifically bought white contact lenses to make her look weird and evil along with her outfit which is basic and black making her look like a conventional villain. Vickee put together a more bright and colourful outfit and made a cape which creates a conventional super hero feel along with her bright make up. they both wear hi-top trainers to give a more urban feel to the video and looks good with the dancing. We were able to find some really great settings for the video and we were especially pleased with the graffiti scenes which really helped to convey an urban gritty setting for the video.

Although we are still in the process of editing a key example of how we used editing to make the meaning apparent to the audience is at the very beginning. At the start we've used graphic matches and similar shots whilst Vickee and Olivia are getting ready, connecting the main characters together.

We used fast pase editing throughout our video, using a variety of jump cuts, straight cuts and slow motion in the run up to the fight scene. We have avoided using over the top effects and transitions as we thought they'd be intrusive in telling the narrative and are not conventional in the music video genre.

We have continuously used the basic concepts of music video, an example of this is using the music to visually connect with the video through dance and editing. Although Invaders Must Die only has a few lyrics, where appropriate we have used visional images to connect to these in our video through the characters.

Self Assessment Pt 1

By looking at the assessment objectives we can see where we can improve and make further adjustments.
I'm looking at Planning & Research whilst Roish is looking at the Filming & Construction criteria.

Planning & Research
Looking at similar products: Examples of this is when Olivia looked at the official Prodigy website and noted features that we could include in our websiteand when I did research into the Prodigy's past albums noting their artwork and style.
I also looked into the official video for 'Invaders Must Die', whilst Roish looked at 'No Good,' Danni looked at 'Charley' and Olivia looked at 'Drop' by 'Pharcyde' for conventions we could include in our video.

Organisation: Olivia's involvement in the acting in the video was a good choice for us as she always knew what we were looking for in regards to framing and acting in shots, whilst Vicky was an external actor she proved just as reliable and helped by putting in her own ideas, overall producing a very focused and organised team.

The locations used for our video were The Grafton, and an old garage both in Cambridge. Roish has good knowledge of the Cambridge area, proving helpful when finding locations like the garage. The only negative to this is that Cambridge is quite far away if we had to re-shoot some shots, but we over compensated for this in our original filming so this wasn't a problem. We also used a skate park in Bury St. Edmunds, a close location that was easy to get to and proved perfect for the gritting atmosphere we were looking for. In addition we used my house and Olivia's for the introduction of the video, a location where we could easily visit at a flexible time as it only took 30 minutes to film at each house.

We were very wary of the continuity in the costumes we were using as we'd be shooting over three days. Olivia's contacts proved to be a pain, as when we were filming in Cambridge she found they irritated her eyes but they still gave off the effect we wanted - no pain, no gain!

Shots, layouts, drafting, storyboarding Our storyboard was very detailed, complete with shot angles and framing notes whilst also timings to help us when i came to editing, we brought these along to every shooting day, and although we weren't religiously sticking to them it provided a good place to start, and ensured we got all the shots we wanted.
We did some practice shots in the early planning stages, e.g. we filmed the backwards shots of Olivia jumping off the table in the canteen to see how they would look; we later filmed this at the skate park due to the success of the practice attempt.

Time Management We planned in advance what days everyone was free to film, and when we could borrow the camera, all resulting the smooth running of our film. We had all our planning done before we went to shoot, ensuring we all knew what we were doing making it easy to film on the days.

Presentation We also used the blog effectively to give an update of what we had been doing in lessons, we have all done a considerable amount of work on here, at a standard we feel is representative of our overall input within the tasks.

Overall i feel we deserve a high level four for planning and research because i cannot think of anything we have missed, but then again, i would say that!

Second shoot photos

These are some of the photos i took on the second filming day.

i used the location for inspiration to maximise the gritty urban look that wre trying to achieve. I will be using photoshop to edit all of the photo's from both the skatepark and Cambridge. i knew from the photo,s i took from Cambridge that i had to take a few more with both of them in shot so that is what i focused on, for the sake of our CD cover and website.

http://roadmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2009/12/picture-ideas-for-dvd-cover.html
in December i did a post on possible ideas for the DVD cover, for example using Olivia's hand as a close up with her in the background in a soft focus. I was keen to edit the logo of the ant from the new Prodigy album - something Ali spoke about in her CD cover analysis. Therefore in the recent shoot i took another photo, this time with her in costume to get the overall effect, i'll be editing this soon and be adding it to the blog.

CD Covers

As Ali said, we took many photos in Cambridge whilst filming and because they have all turned out so well we decided to use one of them as our CD cover. However, because there were so many good photos and we couldn't come to a decision we undertook some audience research. We printed off the possible photos, 7 in total, and we asked students and staff around our Sixth Form at random, which picture they preferred. We asked 33 people and these are the results:


Picture A received 33.3% of the vote

- Many people loved the contrast of this picture between the yellow of vickee's jumper, Olivia's red hair and the dark background.
- Another comment was made about how it would stand out on a shelf if it was in a store.
















Picture B received 12.12 % of the vote

- Comments made were on the love for the framing and the use of black and white; it captures the theme of the music video
- They also liked the grainy feel to the picture.





Picture C received 6.06 % of the vote
- Everyone loved the eyes and the framing of this picture, but some weren't sure if it would look right as an album cover.

















Picture D received 3.03 % of the vote
- Everyone said that it was a great photo, but again, they questioned whether it would look good as an album cover for a group of people, which The Prodigy are.














Picture E received 9.09 % of the vote - They loved the colours in this picture - Also the "tangled web" look, linking in with our theme aswell

PictureF received 3.03 %

-Similar to picture B, most people loved the framing and the gritty setting

Picture G received 33.3 % of the vote - The explosion of colour attracted alot of people - They loved the grafitti - Other comments were made about the framing

Therefore, looking at our results we could see that A and G were the favourites. As a group we were happy with these choices and are now deciding which one to choose out of the favourites!!

Here are some other pictures from our shoot which we may include in our digi pack

I particularly like the top left picture of the light, it really sets the mood of the genre we are looking at and I think is a great picture. However I also love the other two pictures; the picture of Olivia and Vickee staring into each others eyes I think is quite a powerful image.Then the picture of Vickee on her own really stands out to me as a picture to show her cahracters loneliness and the tiresome waiting for the villain.







Danni

Original CD Cover Ideas

The designs we made a couple of weeks ago. We all prefered the first option below, although we also took pictures whilst we were filming in Cambridge which we are now keen to include on the CD cover instead, these will be uploaded shortly by Danni.

Just a little catch up...

Okay, so we have filmed at my house on the 26th of January and we just finished shooting our Cambridge scenes on Friday the 29th of January, we were going to shoot today but it was a bit unorganised so we will probably shoot at Ali's next week instead for Viki's shots :) We have also booked the Auditorium for this Friday after school so we can have some good lighting for the Mr Mills shots! We have also got to film at the skate park in bury too but we will probably do that next week as well :D Cambridge went really well, we got all the shots we needed, but during the end it did get quite cold but over all it was a very good day!! So yeaaah we have still got to shoot on some locations but we are all feeling really positive :)

Olivia

Reference to Tricky's Poems?

Whilst having a look at a few videos on Youtube, i came across Poems by Tricky. As part of the video they have the lead singer's lips projected through a camera, suggesting a hidden identity something i thought would be brilliant for the part in the song where it says 'Invaders Must Die.'
As you can see from the picture, albeit slightly blurry, it also has bubbles in the shot, i love this idea and would be keen to include it but i don't think it really matches our genre - although i wouldn't have expected it in a Tricky music video either but hey!
So where some may call this copying, our excuse is just that are getting postmodern by paying homage to a great video!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ9pEAABU_I&feature=related


Ali

Our Website

Okay so we have been looking at some designs for our website and probably the biggest inspiration we have is the prodigy website. For our website we have made the background look dark and graffiti like, we dragged a picture that we found on google onto the templates and has given the page a really good effect, as that background it dark the main font colour is bright orange as it gives a neon effect which relates to the conventions of the prodigy website, we have also included a 'join us' link to fake pages of facebook, twitter and so on so it gives a more realism effect. Photos will go up onto the website when we have shot our video as then we can put some really cool pictures of action shots from the music video, and even maybe put our actual video on there once it is finished so then people on the internet can see it as this website will be live.

Also things that we will include on our website will be topics like news, links, photos so it does give that sense of realism. We have also put up the track of invaders must die so people can listen to it if they want when they come onto our webpage.

We haven't finished our website yet but it's looking goooooood! :D

Olivia

Make up for our villain

Today in preparation for next week, I planned what make up we would use on Olivia for her scenes. Typical villains and heroes normally wear some kind of a mask, which we were planning to paint on with face paint or something similar, however due to Olivia being a vegan this could be hard finding a "vegan friendly" pack. Also as we are shooting over 3 different days, continuity could be tough with painting a mask on. Therefore, we have decided to do a more simple look, with dark make up which will make her look evil and connote her dark side, as a villain. I also used a blue eyeliner to make it look a little more shocking and will make a nice contrast with her white eye contact lenses (which she shall wear on the days!). The make up is very simple and shouldn't be too time consuming on the shoot days, which is vital so we have as much time as possible to do the shooting! Ah im getting excited about next week now, bring it on!

Danni

Updates

We've been finalsing our preparation in pre production before we shoot. Olivias costume is sorted and tomorrow we should be deciding on make-up and how we will create a "mask" look. We are going to shoot the opening scenes of her waking up on Tuesday 26th January. Then on Friday 29th January we shall be making our trip to Cambridge for the day to do the majority of our shots. This will give us the following week to work on our footage during lessons and then we need to shoot Vickys opening scenes on one evening.
Today we are working on our webpage, formatting it to make it our own; colour, pictures etc
As I said tomorrow we will focus on mise en scene aspects of our video shoot.
Fingers crossed everything will go to plan! We will update on here via pictures etc about how each shoot goes!

Danni