Group 22 Presents: YOU SHOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT AGAIN

22. Siobhan, Vanessa, Rebecca, Can from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Evaluation Of Finished Production Work: Final Blogging Task

*Vanessa walks to the stage and takes up the microphone to formally close off her blog*

"Ladies, Gentlemen, this is it, we have accomplished what we set out to do. There have been tears, and failed footage and terrible lip-syncing, but I tell you now, Group 22 pulled through these hard times by sharing in laughter, growing media skills and midday McDonald after filming.
*tears stream down her cheeks*
I'd just like to thank my amazing colleagues, the media teachers, the technicians, the third floor, and many others, for making this all possible!

Good night and good luck!

 I'm going to leave you with one last video:

Group 22's...Our Journey

Formally Closed.

Evaluation of finished production work: Final Progress Review Blog

Evaluation Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As I said at the end of the video, I also posted my video to my personal blog on Tumblr, and asked my followers as well as people searching "Dubstep, Music Video and Media" news feeds to message me for the password in order to watch the video and give me feedback. Many of the comments I received complimented certain aspects of the video, however the only conclusions I could draw from this was that certain parts of the video, such as the locations and alleyway scene appealed to our target audience. Although, amongst these comments were the two comments I have selected below, which really made me reflect back on my music video in a different light.

This is a screenshot of the blog post I placed on Tumblr, I have included this screenshot as part of this evaluation question, because minutes after giving this password to 'pastel-castle-cove', who had found the video from the dubstep news feed, she "liked" it and followed my blog. This taught me the importance of producing music videos, because had this been a real debut of a new artist, by releasing this video on websites such as Tumblr and YouTube, where the mass consumers are the target audience, I would be able to capture the attention of new fans, and add them to Bl4ke's growing fan base at a fast rate.

Although messaged to me anonymously for some reason, with a suspicious kiss mark, I learnt that to some people viewing the video, the ending of our video was confusing. On the one hand, this can have the effect of making the audience members want to watch the video again to see if they can understand it better the second time. This is positive because, it means that the video will be viewed many times, and thus our artist will have more promotion and is more likely to be remembered. The negatives however are that the confusing ending might discourage people from enjoying the video in it's entirety. It will also interfere with them creating interpretations of the video, and thus prevent them from relating to the video to the extent that we hoped they would.

I found the feedback below to be particularly helpful, because it provided me with ideas of what could have made this ending scene less confusing, such as clearer interaction between the characters. This person also goes further to also make suggestions of what could have enhanced the whole ending sequence. The part in which she states "...it could have been nice to see the effects of the drugs he takes with the girl" made me look at our video in a different light, because it taught me that being a dubstep video, this drug scene would have given us the perfect opportunity to explore extreme and obvious edits and special effects as we discussed in the initial planning stages. For example, if given the chance to redo this ending sequence, I would have used blurring effects when Bl4ke is staring at the girl, to show that he is not in his normal state of mind, and as the narrative of the video is desaturated, I would have perhaps used a bloom effect to make the colours very vivid during this section to show that they are "high". This would also incorporate more elements of Carol Vernalis' theory, as these edits and filters would have drawn more attention to the action and perhaps also made it clearer. A blur on the girl's face when using a point of view effect from Bl4ke's perspective may have also driven home the fact that she means nothing to him, just an instrument of pleasure.

Evaluation: The Making of Question 4

I have started answering Question 4 by asking my Tumblr followers to view my video:

I hope to get a range of feedback this way, that I can analyse and use in this question. The advantage of gaining feedback in this way, is that the video will be seen by a wide range of people all over England and other countries, not just people around my home and college environment, therefore, as these people might have different life experience due to the area they live in, they may have different interpretations and thus different opinions on what I could have done with the music video that would have made it either more improved, or more relateable to people like them.

Gaining feedback from people that don't know you personally, means that the people are more likely to be truthful and voice their true opinions, which means my feedback will be more accurate. The fact that the feedback is also being given over the internet allows the people to speak more freely.

As well as my Tumblr feedback, I hope to make a Final Cut Pro video to show and comment on feedback I have gained from my target audience by using a Flip camera.

Evaluation Question 3

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

Evaluation Question 3 By Vanessa Maselino 

Evaluation: The Making of Evaluation Question 3

I've started my Question 3 by writing out a list of the technologies that I used for the duration of this project:

It helped to categorise the technologies to make it easier when it came to writing the information up.

The second part of my plan for question 3 is to use Powerpoint, because there is a lot of text based information, therefore I feel the best way to present this would be in a program such as powerpoint.

I have started an example of what I hope my presentation will look like.

 I want each technology to have it's own slide so that I can describe in detail what each was used for. This is because many programs had multiple uses.

 The content of these slides will have a combination of photo examples of the software, photo examples of what it was used for, and text explaining these different uses and functions.

I will then use SlideShare to transport this onto the blog.

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?


Evaluation Question 2

(Please view in full screen)

Synergy Elements1

(Please play for comments relating to this video.)

Evaluation Question 1

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

Evaluation Question 1: Part 3

(Please Press Play)

Production of Ancillary Products: Completed Advertisements

Official release of BL4KE's adverts below....Copyright Vanessa Maselino

Official Album Release Advertisement

Official Tour Dates Poster

Production of Ancillary Products: Completed Digipak

Finally! Here is my completed Digipak:

Font and Back Panels

Inside Panels

Production of Ancillary Products: Production of the Tour Dates

Tour Dates

To create the Tour Dates poster, the part that required the most research was the venues Bl4ke would be preforming in.

To find the venues, I researched popular gigging venues around the area that I wanted Bl4ke tour in:

I then used these venues, and researched them to find out which ones had booked dubstep artists before. I didn't research the O2 Apollo Manchester, because I thought that as my artist is a new artist, it would be unlikely that his first tour would be in such a high profile location such as this.

I went into a lot of detail when I was researching locations in Nottingham, because I thought that this is the home of our target audience, so I would need venues that are too high profile, but are known well enough to draw up a large crowd. This is because aside from Bl4ke fans, people are more likely to turn up if it is a venue they know well and trust. Through my research, I was referred to "Skiddle.com", where I was able to search local events already taking place in Nottingham, and find the venues that have held the most dubstep gigs.

Creating the Advertisement

The same level of attention had to be paid to the magazines reviews. This is because, I wanted to make sure that Bl4ke would draw a lot of attention amongst various dubstep audiences, and thus the best way to do this would be to add reviews from reputable Dubstep magazines.

Production of Ancillary Products: Production of the Digipak so far

So Far, the problems I have encountered with designing my digipak are with the smaller details. For example:

I ran into problems thinking of how to design my wall effect on the back panel. This is because, images from the internet interfere with copyright laws, and I feared that taking pictures of a wall and then trying to manipulate it to look broken might make the image look unreal, as my skills in using photoshop are not as advanced as I had hoped them to be. I originally was aiming for a look such as the picture on the left, and chose the colour pink because I thought this could be desaturated to a paler pink so that it was not too bright, and could match the pink on the bricks of the graffiti. However, after re-evaluating my design, I cropped a section of the graffiti wall from the picture, and used this to create a brick effect, by layering them individually, in the traditional masonry design. Although this took up a lot of time, this allowed me to manipulate the bricks to suit the panel, and create the broken wall, in which I can place the album names.

Production of Ancillary Products: New Merged Image

After finally testing my superimposed image using photoshop tools, I came up with a better image than in my mock-up.

I think this attempt came out looking much better than the first, because the image I used matched up a lot better with the graffiti face, than the last. He is also positioned in the same way, thus I did not have to crop away much of the image to make sure it became one picture. The wrinkles on the graffiti also make Bl4ke's face look aged, and thus adds a new meaning to my album. The old face contrast the word "urban" in the album name. It reminds of the way teenagers are perceived as doing childish or amoral things in an attempt to act beyond there years.

To improve on this picture further, I aim to desaturate it, to bring the colour closer to the colour of the narrative in the music video.

Production of Ancillary Work: Practicing Using Photoshop

In this lesson, we experimented with photoshop to gain further inspiration to improve or alter our mock-up, as well as gain experience in using this new technology. We were given the task of taking a picture that was deliberately taken from  the internet because of it's poor quality, and turn it into a decent digipak.

Above is a picture of the digipak I created in the task. The problems I had with my image is that it was very small and pixelated to begin with, so when I opened it up into photoshop and resized it, it was very blurry. I learnt from this, that when working on my real digipak, I must make sure that the picture I use is already the same or of similar size to the panels I am using it on. I tried to improve on the blurriness by adding smoothing filters and de-saturating the image. Although this did not greatly improve the quality of the image, I realised that de-saturating an image does help it to blend in with it's surroundings, and thus this gave me the idea that I could experiment with desaturation on my final piece. This task also gave me the experience of using the tools in photoshop to remove the background, as this is one of the processes that I need to go through in order to merge my images. I learned that removing colourful backgrounds is a lot harder, as it is more obvious that the image has been removed, and you have to be very careful when tracing around things like hair, because photoshop sometimes confuses this with the background when using tools such as magic eraser.  I chose this image out of the other possible "bad images", because it was the closest replica to the image I hope to achieve, due to the fact that it is an extreme close-up of a face.

I practiced the overlay technique and changing the opacity on the back panel of the digipak. To achieve this on my final piece, I must make sure the layers are arranged in the correct order, because this will impact which layers will be clearer and if in the wrong order, it will make erasing unwanted features difficult. I also placed the copyright information, barcode and logos in the places where I hope to put this information on my actual digipak.

From designing the inside of this digipack, I decided that I liked the fact of creating synergy, by putting the design of the back of the digipak on to the CD, as well as the artist's name. I put the name through the CD to make the hole look more realistic and also used a plastic wrap filter to make the section before the hole look more authentic. However I thought that an ordinary background behind the CD looked very plain.

This task also allowed me to think of features to express the meaning of the album name. For example, the album is called "Lost in Translation", thus I used the ghost underground tube map of London to both signify travelling and being lost, and as these station are no longer in use, they are lost from the world. I also made the same image on the front cover look burnt and faded on the inside to signify that he is being lost.

Planning Ancillary Products: Mock-up of Advertisement

For my initial ideas on the design of my advert, I used a print out of my rough album design to mimic where the album cover would be placed on the advert. I then worked around the picture, thinking of details that would enhance it, not make it look abrasive or greatly contrast it. For example, I thought of adding a border of bricks to create synergy across the four media products, and in a green colour to accompany the green in the image. I then noted down essential information, such as where reviews and website information will be placed.

Planning Ancillary Products: Mock-up of Digipak

The slideshow above is the first mock-up I made when I was trying the images, fonts and layouts I thought would work best together. From this initial draft, I decided that the positioning of the copyright information (on the front of the digipak and inside), the positioning of the barcode  and the content of the copyright information would be the features that I would keep for my final piece.




I then drafted a new plan based on feedback for my first draft and my new ideas for the superimposed image on the front cover and album name. I improved on my brick wall idea, and decided on a set tracklist. I also decided to move the design I originally had for the front, to the inside panels.

Planning Ancillary Products: Costume and Layout

Many dubstep artists have very simple clothing that are usually a t-shirt and pants, and perhaps an accessory that has become a part of their brand identity. In BL4KE's case, he wears variants of the same clothes as both the narrator and participant. This wasn't the original plan, but the white shirt, black tie and plain jeans work very well as his dubstep brand image, therefore I thought this would work well on the digipak.

However, when I began to work on a rough copy of the front of my digipak, I came with the idea of merging BL4KE's face with the iconic wall image of the man's face. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I liked the thought of visually portraying the fact that BL4KE is still an underground artist, therefore he is still invisible to people that have not knowledge of dubstep, and thus just a part of the scenery. I thought that an interpretation like this could be written in an inside booklet of the digipak, or perhaps on a bonus DVD explaining the making of the album. This would target fan bases such as the people I encountered on the Dubstep Forum website, who were angered deeply by commercial dubstep.

Secondly, I like the idea of showing that BL4KE is so "in-tune" with youth culture, that he is an iconic image in this "Urban Paradise". Carrying out this would mean his costume would not be visible.

Above is the mock-up of the way in which I aim to superimpose BL4KE's face onto the wall.

Slide 1 - First of all I will use a side profile shot of BL4KE and crop around the face.

Slide 2 - I will then begin to remove the surrounding areas of the picture around the face, up to the neck, and add a texture effect to give it the look of a brick wall.

Slide 3 - I will then remove the background of the wall image, and apply the face as an overlay on top of it, whilst reducing the opacity of the face so that both images are visible.

Slide 4 - The images will then be cropped together and matched up.

Slide 5 - Once this is done, another texture effect will be used to enhance the wall effect and colours.

Planning Ancillary Products: Album Name

Above is the name I have chosen to be my album name previewed in the three different fonts from my short list. I have chosen the name "Urban Paradise", because of the different interpretations than can be drawn from it.

Firstly, our video included as many negative stereotypes about teenage culture as it could. E.G:
- Drugs

- Alcohol

- Smoking

- "Sexual Behaviour"/ Promiscuity

- Staying out all night

- Violence

Together with this, he word urban is associated with young people and paradise can be thought of as your dream place to be. Therefore by showing all of this imagery and then labelling it as a "young person's paradise" it is insinuating that these negative stereotypes of youth culture is actually a dream scenario for a young person. It is supposed to be a sarcastic reflection on how we are portrayed in the media. Having said that, there is some truth in this, because as a young person, I know that many people around me glorify and glamourise things such as drugs and alcohol and violence, therefore it's also a statement about the mindset of some teenagers. this is then picked up by the media and projected as the general thought process of modern day teens.

 My analysis of Chase and Status' digipak taught me that it only takes an image or word to make someone think of a stereotype, (e.g Dog - violence) Thus, on the surface, it is just a name designed with words to target the desired audience members, but below that, it is a controversial topic which I think many people enjoy to debate about. I also learned that many dubstep artist hide meanings in their music, digipak designs and symbols.

In many ways, our video glamourised these negative stereotypes of teenage culture, because even though the video was quite sad, we used visual elements and imagery such as the graffiti backgrounds to make it seem "cool" and enticing. As well as this, though lost and downtrodden, our main protagonist was still empowered at the end of the video by being the one to dictate when he walked away from the girl. In the cinema showing of our music video, this was the part that resonated the most with the target audience, which shows that they did not focus on the areas that showed the character in a bad light, rather his moments of power. For this reason, I thought that "Urban Paradise" was a fitting name for the album, as a sarcastic reflection of the portrayal and sometimes reality of youth culture.

Planning Ancillary Products: Short List - Fonts

Earlier on in the course, when planning the synergy elements for our pitch, I designed a logo that could be used as BL4KE's official logo, as many artists usually have a signature design or font that is used on all they're products.

I have chosen this font to be used for the name of my artist, because the main reason I created this logo in the first place was so that it could be a reflection of the graffiti in our video. It is also to capture the urban theme so that it can transcend into all forms of my digipak. This font is also a perfect candidate, because it looks like graffiti, however it is still clear to read and can e easily recognised across the media products.

However, I  do not think that this font is appropriate for use for the album name or tracklist. This is because it is legible as a large font, but the album name is smaller than the artist's name, and by convention, the tracklist is required to be much smaller than that, therefore as a much smaller font, the "spray-effect" won't be easy to read. Thus my short list for the album name and tracklist are narrowed down to:

1) This is a possible choice because it is classic bubble writing, which is a common style of writing used in graffiti. This means that it will easily be recognisable amongst the audience members as a graffiti font which matches the graffiti font of the artist's name. This font is also easy to read as it is clear.

2) This is a second choice, because although it is not a typical graffiti design, it is simplistic, which means it will compliment the font used for the name of the artist, which is an important rule on the Dos and Don't of design work. It is also easy to read, and will still be easy to read when made into a smaller size.

3) This is my third choice. This is because, it has the effect as though it is graffiti that has been on the wall for a long time. it is also clear enough to be legible when translated into a smaller size, and the detailing at the bottom makes it interesting. On a black background, it is clearer to see that the bottom of the letters are made to look like towers and buildings.

Planning Ancillary Products: Do's and Don'ts of Design Work

1) DO!

The first rule of design work in relation to fonts is to make sure that only a maximum of two fonts are used. This is because more than two fonts will make the ancillary products look unprofessional. Two many different fonts may also contradict each other a distract the audience from the important features of the digipak. The fonts must also complement each other so that it doesn't look mis-matched, and in terms of my dubstep genre, I hope to use fonts that look either like graffiti or electronic/digital. The sizing of the fonts also matter, for example the following of the convention of a larger font size for the artist's name and smaller font size for the album name. Fonts should also never be used purely because they look"pretty".

2) DON'T!

The use of unnecessary effects may lead to the ancillary products looking nothing like the original concept. For example, a picture with a "plastic wrap" filter on it may end up looking distorted and disproportionate, when it was originally supposed to be a soft image of the artist's face for the cover of a romance CD. In my case, overuse of a filter may lead to the iconic image I choose looking distorted because of the different colours in the graffiti. When using an effect, it must suit the genre.

3) DO!

I have already been focusing on the rule of sticking to three colours as a maximum. This is why my blog on my short list of colours and images only feature three colour choices each to accompany the pictures. minimising the amount of colours means that they are most likely to go together well, and a more focused approach means it will also most likely fit the genre correctly as well as the colours in the photos.

4) DON'T!

Another "DON'T" is the stretching of images to fit the panel of the digipak template. This is because, stretched images can look distorted and unnatural. It can also be easily identified as a stretched image. If an image needs to be made bigger, then the size should be changed and any areas the are not needed should be erased. Images that are stretched reduce the amount of marks that can be allocated to the ancillary products. 

5) DO!

Using clear photos that are in focus are essential, because they make sure the digipak looks professional and shows that you took the time to photograph the artist for the ancillary work. Also, on this subject, text should never be placed on or across the artist's face, and the rule of thirds should e followed to aid composition.

6) DON'T!

Pictures on every panel are distracting and make the digipak look as though there was no specific concept. To avoid this, I have carried out research to follow the conventions of the dubstep genre closely, as too many photos in order to fill up space will lose marks.

7) DO!

The media products should include:

• Barcode
• Date
• Copyright information
• Title of the album
• Artist name
• Record company logo
• Website
• Artist website.  

for authenticity.

Planning Ancillary Products: Short List - Image and Colour Scheme

I have decided that I want to use some type of iconic imagery from the video to create the design of my digipak. Therefore an image similar to this is the first on my short list. This is because this location is used as a reoccurring image in our music video, to show that the artist is lost and aimlessly walking through life. As it is an image that is repeated, the audience are more likely to remember it, and if I use it, the colour scheme accompanying it must suit it, not contradict. Thus, the colour scheme would be orange, pink and green.

This is another memorable image from the music video. This is because there is a whole 3-4 seconds of the music video that is devoted to the camera trailing up this wall and reaching the sign at the top. The sign again sets the tone of the video, by enforcing the feeling of hopelessness and being lost. Therefore, having this featured in the ancillary, will set the same theme across the other media products. Of course, the colours to accompany this would be the dark orange, white, and black.

There are not many images in our video that feature this background, however, this base track is at the very beginning of our video, and thus one of the first images our audiences are confronted with. Therefore it still contains an element of synergy and in previews of the video, where this beginning scene is the only section that is shown, this image will me the most prominent. Thus it is a good candidate for the digipak. Also, the colours with this image would be, blue, black and a peach hue/ orange.

OBSERVATIONS:

From my final short list of choices of images and the accompanying colour scheme, it can be seen than although in different hues, the colour orange is present many times, as well as black. Therefore I think I can already deduce that BLACK and ORANGE will definitely feature in my ancillary work. Although the type of orange is still to be debated.

Researching Ancillary Products: Analysis of Magazine Adertisements