Final Magazine Advert

This is the final version of our magazine advert, after a few draft versions we finally settled for this one. We used the magazine advert research to look at the generic conventions of magazine adverts and tried to follow these conventions. We decided to use an image of our artist as the backdrop to make her a focal point as this is her debut album. We also put an image of the album on the advert to make it easier for our target audience to link the album to the artist. We used star ratings from The Guardian a respectable newspaper to entice our audience to purchase the album.

Final Digipak Designs

This is the front cover of the album.

This is the back of the album. We played around with the shadows and kept the same styled font throughout so that our audience can recognise the artist through the same styled text.

This is the inside panel of the album. We used acknowledgements for this panel, a common convention of albums.

This is the second inside panel. We decided to put an image of the artist and fade it out a little because this is where the CD will sit.

Final Evaluation

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

• When thinking about the genre to choose, we knew we didn’t want to do Rap/RnB we decided to try something different that we didn’t really listen to.
• We used Jamendo to research different genres as it has a broad range of uncopyrighted artists.
• Using Jamendo really helped because we had never heard of most of the artists on there, this allowed us to make our artist whoever we wanted them to be because we wouldn't be basing decisions for costume and artist image on that of the real artist.
• Chose Indie Pop, began researching artists such as Adele, Lily Allen, Eliza Doolittle and The Tings Tings.
• Common for an indie pop music video to contain narrative, conformed to this convention in using narrative to depict the story we felt the lyrics were trying to convey. 
• Also common for indie pop to use bright colours and daytime, conformed to this in using bright colours in our artist costume and shooting the video during the day. 
• Our video seems to evolve as it begins quite enclosed in the house scene and gradually moves on to more open spaces until it concludes at a beach, one of the most open space. This  effectively depicts the character's journey to freedom.    
• Needed to ensure that our actor was confident in front of the camera so when it came to lipsynching we were weren't struggling to get our actor to sing.
• Chose Sonia because as a performing arts student, performance and being in the spotlight is something that came easy to her. 
• Used a vast variety of locations because of our narrative but also to have things to cutaway to when editing, in order to maintain the audience's interest. 
• Ancillary task - researched different magazine adverts and album covers using similar conventions on our magazine advert and digipak. The main things we used from our research was the star rating, putting an image of the album onto the advert so that our audience could make the link as this is her debut album, logos of social networking sites and where the album can be bought. Also gave us ideas of ways to ensure that our audience buy the CD and not just download the album.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• Audience feedback has been very beneficial, when first deciding on the song we went to the other media class and had them listen to the song. Gave us ideas of what they thought the video should be like.
• When we first began brainstorming we hadn't even thought of using a beach, came about as a result of audience feedback and I think this location made our video even better. Also gave us ideas for costume and what they saw the artist looking like.
• When were ready to go to Leigh on Sea, we were advised to check the tide clocks to ensure that when we were filming the tide wouldn't be far out.
• When we first filmed the house scene and uploaded the footage, we thought the lighting wasn't too great, we put a poll on our blog to see if our audience felt we needed to reshoot the scene with more light and a vast majority of them said yes. This was helpful the second time shooting was much better.
• When we first filmed in Trafalgar Square, we recieved feedback that we didn't get many establishing shots and it wasn't very obvious that we were in Trafalgar Square so from this we went back to reshoot.
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• -the most helpful advice we got was from the feedback we got from the other class and miss about needing a variety of locations and going to Leigh on Sea as it was a very good place to shoot our music video
  -for the ancillary task, specifically the digipak we had strong ideas about the front and back cover of the digipak however we were struggling with what to put on the inside, we researched other digipak covers like Leona Lewis and found ideas that help attract audiences into buying the albums such as giving special offers and exclusivity
  -from other feedback we received, many people wanted us to give special offers like prices off concert tickets but miss didn't like it so we chose not to do that
  
  How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?
  
  -we used the Internet mainly by going onto websites such as YouTube to listen and watch other music videos on indie pop artists
  -we went onto google to download examples of music covers and magazine cover (evidence of this is on the blog as we have Lily Allen and Adele album covers on the blog)
  -Jamendo was used to download the song and helped us choose a suitable copyright free song
  -we used blogger as another source of research as we created polls for the audiences to help give us an idea what the audience would expect from a song of our chosen music genre
  -we also used mobile phones to help play the song whilke recording our video to make it easier for sonia sing along to the song
  -we also used lighting for some of the clips and for images for the magzines and digipaks
  -we used photoshop which was very key as it helped us make our magazine covers and digipaks as it was a software which helped add effects and transform our normal images into a appropriate one that would suit a magazine or digipak
  -we did rough cuts/ practices so that we can get feedback on it and make the necessary chages required
  -the images of other album covers were downloaded and posted on the blog from home
  - we also used the internet to find logos of social network sites where people can follow the artist and shops they can purchase the album from (HMV, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter were downloaded from google images)

Audience Feedback: Music Video + Ancillary Tasks

Both A2 Media classes gathered for a showing of everyone's music videos. The feedback that we got for our music video was very good. Everyone understood the narrative and liked the way our narrative fit in with the lyrics of the song. They felt that there were a variety of camera angles which made the video interesting to watch. They also liked our ancillary tasks but felt that one of the panels needed to link in with the other three which had gold and orange hues on them. They felt that this panel was too different from the rest.

They particulary liked our magazine advert and liked the fact that we placed an image of the album on it to allow the audience to recognise the album in stores.

Draft Version: 4 Panel Digipak

After the photoshop workshop, we had really strong ideas for the front and back panels of our digipak, but we were a little stuck when it came to the last two panels. These were some of our original ideas, however after receiving feedback from our peers and teacher we have decided to develop them. 

 

 

This was an idea which we really liked because we are trying to promote our artist so pictures would help to make the artists more recognisable. This would be where the CD would sit.

This was another one of our ideas. Acknowledgements are common in albums and so we also wanted to use this in our digipak.

Lyrics are also common in albums and we wanted to incorporate this in our digipak, however from audience feedback we realised that unless we were going to have a lyric book, it wouldn't really make sense to have the lyrics for just one song on the album. 

We wanted to have some sort of promotional offer in our digipak, that would act as an added incentive to buy the CD and not just download the album. So we came up with the idea of a discounted priced ticket for Elle Lefant's tour. 

Magazine Advert Draft Designs

This is our first draft magazine cover. We used a similar layout to the Hawksley Workman magazine advert from our research in making the image of the artist the background and having the artist name going across the middle. We still need to play around with the colours and sizes and add some more features common to a magazine advert e.g star ratings.

This is similar to the advert above but we thought adding colour to the artist name would make the advert better.
















This is another draft we felt that there was too much text on the advert so we moved things around and changed the text because we felt that the text in previous drafts didn't really suit the artist. We also added an image of the album as we had seen this on other magazine ads and thought it was important to do this because this is her debut album. We cut down the text by adding logos and made the text vertical in an attempt to make the image a focal point.

Editing

We have finally started editing the final version of our music video. We couldn't begin editing properly until we had re-filmed the house scene which is the first scene. If we hadn't have waited, everything we had edited would just have become out of sync when we slotted the new footage in. After doing our rough cut, we have found editing much easier as we are putting shots in the same sequence as they were before and then going over them more finely afterwards. We have found editing to be much quicker that way.

Day 6 of Shooting

Today we went to film the scene outside the house where our artist is singing the chorus. We took a variety of shots so that we have a some clips to cut to if we don't have enough footage. We used two flip cameras as one was running out of battery but it was useful having two as we decided to film the same scene from several angles. We are hoping to film the house scene on Thursday as we didn't have good enough lighting so this time we will be using extra lighting.

Review of Footage So Far

Having edited a rough cut of our footage and posted it on our blog, we have got some feedback from our audience. The general comments we got were very positive so we know we're on the right track in terms of editing.

We are happy with our footage so far its helpful seeing it all together as we are better able to spot things we made need to reshoot. For example, after uploading the footage from the house scene we can see that we may need to refilm it because of the poor lighting. We have added a poll onto our blog to get audience feedback on this.

Posted by Maria Grillo  

Shooting: 11/12/10

The start to our shoot could be summed up in one word: Nightmare.

We went to shoot the scenes at Leigh-on-Sea. We planned to meet at West Ham Station for 10am to get to Leigh-on-Sea for around 11am. We all met up as planned and got on the train. We were about 10 minutes away from Leigh-on-Sea so we decided to get ourselves ready by putting the tape in the camera. However the camera kept displaying an error message saying: REMOVE THE CASSETTE. This was unusual as we had never seen this message before, when we removed the tape to our horror we found the camera had chewed our tape. We had some spare tapes and hoped that it was a problem with the tape but we put in another tape only to have the camera chew that one too. 

Luckily I had my FlipVideo camera on me which we were forced to use to film our footage. This wasn't ideal but it was better than going all that way only to have to come back with no footage. As we were at the seaside we checked the tide clocks the day before to see when the tide would be coming in. The tide was very far out when we got there so we planned to film scenes on the cobbled streets around the village whilst we waited for the tide to come in. Thankfully, the rest of the shoot ran smoothly.

Posted by Maria Grillo

Experimenting with Photoshop - Magazine Advert 2

Today we had a magazine designer come in to teach us the basics in how to use Photoshop. The image above is the advert that I began making in the workshop. We looked at the typical things you'd find in a magazine advert during research from a previous lesson. Although, the advert isn't finished it does include the main things you'd expect to find on a magazine advert for example the name of the artist, the album release date and where the consumer could buy the album.      

Posted by Maria Grillo

Planned Shoots

08/11/10
We have decided to re shoot the scenes in Trafalgar Square. After uploading our footage, we realised that whilst there we failed to get a establishing shots or any shots of famous landmarks that we could cutaway to. In addition, as this scene is a time lapse scene, it was important that our actor stayed completely still for a long length of time so that when the footage is sped up, she is still throughout. However, we didn't film her standing still for long enough.

09/11/10
On Thursday, we have decided to go and film the scenes for the first verse and chorus. This is the argument scene between our two actors. We had originally planned to do this at Sonia's house but Sonia mum wasn't as keen on us filming there so we changed our location to my house.

Posted by Maria Grillo

Magazine Advert Research

Studying 5 magazine adverts from different artists allowed me to understand what we could possibly use in our magazine advert. From looking at a variety of different adverts, I was able to understand the common features of an advert.

Manic Street Preachers

This advert by Manic Street Preachers is effective as it shows a man taking a photograph using a polaroid camera something that is rare in use today. This gives the advert an edgy look. The advert uses star ratings and comments from well known magazines and newspapers as a persuasive technique in order to convince readers that the album is good so they will buy it. This is a main feature of the advert and takes up a large part of the page.  

Weller

This advert by Weller as it makes the artist stand out as a solo artist as it shows all eyes are on him, the image is very dominant and the use of strobe lighting and spotlights add to this. This is also used to advertise his documentary and as it is a CD/ DVD box set, this gives the reader an extra incentive to buy the CD as they are getting more. We could also give the reader something extra to persuade them into buying our artists album and not just download it.

Warpaint

Just like our artist, this is Warpaint's debut album. It is interesting to see that the image of the band is the most dominant on the page. This shows that they are establishing themselves as a band to a world that is unfamiliar with them. The use of star ratings from magazines makes the advert persuasive the magazine's have a good reputation in the music industry and so their opinion would be taken seriously.

Hawksley Workman
The image of the artist is the background image. This is effective as the image is dominant and makes the artist stand out. Also, the album image is also effective as it allows the audience to make the link between the artist and album, so they know what to look for when buying the album.











Crowded House
This advert uses an animation of a bear, unlike the other adverts there is no image of the artist. This makes it seem as though their name speaks for itself and because they have such an established fan base they don't need to show their picture. 













Posted by Maria Grillo

Rough Cut Footage - Verse 2

 

Hey guys, we would like get some feedback from you concerning our music video

1) Watching the music video, what do you understand from the narrative?

2) Is the location suitable for the narrative?

3) Does the artist look like another artist in the indie-pop genre?

4) Is there anything else you would like to see in the music video?

5) What do you understand from the narrative in this clip?

Shooting: 24/11/10

Today we went to film the scenes at Shadwell Basin. This is the scene immediately after our actor leaves the house angrily after an argument with her boyfriend. This is where a lot of the lip synching during the song takes place and so it was important that we planned this shoot well. In addition, we also had another actor on set so we had to make sure that both actors were ok and knew what they were doing at all times.

The day ran relatively smoothly. We played the song in the background so that our actor could sing along  on the beat, to make the lip synching easier. We ensured that we had a variety of shots and took establishing shots of the location to give us things to cut away to in editing. We didn't have many problems during this shoot the only thing again was the weather and our actors weren't really used to working in those conditions.  


Posted by Maria Grillo

Shooting: 23/11/10

Yesterday, we went to film in Trafalgar Square. This is the bridge of the song and where we would like to do a time lapse with our actor standing still amongst people walking fast around her. The lyrics at this point say 'Gotta run run run' over and over again and we thought that it would be a nice contrast to have our actor at a stand still whilst the world around seems to be going in fast forward.

This was our first day shooting and the main problem we had was the weather. Although, we looked at the weather forecast for the week we didn't anticipate that the weather would be that cold, it was especially difficult for our actor who wasn't able to wrap up warm as we had to film. The day was ok.  

Posted by Maria Grillo

Weather Forecast

Since we will be filming this week we have taken into account the weather as we do not want any surprises along the way. This week will be dry but a bit cold and so this is ideal. As we do not know what the weather will be like next week, we have decided to film all of our outside footage this week so we can be sure to have to same weather in our footage. 

Animatics - Part 1

We split our song into two sections and all did the storyboards for that section. We all took responsibility to create an animatic for our section. Here is part 1:

This is the first verse and chorus of the song. It begins with the artist and the actor playing her boyfriend having an argument. In this argument, the boyfriend is pleading for another chance and the artist is ready to let the relationship go. We see her turning her back on her boyfriend and look at a framed picture of them during happier times, the scene cuts away to the present and when in cuts back the boyfriend is no longer in the picture. This reflects how he has disappeared in the artist's mind. This rest of the section shows the artist leaving the house in tears at the breakdown in their relationship.  

Posted by Maria Grillo and Mirza Rahman

Sample Footage

Today, we went out to film some practice shots for our music video. It was important that we did this as we plan to have shots of our artist walking towards the camera, this means our camera person will have to walk backwards when filming. By practicing, it allows the camera person to get use to this and focus on keeping the camera steady.

We experimented with several shots including side shots, low angle shots and high angle shots. The location we chose had a really nice line of trees and so we thought would could experiment in editing with jumpcuts by setting the camera on the tripod and filming our artist next to every tree. Doing this has given us even more ideas of shots that we could film to give us a variety when it comes to editing.

The video below shows an small edited clip of the sample footage we shot, we just focused on a few lines of the second verse of the song.

Posted by Maria Grillo

Photoshoot

Our target for Tuesday's lesson was:

• to finish story boarding
• take photos of our characters (as we would like to use these pictures as a prop when shooting the bedroom scene)

In our storyboard, we have a close up shot of a framed picture of the couple on their bedside table. We'd like to use a tranistion to make it seem as though her boyfriend disappears from the picture, just as their relationship seems to have disappeared with their argument. We took quite a few images so we could look through them and choose the best two to take to the print shop.

We choose this location because we wanted a backdrop of yellow and green coloured trees as it brought out the autuamnal weather. However this was not too important as the pictures taken would come out as a medium shot so not many of the background image would be seen.

Here you can see Maria taking an image of our male actor, Tyrone and Sonia. We asked them to act as a loving couple.

Here you can see Maria taking the same image but with Tyrone out of shot. We made sure Sonia stayed in exactly the same position to make it easier when it came to editing.

Below are some other images of the photoshoot.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku, Maria Grillo and Mirza Rahman