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.

Evaluation- questions

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

-research on Jamendo, a copyright free music website which helped us decide our song and music genre (indie pop).  We went through many of the songs and music genres on this website such as R&B, Rap, Pop etc
-researched other videos and music magazine and CD covers of our same music genre indie pop and found many results such as Lily Allen, Adele, Eliza Dolittle and the Ting Tings
-we conformed to the conventions of similar indie pop songs such as the narrative and the many locations
-our group did not use a studio to record any clips as the video was recorded in many outside locations
-choice of actor very easy to decide as Sonia was already a performing arts student who was very confident in front of the camera
-A variety of locations were necessary to ensure we had enough shots to keep it interesting for the audience as well as to make sure we weren't reusing any of the clips. Our narrative also meant our character was at different locations
-for the ancillary task we researched several magazine covers, eventually taking some of the ideas and inputting them onto our own covers (such as the layout, social network websites like facebook and twitter, sponsors and where to purchase the album from such as amazon and HMV)
-researched on digipaks and found they gave special offers and things like exclusivity when purchasing albums rather than downloading

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

-posted a poll on the blog giving people options to choose what our music genre should be and how our artist should look
-researched on other artists like Diana Vickers and chose to follow a costume or dress sense like hers
-evidence of our feedback recorded on a camera of our group going to the other media class and asking them questions of what they thought about our choice of song and music genre and opinions on how our artist should look as well as the locations
-the audience should understand the narrative as it is fairly simple and that it is a indie pop song as we conformed to the conventions of and indie pop song (like the costume, colours, mise-en-scene)

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

-we received feedback for our opening scene as it was too dull and that it did not have enough lighting
-received feedback halfway through our editing as we required more clips as we didn't have enough to make up for the duration of the song
-after receiving feedback we went back to locactions such as Trafalgar square and recorded more clips as we needed some more establishing shots and we also went to a different location as part of our narrative. we reshot the opening scene and took some lights with us
-we were told to try and get shots of the artist singing in the studio however we were unable to as we had already enough clips for our edit
-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.

Experimenting with Photoshop - Magazine Advert 1

This is the magazine cover which I created on the day of the photoshop workshop. This is the practice version I created. This image was taken in our media classroom on Tuesday but using photoshop I blurred the background and brightened the artist to make her stand out. I chose to do the artist name in this font and design as I got the idea from my magazine research. The magazine cover that had Hawksley Workman at the front had the layout like this and therefore I got the idea from this and decided to try it on this cover.

Evaluation

 

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

Experimenting with Transitions

Here our group was exerimenting with transitions. We all came up with an idea of using a transition to show the singer move from one location to another. We first planned to have the singer walk past a tree and then appear in another location but the idea was not going to work as the next location did not have any trees therefore after a bit of research we found on youtube different objects we can use in order to do the same thing. So we decided to have the singer walk past the camera and then suddenly we would see her ending up in a different place.We were trying different types of transitions to see which one will suit best for our main clip.

Posted by Mirza Rahman

EXPERIMENTING WITH TRANSITIONS

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

Genre Research - Album Covers

Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You - The reason why we have chosen to upload this album cover as we hope to make some things similar on our cover. We hope to have her alone because again we want it to be linked with the lyrics, there are bits in the lyrics which use the word "scared", "alone" ect. Therefore we intend to make our album cover look slighlty similar to these covers.

Adele - Make You Feel My Love - The reason why we have chosen to upload this cover of Adele is because we hope our album cover will be similar to this in terms of having a picture of our singer alone to show she is alone and vulnerable which will be linked to the lyrics of our music video.

Posted by Mirza Rahman

Roles and responsibilities

Sonia: singer, also in charge of selecting the mise-en-scene, including colour, figure lighting, objects and settings.
Maria: director, editor (transitions , captions, using sound with images, editing so that meaning is apparent to viewer and other effects)
Mirza: cameraman (holding a shot steady,where appropriate, framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate, shooting material appropriate to the task set)

Everyone will make sure we use a variety of shot distances as appropriate, also we will all participate in the editing and the blogging.

Posted by Mirza

Artist Profile - Sian Lewis

We discussed what we want our artist to be like. A profile of our artist can be found below:

Name: Sian Lewis
Stage Name: Elle Lefant
Age: 19
Status: Single
Location: She lives in Chiswick in West London with her flatmate and best friend Rachel.
Image: Quiet, humble. She is different with a sort of quirky "Diana Vickers' look.
Possible Costume: Faded denim shirt, leggings and lace up work boots.
History: She first recorded her songs on YouTube before being found by a small record label called Red Bedroom Records. She's always enjoyed singing but has had problems with her confidence ever since she got stage fright at a school talent show.
Fav quote: "I need to dream big because when it happens it's gonna happen real big"
Aspirations: She hopes to follow the likes of Adele and Lily Allen in the future.

'Runaways' marks her first single in the UK market.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku, Mirza Rahman and Maria Grillo

Our song - Runaways by Elle Lefant

After a long search we found a copyright free song that we all love. The song is called 'Runaways' and is by an artist called Elle Lefant.

Genre Research - Lily Allen - The Fear

In this music video the director uses the notion of voyeurism. We see this in the beginning approximately in the first 15 seconds as the camera is outside the singers caravan window. It is a view which seems as though somebody is looking through directly at her. The actual video itself seems to have a fairytale theme to it in the sense that the singer starts off in a caravan in the middle of an empty field and as the song progresses, we see her in a big mansion with lots of butlers, dresses and presents. The singer seems to represent the girls in the fairytales, the ones who start off poor but in the end they get everything they wanted. Also, the video reflects the lyrics. When she starts off in the caravan, she says that she wants 'to be rich and have lots of money' and then when the scene changes to her in the mansion she says she doesn't know "whats right or real" this is shown through the dancing butlers and this kind of reflects the confusion in her mind. Also the song is very conversational as majority of the time in the video she is speaking to the camera. In  our music video of runaway we hope to have the singer singing directly to the camera as though they are having a conversation.

Posted by Mirza Rahman on 07/10/2010