Group Interview

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From the feedback we received from an audience it was generally quite good and they gave us some good points on how we could improve our products. The general feedback was that the digi-pak was the best product we had made and the pictures we had used were successful and made the product look professional, because of the influence from the genre ‘Indie Pop’ the audience could tell that we were influenced by this. The initial thoughts on the music video was good and everyone we asked seemed to understand the story line of the relationship we were showing, a lot of them understood the concept of the red balloon, which is something we were hoping the audience would understand[EDITED TO ADD] but others found it quite unclear at first at what the balloon was showing from the beginning to the end of the video, if we were to make the music video again we would know to try make the narrative clearer to the wider audience we were trying to attract. However, some of the audience did say that the balloon colour was slightly too bright but we wanted the balloon to stand out above the black and white shots but if we had to do it again we would know to tone the colour slightly down and overall they said the balloon was a different and challenging piece to include in our video as they had never seen it before. Alot of the audience who we asked thought we could of used a variety of different shots, which as a group we agreed when we were in the editing process that we should of used a wide range of shots to make it look more professional,[EDITED TO ADD] they liked a lot of the transitions we used to and from the black and white images to colour, which showed the flashbacks. We also showed the audience the advert we had created, for something we weren't too pleased with the audience also said they liked it but it also wasn't the favorite piece from all the products we had produced. I have learnt from the audience feedback that they thought the digi-pak was the strongest piece of media we had produced, with the photos looking professional with the edit we added to them to the simple text we used on each page, which me and my group all agreed was the best piece we had made because of the way we had made it look. If i was to change some of the products due to the audience feedback it would be the advert as it wasn't the strongest product we had made but it was still reconisable to the audience that it was for the artist 'Elliot Guy'. 

[EDITED TO ADD] I thought it would be useful to interview a few different individuals about our pieces to get an overall view of what they thought of our products. Both groups we asked said the Digi-pak was their favourite product as they thought it was professional, which was said throughout the rest of the audience feedback. It is also our favourite piece as a group from everything we have produced. From interviewing the four individuals we learnt that they did enjoy the music video because of the use of the music we used they said the music fitted well with the narrative we were showing and it made them enjoy the video a lot more, we were pleased that they understood the concept of the video with the red balloon, which is something that would either confuse the audience or they would understand the concept of the video.  The best audience feedback from the interview was the digi-pak they said it looked professional enough to sell in a shop, which we were pleased with. 

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

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

For our project, we decided to create a music video, a digi pack and a poster. We linked all three products together by using similar images and texts which were linked within the genre we had researched fully into, 'Indie Pop'. When researching into 'Indie Pop' we noticed a lot of artist had a main focus of nature throughout a lot of their products, we thought this would be successful for our project. From the album cover front and back image it all links together, with the front cover being the girl on the beach holding the red balloon to the back cover being an image of the beach, the decision of using the front cover image linked with the music video and the red balloon being something the audience would be familiar with from the video. The audience would instantly know if they saw the album cover that it was the artist 'Elliot Guy'. The links between the album cover and the digi pack is the images of the beach, this all links in with the setting of the music video again. We specifically used the beach images to match with the research we had conducted. We made sure when editing our front cover image that the colour of the balloon was very similar to the colour we had made the balloon in the music video, so everything had a link and looked the same. We of course made the advert link to the front cover - as it is advertising the album cover. We wanted this to be the same image because the advertisement of the album the audience would recognise it straight away, when researching other artists we noticed they always use the front cover image as the advert too. We wanted to follow the typical conventions of the 'Indie Pop' genre by doing this was linking everything together like we had seen within the genre. All three products are effective as a combination of both the main product and the ancillary texts as all link together to show that each product is linked to the artist we have created, we made sure that the products would all attract an audience and it would be reconisable to the audience of who the products are representing. 

[EDITED TO ADD] Below are the two products which are the album cover and the advert there is a clear link as the images are the same for both the front cover and the advert. The only thing we changed within the two products was the colouring of the advert, we had to make is less bright because we wanted the focus on the text a lot more than the image, it is still reconisable that it is related to the artist 'Elliot Guy'.

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

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

We used several media technologies when constructing all of our media products including; Instagram, Photoshop,Adobe Premier and blogs. When researching and planning, the internet was my main source, providing me with videos of the genre we were looking at to analyse and also to research into the genre we wanted to focus on finding out what we could include in our own products. As a group, we realised that our blogs were very important especially from previous projects, we know that we have to put everything on that we think will influence us when we eventually start filming. We used the blogs to update our ideas so the rest of the group can see what we are thinking. This was useful because of the size of the group we were working in, it was easy to check each of the group members blogs to see if they had any new ideas that they hadn't yet told us and to go back to past dates to see what we had researched about indie pop videos, so we could remember what to include within our own products. We used Adobe Premier for our editing of our film, we were quite familiar with the program because of past projects we knew the basics. We learnt a lot of new things such as creating a black and white scene, slowing down of shots and we tried several techniques of premier to get the red balloon effect. For the editing of our advert we used Photoshop to create it, we used several tools on Photoshop to get our final product, we decreased the colour of the image because it was too bright and we wanted the text to stand out more than the image. Also using the text tool we could add and move the text where ever we wanted, placing it in the right way to make it look professional. 

Below is a step by step video of how we used Instagram to create the final images for our album cover and digi-pak images.  When editing our photos for the digi-pak, album cover and advert we used an app on i Phones called Instagram, we realised when we had put a photo of the beach on when we were filming the effect we used was really effective and we thought this would look good throughout our products. The effect we used was called 'Early-bird' and we thought this made the photos look more professional and every photo linked together looking the same.

The seven images below show a step by step of how we made the balloons on the original image a brighter red as the original image the balloons were a pinky red which we didn't like and we thought making it more brighter and a different shade of red it would match the balloon colour on the music video.

We opened the image in Photoshop.

We used the magic wand tool.

The highlighted the two balloons by keeping the alt button pressed down.

We then clicked the refine button.

Once it had opened we used the feathering effect to make the edges of the balloon less harsh and the shift edge tool to make sure the whole of the balloon on the image was evenly selected. This made the balloon a more vibrant red colour and to make it look as natural as possible.

We then went onto image > adjustment > hue and saturation to change the colour to the red we were wanting.

Finally, we played around with the hue and saturation levels to get the correct red to make it look proffessional and natural as possible.

[EDITED TO ADD] When we filmed the shots of the red balloon the day of filming the weather was windy which when it came the editing we tried many different techniques including the 'Matte Effect' which in our practice videos we noticed it wouldn't work because of the movement of the image. We found a editing technique called 'Leave colour' we still had some problems which caused some of the other parts of the image to go red such as the scenery, we realised we wouldn't be able to do this on our own as it was a difficult proccess. We decided the best idea was to commision someone who had more experience in how to use Photoshop and how to get the best possible effect for the red balloon. The effect was created by turning the balloon red frame by frame which was very time consuming, however the outcome was much better than we expected and the balloon has been our main theme throughout our product, which we are all very pleased with. Below is the video of James explaining how he created the red balloon with the black and white shots. 

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

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

Before we started designing our final product we made sure we researched fully into the area we wanted to go into.We researched into the genre 'Indie Pop' and looked at the different convention they include throughout their products, we focused a lot of our research on the artist Ben Howard as he is in the the Indie Pop genre and when looking at his video's we liked the style he used throughout his videos and the use of nature was a theme in his videos. We noticed when researching not just Ben Howard but other artists such as Mumford & Sons that they also used the theme of nature in their videos. We think this has been a successful thing to follow because of the different shots we have used within our music video. We used different shots of nature throughout our music video to get the same effect we were seeing in the video's we had researched and we thought this would link nicely with the other shots we have included, we thought this would separate the shots of the couple together and the girl on her own at the beach. A big influence to our music video was the video 'Old Pine' by Ben Howard he uses a lot of close-up shots of nature such as grass, tree's and water to create a calming feel to the video when the audience are watching, all the different shots of nature match the music. In the video we see a lot of shots following the artist in the video it gives a sense of adventure and as an audience you want to know where he is going, we have used similar shots like this when following the girl on the beach as she is on her own, we gave this isolated look of her being alone because of the story we were trying to show. Ben Howard uses a lot of bright lighting in his shots and again gives this relaxing feel to the video and makes you enjoy the video and music more, with our change of scenes to black and white to colour we wanted our colour shots to be a lot brighter to create this home video effect and the not so perfect quality added to the effect we were trying to show. The brighter lighting we used shows the happier side of the story we are trying to show within the music video which is the happy relationship, whereas with the black and white scenes the lighting is darker and matches the loneliness of the girl. 

We were also influenced by other Indie Pop music video's such as Ed Sheeran's video 'The A Team' and The Vaccines 'No Hope' which are both shot in black and white, we really liked the effect it gave to each music videos. 'The A Team' video is very dull and the story follows a girl on drugs the black and white effect gives it quite a dark feeling which is shown within the story he is trying to show. Not only were were we influenced by the black and white effect in Ed Sheeran's video but the way he shows the narrative story throughout the video, which is something we wanted to do in ours. We used the black and white effect to show the isolated beach and the girl being on her own, but it also made our effect of the red balloon stand out more above the black and white effect. We were also influenced by the vaccines 'no hope' video because of the way the black and white shots made it have a vintage effect, like Ed Sheeran's video 'The A Team' the black and white effect gives it a melancholy feel to the videos and matches the mood the video is creating. From the research of these two videos, we wanted to created the same kind of look with the sad and lonely feel to the girl on the beach with the same effect they use in their videos. 

When researching into this genre for our album cover and logo we noticed that a lot of the artists in the genre use their name as the logo - making the typography so the audience know who it is as soon as the they see the name. We liked this idea and we thought we would do this to our artist. Artists such as Lana Del Rey she uses a type of text that matches her style, she is very sophisticated and her music is also very sophisticated and old fashioned, the text is very feminine and matches the artist. This text is recognisable as she uses it on all her products and the audience know from the text what kind of singer she might be. We used the text called 'bookman oldstyle' as we thought this was sophisitcated enough for the type of artist we were creating and all linked in with the images we are using, we also made sure we used it on all our products including the from the song names, album name and artist so it all linked together. 

We challenged the forms of conventions of real media products with the red balloon, we got the idea of the red balloon from the film Schindler's List and even though this is not a music video we liked the idea of the red coat on top of the black and white shots. We took this as influence and came up with the idea of the red balloon which would be the symbol of her relationship and the love she once had. When researching music videos within our genre nobody had done this, we thought this would be a unique but challenging idea to include within our video. We first used the effect Matte which didn't work because of the movement of the image it was difficult to keep the image we wanted in colour to stay in colour, the effect made the balloon red even when it was moving. I think this is an effective piece of our music video as it is unique and we haven't seen it in any other videos we have researched. We also challenged the fact that our artist is a male but we used a female for our video and album cover, we did this because we wanted to attract a wider audience. When researching we hadn't seen this happening as usually the album cover is of the artist themselves, we challenged the typical conventions of the indie pop genre by doing this.

When researching into the different adverts artist use to advertise their albums, i noticed a lot of them use the same image of their album cover as the background image. This makes it more reconisable to the audience that it is 'Elliot Guy's' new album. We were influenced a lot by Noah And The Whales advert because it is simple but effective, the plain colours links in with the image they have has their background and still makes both the image and the text stand out. They have made the text stand out above the image and placed it centre so the audience's eyes are drawn straight to the information they are giving us. The text they have used is exactly the same throughout all their products - like ours it associates to them straight away. When creating our advert we have followed the similar techniques they have used within their advert as we thought this was an effective product to follow. We toned down the colour of the image as we didn't want it as bright as the original album cover image as we wanted the text stand out above it so it was easy for the audience to read the information they were providing. 

Within the digi pack we stuck with the theme of nature and link between the beach images to the music video all linked together. Again, when researching into indie pop genre it was clear that the audience had linked together their album cover photos with the digi pack photos. We were influenced by the Coldplay Mylo digi pack because they had made it so the images were the main focus and hadn't included much text on the pages. We thought this was different compared to others we had looked that as a lot of digi pack's include the song lyrics; something we didn't want to include. With the Coldplay digi pack they have the text of who created the music etc. at the bottom of the image in white writing, we took this idea and put it into our own digi pack as we thought this wouldn't take the focus away from the images we were using. We included the song names on every page and two lines of the song lyrics below it, this was different to anything we had seen before as usually it is the full song on one page. 

Presentation

Interview Questions

We are planning on showing our music video to a group of people to get audience feedback, here are some of the questions we are planning on asking them.

 

Do you understand the storyline?

What do you think about the transitions to black & white from colour?

Do you think it looks professional?

Would you see this on a music channel?

What do you think we could do differently if we do it again?

What do you believe the concept of the red balloon is?

Plan For Evalution

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

For this question i am planning on comparing with pictures our own products and the products we were influenced by. 

1) Images of the videos we were influenced by, the images from our own music video which have conventions of the Indie Pop genre.  Ben howard - Nature 
2) The typography we have used throughout our product - making the name of our artist the logo
3) Black & white shots - where we got the idea from
4) Challenge forms of convention - The red balloon 

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

Everything links together, the images of the beach and the beach setting in the video. 

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this question i will play our music video to an audience and ask them questions on what they think about the video. 

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

Photoshop - edit images for advert

Instagram - edit images for digi-pak/album cover

Blogs - follow ideas, research

Adobe premier - Edit our music video/ get the colour of the red balloon. 

FINAL FRONT AND BACK COVER

 

 

FINAL DIGI-PAK

Front Cover

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Back Cover

FINAL Music Video

Sequence 01 from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

FINAL ADVERT

 

 

 

FINAL BACK AND FRONT COVER!

 

 

 

Final with Stickers and Bar Code

 

 

Final Back Cover

This is the final back cover for our album cover, we have stuck with the theme throughout the album and music video with the theme of nature. We also used the same effect called 'Earlybird Effect' that we used on the front cover image, so it all linked together and didn't look like it wasn't going to match, the back image links with the digi-pak images. The image is striking and matches the theme of our music video and the iscolated feeling we have given throughout the video. We have used the same typography throughout the whole album so it links altogther and we were influenced by Lana Del Rey's back cover as she uses all capitals on her back cover with one word bold, we liked this idea and we think this makes it look professional. We used the white spine because we didn't want a bold dark colour to take the audience's eyes away from the good quailty image. We also made the text at the bottom of the image small enough to read but making it look proffessional and not ruining the image.

FINAL Album Cover

These two images are our final images for our album cover. From the previous images we have posted on our blog the images were too saturated which made our balloons a pinky colour, we wanted them to be more of a brighter red like the red we have on our music video, we changed this on photoshop because we wanted it to be exactly like the balloons in our music video. We didn't want to lose the effect of the striking image because of the really good quality, we used the 'z' effect by putting the album name and artist in the top left corner which is where the audience's eye goes to straight away, we kept the font simple and small so the image was still the main focus. We kept the writing plain and black so it wouldn't contrast with the blue sky but so it would stand out on top of it. We have used a transparent sticker in the bottom left hand corner because when researching other album work they have usually used a clear sticker, we wanted to use this so again it wouldn't take any focus off the the image but we wanted it to be noticable still. We have used the same font of the album name and artist so it all links together, we wanted to use the song we have used in the music video to promote the album as this would be the first song the audience know about, we have linked both the music video and print together.

photos

Here are some different edits for our back cover of our album cover, we edited the original image because we wanted the colour to match more of the front cover and made sure it matched without it looking like it clashes. I like the first image as i think it matches the front cover and the text will be easy to read.

Text In Digi-Pak

When i researched the inside of several digi-pak's a lot of the artists use lyrics inside of their album cover, we  were struggling as a group to think of our own lyrics and was time consuming, we decided when we looked at the Coldplay Mylo digi-pak that we liked the idea of not having too much text but only having it simple but effective. Coldplay included the song name and who produced the tract etc. We think this will be an effective way, without filling the whole of the digi-pak with text. 

Above, is an example of what we would want it to look like inside of our digi-pak. I  think this an effective idea because it includes the song and credits which is what is usually included in digi-pak's. It doesn't take anything away from the look of the images which is the main focus throughout our digi-pak and it's something that would look effective on the other images we are planning on using.