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

Combination of ancillary texts...

For our promotional package we decided to use the our final front cover for our promotional poster. This included the main image and the album name and group name in our chosen font. We felt this would be effective because the promotional poster is used to create awareness of an artists album release, so if we used the album cover for the whole surface area of the poster we are creating this awareness to an audience.

The promotional poster is a more complex version of our album front cover. However we did need to think about the colours we wanted to use for additional textual information. We added the album release date underneath the album name so it will catch the target audiences eye to both the release date and album name, which could lead to more album sales. We chose to use white, pink and purple for the colouring of our additional font as we felt that it fit in well with the colours of the main image. The single names are in the pink and purple to highlight the tracks that will feature on the album, again to entice the audience into buying it. I think the colours we have used throughout work well together because they're very feminine which represent our created girl group as a whole and they also represent the group members because they like these particular colours as well.



Combination of ancillary texts with our music video (main product)
Since our ancillary texts do not include images of our created artist, it may be harder for us to draw comparisons between our video and our CD cover.

Our whole CD package includes the aspect of powder paint on the main images, even within our artist fact files we have used the powder paint image behind the file image. We have done this because powder is included a lot in our video, whether it was in the balloon popping scenes or the powder paint being thrown at the actresses scenes. We have done this because 'Louder' is the song we have used for our music video and it is also the first song that features on our album track list, by doing this it is a way to promote the song as a whole and to gain audience awareness.

 The images above show screen grabs from our music video, including the aspect of powder paint which we have used within our ancillary texts. We have done this to create a connection between our main product and ancillary texts, this will help the audience to recognise these images from when they have watched the music video on social networking platforms or YouTube.

We composed a questionnaire to see what the public thought about our ancillary texts and main product, and whether the two aspects combine well together or not.

From the answers, we found that our ancillary texts work well as combination to our main product because we have used the aspect of powder paint and colour within both tasks. This is good as it will show a good representation of our music video, and the song we have used for this is the first song to feature on our album, which is useful for advertising the song as a whole. The audience will be able to create a link. However from feedback we have realised that some individuals found it a little difficult to read the lyrics on our lyric sheet due to the brightly coloured background image. So next time we will have to consider what colour to use for our text and to choose a font that is more noticeable against our main image. I also feel that we could have made our lyric sheet more interesting to look at like we did with our artist fact files, for example we could have included the title of the song at the top of the lyric page using our signature font that we used for the CD cover.

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

What we did...
To present our video we used FinalCut to put all of our shots and footage together to make our final product. We decided to use this programme because we were familiar with it from AS level, and by using this platform again we were able to discover new transitions and effects that we have used within our video, for example the split screen. By using this programme we feel that we were able to create our video to the best of our ability, whilst also learning new editing techniques for future projects that we may carry out. We used a lot of fast cuts throughout our entire video, but we done this in order for the footage to go with the beat of the song. We felt was effective because not only does this create quite a dramatic effect it also creates flow within the video rather than the shots not going with the song at all or them being out of sync. With the fast cuts we are also able to put as many different shots and settings in as possible, which shows that we have thought about how we could make our video more appealing to the audience by using the different shot types and not just one setting. We have also used a lot of close ups, whether it was of the actresses or when we filmed the balloons popping. The close ups of the popping balloons shows the impact of the powder paint escaping the balloon, again to create dramatic effect, and the close up of the actresses allows the audience to see that the lip syncing was on point and this shows that we wanted the video to look as professional as possible.

To add to this for our ancillary texts we used Photoshop through out to create our entire digipak, including the CD front cover and back cover, lyric page, artist fact file and promotional poster. Again with the use of Photoshop we were able to make sure our digipak worked well with the genre we had chosen for our video and that it linked with the artist that we were trying to portray, which was a teenage girl band. We went against the typical convention of using a group image for the CD cover and promotional poster as we felt that the images we had taken of the powder paint splattered across the ground looked quite effective, particularly with our video. So we took those images and played around with the colours, saturation and contrast until we were happy with what it looked like, so this made our main image, and the colour choices of pink, blue, green and purple created a feminine look to the cover which we felt represented our artists personalities and image.

Comparisons to real videos...
Pop music videos are usually performance based through choreographed dance or in a narrative storyline which connotes the song lyrics. Pop music videos tend to be quite fun and lively, depending on the pop song the video will most likely fit in with the beat/tempo of the song at hand. The artists will usually wear mainstream/popular trended clothing in the videos and if it is a pop group in a video they will show each member individually when it comes to their part of the song, and a group shot when they sing together. A real life example could be Little Mix or of course Neon Jungle (original singers of Louder), which could be compared to our own artist within our music video.

Within Little Mix's Little Me video they use a lot of close ups of the group members, to portray the drama of the song as it is slow tempo and has a deep meaning behind it. Although our song choice does not have an equally deep meaning to it, we have still used a lot of close ups to show the intensity of the song and the actresses/singers facial expressions. Close ups are typical conventions within pop genre videos, especially if the song is a slow one because it shows the meaning behind the lyrics or the mood of the song as a whole.

We have used a similar group shot to Little Mix as well. Girl bands tend to use a lot of group shots when they harmonizing together in a song, and you can usually see the setting around the group as well. Their video is completely black and white through out, whereas our video has colour as well as various black and white shots, but we have done this in order to create more of an impact when we use the powder paints and use fast cuts.

Looking at another Little Mix video, we saw similarities in their Change You Life one. Both this video and our own video are performance based videos, not showing an kind of narrative. Pop videos sometimes use an element of flashbacks in videos, whether it is a narrative or performance based one. Little Mix's video shows flashbacks of the group on tour, portraying an element of friendship and reminiscence, and this is similar to the beginning of our video where it cuts between the glow stick shots and the flashback shots of the actresses laughing and joking around when we were filming. This allows the audience to see snippets of an artists life behind the camera as you can see them as their natural selves, even though they're in a music video.

In relation to costume, the typical convention for this in pop genre is that the artist would usually wear casual clothes and tight dressy clothes. Tight dressy clothes are used within Neon Jungles 'Louder' video which allows Mulvey's theory of 'male gaze' to be suggested. Males would see the group members as sexual objects and women would think 'I wish I looked like that', but most pop artists will wear tight dressy clothes in order to look trendy or to be a sex icon if they wish to do so. We decided to challenge this convention as our actresses have worn casual clothes within our entire music video, but still look trendy at the same time. We took the idea of wearing dark clothing from Neon Jungles costumes, but then decided to include fluffy, hooded coats because we were filming outside in the woods and we wanted quite a cosy feel to that particular setting. When it came to the powder paint and black/white background settings we decided on monochrome colours, but wearing more skimpy tops in order to fit in with the natural/plain setting.

Forms-Ancillary Texts...

We have challenged a lot of the conventions of a pop genre CD/album, the first convention being that we have not used an image of the artist as our main front cover image, we have used a powder paint image which will link in with our music video. However we have used quite feminine colours on this image to portray the femininity of our create group. The font used for both album back covers are however quite similar, they're in all caps which allows the song names to stand out to an audience in a shop or website.

Another typical convention is the font used for the album title and artist. Most pop artists have their own signature font that is present on all of their music products, so they're recognisable to an audience. We chose a font that we wanted to be our 'signature font' and have place this boldly on the front cover to attract the audiences eye so they know who our group is. Neon Jungle's album cover also uses this as you can see their group name is written in their signature font.

We have then included the convention of a barcode, record label logo and copyright message to ensure that the album can easily be purchased/scanned in shops and that the record label and group own all rights to the album and it should not be used for copyright purposes.

Audience feedback of music video

In order to get feedback for our music video we uploaded our project onto all of our social networking platforms. So we uploaded  it onto YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr in order to get comments from an audience to see what we have done well with our video and what we could improve on. We feel that we were able to get the most feedback from Facebook and YouTube because they are the most popular social networking websites, meaning a wider audience will see our video and give feedback.

TWITTER

We uploaded our video onto Twitter, but we have not yet gained any comments or feedback on this platform, however since we uploaded the YouTube link we were able to gain more views just by sharing our video onto this social networking platform.

YOUTUBE FEEDBACK

We uploaded our final video onto Becca's personal YouTube channel then shared it onto other sisal networking sites from there, after one day we have gained quite a few views plus a few comments stating that positive aspects about our work. We even got a comment saying that our video looked professional, which gave us a confidence boost.

FACEBOOK FEEDBACK

From looking at our Facebook feedback, we were quite surprised to see that we had not gotten as much feedback on this social networking platform than we did when we made our AS project. However we did get likes and a comment which are all positive feedback, and considering the number of views we have seen from YouTube we can tell that people have been watching our video, which is good as this means it is appealing to a wider audience. 

We are glad we uploaded our music video to social net workings websites as it has allowed us to get a little feedback from an online point of view and also quite a few views. This has helped us to see what people think of our video whether it's was positive or negative feedback. 

Storyboard for music video

When we made our storyboard for our music video we decided to use post it notes for each shot that we used. This was we were able to keep our work neat and if we went wrong with any shot we could just re-draw them or move them to a different place when making the sequence.

We chose a variety of different shots and effects to portray the various conventions of the pop genre and to attract our target audience. For all the shots we had to draw them individually and if they contained an effect or transition we noted down what they were on the post it. We also stated which actress was in the shot by noting down their names in brackets on the post it. 

Filming schedule

To make sure we get all of our footage done on time for editing we decided to make a schedule for when we're all available to film, so we're able to see what settings to film and when.

We first got together as a whole group in the Christmas holidays on the 2nd January, we planned to film two settings on this day, the first being the woods setting, and the second being the powder paint setting against a black background.

When filming the woods setting we had to decide what sort of background we wanted behind the singers, we chose to film different parts of the woods for different lyrics, to create a range of different shots, but we mainly used close ups to emphasise the lyrics and facial expressions of the singers. We decided to film panning shots for the chorus, circling both singers to create more variety, but we will be filming the black and white background setting and stage setting other days to get more shots which we can work with for editing.

The powder paint setting was simple to film but very messy, we used a black sheet as a backdrop that the singers would stand in front of whilst having the powder paint thrown at them. We filmed this at Viki's house in her back garden and it didn't take long at all top film, we played the song on repeat and threw the paint at both of the singers when we thought it fit well with the music, which was mostly during the chorus as it is more dramatic. We filmed a lot of the shots as close ups and mid shots so we could see the paint more clearly and how it impacted against the singers plain black costumes and background. We also improvised by filming the girls blowing the powder paint and a little bit of glitter out of their hands to see it fly out of their palms. 

We then arranged to film the black and white setting at Becca's house on the 13th January, but we were only able to include 3/4 of our group members because Viki was ill, so we could only film Becca's parts but we decided not to postpone the filming all together because we felt that it was better to get as much filming done as possible so we have more to work with when we were editing. We had to reschedule filming Viki's part when she got better.

On the 14th January we decided that we will film the extra footage that we wanted, so the balloons popping and the title spelt out with glow sticks, and any initial footage or images we wanted. We filmed these shots at my house, however only 3/4 group members were present because Viki was still off school ill. It didn't take very long to film at all, we used a funnel to transfer the powder paint and glitter into the balloons and then we blew them up and tied them, we then stood in front of a black sheet and used a pin to pop them whilst we were filming, so we caught the paint exploding out of the balloon which we feel looked really effective. We also popped some party poppers to see how effective it would look on camera but it didn't look as good as the balloons. With the spare powder paint we chucked it onto the floor to create a spattered effect which we then photographed as an idea for our digipak, we also drew V.S into the paint to stand for Vintage Strobe, which will also be considered for our digipak. Finally when it was dark enough we used glow sticks to spell out Louder and filmed this as an idea for the title at the beginning of our video.

When Viki came back into school we decided that we would film her shots for the black and white setting on the 27th January. We arranged to go to Becca's house again to film as she had the black and white screen, and we made sure that Viki had the correct colour costume (white) so that she contrasts the black background that she will be filmed in front of. We also had to make sure that the shots that we filmed of Viki were identical to the ones we filmed of Becca a few weeks earlier, we were able to do this by looking at still images of the footage that we already had.

Editing process of video

Since we only have two more settings to film for our music video, we decided that we would start editing as soon as possible  with the footage that we had. Becca is the main editor within our group but we will always have input with what the video will look like in terms of effects and transitions.

 We decided to add all clips and footage that we have onto our FinalCut document so we know that we have a lot more to work with and what footage wouldn't be as good to use. With some clips we would use them more than once but change the filters and speed if we wanted to make it look different, also this would avoid our video becoming too repetitive.

We chose to crop some of our clips because we did not need the whole thing, we wasn't sure how to do this so we researched how to, we now know how to do it so this will be very useful throughout the editing process. With the balloon popping clips we decided that we wanted to play around with the colours of the powder paint coming out of the balloon, in the image shown the powder paint is blue but it was originally green, so we moved the colour charts around to get the right shade of blue that we wanted. This will again allows our video to be less repetitive just buy changing the colour of powder paint.

 When changing something to our video it was important that we rendered the whole video so we didn't lose any footage when we played it back at the end of lesson, it was also crucial to save our work every so often and at the end of the lesson so we didn't lose our video completely. In the image on the left you can see the video being rendered but also that we have placed two clips on top of each other to create a faded effect, so the powder paint footage would be faded, behind the clip of Becca in front of a white background. This allows us to create a dramatic effect with the colour and impact of the powder paint, but also creating contrast, which is one of our main aims throughout the video, because we feel that contrast is a good way to create a dramatic effect.

We decided that we wanted to do almost a split screen for our video to highlight the contrasting colours that we chose to use for our setting and costumes. The shots of Becca and Viki were shot separately in font of the different backgrounds so when we wanted to place them together we had to crop both shots, as if it was a simple image, and then place them on top of each other in the correct places so that they were equal width to show a back to back effect. We then just had to make sure that the lip syncing was in time with the song and that both girls were lip syncing the lyrics at the exact same time.

When thinking about how to begin and end our video we wasn't sure how to go about it, we knew that we wanted to use the shots that we filmed of the word 'Louder' spelt out in glow sticks but we didn't know how to go about filling the bits of the song that we didn't have footage for. So to experiment we decided to use clips where Becca and Viki were acting quite natural e.g. laughing so we were able to fill in any bits of the song that did not yet have footage. This proved very helpful as we were getting very close to our dead line and Viki was not in school for us to film any extra shots, so the spare shots that we had from filming the first time came in handy for filling any empty space.







When it came to the end of our editing process we made sure that all of our shots were in the right place and the lip syncing was in time with the song. We rendered the whole thing for the final time, saved it and then exported it using QuickTime Movie to make it into a movie file. We would then begin to upload our music video onto social media websites (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and onto YouTube to gain audience feedback.

Lyric page for digipak

As well as creating fact files for our group we also made a simple lyric page, which will also feature in the inside of our CD digipak. The lyrics that we are using will be our chosen song 'Louder' because this is the song that we are using for our music video.

When artists in real life use lyric pages in their albums/singles they usually include the lyrics for all of the songs that are featured on the CD, however we are only including one song as we have created our own original song titles for the rest of our album, and they obviously do not have a real song or lyrics.

When we created our lyric page we used Photoshop again as we were confident in using the programme as a whole. We decided to use the image from our back cover of the album as the background image of the lyric page, particularly because it features the initials of our artists name Vintage Strobe and we agreed that the vibrant colours in the image was quite effective as a whole. We chose a bold lettered font and decided to have the writing as white as it shows up against the background image clear enough for an audience to read them. If I was to change anything about this I would have added the song title at the top of the lyric page in a quirky font from DaFont, similar to the ones that we have used in the fact files.

Artist fact file for digipak

To add to our digipak front and back cover we had to create an artists fact file which would be placed on the inside of the CD case, these are very common within real artists albums, particularly if it was a deluxe edition of an album.

We decided to use our album front cover for the background of the fact files then we added an image of a file template, to link with the idea of fact 'file'. We added an image of each group member and then used various fonts from DaFont to write out 'fact file and 'Viki' and 'Becca'. For this we had to make sure we used our own images, and we were able to merge each aspect of the fact file into one thing by using Photoshop. We included general information about each group member to showcase their personalities and life style, we then downloaded and included a couple of feminine stamps to add onto the images. We wanted the fact files to look quite quirky and nice to look at.