Tuesday 24 April 2012

Ancillary Comparisons

Our group came across the idea through research about keeping the look of the individual products created the same. This meant that the house style, fonts and overall themes would be kept the same throughout.

We found this to be important through research and audience feedback and were told that an audience is likely to reject a product if it doesn't conform to particular codes and conventions and doesn't have the same theme running through it.

I have collected 3 pages from 3 different magazines (print media) to show my understanding of contrasting house styles that an audience would reject. The images below would be rejected by a target audience if sold together due to its contrast in house style and genre.

this gave us something to aspire to and made sure we came together to personally review all the products made as well as altering them to ensure the themes were the same throughout.

Going along this route would alter the audiences reaction as to what they would do with the product (Reception Theory).

This research also takes on elements of Gaze Theory as we want our audience to be happy with the product presented them and to accept it because it complies to certain codes and conventions and relates to them.



Monday 23 April 2012

Creative Arts Evening

During term time our school hosted a Creative Arts Evening in which our videos were going to be shown to 100 people as well as our individual ancillary tasks. The video below shows what happened at the event and also include feedback we got from those who attended the evening.

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Evaluation Question 4

How did you use new technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages
Blog
Throughout the blogging process I have come to find that there is a number of ways in which work can be presented which is pleasing to the eye, meaning not heavily text based. As far as developments in technology go, there is a big increase in the way information can be shared, whether it’s through the internet, television or radio.
For this blogging process in particular, I was going to have to apply my ICT knowledge as well as creative skills learned throughout the Media course in order to present an exciting blog which incorporates different technologies. Throughout this blog there is use of different presentation features such as Prezi, which is an interactive slideshow used to show a different side to work that could have been presented as text, Worlde, which is a feature that combines words of phrases given by our target audience and designed to emphasis the words used the most, as these are shown to be the biggest. I found that these gave a deeper insight into what needed to be told and was a clever way of displaying information and examples of these presentation features are shown below:





Another feature I used was You Tube and not by choice. In order to upload a video to the blog, it has to be done through Youtube or else the video will not play. This is done using Google, as they own Blogger and Youtube, showing an interlinking of the use of the internet dominated by this company. This relates to research carried out for the exam as we are looking at hegemony in media companies and overall ownership between News Corporation and Disney.
Video
For the music video a range of technologies was used in order to capture record and edit our video. To record and capture footage, the group and I used a video camera aided by a tripod which was useful to the development of our music video as we were able to achieve a range of shots which wouldn’t have been achievable without it.
To then edit the video we used a Video Editing Machine to enhance and develop it according to the audience feedback we received. This software and equipment was very useful to us and we were all able to develop our skills through this form of media.
Ancillary
As part of the creation of the ancillary tasks I used a computer and software such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Illustrator (Adobe CS3 package). This technology and software enabled me to create a professional poster which conformed to the codes and conventions of existing media products as well as a carefully designed, interactive website with a click-to-enter page and a home page.
Overall I found the of new technologies daunting to being with but as time went on I felt more and more comfortable with it and I think this shows in the groups final video and my ancillary tasks

Evaluation Question 3


 What have you learned from your audience feedback?Throughout this task the group and I have relied heavily on audience feedback in order to create the best possible product. upon choosing the song "Thinking of Me" by Olly Murs (through audience feedback) our first mode of action was to narrow down those who liked that genre of music, being pop and reggae and then average the ages of those people so we had a concentrated market to work with.


This choice helped us move on to create a story board and annotate the lyrics of the song in which we felt it was best to continually include our target audience as we were creating a product for them. From this I learned that looking for audience feedback during the early stages of planning and production is what could make or break your final product and without it we as a group would have struggled to create the main and individual products we did.

in order to concentrate the feedback we got, we used a presentation technique called Wordle in which we entered the words most commonly used by our target audience in order to look at the areas we were struggling in. what we soon found was that getting audience feedback isn’t designed so that we can carry on developing the things that are good but is there help us develop those things that our audience would reject upon seeing, with references being made to Reception Theory. Below is the presentation feature mentioned above, with the words being used by our target audience to describe different aspects of our product?




Another key moment of audience feedback came towards the end of the development of the music video. This was a creative arts evening held by our school to showcase the work of the creative department. It was a good night of entertainment and our group made sure we took the opportunity of getting feedback from the audience that viewed our video which can be viewed below.

In conclusion, audience feedback is a very useful tool which can make or break your product. It can help you differentiate your ideals to that of your target audience. Personally audience feedback was a great help to our work and meant that we knew that the product we were creating is what our audience wanted, meaning their Reception of it was guaranteed.



Evaluation Question 2

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

In order to create Ancillary Tasks that relate to our target audience I carried out research and had to collect information which was vital to the development of these products.

From this I was able to develop my products and get constructive criticism from my target audience, peers and teachers. I also made sure that through research I stuck to the codes and conventions of the individual tasks and of the mass market.

As I was creating a poster I made sure I used knowledge from the previous year to help me design a product that could be on a billboard. I also had to do research into this type of poster as I had never created a poster for an artist meaning I was learning as well as contributing. From this I designed a product that got good feedback and matched all other Ancillary Tasks designed by other members of the group.

The second Ancillary Task I was to create was a website. Chosen by the group to head this task I had to apply my ICT knowledge more than anything, but make sure I did research into websites of other artists such as Rihanna and Flo Rida. In the end I was able to create a product that related to the themes we had chosen as a group and matched in various ways to the other Ancillary Tasks.

As far as the music video is concerned, after choosing and pitching our ideas we decided that going along the vintage was the right thing to do as the featured artist incorporated those things in that particular songs with elements of Reggae and Pop also featured. All of the products created incorporated aspects of Reception as well as Uses and Gratification Theory with that key word feedback coming in. Without it, many of the decisions made would have been of the group’s individual preferences and not those of our target audience.

Overall feedback told me that the combination of my main and ancillary texts worked well and related greatly to our target audience and this is backed by the storyboards we created and information we collected from our audience. The themes are all the same and although these products are all individual, there was a good use of repetition of some aspects such as font and layout. Below are examples of the ancillary tasks created as well as some of the feedback received from our target audience and peers.





Evaluation Question 1

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


Sunday 15 April 2012

Final Product Comparison: Poster

Below is a poster I created which tends to conform to the conventions of print media in the sense that there is a clear focal image with the name of the person beside it. As well as this the sepia tones help to give it that vintage look which our group wanted to incorporate.

Below my poster is an original one of Olly Murs which in comparison to mine I have been told that there are similarities in the professionalism it shows on the page.

Saturday 14 April 2012

Video Near Completion

This video shows the progress made with the filming we had already done but needed to improve on.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Behind the scenes

As part of the creation of the product for Olly Murs, we as a group thought it necesasary to carefully document behind the scenes action which could be used to show fans of Olly on his website. With this in mind we took some photos and recorded behind the scenes action which is on this blog post.





Below is a presentation of our time behind the scenes! Click the link for more!

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Woodlands

This post shows images (below) of the first outdoor stage of filming which was done in the local woods. We felt this was a great place to shoot as it gave an autumn feel to the video which we thought would fit in well with the idea of memories, love and seperation and with this tried to include the typical conventions of a love song also.


The link below shows an interactive presentation with images of our time filming in the woods:

Saturday 31 March 2012

White Screen

Apart from having specific locations where we wanted to film for the video, we also used facilities at school to achieve the look and feel of a music video. We used a white screen where we took pictures and recorded footage which features in the video. This directors choice was made by the group and shows conformity of conventions used in music videos.

Below are some of the images taken using the white screen, they feature our artist Olly Murs played by Sam Robinson and the featured actress Faith Brackstone:







The link below shows an interactive presentation with images of our time filming using the White Screen:

Saturday 17 March 2012

Green Screen

in the first stages of filming, we took advantage of the facilities in school and used the green screen to start what would be very precise and productive filming. Using the green screen we took pictures and recorded footage which features in the video. This directors choice was made by the group and shows conformity of conventions used in music videos.

Below are some of the images and video taken using the green screen, they feature our artist Olly Murs and those working behind the scenes:






The link below shows an interactive presentation with images of our time filming using the Green Screen:

Friday 9 March 2012

Erith Pier

As part of the filming process, we decided as a group in meetings held that one of the locations we wanted to feature in the music video was Erith Pier. This choice was made and was a crucial part of the filming process and is included largely in the final video.

Below is some of the footage we took at Erith Pier and images taken whilst we were filming:




Below is a link showing a presentation about our time filming by Erith Pier:

Monday 27 February 2012

Greenwich

Below are some of the images taken during the filming process in greenwich. we used the bright colours at the time (grass, sunset) to creat a theme of love during the video.









The link below shows an interactive presentation with images of our time filming in Greenwich:

Saturday 18 February 2012

Stages of Filming

The next few blog posts outline the different stages of filming and locations in which they were shot.

Friday 10 February 2012

Research: House Styles

The link below shows the research I carried out to back the knowledge I had already gained as far as house styles are concerned. I knew the importance of having a specific house style throughout your products and this is what makes it a well known brand.

The link gives a deeper insight into the importance of house styles and is something I referred to when creating my products:
http://www.whitehatmedia.com/blog/importance-house-style-guides-when-using-social-media

Friday 13 January 2012

Font Styles - Existing Fonts

As well as creating a group product, we were also heading Ancillary Tasks and felt it necessary to do extensive research into artists products (which will have been created by a number of people).

From this we recognised the importance of having similarities on our products and settled on a main font: Impact.




The image above shows our choices of fonts in which decided on settling for Impact. We found this particular font to relate more to the character and is something we included in all of the tasks we created.