Media Evaluation:

How did you use all of the media technologies within the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Using my blog I have been able to record all aspects of my research and planning for each of my productions, the music video, the digipak and the magazine advert including the finished products and any other information that I needed such as studies or theorists. It is also useful for looking through other peoples blogs to help you understand certain pieces of information that you may not have or don’t understand making it easier to get the information. It is also a useful device to post the work get it marked and then work on the post again to make it even better.

As I mentioned earlier throughout the three topics I have used the same methods countless times as I feel that they provide the best data to me. These methods would be a triangulation of questionnaires and interviews as each provide me with a different amount of data that I can use together to provide the results as the questionnaires are simple tick boxes so provide me mainly with quantative data which is numbers or statistics although there are a few open questions. On the other hand however the interviews are unstructed so provide me with qualitative data which is meanings and feelings. Thus a mixture of these provides me with both types of data that I combine together. As well as these methods I also used the social networking site known as facebook to advertise and get feedback as it is used by and targeted at my target audience thus it gives me a better understanding.

I also used a type of random sampling as I felt that it was fairer and could provide me with truer results although I had a few short rules in order to keep the sample representative, reliable with the validity being high. Thus I felt by making up the rules it was easier to keep check of what I was doing and making each method similar so that I could compare and analyse them against one another getting the results to help make my products better focused on the target audience. The rules were simply asking ten people of each gender, asking just the target population and to ask a different group each time.

Using blogger I was able to research the music industry looking at things such as music videos, CD reviews, music channels and CD adverts which I presented on the blog so that I could refer to it when and see how I wanted to make things more appealing to look at while gaining more effects, ideas and the design style for the video, digipaks and the magazine advert. An example of this would be the initial design of the storyboard for the music video as those ideas develop which would be hard to keep track of if the blog wasn’t available.

Taking this point further every piece of documentation I have had has been posted onto the blog to look back at to revise from as well as to use in my products. Eventually I found the software called Slideshare which allowed my group to embed things quicker and easier as well as allowing me to post power point documents as blogger wouldn’t accept that kind of file. However using slideshare I was able to post the powerpoint document onto the blog as well as any other pieces of information that blogger wouldn’t accept normally.

Slideshare also helps to publish documents more neatly with graphics that normally wouldn’t be published such as pie charts again this helps provide the results for the questionnaires that I have completed before. This factor also helps me compare various bits of documents against each other while making them neater and cleaner.

Other media technologies that I used included Final cut express which was the video editing software which the music video was created on as it provided quick editing skills as well as all of the effects that were useful to create the music video. The effects including fading the colour image to that of black and white in order to show flashbacks, allowing the speed of a scene to go either super slow or super fast as well as even reversing time which I performed on a clip of images falling to the floor and back again. That said it could be complicated to use at times especially when the footage my group unloaded wouldn’t work we had to reboot the system and alter the settings so that it would finally capture the video so we could start editing. That said this software I feel is one of the best editing skills that I could of used as it really makes the product stand out while boosting its effectiveness to the public audience as well at the target group.

A list of some of the techniques that I used within the publication includes the following:

-cross dissolve - which is an effect where one shot would fade out over another shot quickly which was used in between various clips as it was a smoother transition between the two shots.- we removed the colour - from some of the scenes to show the audience that the scenes were from the past as well as the fact that it also showed the audience clearly what was the present thus in turn understand the narrative. -In the scene of the daughter sitting on her bed looking at past photos of her and mother she throws them off the bed onto the floor using the effect of reversing this shot, the photos were thrown onto floor then the shot was reversed where they returned onto the bed and then thrown back onto the floor again and we in this shot we also changed the speed of it to get the shots connected together to match the beat.

For our music video we shot the scenes with a Sony DV camcorder and also the tripod. Throughout the filming we made use of natural lighting thus no artificial lighting was needed as the natural lighting usually the sun was sufficient for all of the scenes whether it was at the graveyard or in the family home of the mother and daughter. This was partly because the scenes were in black and white so no one needed to see the burst of lights thus didn’t chose to film them as they wouldn’t show up anyway while the graveyard scenes where in colour to see the bright light.

For my print productions the software I used to create both of them was Adobe Photoshop as well as a mixture of power point for the magazine advert and photobucket which I used for the digipak. The production of my digipak using Adobe was to use effects including creating multiple layers to construct the digipak. Using images I took of Carly from an arranged photo shoot I used a Nikon D200 and begun editing these photos using the cropping tool, a stamp tool which allowed me to copy other areas of

the photo paste it down which I used on pen marks that where on her arm in order to get rid of them and make them appear more flawless. As well as this factor for my digipak I also used the following effects which I have mentioned before on my blog when discussing the album.

The text I used for the artist’s name is called Chaparral Pro which is also red in colour and size twenty four. I chose to include the artist’s name so people who know who’s album it is as it is just as important maybe even more so than the digipak title. The colour red I used as I feel that it is a fairly bold colour that catches people’s eyesight rather well and as well as this it ties in with the genre of some of her music which relates to love or some kind of relationship between people which red stands for. I also used this colour to fit in with the pins on the picture as the red pin is near the top of the pack thus I placed the artists name in an upward position compared to the album name text which ties in with the blue pin thus is placed lower down to match the blue pin almost creating a kind of mirror type feel.

The reason to smile text I used is in times new roman, size seventeen and is in the colour blue as I mentioned earlier. I chose to use the blue colour to tie in with the song reason to smile and how it is suppost to make the audience feel which is sad or at least slightly upset as the song is about someone looking for a reason to smile due to a trauma to them that they can’t overcome. Within the video this is explained as the characters mum dying due to suffering from cancer and she is trying to cope with the pain while trying to move on yet finding it hard with the memories. I picked the size seventeen as I wanted the text to remain pretty big yet to be smaller that the artist’s name so that she gets more published with the media and society in general. The text was picked as I felt that it needed a simple tone to the design to flow with the artist’s thoughts and her personality which I felt was quite calm and laidback.

Digipaks are known for having a picture of the artist or something that ties to the songs as the cover and this album is no different. Going along with this stereotype I used an image of Carly within the top centre of the digipak which I took within the college in close proximity to the artist so that she wouldn’t miss any of her lessons. Due to this factor however and the fact that she couldn’t get any transport to go to any other locations my ideas were limited to what I could do with the image. However I was able to take a photo of her facial features and her mid body so that the target audience could recognise the artist as well as the track before I modified the photograph on photoshop. First of all using photoshop I edited the image by using the

sharpen tool to make the features more defined and clearer then followed this step by using the contrast tool to make the image more brighter and noticeable due to lack of lighting when I actually took the image. Next I used the burn tool to get rid of a few scar’s as well as the clone tool to help create the clean skin that is stereotypical used on album covers as well as magazines. The effect I then used is known as lens flare which creates a flare similar to that from a lens at a designated point that I chose to be within the upper right corner of the photo to create a purer feel to it as well as making the image more noticeable.

The back cover I edited to go along with what the audience/target group suggested within the questionnaire which included using just a single image, making the colours more bold and making the text run through the middle instead of having it to the side. So taking everything into account I completely altered in back cover by getting rid of everything aside from the track list. Thus starting from scratch I incorporated the one picture idea b using a flamed candle which Carly herself stated was useful to refer to one of her songs known as catching fire. The photo I enhanced so that it came of brighter as well as larger yet altered it just slightly enough to allow the photography to fill the back yet not appear stretched in any way or form.

After the above editing skill I then altered the text of the track list to again go along with my target audience so instead of having them plain and black I altered them into a yellow colour to contrast the red from the image as well as using a font known as wet pet allowing me to create the dripped quite effect that allows the letters to flow down the page. This I feel matches the tracks together yet also allows their difference to be shown with each line having a different stretch effect added to it to increase this factor which I felt make it more appealing as well as allowing it to draw more attention than the first draft did. I then aligned the words so that they were going clean down the middle before I showed the first draft as well as this copy to another group of people where I asked them to pick the best one which all of them stated was the candle version. This feedback shows that I went in the right direction.

I then edited the middle of the digipak and this time instead of having one shared image, I divided the page into two so that I could manipulate each side by changing it completely. For instance the left side I used a full

picture of Carly which would match the picture that would be on the small booklet inside of the pack thus connecting the two ideas into one. This was due to the fact that the target audience felt one nig image of the artist was better than two smaller images thus I followed their idea by fusing it within my own. The image was edited on photoshop however beforehand with be changing the contrast to blend in with the pack better as well as changing the brightness so that she appeared similar to the one of the front, again to connect the two images together.

The right side however I used a dark tunnel which had a light coming through the middle of it which I took a year or so back under a bridge with the water rippling through. That was when an idea struck me and I found a few old digipaks one of which had a similar tunnel like image for the CD to fit in with the image pasted on the disk so that the hole in the middle showed the light tunnel effect underneath. Taking inspiration from this I selected this picture and used it in a similar fashion however it didn’t seem to match the other side with Carly having a white background and the tunnel having a black one. So I used a blur effect to join the two together slightly making it seem like they were attached in the middle all along thus making the digipak image that I desired for to start with. I also wanted the middle to be more subtle than the rest of the digipak as the back and the front cover were more colourful and outgoing so I wanted to create a contrast between them. As well as this my target group stated that they did get sick of seeing a lot of colours all of the time on albums and the such, when it wasn’t needed.

For the adverts background design which I created using a mixture of Microsoft power point as well as publisher in order to get the mixture of colours and the shape that I wanted to have. I picked the colour blue to show the emotion of calmness in order to express what the artist Carly is like as well as her music. This colour help the advert increase its look so that the target audience are attracted more too it and so that people can see it from quite a far space away.

The text counter balances with the background being blue and making the words represent calmness like the artist is suppost to signify. The font for the artists name and the track album is known as Vivaldi which I chose to create an old English writing type feel as the adverts I have see try to connect with artists by their gender with females mostly getting curly type posh writing while males receive bold type writing. Thus this stereotype I have carried on as it had now become the norm so my audience will see the writing and hopefully instantly see that the artist is female and thus will attract the right attention to buy her CD. That said however I have used a different font (known as Constantia) for the box talking about HMV in order to make it feel that they have made that statement which will hopefully cause the public to be interested more as a big music company is selling it.

I used the ITunes sign as well as the HMV sign to again increase popularity as some people will just look at the symbols instead of reading the page or they may just recognise the symbols from a first look. Thus I kept the symbols next to the text boxes that they are being described it to keep them connected so that the whole advert ties in together and makes sense to the viewer/reader. This I have noticed is used quite a lot on adverts and not for just digipaks, this method is used by films, TV companies (etc) showing that it is a useful method to think about.

I have also used an image of Carly which I used a metal oval effect for to create a white border round the outside of it making the photo appear deeper and more bold while also turning it into an oval type shape so that it looks almost like a vanity mirror. This I feel creates the idea that she is happy for her image and that people should be staring at her or the advert, meaning that they should buy the digipak to be as “outgoing” or as “beautiful” as she is portrayed. Again this is used a lot in albums such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Cheryl Cole plus many more all trying to use the female’s body or image to help sell the digipak.

The other image used is simply the front cover of Carly which I used by print screening the image off of my blog and cropped it down to size before adjusting a few setting where like the oval image I created a border. However this was a simple square metal border encasing the image to make it clearer, bolder thus more attractive and makes it stand out more so that the target audience will hopefully be attracted by. The image also shows the digipak so that the viewer can clearly see what album it is as well as the artist meaning that if they like the look of the advert and go for the digipak they won’t select the wrong one which could be similar. Unfortunately with all the norms that companies are using now sometimes two digipaks may adopt the same ideas and appear slightly the same making it hard to pick the CD if you don’t know the artists name or songs.

I also used a program known as Polyvore to create costume designs for the actor’s clothes within the music video as well as the artist’s clothes from the images in both the digipak and the magazine advert. This I think made it easier when taken into account what I had to do for the artists and the creativity of the digipak and the magazine advert.