My brief for my A2 Media work was to create a Music video and two select ancillary pieces of my choice, with the options of a band album, band poster, or a band website. I chose to carry out my work based around a band that fall within the metal and rock genres of music as they are styles of music I frequently listen to and enjoy the most. The pieces I decided to focus on for this year of work involves a Music video, the band album, and the band poster, all linking together into one promotional package for my chosen band.
I have labelled all of my Blogger posts in order to make it easier to navigate throughout and find specific parts of my coursework, ranging from research and planning stages, to the development process and the final areas involving my evaluation answers to my work.
For my audience feedback, I have conducted an online survey using Surveymonkey.com, from which I have gathered 20 responses.
I put links to my online work portfolio, as well as my online survey to my Facebook account, which has made my work and survey available to a more public and large open group of people who lie mostly within the age range I was trying to target.
My survey only contains 5 questions, but I feel that the questions I have asked are effective enough at finding out if my work works well together as a band package, and if my audience enjoys it.
The first thing I asked was for relating to age, here are the results:
By asking this question at the start of my survey, I have identified one of the main demographics of my audience within the survey, with 11 results for 16-18 years old, 2 results for 19-21, and 7 results for 24+.
Now I know that 13 results were answered from people within the more ideal age range of 16-23 years old.
My second question asked if the genre of music was clear within my music video, here are the results:
20/20 people said that the Rock / Metal genre of music is defined well within my music, this shows that I have been successful with my audience in creating a music video for the band Breaking Benjamin, as well as an appropriate music video for the genre.
My third question asks if my band album / digipak defines my chosen music genre, here are the results:
17 people said that the music genre is defined well within my band digipak. With 3 people saying they are unsure if my digipak follows the music genre, there may be adjustments in areas that I could make in order to make the genre easier for people to identify.
My fourth question asks if my band poster defines my chosen music genre, here are the results:
16 People said that the poster shows the music genre that I have chosen.
1 Person said that the poster does not show the music genre.
3 People said that they are unsure if the poster shows the music genre.
This shows that my audience mostly agree that my poster is successful with fitting in with the rock and metal genres, however there are still some mixed opinions. This can lead to the option of carrying out more research to see what areas of my poster doesn't work for my poster, and what I should aim to improve.
My fifth and final question asks if my video, album, and poster follow a consistent theme and create an effective package for the band, here are the results:
With all responses agreeing that my pieces have a consistent theme across each area, and that they work well for the band, I now know that I have been effective with creating a full promotional package for the band chosen at the start of my project. All of my work links well by following consistent themes. Possibly done through the colouring of pieces, fonts, locations, as well as the band logo. All of which I have aimed to keep similar throughout.
Additional online feedback:
After posting my final music video onto YouTube, I received my first comment from a random user who mentioned areas of my video that they liked. This includes my camera and filming work, as well as my editing + cutting, including lip syncing used throughout.
Focus group:
I also put together a small focus group to get extra feedback specifically for my video. This allowed to find out a couple specific details about my video that people like or dislike about my video, being told that my editing and synching for the video was done effectively. One recommendation was suggested to include more fade in / fade out transitions through my piece. as I had done with a couple moments in my video.
After receiving feedback on my digipak, I have made adjustments to one of my inside panels.
I have changed the content within the top right panel, originally I included lyrics to the song "Diary Of Jane" which my video is based around. I received feedback saying that the song lyrics may not be an effective idea, as the digipak is meant to represent all the songs for the band, rather than one particular song.
To change this, I have included the names of each band member and their role within the band, as well as a thank you message from the band at the bottom.
I have constructed an entirely band poster, following a different style from the last draft.
I have also produced two versions of the poster, both a landscape and portrait version to see how the poster would look in different formats.
The style that I have chosen to follow was inspired and influenced by two posters I found in a Mojo magazine, which are small landscape posters that both fit onto half a page of A4 each.
These posters show my inspiration behind my poster designs. The posters include the front cover image of the actual digipak, and then uses the same images / styles for the background of the poster.
I have finished editing together my video, and all areas of it are now completed and polished so that there are no rough cuts between my shots. I have also finished changing the colours of all of my new shots to match with the rest of the video. I plan to have the video exported and available online within the next few days so I can start gathering audience feedback and focus groups to use when answering my evaluation questions.
The screenshots below show my use of the RGB balance tool.
The top photo is from my first filming shoot, and the bottom photo is from my second filming shoot. They are both similar shots of the same band member, however they are done weeks apart from each other. After uploading footage from my second shoot into FinalCutPro, I realised that my newer footage has a slight change in colour, especially after applying the same levels of desaturation and vignette effect.
The original footage I had filmed has a slight green tint to it, possibly to due to with the lighting at at the time combined with exposure levels used when filming, when I filmed for the second time I had changed the camera exposure which has possibly contributed to the colour change.
As I want to keep continuity throughout my video, I wanted to make sure that the colours stay consistent throughout all of my video. This meant using the RGB balance tool to try and match up the colours as closely as I could.
Before and after using RGB balance.
By subtly reducing the red highlights in my new clips, as well as increasing the green highlights, I have been able to make my newer footage close enough as I can to my older footage.
Footage before colour correction.
Footage after colour correction - also showing the RGB balance settings used.
How my newer footage compares with my older footage.
Here is another comparison of the two shots I had shown at the start of this post. The top screenshot is from my first filming session, and the bottom screenshot is from my second filming session.
By using the RGB balance, I have been able to closely match up the two shots with their colours. The areas that are most noticeable with the colour changes are the walls in the background, and my band members skin on his face and arm. Where the new shot used to have more of a red / pink tint to the background walls, and my band members skin, they have now been changed to have a slightly more green tint similar to the original footage.
As each clip is slightly different in the lighting and exposure used, using these same RGB balance settings used from the shot above may not work the same and will be effected differently. This will likely mean that I have to individually correct each clip as the settings may interact differently with the different clips.
I have created a darker look and feel throughout my video by using different video effects across all of my clips.
The effects I have used is: Desaturate = 40
Vignette: Size = 0.45
Falloff = 0.75
Blur amount = 16
Darken = 0.7
Saturation = - 1
Mix = 100
There is a slight change in colour in the clips that were filmed, with newer footage have a slightly more red colour to it than the first footage I had shot. Because of this I need to use RGB balance on my newer clips to slightly reduce the red levels, this helps to match the older and newer clips and help keep continuity throughout my video.
Here is a before and after of a shot from my video, the top photo shows how my footage looks in the timeline without applying desaturation and vignettes to my clips. The bottom photo shows how my footage looks after I have desaturated the clips and applied a vignette. The original clips are fairly strong in colour. As one of my band members were wearing bright shoes as well as a bright coloured guitar strap, I wanted to make sure that they don't stand out as much as they did, this is one of the main reasons why I desaturated the clips. However I also feel that desaturating the colours throughout helps to fit more with the mood of the song and genre.
The original logo that I had used so far throughout my ancillary pieces was the official band logo. As it is not my own creation or work, I need to create me own logo and change my work to include the new logo made by me.
Here are some different logo ideas that I have created for the band.
These Logo ideas follow the same concept and idea used for the original band logo, featuring two B's positioned together, representing the band name. The original logo used 4 B's linked together to create a unique design and pattern. For these I had two B's placed back to back, and tried different fonts to see what worked best.
Here are the 4 best ideas that I have created for my new logo.
Jordan- go back to the poster ancillary- if the main image is not your own work then you can't really use it. Maybe sketch an image etc but check that all work is original and don't forget that the poster is advertising a specific album so link the poster to the digipak more. Don't label something as final unless you are ready for submission and marking
Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? - Carry out on Prezi.
- Detail codes and conventions learnt about Rock / Metal music videos, gained through the research stage + analysing already existing videos.Mention all codes and conventions I had to follow, what I included my video and how it followed codes.
- Talk about analysis and research carried out for band digipaks of the genre, show comparison between mine and original band digipak.
- Why would my Digipak appeal to the audience of the genre and the band?: Similar themes and colours represented throughout, representing the band.
Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- Talk about house styles: consistent theme and image that I would represent and use throughout my pieces - Why it is important to have consistency throughout, it helps to link together all the work, and associate and create a brand image to identify the band through the similar styles.
- Go over house style that I used, was there are consistent theme throughout all three pieces? did it create a certain image for the band and could they all link together?
- List benefits of the Digipak and poster that I created, why it is appealing, any interest created for the band and album?
- How did my Digipak and poster follow codes and conventions of the genre and band, does it work, is it suitable?
Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback? - Video based feedback from interviews, uploaded on YouTube and Embedded into Blogger.
- Carried out audience feedback, interview / questions based around the Digipak, poster, and final video that I produced. Interviewees were picked from age range of target audience from the genre.
- Found out how they feel about what I produced, anything that I should improve on with it, how closely they relate to the band or song choice, how consistent they are.
Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? -
- List the different software and / or hardware that I used for the different aspects and pieces of my work:
Serif page plus x6 - used for the designing and creation of my band poster and digipak, offers a wide range of easy to tools to create a professional and consistent theme throughout the work, offers templates to create reasonable and realistic work.
Blogger - Used for recording and publishing work progress, allows comments and feedback to be made on my work, also able to embed work from other sites into published work (Can share any Prezi or Youtube links that are relevant)
Final cut Pro - Used for editing, professional like editing software, easy to understand and learn, offers all necessary tools required for the editing.
Apple Macs - Used macs to access editing software / final cut pro.
Web 2.0 / Youtube - Used to upload rough cuts + final version of my music video, then using embedding links to get the video into my blog.
Prezi - Used to show any planning and / or evaluation work, better designs let the work be more unique with a more professional feel and image.
Photoshop - Used to create all panes involved in my band Digipak / album art. Photoshop offers more professional and high quality tools more precise than what is offered by Serif PhotoPlus.
Here is the finished version of my Band / Album poster, using the same fonts and styles / blurred effect on the text as I used in my band Digipak. I kept the poster to a minimal design.
I have carried out a survey online in order to find out about my target market, and what they would expect to see within my music video.
Here is a link to the survey I created for my audience research. Music video survey.
The surveys included in my question start by finding out information about the target demographic for my music video, finding out age ranges, preferred music genres, and how often the watch music videos.
I then include questions that can be used to influence certain aspects of my video, asking questions about what themes people would prefer to see in a music video by the band, such as comedic or serious themes, and performance or narrative based videos.
I have collected 12 responses for my survey.
Here are the answers and responses I had gathered from my survey:
How old are you?:
75% of people are aged 16 - 17
25% of people are aged 18-19
What genres of music do you listen to? (Multiple choice)
Rock - 9
Metal - 4
Pop - 5
Blues - 0
Country - 1
Dance - 4
Electronic - 4
Hip Hop / Rap - 5
Jazz - 0
Reggae - 1 How often do you watch music videos?
Never - 1
Rarely - 9
Commonly - 2
What do you prefer seeing in music videos? (Multiple choice)
Comedic themes - 5
Serious themes - 7
Live performances - 6
Story telling / narrative - 5
Other - 0
Should the locations used in the video suit the themes of the song?
Yes - 10
No - 0
Don't mind - 2
Have you listened to Breaking Benjamin before?
Yes - 5
No - 7
Would you expect videos by Breaking Benjamin to contain serious themes?
Yes / Serious themes - 6
No / Comedic themes - 2
Don't mind - 4
Would you like a music video by the band to contain visuals that link with the instrumentals and lyrics?
Yes / Link to the video - 10
No / Unmatched to video - 0
Don't mind - 2
Would you expect to see any visual effects within a video by the band?
Yes - 9
No - 3
Here is the finished version of my CD Digipak for Breaking Benjamin - Phobia. There is a sense of continuity throughout all of my panes, as they are all set within the same locations and settings being the woods. Two of the panes also feature the similar surrealist theme with miniature people, which is not relevant to anything with the band or their music.
