Evaluation Interview

This is our evaluation interview

Evaluation Presentation

This is our evaluation presentation

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

From the beginning of the year (September) we have been using many different media technologies for our research, planning and evaluation. During my research I was researching film trailers as this is what I was going to be producing, we were going to be following the codes and conventions of a horror genre, for my research I used the internet to watch many film trailers, I researched ones such as ‘SAW’ and ‘The Wrangler’. When I had found the ones I was researching I watched them over and over again and took notes about the effects that they used and why they were effective. The ancillary texts for this project were a front cover of a magazine and poster, I began my research for these, however when I was half-way through my partner dropped out and I joined Greg. Greg had already chose his band and had done a lot of research, as I joined at the beginning of the planning stage it meant I was researching and planning at the same time which meant that I didn’t get a lot of research done however I was familiar with music videos, magazine adverts and front covers for the genre. We began planning, we downloaded a storyboard template which helped us to make our storyboard, and we then discussed the different ideas for things to include in our advanced portfolio. Whilst doing this we had to be thinking about the print products, as I was not familiar with Adobe Photoshop yet, I used publisher as I was familiar with this software as it is very easy to use. After we had decided on a basic layout to use I began teaching myself how to use Photoshop, we found the font that we wanted to use for the band name ‘Pulled Apart by Horses’ and I used the ‘magic wand’ tool which allowed me to select the text without the background being included, I then changed the colour of this to suit the different backgrounds that we had tried. At this point the red and black colour scheme hadn’t been decided yet. I firstly chose black as I thought it was quite a sinister colour and would reflect the nature of the band due to its connotations however this proved to look quite plain and not very professional, after many trials and errors we decided on a red and black gradient with an image in the middle. When producing the music video we used Adobe Premiere Pro, I filmed the whole video as Greg starred in it, I had to improve my camera skills as I hadn’t used it a lot last year as I was in the opening sequence. To do this I refreshed my memory on the different camera shots that we could use and looked over the storyboard. We then used Adobe Premiere Pro which I had some skills in, for example I knew how to cut the shots and import shots in, I also knew vaguely how to use some edits, me and Greg decided on the edits together however he tweaked them a bit. The internet played a huge part in most parts of our project as we used it to get some fonts for the digi-pack which we would have liked to have all the way through the digi-pack however we were unable to do this as the website could only convert a small amount of letters at the same time and doing all of the song lyrics would have took too much time which we needed for the editing. For our evaluation we used PowerPoint which we were already familiar with. 

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

We tried to receive as much audience feedback as possible by showing people in our class, our friends, our teacher and our parents. To get the feedback we emailed the link to our blog and asked the people in the class to watch it and give their comments on the print products as well. An example of audience feedback that we received and carried out is the feedback that we got on the magazine advert.  A class member suggested that we used a glow around the digi-pack to ensure that the colours didn’t merge so we did this. Originally we used a white glow as we thought that it would complement the white text on the bottom, however we tried this and it didn’t look right so we used a red glow, although the whole advert was red it brought out the photo and helped the colours not to merge. Our teacher also commented on our blog posts telling us how to improve, for our music video he suggested that we include more edits, which we did. We were pleased with this after we had made the suggested changes as it made our music video look more professional. I also showed some family and asked them similar questions such as how could it be improved and do you think it looks like a real music video. We took into account what they had said and made some changes, an example was someone did not understand that there was a supernatural force chasing Greg and they didn’t really understand the storyline, this led us to find the night vision effect which shows the audience that it is not something real and it suggests that there is something chasing him. When we were making our first rough cut we found that we didn’t have as big a range of camera angles that we wanted, we then went out to re-shoot some and got some more point of view shots which involved me running with the camera, these give the impression that something is chasing Greg. We are pleased that we got plenty of audience feedback however we didn’t get as much for the digi-pack as this was one of the last things we ,made meaning that there wasn’t a lot of time available to get audience feedback on it. Although we got some which included changing the font colour; which led us to use the different effects including some white and a shadow, we feel that the digi-pack could have been improved by some more audience feedback. 

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

Pulled apart by horses are from Leeds, England and have been formed since 2009, they are comprised of lead vocals and rhythm guitar player Tom Hudson, lead guitar player James Brown, bass player Robert John Lee and drummer Lee Vincent. The band have immediately grounded themselves as really raw and heavy band, famous for fast driving hard hitting songs, delivered with aggression and humour. Due to the fact that the band are ‘raw’ and ‘heavy’ we thought it would be useful to extend the horror aspect to them which is shown in some of their single covers as they have images of skulls etc. We decided we wanted to extend the horror aspect, to do this we chose a strong colour scheme of red and black in both our music video and our ancillary texts. We chose these colours as they both have connotations of danger and horror. We researched many digi-pak covers and found that many included the band name at the top and the album name at the bottom with an image as the background, we took influence from this album cover however we thought it would look better we made the typography bigger.

 We also used similar typography throughout our project for example the font used on the front and back cover of our digi-pack is similar, we used this as it fits with the stereotypical ‘horror’ fonts. We got this font from a font website that only allowed us to change a certain amount of characters as a time, meaning it took quite a while to do even the song names; ‘High five, swan dive, nose dive’ took 3 different sections. If we were able to have longer on this project we would use this font for the lyrics inside the digi-pack however it would have took too long. To overcome this problem we used the font showcase gothic which was simpler than the ‘horror’ font from the website. We used many different edits to change the fonts, throughout the digi-pack we have used the same edits the font is red, black and white; the white created a good effect and ensured that the text did not blend in with the photos that were on the backgrounds of the digi-pack. For the background photos in the digi-pack we used some of the excess footage, this was useful as it meant we saved time by not having to go out shooting anymore. However if we had longer for this project we would have gone out to shoot some more edits, we wouldn’t change the storyline however we would get more shots of the band scenes and the chase scenes so that in the first section there would about double the edits, by doing this we would be conforming more to the codes and conventions of a music video and speeding up the pace of the music video which would increase the sense of fear felt by the character (Greg). Overall the combination of both our media project and the ancillary texts is good as the colour link is very strong; this shows the audience that these are Pulled Apart by Horses products as the link is distinctive.

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

I began the year aiming to make a trailer and therefore did lots of research into horror movie trailers; however my partner dropped the subject so I had to swap groups and join with Greg. A music video wasn’t my first choice however I have enjoyed doing this, I have enjoyed both parts; the print based products and the practical product. Due to the fact that I joined Greg’s group late meant I had missed most of the research time. I did some research and found that many music videos either had a storyline or were of the bands performing, when planning our practical project we decided to combine the two codes and conventions which is how we came up with the idea of the person being chased by something supernatural, then having frequent cuts to the band performing; this helped our product to fit with the codes and conventions which helped it to look professional.  The band have described themselves as “Kurt Cobain snorting Ozzy Osbourne's blood whilst combing his hair with a chainsaw”. This shows that they are quite edgy and original they have an aspect of horror t them due to some of the song lyrics and song titles; in our planning we decided that we wanted to expand this aspect which is why we chose the ‘evil dead’ influence. In the ‘Evil Dead’ and the ‘Evil Dead 2’ there is a supernatural force that is used, in the film whenever it is used a point of view shot is shown, we used this as influence and chose a supernatural force chasing the character in our music video. We used a point of view shot however it was unclear what was being portrayed. To overcome this problem we used a simple night vision effect which shows that the ‘force’ was something unfamiliar. The reason we chose the ‘Evil Dead’ in the first place is because many other horror films are high budget and have extravagant costumes and face paints; due to our lack of ability to have these we chose the evil dead as there is very little effort into showing the supernatural force; only the camera shot.  Another thing that we used to give a horror effect is the colour change in the band scenes, we changed the normal colour to red and black as red and black have connotations of danger, death and horror; this is why we felt they would be good colour to use as we were going for a horror look also the ghosting effect was good as it helped the product look realistic. These may not normally be used in professional music videos in the music industry, however we thought they gave a good effect and helped the audience to understand what the storyline was about. In some aspects however we have deviated from the normal codes and conventions of media products in our area as we have a used a strong red and black colour scheme which we hadn’t seen in our research, we found that bands in the metal genre used normal images with very little edits. However we wanted to emphasise the horror aspect to the band by using the red and black colours both of which have connotations of danger and death.  We included quite a lot of frequent cuts which sped up the pace of the video in order to match the speed of the song; if we were able to have more time we would have re-shot some band shots which would mean that we could add extra edits in at the very start of the music video, we feel like this would benefit us as it would grab the audience’s attention more at the beginning, however we feel that the amount of edits we have is okay and works well. We were very pleased with the font that we used for the magazine advert title and the digi-pack song titles, we felt like this developed the normal codes and conventions of metal bands as in our research we saw that some bands used similar fonts however not as intense as ours but we are very pleased with it and feel like it is very effective. 

Final Music Video

I have recently posted our final music video, after watching this thorugh we have realised that it is very pixelated, we are on this issue now; trying to resolve it. We are currently redering it again in at a higher quality to try and reduce the amount that it is pixelated. When we sort this out we will post the final video again. Hopefully it wont take too long.

Final Video

Media A2 Project - E=MC Hammer Video from Greg wilson on Vimeo.

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

I began the A2 year aiming to make a trailer and therefore did lots of research into horror movie trailers; however my partner dropped the subject so I had to swap groups and join with Greg. A music video wasn’t my first choice however I have enjoyed doing this, I have enjoyed both parts; the print based products and the practical product. Due to the fact that I joined Greg’s group late meant I had missed most of the research time. I did some research and found that many music videos either had a storyline or were of the bands performing, when planning our practical project we decided to combine the two codes and conventions which is how we came up with the idea of the person being chased by something supernatural, then having frequent cuts to the band performing; this helped our product to fit with the codes and conventions which helped it to look professional.  However we did you quite a few effects on Adobe Premiere Pro such as the night vision effect, the colour change (in the band scenes – red and black) and the ghosting effect, these may not normally be used in professional music videos in the music industry, however we thought they gave a good effect and helped the audience to understand what the storyline was about. In some aspects however we have deviated from the normal codes and conventions of media products in our area as we have a used a strong red and black colour scheme which we hadn’t seen in our research, we found that bands in the metal genre used normal images with very little edits. However we wanted to emphasise the horror aspect to the band by using the red and black colours both of which have connotations of danger and death.  We included quite a lot of frequent cuts which sped up the pace of the video in order to match the speed of the song; if we were able to have more time we would have re-shot some band shots which would mean that we could add extra edits in at the very start of the music video, we feel like this would benefit us as it would grab the audience’s attention more at the beginning, however we feel that the amount of edits we have is okay and works well. We were very pleased with the font that we used for the magazine advert title and the digi-pack song titles, we felt like this developed the normal codes and conventions of metal bands as in our research we saw that some bands used similar fonts however not as intense as ours but we are very pleased with it and feel like it is very effective.

These are the last pages of our digi-pack, We used a font website to made the production logo as we like the font, this is the bit that says 'rory o haras suicide productions' we feel that the whole digi-pack looks quite professional and we are pleased with the fonts and edits that we have used.

Digipack continued again

These are the next 4 pages of the digi-pak the 2 filler pages are in the middle of the digi-pack with the remaining songs and back page coming after them.

Digipack continued

These are the next few pages of our digipack, we have had to make 2 filler pages due to the fact that a digi-pak needs to be a multiple of 4 and we chose 12 songs meaning with the front and back  page we needed 2 more pages, for these we got images of each band member and an image of their instrument opposite them, we think this is good as many digi-paks that we have looked at have filler pages.

Digipack

This is the first 4 pages of our digipak, the first song E=MC hammer is the song that we couldn't find the lyrics for so Greg had to listen to the song and write down the lyrics so they may not be completely right. However we got all of the other lyrics from lyric websites so hopefully they are. Also as you can see we have followed the red and black colour scheme and we used some effects on the text. I will post the edits that we used on our photos and the text after I have finished posting the digipak.

Magazine Advert

This is our final magazine advert, we are very pleased with it and are still working on the digi-pak, we shouldnt be much longer, just making some final tweaks!

Final Video

I am pleased to announce that we have finished our music video and we are very pleased with how it has turned out, we have used many edits which give good effects, we are currently still making the digipak and we only have 2 pages left, we have used a very good effect on the text of the lyrics which we are excited to put on our blogs, my next post will be our final magazine advert which will be followed by the digipak. This is just a short post as we are aiming to finish the digipak over this dinner time so it can be posted on our blogs tomorrow.

Magazine advert with white glow

This is the magazine advert with the white glow instead of the red glow, we have decided to keep the red glow as we feel that it looks more professional.
We are still working on the contents of our digi-pak and writing out the lyrics for the songs, this should be finished by tomorrow.

Magazine Advert

This an idea for our magazine advert, we have kept the red and black colour scheme which keeps the link evident throughout all of the print products and some parts of the music video. We used some shop logos which make it look professional, this shows the audience where they will be able to find the album. We used the front cover of the digi-pak on the album which will make the audience familiar with what the cover looks like so they can buy the album. We felt like there was too much red and black and that we couldnt see the difference between the background and the album cover, as they sort of merged together; to overcome this we added a red glow around the album cover which gives a good effect. The magazine advert title is the same typography as the one that we have used previously in our other products, we have used this as it is the font that the real band use and also gives a good effect. The writing we have used for the information is white and simple which allows the audience to read it easily and get the information they need. We have used ratings from Q magazine etc which will influence the audience into buying the album as it suggests that the album is good. After adding the image of the album cover we felt like we needed something else to break up the things on the page, we thought of adding in an inverted cross which adds a supernatural feel which links with the bands genre. We used quite a few effects on the cross to reduce the saturation of it and add a sense of transparency. We also did this with the pentagram, we feel that these look good on our advert. We are going to try a white glow around the album cover which may break up the red and black and compliment the white writing but we arent sure and will post the advert with a white glow on my blog and then decide which one we will use for our final advert.

Updates

We are still working on the editing of our music video, we have added some more cuts with speed up the pace of the video and help it to fit with the song. We have also been working on the digi-pak, we have the front page which we changed slightly from our plans as we were going to have the typography plain black, however when creating it we changed the text and added a colour burn effect which we are pleased with as we think it has a good effect. The image used is one from our footage, we think it has a good effect as it is of the band playing, we have edited a lot, so much so that you can see the outline of the band but we like the effect as it fits in with the editng that has been used on the music video. The album is called 'shake off the curse' after one of the songs that is featured in the album. We chose to do this as we feel it is a good song name and it fits across the front of the digi-pak. We have also done the back page of the digi-pak; we have used a font from the 1001freefonts website which took a while as we had to use the website for each song name and the website was quite slow, we are finished now though and are pleased with the font as we think It has a good 'horror' effect which we have used in order to fit in with the genre of the music. We have added a bar code to the back cover of the digi-pak and the production logo, in order to make this we used another font from the website which we think looks quite good, we have placed the production logo at the bottom of the back cover as we have researched some digi-paks and found that this is often where it goes, the typography was originally black ad we have changed the colour to red but reduced the opacity which makes it look professional and it also helps it too compliment the other font used for the song list. Tomorrow we are going to get the rest of the digi-pak finished which we still are not sure what to do; ideally we would use the font from the 1001freefotns website as that has a good effect and fits in with the genre, however the maximum amount of letters that can be used at one time is 10, so to get a whole song would take up a lot of time that we don't really have, because of this we are going to look for a font on photo shop which will allow us just to type it up. As you can see the back page is quite bland and we are going to get rid of this prob;em by adding some images in, we will take these photos tomorrow. We were going to the images from the unused band footage by pausing it and making a screen-shot of the image, however it have proved difficult to get a photo that looks good and is what we want. So in order to get a good photo will will take some tomorrow. The colour scheme, as you can see, is red and black which fits in with the band footage in the music video, these is good as it means our print products tie in with the video which shows the audience the link between them.

Updates

Me and Greg came into school during the holidays and got a lot of editing done, we are quite pleased with our progress however we are still running behind schedule, we have most of the editing done and have done most of the changes that our teacher has suggested; such as making the shot changes on the beat and adding in some more edits in order to make the video a similar pace to the song. Also whilst in school we began our digi-pak and realised we need to shoot a few more pictures and sort out the lyrics for the songs; as the band are not very well known lyrics to some of their songs are not published on the internet therefore we will have to type them up; we have planned to stay in every dinner time this week to get everything finished. The magazine advert is now very close to being finished and we just need to change a few things around and get our image into photoshop. When this is done which will hopefully be by the end of today I will upload this on my blog. Whilst making the digi-pak on photoshop we used some of the edits such as colour curn which gave a good effect on the image; similar to the edit used in our music video which shows the link between the print based products and the actual video. The main link between the two products will be the red and black colour scheme which gives a good effect. Also there are a few extra chase shots needed to lead up to the ending of he music video as we spotted a continuty error when peicing them together. By staying in on lunch times and after school we should be finished by the end of the week.

Rough Cut 1

This is our rough cut, we finally got all of the shooting done and edited them together. We are aware there are a few things that need to be edited quicker and we will do this in the holidays when we come into school. We are pleased with the effects that we have used such as the red tint and the night vision on a few. We think that theses give a good effect. While watching our rough cut we have realised that the edits could be abit faster due to the speed of the song. Also the shot where Greg is miming had to be reshot a few times in order to get the sound to be in time with the video, we eventually got it right. During the holidays we will be working on the print based products and some of the edits; so we may have a new rough cut uploaded some time this week.

Filming

As you know, we shot our band footage last week, however when we watched it through we realised that we needed more shots than what we had shot. We then decided to shoot again last night and we have hopefully got all of the shots we need. We did find another actor which means that I can be in control of the camera which will allow the shots to be easier to film as I will be able to decide what positions look better on the camera. When filming last night we used the stage in the hall which we hope will look better than the drama studio as you could see some of the window in the background which made it seem unprofessional, when we were looking through our shots yesterday we played around with some tints and lens flares onto the band shots, we are thinking about using some of these effects on our band shots and leaving the chase scenes with the original lightening, however it is difficult to say until we have imported them all into Adobe Premiere Pro and put them into the correct places and made them in time to the music, we are going to import the music into Premiere Pro tomorrow in aim to have a rough cut soon. When filming yesterday we filmed from a range of shots including mid shots, close ups and low angle shots in order to make them band seem powerful and superior. We will have our rough cut uploaded as soon as possible.

FILMING DAY

We are starying back after school today in order to film our band shots, we are very pleased that we will eventually have all of our shots, this will mean that we can begin editing and make sure our music video is as professional as possible. We are filming in the drama studio so hopefully that will look okay. We will be in school for quite a while as we have to take all of the instuments through school. We have lost one of the actors and therefore I will have to be in the band scenes when i was meant to be filming with the camera, to get around this problem we will have to set up the camera on the tripod, however hopefully it will work out, if not we will have to re-shoot another day. Also by filming today it will mean that we will have some photos that will replace the copyrited ones that we have used on the print based products so far, so we can begin replacing them and uploading our print based products.

Magazine Advert idea

I have been working on our magazine advert, I have already posted an example of our template however I have updates this in am attempt to make it look more professional, I have included some music logos such as hmv and Itunes. I have changed around the order of the things on my advert, for example I put the band name in the middle and the album cover at the top and then on the other  one i changed it to the band namebeing at the top and then the album cover in the middle. I would appreciate some feedback one these to help me decide which one is better.  Also we have used the image of the album cover for the time being, we will replace it and put the one that we create onto the advert and edit the image to make it look more prefessional.

Front Cover Idea

I am currently working on the front cover of our magazine. We have decided to call our magazine 'Underground Sound' due to the idea that the band 'pulled apart by horses is quite an underground band and arenot very well known, the magazine will include many different music genres, not just rock music. I have just made a rough idea for our front cover; we still have not finished the band scene and therefore we havent been able to take any images of the actors that we are using. We should have this done soon.

Magazine Advert

The magazine advert was posted about a month and a half ago so i thought i would post it again to keep you all updated. We feel that this one is better as the colours and gradient are effective.

Print Products

Me and Greg are currently working on the print based products as we have already said. We have just scanned some digipacks that we are going to post on our blogs, these are what we will base ours on. They are from the same genre and therefore we are going to create something similar; we are going to follow the codes and conventions of this genre so that the audience realise what genre it is, this will mean that already established fans of the genre will be interested in the products, as well as the already established audience of the band. However the reason we are not able to blog any at the minute is the fact that we STILL have not got round to filming our band scenes, even though we had a date planned which was Monday the 7th we couldn't film on the day as one of the people we are filming was unavailable. We are planning to film tomorrow after school so we hope that we are able too and that nothing prevents us this time. This will allow us to finish our music video and also finish our half done print products. Meanwhile we are just carrying on with our ideas for the print products and altering the colours to see if any other ones look good, however we still think that the red and black gradient looks best for the magazine advert - the one I previously posted.

Sorrrry

Its been a while since my last post due to it being christmas and all, also i have been doing some revision for my january exams. However me and Greg have finally decided on a date to film the band shots! It is monday the 9th of January, after we have filmed this we will begin our final editing straight away. Over the holidays we have been working on some of the print based products and will upload these soon however to progress with these further we need to get the band shots finished first to use some still shots that we will film at the same time. So hopefully by the end of next week will have a final rough cut, if you get me? Then around 2 weeks after hopefully there will be a rough cut! If i haven't already mentioned our print based products we are going to make a magazine advert, a magazine cover and a digipak. The magazine that the cover is for and the magazine the advert will feature in is called 'Underground Sound' We think this is a good name because the band is quite underground as they aren't very well known and sound rhymes so we feel like it is a good choice of magazine name. Hopefully we will find a good typography for the cover to make it look quite proffessonal. We are very excited to have our products finished.