Evaluation - Technologies

Throughout the production of our music video, magazine advert, digipak and blog. We used a great variety of technologies varying from mobile phones to advanced, professional editing programs such as Adobe Premier. By using such a wide variety of technologies, we were capable of capitalizing on both time and the resources available to us.

Mobile Phones:
Mobile phones played a pivotal role throughout our production work. We used them to plan and schedule when we would be visiting locations, doing our filming, take pictures of locations, make notes of ideas for our productions and we even were able to make changes to our blog at any point when reviewing it as we could access the blog through our phones.

The Internet:
Most of our preliminary research was carried out using the internet. We researched our genre using search engines and reliable sources, similar texts using YouTube, the song we used for our production, locations on Google Maps, clothing, brands, trends etc. We emailed each other ideas, and scheduled our work using the internet too. We also were able to take photos of locations using our mobiles and email them to the blog account through the internet, speeding up the process instead of having to transfer the images via USB cables as well.

Digital Video Camera:
Instead of using a traditional video camera which uses a tape. Our group chose to use a digital video camera which incorporated a media card to store our work digitally. Allowing us to import, export and make copies (backup) of our work quickly and efficiently.

Media Card:
We wanted to stick with modern technology throughout our production as we felt it was helping to speed up our production work and helping us meet deadlines. Thus, we used a media card in our digital video camera to record our footage onto. This helped us greatly when importing our work to the iMacs back at college as we could simply pop in the memory card and import our work instead of using a capture deck which is a lengthy process.

Apple iMac:
We used Apple's iMac incorporated with Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop to edit our music video as well create and edit our ancillary texts.

Adobe Premiere:
To edit our music video we used Adobe's Premiere software. We found this to be a very efficient, professional program that allowed us to cut footage, rearrange footage, add effects, add backgrounds, speed up and slow down footage. We also felt that this was a step up from last year as many of us used iMovie last year so it was good to learn how to use another editing program.

Adobe Photoshop:
Adobe's program Photoshop is one of the best photo editing softwares about and we were lucky enough to have the newest version to create, edit and perfect our ancillary texts. We used it to crop backgrounds from our photos we had taken in the photo studio, add new backgrounds, add text such as track listings and tour dates, images such as parental advisory labels.

Blogger:
We used Blogger to publish all of our coursework on. Starting with our planning and research and finishing off with our evaluative points.

Adobe Premiere
and Photoshop Logos

Evaluation - Audience Feedback

Our overall audience feedback was pretty positive with a variety of classmates, friends and colleagues praising our production. Mostly our classmates who understood the terminology of the subject area commented on us using a range of effects and editing techniques (in particular the green screen and backings) as well as mentioning on the amount of cuts and the variety of shots we used. Our classmates also admired our ancillary texts (the digipak and magazine advert) and many said they thought the idea of an A3 magazine advert pullout was quite a creative idea.

For feedback outside of college from friends and colleagues, we thought we'd do something with modern technology to show our friends. So, we posted our production on YouTube, Facebook and Tumblr. This was also quite positive although less formal. Most friends stated how they enjoyed the production and thought it was brilliant.

Facebook Comments

Tumblr Comments

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

Our magazine advert, designed to go over two pages 

Digipak design

We designed our digipak and magazine advert around the artist persona we created, rather than the song, as we considered that it would have a detached feel to it instead of encapsulating all of our work together. The detachment would arise from the fact the video, digipak and magazine advert are supposed to be promoting the artist rather than the song we did. 

The persona we created is that of a hardcore/Goth rock star, with "All I Wanted" being one of the softer songs on the album. The songs on the digipak are all from other artists, chosen for their sombre and depressing impressions they give. This is reflected in the damaged heart in the background as well as "requiescat in pace" translating from Latin into "rest in peace". To enhance this idea we used the genre conventions of hard rock, including the heavy make up and instruments.

We tried to create a running theme by using merchandise from other bands, including Nirvana t shirts and placement of Drop Dead accessories; Drop Dead being the clothing range of Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes. In our production work we have used Drop Dead as our record label, creating a connection with fans of other bands.

There is a link between the two ancillary texts in the costuming, as the same outfit and placement of other bands is used. These can be connected in this way to our production as a different Nirvana shirt is worn during some scenes of the video. This intertextuality also creates a link to the artist we covered in that they are seen wearing merchendise from other artists. We also connect the promo video with the ancillary tasks through the use of the pink backgrounds and despite the sad tone of the song, using happier backgrounds such as the heart on the digipak and bright beach scenes in the video. We also used fire in both the magazine advert and the video to create a very strong link between the pieces of work. 

We feel the promo video and tasks work well together in that we have used elements in both for potential fans to be able to make the connection between them both and the use of hard rock conventions along with the inclusion of the intertextual references will help attract our audience.