Fin.

I have officially completed all my coursework.
What a journey it has been.... Enjoy!


- Emi xo

Evaluation Question 4

I vlogged it for you, Enjoy!

Evaluation Question 3.

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback? on Prezi

My answer to question 3 presented on a prezi! Enjoy.

Evaluation Question 2.

Evaluation Question 2

View more presentations from EmiStickland.

Evaluation Question 1.

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


After deciding on our song 'Dreaming Out Loud' by Sally J Johnson, my group and I set out to create a music video appropriate to the genre as well as the song meaning. After concluding our genre was 'Indie, Abstract and Alternative' we then set out to develop ideas and seek inspiration from other media products that could help us do this task.


 We researched the genre and discovered some similar artists and their style of music videos. 

After researching 'Enya' we gathered that her style of music was very similar to our artist we had picked. 

After researching some of her videos we saw that most of her videos tell a story, so we wanted to make a set narrative in our own music video - just like Enya does. 


Another similar artist was 'Florence and the Machine'.

Florence has a very abstract/alternative genre that we found elements of in our chosen artist. Almost unique. We researched Florence more then Enya as our target audience were more likely to know more of and listen to Florence. Our target audience are more of a younger generation (16 - 21 year olds). 

We taken a lot of inspiration from the 'Shake It Out' video. We liked how abstract and random it was. It was almost as if it was all a dream and we liked that element to it. 

 Here's an element we got inspired by from Florence and the Machine. All the characters in her 'Shake it out' video wore masks and it looked very abstract and unusual. We liked this element and decided to use animal masks in our video. Instead of using real animals we wanted to add to the strangeness and have people with animals masks on, this was also a way for us to be more creative and kind of original. Our target audience also liked this and thought it made a good impact on the video. 


















We also took great inspiration from films 'Alice and Wonderland' 'Inception' and 'Black Swan'. We tried to include some intertexual references so that our target audience could identify them within the video. 

Alice in Wonderland also inspired us to feature Woodland animal masks in our video, including a girl walking through a woods and being lost. We researched that our target audience of the 'Indie' and 'Alternative' genre like 'Alice in Wonderland' so thats how we decided to feature some inspiration in our video. On a creative level, we costumed the main character in a 'innocent' looking dress just like 'Alice' wears from Alice in Wonderland. 

As Inception and our chosen song 'Dreaming Out Loud' are both about dreaming, we took the basic idea of going into a dream/sub concious from this movie. 

We wanted to experiment with some of the famous scenes from the film like the "Zero Gravity" Hall scene, but however we were challenged as we had no budget to pull off something spectacular like a real media product. The only difference was the budget as it's probably an expensive process to pull off. We really wanted to be creative with this but it was literally impossible without the budget and equipment. 

Finally, we took the concept of the imagery used from Black Swan. We decided to have a ballerina in our video who is the dead sister of the other main character. We wanted her dressed in black to represent evil. Just like  it does in Black Swan. 

After showing our target audience our mood board we'd created:

This helped us gather our creativity. It guided us into what our target audience wanted and what we'd like to achieve from the video. They really liked the Alice in Wonderland/ Inception concept and were really eager to see some aspects in the video. Also inspiration from other artists directed our creativity and helped us find inspiration for our video. 

On terms of Entropy and Redundancy, we intended it to be more entropic to suite our genre and ideal for our target audience. The Indie genre tends to be more entropic with visuals but quite redundant on the conventional message - being random, free-spirited and unique. 

Entropic elements:

• Girl waking up in a Woods
• People pretending to be animals - wearing animal masks. 
• Dead Ballerina's dancing around 
• Narrative - Ballerina being murdered. 

(An entropic element - murder of a child)

Redundant Elements:

• Fear of the main girl 
• Performance element from the main character. As seen in 'Shake it out' by Florence and the Machine - she's the main character so she sings the song (happens in many indie/abstract videos). 
• Unique. We think our video is very unique in its own way so there's an redundant element of the indie genre being unique. 

(Redundant element - Main character singing the song, used frequently in Indie music videos).

When showing the audience the video, they felt very saddened by the narrative of the story and thought it was very entropic. They appreciated both the entropic and redundant elements to the video. They thought it appealed to them greatly, so these elements proved successful into the Indie genre. 

On an Originality point, we chose this song to do as it challenges conventional music because there are hardly any lyrics. Its mainly music based. We tried to portray a very dark/sad video which was against the conventions of our genre as Indie is usually very positive, happy and bright. Its doesn't portray a very happy story or positive thinking so this was probably the most original factor within our chosen genre. 

Very Dark Elements from our music video -  against the conventional typical indie genre. 

Bright elements from indie band 'Mumford and Son's song "The Cave'. Typical of the genre,  smiling people, bright lighting etc

Our product is obviously different from a 'real' media product probably only because of equipment and budget available. We didn't have big cameras they use for proper music videos. Our college had offered for us to use their video cameras, and we only used that for one scene. The other parts were filmed on personal cameras as the college cameras were old compared to our own ones. We bought the props ourselves e.g. animal masks but apart from that we didn't have a big budget. The effects we used were on the editing software we had available. This contrasts to 'real' media products for they are given budgets and can spend it on whatever they please. However the technology available still gave us the chance to be original as we'd all had experience with the editing programs. 

To Sum up, the only problem we thought we have by challenging conventions is that our audience wouldn't understand the narrative. When we'd shown the audience our video, they understood the concept but not clearly of what it was about. This was proven in the audience feedback video. However, the indie genre is very vast and they really liked the unpredictability and not clearly understanding what happens. 

Audience Feedback - Video

We asked out target audience a series of questions about our music video. We showed it them before we asked the questions. 

Final Video Feedback

This is our audience feedback from our groups on Facebook that my group had created. 

Final Video

and here we have it ladies and gentlemen..... our final cut. Enjoy.

                                                   Its been uploaded on Youtube.

Rough Cut Feedback

We haven't had much feedback on our rough cut - but we've taken on what they've said. 

Rough Cut

Here's the rough cut to of our music video that we hope to get feedback on! We've posted it on Facebook and Youtube for audience feedback! 

Finished Advert.

I included a website - suggested from Audience feedback. 

Finished Digipak.

Top Left - Inside Left Page
Top Right - Inside Right Page (Where the CD goes)
Bottom Left - Back Cover
Bottom Middle - Spine
Bottom Right - Front Cover


The outline of where the CD is meant to be is very faint but that was intended. 

Digipak Feedback

Loads of people have really liked my digipak and I've had no improvements to make. I'm very happy with it. 

Digipak Draft Pictures

These are some of the images I'm considering for my inside right (where the cd goes). I'm thinking the top image because it actually looks like a CD. 

Feedback So Far.

This is some audience feedback I've been getting on Facebook about my print products so far. 

I've had really positive feedback on my front cover. Everybody seems to of liked it and I've had no criticism. So this shall be my final piece. 

For my adverts, different people have liked the two different adverts. Some prefer the bigger one with more text on it. 

Some prefer the smaller one with less text. More people have liked the smaller one so I'll be going this one. I'll add on a website too to make it look more generic. 

Back Cover.

This is my Back Cover of my Digipak!  Done on Photoshop, Gimp and Paint! 

Another possible Digipak picture.

I edited this to a high contrast but thought it was too bright for my Digipak.

So I edited the brightness so that it goes well with my other pictures.  

                                                   I'll use this for one of my inside pages.

Advert Drafts

Draft One of my advert. This one includes alot more text then the second one. Also a quote from a magazine.

Here's another one I've done. Less text and is a lot smaller. 

I've put them both on Facebook for audience feedback. 

Digipak Template

Edits and Draft 1.

I've edited my cover photo for my digipak to make it look more hazy - I did this for it to appeal to my target audience abit more. I want it to look elegant and simple as I feel it would be more effective.  

This is my first draft of the album cover. Its a little messy at the moment and the 'Sally J Johnson' part I copied it instead of manually writing it. So I'm going to do it again. 

Feedback - Digipak

I got some audience feedback on one of my digipak pictures and they all said I should use it for my front. They all liked the effect I put on the picture too! 

Advert Research

Very small and simple. Contains a website, number and were the artist is performing. 

After researching through some magazines I found some niche artist's adverts. They are smaller then big artist's one and usually quarter the size of a normal a4 advert.  So I've decided to do mine horizontal and about half of an a4 sized one. 

Facebook.

I've created a group on facebook to allow my target audience to give me feedback on my digipaks, adverts and the music video. 

Digipak Picture

Another picture for my Digipak... What should I use it for?  Front cover?  Or maybe an inside picture?

Rough Cut

We've done a rough cut of our video and have placed it on Facebook and maybe Youtube. We've asked for audience feedback so then we can improve our video from that. We aim to get our video done by the end of week!

Digipak picture

Here's another picture that I'd like to use for my digipak. What do you think? Front cover? Another side? Back cover?

Advert Picture

                                    This is the picture I'll be using for my advert - Opinions?

Some new locations.

Here is where our final shot was filmed. Near the river its really picturesque and beautiful, when filming the reflections on the river had started sparkling and it looked lovely.

This is where the main character had to run away from the animals then the animals ran after. 

Print Work.

This is the font for my print work that I'll be using. Its really elegant and different so I think my target audience will like it.

Editing.

We began editing last week but hadn't got much done. However today (Monday the 12th) we got most of the editing finished!  Sadly, Sarah had lost her camera so we've lost some of our clips, so we're going to have to film them again. This shouldn't stop us however, so we'll aim to get it finished by next week. The editing is going very well and we all understand how to use Final Cut Express. We're trying to do a rough cut then put some effects onto it.

Almost finished!

We've almost finished all of our filming!  A few more dedicated hours then we should be ready for editing by next week. On Monday (the 5th of March) we found a new location to film on Whitcliffe. Our group really liked this location and we thought our target audience would like it too. Its a big forest and its very beautiful. Its near a big lake so we did a location shot there too! Sadly, we had to re-film some parts due to footage loss but we're back on schedule! We couldn't film any parts with Jade in as she'd misplaced her costume. Sarah & I will be doing some extra filming in our own time and Friday we plan to finsih the entire thing. Some people have offered to be extras (as animals) so we'll be using them too!

Time Management for March

Here's our schedule for March! 

Progress!

Today we got on with some filming and made lots of progress! We've filmed it in an indoor light filter that has created this beautiful bluey, dreamy, abstracy effect! Its added a great effect to our theme so it looks more abstract. Its going well so far but we still have a lot to do! We'll be carrying on filming for another week or so!

What we've done.

We successfully filmed a small fraction of our music video. The key dancing scenes with Jade in. We had 3 takes and got a perfect shot. However, one of the cameras became really distorted so we've had to use our back up camera. We attempted to edit but sadly it wouldn't allow us. We plan to do more filming this week.

Also, I took some snapshots for our digipaks involving Jade. Some of them are really good so I'll hopefully be using some of them!

We are filming today!

Unfortunately, we don't have Sarah with us so we cannot film as much as we'd like too. She has our camera & costume so we'll only be filming parts with only Jade in today. Sarah & I have managed to film the first 14 seconds of the video off schedule. Jade has brought in her costume today so its all good!

Props!

Our props had finally arrived! So we can properly start filming next Monday! Sadly we cannot film today as our schedule said as the weather isn't good today, plus our dancer is absent. So we'll attempt to do some editing of our current footage.
The actors will be asked to put on a mask and to create the extra abstract theme. We'd thought we'd go with people dressed as animals to make effect on the dream aspect to our video.
With this idea we got the concept that it goes well with our target audience, being strange and different. We thought they'd like the idea of people dressed up as animals more then actual animals.

Costume.

                                     This is Jade's outfit for the Ballerina Girl. Black representing death.

Outfit for my character. Its all innocent and sweet for the character. Its quite an indie dress so our target audience may like it.

Storyboard - With Music

This is the storyboard we'd drawn out, presented to the music for our music video.

Tumblr

http://dreamingoutloudmedia.tumblr.com/

This is our blog that we created to promote our coursework. Mainly for audience feedback! it was created also to get feedback from our target audience.