Final Cut

This is our final cut for our music video Faithless - Insomnia. After 5 rough cuts we finally produced this final cut, we hope you like it:

Mag Ad

This is my final draft of the Magazine Ad this would be a full page ad in Mix Magazine as it is suited to our target audience, which my research suggested. This mag ad follows all of the main magazine ad conventions which i have summarised in a vod-cast. Audience feedback suggested that this should be our magazine ad as it shows a clear link between all 3 texts. 

This is another full page mag ad draft i designed. In comparison to our final mag ad, it is lacking in some places for example the link between the ad and the digipak as i haven't included an image of the digipak. However, this ad does follow the main mag ad conventions. This mag ad was liked by our target audience however we felt that the one above was a better ad. We liked them both with either a black or white background as both were equally effective in grabbing audience attention.

These are the half page magazine ads i designed were for the likes of our secondary audience. We opted to design half page ads because this would require much less of a budget to advertise in our secondary target audiences magazine ads which again i highlighted in my magazine ad vod-cast. I kept the half page ads brief to act as teaser adverts. This is why these ads do not include the main mag ad conventions.

This is an ad from my Tube station draft ideas. This would be our final teaser ad, the tube station ideas were very different to the other mag ads i designed as none of these included an image of our artist or had no link between our music video and the ads themselves. I designed the tube station ads to focus more on Faithless' British heritage, this ad still includes the key conventions. However, it is a teaser ad which is why i included the text 'the only UK performance'.

Digipak Final

Here is my final digipak product with all the panels completed which we can now go on to receiving final feedback from our audiences.

Here is my final digipak but the remixes cover.

Here is our final lyric booklet which will go inside the digipak which is a common convention for digipaks.

Front & Back

Page 1 & 2

Page 3 & 4

Page 5 & 6

Page 7 & 8

Page 9 & 10

Evaluation Question 4:Technologies

HOW DID YOU USE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION & RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

This is a video on our QR code and viral video:

This is a video of our QR code in use:

Blogger

The first and definitely one of the most vital pieces of technology we used was blogger. Blogger was vital to our research and planning which are 20 % of the marks and all round presenting of our A2 coursework. We used blogger to showcase everything we did on our project from our final cut to the research into genre. We displayed all our research and planning on this website. As well as the research and planning and the final product we also used blogger to showcase our evaluation questions as these again are 20% of the marks.

YouTube

A second very important technology is YouTube. YouTube allows us to showcase our vodcasts and rough cuts and any other videos we wanted to share. YouTube is helpful in many ways for our project, the theory of web 2.0 allowed us to get feedback on our rough cuts from people commenting feedback on our videos. It allowed a platform for all our videos to be showcased and allowed us to share these videos on blogger, which was probably the most important use of YouTube for team DeJaCu. Our evaluation questions are also put onto YouTube which is 40% of the marks.

Final cut pro

Final cut pro was the editing software that we chose for creating our final cut. As well as the final cut we also created many different vodcasts and other videos. When creating our final cut we used many different effects and transitions that are provided by the software. We used several transitions like cross dissolve and flash which both helped make the video have continuity and the all-round quality of the video was improved. We found that final cut pro was very easy to use ad we had used the software last year and had developed some skills in working with it. Not only the final video was created on final cut but all of our evaluation questions were edited on final cut pro. The software is very professional and is user friendly, even used by the famous directors the Coen brothers.

Divshare

We used Divshare for many of our different tasks on our blogs. One use of divshare was to upload Word documents to our blogs; this was greatly helpful as it allowed us to share many different files for our research and planning. We used this to do things like our timing sheet and lyric sheet. Divshare was also used for creating our weekly podasts and allowed us to put the insomnia song on the top of our blogs.

Magazine sites

Magazine sites like Q magazine allowed us to research into the key conventions of magazine advertisements to imitate when making our magazine ad. We looked at many different magazine sites; mix mag, rolling stones, NME, Mojo and many more. These give us a lot of inspiration for our final mag ad.

 Photoshop

Photoshop was vital for producing our digipak and magazine ad, it was an essential. We had no previous experience of using Photoshop, so to begin with it was a struggle to get used to the software. Once we had become used to Photoshop we were able to exploit the range of tools it offered. It allowed us to modify any image we uploaded and we could also download fonts on to the Photoshop software and change the sizes and the positions. There are several different filters to be applied to the images the ones we particularly liked were conte crayon and plastic wrap.

Twitter

Twitter was a great website for us as it allowed us to advertise our film for free. The film industry spend millions on advertising yet one of the best ways is via social networking and that way it is 100% free. Therefore we took this to our advantage and advertised our music video via our own twitter page. It not only helped get our music video out there but it also let us gather inspiration from the people we followed on facebook e.g. faithless and other interesting twitter pages we had found.

Camera

We used a HD camcorder called the -----

Da Font

Da font was used to help create our final digipack and magazine ads. We used this website to search different fonts that would fit in with our final product.

Evaluation Question 3: Audience Feedback

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

We addressed QR codes and our viral video in my Evaluation Question 4.

Evaluation Question 3 Vod-cast Part 1

 Evaluation Question 3 Vodcast Part 2

At the start of this vodcast there is a vodcast incorporated which was made in our grouped and voiced by myself.

Originally we based our target audience on our own knowledge. As our act - Faithless is a well known band across the UK we already had an idea of our primary and secondary target audience. We believed that 'insomnia' was a well known song. Therefore, our primary target audience age is 15-24 and our secondary target audience age is 25-40.

YouTube Comment

YouTube Comment

Carrying out research on YouTube as a start up task. We found a lot from this immediately as their is a target audience for our primary target audience. But this also highlighted to us that there was a secondary audience as well. To begin with we were sceptical about our decision of our primary and secondary audience because we thought that the act would be more suited to an older audience as

the primary audience. As Faithless originated in the early 90's. However, the feedback we got from YouTube comments didn't lead us to change our minds.

Another feature i found relatively useful was to look at Faithless' live performances and to look at the audience members attending the concerts. This was a useful tool as we could roughly work out the age of the audience. This matched up to our primary and secondary target audience perfectly as there was a mix between the two at Faithless' live performances.

When researching for magazine ads this also helped us define our target audiences as we looked into previous magazines that Faithless have been in. As well as this it also helped me know which magazine to target when creating a magazine ad as the right audience would be targeted. 

This is my initial knowledge of magazines and their target audiences...

Jay Z on the Rolling Stone cover

• Q magazine - Target audience 25-40
• MixMag - Target audience 18-32
• NME - Target audience 15-24
• Rolling Stone - Target audiences 16-24, 25-40
• Mojo - Target audience 25-40
• Fact - Target audience 18-32
• FHM - Target audience 15-34

Dance specific...

• djmag - Target audience 18-32
• Core - Target audience 25-40
• Maxumi - Target audience 18-32
• OHM - Target audience 18-32

 The steps i took to hunch our target audience were simple but effective methods. These were showing members of our primary target audience pictures of our artist and seeing if there was any recognition there. A second thing I did was to play the mp3 of the track 'Insomnia' to see if there was any recognition with the song as well.

This is an audience research vodcast we created.

Age/gender/ethnicity/sexuality/nationality and class were not an issue in the nature of the feedback we received in terms of content. Girls were usually much more hesitant to speak on camera and were very camera shy. Most of the feedback we got was from our peers from our primary target audience. The feedback was good but wasn't very thourough. Compared to the feedback we got from our fellow students and teachers their feedback was alot more precise than the general feedback we received. It was good to use a range of both general and educated feedback as we could act upon the little things as well as things that a normal viewer may not see such a slight glitch in camera movement.

We created a range of sample sequences, 5 in total and told them the idea of what we were going to do for this video, and that gave them a taste of what it was going to be like.  One of the questions we asked was ‘do you think this idea is appropriate for our target audience?’ The feedback was that it was suitable because of the idea and the fact that the main character fits in the age range of our primary target audience so they can relate to the character. We also were planning to incorporate a nightclub scene in our original idea, which our target audience seemed fond of. However, we didn’t include the nightclub scene in our final draft because it was unconvincing and un-realistic. A lot also agreed that the music was suited to our target audience because the track was well known. On the contrary one person did say that the audience could be stretched to an older audience profile because their parents would be familiar with this genre of music and the act itself. Which is why we have a secondary target audience. Another question we asked our audience was ‘any thoughts on how we could utilize the tools of social media?’ The majority said Face Book was a key tool especially for people who have a lot of followers therefore we could reach a wider audience base, and it gives a possibility of a viral aspect.

We were able to gain feedback from our sample sequences which was good as it required little time. As we made 5, we got a good range of feedback. I gained feedback from 5 peers on the sequences although the audio on the clips were muted. The feedback boiled down to both positive and negative.

The positives were.

·      The track itself was good

·      The black and white filter

·      The effects used e.g. the time lapse on the chair

The negatives were.

·      Lip syncing out of time in some sample sequences

·      Boring in places

The audience feedback from this was useful as we knew what to do and what not to do when it came to creating our rough cuts. It also gave us a heads up on what we had planned to shoot, as we could change this accordingly and save time.

One of the key pieces that arised from our audience feedback was our nightmare scenes. We originally had a masked character but this was very unconvincing and didn’t fit in with the style of our music video at all. Which is what we were told. We therefore, changed the idea completely to a little girl which gave the text verisimilitude as well as Stuart Halls preffered reading which is what we hoped for. So the feedback was very useful as it allowed us to change our character and know that it was what our audience would like.

Digipak Audience Feedback:

Throughout all our digipak rough cuts we collected feedback from our primary audience and our secondary audience, this way our end product would be able to achieve the preferred reading from our audiences.

With our first digipak draft the design only reflected our research into the genre and therefore didn’t reflect any audience input, which is probably why our final draft looks nothing like our first seen as our audience weren’t appealed by it at all, and from our feedback they preffered the further drafts we created with a grid of our main character, and also the use of our character standing aloine on the rock.

Mag Ad Audience Feedback:

In total we created over ten mag ad drafts which were all summariused in a vodcast we created. With our mag ad we stuck to the main conventions and we collected feedback from our primary audience and our secondary audience, this way our end product would be able to achieve the preferred reading from our audiences.

Audience feedback showed that our primary audience particularly liked the tube station draft ideas and liked the link we made with Faithless’ British heritage, our tube station ads were not the one we going to use as our final magazine ads. However, if we included more conventions they could have been, this is why we used them for teaser ads. Our final mag ad was widely preffered from the rest of the mags ads we designed, our audience feedback helped us tweak the final stages of designing as one member of our focus group said that we should enlarge the band name and make iot stand out more which is why we increased the font size and decreased the size of the information. Also due to audience feedback we layered an image of the girl onto our mag ad to fill a blank space, as they had seen our rough cuts prior, they knew of the second character. When a filter was added this was very effective. Therefore our audience feedback played a large part in our Mag Ad.

The web 2.0 theory really helped us with receiving feedback as it facilitated interaction with our audience through the use of YouTube and twitter. Which follows Tim O’ Reilys theory of an ‘architecture of participation’ which delivers a rich user experience in the way they can now interact and access our music video. In some cases the audience has a large role in our production which links to David Gauntlets theory as people become producers as well as consumers. An example would be when we mad our video faster paced towards the end due to consumer input.

 Before the construction of our media product we already had an idea in mind of the audience we were addressing which would follow Ien Angs theory.

John Hartley states ‘institutions are obliged not only to speak about an audience, but-crucially, for them to talk one to one as well’ Our text would follow this theory as we effectively created a character that our audience can engage with through the text. As our target audience’s age range is similar to our characters. It is also reflected in the mise en scene and costumes we used, such as black jeans and a stylish coat.

To summarise all three of our media products required us too take in to account, and rely on the audience we were addressing. It proved to be a key aspect during our production as we enjoyed interacting with our audience’s whether we were focusing on our multiple rough cuts, our digipak or our magazine ad. Audience feedback was vital in order for us as a group to bring out the best of our idea, and to make it suitable for our audiences. 

Evaluation Question 2: Package Combo

E V A L U A T I O N  Q U E S T I O N 2

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

We addressed QR codes and our viral video in my Evaluation Question 4.

INTRO (1): DISCUSS/CRITIQUE THE QUESTION

WOULD THIS BE A 'PACKAGE' IN THE REAL WORLD?

In the real world most of the different products would be made by different companies. The music video would be given usually to an aspiring film director or a specialist in music videos. Many music videos are given a very big budget, some in the millions. Whereas our production didn’t even have a budget.

The advertising via mag ads would also be given to a specialist and not the artist itself, many companies specialise in just making these advertisements. The artist gives these companies their general ideas and then its up to the companies to cater their needs and produce an inspired magazine ad.

The digipack would then either be made by another different specialized company or made by the same company that did the mag ad, as generally like our mag ad and digipack they are both very similar as they are both linked to one and other.

THE ART v AD QUESTION

The other question is ‘is a music video art or an advert?’. As the videos  now are very much to advertise the artist as videos can go viral very easily; take Psy – Gangnam style for example. PSY was not a famous artist in the west before this yet a good video along with a catchy song created a great hit. Therefore a music video is very much to create views for their music, it’s a way of attracting your audience. However the counter argument is that it is just a form of art and part of the music. I believe it is abit of both as artists want to give people an idea into what theyre about with their music videos, showing people their unique style. However they are definitely used as an advertising to so more people are listening to their music.

2: detailing your target audience

All three of our texts were linked massively to our target audience. We were sure of our target audience through our initial and on going research we did through out our production. This was our primary audience, which was aged between 15-24 and our secondary audience aged between 25-40. When we were making decisions we always had our target audience in mind due to the web 2.0 theory the audience is also the producer of a text which our product is in some ways as we always reflected our audience.

3: (this links back to audience) where might each text be distributed/exhibited

We would aim to get all 3 of our products distributed to our target audience. Therefore we did research into where all of our products would be distributed. Our mag ad would be in magazines that appeal to the male adult market. We decided that our ideal magazines would be magazines such as MixMag GQ and many others. Our CD would be distributed in places like supermarkets and mainly online websites. There is online music marketplaces such as the iTunes store and Amazon where digitization has allowed consumers to digitally download singles and albums as well as music videos. There are recent examples such as Beyonce’s newly released visual album ‘Beyonce’ which is only available for consumers to download and only includes music videos on the album. In terms of the music video itself our video would be on Youtube. Youtube would act as both an exhibitor and distributor for our music video as the display the work of artists.

4: break down (denotation of) key elements of each of the 3 texts in turn

Digipak:

·      Artist Title

·      Album Title

·      Artist Image

·      Bar Code

·      Lyric booklet

·      Track listing

·      Record Label

·      Orange Filter

Magazine Ad:

·      Artist Image

·      Artist Title

·      Tour Dates

·      Orange Filter

·      Brief information on the artist

·      Tour Locations

Music Video:

·      The black and white effect we used

·      The nightmare character

·      The chair

·      The grafitti wall

·      The song

·      Costume which reflects our target audience

5: in what ways are the 3 products linked

All three texts were linked together in all products. A key example would be our final drafts for our digipak and Mag ad the images we used were both from our music video. These images were of the little girl – the secondary character in our music video and our primary character standing on the moors. The moors image we took from a scene in our music video. We tried this out on the cover of both the digigpak and the mag ad and it worked well. When filters were applied to both this enhanced the image and we were able to use this for both media products.

For the digipak we used images of our character sitting on our chair in front of the graffiti wall location. We had created sample sequence which included a time lapse of our character switching positions in the chair, we took screen shots of each different position and incorporated them into a grid for our digipak this worked well as we didn’t just use the bland image. Changing the saturation and temperature of the image on Photoshop made the image stand out and it worked well for the inside covers of our digipak.

6: in what ways are they differentiated

The products were differentiated in the fact that the music video followed an almost social realist theme and this was reflected in the music video through the use of locations in run down settings, also the use of editing reflected this as there is a black and white filter through out the music video. Compared to both the digipak and the Mag ad much brighter colours were used in order for the texts to stand out. The way that the digipak and the mag ad differentiated, were the conventions mainly as both of these had different conventions. For example there isn’t tour dates on the digipak – this is one of the main conventions when it comes to Mag Ads.

However some of these texts are stand alone. Such as the tube station magazine ads there is a link to our acts British heritage. But, in terms of our production there is no real link between the texts.

7: evidence + reflect on some AF on all 3 as a package

Evaluation Question 1: Conventions

Evaluation Question 1

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

Music video:

. Goodwin’s theory:

Music videos often nearly always follow either one of the 3 categories in Goodwin’s theory Narrative, Performance and Concept.

Narrative- for example the narrative in a music video would often follow a story based on the lyrics like in the music video Waterfalls by TLC, Like the song itself, the video tackles issues of illegal drug trade and in the video a young man goes against his mother's advice to stop selling drugs and is killed before a drug deal. And as for our music video we follow this concept because the lyrics are talking about an insomniac not being able to sleep and this is signified in our music video in multiple scenes where our main character is stressed but in particular when he’s seen in a multiple layering scene in his bedroom not sleeping (show bedroom scene).

Performance- then with the performance aspect in a music video there’s often a band playing or a singer directing the music to the audience and this could either be throughout the whole video like in Disclosure’s song F or F You where the 2 dj artist are seen throughout as well as the singer at parts, or the performance footage could be shown at specific parts in the music video as well as a narrative for example with Plan B’s song Playing With Fire where the singer Plan B is shown singing at various parts in the song, and this is what our music video also follows because as well as a narrative going on there’s also performance footage with the singer singing directly to the camera.

Concept- Goodwin’s final category was concept where a music video would often have an abstract feeling to it where it’s quite random and has no direct meaning to it, for example the artists Bondax often follow this as they demonstrated in their music video Giving It All as throughout the video there’s no real connection between the music lyrics and visuals, and this is common within that specific genre which is vital for our production as we are using a track from the same genre ‘house’ which is why we demonstrated the some of this concept aspect in our music video as we have quite abstract footage at time which could be seen as quite random towards the music (abstract clip from music video).

. Narrative:

Also for the narrative structure of a music video it is common for there to be an opening and a closure for example in Coldplay’s song Paradise visuals signify an animal escaping from the zoo by having the elephant character run away from the zoo to the train station which was the opening, and then the closure was anchored when the elephant was reunited which the other elephants and walking off into the sun set, and our music video follows this stereotype convention as we have an opening signified by the character starting his day in bed then the closure is also signified by the nightmare girl character locking the male character in the wendy house.

. Star treatment used:

Clean bandit don’t use star treatment and instead the focus is on the whole band for example in their song Rather Be all the band are shown throughout the video at equal lengths so there’s no star treatment used. However Faithless do use it for example in the song God Is A DJ and focus on the singer even though there’s a band behind every song, we were heavily influenced by this as we used the same start treatment towards our singer.

. Titles Used:

Also another common convention used in music videos is titles at the start and the end this is because it give the cinematic feel to the video and as most producers of music videos go on to produce films it’s no surprise that this is a common convention, a good example of this is in the song Paradise by Coldplay as at the start titles are used to introduce the music video in a cinematic approach. However with our music video we preferred to go for the countertype and not include titles as we didn’t feel they worked well with our structure for the intro or the ending.

. Nightclub Scene:

This stems back to when house music videos were first used to advertise clubs and a good example that we looked out was Martin Garrix’s song  Animals as there’s nightclub scenes throughout also with this comes the continuous use of flashing lights throughout the video which is also common in house music videos, however our music video is a countertype of this aspect as we did attempt to film a dance club scene but didn’t think it was effective enough to use for our final piece so therefore we went for the countertype in this case.

Genre Specifics:

. Multiple Locations Used Is Common:

For our genre in particular it’s common to see a variety of locations used throughout the music video and this is mainly because as the videos are mostly concept based a variety of locations are needed in some cases to keep the audience interested and engaged, otherwise it could provide some oppositional reading and start to get boring for the audience, for example in the music video Rather Be by Clean Bandit they use a variety of location throughout, and this is was we aimed to do in our music video to which we achieved by making sure we filmed in a variety of locations, for example we filmed in the woods, a river, park, moors,fields,streets,café,bedroom,bathroom, etc.

Digipak:

.Stereotypical Conventions:

-Front:

Titles bold on the front so they stand out from the background images, these titles consist of the artist’s name or band’s name, then the title of the single or album, and the arrangement varies but usually they follow the stereotypical convention that the artist’s name is larger and above the title of the album or single.

Then the sticker on the front is also a common convention used to notify the audience of what the digipak had to offer, and usually the text in this stick is bold and stands out from the background and the text used in these tickers stereotypically reveal limited edition tracks or a DVD with live footage from a tour or behind the scene, this way the audience are drawn in and appealed in a way that they’d purchase the product.

-Rear:

Digitisation has formed the more regularly used QR codes now which are displayed on the rear side of digipaks which lead to the website of the artist this way the audience can access the artist online instantly.

And the barcode if also commonly found on the rear sides of digipaks.

Copy right print is also a main convention used in digipaks and is usually in the form of small print in the lower part of the back with the copy right and produced by logos.

Also record labels being displayed is stereotypical for the rear side of digipaks and these are often shown as logos for each individual label as there could be more than one with conglomerate companies being displayed also.

And the track listing is always displayed on the rear side as it’s important for the audience to be notified of the tracks that the CD consists of, usually the tracks will be numbered with the title of each track, and then the details of each track will be furthered in the lyric booklet usually.

Another common convention usually used it to tie the front of the digipak with the rear and this is effectively achieved when they use the same image but stretched out over both sides, or when the colours match up and flow.

As well as the CD and DVD logo which are found on all products that consist of DVD or CDs

-Spine:

Usually on the spine you’d find the title of the album horizontally positioned out down the side with a unique catalogue number specific to that album, also the record label’s logo is normally displayed also here.

-Our Digipak:

Ultimately our product consisted of all these common conventions as it had a unique bolb font on the front specific to the artist which we researched, and here we had the titles of the artist larger than the title of the album. Also our sticker works effectively because it notifies our audience of the bonus DVD that would appeal to them and make them more likely to purchase the product. We also used a QR code for the rear side of the digipak along with the barcode both specific to our product, and the record labels are also found here which is common also, along with the CD and DVD logos, more importantly our digipak flows from front to rear which is significant in qualifying for the common conventions in this way because it works so effectively. And the track listing is also positioned well with the tracks numbered appropriately. Along with the small copy right print that’s in the right font size and worded correctly.

Mag Ad:

Stereotypical Conventions:

During my research and planning I looked at a range of magazine ads from different genres and used this to round up the main magazine ad conventions. Firstly what’s commonly used are the titles of the artist in large bold with the titles of the album bellow, and these usually flow quiet effectively with a range of different fonts and font sizes. For our magazine ad we downloaded fonts from websites such as ‘DaFont.’ These fonts were easy to install on to Photoshop. They also include brief information on the artist, concert dates or tour dates, The release date of a specific album or DVD, an image of the band or artist, a twitter feed, a QR code, a reference to the record label. The information included on a Mag ad differentiates between genres for example on a dance magazine ad there would usually be bright colours and a large image, in contrast to a rock genre magazine ad where dark colours would be used. Also the focus changes for what the magazine ad is promoting whether it is tour dates or promoting a CD, which I where the variation of fonts plays a key part.

In terms of our magazine ad I would say that we challenged as well as followed the forms of conventions of real media products. For example a conventional method we used was an image of our artist on our front cover which I used a filter on to change the temperature of the image to give it an orange effect. We challenged the conventions of using bright images for the dance genre because I incorporated a lot of black onto a magazine ad but this was to link in with both our video and digipak. I would also say that we developed the forms and conventions of media products because we included two promotions one of the digipak we created and the tour dates we promoted, my research showed that most magazines ads only promote one of the two. So in some ways we have developed this form and convention.