Evaluation: Portfolio

Please see my evaluation portfolio website at:

www.akhan2116.wix.com/evaluation

Evaluation: Question 2

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

For my media coursework I had picked to do a music video, digipak and magazine advert. All three were linked together because the magazine advert was an advert for people to buy the digipak, and the music video was the showcase of a single from the album. I think the combination of the three tasks worked very well together, and the in-house design was consistent through out.

During the research and planning stage I had decided on a simplistic premium design. This is because I found many designs that were very overcrowded and the information on them was hard to read or understand. I wanted to avoid this by making it simple and modern. This would help my audience identify and understand everything on them. I had also realized that the main objective of my task was to sell records, this is the priority of any product produced in the music industry, because of this every element included in my design was more or less positioned to help sell records. In doing this I hoped that I could optimise sales as well as provide a quality product for my audience.

The main color scheme of my overall design was black, white and red. The black and white elements of the colors, I felt, helped keep the masculinity of the design, and reflected the modern man. This was contrasted by the color red, which is synonymous with the theme of love, which reflects the issues raised in the album.
I kept this color scheme through my digipak and magazine advert to create a link between the two. This kept my design consistent and recognizable , and gave it a personality and image of its own.

In my magazine advert I had employed a number of methods to help sell the digipak. Firstly, the main image seen on the advert is the front cover of the album, as it is the most important thing in the advert. I also included magazine reviews, which would help persuade people who do not usually listen to my artists songs.
During my research I found that an album's popularity is based on its first week of sales, which is a critical statistic, something I wanted to ensure I could maximise to take advantage of things such as Top 40 Album Charts, because the more popular the album is, the more people that will buy it. To support first week sales I placed a release date in the magazine advert, this would inform my audience as to when they can purchase a copy, and hopefully encourage them to buy sooner (i.e on the first week).

Evalution: Question 3

Here is a video I created of people giving me feedback on my music video.

Also, as I had posted the video on YouTube, which was very useful as I was able to receive a fair amount of feedback from my audience. For example, I had received a few comments giving me feedback:

I was also able to measure how many times my video had been "Liked" and "disliked".

 This allowed me to see the overall opinion of my viewers. Out of 12 people, 4 had liked my video, the 

rest had disliked. However, the 8 people who had disliked, did so because they had expected the official

music video. For this reason, I changed the name to include the "(Unofficial Music Video)" and since,

my video has not been disliked.

I was also able to see a certain statistic called "relative audience retention", This allowed me to see 

     my videos ability to retain viewers during playback, compared to other videos on YouTube of similar 

length. I.E Music videos.

 As you can see, my videos relative audience retention stayed at an above average rate, which is an

achievement. 

For my music video I had received a lot of feedback from a range of different opinions, 

though a lot of the comments were positive,I also received negative reviews as well, 

along with constructive criticisms. I took these on board happily as I could use this to

 improve parts of my video. This ensured I would have a final piece of the highest quality

 possible. Here is some of the negative feedback I received and what i did to improve.

I had received comments that the lip sync was a bit off In some shots, which made me go back 

 and adjust the timing of the shots to make it more accurate.

 I had received comments that the cloning effect I had used was also off, so again I went back and did 

what I could to make the effect work, though it wasn't perfect, and I didn't have enough time to re film

the shot.

 I was told that I had used a medium close up shot of my male actor throughout the video, this was

because I felt it was his best take. However I had overcome this problem of repeated shot by zooming 

in more. I was able to do this because my shots were recorded in a very high-resolution, and when 

zoomed in, barely any of the quality was lost.  

    
Positive feedback also helped me because it confirmed that what I was doing was good and 

pleased my target audience. Some of the positive feedback I received was:
 
-Good Camera Quality
-Good location
-excellent narrative to match the lyrics
-shots were nicely cut to the beat of the song
-transitions between scenes was smooth
 -great ending 

Evaluation: Question 4

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

In the beginning of my project, I had used the internet for many things. First of all I created a blog on the website, Blogger. This was to track all my progress and post all my work onto as I went along (see image below). This allowed my teacher to comment on my posts and tell me what needed editing and how I was doing overall. Also it allowed me to sort all my posts into different labels. These labels would appear on the side of my blog and when clicked, it would show all posts with that label on. This ensured ease of use for me, my teacher and moderator when looking at my blog.
 

Other things I had used on the internet, was the search engine, Google, and YouTube, I had used these throughout my project. For research I did it to search for theories (such as Andrew Goodwin’s) and YouTube music videos (for my textual analyses). Also during construction of my tasks I used these sites to find out how to do things, such as watching video tutorials on colour correction on Youtube, for example.

Also, during the evaluation stage of my project I had used YouTube to upload my video, I also posted the link to my video on the social network site, Twitter. This helped me to get audience feedback for my video.

For my music video, I had used my Canon 550D, a DSLR Camera, with a Prime Lens with a focal length of 50mm.  I have been doing photography for a number of years now so I am used to using the camera. What I liked about the camera was that it recorded in full 1080p HD, and the lens allowed me to manually adjust focus, this allowed me to play with depths of focus and change from shallow to deep ranges.

 I also used a tripod when filming which helped me achieve very clean cut looks. However for a part of my video there is a handheld scene shot from my female actor’s point of view, I did this to make it purposefully shaky to portray her intoxication with alcohol. I had a few problems on my first day of filming, my battery died and my full-up memory card stopped me from filming anymore. However I fixed this problem in the rest of my filming shoots by always carrying a fully charged spare battery and removing clutter on the memory card, and deleting shots if they didn’t go right.

For my video editing, I used an industry-standard program called Sony Vegas Pro. At first, I was going to do it on Final Cut Express on the Macs in school, but I felt that because it wasn’t the full version of final cut, I was very limited as to what I could do. Also, I had purchased Sony Vegas earlier in the year so I would be able to edit at home as well, which would free up my lesson time to work on other aspects of my project. I found that Sony Vegas was a godsend.  One of my favorite things about the program was that you didn’t have to render each section as you go before you were able to preview the edit (something you had to do on final cut) instead you just rendered it when you were done. This had a big effect on the speed of my editing, as I had very big files as I was recording 1080p footage at 30fps, so if I did have to render each section as I went, it would take me 5minutes to be able to preview every minute change I had made in the video, which would’ve been a nightmare when perfecting lip sync.

For my ancillary tasks I had to create print work, a digipak and a magazine advert. For this I used Corel Paintshop Pro X4, I chose this over the usual Adobe Photoshop, because I’ve had previous experience using it in photography work in the past, and also because I have purchased it, it allows me to work at home. Using Corel Paintshop allowed me to easily create graphic, texts and add effects to images.

Evaluation: Question 1

In this video I will be answering question 1 of the evaluation:

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

Construction: Magazine Advert Drafts

Here are the drafts for my magazine advert:

Draft 1:
For the magazine advert I wanted to carry on with the color scheme of the digipak. I put in magazine reviews and the album covers. This would help persuade people to buy the album, and identify it in stores.

Draft 2:
I felt that there was too much blank space in the previous draft, so I added an image of my guitar in the background, this would help add content and stop the advert from looking too empty.

Draft 3:

I had noticed I had not followed my template of my magazine advert at all. (See here for template).
So starting almost from scratch I  had come up with a new layout which I thought worked much better than previous drafts.

Final Draft:

I wanted to fill up the black empty space surrounding the advert, so I added a red sheet texture to the black background, which complimented the color scheme. Also I added a second review and institution logo to fill up the gaps underneath. This helped fill up the advert without making it overcrowded with too much information.

Construction: Poster Insert Drafts

Here are the drafts for my poster insert:

Draft 1:

I put a picture of my artist, and added a peach effect to it. Then I placed titles above and below the poster. This was a simple design that I knew I had to improve on.

Draft 2:

I moved the titles above and below the picture, this stopped them from obstructing the image. I also added a red OVO logo, to tie it in with the color scheme of the digipak.

Draft 3:

The image I was using before was already in use on the album cover, and I wanted something different on the poster, so I changed the image and gave it a sepia effect. I also changed the colours to a black/Gold theme, as I wanted the poster to be different from the rest of the digipak.

Final Draft:

I wanted my poster to be completely different to my digipak, so it would stand out. So I changed the black and gold combination to a white and gold theme, and created a gold frame around the image. This gave a premium feel to it.