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.