Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video follows the conventions of a real music video of the rock/metal genre. This is because it shows our band on stage preforming but also has a storyline and flicks between the two. Also you rarely see a video where the artist isn't lip-syncing whether the video is just a performance or contains a storyline. Evanescence's video for "Bring me to life" also has a dream sequence so we knew our idea would fit the track.

There are also a few parts that challenge the conventions of a music video as most don't have a title screen and let the music channel state the song track and they don't usually state the production company. We all thought this was a good idea as it shows that we have made the video ourselves as real bands don't. I also liked the old-fashioned feel of the font and background and think it fits well with the Alice in Wonderland film as it is an old story.

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

Hopefully the themes of our music video match nicely with our website and digi pak. As you can see our digi pak is hand made this makes it look more authentic and old fashioned. The cream card is very similar to the textured background at the start of our music video. if we had more time to make a few different version we would have liked to tea stain the card so it looks more textured but it may haven't ruined the look of the drawings and the strength of the card. The blue ribbon matches the colour of Alice's dress so therefore matches with the video. Also the illustrations are cartoon versions of us in our costume so this also goes along with the video.

We wanted the website to look Gothic and match the Alice in Wonderland theme. So we used a dark blue background; the font is light blue like the ribbon and swirly like the beginning of our music video. It also has a page with the video on it and a gallery with picture from filming and a page show our digi pak combining all elements of our product.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Most people that watched our video enjoyed it which I am very pleased with. We have uploaded it to facebook and youtube so we can get friends opinions and anonymous opinions. As everyone has been so kind and given us great feedback we have had to be critical of ourselves.

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

For our research we used the internet:

• Youtube for music video research.
• www.evanescence.com for band research.
• Google to find a free website creator and www.wix.com to make our website.

Planning:

• I drew the storyboard on paper but we scanned it so we could print another copy if needed.
• I used blogger to store other aspects of planning like character drawings.

Throughout the filming and editing process we used:

• a HD video recorder and tripod.
• a FUJIFILM still camera to take pictures for our website.
• the apple mac for i movie to put our video together.
• i tunes so the track was on the computer and could be added to our video.
• We used an i-pod to keep our band scenes in time.

For the evaluation stage we used:

• i-movie to make the video below
• garage band to record our voices for the video below.
• Youtube and Facebook to upload our videos for audience feedback.

Our group evaluation; hopefully this video will explain why we did certain things and anything I may have missed out.

audience feedback

We uploaded our video to youtube in order to get audience feedback we thought this would be a more interesting way to gather it.

Our video is second on the first page of youtube we are pleased with this as this means it is more likely to be watched and we will get more views.

Overall so far we have 222 views i am surprised and pleased with this as i didn't think we would received this many. As you can see from the picture above with have received one dislike but we did get more positive feedback as 9 people liked our video and also we have 1 favourite.

The map show's what countries our video has been viewed in.

These are all the comments that we have received they are all very positive and can been seen more clearly on youtube.

We also showed Year 8 and 9 students at our school our video in an assembly and they were all impressed.

Digi pak research

This is Evanescence's second album "the open door" the writing style is gothic so matches the music and art work.

I really like the colours and thought the pattern on the disc was nice. I also liked how the booklet was attached and the paper it was made from.

Atreyu's digi-pak is one of my favourites; I love the way the cover looks innocent and doesn't really match with their music but when opened the sheep rips in half and reveals a wolf. This would fit well with our digi-pak as the Cheshire cat and mad-hatter later reveal themselves too be evil creatures.

Like a lot of digi-paks it also contains a second disc which is a DVD with music videos on it. Instead of being opened like a book the booklet containing the lyrics folds out and has a lot of pictures of the band.

Machine Head used a red case instead of a clear one. We like this as it makes the digi pak stand out more and looks more interesting.

We liked this digi pak because the outside is black and white and the inside is colour. This would be good for our digi pak as we would like our illustrations to be in black and white as this matches the book. We would also like the booklet to be in colour and more then likely photos of us that will also be on the website.

Album Cover analysis

The first album cover is Evanescence- Fallen; as this is the album our chosen song is from. The image is the lead singer Amy Lee; in this picture she looks mysterious which fits in with our video as we want the characters to come across strange. I also like the blue tint effect as it makes it look strange and gothic.

This is the cover for Evanescence- The Open Door; their second album. This cover has a more Alice in Wonderland theme; mainly because of the door. At the same time it is still gothic like their first album cover.

Atreyu are my favourite band; this particular artwork is from the artist Dave Quiggle; http://www.davequiggle.com/. This relates to our coursework as the outside looks nice and your first reaction; is "awww look at the cute sheep," but when you look at the inside of the case it is creepy and dark, and the sheep is ripped in half and a wolf is it in its place almost like the sheep is a mask. This fits in with our idea as we want it our music video to start of "nice" and turn out dark and twisted.

Our website

We wanted our website to match the theme of the video so we used black and blue for a Gothic meets Alice in Wonderland feel. The website was to promote our digipak and new video. My favourite page is the gallery as it shows pictures of our make-up and from the shot which always reminds me of how fun the days were. Paul found a free website builder called www.wix.com so we used this. Paul and Yaz wrote the text and me and Paul uploaded the photos. Another part I like is the picture viewer at the top as it fits with our digipak as they are in black and white. Here is our finished website.

http://www.wix.com/a2medianewacademy/a2-media-coursework

Our Final Project

Our Music Video is now complete. I had a lot of fun making this and i am very proud of the final result. i just hope that everyone that watches it enjoys it and can see how much hard work Yaz, Paul and me put in to making it.

Digi pak

We decided to make our digi-pak ourselves as this would be more authentic. We found cream card that sort of matched the old textured background. I made the net for the outer case and Yaz made the net for the inside.

I also drew the pictures we wanted them to be similar to the illustrations in the original Alice in Wonderland book; i tried the make the characters look as much like us as possible. We added blue ribbon the the front to tie the case together as blue matching Alice's dress.

We thought it would look good to line up The cat's eyes with the "grudge" style creatures like she is revealing herself. We liked how the atreyu cover slide open but we decided ours would open up rather then sideways.

Yaz sewed the bottom instead of glueing it so it looked more interesting and handmade. This then folds out like so:

The left side is were the booklet will go after paul has made it and it is off alice running away from the creatures as she is not on the cover. We added a blue bow so it looks less plain. We wanted to stick to the blue theme so we found a blue cd case and Yaz sewed this to the card.

A close up of the right hand side shows a drawing of a screenshot of Yaz as the creature we wanted a screenshot of both Yaz and Paul drawn again to gain the creepy effect.

This is the back of our digipak, it's a picture of a teapot as this is an important part of the Alice in Wonderland story. When it opens up it shows the cup that i throw of the floor and the "tea" spilling out; explaining why i throw it on the floor as it looks like posion.

website research

This is evanescences website. A lot of sites have a button saying "enter site" a lot of sites have a page before the homepage giving new information; in the case of Evanescence that they a new album coming out shortly.

Start away the colours coordinate and match the music; there is also a picture of lead singer Amy Lee which fits with what the writing is saying.

The Butterflies in the background can be moved around the screen I thought this was very interesting as it makes the site fun and shows what professional can do.

There are several links to around the site for examples photos, news on the band and merchandise. Some of these like a gallery and merchandise we may use for our site as we need to advertise our digi pak.

Like the butterflies the birds can also be moved showing that on websites all the pages have to link together.

Most of the picture are of Amy Lee but we would like ours to be of all of us and pictures of us filming; but the layout is nice.

When you click on the picture to view it opens in a new window as you can see by the picture. I like this idea as you can see the picture more clearly and because its a pop-up it doesn't interfere with what you where already doing.

As we only have our digi pak and not t-shirts and other merch to sell maybe we can make our merchandise page more interesting.

Like we would like Evanescence have a page showing their videos. I like the scroll sideways bar showing the other videos. Their new video is already selected so all you have to do is press play. Maybe this is a good idea for our site =].

Editing

We used i-movie to edit our film and it was a very frustrating process. We started by watching all our footage to see which ones were best as we filmed some shots more then once so we had more choice in the editing stage.

Then we put the footage into chronological order to insure we knew how the music video would piece together. We began with the last bit the last shot from our first day of filming, showing that you never actually film in order; this was the footage of Paul setting up the camera in a manor of an amateur style music video, which ours actually is. This is because it fits too the stereotypes of how we wanted to portray our music video but also with the conventions of a official music video in later footage.

We chose this font as we thought it looked gothic and fits with the Alice in Wonderland theme; I really liked the background as it makes our video look old fashioned and a little bit creepy. We added the music first instead of last because this was easier as we did our editing along side filming. Most of our shots are sped up especially the Cheshire cat parts and it was a bit too long and it makes our video more dream like.

I split the close up and mid-shot clips of Yaz as the Cheshire cat up and re-ordered them. This make it more dream like and hinted at the fact the dream would become a nightmare as her head movements look creepy. I tried to mirror this at the end when she looks up as the creature as this is a indicator something bad is about to happen.

Matching up the track to Yaz and Paul's lip-syncing was the hardiest and most frustrating part of the ending process so we all had an input. We put this in first so we knew how much room we had to add footage before and after that part of the song. We decide to switch between close-ups and long shots as this sticks to the conventions of a real music video. As Paul wasn't the best a lip syncing so when it was his turn we used the long shots and used Yaz for the close-ups.

Yaz used a transition called zoom to skip between dream and reality as it makes the video flow better and faster and also makes it look professional.

Overall i love the way our video turned out and think it shows our imagination, creativity and hard work and hope everyone else can see it too.

filming day 4

Our last and final day of filming :'(.

We picked up were we left off from filming day 2 and started filmed at the band stand. Again it was a freezing cold day but we were determined to finish. We really wanted to make sure we shot a variety of different camera angles.

I filmed Yaz's creature transformation from a downwards angle close-up. This looks very effective as it is like the cat has melted and this new creature has been born. We then decided to add in Yaz taking off the cat suit just to show the audience that they are the same character. We then shot Yaz crawling after me.

I also filmed Paul's transformation and thought an upwards pan would look creepy.

We made sure we took it in turns to film so we have all had a fair input. Overall filming was very fun but also a lot of effort, but now for the dreaded editing D:.

Whilst filming on day 2 and 4 we all got a few odd looks; especially me and Yaz who decided to go in ASDA for our lunch break. (Like people have never seen the Cheshire cat, Alice and the mad hatter walking round town before!) Also an elderly couple asked us what we were doing and took a photo of us to show there grandchildren; showing people of all ages are interesting in media.

Filming Day 3

We decided to use a different location to film the shots of me falling asleep so that wonderland looks more exciting. Yaz filmed me lying on the bench with the camera off the tripod as she had the steadiest camera work, we did this a few times to make sure I was in a similar position to when I wake up in wonderland.

The camera then went on the tripod to film a mid-shot of me eating the cheese and pretending to take a piriton tablet, for storyboard number 5.5. Yasmin and Paul took it in turns to film throughout the day as I was in all the shots. We added a close-up of me yawning so me lying down and falling asleep didn't look so random.

We then shot a long shot of me dream fighting and Paul and Yaz waking me up this was so everyone could be seen at once without any heads being cut off.

Filming Day 2

We decided to film in west park for the Alice in Wonderland part of our music video. Again we had another problem one of our actors didn't show up so we had to rope someone in at the last minute.

Costumes: We were all dressed in our character costumes which are described on a separate post.

We filmed storyboard numbers 6-9. This took us a while as we wanted to make sure we had a variety of shots to work with in the editing process. We also added a pan of the park to show my character's realisation of her surrounds, that she is now in "wonderland". We wanted it to be shaking to so Alice has just woken up. Paul filmed shot 8; Alice meeting the Cheshire cat. We experimented with different shots like close-ups, mid-shots and upwards parts as we wanted our video to look as interesting as possible. Alice following the Cheshire cat was also difficult to film as The Cheshire Cat disappears and we had to get out timings and positions just right. Yaz filmed me lying on the bench and we all had input with the caterpillar part. As we were all in storyboard number 9 we put the camera on a tripod this was a mid-long shot.