Evaluation/Question 4

QUESTION FOUR/HOW DID YOU USE THE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Technologies that we used for this project:

• Tripod – Keeping camera still and smooth
• Sony Video cam recorder – Filming every scene
• Digital Camera – Still motion effects
• Internet – Planning and research
• Sony Vegan Editing software – Editing filmed shots
• Air blowing fan – Creating wind for lettering to fly to titles
• Lights – Adding lighting effects
• Mobile phone devices – Branding
• Adobe photoshop & InDesign – CD and album covers
• Flash Annimation & Desktop Maya – Annimation and modelling uses.

Over the duration of this course I have learnt a lot about all the different ranged and uses of the technologies that are around me on a daily bases. Therefore it made sense to use all these advanced technologies to do my research, planning creating and post-producing my media opening sequence.

RESEARCH:

When it came to researching I used the internet to find out information about music videos and all the different things that goes into contructing music videos. Ive mainly used Google as my main search engine to find out a wide range of information about the media industry. With the use of this search engine it gave the ability to research specific information about the directors and successful music videos in minutes, so using the Internet as a source of information was extremely easy and convienent. Not only did I decide to use the big global search engine I also used my local liabry to find information like the “dancing in the distraction factory”. This was a better way to find newspaper articles to get more realistic and reliable infromation due to the way its strutchured.

When using Google as my focused search engine I have also used one of the most well known websites Wikipedia as it holds all the information about the music industry there is available. Wikipedia has helped me hugely in the research stages as Ive learnt new directors and their roles and how people have become from ‘nothing’ into ‘a well known famous artist, director, etc. Which has been very inspiring as Wikipedia allowed me to look more in depth of their career paths, showing their upfalls & downfalls.

Using ‘YouTube’ in the research and planning stages become very useful, as youtube is the biggest steaming video site of all time, allowing myself to catch up with all the lastest music videos for inspiration of how music technologies are developing. Also youtube has mirrorball videos with interviews that has helped me expand my knowledge about the people behind the music videos who do most of the work and not get the credit. Therefore it has made me realise how much work is put into the planning of a new video.

Watching MTV in our free time and lunch times we watched a large variety of the latest music videos to help us research what music videos are the most effective and why? and look at artists and how their music videos represent them as individuals. This was an effective source of information as it helped the to all keep-up-date with who is making the best sellers singers and who isn’t in the charts.

PLANNING:

In the planning stages we used various technologies to help us prepare and organise ourselves for when it finally came to the filming process This organisation was enhanced by these modern technologies and without them we would have again struggled.

‘Google Maps’ became an essential source during our planning stages of filming, allowing us to access satelitte images of our chosen locations. The modern advancement of ‘street view’ on google maps has also let us explore further into the surrounding area where we were planning to film in a three dimensional perspective. This made organisation that extra easier as we selected our desired positions of filming via ‘paint’ in which I print screened an image of our location, copied and pasted onto paint and then applied the circular tool in red, demonstrating where the location is and where we are filming. Also by using paint I created a montage for our storyboard, applying  my own touches as well as applying a black and white filter on‘befunky.com’.

Also during the planning stages I again used Wikipedia and Youtube as my vital sources for ’exploring music videos of my appeal’ and also ‘music genres’. This demonstrates how vital these websites are within this technologically advanced world. However I did feel let down by the modern technologies due to the fact I couldn’t find the lyrics of our chosen song. This isn’t down to the internet itself, but its the fact that I rely on these technologies to help answer unanswered questions. I also felt that these lyrics would be broadcasted more within the online community therefore I was quite suprised that the subject was quite low key. This demonstrates that modern technologies can’t produce everything you need at the most critical times.

DESIGN:

For designing ive decided to use some complex software to find ways of advertising and promoting our media product. For example Ive used photoshop for manlipulating images and creating inspiring effects of photoshop that was used on the CD album designing which included the front & back cover, booklet, and exterior and interior of the album. We also used photoshop for our band homepage site to create our main theme throughout the site. This included desiging the colour schemes and layout on each page which all corriponded with eachother.

I wanted to learn a new software in this media course which involved me learning how to use Indesign as this is a software package which mainly focused on layout designs and less of the photo editorials. I personally felt that this was a software that gave us a more complex ability to change any layouts that we were uncertian of. Using Indesign became very useful as it allowed me to experiment which the different technical aspects of the software to achieve a professional outcome of each design.

Learning this software became a good risk as I developed new skills during this course. It has also made desiging the layouts of the CD much more easier.

CONSTRUCTION:

When filming each individual scene we used a Sony camera that was a basic recorder that was easy to function and were a good enough quality to produce work at an efficient quality. Also we learnt that using a tripod would keep the camera in the same angle and in a secure place. It helped us so much throughout the filming process as we needed all 3 characters in one shot, and as we decided to film in an empty school there was no one around to hold the camera for us, so we replied on the tripod technology to hold the camera whilst we act. I don’t know how we would have managed to create any work without this technology, as it played a major role in our work. Plus not forgetting the actually recording camera it’s self, as it was comfortable and easy enough to use without too much problems and stress.

This is the type of camera we used when we began to film the first scene with the motion stop. As we needed a camera that would show each letter clearly, climbing up the wall individually. I’ve never used this type of advanced camera before as it had so many type of camera setting built in with it, it occasionally became difficult to get the lighting perfect for the gloominess of the room.Not only did we decide to use this digital camera for our first scene but we also used a more simple camera that did the job pretty well when it was on ‘text’ setting with a bright flash. Therefore each member of the group were either taking the pictures whilst the one person was sitting the letters slowly on the wall in a random order.

This is the main video cam recorder that we used throughout the whole filming process. I personally really did not want to use a basic camera again and I felt from my AS media coursework, it didn’t give a very good professional overall quality. However this camera is easy to use and allows us to take any shots needed for our media work due to its lightweight and flexibility. This type of technology made our filming process much quicker and stress-free.

This simple flip camera came in really useful when filming our scenes, as we were able to get the shots done more smoothly when it came to the editing. By the use of two cameras it made movement of the camera shots more consistent and professional, preventing us to make the mistake of the 180 degree rule. Therefore using more than one camera become a really handy as we made less mistakes and allowed us to have more choice and variety in what shots we would like to use.

For the production and post-production stages of the media course I have learnt how to use Vegas pro editing software. This software was very new to me as I had used it before, but once I had a little play around with it I adapted to the software really quickly. The more I messed around with it and watching Vegas tutorials on YouTube I managed to learn all the basics about how to navigate around the software. The more I used it I got more confident in using it and then I wanted to experiment with the advanced techniques, like fast motion, colour contracts and variations. All these little special effects made the editing of the process extremely fun, as we could see how much detail and advanced things we can do to our media work to improve it, like making it more professional and high quality. When using Vegan Pro editing software we were also able to add cool sound effects to the film, like the scratch record and adding up-to-date song soundtracks that adds anticipation by grabbing the audience’s attention. Music was a really big improvement and learning curve during the post production process. As I learnt how much it can make a piece of work much better by using it in the correct way and format. The last thing we did when editing the video was adding title credits of the cast and directors of the movie, so it will show the audience who has created and produced the film adding publicity to the work.

This is a very expenisive software that we tried to use, its extremely complex as its managed to make movies like ‘Happy Feet’ and moving characters from the “Pirates of the Carriabean”. It was a completely new software for me and my group and took hours of work trying to learn it, however we needed some form of annimation in our scenes, and therefore used ‘Youtube’ and magazines to learn the basics of this software package. We managed to create some usual object using this software and become a part of our music video.

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EVALUATING:

When evaluating the final media product I uploaded the work onto YouTube which allowed close friends and family to access and view the video I made from anywhere at any time giving me their thoughts and opinions towards the video produced. This allowed me to find out what people liked and didn’t like about the work and maybe any improvements that were recommended. Then from this feedback from other people it has made me learn what I could do better next year, if I was to carry on with media. Inspiring me to carry on and test the boundaries of the technologies used and push myself that littler further to improve and test my knowledge on the media industry and the technology equipment used.

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 Once the you tube version was uploaded onto you tube, we used Facebook to communicate with people we know and share the link to a wide range of people. By doing this, we were making people more aware of our music video launch and get peoples opinions and feedback much quicker and efficiently. Therefore by the use of Facebook as a communication tool and YouTube to help share our video all over the social networking site. It has successfully helped us gain feedback in a much more technical option.

EVALUATION VIDEO FORQUESTION 4:

Overall, without any of these technologies I wouldn’t of know how I could produce my media work. With out knowledge of the media industry and planning I would not know where to begin. Making the media product without a camera or mobile device would be near to impossible, and putting the scenes together with special effects and music wouldn’t be possible. Therefore I made sure I looked carefully around my surroundings and used the technology that was available, so I could product a piece of work that was to a suitable standard. Learning how to use a new software like Sony Vegas was also a really good experience as it opened more doors to what I would like to do in my future. I used my ICT skills plus my creative abilities combined with Stevens to produce our opening sequence to a satisfying standard.

Evaluation/Question 3

QUESTION THREE/WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Feedback and evaluation did affect our final product in many different ways, and proved to be a good technique in finding out the positives and negatives of our music video. In order to gather the feedback and evaluation comments, we used various methods that would later provide us with information about our music video, along with opinions from our target audience and what they think we could have done differently. Below are the following methods that we used to gather this information;

• Questionnaires in the School’s auditorium – giving previews of early drafts of our music video.
• YouTube posts and comments/ Facebook likes and comments.
• Second questionnaires to focus groups within target audience.
• Artist feedback.

We found that the methods of feedback that worked most effectively were the last three points of; YouTube/Facebook posts and comments, second questionnaires to focus groups, and unforeseen feedback from the artists themselves. Once we had our final redraft of our video ready for viewing by our target audience, we were able to show a Year 12 and 13 media classes the final outcome. From this we were able to gather a wide range of information concerning our music video from our target audience awarding our video a mark out of ten, and then leaving additional comments on the sheet. The three essential questions on the sheet that we focused on were as follows;

1. Who would you say is that target audience for this video? (Consider: Age/gender/subculture/genre).
2. Try to identify three technical aspects of the video you thought were done well.
3. Try to identify up to three things about the video you thought were less effective.

Above is the questionnaire which we have handed out to 30 students and asked for their personal feedback.

The pie chart on the left shows the feedback data in both amount and percentage. The questionnaire sheets were given to a Year 12 & 13 media class of 30 students, who would then give our video a mark out of ten as to what they think our video deserved. Evidently from the pie charts shown on the left, the students of the media class scored our music video highly, with 57% saying that it deserved 10/10. The remaining 40% though the video deserved still a high score of 9/10, which to our surprise was a slight but noticeable improvement from the previous feedback, however 3% of feedback we received did believe that the video deserved a 5-6/10 which was understandable as they didn’t think the concept of the narrative worked

These results were EXTREMELY satisfying, as the students that we put the feedback to are out target audience for the music video, therefore we had successfully achieved the forms and conventions of the genre in which our target audience associate with Kid Cudi.

Feedback comments:

 “Interesting use of text from the beginning. Camera angles and footage matches the song lyrics in a professional manor. Multiple angles follow the story line well. Great manipulating use of the footage and good use of transition between the footage (fading out at the end for example).”

“Put together well – matches the song nicely! Good job!”

“i like it – you got good camera angles and effects, the only thing i would say is it gets a little repetitive towards the end, however apart from that it’s good :)”

“You’ve really captured the creative style of the artist! I can clearly see the contrast between the light hearted notes of the song and the seriousness of the video!”

“really like the effect where are the two of him in the room, really works with the song and a good video in general, love it!”

The comments on our artist homepage are the following:

Daniel

“I have just seen your album cover and music video, and i must say they are brilliant, i love how they match with similar pictures. Each one is linked through the scenes and the actor is a brilliant way to show off Kid Cudi’s song.”

JT

“Love Kid Cudi!!!!!!”

Sam

“Thank you, this site has helped me find our much needed information on Kid Cudi”

David Taylor

“I love this site!!!! It tells me all the important information that I want to know, rather than all the random information that most band/artist websites have. I also love the transitions of the site making it really exciting to navigate! Love it thank you  ”

Kid Cudi Fan

“I love your music, please add more to this site. Also your music videos are amazing.  ”

Evaluation/Question 2

QUESTION TWO/HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCTAND THE 2 ANCILLARY TEXTS?

Once we had finished with the production of our final media product for Kid Cudi’s single ‘Trapped in my mind’ we also had to do another two ancillary texts to produce, which will work alongside our music video. The OCR brief had asked us to choose from the following three options;

•  A homepage for the band
•  A DVD cover
• Magazine Advertisement for the DVD single

From these auxiliary texts we chose to produce;

• An Unofficial Website for Kid Cudi
• A Magazine advertisement for the DVD single.

By producing these additional ancillary texts to accompany our final music video, we hope to achieve an effective combination between our products and texts. Through creating our own; original website, magazine cover and preferably magazine advertisement, which all have well contruscted ‘image’ that deleivers the following aspects;

• The alternative rap/rock/hip-hop  genre that is Kid Cudi himself.
• Confirmation of Kid Cudi’s credibility as an artist.

This first out of our two ancillary texts that we were required to produce was the unofficial kid cudi website. This meant we needed to create a basic structure for an fully functional website. We needed this website to consider our target audience greatly, as our target audience are the people who this website will be mainly appealing too. In order to make this website attractive to the users we needed to make sure we did the following points:

• Research into the layout, themes, design and basic structure of a website – For this we looked into Kid Cudi’s official website to gather a general idea of its design and themes that are incorporated within his genre.
• Furthered our research into the layout of the website and developed our understanding of the various sub headings and sections such as; an about page, gallery, tour dates, and music/video pages.
• Through doing this we could address our target audience by generating themes and designs around their interests in the dance/rap/pop genre and decide on the essential information that is given.
• Additional information on the artist such as; reviews, album details and discography, music video and press articles/ shoots.
• Specific focus on; branding, colours, themes, photography, biography, font and text, etc.

When it came to the designing of the layout of the website, we selected a basic template from Wix.com and then selected a few images from our music video that would help represent our artist more personally during each page. The images such as; hands pushing against the glass platform, or the lettering placed in a spontaneous order. These are the images that are immediately associated in our unofficial music video.

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Another essential part of the marketing and branding of Kid Cudi is to figure how we can represent him as an artist. With thorough research and observational discussions we found items of clothing and objects that could be Kid Cudi’s famous signature. Which I felt was the oversize vintage glasses which he always wore when he first became an artist. However there wasn’t a readmitted colour scheme that was associated with Kid Cudi therefore we found and used a wide range of images and colour schemes that we felt would help represent the artist a bit more and strongly indicate what the new music video is about, developing new recognition techniques.

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After through research and design development, I now believe that the general feel to the finished website relates well to our target audience, as we have managed to maintain the urban, positive mood that is connected to the genre of music.

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Once we had the basic template of the website that we wish to create, we could begin to decide on the colour scheme, theme and overal design concept. Due to our target audiece we gave our website a simple and effective style. Which make it easy to navigate to the other pages which include – About, music, video, tour, press and contacts. For our website to work appopriately in terms of marketing and promotion. We made sre we create a ‘Press’ and ‘About’ page which will promote our other anicilarry tasks so they all become one advertising package (Synergy). On this pages we incorporated a few paragraphs decirbing Kid cudi as an artist and a written summery which is dedicated to giving our target audience the ability to share what their music is about and what influeces them. The major disavtantage  of creating a website reinforcing Kid Cudi and his music is the fact that our target audience can educate themeselfs on our artist by the background information, whilst our music video only prootes them with their artisitc, musical, and image ispects of Kid Cudi.

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Through creating realistic sections within our website, we were able to make an effective form of promotion, due to the websites simple structure, functional layout, and clear information regarding Kid Cudi. This opened up many opportunities and allowed us to incorporate other factors such as;

• A section dedicated to our music video for Kid Cudi– this was a useful way of enforcing our music video’s association with artist, and a successful method on our target audience.
• Various photos linked to our music video and the type of visual connections to Kid Cudi, this maintained the happy feel of the website, including cultural images created through intertextuality. This also allowed us to bring in the photography software package of Digital Photo Professional, where we were able to manipulate the images to the themes of the artist.
• Effective imagery and material that aids the audience in interpreting  Kid Cudi’s image and music, just as Kid Cudi’s official website creates associations on us.

http://www.wix.com/modeyv/kid-cudi#!

The second ancillary text that we wanted to focus on was a magazine cover that would help support advertisements based around the promotion of Kid Cudi, through using the mass read, cultural music magazine NME. Due to the massive popularity of NME, I decided to base our magazine cover on NME’s unique style of layout and writing. By doing this it feels extremely satisfying to know how successful the magazine is in terms of marketing and promoting the singer. Therefore before I could begin to create the magazine cover and the advertising within the magazine, I wanted to research some aspects of a magazines design to make it visually appealing and successful;

TEXT – The text and fonts used in this advertisement has involved in all ancillary texts. In terms of the magazine design/article it has allowed the audience to associate with NME’s unique logo and layout. which was exactly what we did when regarding the advertisements and homepages, we all looked at Kid Cudi’s house style and what makes him different and recognizable to the public eye and tried to allow the audience to establish and recognised Kid Cudi within our media products.

IMAGERY – The images that are used and how they might portray certain artists in this music industry. NME usually have a band or solo artist in which the main article of the magazine is centered around as the central focus of the layout, surrounding this image are subheadings that give an idea what to expect within the magazine.

COMPOSITION – both composition of the front cover of NME and the advertisement have conventions in which we had to recreate. As mentioned above NME have a centred feature with surrounding sub articles, bar code and various other advertisements.

The main image of the magazine cover was designed on Adobe InDesign software. When it came to desiging the our own magazine I looked into existing magazines that had some correlation to music bands/artists. I found a well known company called NME to help advertise our artist regarding Kid Cudi and oiur music video Trapped in my mind. I done this by researching ino the previous NME issues nd was able to immediately identify their logo, fonts used, imergy and composition. From this research and obvservation we were able to use realisitic associaitions to NME such as the nutorious logo, which we used and cropped it to make it look presentable in our magazine. We made sure we kept the colour scheme and specific fonts the same as this is what successfully identifies the magazine to our target audience. When desigining a magazine I used the conventions of exisiting magazines and noticed that any imergy is normally the centre feature, referring back to the effective techniques of NME’s composition. Allowing me to create a perfect marketing point for Kid cudi and pull the main attention away from any subheadings and extra information about the organisation.

COMMODIFICATION

Commodification is a process of how an artist will turn themselves into a product which then becomes a demand for the consumer; therefore artists in particular can become a commodity. A artist like Kid Cudi will do something like this is through creating music which will end up in a result of commodity though the sales of singles, albums, DVD’s, advertising in different media forms, etc.

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Another way that is associate with an artist is probably the most important; this is the artist image. For example when an artist becomes more and more popular it create a high demand then certain features of personal identity of the artist becomes a from of commodity, in which people aspire to own. Parts of an artist’s image can be the artist themselves, the brand logo, and other aspects of branding such as; message, genre, ideology and subculture. When it comes to Kid Cudi I’ve noticed a recognition of style within him as an artist that the costumers are identifying, which is his massive geek glasses that became a massive hit with the public.

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In regards to our final product and ancillary texts, I feel we have used commodification effectively, through maintaining the pure simplicity of the Kid Cudi’s logo and the happy positive aspects of their branding. The numerous pictures on our website, in which represent our music video and the visual connections of Kid Cudi, contribute to the singers actual commodity as they emphasise marketing points and the products of Kid Cudi. We have also managed to keep the pure simple image of Kid Cudi in the design of our magazine cover and the accompanying advertisement, along with the website this connects the sense of commodification as it emphasises the media that Kid Cudi has released.

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SYNERGY

Synergy has played a massive part in the various forms of media that we have created, to adverstise, promote and market our product and artist. Our coursework has used the concept of synergy in an efficient manor, due to the use of various forms that we have used, which all link together creating cross media convergence of our different media. For example our music video from Trapped in my mind has been advertised and promoted on the unofficial website that we created whilst also managing to effectively promote Kid Cudi and our new music video on my own version of the NME magazine. Where the magazine has been advertised in the press sections of our website. With all these media products that we have created we have successfully and professionally interlinked our ancillary texts together in the concept on cross media convergences.

Evaluation/Question 1

QUESTION ONE/IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MUSIC VIDEO USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE THE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF MUSIC VIDEO/PROMO PACKAGES?

It almost impossible to say what the conventions of a music video are because they have varied and developed tremendously over the years. However I believe that our final music video can be classed as an actual music video, as we have worked extremely hard to challenge the forms and conventions of a real music video to make sure it fits well to the categories requirements. In order to do this we have applied certain conventions of music videos and other media forms and technologies, as a result of this it has enabled us to create our own unique music video to Kid Cudi ‘Trapped in my mind’.

Throughout the making of our final media product we have challenged and developed certain music conventions such as;

• Synaesthesia
• Narrative & Performance
• Disjuncture & Illustration
• Camera shots/movement/angles
• Cutting/editing/ fast & montage
• The Meat (or star image)
• Beats!
• Lighting & Colour
• Mise-en-scene.

Stop Motion:

Throughout our coursework this year, we have been able to base our initial music video idea around the technique of stop motion, illustration and artistic movements. As mentioned in the research and planning stages of my coursework, stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small steps between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.
Our music video has challenged the forms of stop motion, and the forms of stop motion in music video in the first scene. Our opening introduction shot is composed entirely from 43 printed letters, all of which move by themselves within the contexts of stop motion around our desired room.

Synthesis/Narrative & Performance:

Synaesthesia is possibly one of the most important aspects of a music video as it works on the basics of building up visuals to a soundtrack. Whilst, allowing the viewer to create their own interpretation of sounds, taking into consideration the way they introduce a certain or mood. Due to the lack of performance in our final media product, we have decided to focus the aspect of synthesis around the sounds and the lyrics used in Kid Cudi’s soundtrack. For example we listened to the key sounds, tempo’s and structure of the song and managed to associate these beats during our music video.  This allowed; the audience to associate the tempo of the song to the moving letter print out during the introduction scene. Also allowing the songs structure to enforce the visual images/loose narrative of our final music video.

In terms of narrative and performance we challenged the forms and conventions of music video through using our previous research and planning, to build a solid structure to our narrative. During the research stage, I studied Kid Cudi’s video for ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ to get a general feel of narrative and performance within the genre of Alternative rap that his music category falls in. The research stage has taught me the following points about narrative and performance;

• Close up’s of the objects in the video – central focus.
• Subtle links to the lyrics, possible links to objects in particular.
• Due to the genre – we could make the narrative horror linked.
• Overall generally set a depressing mood within the video!

In order to challenge the conventions of narrative within the alternative rap genre of Kid Cudi, our music video used the same technical aspects of narrative that are used in that genre, aspects such as;

• Various objects that were purposely placed in the video for product placement purposes.
• Objects that we could use for visual associations to the narrative.
• Close ups of the objects and facial expressions in the video.
• Most importantly we kept the narrative attention grabbing due to the depressing and negative mood.
• Although we did not incorporate any performance we have made the narrative extremely interesting and mind puzzling.

Sometimes music videos are completely abstract, with visual images apparently unconnected to the artist or the lyrics. This is called disjuncture videos.

Disjuncture/Illustration:

Disjuncture type of videos ofter explores a concept, very loosely based on the lyrics.

Camera Shots/Angles/Movements:

In terms of Camera shots, I based my initial thoughts and ideas on the way that directors from Kid Cudi’s existing music videos used camera shots in the construction of videos like “pursuit of happiness” and the camera work used in a recent piece of work “no one believes me”

In order for our music video to challenge the conventions within the genre of electro/pop, we used a range of camera shots;

> Establishing shots(ES) – such as the start of Trapped in my mind – these shots established where we have set the video in the main scenes
> Mid Shots (MS) – These aided the establishing shots – It gives a larger view of the performance given, however in our video it gives a larger detail of the frame and the narrative.
> Close ups (CU) – These shots were the most important shots in our video – these shots gave our target audience a close up view of the moving photos and facial expression – allowing them to see the detail of the lettering as they move. Whilst the close ups in the face highlights expressions of the emotions and confusion Dom is experiencing in each room he appears in.
> Extreme Close Ups (ECU) – Extreme close helped to aid the audience in understanding the narrative – it also enabled us to pick out the fine detail through using the cameras and other available technologies.
> Camera movement on the other hand, we will be using simple methods that will allow us to follow the photos accordingly when filming the first scene and make the other scenes smooth together frequently.
> Panning & Zooming – to change setting and cover space – In Kid Cudi’s existing videos the director constantly zooms out to capture more of the scene within the frame. In our video it gave some variation of camera movement and gave a larger picture of the trapped room where the scene is set, allowing the audience to follow the moving letters and sentences around the confined room.
> Camera Tilt – tilting to various angles using the tripod allowed us to follow the actor’s movements as it was important to give the illusion that Kid Cudi is trying to escape but failing which adds confusion. Therefore to make sure our music video wasn’t too confusing and  un relevant, we needed to use technical camera movements like the tilts.

Montage Editing:

Music videos rely heavily on montage editing with a wide variety of different footage juxtaposed etc. Live footage cuts to close-ups of singer’s face to show the expression and mood cutting to footage of the actor self harming or kicking off at random objects, etc. All showing that many random shots are repeating after each other constantly. We used this form of editing well in our music video throughout interesting narrative, as our narrative helps gather a variety of locations and then we have linked them together whilst still making sense and following the narrative, allowing us to have ‘freedom’ in our music video. This was a very clever thing to do as it allowed us to be much more artistic and creative without ideas, if something didn’t work then we had the ability to change the idea, which was a bit like a trial and error experiment.

When it comes to the speed of our editing we relied on the tempo and mood of the song, which then helped us develop the slow tempo and emotions of the soundtrack creating longer lasting shots. Developing upon this idea we used slow motion within a few of our scenes, one example would be what Dom Bennett slowly and painfully punches the door. This helped us use editing techniques to slow down the scenes with the tempo of the music.  When it comes to the time management of the music within in the video and making them synchronise together perfectly we thought it would be a good idea to use cuts with the beat of the song by adding Gaussian Blur to the editing,. This successfully created a blur/fuzz every time there was a large beat taking place, matching the song whilst also adding movement to the music video. At the end of the day John Fiske quoted “music videos foreground the signifier over the signified” meaning that music videos are more based on the aesthetics than the narrative.

DIGIPACK:

Our final digipack which I strongly believe is a very unique and inspiring cover due to the strong influence of the lyrics within the soundtrack. As the name of the song is called ‘Trapped in my mind’ I wanted to represent the mind of a person who might be trapped and the damaging thoughts that might be occurring within the mind. This matches well with our music video and the song as it creates a strong sense of claustrophobia. When it came to designing the covers of the digipack we did try to challenge the conventions of albums arts, but using more illustrative work than having the main focus being the singer. The singer is only shown once the package has been opened which challenges some unusual convention of the artist being as its not been directly focused on. However we did include the most important aspects of a successful digipack and inserted bar codes and copyright acts on the back of the album artwork to show the institutional connects of our album, preventing people from copying our design work.

Existing cover artwork (Demonstrated more clearly on album artwork research)

As you can see from this digiback collection, this artist has used photo manipulation and some sort of illustrative aspect to this design. Which makes it look very eye catching and doesn’t have any photograph of the main artist. This was something that I was aiming at when in the design stages. I felt that the most effective album artwork are designs that show more creativity and thought. Therefore when I began to design the digipack I made sure I could show that I have use media technologies like Photoshop and other photo manipulating software that would enable me to create an artist piece of work.

Our final cover artwork.

Above is our completed digi-pack view on the computer before it was sent off too Fuzz Digital printers.

This is the final printed digi-pack which had finally arrived back from Fuzz Digital. I am extremely proud with our product, as it was the first time I’ve have designed something which actually got published in bulk. Unexpectedly we received 10 hard copies of our digi-pack, meaning each member of the group could take one home to be proud off.

Evaluation Questions:

QUESTION ONE/IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MUSIC VIDEO USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE THE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF MUSIC VIDEO?

QUESTION TWO/HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCTAND THE 2 ANCILLARY TEXTS?

QUESTION THREE/WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

QUESTION FOUR/HOW DID YOU USE THE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Final Ancillary Texts

•  A homepage for the band
• Magazine front cover
• Advertisement
• CD Cover designs (Digi-Pack)

These are all the ancillary task which myself and my group have created. We are very happy with these types of advertising methods for Kid Cudi, as the themes and colour colorization are consistent throughout all theses designs.

To view my research and analysis of the CD Cover and band homepage, please view the links on top of my blog

Our final homepage design

Homepage:

This is the homepage of our website! We wanted to give it a very modern, sleek and sexy twist you the sites design to make it appealing that also represents that artist. As Kid Cudi is a young hip/hop stylish type of guy we wanted to signify his personality and identity towards the layout and colour scheme. We have used our main artist who will be representing Kid Cudi on the Homepage instead of Kid Cudi himself. We wanted to include music onto the homepage so the users can immediately hear the most popular tracks and of course the new song with an unofficial video that we had created.  We inserted 5 Kid Cudi’s songs in total which is set as a playlist so the music will play continuously throughout the site. If the user decides that they do not want to listen to the songs we have an music equalizer located on the top right of the page so they can simply click on a On/Off button.

Band Info:

We used some basic knowledge on Kid Cudi which is going to be all located on this page. Everything the fans will need to learn about the artist, to help increase their knowledge of Kid Cudi as a solo artist and how he has evolved from an ordinary guy to a famous celebrity.

Band Photos:

This page will have all the albums that Kid Cudi has ever created, so the audience can identify the released albums and help promote the songs. It also has some the designs which I have designed and created on Photoshop, etc which will help add to the small collection of his albums.

Tour:

This page will have all of Kid Cudi’s tour dates which people can be aware of, helping promote his concerts which are very useful for any band or artist to get more fans and recognition. It’s the tours that give the artist the most about of money therefore it’s important to have tour and dates within a website. Unfortunately our website isn’t going to be advanced enough for the booking tickets physically functional, so the fans won’t be able to order anything from out site; however it will make them aware of when to book tickets, which is just as effective.

Videos

On this page the final official music video will be located clearly. The aim and purpose of this page is to attract the audience to view the new video and make them want to download the single. We have also used an external link to YouTube so people can comment on the video etc on the YouTube site.

The Press

This page I have made some advertisements and a magazine cover that will help promote Kid Cudi’s latest releases and the official music video to develop recognition. I have decided to follow the OCR brief and designed a magazine cover for the DVD that will be eventually be constructed and an advertised poster that will be located anywhere to make the audience aware of the new release of the music video and single. The information is clearly structured making the user more aware of our magazine and also shows that we used a range of different Ancillary texts.

Contact us:

This page is simple and easy to use. We have made this page neat and clean and still kept a consistent theme. By having the use of this page it will allow the audience of this website to contact us, if they have any other queries about the information held on the website and give us some feedback, which we can consider. Therefore this page will reassure the target audience that they can contact us if needed.

This image is currently from our first filming day when we decided to use stop motion for our introduction scene.

Website: http://www.wix.com/modeyv/kid-cudi

Overall I am extremely pleased with our unofficial homepage as it had a wide range of feathers included making the website full functional and proffessional.

The features that we used include the following:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• PayPal
• Google maps
• Gallery
• Tours updates
• Discussions
• music

Creating Homepages

We were asked to create a band website that would help advertise and promote the artist or band to the audience. From my thorough research in my previous posts and pages, my group and myself have decided to find different ways we can represent Kid Cudi as a youthful artist and successfully promote his latest songs, tour, videos and information and show this within the appearance of the websites design.

Wix formally stands for Windows Installer XML which is free software that allows people to build their very own website that they can personalize to the specifications. They can design the layout to represent their requirements of the business or purpose. Once the designer is happy with the design of the site they are eligible to buy a private domain to launch the business or personal use.

Definition in more depth from Wikipedia:

“The Windows Installer XML (WiX, pronounced “wicks”), is a free software toolset that builds Windows Installer (MSI) packages from an XML document. It supports a command-line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages. WiX was the first software released by Microsoft under an open-source license called Common Public License.

The WiX distribution includes Votive, a Visual Studio add-in that allows creating and building WiX setup projects using the Visual Studio IDE. Votive supports syntax highlighting and IntelliSense for .WXS source files and adds a WiX setup project type to Visual Studio.”

This is a screen shot of the Wix homepage which immediately shows the audience was Wix is about bus the main headings, subheadings and screen shots of what to expect within the site.

 

These are a list of what types of themes are available with Wix, as we are creating a band/artist homepage we needed to search through the music themed layouts on Wix which would help us gain more inspiration on layout and web design.

I searched through all the themes in the music section and came across this layout design called Mix.Master which I believed looked the most professional out of all of them.  Once we had the basic layout from Wix.com I customized the layout to suit our artist Kid Cudi. Kid Cudi tends to use dark colours after observing his official website. (See image below)

After looking at Kid Cudi’s official webpage and using our template I decided to use the colour scheme red, grey and black so both Kid Cudi homepage contrast well together showing development.

This was the fist experiment that I did, creating the first visual view of the design. I wanted to use a dark but eye catching red against the black so the colours stand 0ut well against each other. The found a image on Kid Cudi which I placed in the center as a temporary image. Which will be replaced once we gathered correct images of Dom from the filming processes.

Music – Band Homepage Design Analysis…

http://prezi.com/ucrcurummdah/edit/#0_27193272

Zooming presentation.

This is a screen shot of my Prezi Presentation that I made, about music – band homepage, design and analysis. I wanted to use Prezi as it was a new professional way of creating a fun presentation about my chosen subject. Therefore I felt that it would be a great idea to do a presentation instead of using power point which also added a different media technology into my coursework.

Digi-Pack Improvements

After some research on peoples opinions on our desired digi-pack, we realised a few improvements could be made and finalized before getting professionally published. The back cover was mentioned a lot from the feedback we received, as not many people liked the lost ghost in the background. Therefore I wanted to consider the feedback comments critically and improved the back cover, by using one of our first designs, which was initially meant for the front cover previously, I manipulated it so it becomes relevant for the back cover image. Not only did I want to manipulate and edit the back cover, I wanted the edging to contrast more spontaneous on the sides, making the title stand out and blend in with the front and back cover.

We are extremely happy with our final Digi-pack design, however we do feel that we should have had a proper image of the Artist (Dominic) for the front cover. Unfortunately with major problems with Doms availability and access, we could physically not take the images of him before the printing release date. So for our website, we shall not make the same mistake and take professional images of Dominic when he is next available.

Overall, I love how we used photo manipulation and illustration for our main Digi-pack design as it represents our narrative of our media product clearly and effectively.

Digi-pack feedback…

Desired Digi-pack design:

External:

For the front and back cover to the album I’ve tried to keep them looking very similar so the whole house style is consistent. I believe that this design will look very attention grabbing compared to the other CD albums out there on the shelves of stores and markets. Therefore with this unusual design it will be successful in the music market industry.

Internal:

This is the internal design of the finished Digi-pack. Ive really tried to keep the design very simple with meaning still within in. For example we used the lettering from the beginning of our music video and use these words to be creative. The initial idea was to have the artist name shows in the lettering then insert shots of Dom representing Kid Cudi, within specific letters. The colour of the inside contrasts well against the front of the package and will look really effective once the CD Rom is allocated inside.

CD Rom:

This is the CD’s final design which i think stands out from the rest of the digi-pack as the bold scattered letters look really eye-catching and original. The name of the song is located in a clear blank space, preventing any confusion from the rest of lettering in the Kid Cudi image.

Improvements/things to consider:

• Brighten up the interior images
• Back cover appears to be a bit messy and unprofessional, maybe create a more simply background so the text is more clear.
• Doe not need ‘parental advisory’ logo on both sides of the CD cover
• Needs to incorporate copy right law, somewhere on the package
• Bar code must be included
•  Front cover is really good, it gives a clear idea of what to expect in the narrative due to the clever use of clocks to represent the brain and hands trying to escape out of the case.
• All the images contrasts really well together, keeping the house-style consistent and professional.
• The font used is clear and easily readable
• The design of the title has been carefully thought through when designed and it really shows.

Experimenting with Photoshop

This is a print screen of our front cover digi-pack design built on photoshop CS5. To create this complex design, I had to use a wide variety of layers to add graduate tones and shading to the images.

Here I just put the picture that I will manipulate onto Photoshop.

Here I have tested many different adjustments, have found that this black and white adjustment with the addition of more brightness and contrast adjustments has created the best look for this picture. Whilst also linking to the overall cover look and feel based off the front and back covers.

To make the name of the song stand out ‘Trapped in my mind’ I have made the letters into a dark red colour to distinguish them from the other letters present in the picture.

I have added pictures of our actor ‘Dom’ inside the letters to create a cool effect, some of the pictures are straight from our music video. I had to crop and resize all the pictures, and use layers to place the pictures inside the letters, I decided to place the letters inside the pictures with the white fillings.

Here I have added another picture for the inside cover of our album digipack onto photoshop.

Just like the photo before I have used dark red to colour in the words ‘Kid Cudi’ to distinguish the artist name from the other letters present in the photo.

Adjustments needed to be done to the contrast and brightness of this picture to create the best look for the inside cover, the black and white did not fit this picture like the previous picture. Therefore I have used different adjustments to this picture to make it look great and fit the other pictures just as good.

Like the picture before I have inserted scenes and photos of our actor Dom into the letters on the wall, giving the inside of the album digipack and dark and great feel. Whilst still showing what song and artist is inside.

Final Designs for internal sides of the Digi-Pack:

Right hand side of the Final CD cover

Right hand side of the final CD cover

CD Designs

Photoshop CS5

This is a software that I shall be using in most of the designing stages of the CD cover artwork, Band homepage design layout, and promotional uses. I’ve decided to use Adobe Photoshop CS5 instead of Illustrator as im more familiar with this software, and its complex enough to give us the ability to experiment with different photo manipulation effects.

I will be mainly using photoshop CS5 for photo editing only as this is the better software for the job. Whereas, for getting the text and layouts correctly aligned I shall be using Adobe Indesign CS5 as this software is based mainly on layout design.

InDesign CS5

To begin with we opened InDesign package software, the first thing we would need to do before we can do anything is measure the CD cover compartments accurately and get the Photoshop page layout exactly to size, making sure all dimensions have been fitted and measured correctly. We need to do this because when it comes to getting the CD external and internal surfaces printed out commercially we need to make sure we go through quality control and testing using printing marks, etc.

Below is a screen shot of the blank document that will be the basic template to guide us when we are designing.

I’ve measured up each dimension of the front cover and attempted to get it done accurately. As you can tell from this screen shot it is immediately beginning to look like the shape of a CD cover, and its clear to see where the images and texts are allowed to go and where it shouldn’t placed.

Design Ideas for Front cover:

Design 1:

This is design 1, my first attempt to create an Album cover which relates to our song perfectly. I found some images over the Internet and used Photoshop to merge the three images together, to create a meaningful design. I used a very bright colour font which stands out the most in this design and the font is very complex compared to the design, which made the overall impact look unbalanced. I also think that the empty room should blend in more with the brain/mind, otherwise it will look badly photoshop and therefore doesn’t give a very professional appearance.

Design 2:

This design is personally one of my favorite designs which I developed from the first design. I still used the same three images but used different editing techniques to manipulate the image. I used different opacity levels and fill levels to make the empty room more merged in the brain. Then I decided to use a dark human figure that appears to be trying to escape, so help it match the character in our music video. I wanted to use a simple font that would look really effective against the image “GTD” was the name of the font that I’ve found which had really interesting shapes and symbols to make up the words. I decided to try this font but using capitals which make the symbols turn into readable typography.

Design 3:

This design is very busy compared to the simplicity of the other designs. However I do like this design as it symbolised the fact that the album is about being trapped in an artisitic layout. I really like the way i’ve used the shaded hands on both edges of the album cover as this could represent a person trapped behind the CD case. Or it could have more meaning to it as the hands can signify the music industry of a working day life trapped in this hetic lifestyle that a celebrity has to face every single day and there is no escape from the paparazzi’s. Therefore the faded hands could somehow represent Kid Cudi trapped in a working day lifestlye which can eventually become his album being published.

Design 4:

Again the same hands are used in this design as myself and my group think it looks extremely effective. However this design doesnt say as much when it comes to the mind situation. Its basically an empty room with a broken sofa and a window which only symbolised the room that kid Cudi is trapped in within the video. But from the first impression of this design i dont feel it has as much meaning towards it than it does in the other designs.

Design Ideas for  Back  cover:

When it comes to designing the back cover, I find it personally hard to mess around with the page and text layout as music singles tend to only have 1-3 songs on the back which wastes a lot of space. Therefore throughout the designing process of the back cover, we will need to find different solutions to cover the whole page to make it more eye-catching and visual appealing.

Design 1:

On this design I’ve tried to make it look consistent to the designs I’ve created for the front cover. So from using some inspiration from the front cover designs, I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate some of it towards the back cover. We have decided to use the same images from the front cover and duplicated a few images to use more of the page up.

Design Ideas for Booklet:

Exterior

Design 1: This is a design that I randomly came up with from using the potential previous designs combined together. This is the exterior design of the CD booklet:

Interior

Design 1: This is one of the first designs that came into mind when thinking how to design an interior information page as simple as possible.

I really wanted to keep the inside simple but effective from the use of lines, colours and sharpness of the layout. I felt that less was really more in this situation. I really like the straight line which represents an heard beat rate, as I felt this could be incorporated well with the idea of being trapped in his own mind, which makes him crazy, possibly suicidal. We thought we could include some shots that will represent that, for example walking into the light to death.