What did you learn from Audience Feedback - Video

We asked our audience for feedback after a viewing of our music video for "Superman". A range of questions were asked from what they liked about the video, to what they didn't like about it and their overall view. The answers we gained were similar from the participants involved but insightful nonetheless. We have condensed their answers into these two videos.

Final Blog Post!

My blog has finally been completed! I hope you enjoy looking through my various posts to gain an insight on my ideas and final designs, as well as influences and research that were important throughout all the tasks.

Here is our final music video for your enjoyment,

ENJOY! :)

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

Throughout the research and planning stages to the construction of my music video, digipak and advert I have used different forms of media technologies such as Youtube, iMovie, and photoshop for the construction. of these products.

During the research and planning stages, I found YouTube a very useful resource in aiding my ideas into my own music video. Watching videos from a similar genre allowed me to pick up the conventions of the pop/rock genre and later on in the evaluation stages I was able to highlight where I used, developed and challenged these conventions. Instead of watching a music channel on TV that would not always show the specific genre I was researching, YouTube allowed me to specifically search and select what I needed. Pausing the videos meant I could analyse and go back and view over multiple times. Google Images and Google itself was useful in the research and planning stages of my digipak and advert, as I had an essential range of examples to search for. It was particulary vital for researching into directors of music videos and artists of the pop/rock genre of our music video and I had a rich amount of information at my fingertips at all times.

When constructing our music video we had access to a video camera and tripod at our sixth form. The tripod allowed us to use tracking shots, and steady long shots while the camera allowed for zoom ins and close ups. iMovie was then used to upload our footage onto and then to finally edit. Throughout this process, our work was backed up to an external hard drive, but unfortunately there was a problem with this as at the middle stages of editing, we lost a majority of our edited footage and had to start from scratch. Nonetheless, the rest of the experience was pleasant enough, and we used YouTube clips for tips on effects and cropping as the software was updated and therefore brand new to the production team. Photoshop was used for the majority of the construction of my digipak and advert. The ability to crop images, add effects and use different fonts and tools was a great help in making the products look as professionally done as possible. Using it during the planning stages meant I could create a draft for a certain product and then ask for essential audience feedback, before moving on to develop a final design.

How effective is the combination of your advertisement, digipak and music video?

In order to create synergy between the music video, digipak and advertisement, creating the latter two with similar imager, techniques and fonts was essential in creating a familiarity for the audience while easily relating the three products to each other. My final designs for the digipak and advertisement are below.

Firstly the image of the female artist in the digipak and magazine advertisement are identical. While the image used for the advert is not the cover's main image it is still used in the production and I felt myself it was a more effective image to draw attention to the advert itself. However, it still allows the audience to make a direct link between the two products. The strong female image is also present in our music video. The female protagonist, while used in other music videos as demeaning and weak, was strong and in control of her own decisions in our own video, challenging the female stereotype. She was the character to take control and choose who she wanted to date, the plot/narrative of the video itself. As the image on the digipak and the advertisement are (mostly) a full body shot, this may attract a male gaze so in some ways this hindered the stereotype challenge.

The cartoon effected images and the thought bubble/speech bubble from the digipak and advert reflected our editing techniques from the music video for "Superman". Using this effect for the Superman character and the female protoganist's imagination highlighted the cartoonish, youthful effect we wanted to establish in the video. I myself developed this idea further in my digipak and advert to create a recognisable theme for the band. The logo was created using the graffiti tool, emphasising the youthful aspect of the three products. The music video uses scenes of childish play in the park. The theme of love is used for all three products. The digipak and advertisement emphasise the band's love of music with the image of the heart incorportated onto the image of the female. This theme was also the main plot to our video, the female character on her mission to find love at a speed date. I produced a red glow around the heart, while in our video to emphasise the theme we used the romantic effect to add to the speed dating scenes.

I used the segoe script font for both the advert and digipak to create a signature style for the band, but to also again emphasise the synergy between the products. Although no font was utilised in the video, it reflected the genre of Pop/Rock with its "real handwriting" effect, as well as being a popular choice with my audience. The glow effect used around the images of the female adds to the surrealness of the album, but again creates a synergy between the products. It also ties in with the theme of Superman from the video, and also one specific editing technique where we used the dream effect to reflect the excitement and surrealness of the imagination of our protagonist.

Overall, I feel the combination of the digipak, advert and music video are effective due to the carefully selected characteristics in all three products, which in turn creates an effective synergy and a personal image that fans would instantly recognise. Some features are more obvious such as the colour scheme and logo from the digipak and advert, with the Superman/cartoon-related connotations/ influences becoming obvious once the music video is viewed.