BLOG FINISHED

I have finally come to the completion and end of my A2 media blog. I hope you enjoy both my music video and print products. I have recorded my journey throughout A2 on this blog and you will find all of my ideas and work throughout it. Thankyou!

Media Presentation

Here is a presentation I created to explain and present my project ideas and my final outcomes in front of my class and teacher.

Media Presentation from Charlotte Greaves on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 4

Here is my video that I have created to answer my question 4 evaluation.

Here I have also created a powerpoint to address, demonstrate and explain to advantages and disadvantages of the various technologies I used within my project.

Evaluation Question 3

What have I learned from my audience feedback?

Here I have created a video demonstrating and explaining what I learned throughout my project from audience feedback and critique.

Evaluation Question 2

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

Here I have created a Prezi presentation to answer my question 2 of my evaluation:

Evaluation Question 1

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

EVALUATION QUESTION 1 from Charlotte Greaves on Vimeo.

Planning Notes for Evaluation Question 4

Planning Notes for Evaluation Question 3

Planning Notes for Evaluation Question 1

Planning Notes for Evaluation Question 2

Media Product Survey

I have created a survey for my audience to complete via SurveyMonkey. I have made this to get feedback on my final products and to see peoples opinions etc. I think it will be a great way of collecting data and information as to if my products are successful and work well together. I have emailed the link to various people in my sixth forma and also emailed people outside of sixth form to get a variety of age's feedback. this will be very useful to me when completing my evaluation and I will post results when they are received.


Here below is my survey that I have created. It is made up of ten questions.

Create your own user feedback survey

Evaluation of my Project

Now that I have completed my music video, advert and dig-pak, I am now going to evaluate my entire project by answering these questions in alot of depth and detail. I will use a wide range of media's to create these answers such as vdieo, powerpoints and recording. Therefore I will be expanding outside of the level three criteria and will be able to show off my skills that I have adapted throughout this two year course.

These are the questions that I have to complete answers to and I will be doing this over the Easter Holiday period.

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

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

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

Final Product Digi-Pak

Here is my final product of my digi-pak. I have fit my designs into my digi-pak net to meet the measurements. I have included all the little details needed for my album such as the bar-code and the small print featuring the copyright information, aswell as the catalogue number and record company logo on the spine. As explained on my advert post, I have clsoely linked my design through both my print prodcuts and this can hopefully be evident to the audience through the use of my font, colour scheme, filters and choice of images.

Final-Product Advert

Here is my final design for my advert. I decided to use critics The Guardian, MOJO and NME as I felt they suited my particular genre very well and when I researched bands similar to mine and their adverts, these names are what were featured on the covers quite often. I follwoed the design of my digi-pak very closely when desiging my advert, as something I wanted to make clear was the flow and similarity of the design within both print products and the aim in which to create a certain identity belonging to my particular band.The text I used was exactly the same as my digi-pak and the bold, brightness of the white stood out perfectly. The layering of the text over the image was somehting that as very popular when looking at my research and was something that I wanted to include in both print products as it was very eye-catching. The filter of my image and the image itself, evidently shows the flow between both my advert and digi-pak as the image content is the same and the filter effects tone is the same.

Music Video- Final Cut

After months months of shooting and editing, I am finally uploading my final cut of my music video. It has took me an endless amount of weeks to edit and refine my work to get it in a place where I think it is the best I can do. I have added layers of filters, cut shots up, altered tiny aspects of my shots etc. Syncing my videos of my actor miming to the song and also editing to the beat of the song was something I found particurlarly hard, so it was good to overcome this and learn along the way. I am very priud fo my final outcome and relieved to finally not ahve to listen to this song all the time!!! I hope you enjoy it!

Chemicals Final Cut from Charlotte Greaves on Vimeo.

CD

For my CD part of my digi-pak I have took an image from the internet and to make it myown, I have edited it with the same kind of filter that I usedfor myimages and for my advert. Doing this,I thought would make it look individual and unique and would compliment the colour scheme of my products better, making it look more realistic. Here I have uploaded the image of the CD before and an image of afterI edited. This shows a clear change in the CD and how it looks much more effective with the filter overthe image.


 

This is the ordinary image that I took off the internet before I had edited the image. As you can see it looks very plain and uneefective. The colour is very dull and grey and this would stand out on my digipak, interupting the flow of my design.

 

 

Here is a screenshot of the CD after it has been edited, where the editing software on the right hand side of the image shows the filters and edits that I used to layer over my image of the CD.

 

 

 

Here is my final outcome of my image that shows the change after the editing. Comparing it to my digi-pak filters, it links really well and looks much better than the original image's colour.

 

 

Catalogue Number

A catalog number is the identification number a record label assigns to a release. It is used for tracking purposes by both the label and the distributor. Catalog numbers are typically printed on the spine of a CD and on the back of record sleeves, but you sometimes you'll find them in other places on the artwork - and sometimes on the CD and the info label on the record itself.

I have made my own catalogue number up FYC08 -This will be included on my didgi-pak on the spine.

There aren't any rules as to how a label decides to set its catalog numbers, but once you develop a system, it makes sense to stick with it. Catalog numbers typically include both numbers and letters - often some portion of the record label name combined with numbers that signify the number of the release for that label. For instance, label XYZ might assign their first release the catalog number "XYZ01," their second release "XYZ02" and so on. In this way, you can often trace a label's history by looking at their catalog numbers.

XL Records

XL Recordings is a British independent record label owned by Richard Russell. It originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records and is part of the Beggars Group of labels.

 Artist belonging to this record company are:

ADELE

Atoms For Peace

Bobby Womack

Dizzee Rascal

East India Youth

FKA twigs

Friendly Fires

Giggs

Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx

Ibeyi

Jack Peñate

Jack White

Jai Paul

Jamie xx

Jungle

King Krule

Låpsley

M.I.A.

Novelist x Mumdance

Radiohead

Ratatat

RATKING

Sampha

SBTRKT

Shamir

Sigur Rós

The Horrors

The Prodigy

The White Stripes

The xx

Thom Yorke

Tyler, The Creator

Vampire Weekend

 

As you can see, I chose this particurlar record company as it is British and independently run. My genre matches this perfectly and bands such as Vampire weekend, which have had a big infleunce on my entire projectare signed to XL. These artist are low key which is another reasona s to why i chose it.

 

When I visited the Media Aesthetica Film Festivalin York, I attended a workshop with The Beggars Group which gave me alot more insight into what they are and influencedmeslightly within choosing this for my project.

 

Here is the logo that I will include on the spine of my digi-pak.

 

Font for my Advert

I decided to link the same font on my album cover to my advert. I have done this as it will create an image for my band that everyone will recognise and it will continue an identity. The same font flows nicely and effectively though my entire packaging and the same filters are used also. This creates a continuity through my project and compliments well. By using the same filters for all of my images on my digi-paks and advert as well as the font looks much more effective than changing the font and filters as that would confuse the audience on what they are buying. This is similar to the adverts and digi-paks by bastille that I have researched. They use the same style of font through each product they produce with only slightly changing the colour at time, but using the same pastel tone to their font. This is easy for people to identify their album as one of Bastille's and this is a successful artist identity created for the band. I hope to achieve this also within my advert and digi-pak.

Sticker

I have decided that instead of placing the album name onto my digipak front cover- I will in fact create a sticker that the purchaser can peel off with the details of the album etc. I think this will be alot more effective as it still supports the simplicity of my album cover, aswell as including the vital imformation needed on the cover. This will then link nicely with my advert where I have included the information in my text about the name of the album and where to buy it. Once I have completed a draft of my front cover with the sticker added, I will post a comparison to explain how it will appear to everyone on the album cover.

Advert Photograph

I have chosen this image formy advert. I decided that it links really well with my digi-pak as it is an image of my littlesister and my digi-pak is based on kids pulling stupid faces. The fact she has a toy guitar also goes well with the fact my artist is a band and there are guitars featured in my video and on the track. As yo ucan see I have imported the image into Photoshop and will be editing it with filters the same way I have with my digi-pak and then will eb adding my text onto it. I will upload a final outcome once I have completed this task.

Few bits and bobs to shoot

I am almost at the end of editing my music video however, there is a couple of little clips that I want to shoot and add into my video. There is one smalll shot right at the beginning of the female character brushing her teeth that I will refilm as it has someintereference on the video due to the sun shining through the window and flashing. This will only take me five minutes maximum as it is only half a second long. I also want to shoot some new footage of my lead singer in my band with an extreme close-up of his mouth singing the first line of the song as I think this looks more effective that my previous door shots of each house. Once this is completed, edited and added into my shot, this will hopefully be my music video finalised.

Adding filters

For my video I have decided to alter the effects on my clips to distinguish the difference between my narrative and performance clips. I have played about wioth the brightness and contrast on my performance clips and decided that a cooler effect looked much better than a warmer one. Altering the contrast to a more defined look, made the video stand out more and look bolder. Here I have screenshotted my first clip on my video with the layered effects on top to show what it will look like in the final outcome.

 

 

As you can see there is a huge difference between the footage on the left to the enhanced version on the right, giving it a more cinematic feel and professional touch.

 

I have also edited my narrative footage with  more warmer filter to it. I found that by doing this, it could be a representation of the hot and cold behaviour within the relationship in my narrative story. The change in quality of colour is fantastic and it really gives a clear, bright effect that makes it look more professional and stands out than just the ordinary footage, that looks quite dull and boring.

Tracklist For DigiPak

I have put together a list of songs from my chosen genre by looking through albums off bands by browsing through Spotify. Looking at the related artists was also really handy to find track names of the same genre, The name of the song in my video is 'Chemicals' so this is obviously being included. I have looked at songs by the likes of Bastille, Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire, The 1975, Ed Sheeran etc.

Here is my final list for the back of my digipak:

1.Chemicals
2.Unbelievers
3.These Streets
4.Wake Up
5.Thinking Out Loud
6.Little Secrets
7.Did You Hear The Rain?
8. Another Love
9.Robbers
10.Girls
11.Out Of Control
12.I Want It All

Another Improved Rough Cut

Chemicals Rough Cut 3 from Charlotte Greaves on Vimeo.

Changing the font on my video

The original font on my typography throughout my video wasn't intended to be the final font. I have kept it till nearer the end to change and play around with certain font styles to see which one is perfect for my video. I wanted a block, simple text that was similar to my album font just to continue the simple effect. However, the text I used to begin with was not at all like this and wasn't very effective at all. The appearance wasn't slick or professional, and this is required for it to look as real and professional as it can be. I altered the size and position of the text so that it was horizontally and vertically centre on each shot.

Below I have screen-shot the change in the texts that I chose before and now:

Re-shooting bedroom scenes

As pointed out by my teacher, the shots of myself at 00:57, 01:00 and 01:02 are out of focus so I re shot them today so that the quality was clearer. Luckily the lighting is very similar as the weather is the same as the day I shot last time so It should not ruin any continuity. I used my tripod to act as the viewpoint of the male character and hopefully this will pull off. 

Chemicals- Rough Cut

I have been steadily editing my music video and have come to this rough cut. I have only got 5 seconds to add footage to and then all of my clips will be inserted into the video. There is a few more thins that I need to tweak, such as the typography and the filtering that I want to add to a selection of shots, to allow a difference in appearance for the narrative parts from the performance parts. There is also some shots that I want to shorten or cut out and the editing to the beat at the beginning needs to be tightened. Then i should be finished, after half term, i will focus on getting this finished as soon as possible as it should not take much time now to finalise. 



Chemicals-Rough cut 2 from Charlotte Greaves on Vimeo.

Filming bits and bobs/re-shooting

This weekend I used the time with Josh wisely and took the opportunity to film tiny shots that i need to fill the spaces in my video. I also decided to re shoot the dinner scene as the last time I attempted it, it was too dark and the quality was not up to scratch. I filmed this at night time last time so to avoid the same mistakes again, i chose to film in the day time so that the room was light enough and wouldn't have a dark image quality.

Here you can see the huge difference in quality and how this will much better for my video and I will be adding this into my video this week. The light has improved drastically and I am really happy with this outcome.

I also shot some arguing scenes that last a few seconds long as I decided to add more argument scenes in my project to edit to the beat and have more of a variety.

Digi-pak update

I have almost finished my Digi-Pak final design and I am now selecting song lyrics for my track listing on the back. I have decided to use a white font for my track list to continues the same effect throughout as the front font colour. For my choice of songs I am going t choose different tracks from certain albums within my genre that I have researched and add them to the list including the name f the track on my music video. I am now going to finalize my tracks and I ill upload the list that I have created before adding them to the back of my digi-pak design.

Chester Park Filming.

Today due to the horrible weather, I decided that filming at Chester Park beside the river would be a better idea as travelling all the way to South Shields for the limited time I have was too much hassle when i only needed to film footage there for around ten minutes. So i packed my props, camera and tri-pod and set off to Chester Park, that took around ten minutes. meaning it was much easier and quicker to film and the paths along the river were perfect for filming on. Last Night I planned my shots and how long they were going to take so that the day would go as smoothly as possible. I filmed the part where the couple meet, walking along the river from different directions and where they bump into each other and exchange numbers.  found that this looked effective as it was an ordinary place where lots of people go and it didn't look forced.

Deadline for Rough Cut

As I have planned to film parts of my footage on certain dates of this month, this unfortunately means that I will not have all my required footage for the rough cut deadline. I am making great progress and my video is coming along nicely however and I have had many meet ups with my teacher on improvements and feedback. I have all of my performance footage fitted into my video and I am just needing to film a few very short narrative pieces to include. One of my improvements has been to re-shoot my narrative and redo the story line slightly so I hope this works. My last filming day is scheduled for the weekend commencing Thursday 29th and I have decided to film in South Shields with my boyfriend as it is much easier than travelling down to Blackpool but will hopefully still have the same effect that I am aiming for as the scenery is similar, being at the seaside. I have also started changing the style for editing to a much more quick paced style to see if this looks more effective.

Shooting some more Narrative

This weekend my boyfriend has come home again to film some more footage for my narrative. We will spend all of Saturday filming locally in places that I have pre-planned to. I won't get everything I need to shoot as some oft he shots are planned to be shot elsewhere. Hopefully it goes well and we get what I need. Once I have filmed, i will upload some screen grabs of the different shots I film and the different settings also.

Digipak Vblog

My Digipak and how it all came about from Charlotte Greaves on Vimeo.

More screenshots of digipak designs

Here I have created and edited two out of three of the images for the inside of my digipak.I decieded to use images with two kids in for these, to give a bit of variety. I have copied the exact same effects as the cover and back for these images for it to all look the same. I am yet to edit one more image and will add this as soon as it is finished.
 

 

Screenshots of Digipak designs

Here is my first design of my front cover with my Bands name added. I have added filtered layers onto my image to achieve this sepia effect. I am pretty confident that this will be my chosen cover for my final digipak design as I am very pleased with the outcome.

 

Here I used some other images, originally to be used formy back cover. But before I began creating the backcover,I decided to test what it would look like for my front cover also.



 

 

Here is the back cover finished.I am yet to add my tracklist and anything else that I am to include such as record label symbols, websites etc. I am now going to create a tracklist, linked to my research and add it to my design with the font and colours of my choice that compliments my front text.

Advert Analysis- The Drums

Digipak Analysis- Vampire Weekend

Digi-Pak Analysis- Bastille

Blackpool Promenade

So I have planned to visit Blackpool on 29th January to film my shots on the promenade. I found this an interesting place as it gives a different range of scenery and looks effective on camera. It suggests that they have gone away together or one of them lives there or they are having a day out and therefore adds more to the relationship. The bright colours on the promenade, may suggest happiness and as people go there to have fun, it would connote that. As the beach there is called 'Pleasure beach' it gives an ironic sense to it that they meet there and end up forming a relationship.

Here are some images of Blackpool Promenade and the Pier:

Shots that will be filmed this month

As I planned to film in different areas, when i visited Blackpool, I planned to shoot on the pier for some shots but the way that the trip was planned, I was unable to do this. This was completely out of my hands, however I have planned another trip down to Blackpool  on 29th January (making use of the day off school we have), to shoot on the pier and as my boyfriend lives there, it will be very easy to do so. I will be able to have time to shoot in daytime unlike the other week when I could not. I will only be there or a weekend giving me time to add any necessary footage to my video before the deadline. I have planned that this I where they will first meet and a phone number will be given. My boyfriend has planned to come either the second or the third weekend of January to shoot some more shots that I either shot and weren't satisfied with or haven't got round to shooting yet, giving me a lot of time to get parts done to the best quality.

Here I have ticked off the shots I have done and have left the ones that I am going to do this month. For example the necklace shot, is where I have decided that the boy will buy her necklace and she will act surprised when he pulls it out of his pocket and this will demonstrate a time in their relationship where a huge positive step is taken.