Wednesday 29 April 2015

EVALUATION: Question 4

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



David Gauntlett (2007) states that "New digital media have fundamentally changed the ways in which we engage with all the media,"
The rise of new digital media technology has greatly changed the way we react to all media in all forms. These different forms of media work in synergy with one another to create a web of networks to reach audiences across the world - This has only been possible in recent years. The synergy process in the different forms of media has opened pathways for lots of new possibilities in the media industry.


To make my ancillary task more comic-like, I used Photoshop to manipulate the images- using a 'posterise' effect, making the people look like actual comic characters. My ancillary definitely ends up looking inspired by the four colour comics due to this especially due to the Ben Day looking dots on the faces.

EVALUATION: Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?


We filmed an audience response using questions from the open questionnaire that was created so we could get people's views and opinions alongside seeing their reactions whilst watching the video.
We filmed two people of the correct target audience range to get their opinions on it alongside filming the couple of an older age range to see their opinion.
Although the younger audience could probably understand and relate to the video more, the older couple gave a surprisingly positive reaction, saying that they enjoyed it, understood the narrative and found it comical. This shows that our video could be liked by a wide range of ages alongside our target age-range, due to the comical aspect to it and the superheroes since comics are liked by all ages.






These are some of the results from the open questionnaire that was handed out.
So far we have had a positive response from our target audience, they have found the video both relatable and comical which is what we wanted. Altogether we have got a very positive response from our audience and we haven't had much critical feedback other than the fact there should be more school scenes added to make more of the narrative- however, we were unable to do that due to uncontrollable circumstances so I am happy with what we ended up with in the end.







EVALUATION: Question 2

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

What have i learned about the way the media produce, distribute and share material



Evaluation Question 1 (part 2)





The audience may have certain expectations due to the superhero genre and school story genre as there will be certain conventions to both that the audience is used to. Therefore, they may expect how it ends. According to Tom Ryall (1998), genre is there to place convention for the film maker to recognise and develop within their own work, but also for the audience to identify.









EVALUATION: Question 1

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


Here I have analysed my ancillary tasks to show what conventions I have used from existing magazines and CD's, I have also wrote about the conventions I have used from comic book covers as I have made my digipak and poster look like comic books to go with the music video.
I thought that by making them look like comic books, it will attract an audience that likes comics towards the video more; it's also like a sneak peak towards the actual video.

Friday 24 April 2015

Music Video Questionnaire: Open

I'm going to hand this open questionnaire out to members of my target audience so I can get their personal opinion of it after watching the music video to help me evaluate it later on.




Age: _______           Gender:   _________

 


1.) Did you enjoy the music video? What were your overall thoughts about it?
________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________


2.) What was your favourite part? why?
_______________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________


3.)What was your least favourite part? why?
__________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________


4.) Were you able to understand the narrative behind it all?
_________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________


5.)What would you change about the music video? if anything, why?
_____________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________


6.)Did you think the miming of the singer was believable?
______________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________


7.) Would you recommend it to others?
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________


Thursday 23 April 2015

Update on last bits of filming

Once again, we've had problems with filming, Our main actress, Rebecca, has gone on a holiday when we were about to film some of the school parts or her just reading comics or drawing herself as a superhero. We have come away quite a bit from our set plan of things to film unfortunately, but that's due to problems we could not change.
We figured that there was a very slim chance we could get any of the school/comic book scenes in anyway, but we wanted to add just a little bit - to add a bit more narrative to the music video.

Luckily, My work partner Emily's hair seemed a similar style to Rebecca's, so we decided to film small parts of her from behind in the classroom. I think it ended up working out pretty well.
We got a few extras in to be the extra students and we got the bullies in without their costumes on.

One of the bullies is seen throwing a paper ball at her before laughing with the other bully about it, so at least the viewers get a slight idea that they are bullies this way.

Even though we had a ton of problems whilst filming, I think altogether it worked out quite well and we got some good footage.

Wednesday 22 April 2015

Response

Quite a few people have been shown the music video so far and there's been a positive response

Everybody found the video humorous which is good and they particularly liked the whole superhero aspect of it.

Heres the results of the mini survey i put on facebook, alongside the unfinished draft of my music video so they could watch what we have so far.
Facebook proved to be a successful place to share my questionnaire as it reached target members of my target audience as social media is used lots by people of my target audience.


Tuesday 21 April 2015

Music Video Questionnaire: Closed

I created this questionnaire, going to post it on facebook alongside the draft of the music video so my target audience can see it and i might get a large response if i post it there.



Create your own user feedback survey



Monday 20 April 2015

Music Video draft




This is our music video so far, there's still quite a lot of footage to be added and changes to be made such as that one scene of Adam in black and white and some of the footage hasn't been muted yet. We are also not too sure on the filters we have put on the scenes yet but it does make the old onomatopoeia words fit in nicely.
We may also be adding quick fades to white and such so it isn't all just cuts between clips.

We are gonna get opinions from our target audience to see what they think about it so far and any changes they think we should make.

Sunday 19 April 2015

Finishing Digipak (add image of final inside part)

I've decided to add the drawings on here as they're a part of the narrative of the music video. To fill in the rest, I have got images from the footage we have.

Onomatopoeia

These are the onomatopoeia comic words for the fight scenes we are gonna be adding to our music video when we edit. These ones are from batman (1966) and although they are quite low in quality it was hard to find any better ones, hopefully once we put some filters onto everything, it will all fit together.



Saturday 18 April 2015

Filming

We managed to get some good fight scenes involving them all, alongside some random comical scenes. We got tilted camera shots and closeups too just like from the batman episodes we've looked at.



Here's a video showing a few of the clips we shot today, I think  we are going to end up adding filters to the scenes to make them look better and fit in with the video more.




Friday 17 April 2015

update

Filming the villains



We had a successful, fun day filming. Although we didn't have Rebecca, we still got some good shots with just Emily and Alex. It was mainly just them messing around, which will be good for the comical side of our music video. The set got put together for the first time and looked very comic like and colourful. Both Emily and Alex both looked really good in the villain costumes so I think what we have so far is good footage.

We will have to try our best to get another day where all 3 are free, so we can film the fight scenes.










Here are a few of the clips that were took today.

Tuesday 14 April 2015

Filming day!!

 We have a day planned soon where all 3 are free on the same day! Nobody's going to be at school that day so I think it's the perfect time to film the main superhero parts. Everybody's costume is ready and the set is too.

Drawings




















I have drawn these two images. One of Rebecca (the hero) and one of Emily (one of the bullies/villains).

I deliberately left them unfinished as I wanted Rebecca to be drawing them during the music video. It will add to the imagination factor of the music video, showing that she's imagining herself and others in the superhero world inside her mind.

Villains!

Finally we have found villains for our music video. They are both very enthusiastic for the music video which is what we want.
Alex - Purple shadow

 Emily - Red poison




As guessed by their supervillain names, they each have themed colours, Alex being purple and Emily being red. Those colours were chosen as we wanted them to look stereotypically evil compared to Rebecca whose colour is green.

Both Alex and Emily have decided to start making their own masks out of card and decorating them with their assigned colours. Luckily they both have capes at home and Alex has even got 2 wigs, one red, one purple, so that her and Emily can look even more like the part.
For the bullying parts, they will probably just be dressed in black and leather etc.

Sunday 29 March 2015

Added part to the poster



I've added Rebecca to my ancillary poster in the empty circle in the corner because in comics I've looked at, the circle usually has a figure in.

Saturday 28 March 2015

Added part of my digipak




This is the side view of my digipak, I've added the Hopeless Records logo at the bottom as the production company is usually on the side of cd cases alongside the front.

Friday 27 March 2015

Filming

We managed to grab Rebecca whilst she was dressed in a hoodie, leggings and trainers, so we figured this was the perfect time to film any gym scenes, although we are not completely sticking to the original plans and storyboards, we are going to get as much footage as possible just incase.

Here are a few of the scenes we filmed:

Thursday 26 March 2015

Storyboards

I have created a storyboard so its easier to see what way we want things filmed, we will most likely not be sticking to this exact plan as we might change our minds in the editing.

I've only drawn the brief narrative, it probably won't be in this exact order, as scenes are usually edited all over the place in music videos. Also, scenes of the singer miming will be added in-between too.




Monday 23 March 2015

Filming Plan

We are going to finish filming asap.
There is a bit of struggle of who to cast as the bully/villain as there doesn't seem to be very many willing people but I think we have found a couple of people who could do it.
Once we get the villain and the hero together we can take better pictures which could even end up added onto our ancillary task later on.

This is a basic rough filming plan that we are hopefully going to stick to for the narrative side of our music video. Obviously the song itself is not that long and we have the Adam singing parts to add in, so the clips won't be as detailed as I've wrote. There will probably be extra people within these scenes to make it look more realistic.

- Film Rebecca in a bedroom/classroom reading comics, surrounded by comic-related things?- showing her love for comics.
- A scene where she is sat drawing what she would look like as a superhero.
- Showing her looking stereotypically  'nerdy' walking around school.
- Showing her getting bullied by the main bully (villain) and her friends.
- Walks down crowded corridor. She opens up her locker to put books in and there's lots of inspirational comic posters inside of it.
- Looks over and see's another person being bullied by her same bullies.
- Imagination starts - where she starts to imagine what it'd be like if she was a superhero
- Same scene from the corridor/locker starts again but everyone is in superhero costume - her imagination.
- Confronts bully who is now a superhero villain.
- Fight starts (references from batman, flash cards, etc)  (This will be where filming in front of our set starts)
-In between this there could be very short little funny clips such as her standing in front of a fan with her cape blowing, just to keep the humour of the video going.
-Wins fight, saves the person - appreciated as a hero.
-Back to reality at the same scene before imagination started
-?

inspiration: kick-ass and batman

Batman (1966)



This is the main inspiration for our music video, we want to add certain concepts from it and make it kind of like a parody/spoof. This influences us lots for the video, I think the overall product will look more comical if over-exaggerated elements such as the bright colours, tilted angles, zany fight scenes, costumes and use of onomatopoeia- are used.  This is because, these days, comic films and TV shows aren't really bright, comical and exaggerated like this anymore- an example being the Avengers movies. In the Avengers, everything looks realistic and lots of cgi and such is used to make it like a real action movie. It would be rare to see these batman conventions used again, due to the upgrade in modern technology, unless of course, the footage was trying to look like a comical spoof or parody.

Inspiration - Kick Ass

Another inspiration for our music video is the film Kick Ass which holds a similar sort of plot as the narrative in our music video as it is about pretend superheroes. It has a more modern touch to it so we can get inspiration from both old (batman) and modern (kick ass) clips.
We have been inspired by the costumes, characters and scenes within both.


Monday 16 March 2015

Sets




 Since we are going to start filming asap, we have starting laying out other sets in the music video such as the locker which the Rebecca will go inside as the 'nerd' it will show her love for comics as we have printed out lots of comic related pictures to stick inside.

-




We have also started making the backdrop to go behind the boxes, we decided to create a sky as it will go well with the buildings.

Creating the set





 

We have began creating our boxes for the set, We have managed get lots of boxes from the school since a lot of chairs were delivered. Me and Emily went out to buy primary coloured paint and duct tape so that we could make the comic effect we wanted. We want to create enough so that the set is full with them, but with enough space in front of them too.



Friday 27 February 2015

poster screenshot #4

Finally got round to completing the poster, I decided that a picture of Adam (Dan Scott) would be good for the poster as it's advertising his cd, I added the brick wall behind him to keep to the comic theme and because we have filmed him in front of a brick wall.


digipak screenshot #11

I have added everything to make it look like the back of a real cd case, the songs were just made up on the spot as it isn't that important as long as the song of the music video is on there




 

digipak screenshot #10


This is the back of my digipak, I wanted there to be just one image of Rebecca but not showing her face completely, so it matches with the front. I will have to think of some song names to put on, alongside placing some logos down of companies that ha e produces my cd, etc.


digipak screenshot #9

I have added the circle for where the cd will actually go.


digipak screenshot #8

This is the second inside part of my digipak, where the cd will go.


digipak screenshot #7


 

 

digipak screenshot #5



I've been testing out different colours for the title and whatnot, I want to keep to the comic primary colours but I have saturated them a bit to keep a retro look to it. I decided to name the cd 'Phoenix' as that's the name of the song I'm using in the music video and a lot of albums are named after a featured song within it.

Friday 6 February 2015

Sets

Since we are creating a comical music video, we are going to try make a set like this out of boxes.
Our school has just ordered in lots of chairs packed in boxes, we are able to get 20 of them. We will stack boxes on top of each other to make tall buildings and either paint them or stick colourful paper on top of them. We will also create a backdrop to put the boxes in front of. I think this set will be good for both singing and narrative parts.

Photoshoot


Here's a selection of the photos we took:


Photoshoot





We eventually took pictures of Adam and Rebecca for our ancillary task. We took lots so that we have a huge selection to choose from; I will be able to finish my digipak and poster now.