Music Video (FINAL)

Ancillary Tasks (FINAL)

Evaluation: (FINAL)

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

Question Two
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Question Three
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Question Four
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Production: Making Improvements

Alongside my evaluation, I have been working on perfecting my music video. I have made various changes throughout. 

Firstly, the beginning titles faded in and out fairly slowly and not to the beat of the music. Cutting to the beat is one of the main conventions of music videos so I decided to change it. Both the 'MTV' and 'Mr. Blue Sky' now fade in very quickly to the beat of the music and then snap out without a transition, also to the beat of the music. I think it makes my video look more professional when it is nicely edited to the beat of the music. 

Also, my hedgehogs seemed a little out of place, like they were a mistake. I refuse to get rid of my hedgehogs though, they are my favourite part of the video! And so instead, I decided to try editing them to a faster beat in the music and it worked! They feel a lot more like part of the video and again, look a lot more professional when edited to the beat of the music. There was also one point in the video where Max and Jak were at the bench that had no cartoon elements. I love the hedgehogs so much I decided to just copy and paste them, so now they feature twice in the video!

I am sad to say it but I have listened to my audience feedback and have reluctantly removed the majority of the bubbles. It was risen a lot in my survey but I chose to keep them because I thought they were really cute, but after looking again I can appreciate how they can get quite annoying. I have kept them for one or two parts but on the whole, the bubbles are no more. Admittedly my video does look a lot more clean now!

During the electronic "Mr. Blue Sky" part, my visuals didn't quite fit the tone of the music video. I think the colour change is important because there is an evident change in the audio, but it didn't feel like it linked to the rest of my video. To build a relationship between it and my video, I chose to add in some of my previous cartoon characters - such as the birds and the butterflies - and then also alter the colours of them to make them look all groovy. It feels much more like a part of my music video now.

I also assured continuity between my shots by making sure that all of the shots during the guitar solo had musical notes floating out of them.

Another big change I made was to the CUs of the mouths. I didn't feel that it fitted in very well with the rest of the video because of the colours and the way that it flowed, so instead I have inserted a tiling effect to my video. I have also added a fade transition between them both. It looks crazy now but definitely is reflective of the mood of my video!

Here is an updated draft of my video. This version does not have the updated mouth CUs. Almost complete now; the end is in sight!

Evaluation Question 1: Draft Notes

Evaluation Question 4: Draft Script

Auxiliary Tasks: Update: 20/01

I have been working on my digipack. It is taking a lot longer than my poster did as I am creating the front and back cover as well as the inside covers and the actual CD. But it's worth it because it is coming together nicely!

For my CD, I chose to keep it very simple, using the same blue from my poster and music video and just adding the beautiful yellow sun to the very centre of it. I used the magnetic lasso in order to select the central part of the sun and delete it, for the hole in the CD, and then moved the layer to the front. 

My inside left cover was the easiest cover to make. I wanted to make sure my digipack linked nicely to my music video and therefore, I screenshotted a frame from my music video of Max and Jak. I used a scene that many people have expressed their love for and has become rather 'iconic' within the group of people who have seen my video. I had to make the frame square by selecting and deleting unnecessary parts from the side, since my digipack is square whereas my music video is rectangular. But other than that, the creation of this cover was easy and yet it's really effective. 

Eventually I finished the first draft of my digipack. Now it's time to try it out on my target audience!

In order to assure continuity between my media products, I modified the background of my magazine advert so that it was the same gradient as the background of my digipack.

Using a DiscWizard

Although my digipack has begun to come together, I was struggling to format it in a way that it all fit together. To fix this, I downloaded a disc wizard from the Internet. I imported it into Photoshop. 

This allows me to build each individual cover on the same file, meaning that it stays consistent in terms of size and positioning. It also means I can print it out and it would actually fit a CD case!

It took some time to copy over what I had already done but once I had done so I was able to begin working immediately on the spine and the back cover and it is so much easier. It is coming together really nicely now.

CD Cover: Change of Plan?

I did like the basic layout of my CD cover, but wasn't sure it looked professional enough. I spoke to some of my friends, got their feedback and am now working on a new version. The image below is a work in process but you can see I'm adding various improvements and making some changes!

Draft CD Cover

It seems I exported my CD cover at too high a quality for little ol' Blogger and so it's come out a little more toned and darker than it will be, but you get the idea. 

Magazine Advert: Responding to Audience Feedback

In order to appeal to my target audience, I posted an online survey using Survey Monkey in order to gain feedback for my music video and my magazine advert. A lot of the feedback was fairly positive, but there was one criticism that a lot of people had.

Basically everybody wants me to change the font. Originally, I received a couple pieces of feedback suggesting I looked at using a clearer font.

Originally, I thought I could justify keeping the font the same. I felt like because the font was the same as the font used in my logo, I could keep it the same and it would just look more 'complete'. 

However, the feedback kept coming. 

Everybody seemed to want me to change the font! And so, because such an overwhelming majority of respondents didn't like the font, I decided to listen to my audience research and change the URL to something in a much clearer font. Here was the outcome!

Research: Digipacks