EVALUATION - Completed Ancillary Products

All completed ancillary products:

As a group we assigned ourselves two individual ancillary tasks. This is an image of all of our completed ancillary tasks. Starting from the top left is the website, calendar and poster, digipak, DVD, bus stop advert/bus advert, magazine cover and poster.

From looking at all of the completed pieces together as a whole, it is easily recognisable that each piece shares the same house style. For instance, there is a consistency of main colours used throughout each piece in the colour scheme - grey, black, white and red. The overall main font that we decided to use throughout our work was the font 'Skin & Bones' which we downloaded from www.dafont.com, which was mainly used on headings. We also used the sans-serif font 'Arial' for smaller texts such as paragraphs on the website and lyrics in the digipak.

My magazine cover and digipak:

Kate's bus stop advert/bus advert and website:

Louisa's poster and DVD:

Vanessa's calendar and poster:

EVALUATION - My Completed Magazine Front Cover & Digipak

My completed ancillary tasks:

Here are both of my completed ancillary tasks - a magazine front cover and a digipak. Both of my products follow the consistent house style that is used throughout our products as they both include the plain grey background, minimal colours used such as the black and white text and text boxes, the black font on a white background with black stroke around the box and one key image of the band with the lead member in the foreground and the other members in the background.

Magazine Front Cover:

My completed magazine front cover follows the conventions of a music magazine as it has a big and bold masthead, positioned in the top left hand corner, with musical connotations 'Track'. The masthead has a white stroke around it which helps the text to stand out at the top of the page. In the top left hand corner there is also the conventional issue number, price and magazine website. Down the left third of the page there are three main coverlines which entice the audience into wanting to buy the magazine with interesting and current stories. The main coverline is in red so it is very attractive and eye catching. This is important as this is the main element on the page, as it highlights that this issue features an article about Kings of Leon.

A puff is used to emphasise other important stories in this issue. This puff is black and star shaped with a white stroke around it so it stands out on the page, whilst conforming to the consistent house style used throughout the cover. In the bottom left hand corner is a barcode which is also a conventional aspect of any magazine front cover. Running across the bottom of the page is a banner which lists the other bands that will be featured in this issue, which interests the fans of those bands and could encourage them to buy the magazine.

Digipak:

This is my completed front cover for my digipak. The background on the front cover, and throughout the digipak, is plain grey. This gives the product a sense of consistency and a professional look. The band name and the album title is the same font - 'Skin & Bones' - and size. The font is black which stands out on the white block background. They are positioned equally on the page and lined up with the same border each side.

This is an image of the first two pages that appear in the digipak. On the left page is a combination of shots and images of the band in various locations. This was a good space to use a selection of images in different locations, as it gives the band a professional and realistic view about them. This is because in real life products, the band/artist appears in many locations in the digipak such as a studio and outside. I made sure that all of the images were of the same size and fit on the page correctly, without being stretched and pixelated.

On the right page are two songs and the lyrics that go with the song. The title of the song, such as 'Closer' and 'Crawl' are the same font and size - 'Skin & Bones'. The font is black and positioned on a white background, the same as the front cover of the digipak. This therefore demonstrates consistency throughout my product. I typed the lyrics into an 'Arial' font which is an easy font to read when there is a lot of writing. Here, I reversed the colour of the font so instead of being black I changed it to being white on a black background as opposed to being a white background. This distinguishes the difference between the song title and the lyrics.

This is an image of another set of pages in my digipak. On each page are indivudal shots of the band members. On the left hand page are individual photos that we took whilst the band were in the studio and on the right hand page are shots of them outside against a brick wall. The photos are positioned and scaled to the same size to give the overall look of the pages a professional appearance.

Across both of the pages, the lead member is purposely positioned in the foreground whilst the other two members are positioned in the background. I did this to highlight the lead member's importance as conventionally in band photoshoots, posters and digipaks the lead singer is always positoned in the front of the picture. Therefore, but adding this into my ancillary tasks, I am conforming to the codes and conventions of digipaks.

The font used on both pages is the same - 'Skin & Bones'. As well as being a consistent font with the rest of the digipak, it is a consistent style as it a black font on a white background.

This is the back cover of my digipak. Instead of using the plain grey background, I decided to make the background an image of the band in the studio. I changed the colour scale on Photoshop from colour to black and white. Therefore, eventhough the image is still carrying on the similar colour scheme of grey, the image takes the edge off the harshness of the plain colour for the back cover. I also did this as, without this image the back cover would look dull and empty as it only has the track listing, the name of the record company and the copyright details.

This is an image of the CD case, with the closed booklet on the left and the disc on the right. The background design on the CD links with the album title 'Only By The Night' as the image is of a moon. This idea was inspired by real life products by Kings of Leon as on their actual album cover 'Only By The Night' the image is of an owl, which is nocturnal. Therefore, I developed this theme into my own work.

The moon was a good choice as a background as its plain and text can, therefore, be written easily over it. The text written on the CD is the band's name centred at the top of the disc, with the album title in a smaller text centred at the bottom of the disc. The text is written in the same house colours as used throughout the whole digipak - white and black, keeping the consistency of the piece of work.

EVALUATION - Audience Feedback: Interview 2

After showing our music video to another person within our target audience, I then asked them some similar questions to get their perspective and opinions on it.

The questions I asked were:
1. What did you enjoy about the music video?
2. What are your opinions of the editing?
3. What do you think about the choice of mise-en-scene in the video?
4. What was your favourite component of the video?
5. Is there anything in this video that you feel could be improved?

This interview also highlighted other key parts of our music video that the audience enjoyed. They enjoyed the video due to the fact that there was parralell editing between the narrative and the band shots, as this is typical of an alternative rock genre and also conventional of music video's shown on MTV. This comment was useful as it suggests that our music video looks realistic and professional as it could be seen on popular music channels. The audience also liked the fact that the band shots were set in a real studio as the band look realistic and look like an actual band. This is aided by the use of the guitars, drum kit, amps and microphones which are all typically found in a music studio, and therefore easy to identify with.

Here are some images of myself recording:

EVALUATION - Audience Feedback: Interview 1

As part of our evaluation we had to get other peoples opinions and views on what they thought about our completed music video. I showed our music video to a number of people within our target group which is 16-25. After viewing the video I asked them a series of questions.

I created a list of questions relevant to our music video and selected the questions I thought could give detailed answers. I then recorded myself asking my friend these questions and her responses.

The questions I asked were:
1. What did you enjoy about the music video?
2. Does the video reflect the lyrics and music well?
3. Was the narrative good and did it make sense?
4. Is this video typical to an alternative rock genre and why?
5. What was your favourite component of the video?

From the feedback from this interview, it highlighted the key parts of our music video that the audience enjoyed. They enjoyed the video due to the locations used, the wide variety of band shots and how these aid in telling the narrative. Also, they thought that the video reflects the lyrics well as they understood the concept of the video and how the girl is all alone but by the end of the video she finds somebody that has been there all along. From this interview it is clear that the audience enjoyed the time lapse shot in Trafalgar Square, as the speed of the editing emphasises how lonely the girl is until she finds somebody.

 Here are some images of myself recording:

DEVELOPMENT - Audience Feedback: Media Class

Last week, the media teachers organised a lesson where the class watched everyone else's video on the screen at the front of the class. In our media class there were three groups and three music videos. This was a good oppurtunity to gain audience feedback and criticisms from other media student's point of view. The feedback we gained was:
- Tighten up some of the editing to make the transitions alot smoother e.g. adding in cross fades.
- Add some more band shots of extreme close ups of the guitars.

This was a positive lesson, as receiving feedback helped us to improve our video as well as helping others to improve theirs. We then had 2 days to make these changes and improve our final edit of our music video before it was handed in on the deadline (Friday 25th March). This was also the final deadline for all of our ancillary tasks to be completed.

DEVELOPMENT - Magazine Front Cover

After receiving feedback on my first magazine that I designed, I realised that it didn't include as many codes and conventions as I'd hoped, subsequently leading to a lot of dead space on the page. I decided to re-design my magazine cover and start from scratch. I looked back over my initial ideas that I sketched and chose the layout which included a lot of information on the page that had less dead space.

I chose a completely different photo of the band for the key image on the front cover. I chose a mid shot of the band as the faces will stand out easily to the audience, making it easier for the audience to identity who will be featured in the magazine. This screenshot shows how I have begun editing out the background around the models heads, which I did through using the magic wand tool.

This is the final edited image of the photo I am going to use on my front cover. I edited around the top of the image so there is space for a masthead to be placed above.

DEVELOPMENT - Principal Photography Complete!

From constructing our music video, we realised that without an indication of the boy in our narrative at the beginning, our storyline wasn't going to make sense. To solve this problem we understood that we needed to introduce the boy into our narrative from the start and to do this we filmed two shots. Myself and Kate B organised to meet up after school and film this last section of our principal photography.

The first shot we filmed was a scenario on Facebook, where the boy went from 'being in a relationship' to 'single'. This demonstrates to the audience that he no longer has a girlfriend, subsequently showing that he is lonely.

This is a photo we took the of the boy's relationship status. This is the shot that will appear in our music video to depict the boy's loneliness to the audience.

This concept of the boy being lonely coincides with the idea of the main girl being lonely as well. This is because throughout the day her friends that she is meant to be meeting up with for a day out in London, drop out at the last minute. It is at this point in the story that she realises she is alone.

Here are some photos of myself and Kate filming the relationship status on Facebook :

Along with filming the Facebook situation, we decided to film the boy walking out of the house to introduce who he is and what he looks like, so the audience would be able to indentify him in the rest of the video. We set up a tripod and filmed the boy walking out of the house, showing that he is going out for the day. This storyline of the boy is continued when the audience first sees him at the train station in the background with the girl in the foreground. The narrative develops from here.