Vanessa's Evaluation

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

Media music video evaluation from Nessa Shepherd

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In our feedback it was brought to our attention that we could have made our establishing shot clearer, and could have included more camera angles. We used a variety of shots during our performance, such as low-angles, close-ups, extreme close ups, mid-shots and camera movement such as zooms and panning. However this would have been hard to do whilst presenting the narrative as we chose to set it in a bedroom. As split screen was a big part of our video, we were unable to vary our camera angles as we wanted it to be symmetrical. Also this would have taken away the effect of the passing through of objects, making it very unclear as to what was going on.

We gained lots of positive feedback such as our digi-pack worked really well and had continuity across the products, liked the passing through of objects and that the narrative was clear throughout.

In our rough cut feedback there was a comment saying our music video contained ‘too much stop motion.’ Stop motion was our intention for our music video, in our opinion we thought merging live action with stop motion didn’t fit with the conventional idea of our video looking quirky and unrealistic also we thought our video would lose continuity. In hindsight, we were quite ambitious with creating the whole video in stop motion, as this was very time consuming and quite challenging, resulting in loss of time for editing. It was also mentioned to us that our cloud scene ‘didn’t work’. At this point in time when we received this comment we had only just added this footage to our rough cut so it did look odd, but we took it on board and with the colour corrector, we felt like this was a dominant, quirky part of our video that we were pleased with.  However, we were happy with our overall outcome of the stop motion, and glad we took on the challenge.

Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Presidentz Movie- Question 4
by: ness25

Final Evaluation - Luca

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 In our music video we have followed certain characteristics of a female artist's music video but we have also created a music video that is individual and unique, which does not follow all the characteristics of a typical music video of a similar artist. One way in which our music video demonstrates the characteristics of the genre is through the way love is portrayed between the two characters. The boy and the girl in the music video are in love and this is typical of the pop-folk genre. The video follows these two characters as they wake up, go about their morning routine. The similarities between the two characters are shown and this again follow the characteristics of the genre (innocence, love, relationships). Our music video defies the characteristics of the genre in the way it is shot, using stop motion creates a surreal, jerky effect. This is not usually afflicted with the genre we have used. However using stop motion has created a positive effect as it will appeal to our target audience. Our target audience are creative and loving so therefore they will be open to trying new things. Stop motion has created an effect which reinforces the innocence of the music video as the jerky effect gives an amateur look to the video as if the two characters portrayed have actually created it.

Shows two characters and the love theme.

Emphasises love and shows stop motion (hat appears on boys head)

We have used lip syncing in the chorus of our music video, this has created a link between the lyrics and visuals (one of Goodwin's points on analysing music videos). We see the artist, Eliza Mindel, singing the chorus which emphasises her creativity and musical talent. She is also playing the guitar at the same time which further reinforces her talent. Lip syncing follows the characteristics of the genre because most of the artists in the pop-folk genre are very real and talented. This scene is positive because its creates an emotional bond between the audience and our artist. Through the lyrics she is singing and how she is singing them the artist is portrayed as being emotional and down to earth, she is singing about a real matter which has emotionally effected her. This is typical of the genre as past experience is usually what influences most artists and is shown in their lyrics.

Artist lip syncing

In the chorus of our music video we have used a cartoon cloud background with our artist walking along, this is still shot in stop motion. This scene was added so that the audience could see the artist and therefore relate to her. The whole chorus sequence is supposed to portray a 'dream sequence' this is represented by the clouds in the background and also emphasised by the surrealism that comes with stop motion video. Our artist is represented as being the cupid between the two main characters and therefore emphasising the theme of love within our music video. This theme strongly follows the characteristics of the genre used. In this chorus scene our artist is also seen playing the guitar. This represents her as being creative and down to earth. She can play the music to accompany her songs. This is typical of the genre used and members of our target audience who play instruments can relate to this. This scene follows Goodwin's point of music following visuals, you see her playing the guitar and you can hear what she is playing. This is also emphasised on our digi-pack through the pictures of guitars we have used, it gives a theme of musical talent which is something we wanted to associate with our artist.

Artist walking amongst clouds

                       

Artist playing guitar

We have used frequent references to voyeurism  how ever we have not used camera-work that depicts the female body in a voyeuristic way. This is because that would not follow the characteristics of our specific genre and would not match the star persona we have associated with our artist. However we have used references to voyeurism with techniques such as frame within a frame, to do this we have a scene in which the actors hold up a board. This board is a green screen board, then using the effect we have added a video into the green screen. Therefore to the audience the characters are holding up their loved ones (pictured). We have also used close up of our artist which shows her eyes and also the artist looking at the camera, this emphasises the voyeuristic nature of our music video. Also we have used voyeurism in our digi-pack. The album cover has Eliza Mindel with a magnifying glass which is over her eyes, magnifying them. This is very effective in creating a link between the artist and the audience as it seems as the artist is looking through the magnifying glass at you.

Artist shown looking at audience

Character shown holding green screen

Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

"That cloud scene... didn't work with the rest of the video" This comment is referring to the scene that includes our artist, Eliza Mindel. She is pretending to walk whilst we use the effect of stop motion to move the clouds that we have cut out of paper and stuck on the blue background. This creates a cartoon type of effect which is meant to portray a dream sequence, this is emphasised by the surrealism of the scene including the cartoon background and the natural 'jerky' effect that stop motion creates.  We intentionally added this effect, to show the audience the artist so they can relate to her and recognise her. Also by showing the artist singing the chorus we have reinforced her star persona. This sequence portrays her as being innocent, creative and loving. These factors follow the conventions of the genre we have chosen for the artist. We think this scene fits in well with the rest of the music video as it gives some flow and variety to otherwise a very simple sequence. This scene helps reinforce the theme of love throughout the music video as   our artist is acting as the cupid for the two main characters of the sequence. This theme follows the characteristics of the genre.

Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Prezi question 2

Question 4

Question 4
by: semeluca

evaluation

media question 4
by: cookiemiseter123
 This is question 4
This is question 1


This is question 2

Question 3, My directors commentry.
"you don't really know who the artist is really?" this is mainly referring to the split screen and the cloud scene when the chorus is playing, we purposely added a completely different scene change and using the artist on the cloud scene we feel creates the star personna and helps you identify yourself with her. We think that not using the artist as the actor and main focal point of the story creates a effect that the artist is looking on herself doing this, and looking back on herself and the mistakes she may have made. Also this was our rough cut and we hadnt finished putting the full video together with the artists bit in. I think there was a difference between the actor and the artist and you can indentify this yourself when looking at the magazine advert and digipack. We have purposely picked a new actress to play the lover she is talking about in her lyrics because it allows the singer to sing on the chrorus and allows you to do jump cuts from the artist back to the video to make effective jump cuts and cuts on the beat. Since taking these comments on board and addressing them we have been able to make a distinct difference between the two and have made it alot more effective so hope when the audience see's the final they change their opinion.

Media Evaluation- Charlotte

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

Mediaevaluation q1 from Charlotte Day

Question 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

'The narrative was clear throughout'- This feedback was important to us as the narrative was very important to us as we based our video mostly around this when we came up with our initial narrative.  The fact that it is clear to our audience that the two characters are a couple and are following an everyday schedule the same even though they are not physically together was rewarding to hear as we spent a lot of time planning over our narrative. 

'We liked the passing through of objects'- This was another key factor that we were glad our audience had recognised and liked. We linked this part closely to the lyrics of our song to create an illustrative video. The lyrics in the song quoting 'our bodies fit together like a makeshift puzzle' is within the metaphor for the passing through of objects so we were happy it showed we were following the lyrics closely and linked them to our video.

'The cloud scene didnt work'- This was said in our rough cut video where we had only just included this scene therefore it was looking very out of place at this point and wasnt done to the best of our ability at that stage. However it was good to see some constructive crititsism here as this encouraged us to work harder on correcting this scene and after we had included the footage of the artist performing which was put in after our roughcut this scene looked a lot clearer and our audience then knew who our artist was and had a clearer insight to her persona with this cartoon like imagery. 

'Our ancillary products looked effective and showed clear links however there could have been more information on the digi-pack' -We tried to create a theme throughout our ancillary products of the black and white and link in the images and mise-en-scene within both such as our costume. However the issue of time was the reasoning behind the lack of information. If we had had a bit more time we would have included the information on the spine of our digi-pack with the name of the artist and digi-pack name. However overall our audience said it looked effective and showed clearly the promotion of our artist and star persona and also the genre.  

'Good angles but could have done with an establishing shot' -In our feedback it was brought to our attention that we could have made our establishing shot clearer, and could have included more camera angles. We used a variety of shots during our performance, such as low-angles, close-ups, extreme close ups, mid-shots and camera movement such as zooms and panning. However this would have been hard to do whilst presenting the narrative as we chose to set it in a bedroom. As split screen was a big part of our video, we were unable to vary our camera angles as we wanted it to be symmetrical. Also this would have taken away the effect of the passing through of objects, making it very unclear as to what was going on.

'Too much stop Motion' - In our rough cut feedback there was a comment saying our music video contained ‘too much stop motion.’ Stop motion was our intention for our music video, in our opinion we thought merging live action with stop motion didn’t fit with the conventional idea of our video looking quirky and unrealistic also we thought our video would lose continuity. In hindsight, we were quite ambitious with creating the whole video in stop motion, as this was very time consuming and quite challenging, resulting in loss of time for editing. However, we were happy with our overall outcome of the stop motion, and glad we took on the challenge. 

(unfortunately we were unable to upload our vox-pop but these were the comments made)

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

Final Cut- We used final cut for the editing process of our video. We used many techniques within this process such as green screen, split screen, transitions and layering. With the green screen we overcame a few challenges such as the green card as the image moved so we had to try and move the image going on the card to sync this and whether the image on the card would fit and look clear and professional enough to use. We used the motion key tool and the marker to show exactly where we needed to move the image to, to get the positioning precise. We also had to create a black background behind the image, as when the green card moved a shadow of the image was shown as the lighting was perhaps too bright. However after doing a test run on this before attempting the real thing we knew this would be possible and overall it looked effective. We used split screen throughout the verses of our video. This was to fit with the narrative of our music video with the male a female sequences beside each other and keeping them as in sync as we could with each other. The obsticle we had was trying to get both sequences in time, especially when the objects were being passed through, however by simply taking out a few frames in certain parts we got near perfect to the timing we had wanted and that was possible within our footage. With the split screen we had to crop the two images so they were the same size however the positioning of the bed posts at the beginning isnt as exact as we had hoped and this was because we had to enlarge one side of the footage in order for it to look the same size and this meant the proportions had changed and the whole image would look distorted if we had moved it to line up with the other bed post exact. The layering looked effective whist the artist footage used in the chorus of our video. To layer we moved the two pieces of footage on top if each other and used to fading tool to fade the capacity of the dominant image on top. This performance footage was layered with images of the artist playing her guitar as the performance, overlayed with different camera shots, such as close ups of the guitars to connote the genre of the artist/song clearly, close up shot of the artist herself to show identification to her audience and mid-long shots to show this performance, show her body language and outfit also for this identification. We also used colour corrector throughout to highlight the lighting and to make the video more professional. Our aim was to edit the colour to almost look cartoon like and we enhanced the high key lighting when our artist was performing to follow our persona.

Blog- We used our blog to record all of our planning and research we did throughout our music video process. The blog is easily accessible to media convergence and can display media platforms such as videos, images, and web research all which was useful and needed throughout this planning period. We were able to upload YouTube videos that related or inspired some of our ideas and decisions used throughout, then we were able to analyse and explain what our final thoughts were. The blog was also useful in order to correlate our work as a group, we used this especially through the editing process when taking screen grabs of exactly our progress as a group and how we managed to achieve these editing techniques and test runs and footage to see whether these techniques would work and were achievable. Blogging is such as easy way to show your journey of planning and research as a portfolio and to look back at your initial ideas and how they have changed and progressed throughout.

Photoshop- We used photoshop through editing out photographs taken for our digi-pack and magazine advert. We used the magic want tool for our advert to erase the background and get the outline for our image. We then multiplied the image and reversed it so we had two of the same images facing the same way. We then changed the brightness and contrast of the image to create a further glowing effect then edited in the black and white effect to show continuity with the digi-pack theme. We also showed continuity by downloading our font and writing the information for the advert then cropping and editing colour to show further the connections with our digi-pack. We then edited all our images for our digi-pack through photoshop. We choose 3 images of guitars to connote the genre then 3 images of the artist to show the artist herself. There is continuity with the magnified glass prop to show voyeurism to her audience and identification. We used these as our front and back cover. With the front image we choose to blur further the image of the artist through the glass to connote a mystery and we also blurred the font of the writing to carry on this effect. With the images of the guitar, for one we highlighted the colour of pink and kept the rest of the image coloured black and white. 

by: CharDaay

Evaluative points

"That cloud scene... didn't work with the rest of the video" This comment is referring to the scene that includes our artist, Eliza Mindel. She is pretending to walk whilst we use the effect of stop motion to move the clouds that we have cut out of paper and stuck on the blue background. This creates a cartoon type of effect which is meant to portray a dream sequence, this is emphasised by the surrealism of the scene including the cartoon background and the natural 'jerky' effect that stop motion creates.  We intentionally added this effect, to show the audience the artist so they can relate to her and recognise her. Also by showing the artist singing the chorus we have reinforced her star persona. This sequence portrays her as being innocent, creative and loving. These factors follow the conventions of the genre we have chosen for the artist. We think this scene fits in well with the rest of the music video as it gives some flow and variety to otherwise a very simple sequence. This scene helps reinforce the theme of love throughout the music video as   our artist is acting as the cupid for the two main characters of the sequence. This theme follows the characteristics of the genre.

Question 3 - Commentary

 Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback.

Help: Consider all the forms of audience feedback you have received as well as all methods and contexts for gathering it. Start by making a list of all of the types of feedback you have received, the context in which you received it, methodology and whether you found it useful/ whether you acted on it:

eg. Rough Cut Feedback/ other group feedback on blog/ qualitative/ we added more filters to the video to add genre authenticity. 

1)   Our feedback was useful. We received comments such as improve our green screen

2)   Comments such as matchup the bed posts better- we acted upon this instantly to the best of our ability.

3)   In our feedback it was brought to our attention that we could have made our establishing shot clearer, and could have included more camera angles. We used a variety of shots during our performance, such as low-angles, close-ups, extreme close ups, mid-shots and camera movement such as zooms and panning. However this would have been hard to do whilst presenting the narrative as we chose to set it in a bedroom. As split screen was a big part of our video, we were unable to vary our camera angles as we wanted it to be symmetrical. Also this would have taken away the effect of the passing through of objects, making it very unclear as to what was going on.

4)   In our rough cut feedback there was a comment saying our music video contained ‘too much stop motion.’ Stop motion was our intention for our music video, in our opinion we thought merging live action with stop motion didn’t fit with the conventional idea of our video looking quirky and unrealistic also we thought our video would lose continuity. In hindsight, we were quite ambitious with creating the whole video in stop motion, as this was very time consuming and quite challenging, resulting in loss of time for editing. However, we were happy with our overall outcome of the stop motion, and glad we took on the challenge. 

music video feedback evaluation

"you don't really know who the artist is really?" this is mainly referring to the split screen and the cloud scene when the chorus is playing, we purposely added a completely different scene change and using the artist on the cloud scene we feel creates the star personna and helps you identify yourself with her. We think that not using the artist as the actor and main focal point of the story creates a effect that the artist is looking on herself doing this, and looking back on herself and the mistakes she may have made. Also this was our rough cut and we hadnt finished putting the full video together with the artists bit in. I think there was a difference between the actor and the artist and you can indentify this yourself when looking at the magazine advert and digipack. We have purposely picked a new actress to play the lover she is talking about in her lyrics because it allows the singer to sing on the chrorus and allows you to do jump cuts from the artist back to the video to make effective jump cuts and cuts on the beat. Since taking these comments on board and addressing them we have been able to make a distinct difference between the two and have made it alot more effective so hope when the audience see's the final they change their opinion.

Final music video

Rough cut feedback

digi pack

This is our final digipack cover.

Question 1 Evaluation

1. In our music video we have followed certain characteristics of a female artist's music video but we have also created a music video that is individual and unique, which does not follow all the characteristics of a typical music video of a similar artist. One way in which our music video demonstrates the characteristics of the genre is through the way love is portrayed between the two characters. The boy and the girl in the music video are in love and this is typical of the pop-folk genre. The video follows these two characters as they wake up, go about their morning routine. The similarities between the two characters are shown and this again follow the characteristics of the genre (innocence, love, relationships). Our music video defies the characteristics of the genre in the way it is shot, using stop motion creates a surreal, jerky effect. This is not usually afflicted with the genre we have used. However using stop motion has created a positive effect as it will appeal to our target audience. Our target audience are creative and loving so therefore they will be open to trying new things. Stop motion has created an effect which reinforces the innocence of the music video as the jerky effect gives an amateur look to the video as if the two characters portrayed have actually created it.

We have used lip syncing in the chorus of our music video, this has created a link between the lyrics and visuals (one of Goodwin's points on analysing music videos). We see the artist, Eliza Mindel, singing the chorus which emphasises her creativity and musical talent. She is also playing the guitar at the same time which further reinforces her talent. Lip syncing follows the characteristics of the genre because most of the artists in the pop-folk genre are very real and talented. This scene is positive because its creates an emotional bond between the audience and our artist. Through the lyrics she is singing and how she is singing them the artist is portrayed as being emotional and down to earth, she is singing about a real matter which has emotionally effected her. This is typical of the genre as past experience is usually what influences most artists and is shown in their lyrics.

In the chorus of our music video we have used a cartoon cloud background with our artist walking along, this is still shot in stop motion. This scene was added so that the audience could see the artist and therefore relate to her. The whole chorus sequence is supposed to portray a 'dream sequence' this is represented by the clouds in the background and also emphasised by the surrealism that comes with stop motion video. Our artist is represented as being the cupid between the two main characters and therefore emphasising the theme of love within our music video. This theme strongly follows the characteristics of the genre used. In this chorus scene our artist is also seen playing the guitar. This represents her as being creative and down to earth. She can play the music to accompany her songs. This is typical of the genre used and members of our target audience who play instruments can relate to this. This scene follows Goodwin's point of music following visuals, you see her playing the guitar and you can hear what she is playing. This is also emphasised on our digi-pack through the pictures of guitars we have used, it gives a theme of musical talent which is something we wanted to associate with our artist.

We have used frequent references to voyeurism  how ever we have not used camera-work that depicts the female body in a voyeuristic way. This is because that would not follow the characteristics of our specific genre and would not match the star persona we have associated with our artist. However we have used references to voyeurism with techniques such as frame within a frame, to do this we have a scene in which the actors hold up a board. This board is a green screen board, then using the effect we have added a video into the green screen. Therefore to the audience the characters are holding up their loved ones (pictured). We have also used close up of our artist which shows her eyes and also the artist looking at the camera, this emphasises the voyeuristic nature of our music video. Also we have used voyeurism in our digi-pack. The album cover has Eliza Mindel with a magnifying glass which is over her eyes, magnifying them. This is very effective in creating a link between the artist and the audience as it seems as the artist is looking through the magnifying glass at you.

Promoting our Digi-Pack

We have created a magazine advert as a platform for part of a media convergence campaign. However there are man more ways we can promote our digi-pack. Obviously our music video is another way we have promoted the digi-pack and this would be shown on the television, however this is mainly just promoting the single 'The End'. Although advertising can be quite expensive these days especially the effective ways such as a television adverts there are still a few cheaper ways and ways that could actually make us money whilst it is being promoted.
Our song 'The End' could be found within a film soundtrack for a romantic comedy film for example, so not only is this a free way to promote our artist but also a way to make money. Another way is through the radio with them playing our songs which is a classic way for promotion. 

Magazine Advert

This is our Magazine advert promoting our artists latest album 'Rectify'.
This would be shown on half a single sided page of a magazine., rather than a double. 

Planning for Digi pack and Magazine advert

Digi-pack

• Technical info- -

- Picture format 16x9

- Multiple viewing angles: 1

- Colour mode: colour

- Region Code: 2-5

- Disc Format: DVD-9

- Duration: 120 minutes

- Language and audio content: English/Dolby 5.1 surround

- Subtitels Eglish, Francais Deutsch, Nederlands, Italiano, Espanola, Portuguese (European versions of ll languages) 

• Track List
• Record Label and Logo
• Dedicated to...
• With Thanks to...
• DVD Features (music videos, concert, interviews)
• Extras

Magazine Advert 

• Make clear it is for a digi- pack 
• Out now/date 
• Record Label
• Action (how to buy) - Itunes
• Facebook/Twitter
• Quotes and star ratings from reviews

Feedback

We asked for audience feedback from a few people in our target audience range about our initial idea for our album cover. We asked 3 female teenagers to summarise their thoughts on our first idea.
The overall response was that they really liked the font of on the digi-pack cover as it was simple and girly without it being too obvious. They said the colour stood out and the colour scheme of the pastel colours would work well, however it could seem a bit boring and maybe too childish to attract their exact audience. They also said the way it looked without the picture would work well as a single cover perhaps, however it looked a little boring without the image for a digi-pack cover and they werent sure that a photograph image would work but suggested a drawn image would work better. They also really liked the idea of the bird silhouettes as it was simple, yet effective and did connote a natural approach which links in with our star persona. They suggested to keep the birds as it could almost be her signature image/logo that is recognisable within an audience.
We then suggested a new idea of a black and white colour scheme throughout which they said would appeal to them much more. They said this would look classy and with the possibility of a little colour in some of the images as this would stand out even further. They said this would appeal to a bit of an older audeince yet still aimed at the main teenage audience.
Overall this audience feedback was very useful, especially as it came from our target audience. This helped us decide on what to keep the same from our initial idea and what parts needed changing and what appealed to them. We also wanted to make sure we were still sticking to our star persona and this seemed successful.

Magazine advert

We looked closely into research for our magazine advert from many genres to see the themes throughout. Many of the adverts looked quite plain to us and had the same image as on their album cover. However we wanted to experiment more and use a variety of pictures that were still recognisable to our artist. We decided on a definite that we wanted to show the digi-pack cover in the advert to promote it and so our audience will definitely know what exactly we are advertising aswell as our artist.


Our plan was to use a profile image of our artist alongside the image of the digi-pack. The image will have the same mise-en-scene as the images within the digi-pack, therefore there is definite continuity and identification through our products. Our initial idea was to create a split screen which could be singular or double paged, with one profile image of the artist on one side and the digi-pack image and information on the other side. The split screen idea was to link in with our music video also.

Copyright

Copyright protects the physical expression of ideas. As soon as an idea is given physical form, e.g. a piece of writing, a photograph, music, a film, a web page, it is protected by copyright. There is no need for registration or to claim copyright in some way, protection is automatic at the point of creation. Both published and unpublished works are protected by copyright.

Copyright is normally owned by the creator of the work, e.g. an author, composer, artist, photographer etc. If the work is created in the course of a person's employment, then the copyright holder is usually the employer.

Copyright law grants to copyright holders certain exclusive rights in relation to their works. They have the right to: copy a work, issue copies to the public, perform show or play it, make adaptations or translations. They also have the right to prevent: 

• others communicating a work to the public by electronic transmission, e.g. broadcasting it or putting it on a website.
• others making available to the public a recording of a performance by electronic transmission, e.g. putting it on a website

 Infringing the rights of copyright holders may be a criminal offence and/or cause them to sue for damages.

For our music video, we had to try and get in contact with Ellie Golding to discuss how we would like to use her song for our A-level work. This included what we planned to do and how we would use it. Unfortunatley we did not manage to gain any contact details, but we did contact her through her facebook page.

Importance of copyright

There are many famous stories about how important copyright is and the consequences when it isnt taken into consideration. 
A classic example of a famous case was of George Harrison who was accused of plagiarism with his song 'My sweet Lord' which was very successful and lasted 27 weeks in the chart, however a song called 'He's so fine' by the group The Chiffons which was released 9 years before and wasnt so successful sounded very familiar. 
George Harrison was taken to court and the judge found that though he didn’t believe George Harrison purposefully plagiarized the song, the two songs were essentially the same, only displaying minor differences to note and chord. George Harrison was found guilty of ‘subconscious plagiarism’ and a judgment was filed against him in the amount of $587,000.00.
Therefore it is essential to think about this key factor as stealing someone's intellectual property with no permission or no notification of it is illegal. By contacting Ellie Goulding there is evidence in us telling her about how we are using her song, therefore this cannot be seen as an illegal process. 

Copyright

Copyright protects written, theatrical, musical and artistic works as well as film, book layouts, sound recordings, and broadcasts. Copyright is an automatic right, which means you don't have to apply for it.
Copyright is very important to consider when creating these media products, especially for us as we are taking a famous artists music and changing it, therefore in theory you should ask permission or inform the artist of what exactly you are doing first. Copyright works are protected across most mediums - so if they're protected in one, they're probably protected in others. It may then be copyright infringement if you create a painting from someone else's works without their permission.
We tried emailing our artist Ellie Goulding first, however we were unable to find contact details for this so we contacted her via her facebook page. We told her exactly what we intended to do and how we were using her song throughout our project. We told her what exact song we were using and what our purpose was for using her song. 

magazine insert

430, a photo by Media Studies 03 on Flickr.

We started our magazine insert on photoshop. Here we are showing the layering and the different editing techniques used in this image. We have edited the picture itself by using the brightness and contrast then editing it to black and white to show continuity and the theme to match the digi-pack. This still shows how we added our text to the insert and how we increased the boldness and colour to stand out further.

Cd Cover

This was our initial idea/ attempt at our front cover for our digi-pack. Our initial idea was to have a pastel colour theme throughout the images to show continuity and a star identification. However after taking our images we realised it wouldnt look professional and we wouldnt be able to pull off putting a photo of our artist on her with this background. We also thought the pastel colours may appeal to an even younger audience rather than our target one. Therefore we decided to get rid of the pastel colours and go for a more sophisticated and edgy approach with a black and white colour scheme with a hint of colour in the images. This is a usp for our artist and will be easily recognisable to her audience. 
On this album cover we used bird silhouettes to connote nature and her natural star persona. We have decided to keep this theme throughout, especially as our artist is wearing a bird blouse in our images. 
We are also keeping the font of this cover as it looks very girly and the writing looks handwritten which can seem down to earth and relatable to our star persona also. 

digi-pack photos

These are some of the pictures we took for our digi-pack on a shoot with the artist. We deliberately took thought in the mise-    en-scene within these pictures especially within the lighting and costume. For our costume we wanted to fit with our star persona therefore the idea of the white blouse was to connote her purity and innocence, along with the birds to connote a natural approach also. We made the artist have her hair down to connote femininity with natural and little make to show she is down to earth and creating a positive image to our audience and not promoting how the audience think they should look. We kept our setting simple with a white background as we wanted lots of close-ups and this meant the white background would be easy to edit on. We also wanted to keep the setting as bright as possible along with the lights to create this positive ‘good girl’ star persona approach. The lighting used was a large sheeted light to the side of the artist and a torch that reflected onto a gold reflector to give the images the glowing effect.

              
The top and bottom left pictures show the setting with the mid/long shot. This was to show a quirky side and to make the artist more relatable to her audience as you feel as though you are more in touch with her and with her within these images. We choose the bottom left picture as our cover because it showed this quirky side which linked to our video. There is some mystery behind the picture which also fits with our video as the artist isn’t shown in the video till the chorus. We choose this image as it stands out and would look very effective and intriguing to our audience. We also decided on a few side profile images. This was also the keep the continuity as these profiles can be intriguing and quirky as you can’t see the face straight on. Also the facial expressions look thoughtful and almost dreamlike which fits in with our music video with the cartoon clouds and in the performance when she is looking up a number of times. 

Evaluation Draft

1.       Lyrics relate to visuals-‘we have only ever touched, when there is no one else around’ the idea of touching but them not knowing as it is seen on split screen only by the audience. Fitting together ‘like a make shift puzzle’- split screen also represents this, and the green screen. There are lots of words within the lyrics that relate to them being in a bed, for example; ‘waking’  ‘lying down’ ‘still lay here’ ‘when I stayed the night’. We conventionally related the lyrics to the visuals as this, included with our performance section, was what our audience looked for in this genre; narrative.  

2.       Music relates to visuals- the song has a continuous beat and is very snappy, so this is why we used stop motion, which challenged the convention. We agreed that it made the video more visually interesting. As a guitar is used in the song, we decided to bring this feature in to the performance part of the video with our artist. This connotes how she is still focussed more on the music, even when she is being shown.

3.       Demands of record label

4.       Intertextuality

5.       Reference to notion of looking and voyeurism

6.       Genre of Characteristics

Pplease mention Goodwin and why his observations are so significant to your work

BLOGGER

Blogger.com has been an essential technology within all of the stages in this process. It has enabled us to track our progress to our initial task, from the very first ideas we all individually brought to the brief. This has allowed us to see how our product and ideas have grown.

As a group it has been a major foundation of sharing information, and posting relevant sources for us all to view. From this, ideas have sprung off each other, resulting in a finalised, professional product.

For example, we posted different techniques used in Photoshop to see which would suit our artist best, several music videos that are within the same genre as ours that we were able to view similar conventions and also different digi- packs that we all thought worked well within the genre.

Final cut

Final Cut has been the biggest part of creating the music video, as it has enabled us to edit all of our footage we took, and turn it into something professional. Final Cut allows you to alter how much, or how little of your footage you want, but we used this technology for speeding/slowing down scenes, fading in and out, jump cuts, layering, colour correcting it to make it look of a high standard, allowed us to work with green screen which was very frustrating at the best of times but improved our video a lot when it was completed. A major part of our music video was our ‘split screen’ effect, which we included for our narrative perspective. Final cut made this possible and it runs through most of the video without any hitches. Using final cut we made a continuous video, and also added a soundtrack to make the footage relate to something.

More detail needed about step by step processes of how you applied certain effects. Use correct terminology for the tools in each software.

Evaluation draft

Final Cut- We used final cut for the editing process of our video. We used many techniques within this process such as green screen, split screen, transitions and layering. With the green screen we overcame a few challenges such as the green card as the image moved so we had to try and move the image going on the card to sync this and whether the image on the card would fit and look clear and professional enough to use. We used the motion key tool and the marker to show exactly where we needed to move the image to, to get the positioning precise. We also had to create a black background behind the image, as when the green card moved a shadow of the image was shown as the lighting was perhaps too bright. However after doing a test run on this before attempting the real thing we knew this would be possible and overall it looked effective. We used split screen throughout the verses of our video. This was to fit with the narrative of our music video with the male a female sequences beside each other and keeping them as in sync as we could with each other. The obsticle we had was trying to get both sequences in time, especially when the objects were being passed through, however by simply taking out a few frames in certain parts we got near perfect to the timing we had wanted and that was possible within our footage. With the split screen we had to crop the two images so they were the same size however the positioning of the bed posts at the beginning isnt as exact as we had hoped and this was because we had to enlarge one side of the footage in order for it to look the same size and this meant the proportions had changed and the whole image would look distorted if we had moved it to line up with the other bed post exact. The layering looked effective whist the artist footage used in the chorus of our video. To layer we moved the two pieces of footage on top if each other and used to fading tool to fade the capacity of the dominant image on top. This performance footage was layered with images of the artist playing her guitar as the performance, overlayed with different camera shots, such as close ups of the guitars to connote the genre of the artist/song clearly, close up shot of the artist herself to show identification to her audience and mid-long shots to show this performance, show her body language and outfit also for this identification. We also used colour corrector throughout to highlight the lighting and to make the video more professional. Our aim was to edit the colour to almost look cartoon like and we enhanced the high key lighting when our artist was performing to follow our persona.

Blog- We used our blog to record all of our planning and research we did throughout our music video process. The blog is easily accessible to media convergence and can display media platforms such as videos, images, and web research all which was useful and needed throughout this planning period. We were able to upload YouTube videos that related or inspired some of our ideas and decisions used throughout, then we were able to analyse and explain what our final thoughts were. The blog was also useful in order to correlate our work as a group, we used this especially through the editing process when taking screen grabs of exactly our progress as a group and how we managed to achieve these editing techniques and test runs and footage to see whether these techniques would work and were achievable. Blogging is such as easy way to show your journey of planning and research as a portfolio and to look back at your initial ideas and how they have changed and progressed throughout.

Photoshop- We used photoshop through editing out photographs taken for our digi-pack and magazine advert. We used the magic want tool for our advert to erase the background and get the outline for our image. We then multiplied the image and reversed it so we had two of the same images facing the same way. We then changed the brightness and contrast of the image to create a further glowing effect then edited in the black and white effect to show continuity with the digi-pack theme. We also showed continuity by downloading our font and writing the information for the advert then cropping and editing colour to show further the connections with our digi-pack. We then edited all our images for our digi-pack through photoshop. We choose 3 images of guitars to connote the genre then 3 images of the artist to show the artist herself. There is continuity with the magnified glass prop to show voyeurism to her audience and identification. We used these as our front and back cover. With the front image we choose to blur further the image of the artist through the glass to connote a mystery and we also blurred the font of the writing to carry on this effect. With the images of the guitar, for one we highlighted the colour of pink and kept the rest of the image coloured black and white. 

Feedback

Two weeks ago we had set up a camera and created a sheet to get feedback from another classes group towards our music video. We filmed four groups to visualise there reactions and responses but also had the sheet to have a written response and more of a summary towards our music video.

We had a mixture of positive feedback with some constructive criticism and both forms of the feedback helped us immensely with finalising the results of our music video. The summary from the positive feedback was that they like the quirkiness of our idea and the originality of the idea. They also thought that the way we used stop motion throughout was clever and effective for the song choice.

The majority of our constructive criticism was based around the un finished parts of our music video and that some of the effects and use of split screen confused them, which i think will be clearer when we add our 'chorus' part of the music video and our green screen video because then it will really start to come together and look more professional.

Overall i think the feedback was positive and has helped us get to the finished music video we have now, we have corrected all of the mistakes and parts that didn't flow through our music video and hopefully answered the constructive criticism.

Possible Promotion Images

These images of our artist; Eliza Mindel, are what we plan to adapt onto and within our digi-pack.

Our artist is wearing a long sleeved white blouse with small black bird print on- this connotes innocence, alongside the love of nature, and her natural personality. This is also highlighted with her hair being down, loosely over her shoulders.

On our photo shoot we chose to use a white back drop as we are able to manipulate the images easier on to another background, such as our album cover, but it is also has a connotation of purity.

We really liked, and experimented a lot with side profile shots as through the examples we have seen, they are used well- the side profile shot is a favourite to go on the magazine advert. I think this would work well as the image on the album cover should be different (artist facing camera), so although the images would be slightly different, there would still be continuity running through.

 Image number 1 has a good contrast, and our artist is trying to look, un-interested, but the natural look bodes well for our artist’s persona. Image number 2 (top right) is extremely bright, which reflects a lot about one of the music videos on her album, giving a sense of 'surrealism'. This pose is where she is caught off guard, but the facial expression is making the audience question her different persona. Image number 3, is where she is sitting on the floor gazing above. She looks like she is in a dream like state, which has reference to her album and music. We chose to photograph her with her shoes off as she looked more natural. The red tint to the image is warming. Image number 4 is where we asked her to throw some fake leaves above her, catching them as they fell. The idea behind the leaves was the 'natural' element behind them. The edited colour adaptations are fun and attractive- giving clues to her personality and music.

Rough idea for Digi-pack

DSCF8135, a photo by Media Studies 03 on Flickr.

This is an initial idea for our did-pack. The main things we want to include throughout is a recognisable identity for our artist, this through the font of the artists name throughout the images and a clear colour scheme which we will use as pastel colours or sunset colours. All of this will connote her star persona and will attract her audience of mainly females. We also wanted to fit with connotations from our music video which was surrealistic and quirky, therefore the idea of cartoon like trees and birds would fit these conventions well. Also as our star persona is a down to earth artist and innocent we choose to use natural images to portray this. We also wanted the pack to look simple but effective which is quite similar to our music video. Our persona is all about her and her music therefore we dont want to use lots of editing and create extravagant images as this draws away from her naturalness and key themes within our persona.

Homework for Wednesday 28th November

You need to have an attempt at two of the evaluation questions by next week. I apologise for not going through this in lesson today but any start you can make with this will benefit you. The FINAL DEADLINE FOR EVALUATION IS 14TH DECEMBER so the sooner you start the better. I would like to see something significant from you next week for FOR QUESTIONS 1 AND 4 ONLY. See text in red below for extra guidance with this homework.

Word Count should be approximately 400-500 words per question (excluding question 3 which is in video form)

G324 Evaluation Tasks.

 

Below are the 4 questions you need to answer for your coursework Evaluation. The task for Question 3 should be done in your group. The other tasks are individual. When you have completed the tasks post all 4 onto the same post and tag it with YOUR NAME.

 Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks (you cannot annotate ancillary tasks just yet obviously). Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to indicate which conventions you have used at which point. Explain which conventions you followed/challenged and how/why? Use Goodwin's 6 points as a guide here.   

 Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Task: Create a Prezi which makes clear links between your 3 products.

 Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback.

 Q4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Task: Create a video presentation which discusses the technologies you used at each stage of the project. This video needs to be different from the Director’s commentary in terms of its presentation and content ie. Presented as a ‘How to use…’/ Teaching (in character?) style of video that could then be used as a future teaching aid. For homework for wednesday, you need to write the script for this and try to collect relevant screen grab images. Choose 3 technologies that you used and explain how you used them or you can