Main Task: Final Music Video

This is the final version of my music video after I have made all the editing choices and changes I needed to. The video is roughly four minutes long and I am the only actor throughout.

Evaluation Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

PC/iMac: I used a PC at home and an iMac in lesson for almost all the stages of my project. Editing was mainly completed on the iMac due to it having Adobe editing software which I do not have available to use on my PC at home, mainly Adobe  Premiere Pro video editing software.

Camcorder: For recording my video I used a Panasonic HDC-SD90 camcorder booked out from college which allowed me to record in a very high quality and achieve the best look possible and the easiest quality to work with when constructing my final video.

Camera: When taking my photographs for my ancillary tasks I used my personal digital camera, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-S3, which is 14.1 megapixels. This camera provided me with very high quality images which, similar to the camcorder, made editing that much easier in the long run.

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For my whole project the feedback from both my audience and lecturer was a huge help in improving my product. My original plan (evident in my pitch) was to shoot a music video for the instumental song 'Rain' by YouTube musician Rob Scallon, but this plan ran in to a lot dead ends the main of which was my music video not actually working as an effective music video. So upon recieving this feedback I decided to completely rethink the entire product, starting with the song choice. I decided choosing a song by my favourite artist, Frank Turner, was a good idea and would allow for an effective video as all of his songs tell a story of somekind.

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

My main product and my ancillary texts as a combination I believe to be rather effective in that they all convey the same or a similar message to the audience about the artist and his identity.

The poster image allows the audience to grasp the indie genre the artist is representing just by the similarity to other indie texts in that rather than showing simply a logo and album artwork, it shows the artist in another setting which relates to the title of the album/single as I have done here by having my artist surrounded by bushes to relate to 'Photosynthesis'.

My main product could have been better in working in tandem with the ancillary tasks as it was shot inside rather than outside like the other tasks. This was however due to a change in weather on the day  of the shoot which was obviously out of my control, so this meant that I needed to shoot inside on the same day to meet my deadline.

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

The editing of my product challenges that of typical music videos in that there is little use of proper transitions between clips and it seems very 'bitty'. I was aiming to achieve a rather amatuer look from the offset to show a rather raw form of music video similar to Frank Turner's 'Try This At Home' in which the camera positioning is still in the entirety of the video and simply jump cuts to and from different actors in the video lipsycing to the song. This was my main area of inspiration and I decided to follow the idea of a still camera and jump cuts to invoke a repsonse in my audience that music videos don't always need to be big budget productions with some form of backstory.

The lighting in the entiretly of the video is natural sunlight through an off-camera window and a single small spotlight just above the spot in which the entirety of the video was filmed, this simple lighting was used to again challenge the high budget music videos of our time and stray from the main stream. 

Ancillary task - Poster

This is the final poster advert for my artist to advertise the release of the album. I kept the editing roughly the same to my digipak to show continuity and the look of this was achieved by cropping my image and increasing the saturation to 70% more than it the original image.

The bright colours of this poster reflect the song in my music video and it's somewhat cheerful tone about not wanting to grow or have your views dismissed or silenced.

Ancillary task - digipak

This is the Front Cover of my digipak and the effect of it was achieved by increasing the saturation of the photograph to my personal taste and what I thought I would buy if I saw it in a music shop.

 These are the two inside covers of my digipak and for the pair of them I decided to stray from the normal colour scheme of the front and back covers to something a tad strange and creative to reflect the image of my artist that I was aiming to achieve.

 The back cover of my digipak was achieved very similarly to the front in that I increased the saturation on photoshop to achieve a more crisp and bright looking photograph in which the colour of the leaves really contrasted that of the acoustic guitar.