Case Study

Now that I have finally finished answering my Evaluation Questions, I am going to be focusing on preparing myself for answering the question on my Case Study in the exam.

My Evaluation - Kim Paxton

Question 1

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

Below is my directors commentary

Question 2

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

Please click here to see my Prezi presentation for my Question 2

Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From posting my music video on my facebook I have received lots of positive feedback from my friends, all of which has been very supportive. I have also received some constructive criticism on what could have been improved.

I have learnt that our video appeals mostly to teenage girls as they find the song 'I Gotta Feeling' to be catchy and a 'feel good song'. I think the video itself appeals most to them because dancing is what they like.

This is a video of feedback from members of my class.

Question 4

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

Below is my vlog answering the above question

Adversiting of Cd's

Singles and albums can be advertised to public audiences in numerous ways, each different but equally eye catching and individual.

Radio advertising is a fast becoming a method of advertising products, however the sales person has to take a lot of different factors into consideration before they can air their advert.

1. They have to choose the time of day they want their advert to be on air; different people listen to the radio at different times of day e.g. a housewife might listen while doing housework during the day whereas a business man may listen either early in the morning when driving to work or driving home in the early evening afterwards. Their target audience differentiates the time that the company will choose to have it aired.
2. The radio station they are going to use is another important factor because again different people listen to different stations, depending on their personal tastes.
3. Another aspect the selling company has to take into consideration is the length that their advert will be. A typical radio advert lasts between 10-30 seconds and in that time the seller has to capture the attention of potential customers and market their product in a way that will appeal to the listeners. The cost of radio adverts depends a lot on the time of the advert itself.
4. The final main factor of radio advertising is the frequency of the advertising. Companies generally want their advert to be repeated a lot of times during their selected time-slot of the day in the hopes to constantly remind the stations listeners of what they have to offer. Repetition of the advert eventually drills it into the listeners heads and this is what the company wants as it means they are more likely to connect the advert with the product when they see the product in shops.

Advertising on television is also another way of promoting a Cd to the wider world. Most households own at least one television, some have even more and a lot of people watch soaps and other programs on at specific times each day. Promoters aim to buy advertisment slots around the programs that they think their target audiences would watch. A mere 30 second advert can cost up to £1,500 which is considered an extremly resonable amount to date.

Internet adverts have become one of the most popular forms of advertisement, simply due to the fact that so many people in this day and age use the internet regularly on a day to day basis.

Magazine adverts are another way to advertise newly released Cd's, although they aren't considered to be the most effective way. A half page advert in the music magazine 'Q' costs a staggering £4,578, whilst the page outside the back cover of the same magazine costs a phenomenal £11,902. It's no wonder that magazines make such a large profit, if every product that is advertised is added up it quickly becomes apparent that much over £100,00 is made from every edition published.

Conventions of CD Advertising

Our music video falls under the category of a pop video, and that genre has fairly stereotypical advertising qualities.

Pop CD covers are usually very bright and colourful, as shown on this U2 Pop cover. By using four different colours on one cover, its procuder is trying to meet different criteria's of what appeals to different people and their tastes. They also to do this in the hope that it will stand out against the other Cd's on a shelf in a shop and that the different colours will grab the eyes and attention of potential purchasers.

They also usually have the face of the artist on it, so it can be easily identified in shops before purchase, and then at home when lying around the house. An example is this American Idol CD Cover, as it has a head shot of each of the different singers on it.

'Pop' music is stereotypically targeted at a younger audience, but each different artist has a different consumer. Even from first glance, its blatant that this 'Kelly Clarkson' CD is targeted at girls in the age range of 10-16.



Our Final Cut Changes

We decided not to include any split screen shots due to the fact that they were taking far too long to put together, and also since we are not professionals, it didn't look as effective as we had initially hoped for. We also didn't include the 5 different stereotypical characters; more along the lines of people just dancing and having fun. I hope you enjoy our finished product.

Flat Plan of our Digipack

This is our paper equivalent of a storyboard. Kim and I worked out the layout that we thought we wanted and we had to plan what we needed to do to create our very own digipack.

By using a template, this was our first design. We then had another look at it and decided we would re-do the piece to change some things that we weren't certain about.

TRY 1.

Looking at this first design, there were definitely some things we thought we could change to improve the look and quality of our Digipack.

TRY 2.

Rough Edit

We have nearly finished editing our music video, here is what we have done so far.

Rough Cut

We are about half way through editing so far. We are hopefully going to finish filming next week as there is a dance show in the drama department at the moment so we can't get in there to continue with that. There are lots of gaps as they are going to be filled with footage we still have to shoot.

Split Screen

Here is what I made when I was practising using different split screens.

Here are two screen shots to illustrate the editing I was doing

Practising Split Screen

Today I have been practicing editing for the split screen parts of our music video. It is quite difficult to judge the amounts that I should clip out of each shot but I am going to spend the rest of this lesson practicing. Here is another example of a already existing music video that has inspired me to include split screen in our video.

Continuing Editing

In order to get the editing finished as quickly as possible, I have been doing as much of it as possible in my free periods. Although it takes a while to clip all of the shots so that they are in time with the words, I am enjoying doing it.





Here you can see that I have been editing all of the footage of Rob.

I think we are going to have to plan another filming session in which we will get some shots of more people, because we have already used a lot of the footage we took last week and there is still 1 minute and 50 seconds to go of the song.

This is a screenshot of our timeline in Premiere Elements. As you can see we still have a lot of footage to add before the song will be completed.

Editing

Now that we have sorted out the song, Lisa and I have began editing the footage. We have to arrange it all so that it fits in time with the music. We have decided that since we already have lots of dancing shots that we no longer need to include the dancing shots in which Lisa and I are painted black and white, as they would just be a repeat of the dancing shots we already have.

Todays Lesson

Today in the lesson, Kim and I both had a turn at editing our song in appropriate places as the original song is 4 minutes and 30 seconds, which is definitely too long for us to create our music video to.

We have cut the song down successfully in order to proceed with our editing, to put our clips with our music accordingly.

                                  

Finally Filming

Last night Lisa and I re-started filming. We had a number of our actors with us so we got quite a lot done, and there was a chilled and relaxed atmosphere which made it a really fun and enjoyable hour. All of the actors were also extremely co-operative and weren't shy about doing anything we asked them to do; as a result the time passed extremely quickly.

This time I ensured that the black background and floor covers were much bigger than last time, and also that they were taught so you couldn't see any creases in the material. As well as that, we used the floor lights again but so that they were much brighter this time. Here are a couple of clips of footage we took.

What I Did Wrong

Here is a video of some of the footage I shot last week and a description of what is wrong and why



Started Filming

Last night I filmed parts of our film; mainly four of the five stereotypical characters parts. I have uploaded it onto the computer and after re-watching all of the footage I had realised that the lighting was far too dark, and also the backdrop was too small and it looks unprofessional.
Also, the camera I was using took a long time to focus, and since the lighting wasn't very good it took even longer than usual to focus on whoever was in the shot. I'm therefore going to use a different camera with a better focus next time I'm filming.
The sheets I put up to use as the backgrounds weren't big enough and it looks unprofessional in the footage so next time I will make sure that they are bigger so you can't see anything around the edges of them.
Although I doubt we will use any of the footage I took, it was a beneficial learning curve as I have learnt that when filming indoors there needs to be much more lighting than what would be used then when filming elsewhere.
I am going to talk to Lisa to see what we can do and see what changes we can make it make it look better from an audience perspective.

Filming Times

Lisa and I have found it difficult to find times that we are both free in order for us to film due to our hectic school schedule.

So far we have not managed to keep with any of the times we planned before half term so we need to start filming as soon as possible.

All of our raw footage needs to of been filmed by the 20th of November which is only 10 days from now. so we really need to get cracking.



During class today we need to sit down and decide some deffinate times that we are going to dedicate to filming.



Song Purachse

The first compact disk (CD) came out in the mid 1980s but sales didn't start to pick up until the early 1990s.

A typical CD came with a cover, CD and little booklet about the artist

In 2001 iTunes was released and as a result internet sales started increasing and CD purchase decreased.

In 2010, Cd's have been largely replaced by other forms of digital storage such as flash drives and as a result audio CD sales have dropped by nearly 50% from their peak in 2000. As well as iTunes, to date there are so many different websites on the internet that enable anyone to buy a song or an album and download it straight onto a computer instead of having to do so from a CD.

The online iTunes website is one of the many ways people nowadays download music

With the invention of online purchase comes the possibility of piracy, but since nowadays its possible to access in order to buy any artist music online it is a necessity for them to have their work easily available.



Stop Motion Final

Today Lisa and I have taken the pictures for the stop motion that will appear in our music video. In order to stop any of the pictures from going squint we taped down the paper to the floor. In the next couple of days we are going to start filming our footage.

Ready To Begin Filming

We are now completely up to date with everything that needs to of been completed and are ready to begin filming our video. We will start this as soon as we come back to school after the half term break, and are both really excited about the prospect of filming.