Question 1

Tom & Ed Question 1

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?



Ed Price Question 2;

Tom Lamb Question 2;

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Question 3, Tom Lamb & Ed Price;

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

Question 4 on Prezi

Ed Price & Tom Lamb

q2

Question 2 in reference to the video

Our video is heavily linked to our digipacks in both cases and also represents our band image well.

During all filming and photoshoots the band members were never given strict instructions on what to wear, or how to present themselves, simply told to wear casual clothing. We both decided this would be the best option as we wanted to portray each band member's individual & unique style.

We used the element of skate boarding throughout the video to give some action shots, we also felt that the skate boarding added another dimension to indie/alternative theme. The video also helps to give the audience a realisitic, inside view of the band member's lifestyle on and off the music scene. The skateboarding shots in particular show what the band members spend their time doing when not on tour or in the studios.

The video as a whole represents the ins and outs of what the band get up to in their leisure time. The idea of the video was to show the overall lifestyle of the band, both during performances and in their spare time. Famous lifestyles are often followed throughout the media industry and we believed that our video gives a non-biased more realistic account of band's lifestyle which is not what altered or misleading to sell albums and singles.

Our video is very much in the shadow of Bombay Bicycle Club's video for Shuffle. This video inspired us a lot to make our own version and we replicated a few scenes including the train shot and also the eating shot.

Insert the print screen of the two shots.

Evaluation Question 3

We participated in a class feedback activity. The activity involved watching each member of the class’ music video’s which they had created. We then had to leave a rating out of 10 and also some written feedback.

We received on average a 8/10 from our peers. The comments included:

Good

“The band look good together”

“Change of location is effective”

“Great linking to original video”

‘Love the dancing”

“effective camera angles, and good variety of shots used”

‘editing is of a high standard’

‘instrument shots are well timed’

‘like the dancing’

“shows the personality of each band member, which helps to add humour”

Bad

‘Lacks a narrative idea?”

‘Some shots look to long - dancing’

Overall, we were happy with what our classmates thought of our video, they could see that we wanted the video to have a strong link to the original Bombay Bicycle Club video and furthermore that we were trying to make the video pretty funny with the band not taking themselves too seriously.

With the feedback coming from people in our class, they can obviously relate to how hard and frustrating editing can become at times and for people to actually comment on how good our editing skills are gave us a great sense of achievement.

We were constantly receiving constructive feedback from our Media Studies teachers. They helped to give us new ideas when we were lacking some and also gave us advice on how to improve our draft at the time to get it to the standard that it is now. One of the main points we were told was to reduce the length of a few shots and also re film parts with a HD camera to give a professional edge to our video.

We took on board all of the advise we were given and we did actually cut the length of quite a few of the shots and, as advised, added in extra footage of the band skating or just hanging out.

We start off here with a screen shot that was taken from my Facebook account. We simply posted the link and asked for some kind of feedback…

As you can see from the images a lot of people thought that the dancing was a really good addition to the video, it was a common comment that was left by our friends ‘Jamie’s dancing was the highlight’ ‘Dancing was amazing’ and with other comments that were people joking around saying that ‘people were jealous because they couldn’t dance like that’. I think that the reason that our dancing shots were so popular in our video was more than likely due to the fact that it brought great humour to the video with many people also commented that they believed that the video was in actual fact amusing as well as being a professional looking music video.

There were several other comments with some praise of ‘splendid’, and several comments made about how good the Christmas light shots in Leicester  looked with Ed playing the keyboard underneath them with him moving across the street.  We were also congratulated on our mouth close ups where we had the camera losing focus as the singer breathed which someone picked up on so we are happy with that.  The various locations were always something we felt looked good so to get confirmation on that through feedback was good as we knew that the look and the varied shots had worked and other people had picked up on it and also felt that it looked really good.

Furthermore we were congratulated on one of the opening shots where we had the view out of the train signifying that we were on a journey. There was various comments saying that people felt that the skate boarding shots looked really well and in particular Steff commented saying how she thought we had the lighting on these particular outside shots spot on and how it worked really well.

There were also more serious with some criticism. We did say to people we welcomed the negative feedback, as it would help us learn on what we didn’t get so right and how we could improve it for the future.  

A couple of people commented on the link saying that they didn’t really get the inside the shop shots, which is exactly what we wanted so that we could give them our explanation as to why we did it. We decided to do the in shop shots as we wanted to add a bit of humour once again I thought if we could have some kind of ‘hide & seek’ game it would work well. Obviously though we needed short and snappy shots in order to fit in with our genre, so we decided to have each band member popping out of the clothes rails in time with a word from the song as this would ensure that the shots didn’t drag on at all and that they remained short and snappy.

Another criticism we received was that ‘the boys look to embarrassed’ we felt this was slightly unfair, however we appreciated the comment. There were other people that then retaliated to that comment which was really good, implying that they didn’t personally believe that the boys were embarrassed at all and that in actual fact the girl commenting that she thought they looked embarrassed was in actual fact just jealous that they couldn’t pull off such moves.

Finally, we took the amount of likes we got as a positive, with many of the people liking the link not actually leaving a comment. We have since had even more likes and a few more comments.  

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

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

During this whole project we have used a wide range of technology, in this question we have to explain how this technology aided us in coming to the end of the project. I think it is fair to say that without the technology we have available to us this project would have become much more difficult that it already was.

As the main task of the challenge was to produce a music video I will start with the technology we used to produce the video rather than the ancillary texts e.g. filming and editing equipment.

Canon PowerShot SX130IS, this was extremely important during the construction process as all of our footage was filmed using this camera. We used this camera as it records footage in full HD, which was important to us, as we wanted our video to be as high a quality as possible. Using this camera definitely improved our music video, as the quality of the video was parallel to that of a professional video. During the filming processes we also used a tripod, however watching our video it is clear to see that some parts clearly do not use a tripod, this was deliberate, as we wanted to give our music video the handheld camera effect. Some shots such at the extreme close up, moving keyboard shots and the walking shots used a tripod as we both felt it was necessary to improve the shot and quality of the video. The tripod was another essential piece of and combined with the camera it was extremely important during the filming process.

The camera was also fundamental during the ancillary tasks as we used this camera to take some of the photographs used on our digipacks again showing its worth during the construction stages.

To edit all of our filming footage we used iMovie, we chose to use this software to edit on as we both experience of using it before and also both have either an iMac or a MacBook which means that we both have constant access to iMovie. During the editing process we both found iMovie extremely user friendly, and were able to achieve excellent editing results with relatively little problems. Without iMovie our video would have taken much longer to edit and would have been much more irritating as we have had to learn to use completely new software in a relatively short space of time. Along with the camera we used iMovie was equally important during the construction stages when producing our music video.

Another crucial piece of technology during this process was our Macintosh computers. This technology is much faster and easier to use than other computers and thanks to this we have been able to produce a greater volume of work in a smaller amount of time thanks to the speed and compatibility of this technology. As we both have this technology available to us it also made it much more simple to share work with each other. This technology has been extremely important through all the stages of this project, as much off the work we have produced has been done on these computers.

One of the most used pieces of technology during this process has to be Blogger. Every piece of work we have produced has been uploaded to Blogger. Using Blogger is a brilliant way of storing work and also allows you to view other people’s work whether its peers or teachers. With Blogger it is very simple to use and has been extremely important during the construction, research, planning and evaluation. Blogger has been pivotal as it allows us to store work and also revisit parts such as research, which is crucial during the evaluation process. Blogger also makes it possible to view other people’s work, which can be used for inspiration on how to present work. Blogger is brilliant in the way that work can be uploaded in many different formats such as word documents, animoto’s, YouTube video’s, Slideshows and prezi’s. 

Another piece of technology we used during this process was Adobe Photoshop CS5. This piece of technology was crucial during the construction process. Without Photoshop it would have been much more difficult to produce our digipacks. Photoshop enabled us to edit photographs and produce professional looking magazine adverts and digipacks. As we both have previous experience of using Adobe Photoshop from AS media we both found it quite easy to use as we were familiar with the controls and tools that the software offers. The task of producing a digipack and magazine advert was in many ways similar to the AS coursework task of producing a magazine, this was helpful as it meant we had experience in this area and we had more knowledge of what was needed. Although we both have previous experience of using Photoshop i feel that over the course of this task our Photoshop skills have improved considerably, I now feel comfortable using the software whereas before I found it quite frustrating and difficult.

One piece of technology we have both regularly used throughout this task has been the iPhone 4s. This has been extremely beneficial during the research and planning stages. We used the iPhone during the planning stage in order to contact each band member and arrange when we were all free to arrange filming sessions. The iPhone also has a group call and messaging feature we allowed us to contact all the band members collectively. There is also a blogger app which is available for the iPhone which meant that we could post work and conduct research whilst on the move. The iPhone 4s also has an extremely high quality camera and video, this meant that we could use the iPhone for some short shots and also to take photographs without losing any clarity or image quality. An example of this is shown in the music video where the closing shot at the train station was filmed on the iPhone 4s. There were also examples in both ancillary tasks as the some pictures used were taken using the iPhone 4s.

Another technology used during the research and planning stages was Twitter. By setting up a twitter account in the name of the band we were able to ask for opinions and conduct research beyond the boundaries of our peers and teachers. This was particularly helpful during research stages as we could alter our work depending on opinions from other people and also ask for advice on subjects such as album names. Overall twitter was important during the task as it allowed us to raise awareness about our band and also influenced some of our decision making. Twitter was also used during the evaluation process as our video was sent to all our followers asking for feedback which could be used constructively during the evaluation.

We also used Facebook in a very similar way, Facebook was particularly helpful when it came to the evaluation process as we were able to ask a wide variety of people for there thoughts about our video. We were also able to use Facebook in a similar way to twitter to aid our research and planning.

We also used TubeChop during the whole process. However we mainly used this as part of the research stages. Tubechop allowed us to break down and analyze particular music videos. This was particularly helpful during the research stages as we used this analysis to help us think of ideas and take inspiration from other music videos.

As we working as a pair during the whole process being able to share work was crucial. The main way we were able to share work with each other was through email. Email was important through all stages of this project as without it sharing work with each other would become much more difficult.

Question 2 How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts. Draft

I think that the combination of our music video and my ancillary task work really well together, both products use the same indie conventions and it is clear that they are both influenced by the same genre of music. Both the music video and the digipack feature the band members in indie style clothing and the general style of the band for example their hair style and mannerisms such as speech. The fact that both my digipack and music video follow the same indie conventions gives my work continuity and allows the audience to grasp an understanding of LA Unknown’s style.

As you can see from all my research and planning I much prefer the more simple digipack ideas. It is very much a case of less is more in my opinion and I believe that keeping the digipack simple and not crowded makes your ideas stand out.

My digipack features a consistent theme of playing cards. The idea behind using playing cards came from the name of the song title itself ‘Shuffle’. At first I was struggling for ideas to use on my digipack, my original idea was to take inspiration from the ‘Notorious XX’ album artwork and produce something similar. However when I began to experiment with this idea I found that it was extremely difficult to recreate something such as this as the idea is much more suited to a singular artist rather than a group. To help come up with new ideas I began to analyse the work we had produced already such as the band name and the song name. This is where I came up with the idea of using playing cards, to strengthen the link to this theme I decided to name the album ‘Solitaire’ due to the obvious association with the card game.   

The front panel of my digipack consists of eight pictures and two text boxes. There are four pictures of playing cards, I took photographs of the picture cards (King, Queen, Jack and Jokers) I then edited them so that the pictures had been erased, leaving just the outline of the card. I then took mid-shot photographs of each of the four band members and used the magnetic lassoo tool on photoshop to cut around each band member. I then placed the picture of each band member inside a picture card to imitate the original pictures.  I then simply added the title of the the band and album using an abstract font which was downloaded from DaFont. I also used two colours using alternative colours for each letter. I decided to use a black and white colour scheme for my digipack as this is in keeping with the colours used on playing cards. I decided to allow the band members to wear what they wanted for each picture as this was an attempt to show there style to the audience, in many ways I would like the audience to experience each members individual style rather than control what they wear.

For the back panel, I stuck strictly to the theme of using playing cards, this again gives my work continuity. I used one picture of the back of a playing card and copied it 4 times. I then cut around the image and created a fan effect placing them as similar as I possibly could to the front. I then layered the song names and numbers over the top of the cards to create another layer. The overall idea of the front and back panels was that they would look like an actual fan or cards with the front and the back of the cards positioned is the same posistions. Although the idea behind the back panel seems very simple I personally think that it is effective and some of the feedback I received reinforces this idea.

On the inside panel of my digipack

The other 4 panels all use the same motif and all feature playing cards in some way shape or form. +

Although my digipack does not use any images from the music video the inspiaration behind the idea came from the song title itself, 'Shuffle'. This song name and its reference to playing cards gave me the idea to use them as the main theme of my digipack. To integrate my digipack ideas and music video further, I decided to name the album 'Solitare' reinforcing the playing card motif. The connections between my song/album name and the inspiration behind my digipack shows continuity and allows the audience can relate to the style of LA Unkown.

After looking at both my video and my digipack I believe that the quite spontaneous and random theme is continuous across both pieces of work.

Question 1 Draft

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

The song that we chose to use for our music video was Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘Shuffle’. We came to this decision as the song itself is from the indie/alternative genre and this is the main style of music we listen to & therefore we wanted to create a video that follows similar conventions to that of other indie/alternative music videos. One way in which our music video follows the indie/alternative genre is through mise en scene. The mise en scene is established and the conventions are followed very early on in our music video with a sweeping shot of the band walking. This shot introduces the band to the audience and it becomes clear straight away that the style and clothing of the band follow the indie/alternative conventions.

[Clip of the band walking]

In many ways we used Bombay Bicycle Clubs own video as inspiration for our video, the idea of the video being spontaneous and having no real meaning other than to entertain. The idea of creating a spontaneous video also follows indie/alternative conventions as it is often the case that bands from this genre of music create quite random and frivolous music videos. This is evident when looking at other bands videos such as; Foals – Red Socks Puige and Mystery jets – Young Love.

[clip of music videos above]

Our video also challenges these conventions as it based upon our conceptions of what band life would be like. Our conception of what band life is like is conveyed in our music video, however, many other people have a very different conception. The media convey a completely different conception of band life, one which includes excessive amounts of alcohol, sex and drugs.

[insert picture of Pete Doherty]

Another way in which our music video follows the conventions of the indie/alternative genre is by using short and quick shots in order to create a fast and interesting tempo in our video. This is particularly evident in the keyboard shots in Leicester, there are 4 different shots ranging from mid-shots to long-shots all within 8 seconds. This was not an attempt at stop motion, we were simply trying to create a range of shots within quick succession of each other to interlink with the fast pace of the music. This technique has

The mise en scene of our video was inspired by Bombay Bicycle Club’s Shuffle video. We loved the idea of having lots of different locations throughout the video and the video representing a trip/journey with the band and then keeping in line with Bombay’s video have it cutting back to a band performance. We did however only have a few shots where we cut back to the band as we didn’t feel our band shots were overly great but mainly we liked having more shots of the band in the various locations as we felt it just looked better.

It is clear from both of our ancillary texts that we have followed the same media conventions and have been influenced by the indie/alternative genre. Our ancillary texts use the same mise en scene as the music video. Although our ancillary texts are very different there is a clear link to the music video. Both of our ancillary texts contain photos of each band member it is clear from these photos and the bands appearance that our ancillary texts follow the same mise en scene as our music video.  

Bombay Bicycle Club have various shots in which the band are just chilling out with each other with not a lot happening. We decided we also wanted this in our video; however we chose the shots well and placed them when the music is slower and more relaxed itself. We also placed one of these shots early on in the video in an attempt to introduce the band and their style immediately to our target audience.

[Clip off walking shot, train station, Jamie]

One way that our music video challenges certain conventions is the way that our music lacks a specific narrative idea. We were well aware of this, however we didn’t really want to have story or a particular meaning to the video, and we simply wanted to show our audience what a day in the life of our band is like.  With videos such as ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ from Arctic Monkeys, this has a clear narrative and is totally centred on the life of a drug fiend who funds her habits through prostitution. This shows a binary opposition between our video which completely lacks a narrative and the artic monkeys which is completely centred on the narrative idea.

[Clip of both videos]

Question 2 Preparation

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

My main inspiration for my digi-pack pack came from Klaxon's debut EP - 'Surfing The Void'. There front cover as you can see is colourful, vibrant and full of what seems random pictures however when examined closer you see there is a lot of thought behind the chosen images. I knew straight away I wanted to replicate something similar as I liked this idea.

I believe that my theme of what seems random-ness fits in very well with my song choice, this being 'Shuffle'. Shuffle is a word that represents alternativeness very well in terms of you don't know what to expect, therefore I believe that my digipack links very well to my song choice and also the genre of indie/alternative well as I have followed a lot of indie conventions that are commonly used by other artists of the same genre. Obviously my front cover represents Klaxons' front cover reasonably well as they both have the aspect of what seems random with the varying pictures used to make one big collage.
I took a lot of inspiration from this cover and reconstructed my favourite parts of their cover to produce my own. I took the idea of spelling the band name in a different way than just writing it out and I therefore wrote 'LA Unknown' in a wordsearch and highlighted the words. I also liked the way that they had made faces out of different things so I took pictures of 2 of my friends eyes, one greeny coloured, one hazel, used a drawn nose and finally got a picture of a girl's lips with some lipstick on and her pouting. Furthermore I used the convention of using a 'torn'effect on the images, I managed to do this using an effect in photoshop.

My back cover is very simplistic. This choice came about as I didn't want to over complicate things with an already extremely busy front cover, I thought it would be best to just keep things basic on the back with minimal text. However, I thought that before I did this I'd have a look around and what had already done before. I straight away pulled up some examples of more simplistic back covers, in particular Mark Ronson's debut EP - 'Version'.

This cover is very much something I wanted to recreate. It is simply a black background with the song titles in white, the barcode and some of the legal things that have to go on there for copyright purposes. However I didn't want to have the font so bold, or big, and also wanted it centred. Furthermore I chose not to have any featuring artists as it would just add more detail and writing that I didn't want. Therefore I followed this indie/alternative convention however added my own twist on it.

The album itselef  is called '?'.

I chose to do this as I feel it fits with not only the lead single 'Shuffle', but it also fits well with the band being called LA Unknown. It fits with 'Shuffle' in the sense that you don't know what to listen to, so you shuffle things, and obviously related to the 'Unknown' in the band name.

Furthermore, my album consists of 10 tracks. I chose to do this because it seems that with a bit of research artists that are releasing albums these days are now only really lasting around 35 minutes and the 10 track mark is perfect for getting 10 short, snappy, indie songs out there to their fans. I think it fits well with the idea of my simplistic back cover as it means that I won't have a big long list, instead a simple, basic one.

Despite these seeming somewhat slightly random there has been a lot of thought put into them. First of all with the track named eyelids this is done because I wanted to feature various pictures on the front cover of eyes and I thought it would be fitting to include a song with a eye reference. Furthermore, I opened the album on this track as when you wake up you open your eyes hence it being track 1. In terms if golden sun, this is another track that relates to the morning hence the start of the album and I like the way the sun is described as golden. Young Love is a track that was released by the Mystery Jets. I really like the song and believe it fits well with my genre, I once again decided to feature it towards the first half of the album due to the obvious use of Young in the track name implying it's early on.

Lotus flower was a track I knew was going on my album from day one, due to the fact I had plans for various shots of flowers for my front cover in my mind. It's a song from Radiohead who are a band that I listen to a lot and wanted to get some kind of reference of them into my band. Secret Door is a track that comes from Arctic Monkeys. I picked it really because of the use of the word Secret and the way that everything seems a bit elusive, which is definitely the feel I wanted to get across for LA Unknown. Two Steps, Twice comes from a band called Foals. I'm not too sure why I wanted it in there, but I really like the title of the song so decided to get it in there. Track number 7 sees the single from the album 'Shuffle' appear. I chose to put this in at number 7 purely for the reason that it's so many people's lucky/favourite number and with it being the debut single it's likely to be someone's favourite track on the album at first. After that we have Jigsaw, once again another song from Radiohead, however this time I chose to use it because of the fact that my front cover is something of a Jigsaw and I believed it represented the whole idea really well. Good Evening is my track 9, this was chosen as it's coming to the end of the album. As the night draws to an end you would say good evening, so to give the idea that the album is coming to an end I thought it would be a good song name to use towards the end. It is also a song title that is used by Bombay Bicycle Club.  My last track name 'infinity' comes from The XX. I really like the idea that there is no end and it never stops so wanted to give this same impression for the album; just because it has ended doesn't mean that the meaning has stopped applying to everything. It also links in with the never ending spiral that I plan to have on my front cover.

My 3 page spread on the inside of my digipack was an idea that came through seeing lots of different digipacks of my own. I had a look and soon found that people had either used 3 seperate images that all overlap and link in some way to make one big picture, or they had simply used a panormanic style picture and had it over all the three pages.

I decided I wanted to emulate the same with my inside cover and therefore wanted a panoramic of some woodland spreading accross the 3 with somehow encoporating in some way my torn, colourful and 'random' effect. I believe that I achieved this by me putting in all the band's instruments, however I put them on top of a newspaper background and once again gave it the 'torn effect'. Furthermore, I added in some colour by using a few flower pattern effects on photshop and put them in where the bushes were to give me some colour and give the whole pack some continuity. Finally I decided that I'd make the whole image black and white as I felt it fitted a lot better with the whole colour scheme of my pack and it also followed the convetions of similar artists to 'LA Unknown'.

Finally my other page was once again very simple. It consisted of the 4 band members, on top of either newspaper that I had literally torn my self or a word search which i'd also torn. The images of the band members were then merged onto either the word search or the newspaper and then this was put on top of my black background, once again used to keep things simple. I believe that the images of the band members helped give the buyers of the album an idea of the personality of the band and what they actually stand for and represent. Obviously it was essential that I had the band members dressed in the style I wanted to represent - indie/alternative as this adds to the overall feel of the pack. 

Here is my final Digipack for reference:

In reference to the video we believe