Final Product-Ancillary Texts

Final Product-Music Video

Teacher Assessment

Here is a teacher assessment of my ancillary task, which included a digipack and advert. From this feedback I am able to clearly understand what I need to improve, for example my written communication lacks and the font needs to be changed in order to fit into the genre dance-pop. Furthermore, I need to focus on the conventions of my genre more, and my creativity as the advert main image was viewed as not being creative and not very abstract, also the album title could have been more creative.

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

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

During the construction stage we used Photoshop CS3 to produce the ancillary task; the CD cover and advert. Also, it was very useful in the planning stage when we produced a mock up of our CD cover and also with the experimentation of filters and saturation tasks early on in the course. We use different techniques when producing our Digi pack, for example we produced the eye caption by overlapping two images we had taken with the Canon camera-slow speed shutter- and rubbing out parts of the iris to uncover the image below; we has the density to low in order to create soft edges, because the hard edges seemed rough and uneven.

Also, we changed the hue and saturation on all of the images, this was produce a more intense colour; conveying more energy, which are song and artist image required. Another reason for this was due to the artist costume, which was not originally pink, this was done to match the colour scheme already running through.

We used the rulers in Photoshop to accurately line out our CD cover, creating a more professional final product. The use of opacity was interesting and was tested to make our advert, in which the images overlapped but the whole image was still visible. The opacity increased with each image till is became almost non-existent.

Q3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?- Facebook Feedback

At Different Point in Our Project
I created a video showing how I have used Facebook as a tool to gather audience feedback on my work. This feedback has then gone on to influence my decisions.

Q3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?-Interviews

By carrying out interviews with my target audience, I was able to gather feedback in order to improve and highlight the successes in my work, below is the video showing this feedback.

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

Using examples from my music video, I am showing how my product has used media theory successfully in a multitude of ways. Also, how certain elements affect the atmosphere and mood of my media prouct.

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

I have created a video showing the links in my work and how they come together in order to portray an image of my artist.

Q1) in what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Advert

Lady Gaga's advert for 'The Fame Monster'
-a professional  example

My advert 

 My advert has some features that conform to the conventions of a professional advert. The first one is that the focus of the advert is the artist; the artists is presented and portrayed in a confident and quirky, creative way by overlapping three images of the artist and changing the opacity. This is seen in Lady Gaga's advert in which she has her face displaced twice; this makes it clear to the audience they are the artist and they are important. However, I challenge the convention of the font titles, which are displayed as the album name being significantly bigger than the artist name, I did this because I felt the connotations of the name 'Fluorescent' made is vital to make it stand out because it suggest a brightness and boldness, but I overcame this making sure 'Justify' was above 'Fluorescent' to make it clear that that's the artist name.

The colour scheme seems to be a challenge to professional adverts, as seen from these adverts- they show no colour. It seems that the convention for Dance-Pop adverts is a dramatic, black and white photo, which I do not do; I did however, create a dark shadowed image that has dark blues and vibrant pinks because it links with our colour them running between the music video, advert and CD cover. They also link with the name 'Fluorescent' due to the vibrancy created by using the hue/saturation tool in Photoshop.

Rihanna's advert for Russian Roulette- a professional example

Q1) in what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Q1 by

Q1) in what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 It's very conventional for dance-pop music videos to be solely based around the artist, for example in Olly Murs-Army of Two, the only character present through the entirety of the video is Olly Murs, this is emphasised when he is duplicated multiple times in one shot. Kesha's music video also does this by using constant close-ups of her to express her importance.

 I have used this convention by only using the artist 'Justify' in my media text, and using the same strategy of close-ups as seen in Kesha's music video. However, I do challenge the convention of  location in my work; the typical convention of a dance-pop music video location is a green screened background, as shown in Kesha's video. I used  a field, which is unconventional to this genre, but I wanted to get across the concept of overcoming challenged and frustration (The field is symbolic of this because it is tranquil and calm).

Close-up from my media text

Another convention in pop videos is a dance sequence performed by the artist; my dance sequence is a combination of various location such as a dance studio, in front of a curtain and drama room to create the illusion that he is practicing and performing a dance, reflecting the concept. Low key lighting tends to be accompanied by a dance sequence, and back lit by a light source, mine is no different.

Olly Murs-Army of two

From own media text

 This example below of a real media product shows how brights lights are used to emphasis certain moments in the music video, making the shot seem dramatic and tense. I decided to use this convention to make the dance scenes look dynamic and unusual. I did this by using a blue spotlight behind the artist, making only the artists silhouette visible. Cutting to the beat also a typical convention of dance-pop music videos; editing is fast paced in the chorus as this is the most energetic and upbeat section of the song.  I discovered from using lights that a blur can be noticed on the lens, and created this shot below; this is unconventional in dance-pop music videos because it cuts away from the content.

From own media text

Background information of Artist

From the feedback we had got from people we found that our concept was illustrated well through the use of our ancillary task. Our artist brought upon itself it own persona; the CD cover and advert felt as if its the artists second album, after being gone for some time. This album is their 'come back', we believe this because the images seem to hold angst, however, a lot of energy; a lot of time has been put into the making. The artists is made to seem as if their looking forward and starting a fresh, for example the advert connotes the emotions of determination, as we are shown him staring directly at the camera and left and right; showing how he's ready for anything.

Third Draft of my ancillary task

Teacher assessment-Music video

This is quick note from my teacher who watched my groups music video and gave us some feedback on what could have been improved. We have scheduled to re-film the dance scenes and change our concept (A dance student trying to perfect his dance, not giving into hard work), which our teacher suggested. 

Draft 2 of Ancillary task

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Pois Technique

When developing our digi-pack, we found that our colour scheme naturally developed within our ancillary task and wanted to incorporate this into our music video in order to link to two elements together. Light blues and pinks are used significantly used in order to highlight an upbeat and energetic atmosphere, which works well with the fast tempo of our Dance-pop song. As a group we discovered a technique called the Pois technique (Explained more in the slide show above), this allows us to create visually interesting shots and photos while incorporating our colours.

First draft of our music video

Here is the first draft of our music video, however is is not fully complete having only half the editing of the video which has been marked on this video with an annotation. The reason we haven't finished the editing fully is because we have so many shots compared to other groups, such as the video contains at this point in time 16 shots types, and also we had trouble at the beginning with the rendering of our footage leaving us able to use Final Cut. We also found that the Dance sequence which we shot needs to re-filmed due to the location; the flat curtain background makes the shot flat- to resolve this we will be using a fig rig in order to create a smooth handheld camera movement against a plain wall or mirror in the dance studio. Furthermore, we discovered that we need more close-ups of the face and extreme close-ups because that was one of the many conventions of dance pop music videos.
 

New version:
Below is our new version of draft one, in which we have completed to our fullest potential. Even just comparing these two you will see our much clearer understanding of the Dance-Pop genre, because the pace of editing is much faster and matches the tempo of the song.