Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

During this project, we have attempted to create products as close to the real thing as possible. To help create something that could easily be shown in the real industry, we analysed many other products related to our chosen project: Music Video, Digipak and Poster. The song we chose was Adele – Turning Tables, which, although falls into the “pop” genre, does not necessarily fit into the usual conventions of generic, fun loving, commercial. We watched many of Adele’s other music videos, and found that the song is a lot more heart-felt, and meaningful than a usual pop song and other slower pop songs that are a lot more like our chosen song. Most of them seemed to have darker colours, some in black and white, and tended not to follow a story during the track. We took on board many of the ideas we found by watching existing media pieces, and our own music video was entirely in black and white, and didn’t follow an actual story, it hinted at one already there. Although this goes against the usual conventions of a pop song, if we had used what was expected, it would not have worked with the song as well and would have looked like we had created a “spoof” video or tried to hard to fit in with conventions of a “Pop” music video.

We looked at numerous music posters to gain further information into what to include in ours. At first we were quite unsure and not very confident in what a music poster included because we hadn’t generally seen any around apart from worn old posters that were pealing off of the side of lamp posts. We decided to create a tour poster, as this is what is most likely to be seen in the real world. We looked at many Adele posters and pictures and discovered that in the images used, she is often looking very solemn and sad, this is obviously to anchor the lyrics in her song, it would be very unusual if she was portrayed as a colourful loud happy person in the posters in contrast to her songs. We used this in our own poster, using quite a high contrast, black and white image to create an attention grabbing poster. We chose a red font for the main title “Adele”, as this grabs attention and connotes love, which most of her songs are about. It also contrasts with the black and white image and grabs the audiences’ attention.

The digipak we created included 5 images of “Adele”. Again, they were all in black and white, as this is very conventional of Adele herself. We chose to create a “Live Tour CD” as this would go well with our poster and it is a bit more interesting than just a normal studio recorded album. We kept the same font throughout the poster and the digipak, as this keeps them all related and involved together. The images we chose to use are all very striking and eye catching, as they are quite high contrast, which we thought was much like Adele’s real album cover for ‘21’.

Our music video is entirely in black and white, much like Adele’s video for ‘Someone Like You’, and kept it basic with someone standing, singing at the camera. We used clips of a male part, suggesting he is who the song is written about. However, we decided not to use an actual storyline as we thought the lyrics were powerful enough on their own. We also used letters being written on a white board, which was a creative idea, going against the usual conventions of this type of music video. We also slowed down certain parts, and included other creative effects, which we believe will make our music video memorable.

QUESTION 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary products?

Our chosen project included creating a poster and a digipak to support the music video . All of our products were completed in black and white, excluding one part of the poster. We believe this keeps them all recognisable as being by the same person and keeps them apart from others. We also used the same font throughout, which we believe makes the products look much more neat, if we had used different fonts throughout it would have looked inconsistent and unprofessional. The photo we used for the poster was also the image we used as part of the digipak, which obviously links the two. Again, in the real industry, artists often use the same images for products of the same project, so the public knows that they are by the same person and including the same recent songs/projects.

QUESTION 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We showed sent the link to the music video to friends and family and received mainly positive feedback but also naturally we received negative comments which we have used as constructive criticism.

“I think you have created a very successful music video. The use of black and white is very attention grabbing and memorable and it fits the song well. The poster is very eye catching, and the red lettering stands out well. I like the use of plenty of images for the digipak, and how the whole project is in black and white. This connects all three of your products and makes them stand out from others.”

“The editing could be slightly cleaner on the video, although the syncing of the music with the characters can be very hard to perfect.”

To create a better music video for our target audience, we should, in the future, spend much longer at the editing stage, maybe experiment more with different ideas for example play around with different effects and filters which may have made the video much more aesthetically pleasing. After spending a lot of time trying to find a main character, we weren’t left with long to film and edit the whole thing. Spending more time at this stage would create a much cleaner and better music video overall and we would be able to go back and change what we thought didn’t work exactly right.

QUESTION 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?The media technologies we used were:iMovieSlideSharePreziCameraAdobe PhotoshopScanner (home and school printers)Blogger

iMovie: We used iMovie to create a horror film opening during our AS course. However, using this program to create a music video turned out to be much harder and more complicated to sync the song to the clips. The other factors of iMovie are very successful and helpful in creating an interesting video. We were able to slow parts down, speed parts up, turn the whole video black and white and experiment with cutting effects. This program helps to easily create a very interesting project. As we were still amateurs in using iMovie we resorted to looking at video guides for certain aspects of the program, watching videos of how to use it to its full extent allowed us to try and experiment a bit more with different aspects of colour, speed and effects.

Scanner: We used a scanner to copy our storyboards and other notes onto a computer, so we could include them on our blogs. It is a very quick and simple way to add any sketches that could not be created on a computer. We also didn’t lose any of the colour or writing we had created on the loose sheets of paper.

Camera: The video camera we used to record the music video was quite a basic, although still respectable Sony camera. We had to borrow it from the school, as neither of us had our own that was compatible with the software we had to use. The digital camera we used to take the photos was a Nikon D3000, which has very high megapixels, so we were able to properly edit the photographs and make them as large as we needed them to be. This helped us greatly as we needed the images to be very clear and crisp, and that’s exactly what we got.

SlideShare: We used the website SlideShare to upload our PowerPoints, so we could then embed them into our blogs. It is a very useful site, as it is very simple to use and keeps your slideshows available for whenever you need them. However, on occasion it has not worked, and frozen mid way through uploading, therefore it is not always reliable, but still very useful.

Blogger: We used the a blogging website to upload all our planning and ideas to. This made things a lot easier as we could clearly see what we had and what needed to be added. We were also able to embed videos and slides, documenting all of our work. However, there is not much else you can do on the site, and it is often very slow, therefore there could have been a better way to upload all of our work.

Adobe Photoshop: We used Photoshop to create both the poster and the digipak. We used it to edit the photographs before including them, and, as we are both A2 Level Photography students, are quite familiar with this program. We managed to successfully edit the photos, turning them into black and white and enhancing the detail and the contrast between the colours. We were then able to add the text, and rearranged it until we felt happy with it.