Thursday 21 April 2011

Evaluation Question Two =]

How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

For our product to work as a whole we had to create a repeated motif throughout our ancillary tasks of a Digipack and poster that held good continuity with our music video as well as keeping in theme with our Indie rock genre by creating a sense of branding.

The first thing we did was a photo shoot of our two actors playing the characters in the video; this meant we could use these images on our Digipack and poster once we had edited them on Photoshop. I feel the images are really effective in reflecting our Indie genre as the characters are in simple black yet feminine costume, shot in a one room location and the images emphasise our theme of abuse. Using the same shot for our poster as the one on the back of our Digipack gave a good sense of continuity for our audience as well as in keeping with the genre for our target audience to relate to and keeping a good verisimilitude as the photo shoot took place in the same location as the music video was being filmed. Below is a film reel of some of the images we edited on Photoshop and the final shots we ended up using in our Digipack and Poster.





Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.




We decided to carry across the costume in each of our tasks as again this keeps with the verisimilitude and continuity of our branding. We kept the costume simple for a shoot with both ‘sisters’ in black, the younger in a black cotton dress with legging and a beige flower in her hair to match her blonde hair and goodness whilst the elder in a black top and leggings with a red flower in her hair to match the red hair and present the evil sister. This sense of simple costume is so the audience focus more on the meaning behind the video rather than the outfits. Yet I think the continuity of costume throughout the products works effectively.






 








The main sense of branding comes from our band name ‘The Rivals’ which is seen on our poster and Digipack. We made the band name stand out on our ancillary tasks by putting it in bold, on the poster it is in white against the black background and visa versa for the Digipack. At first we got slightly criticised for the font choice as the class feedback we got back was that it reminded them of the Barbie brand logo font but after some long discussions we decided to keep this look as the font gave it sharp edges with a feminine look about it which is what we wanted from the band name. When the poster was finished the feedback we got changed and everyone seemed to comment that the font of ‘Rivals’ really in kept with the Indie genre and appealed to our main female target audience. Some still commented that it reminded them of the ‘Bratz’ font but we felt that that was the kind of look we were intentionally going for.






The colouring of all three products also contained a conscious continuity where we kept a slight black and white theme running along the two ancillary products, where the poster contained a black background with white font, yet contained the ripped image of the two sisters in colour, thus emphasisng the image to its maximum capacity, whilst the Digipack had two black and white images of eyes and two dull colour images one including the same as the poster, where the font colour was black for ‘Rivals’ and white for the song name ‘Girl With One Eye.’ Although the video contained no black and white footage the theme was kept through the characters black and white costumes and the colour footage was dull in tone in keeping with the inside left image of the Digipack.



All together I feel all three products create an effective use of branding that will catch the attention of our main target audience whilst emphasising our key theme through the use of good continuity and a prominent verisimilitude.


Evaluation Question One =]



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

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Editing =]

The editing process has become a long slow paced epic journey. After only taking one day to film we felt we had enough shots to create an intense music video, inkeeping with our chosen genre. As we had filmed on a VLR camera, our footage had been saved to memory cards. This was our first issue as Sir had to take these home and convert our files to AVI's. We edited on the Premier Pro editing software and saved all our work on the W: drive, however after starting work on our computer, it seemed it was just too much memory for the computer to hold so we changed computers 3 times. By this point we decided to save all our work onto my desktop documents to i could use any computer. Elliot editing the opening of the video and used speed duration to give it a really good look and effect, i then resumed with the fight and ending of the video. I too used speed duration, layered shots over the top of each other, repeated shots, reversed shots and created a quick montage at the end.
In the final week before our deadline, it felt like i was constantly editing for three days, whenever i had the chance i was in their editing. Apart from my group no one had seen the video until its final completion. On completely the video and watching it on the big screen i felt a really good sense of accomplishment and i loved the final product. The only shot that seemed a little cheesy was around a 2 second punch and reverse shot, although it was a little too much, it is over in a flash and i think the overall video works as and end product and so far the people who have seen it, love it and think it's great. So I think all the editing hassle paid off.

Make - Up Techniques during filming =]

Here are some screen shots we took of the files we are going to upload to create our video.


Here is a still image of my one eye, we wanted to build the make up onto my eye as the video progresses to show the progression of the abuse. We have created this tired eye effect by simply using grey eyeshadow to emphasise the dark tired sleepless nights this character has been having.


This image will be one of the last shots in the video, here you can see a purple bruise on my chest and that my eye looks extremely darker, cut and bruised. We created this effect using purple mascara mixed in with black eyeliner, and brown/grey eyeshadows to emphasise the black eye effect.


For the arm bruising, at first emily placed her hand on my arm and we drew dots of where her fingertips would be, then we were able to darken this using the eyeshadows and maroon mascara to show that she grabs my arm so tightly it creates harsh brusing.



These last two images show me at my worst. Here the character is alone and realising her brusing. On the floor she touches herself delicately realising how much pain her elder sibling has caused her and how much the brusing hurts. Whilst in the mirror, upon looking at her dishevelled self there is a great shock and sadness in her eyes, which makes her pick up the box and kill herself.

Thursday 7 April 2011

Short Video of Eye =]

Final Magazine Poster + Audience Feedback =]

Here is our final magazine poster.

As we were now heavily involved in the editing of our video we had to look back at our previous audience feedback before changing our poster on Photoshop. We still kept the same photo in the background as we felt it was very striking and represented the theme of our video. When we returned to our poster we realised that there was only a few things that we needed to do. I decided to put our poster onto Facebook to get some audience feeback from friends and hopefully our right target audience.

Firstly, we removed the speech marks around Girl With One Eye as it had been commented on that it seemed to gramatically correct and they don't suit the style that we were aiming for. Next our audience before had decided that their was too much writing on it, so we decided to get rid of the cheesy childish catch line, 'Dont miss your latest dose of rivalry' and instead moved the 'buy in stores now' further to the centre of the stage and made it bigger so it stood out more and there was less for the audience to take in, also so the main image stood out more. Finally our logo 'Rivals' was commented that it looked very similar to the 'Barbie' brand signature but after some research we realised that the font was rather striking and effective as it linked our image of girly dressed indie rockers that contrasts to the essence of their songs. Therefore we decided to keep the font the same and see what people on Facebook had to say about our final ancillary product. We did take on all our original feeback and we were thankful for it but we still wanted to keep the main essence of the poster to how it was and see what our friends on Facebook had to say.

On Posting our new advert to Facebook, i suprisingly received a far few comments. The first was from a year13 female, who is of our target audience she felt that the 'colour contrast was very good' and she also stated that ' the title is awesome and well-suited' after this comment i was happy that we had kept the supposed 'Barbie' font as obviously it appealed to our main target audience.

One thing we were commented on was that NME rate things out of 10 stars, which was a mistake but we didn't want to have to decrease the size of the stars so therefore we kept to a 5 star rating.

After this I received a comment from an 18year old photography student who fits perfectly into the indie rock genre she commented., ' I really like the torn effect down the middle and how both your eyes are looking straight at the viewer. The colours looks great with almost opposite hair colours and flowers in your hair. Not overly keen on the bottom half but i like the font of 'rivals' Great poster.' Again she commented on the 'Rivals' font choice that it obviously inkept with the genre, and she liked the use of colour. I agreed with ther that the bottom half wasn't that exciting but i explained that we wanted our audience to focus on our band name, 'Rivals' and the main ripped image. So i was very happy with her comments.


I received a comment from a 22yr old male friend, although he doesn't fit into our target audience exactly he still made some valid points and if we had the time i think we would have tried to make some adjustments using his constructive criticism. He stated, 'put a lighting effect on the faces so that they're is maximum emphasis on the eyes, fading into black around the edges, ESP the brown bit at the top. take out the 'order in stores now' its the first thing i looked at and distracts from the strength of the rest of the poster.. maybe put some quotes from reviews or something.. lastly the stars should be above the tear marks.. i think thats all.. otherwise i really like it :)' the only thing i would not have changed is putting the stars above the tear marks as i like the layering effect as if the images have been stuck over the top of the writing.

In general the comments were very positive and better than i had first expected, the last comments made general comments, that it looked good and the image was of top quality, another 16yr female photography student mentioned, 'maybe the eye colour a little brighter? to really capture the attention of the audience' again valid point, but generally i am very pleased with the standard of the poster and as long as it appeals to our main target audience then it's hit the mark for me. 






Digipack + Audience Feedback =]


We wanted to keep our Digipack simplistic with minimal writing and key images. Our first few versions we had kept in just black and white but we felt it lacked something, so decided to combine black and white with colour. We kept the the same font from the poster and also used the same image from the poster for the back cover of the digipack to give it some continuity. On completeing the Digipack i placed the photo onto Facebook to see what people had to say. This was the feedback;

'awesome just from photographers point of view i'd make the 4th image a little brighter and maybe have a bit more contrast see how it looks? Also maybe do something with the second eye like youve done with the first one and put an image in the pupil or just make it a tad brighter.'

This comment was from an 18yr old male photography student, although he isn't in our main target audience i think his advice was useful. I understand his comment about the 4th picture but i like the dullness of it as this dullness is seen in our music video, and with the eye we took the pupil out to make it more effective.

I agree about photo #4, but nothing too drastic. Possibly also see if in photo #2 the girl on the right could be brightened a bit? Don't know if you're using photoshop for this, but if you are you could use the dodge tool a bit in her shadowed bit. Nice concept though, I like this

Again this comment is from a male not in our specific target audience but again he likes the concept and thinks it works so therefore i'm happier. He also commented on brightening the images but personally i liked the dull look. Although no girls commented on the photo, being a girl myself who fits in our target audience i think the concept works and i'm extremely happy with the overall look.