This Evaluation has been constructed to simulate a debate over blogs between an avid reviewer and a production team. The context is that the 'new' band Acoustic Plenty boasted wild claims about their debut album, a reviewer called Jonathon Greensby from Q magazine writes about his fury of their claims and demands the production group for the video prove against Acoustic Plenty's claims. The production group's response has been constructed to answer the Evaluation Question.
The reviewer's blog post on Acoustic Plenty's claims:
http://theangryreview.blogspot.com/
The production team resposible for creating Acoustic Plenty's video 'Temporary Press' and their blog reply:
http://temporarypressblog.blogspot.com/
Showing posts with label Hannah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hannah. Show all posts
Friday, 28 January 2011
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Evaluation Question 2: How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?
Considering that we each created our own ancillary products, we decided that in order to evaluate these products in full detail, it would best to evaluate them seperatly. However, we have evaluated questions 1, 3 and 4 together as a group.
Evaluation Question 3: What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?
(Click on the image below to enlarge and read in deatil the information about each clip and how our audience feedback helped).
Clip #1 - Stop Motion
Before
After
Clip #2 - Lip Syncing
Before
After
Clip #3 - Narrative & Relationship
Before
After
Clip #4 - Narrative & Relationship (Use of spilt screens)
Before
After
Clip #5 - Band Performance
Before
After
Below you can view the final version of our main product as well as the draft version, this will enable you to see overall how our feedback enabled us to achieve our best.
Draft Full Version
Final Video
In order to gain feedback from a wider auidence, a pitch was presented to the class, who all gave us feedback. The video above is the feedback from our first pitch for our plans and ideas, however, as the process of creating the products continued, we regularly questioned our audience. Feedback was regular and always referred to.
All comments that were made were fair and nessesary. Gaining feedback throughout the whole process made changing aspects of the video much easier and overall the video now has a strong narrative. Many improvements were made from the original video, however we are impressed and think our video is a success.
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Evaluation Question 1 Draft
Draft for Evaluation Question 1 Reviewer
These are the blogs so far:
The reviewer's blog post on Acoustic Plenty's claims:
http://theangryreview.blogspot.com/
The production team resposible for creating Acoustic Plenty's video 'Temporary Press':
http://temporarypressblog.blogspot.com/
These are the blogs so far:
The reviewer's blog post on Acoustic Plenty's claims:
http://theangryreview.blogspot.com/
The production team resposible for creating Acoustic Plenty's video 'Temporary Press':
http://temporarypressblog.blogspot.com/
Evaluation Question 1 Plan
'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'
I can see straight away that the question is asking for strong analysis of the music video but oddly enough it can be answered through so many ways. The problem i will face when answering it will be making it interesting enough and using some creativity to get high marks.
The first lesson our team had on the media evaluations was spent looking into detail on how we could answer this question together instead of planning how we would answer all of them. However we did search other blogs for ideas and came across a simple idea of using screen shots that depicted the strongest conventions within the video and commented on them. This was found on the blog: http://musicvideocm3christina.blogspot.com/
The idea although simple and breaking the golden rule of 'don't just write about it' was a good starting place to get us thinking. As always we aim to improve on what we see so we started listing the areas of our music video that either use or create conventions on a mind map. This wasn't exactly detailed but it described the range of ideas we all had at the time.
With some time left in our first lesson we went through our music video on YouTube and made screen shots that carefully showed conventions we had used and challenged. We then inserted them into a Publisher document so we could easily manipulate them and add the text boxes that would explain each screen shot. This also meant we could then save it as one picture and insert it into the blogger account. By the end of the lesson we had the makings of a our first draft answer for Question 1.
However by the next lesson the questions were all revised so a plan could be made for Christmas because of a tight schedule for work. We all decided the best option would be to split up the questions amongst us and each complete our own version of Question 2 (based on digi packs). As Hannah had already started Question 3 me and Alex had to choose between the resulting questions 1 and 4. Both not minding which one we completed I opted for this question because of how open it is.
Back to the plan: With all this in mind I've decided to change how we answer the question because as pointed out clearly by our teachers just writing directly onto the blog will gain no marks, the answers have to be just as creative as our music videos to impress as much as possible. But not wanting to waste the work we have already done i have chosen to still use texts and pictures to answer the question.
So to make some text and pictures more creative and interesting i have chosen to use an idea from our media teacher Mr Smith who came across the feud between a production group called Shynola and 'Mr Trevor'. Shynola created a diverse and seemingly new type of music video for the band Coldplay and their single Strawberry Swing but Mr Trevor boasted that his own music video had been copied by Shynola and made a series of claims based on conventions he thought were copied. The press release by Shynola, in responce, listed the same claims but with replies that proved the conventions were in fact stolen from various other places and provided evidence.
Originality Explained - Shynola Press Release
To answer the question i will create my own situation similar to Shynola's but I will engineer the situation to my advantage to allow me to be detailed and answer the question properly. The ambitious claim of plagiarism will be made by a reviewer for Q magazine that has a separate blog for personal comments. For this I will write an entire blog post based on claims that Acoustic Plenty's music video isn't original and i will write this in a similar analytical way to a review but mainly list 6 areas of the video that have similarities with existing conventions. I will then write a blog post from a production group that filmed and edited the music video that proves the reviewer wrong with evidence in the form of videos and pictures. This will be written towards the fans of Acoustic Plenty who lost interest after reading the review.
I can see straight away that the question is asking for strong analysis of the music video but oddly enough it can be answered through so many ways. The problem i will face when answering it will be making it interesting enough and using some creativity to get high marks.
The first lesson our team had on the media evaluations was spent looking into detail on how we could answer this question together instead of planning how we would answer all of them. However we did search other blogs for ideas and came across a simple idea of using screen shots that depicted the strongest conventions within the video and commented on them. This was found on the blog: http://musicvideocm3christina.blogspot.com/
The idea although simple and breaking the golden rule of 'don't just write about it' was a good starting place to get us thinking. As always we aim to improve on what we see so we started listing the areas of our music video that either use or create conventions on a mind map. This wasn't exactly detailed but it described the range of ideas we all had at the time.
With some time left in our first lesson we went through our music video on YouTube and made screen shots that carefully showed conventions we had used and challenged. We then inserted them into a Publisher document so we could easily manipulate them and add the text boxes that would explain each screen shot. This also meant we could then save it as one picture and insert it into the blogger account. By the end of the lesson we had the makings of a our first draft answer for Question 1.
However by the next lesson the questions were all revised so a plan could be made for Christmas because of a tight schedule for work. We all decided the best option would be to split up the questions amongst us and each complete our own version of Question 2 (based on digi packs). As Hannah had already started Question 3 me and Alex had to choose between the resulting questions 1 and 4. Both not minding which one we completed I opted for this question because of how open it is.
Back to the plan: With all this in mind I've decided to change how we answer the question because as pointed out clearly by our teachers just writing directly onto the blog will gain no marks, the answers have to be just as creative as our music videos to impress as much as possible. But not wanting to waste the work we have already done i have chosen to still use texts and pictures to answer the question.
So to make some text and pictures more creative and interesting i have chosen to use an idea from our media teacher Mr Smith who came across the feud between a production group called Shynola and 'Mr Trevor'. Shynola created a diverse and seemingly new type of music video for the band Coldplay and their single Strawberry Swing but Mr Trevor boasted that his own music video had been copied by Shynola and made a series of claims based on conventions he thought were copied. The press release by Shynola, in responce, listed the same claims but with replies that proved the conventions were in fact stolen from various other places and provided evidence.
Originality Explained - Shynola Press Release
To answer the question i will create my own situation similar to Shynola's but I will engineer the situation to my advantage to allow me to be detailed and answer the question properly. The ambitious claim of plagiarism will be made by a reviewer for Q magazine that has a separate blog for personal comments. For this I will write an entire blog post based on claims that Acoustic Plenty's music video isn't original and i will write this in a similar analytical way to a review but mainly list 6 areas of the video that have similarities with existing conventions. I will then write a blog post from a production group that filmed and edited the music video that proves the reviewer wrong with evidence in the form of videos and pictures. This will be written towards the fans of Acoustic Plenty who lost interest after reading the review.
Friday, 17 December 2010
Ancillary Digipack & Magazine Poster
Digipack Final Design
The key design for my two ancillary products was that they both linked together, I wanted my products to look as professional as possible, so it was key that the two had to link, as this was a key convention used in actual digipack and magazine posters. Even though my products didn't include very much colour, where i did it was still key that I followed the rule of three, which is used when creating a magazine or digipack. On the artwork which I created myself, I wanted only three colours to mainly stand out, Red, Green and Yellow. These to me are the key colours of autumn. Because I wanted the ancillary products to appear handmade or drawn, it was important that the designs remained simple and not overly confusing for it's audience. The Indie genre is all about being independent, so I wanted to ensure that the ancillary products stood out from main stream products. This was mostly what led me to not including any photographs of the band, as after researching various products, I saw that this was a common convention. On the top left hand panel (right inside panel) is where the disc will be stored, there is a cut away piece in the digipack where the CD will be assessable. After questioning fellow media students (whom where also my target audience) the response to my products was very creditable, with many stating how the simple design was a positive factor. They also stated that the drawings made the products noticable and interesting, which would make them if they were shopping in a store which stocked my digipack, would in turn result in them picking the item up. Whilst the comments regarding my magazine poster resulted in respondents stating that the use of colour attracted them to the poster and the design got the 'message' across perfectly, without confusing or causing them to loose interest.
Magazine Poster Design
The key design for my two ancillary products was that they both linked together, I wanted my products to look as professional as possible, so it was key that the two had to link, as this was a key convention used in actual digipack and magazine posters. Even though my products didn't include very much colour, where i did it was still key that I followed the rule of three, which is used when creating a magazine or digipack. On the artwork which I created myself, I wanted only three colours to mainly stand out, Red, Green and Yellow. These to me are the key colours of autumn. Because I wanted the ancillary products to appear handmade or drawn, it was important that the designs remained simple and not overly confusing for it's audience. The Indie genre is all about being independent, so I wanted to ensure that the ancillary products stood out from main stream products. This was mostly what led me to not including any photographs of the band, as after researching various products, I saw that this was a common convention. On the top left hand panel (right inside panel) is where the disc will be stored, there is a cut away piece in the digipack where the CD will be assessable. After questioning fellow media students (whom where also my target audience) the response to my products was very creditable, with many stating how the simple design was a positive factor. They also stated that the drawings made the products noticable and interesting, which would make them if they were shopping in a store which stocked my digipack, would in turn result in them picking the item up. Whilst the comments regarding my magazine poster resulted in respondents stating that the use of colour attracted them to the poster and the design got the 'message' across perfectly, without confusing or causing them to loose interest.
Magazine Poster Design
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Artwork For The Ancillary Products
This is a 'finger painting' I've done as artwork for my ancillary products, the design currently includes this piece of artwork on the poster and the album, however rather than placing the piece on the front of the album, it will be placed on the back cover. It will also be the only image that includes colour through out the theme of the two products. The colours used all suit the theme that is being used 'Autumn', including lots of reds, greens, yellows and browns. I will photoshop the image so that there is no background, so only the colour will show, enabling me to get rid of the darker colour that is the background of the image at the moment. This will highlight the colour further. I will also be improving the lighting effects of the image to highlight the colours further too. Inspiration for this design of a tree, came from the Eels album I originally took inspiration from when researching album covers.
These are two ink drawings that I will be using on the inside panels of the digipack as well as the back cover to the album. Similarily to the tree painting, I will use photoshop to delete the background that is in the photos, so that only the lines appear, making the background transparent. Because of the album's theme and title, I wanted to keep the art theme running throughout the process of the ancillary products. The drawings also link with the chosen font, which looks like someone has doodled the two pictures as well as all the text on the digipack. This theme will also follow on the ancillary poster, as this will have the same effect as mainstream and professional posters do.
These three drawings are the artwork for the front cover of the digipack, in there final stage. Here I have removed the background from each of the pictures to make the drawings stand out more. This technique will be used on the other pieces of artwork for the album, including the painting of the tree. These designs of the protraits match the chosen font, however they also match the chosen genre - Indie. This digipack will be very individual and remain very memorable to an auidence. The main inspiration for these designs came from a series of album and single cover designs from Damien Rice. His designs are often in relation to the title of the album or a tracks title.
Fonts For Ancillary Products
These are my initional chosen fonts that i would consider using for my ancillary products. I'm designing the ancillary products with the idea of the album almost looking self-made, with various picture designs that look like doodles with the font matching. http://www.myfonts.com/ enabled me to search on the website for a font design that suited what I was looking for to suit my two products. By searching 'scribble', the website brought up a number of matching from which i picked my favourite 10. Typing 'Acoustic Plenty' into the text box, also gave me a preview of what the font would look like with my chosen text. After importing each preview of the text into a draft design of the ancillary products I was able to eliminate certains fonts that didn't suit my designs. After going through each different font, there was just one font that suited the design perfectly - "Matthew's Scribblings".
Monday, 13 December 2010
Magazine Poster Research
Noah & The Whale
The cartoon visuals are used throughout as a theme of their debut album, using the same colour scheme. This poster includes all the key information such as; the band's hit singles that are feature on the album, reviews, websites and their record company logo - as well as the band's album title and their name. Noah's poster is eye catching and also suits the season when the album was originally released, summer/autumn.
Wild Beasts
This poster includes the cover of the band's album as the main focus, however it follows the same particular colour scheme as the album itself. This poster follow the key conventions for a music poster, as it includes all the information needed such as websites and company logos. However, this poster includes a more detailed review of people's opinions about the album. All the reviews are on the left hand side, which is the first place the eye goes to when viewing something.
Ladyhawke
Similarly to Wild Beasts, Ladyhawke's artwork for the poster is the same as her debut album cover. This will automatically help to boost her marketing scheme, as people who will see this poster, would definitely recognise the album if they were to see it within a store. Again, the record company logo is included, as well as websites. However, unlike any of he other poster I've researched, Ladyhawke includes tour information, as well as a promotional offer that is relative to the magazine this poster is featured in.
Pete Doherty
Similarly also to Ladyhawke's poster, Pete Doherty's also includes the artwork from his album cover. Again boosting the marketing scheme. This poster also includes logos and dates, however unlike the previous three, this poster could be seen as simple, due to the standard type text and due to the colour of the poster. By not using other bright or striking colours on the poster, other than those from the artwork, the poster stands out and looks less confusing to it's audience, getting it's message and advertisement across simply but yet still very effectively.
Band of Skulls
Firstly, this poster stood out to me due to the use of various colours (which seem quite autumn like, with the vast use of reds and yellows) a similar colour scheme i originally thought would be good to use because of the theme of our music video. Simply by changing the information on this poster to suit our band and album release, it would work as a poster that suited our genre. However, whilst the positive point of the poster was that it grabbed an audiences attention, due to the colours, i felt that the layout was a little bit dull and less adventurous - two things that i felt didn't really suit our band or our music video. I wanted to create something that was striking to look at, but something that was perhaps less confusing to read and that was more interesting to read and look at. However, I'd would like to produce something that was a memorable as this advertising poster.
Jonsi
The use of colour was the first thing that attracted me to this type of poster design. This poster also uses the popular convention of including the album's artwork, however the design was my favourite out of all the magazine poster I'd looked at. The simple use of colour over one area of the poster was striking, a theme I'd really like to include, whilst the text was simple and to the point, whilst still remaining stylish and not confusing to it's audience. This will be the main source of inspiration when i come to designing my magazine poster, as all the conventions work well together.
Florence & The Machine
Again, following the convention of including the album cover. Florence's album however, keeps the text to a minimum, including only the vital information such as the album release date, title and the platforms it will be released onto.
Manic Street Preachers
Including the album artwork again, this poster is very similar to a lot of the poster I've researched, however similarly to Jonsi, this posters conventions and designs is one i would consider following greatly. The plain white background makes the album's artwork stand out, making it very eye catching. It includes all the information needed to inform the audience about the album's release and various following information. However, similar to my previous post on the blog about my CD cover research, i want the theme of the album to be art, linking to the album's title; Street Art. So the key part of this poster design (as well as the band's album cover) is the piece of artwork that they have chosen to use. This would be a great thing to include on Acoustic Plenty's cover, as it would relate to the title whilst suiting the Indie genre as well.
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Digipack Research
Coldplay's Viva La Vida or Death & All His Friends
This digipack originally inspired me, due to Coldplay being of a similar genre to our band. Their recent studio album also included various pieces of artwork that was used in the digipack, which I wanted to include in my ancillary products. The artwork cover for their album was taken from Eugène Delacroix's "Liberty leading the people." The theme of the Revolution followed through the whole album, being represented in the band's costumes. Various lyrics surrounded the artworks used. Even though most of their digipack included various paintings, they still included a photograph of the band, a common convention used in most albums and digipacks.
Be Your Own Pet Get Awkward
This band isn't particularly the same genre as our band, however the use of colour is what attracted me to this digipack. The use of a white background allows the colours to stand out, attracting an audience's attention. This was also the only digipack that I researched that included a plastic case for the CD. This was also the first digipack that I researched that also included art cards, featuring information about each member of the band.
Belle & Sebastian's Write About Love
This digipack attracted me due to the effect used on the artwork throughout the digipack. This was clearly a link to the album's title as well as the theme, Love. The use of the colour pink reflected this as well as keeping to the usual style that Belle & Sebastian have used throughout their discography. This digipack also included a booklet, which featured lyrics and photographs (which also linked back to the theme of the album.) Similarily to Be Your Own Pet, this digipack also featured a plastic case where the CD can sit.
Monday, 6 December 2010
Ancillary Feedback
After getting our feedback we got told that we were each going to do an individual poster and digipack in order to easily assess our input because it wasn't clear from the draft.
We got told that because all 3 of us made a different element that it didn't really fit together because we each had unique ideas and styles of our own which were good in their own right but not together as a digipack.
Miss Somel said that the fisheye effect on the photos didn't work on the insert so this will need to change.
We got told to make sure that our digipack and our poster follow these generic conventions.
Digipack:
We got told that because all 3 of us made a different element that it didn't really fit together because we each had unique ideas and styles of our own which were good in their own right but not together as a digipack.
Miss Somel said that the fisheye effect on the photos didn't work on the insert so this will need to change.
We got told to make sure that our digipack and our poster follow these generic conventions.
Digipack:
- House sytle
- Track listing
- Image manipulation
- Band name
- Album name
- Reflective of the genre
Poster:
- House style
- Band name
- Album name
- Release date
- Brief review suiting the genre
- Reflective of the digipack/genre
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Photoshoot.
I liked the photos that came from our photoshoot and we had a lot of fun doing it. Unfortunately - Sophia was ill today so we will have to shoot her photos tomorrow when she's back and John has been busy recently but we're trying to arrange a day that we can pictures of him.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Hannah's Ancillary Idea #3
My third idea for our ancillary product was taken from various singles by The Kabeedies, which featured cartoon drawings of either the band members or of a cartoon character relating to certain lyrics of the track. The album suits our band's genre and relates to the narrative of the music video. The album cover is suited to the band's target market, adding the same quirky and playful feeling that is shown in the music video. The album artwork also links directly to the album title.
Original inspiration came from The Kabeedies single "Loves Ought To".
Monday, 29 November 2010
Hannah's Ancillary Idea #2
Example for ancillary idea number 2. Unlike my previous design, this particular one doesn't reflect the narrative of our music video, and blurs the relationship between the two. However, this design plays on the title "Street Art" by using the theme of nightlife and the possibility of the theme of 'lady's of the night'.
Decisions for Ancillary.
We have decided that for our ancillary we will not follow the route of including our playmobil in our digipak - this is for our research has shown us that the first single/video's theme isn't incorporated within the album as a main theme. From this we have ruled out including the playmobil on the main panels of the digipak. We have also decided to continue with our autumn leaves/neutral theme for our digipak becuase this will give some continuity for our audience and make everything seem branded for our band.
Planning a photoshoot for our ancillary.
After researching current digipacks and advertisements for bands we have found that the majority of them contain an image of band, either prominant or not. Because of this we have decided to arrange a photoshoot of our band using the theme of autumn leaves and having them against a plain background. We have decided we will be doing this on Thursday evening because all of our band members are free then. We have also found a room for us to use so we can easily cut the photos out.
Saturday, 27 November 2010
Hannah's Ancillary Idea #1
Design #1
Design #2
Here's two examples of one of my first design ideas for the album front and back covers of the ancillary product. The main inspiration for the front cover came from Interpol's Antics cover, which is very plain and simple, however the simple design allows the cover to stand out. The same theme follows on the back cover. (All the track titles were decided by myself purely to test my designs, we will have a group meeting to finalise track titles).
Source of main inspiration:
Design #2
Here's two examples of one of my first design ideas for the album front and back covers of the ancillary product. The main inspiration for the front cover came from Interpol's Antics cover, which is very plain and simple, however the simple design allows the cover to stand out. The same theme follows on the back cover. (All the track titles were decided by myself purely to test my designs, we will have a group meeting to finalise track titles).
Source of main inspiration:
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