Evaluation: Question 4

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

We used a number of different technologies to create our digipak, advert and video.

Once we had chosen our song, we needed to find out more about the band, which included watching some of their videos, especially for our song, In The Morning. In order to do this, we used YouTube, where most of the band's official videos have been uploaded. YouTube is a relatively new website, created just five years ago. However, it has been of vital importance for our project, as it also provided us a with a free way to publish our video to the internet, so other people around the world would be able to watch it.
During our construction and research, we began our blogs. For mine, I have used this site Blogspot, which I have found easy to use, and it has also enabled me to upload photos and text and embed videos. The blog is a key part of our coursework, and the availability of this website has been very important. In order to get the images for our digipak, we used digital cameras, a fairly modern technology. This allowed us to take a large number of photos and delete the ones we did not like, whereas if we had had to use a film camera, we would have had to print all the photos, and then choose the best. We also used a digital camcorder, with a DV tape, which was much lighter and easier to transport that older less modern cameras.

While on location, and meeting up, we also used technologies such as our mobile phones in order to contact each other, and these would have been especially useful if on the days of filming, our group was missing a member, which fortunately did not occur.
Another website that has been extremely useful during our research is Google, which has provided us with images of the band, and other aspects such as information on our chosen genre. We have also found other useful links through Google, such as Wikipedia, where the page on the Coral proved to be very useful.
During the production of our advert and digipak, we have been using Adobe Photoshop CS3 to create a layout, edit photos, and add other elements such as text, logos, etc. We began by pasting a background for our digipak into the program at first, and then began to add our images and text over the top. As each image and piece of text goes in a separate layer on Photoshop, we were able to edit these at a later date, which was hugely beneficial over other more basic image manipulation programs.

A further technology we have been able to use during our coursework is a site called SurveyMonkey.com. This site has enabled us to create a survey and post it online in order to gain feedback from our potential audience. YouTube's comment feature also proved useful here as we were able to ask viewers to give their opinions of the video. A further site we used, in order to gain as much feedback as possible, was Facebook, where we shared the video on our own pages, and asked friends to comment on it.
In order to share everything on our blogs, we had to use technologies to get them there. These ranged from scanning the images for our storyboards, to emailing each other photos and documents such as shooting schedules.

Evaluation: Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We have gained feedback in a number of ways for our project. The first way we used was asking people to comment on our YouTube video, and give us their opinions. We have received quite a few responses this way, which has been very useful for this evaluation. However, these responses were all positive, and we also needed some contructive criticism for our video, which we obtained through our questionnaire on SurveyMonkey.com. Another method we attempted to use was by posting it on our Facebook pages, but this did not generate much feedback.
However, before we began our project, we conducted some audience research to discover what people thought about the Coral, and what their expectations were of the band and their genre. Although the Coral are not that well known, due to being an indie band, and therefore not mainstream, we were able to find some fans to complete the survey, and discover more about what people would expect to see when we created our own video. From this survey, we were able to determine that fans would expect to see unusual and confusing images on album covers, and would expect the videos to not follow mainstream codes and conventions. We endeavered to use this feedback when creating our own digipak, by using the image of the bear having removed it's head, and by having a fairly unusual theme throughout our video of the randomly occuring happy events.
When we had completed our video, we uploaded it to YouTube, and asked people to comment on the video to get a feel of what people felt about it straight after viewing it. We were able to ascertain that people tended to be fond of particular elements in the video, particularly those that were ususual, such as the bear dancing at the top of Clifford's tower. It seems that these unusal aspects boost people's opinions of the video, and make them like the video more.

In order to gain further feedback, we created a SurveyMonkey.com questionnaire, which was posted alongside the video on YouTube, which asked four questions about the video. This did not gain as much feedback as the video, only generating thre mostly positive responses. However, one response did give critical comments of the video, especially regarding the editing. Some of the changes suggested would not be possible however, and one person completing the survey respected this, when pointing out the song was too short, also added that we would be unable to change the length of this.

This is the feedback we received on SurveyMonkey

http://www.surveymonkey.com/?cmpid=eng:gb:ps:google

Link to SurveyMonkey, where questionnaires consisting of ten or fewer questions can be created for free

I also posted the video on my blog, and received a couple of comments this way, which helped add to our feedback. From our feedback, although limited, we have discovered that viewers think the video is interesting and engaging, and have a generally positive thoughts to give. However, the feedback has allowed us to identify on areas we could improve, such as the editing, but the majority of the improvements suggested would be ideal, but not possible with the resources we have access to.

Most of our feedback has been gathered online, from people we do not know, and this has led to us concluding a number of things. We have a received a very large proportion of positive feedback, and we have concluded that this is probably due to the fact that people recognise it is a group of students' music video, so are less likely to be critical. However, a lot of the time, when looking at comments on other music videos it is possible to see that although people give their opinions, this does not give an idea, of whether this is what to expect of a video, unless it largely differs from conventions.

We can also see, and this is especially prevalent on our Facebook pages where our friends comment, that people who know you are likely to give positive feedback, but not give information on why it gives them such a positive outlook on the video, and this feedback may just be due to the fact that they want to praise their friends' work.

Evaluation: Question 2

How effective is the combination of yor main product and ancillary texts?
For our coursework, we have developed three key elements that could be used to sell an album, consisting of a digipak, advert and our video. Throughout the three we have continued themes in order to end up with what seems to be a single package, designed to sell an album. The theme is clear between the advert and the digipak. The digipak features as the back cover a photo of the bear, and we used the same photo for our advert. We also continued the bear theme on the front cover of the digipak by having a photo of the bear with the other stars of our video. This photo is taken on a set of steps, which are also featured in our video, when our star slides down the banister, so this theme is again linked.





The characters featured in the 1000 Years video, as opposed to the bear in our video.
The entire package consists of bright colours, and creates an almost carefree image, from our star causually strolling through town to the photo of the untidy bedroom featured in our digipak.
The theme of the bear also features throughout, something we decided upon after watching some of the Coral's own videos, such as 1000 Years, which features dressed up animals in them, such as a man wearing a bear head whilst chopping fruit.
In our AS studies, we learnt about synergy, using two or more products together to create a stronger image for all of them. For our coursework, we have used our three final products together in order to produce this effect. The video backs up the digipak, which is also supported by the advert for publicity. If these were real media products, we would be able to use them to promote one another like this, and sell the album in the digipak we have designed.

However, it should be noted that our project reflects one of the Coral's brighter, more cheerful albums, as some of the covers, such as that of The Invisible Invasion, are much darker than ours, even though our characters have fairly sullen expressions on on the front cover. The Coral's videos are sometimes quite dark as well, whereas ours is an undeniably cheerful theme throughout.
As a whole, our project would hopefully be very effective at promoting the album as we have given it all a fairly unique look, through using unusual events in the video, and having a dressed up character of the bear as our second most important star throughout the video. This, and the bright colours and carefree images, linked to the continuing themes through the three products, helps it to appeal to its target audience in the indie genre.

Evaluation: Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our video of In the Morning by the Coral is unusual for a mainstream music video, but seems inkeeping with the theme of the Coral, an independent band. The videos for songs by the Coral are unusual in comparison to that of other mainstream artists, which has given us more room to add different ideas that do not necessarily fit in with certain codes and conventions that you may expect in the video of a band such as the Foo Fighters.
All of the Coral's videos vary considerably, which meant that we wanted to create a video that would capture this same individualism so present in videos by the Coral. In our performance, we did this by having a stereotypically dressed front man for our band, and the additions of a bear and a tambourine player to add a unique feel to the video. The addition of a bear is not that disimilar to The Coral's Dreaming of You video, in which a bear dances around in the background, whilst the band are in a narrow room, and on the beach.

Our video follows a linear narrative, as our star goes about his day. It begins with him waking up, and ends later in the day after his journey into town, and back to the bus stop to go home. This follows a key convention of many music videos. Although we do not actually have a live band performing, we do still have the aspect of a group performance, through the dancing at the end, and the bear and busker playing instruments throughout their appearances.
The key concept for our video is a man going about his day, and reapeatedly being joined by strange characters such as the bear. This is not disimilar to the themes and concepts used in videos by the Coral, who have a bear keep appearing behind them in their Dreaming of You video. Our theme is underlying throughout the video, again inkeeping with the stereotype.
Our video also features a relationship between the lyrics of the song and the visuals. When the lyrics, went to the shop are sung, our character enters a shop, and as made plans to be leaving is heard, our character opens the shop door and walks out. We also show an image of the bear in a telephone box, just as the lyrics about writing on a red telephone box.
Another key element of music videos we have also featured is the use of close-ups of our star, especially at the beginning of the video when he is waking up. These are often used at the request of record labels in other music videos, so we did this in order to follow this convention.
For our video, we have tried to use a variety of shots in order to have a more interesting video. During the beginning of the video, we have used a number of close-ups on our lead's face, and have used more long shots towards the end of the video, especially when the group are dancing in the museum gardens. This is farly in keeping with traditional conventions. There are a number of long shots, such as on the beach at the end in the Dreaming of You video, and more close up shots when a band member sings.
For our editing, we have used a number of jump cuts in order to make it fit with the music, and also as we feel it is more fitting for the cuts. However, in the videos by The Coral that we have watched, there are not many jump cuts at all, so this is not a traditional convention of their videos. However, we chose to challenge this convention, as we felt that it enhanced our video.
Our mise-en-scene however, seems quite fitting for the video. For the majority of the song, our character strolls through the streets of York, except for at the beginning when he is inside the house. This casual setting that we have used reflects the Coral's background from Liverpool. When they cycle to the beach in Dreaming of You, it is simply down everyday streets, similar to the ones that we have filmed on. Our character is also dressed in a fairly traditional manner, that is representative of the indie genre.

For our video, we used one sound effect, that of an alarm that we downloaded in order to add it to the video, because we could not hear any background sounds in our video. The rest of the Coral's videos feature music for the entirety, so there are not any sound effects like this, but sounds like this are used over other music videos, so it is not a complete contradiction of conventions.
For our digipak and advert, we have also followed some of the traditional codes and conventions. We have used a number of different images for our digipak, all of which were edited in order to make them look more like a real digipak would. We followed most of the conventions with our digipak, by adding titles, credits, record label information, copyright logos, and CD and DVD logos. We also used the same font as the Coral use on their albums, downloaded from dafont.com. This allowed for our digipak to look as realistic as possible. For our advert, we used a single photo, also featured on our digipak. We continued the theme used on the digipak for our advert, which we felt followed the conventions of typical adverts and digipaks.

Evaluating

The final part of our coursework is the evaluation, where we will asses what we have achieved throughout the past few months that we have been working on our project. We have just begun work on our evaluation this week, and we have until the 16th December to finish this evaluation, and post it to our blogs.

For the evaluation, we must answer four questions, which are

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The aim of this evaluation is to discover how we have progressed throughout the project, and what we have learnt, and discover whether we have created a product that could actually be marketed in our chosen genre. I will be posting the answers to these four different questions on this blog. However, for the third question, we are still struggling to gain enough feedback, so any additional feedback on YouTube or this blog would be helpful in order to make the best attempt at answering this question.

Our video

This is our completed video. It has now been uploaded to YouTube after being approved by our media teacher. We have also created a survey in order to gain some feedback on what others think of our video, which can used for our evaluation. We require as much feedback as possible for the video so if it is possible please leave a comment either here or on YouTube, and complete our survey.

To edit our video, we have been using Adobe Premiere Pro, software that we had only had the opportunity to use once previously when making a video at the end of last year. We used a number of techniques however this time around that we did not use last time. We lightened our footage in the editing suite in order to be more fitting with the general look of Coral videos and also to make it look more professional, as before the footage looked rather washed out. We also tried to make sure that all the footage fitted with the beat of the song especially when there are very specific drum beats. We made the cuts more jumpy when these drum beats were prominent in the song. We also put in a sound effect for the alarm clock, which we downloaded and the inserted into the song, just like we had to add the main song, and removed any background noise from the actual video.

The Advert

This is a photo of our completed advert. This will also be converted to PDF format when we submit the final version for our coursework. We have kept with the theme of the digipak here in a number of ways. One of the ways we achived this was by using the same front, but we did use a different colour as it tied in more with the colour of the photo, and white would not have shown up very well. We also used a picture from the back of our digipak, which continues the theme. We decided due to the fact that the front cover image was landscape, and advert portrait, this photo would not be appropriate. However, the bear by the lamp post was already portrait, so this was a much better choice of image. In order to make the advert look realistic, we also added the logo of a supplir of the record, HMV, and the record label logo. In the details at the bottom, we included a web address and legal information.

Digipak photo

This is an image of our finished digipak before we post the final version in PDF format. When creating the digipak in photoshop, we did make a change from our final draft, changing an image of just balloons for a photo of the bear with the balloons. We were going to use a screengrab from our video for this initial idea of just balloons, but this did not work as well as we had planned, with the image turning out to be rather blurry. Having never taken a screengrab from Adobe Premier Pro before, we did not anticipate the poor quality of this photo. However, we had already taken a number of photos on the days of the shoot, we simply chose one of those, and as the bear was holding balloons, we felt this would be inkeeping with the balloon theme for this side of the digipak.
The other photos we planned to use worked well, although we edited some in order to make them look more professional, such as darkening areas of the photo for our front cover, and repeating the same actions on the back cover in order to make them fit in with one another. The images to be used behind the CD and DVD were also heavily edited to give them a more professional feel, cropping and darkening areas of both of these.

The Digipak - Draft 1 and 2

These are the drafts for our digipak. Draft one features our initial plans for the digipak, but these changed a lot when we went out filming. This was due to the fact that we took a number of photos at the shoot that differ from those initially planned, and we preferred the ones taken at the shoot. We also felt that these photos would improve the standard of the digipak. Most of the photos we have chosen to use were posted in the previous entry, Photos for the Digipak. The only picture that hasn't already been posted is the photos of the balloons in the sky, shown in the plans, but we did not use this in the end. We instead choose the photo of the bear with the ballons, due to the poor quality of the photo of just the balloons.

Update of the Week

This week we have begun editing our video, and have already progressed a long way with it. We spent a long time choosing our favourite shots to be used for the video, as some of them couldn't be used due to passers by being in the shot. So far, we have a fairly rough cut of our video with plenty of room for making smoother, more professional cuts.
However, what has been sucessful already is fitting shots to an underlying beat in the video. During a small break from the song, where there is silence, we slowed the shot down as we felt it was more fitting. Where there is a very strong drum beat, we use some abrupt cuts for things such as coming down the stairs, and zooming in on the bus ticket. We also experimented with a jump cut for when our character leaps over some bollards. We use this cut to move him from one to the next rapidly, and then continue this as he moves closer to the camera.
Due to only having one version of one of the shots, we had to zoom in to cut a passer by out of the shot, and on another shot, we were able to use the program to straighten one of the shots.

Update of The Week

Due to half term, and being out filming the week prior to this, we were not able start our group work until we returned from the holidays. However, upon our return we have achieved a large amount of progress on our digipak this week. We had taken the majority of the photos for our digipak on our shoot, only needing one final photo which will be a screengrab from our video when we come to editing in Adobe Premier Pro next week.
We have been using Adobe Photoshop to create our digipak. We have been able to use a wide variety of features that we had not had the opportunity to use before in Photoshop. We had previously used the Magic Wand select tool, but once we had selected an area, we were also able to darken this part of the image, in order t0 make the image fit in better with what would be expected of an album front cover.
We also cropped images which we had done previously, and also wrote text onto our album cover. This allowed us to explore new features, such as putting a shadow on the text and importing a font that we had downloaded online.

Photos for the Digipak

These are a selection of the images we intend to use for our digipak. A first and second draft have now been drawn up for the digipak.

Update of the Week

This week, we filmed our music video for our media studies coursework. We were one of the first groups at the college to film, which meant our shooting schedule and storyboards had to be completed on the Friday before we started shooting, so they could be approved by our teacher. Now that filming is complete, we must spend the week following half term working on our digipak and advert, before beginning editing the following week. The editing process takes four weeks, and all this time will need to be used wisely, so it is important that we finish our digipak and advert this week.

Second day of shooting

Today we completed our filming of the media coursework. We shot the scenes at Clifford's Tower, at the phonebox, in Coney Street and in the Museum Gardens. This meant that our filming is now sucessfully completed. We kept to time well and have ensured that we have all the footage we need. Editing will now commence on November 8th. Being one of the first groups to film, we now have the week beginning the 1st November for completing our digipak. Today we took a number of photos for the digipak also, and have decided on a different front cover to the one shown in the original draft. We also have additional photos in case we change our mind on what pictures to use.

First day of shooting

We completed our first day of shooting at 4 pm today. We made a good start on our video, shooting the house scenes, bus stop scenes and establishing shots, although we still need a shot of a flat block. We overcame some problems early in the day, when we unable to get hold of a bear suit. In order to continue work whilst waiting for the suit, we shot the house scenes, which do not contain the bear, meaning that we did not fall behind schedule.
We asked permission before filming outside of the shop today, so we do not have any issues there. We chose to shoot the shop today, as they are near to the house we were filming in. When shooting in the house, the necessary changes, such as the removal of the poster and rearrangement of instruments were made in the bedroom we filmed in. Overall, we had a fairly productive day of filming.

Our locations continued

A key part of our video takes part when our main character is waking up on his unusual day. This takes place in his bedroom, and below I wil post an image of the room we intend to use.




We also intend to use this image for the front of our digipak, but there will need to be some changes made to the room, such as the poster will need to be taken down.



We still need to choose a shop to shoot ourside, and a bus stop, but hopefully this will not take too much longer, as shooting commences on Monday. The bus stop will need to be in town however, as we will only have the bear suit for one day.

Update of the Week

This week we have completed our storyboards which I have now published on the blog, although the scans may need to be redone due to issues with contrast. We have also found out that we are shooting on Monday and Tuesday next week, which will be the 18th and the 19th, so we have had to finish our shooting schedules, which are posted below. All details have been removed for privacy issues.

Whilst I was working on the shooting schedule, Nathan and Kassie worked on the storyboards, and Beth wrote a shooting script, pictured below.

Storyboards

These are our storyboards, which will be used when we head out filming to plan our shots

The first three shots are establishing shots, used as we zoom in towards the house where our star is asleep. The fourth shot is the first sighting of the star, who is asleep in bed, and as an alarm is played he will wake up and start to get up. In the sixth shot, we see an abrupt cut to him coming down the stairs, before entering the kitchen. The camera will then zoom in on a noticeably empty bread bin.

On the second sheet, our first shot sees the star frustrated by his lack of breakfast, but by the second, the issue is overcome by a second character handing him a piece of toast, from which he takes a bite and rapidly discards it. In the song, there are lyrics about heading to a shop, so our character goes to a shop, and no sooner than he closes the door, it opens again, and he reappears with arms full of shopping. The first introduction to the two other characters that feature throughout the video appear in our 16th shot, sat at a bus stop, where our star joins them.

In the 17th shot our character is looking for a bus ticket, and when he cannot find one, the camera zooms in on his disappointed face. However, in the following shot, he spots a ticket under the bear paw, and is able to use this to get on the bus. We see an extreme close up of his happy face, before zooming out and finding he is in town. The character walks down the street with the bear and the busker following, before turning a corner, where the others continue to follow him.

Our character continues his journey through town, and eventually comes to a telephone box, where the bear is stood inside on the phone. The group then arrive at Clifford's tower, and start dancing on the slopes, before the final shot features the group saying good bye, where the bear high fives our main character.

Possible locations

As we have been unable to go and visit York yet, I have used Google Maps to get some images of possible locations.
The first one here is Clifford's Tower

Another possible location is Spurriergate

A third possible location is Coney Street. There are two images here. I personally think the second one would be better as I quite like the idea of using the mansion house as a background.

Finally, another possible location I found is St Helen's Square

These locations are good because they are all near to each other so we would not need to travel too much, which could be costly. We still need to consider a possible bus stop for our video, and the houses we are using.
All images are (C) Google Maps

Update of the Week

This week, we began our plans for the storyline, performance, costumes and locations for the video. These are published below on this blog. We are also drafting our storyboards so that we will be one step closer to going out and filming.



Our initial ideas include an establishing shot of the house where the man lives before we cut to his room, head downstairs, and finally finish in the streets of York. As soon as the man steps outside of his house, the music will begin. As the song we have a chosen is only 2 and 1/2 minutes, we will have around 30 seconds of silence at the beginning while we set the scene, and our actor gets up. This is actually fitting, as the song is a fairly happy one, and the happy events do not start occurring until the man leaves his house, and is handed a piece of toast.




We have also been considering possible locations, as our earlier plans show, and two of these may be the City Walls of York and another street for him to walk down (The Shambles is pictured) although neither of these are definite yet.

Planning the Video

This week we began making plans for key aspects of our video, and started storyboarding.

This is a list of the key aspects, such as costumes and locations, that will be used in our video.

The storyline...

The video will be about an ordinary man going about his usual daily routine, random, but positive events occur. When our character leaves his house after discovering he has no bread or milk, a piece of toast is handed to him, and later balloons will be handed to him. Other aspects in the story will include a busker playing a guitar riff and a man dressed as a bear. The theme of the video is that positive events will remedy the negatives that could have happened.

Why we chose this...

The Coral's videos are unusual yet quite simplistic, so we came up with a similar theme, but expanded on it with our own ideas.

Performance...

We are still completing our final ideas on the performance, but these are some we have decided on so far.

• bear pops up occasionally in the shots, "playing" the acoustic guitar


• the actors handing the balloons and toast sings along to certain parts of the song

Why we chose this...

A bear often appears in the Coral's music videos, so we wanted to continue this theme and there is often someone singing along in their other videos.

Our locations...

The video begins in his home, when he is getting up and leaving, and then continues in the streets of town, possibly on the city walls.

Why we chose this...

The Coral's videos are filmed generally in average streets/fields in England, and they all have a distinctive English look.

Our costumes...

For the main character - Converse, casually stressed jeans, t-shirt with some sort of design, dark casual cargo jacket

Busker - someone dressed scruffily

Bear - if we include the bear we will need to hire a bear suit

Why we chose this...

The main character will fit the stereotype of typical Coral attire, while the ideas of a musical bear came from the "Dreaming of You" video, where the bear was featured playing a trumpet.

Update of the Week

This week, we have continued our work on the coursework. We spent much of our first lesson this week studying some of the Coral’s other videos, and like the album covers we had previously looked at, we discovered that they are very diverse. They all have a confusing theme running beneath them, but the actual stories in the videos vary completely. One features the Coral singing on a mountain, whilst another features an elderly lady dancing. The theme of a bear also reappears, this time with someone dressed up as one. The videos largely feature crosscuts between their storylines, and shots of the band singing.

We have also discovered further steps in our coursework this week, such as creating a shooting schedule and planning a storyboard of shots for our film. We are still working on our digipak, as the plans need to be carefully put together. Although it will be done in Photoshop, we are planning on paper and using other programs whilst we become more confident with using Photoshop, as most of us have not used it since planning our magazine in last year’s coursework.

The Coral's Album covers

The Coral have had a number of albums, and the covers of these albums have been very varied. As part of our coursework, we have to create a digipak for the band's album. We have already decided we will have a six sided digipak, but choosing the designs is more complicated. With the covers being so varied, we are faced with both advantages and disadvantages. Of course the varying covers are advantageous for us, as it gives us more freedom to experiment with different designs, and create a unique and innovative cover. However, it will be harder for us to fit the cover with a stereotype of the band's covers, as they are all so different.

Below are pictures of the covers of some of the Coral's albums.

This album cover features the bright colours associated with the indie genre, but also suggests a slightly darker theme, possibly leaning towards the psychedelic rock genre. This is further illustrated by the blurred front cover. This is the fourth of the Coral's albums.

Roots and Echoes, the sixth album by the Coral moves away from the dark, mysterious image featured on the cover of The Invisible Invasion, and while it still uses the dark colours, features an image of the band, possibly because they are further established on the music scene, and by featuring a photo of them, this could be used as recognition.

This is the Coral's debut album, and features a very typically indie front cover. This may be used in order to attract indie fans, with it being the first album, and helps to give an idea of what to expect.

The Invisible Invasion seems to overthrow all stereotypes of the genre, with a complete lack of any sort of bright colour and a confusing image on the front. This variation between the album covers is certainly not a bad thing as it allows us to be more diverse when creating our own covers, although complicates things when trying to define the conventions.