Peer Assessment

Final Research & Planning Assessment Dec 2011 SJA

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

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I found that using different media technologies for my planning and research posts has really helped me to progress and improve my media skills, as some technologies I wasn't to familiar with and therefore it gave me good practice with testing out the green screen, final cut etc so that when it came to filming and editing my music video I was already familiar and continued to improve my skills from there. Also, I really enjoyed learning the different media technologies, even though at times challenges arised and I was faced with difficulties. However, this only made me more determined to carry on learning and progressing.

Here are a few clips of myself and Charlotte setting up the green screen, and how both myself and Charlotte found this the most challenging, including the editing of our video in final cut.

Here is a Jing video of how myself and Charlotte were able to improve our media technology skills through using Blogger for our research and planning posts.
 I found Blogger to be really successful for both myself and Charlotte as it helped me to become more creative when addressing my research and planning posts. You were able to display your creative media skills visually rather than just typing up notes or idea's that you wanted to use. This encouraged my idea's for my music video as through Blogger you could upload clips and gifs that you had created to visually show your idea's. Because when you test out your idea's creatively you can get more of a sense as to whether they would work in your music video.

Here is an example of me and Charlotte setting up our tripod in London. I would definitely agree that the use of the tri-pod and my camera helped me to construct my idea's for my research, planning and evaluation stages as I was able to research and plan what shots would be best by physically going out and using my camera. It also helped me with specific elements in a shot such as different angles and whether to use low/high key shots to either capture a specific emotion or body language portrayed by the protagonist or the artist. Not only did these media technologies help me to construct my research/planning/evaluation posts but also gave me an insight and confidence boost with different equipments and therefore I will be able to take this knowledge and skills to university.

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

Technology used for Research:


Technology used for Planning:

Technology Used for Evaluation

Here are a few images of me using blogger and final cut. Both of these technologies helped me significantly when constructing my research/planning and evaluation stages. I had never really used final cut in previous years of taking media, and found it to be extremely stressful and challenging to understand. However, once I got the hang of it it was a lot easier to understand, and therefore I found it extremely useful when uploading or constructing mini video's for my blogger. For example, especially for my planning and research stages, I would often make little mini video's of music video's or artists that have influenced me, and would either add voiceovers or YouTube tags to these.

Overall the use of final cut has allowed my blogger to look a lot more create and visual, which really helped me with the different concepts and ideas that I had in mind. Not only that, but when it came to actually editing my music video I was already familiar with some of the tools and therefore I found editing less challenging.

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Overall I am really happy with my advert, as the feedback that are recieved are all really positive, and the only criticism that they gave me was that they thought the font was a bit weak and that it was easily overlooked as it blended in with the background. I definitely agree with that they're saying, but I think that black was a just bit dull and boring and didnt really have any connotations from my music video/song or even my digipack. A couple of others suggested that the background could have been a bit more abstract. However, I felt that there was a lot going on amongst the siloheutte of the frame, and therefore I wanted to keep the background pretty simple in comparison to the foreground, using the same, warm colours throughout.

I didn't have any big criticism for my digipack, which I was extremely pleased with. However, a couple of people pointed out a really big mistake that I had made, and that was that on the back cover of my digipack I had spelt 'Ed Sheeran' instead of 'Frank Miller.' I panicked because I had merged all of my layers together and had not saved any of the layers individually. Therefore, I wasn't able to go back to the layer where I had used text. Instead, I used the smudged tool on Photoshop to delete the 'Ed Sheeran' typing, and then replaced it with 'Frank Miller.'
Therefore, I have learned that it is always useful to use audience feedback and get their opinions as they were able to point out the tiniest of mistakes that I had not even noticed myself. It's the little tiny errors that I could have lost a few marks on. Also, I was extremely happy with the audience feedback that I recieved as me and my group did work really hard and it's nice to hear that it has paid off.

Survery and Results

Here is some audience feedback that I received from my peers after they had viewed my music video.

Here is some feedback that we recieved from our peers. A survey was held where our audience was asked to vote for their favourite music video. We came fourth out of eleven.

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

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We decided on a font called 'Hasteristico' which we discovered on a website called DaFont. At first both myself and Charlotte found it difficult to decide on the name of our artist, as we wanted to keep it simple but still having a coolness about it. When we decided on the name 'Frank Miller' we thought that our font should represent our artist just as much as the name did. Therefore, the font is quite plain but is still strong and fits perfectly when representing a male indie/pop artist. As you can see from our video clip, we had other idea's of using other interesting fonts, however I think that some of them could have been a bit distracting and taken away the concept and effect of our advert + digipack.


Combination of main product and ancillary task


Try our slideshow creator at Animoto.
Even though we decided that the image of our artist wasn't as important as the music, we still done a lot of thorough research into our artists outfit, as we had to choose carefully the colours and styles that we were wearing as we wanted Frank Miller to have the 'typical London look' for a male. You could suggest that this went against the combination of our main product as the lyrics to his song are about him feeling lost and swallowed up by this new hectic lifestyle he has been brought into. Therefore, we could have styled him in more of a unique way to convey the theme of him feeling lost and lonely. However, we still wanted to keep him current and fresh, and therefore we decided to use well known brands such as Hollister, and use the colour scheme of red and white in his costumes throughout. We decided to use both these colours as not only do they contrast, but the red represents his passion for music whereas the use of the white imagery represents his innoncence and naiveity to his new lifestyle that he is trying to adapt to.

Presentation 1

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

PLAN

EVALUATION VIDEO