Evaluation

These are the questions I need to answer for my evaluation:

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

2) How effective is the combination of your media product and the ancillary tasks?

3) What have you learnt from audience feedback?

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

I will be presenting my evaluation on http://www.prezi.com/

Advert

Here is my advert for a magazine, which i created in photoshop. I used the research i done on music adverts seen in magazines such as NME and Kerrang, these were all small ones that were featured only on certain pages. I used a photo that i took along with the ones i took for my cd cover to edit and create the advert. I changed the colour settings of the photo from black and white to a sepia setting then i changed the brightness and contrast of the photo. Then adding seperate layers for the text and adding in the ratings and text of Q magazine.







Final piece

Cd cover

The CD cover i created was done by using photoshop, this time it wasn't as difficult to use. I started using by using the idea i had from my plan, which involved using the artist as the main focus for the CD cover. I took pictures of different poses and decided on the idea of this photo being the best one to use. I then decided to change the background cover to black and white by using the effects provided in photoshop, then i used the magnetic tool to cut around the outline of the model, i then copied the image and pasted it and moved the image so the back one could also be seen, then changed the distortion which changed it also to black and white then faded it to 60 and it had more of a brown vintage style to the image continuing the contunity fromt the music video. Then i pasted the image again moving it so the other picture could be seen then used the same same effect but it increased to 80 making this the most image with the most colour. After completed the images i added the text and chose the font and colour to match the style of the music video and genre.

The final CD cover compared to the draft is a little different to the original plan, it still contains the initial ideas but i changed the orginal image. This was because after taking the photos i decided to change it and use this one which i think worked better. The rest of the ideas in my draft i used.

Back cd cover in photoshop.

MUSIC VIDEO - KISS WITH A FIST

Here is our final music video, Kiss with a fist.

Magazine advert research

I started researching music magazine adverts, for new albums and singles and started to gather ideas and information on how to set mine out and what was the best way to lay out my advert. I also considered what magazine it would feature in due to the genre of the song. The main magazines i decided to look at were NME and Kerrang because they were the most popular indie magazines which ties in with the genre of the song we chose.




There isn't usually very many adverts featured in the magazine, and they are never bigger than the ones featured above. There are two styles which the adverts are laid out in, they either run along the bottom of the page and only take up a third of the page. There isn't any full page adverts in the magazine, however sometimes there may be a feature ad on the back cover of the magazine.

Or they are featured in the double page spread, which still run along the bottom of the page but there is more than just one advert next to each other. They don't always take up as much room as the other style.



Here's my plan for the advert featured in the magazine, i think that it would be best to create the advert so it goes along the bottom of the page, or on the page portrait style but small enough so it doesn't take up the whole page, as this is the reoccuring style throughout all the magazines. My final draft will be alot smaller than this but it's just to get an idea.

Editing

Seeing as we started the editing whilst we were still filming some scenes most of it got done along the way so we didn't have all the editing left at the end. This made it alot easier because we could spend enough time on the tricky bits of editing like the lip sinking and matching it up with the music. We had a person in our group that already had a mac so we used this to edit which gave us more time as we didn't have to rely on the equipment we had at school, not everyone can have a mac at the same time or use it when they need to which is always a problem. We were able to do editing at home and at the weekend. The hardest part of the editing was fitting together all the footage we had and the time allocated in the song. The song was just over 2 minuets long and we had shot alot of footage just to make sure we had enough good scenes to use. There was one part in the video where the effect we wanted to create took up over 20 single shots, however we needed to speed it up in order to create the effect, this was easy enough just by changing the settings. Also we changed some parts of the film to look sort of vintage. All the editing is done and our music video is complete now.

Take four, filming

Finally all the scenes are done and all filming is completed. We shot the last scene today, which was the opening scene of the video. This included the male lead playing the xbox then his phone ringing which he ignored and then florence appearing on the tv to replace the xbox game. This was quite fun to film with it working out how we wanted it to.

Take three, filming

The majority of the filming is done, and onto the editing stage. We shot some more scenes today of the guitar part and singing, and more miming parts so we had enough parts to lip sink together. The only part of the filming which needs to be completed is the beginning which involved finding someone to play the male character in the songs story this wasn't as easy as it seemed but we eventually got someone to agree to acting in our video, which we will we be filming durring the week.
Then the only part which needs to be done is the editing on some scenes and then putting the scenes in order, which won't take long, we will then be able to burn our music video to disk.

photos

These are the photos we took for the Cd cover and the advert.

Construction of identities on the web summary

We were asked to summarize a handout we recieved on the construction of indentities on the web by Daniel Chandler, a media theorist in 500 words.

The adoption of new media seems to involve burring and shifting the boundaries of public and private. The use of writing on web pages seem to take over the role of speech, so everything that is written on a web page that is meant to be seen as personal has simultaneously became public. Home pages are a medium in which conventional relationships between public and private are visible. Thomas Erickson explains that personal home pages and the world wide web are not being used to publish information, they are being used to contrust identity. The web is one of the first places where individuals can construct portrayals of themselves using information about themselves. Personal home pages are often a reflection of their maker.
The comparison for personal home pages which are used in everyday life are in the clothes people wear and the goods they possess, which can be limited, whereas the web offers potential of mass communication and is more widely accessible for self presentation. Web pages are a form of asynchronous communication, unlike synchronous communication such as the phone and face to face interaction. Home pages are often compared to face to face interaction, however whenever you visit a home page you don't meet the person you only meet their virtual self which can be misleading.
Constructing personal home pages involves bricolage which was discovered by Claude Levi-Strauss's, this is used to generate a particular format and gives you the materials that you can use to create your identity. The more complicated you make the arrangements the better the assumptions you can reflect, this is a way individuals can differentiate themselves form others and make personal statements.
Typical elements which are recognized in the content of personal home pages are, biographical details, interests, likes and dislikes, values, beliefs and friends. A persons identity emerges from whom one knows and their connections. Links that share interests can been seen as constructions of virtual communities. The web allows people to publish their ideas, even though they may sometimes be worthless they can be useful. Personal home pages include text graphics and sound, they can vary from short screenfuls to long scrolls and may vary from a single page to many pages which are connected. The contain links to other pages, some have hit counters, guestbooks, review forms, email and chat buttons and hot lists. Although people can choose what to reveal about themselves this can sometimes be misleading or have unintentional disclosures, or the intentional disclosures. The way the page is coded or looks reflects how the person is.
Sometimes the structure of web pages say as much about the person as the content does. The main use of the pages gives people a sense of escapism and is a place where they can off load feelings and emotions. It seems to be leading what might have been private writing to public writing with it being laid out for everyone to read. This publication of writing can be revealing about themselves compared to what we would expect in face to face interaction with strangers. We can be more in control of the image we present online than we can in day to day life, the option of including information and photos which tie you to real life is completely open and some can choose to adopt identities which are unrecognizable to everyone even if they know them in real life. Frustrations which come from having a page can be compared to frustrations in the real world, such as what to write about yourself and what to wear both exposing what type of person you may be perceived as.

Some of the problems are that strangers think they know all about you. Also problems with safety some people create unreal identities, so it could mean it was a completely different person behind the virtual self they've created. Home pages can enable people to think about their identity, and allow us to transform the way we think of ourselves and change to who we really want to be. They can help to let the things which may be hidden from yourself and others to be shown.
Assumptions that the Internet is allowing less and less face to face interaction, and that people will use cyberspace as an escape from the everyday world is feared by some. However it may be offering somewhere that they can work through important and personal issues which could be limited in everyday life.

Take two, filming

We filmed the main part of the story side of the music video, and extra shots which we will use as quick cuts making each scene flow with the verses of the songs. This took longer than planned due to the use of props we had however we were only left with one scene, and one single shot left to shoot, which was relieving because then we can focus on the rest of the editing which needs to be done, giving us time to add the song and make sure everything was lipsinked correctly and all of the shots ran smoothly durring the video.