Evaluation

The task for our A2 Media was to create a music video for a song by an unsigned artist, and then create a Digi-Pack and Magazine Advertisement for this single.

I was to work in a pair for this project however, finding my partner unreliable; I instead chose to work alone at the last minute. I intially found working in a group difficult, having worked alone for the Charity website tak the year previous, and to work alone again was a bit of a sigh of relief because I knew I could rely upon myself.
The first task we had to do was to find a song by an unsigned artist, who would grant us permission to use their single. I was lucky there was a band I had encountered when visiting Sheffield who had never been singed, and had since split. However, three of the four members were now in a new band and very active on social networking sites, so I gained a reply to initial e-mail asking for permission rather quickly. Proof of this can be seen on my blog.

After this, I decided upon the kind of image I wanted my band to portray, and this would remain relevant to all of my products. I decided that the band would have a new feel to them, and with the music sounding similar to bands like the Arctic Monkeys because of growing up in the same area, I wanted my band to be seen in the same light as them.
The song itself was about living in backstreets and pubs when they were young and growing up, so I also wanted to incorporate this into my products where possible.

Having already planned, filmed and edited the majority of one music video. It was my decision that to achieve the top grades which I aimed for, I had to do a music video that was entirely my own idea. I had my song, which was an acoustic song because I didn’t have the time to book a performance area, instruments or find a band. Instead I decided that I would play the guitar myself and my Teacher would film me with the shots I had chosen.
To begin the planning, I drew a storyboard of what I hoped the video would look like but, predictably, there has been changes made from that in the final video. One major difference I wish hadn’t occurred was the fact that in my planning, the singer sat on a beer keg, relating to the name of the song, however finding one of these at short notice, as well as moving it to school, was too difficult to do.
Another change I made was the fact that in my story board, the singer had longer hair than I have. The image I was trying to present usually involved people having longer hair, however it wasn’t possible to find a wig that fitted the description I was looking for.
Another problem I encountered when trying to edit the video according to my story board was that I had been very vague in the shots I had selected, and if I had simply put these shots in, the video in my opinion, would have been slow moving and made it boring. I had already elected to do my video in black and white to relate to the backstreets where the band grew up, and if I had used a few long lasting shots to make up the video, I wouldn’t watch it, and so the audience definitely wouldn’t watch it in its entirety.
When filming, to make it easier to edit later on, I connected an iPod to the speakers in the room where we was filming, so I could match up the music in the video, to the actual track and therefore make the lip syncing easier to achieve.
Because I would now be in the video, I needed someone else to film it, and I chose my teacher, for a number of reasons. Obviously he has knowledge around the subject and would give constant feedback on the camera shots, and how they went with my acting.
Another problem we encountered was because we were filming in a classroom in front of the green screen, children kept coming in which sometimes disturbed the lighting which had been set up, as well as me. It also turned very warm in the room because of the spot lights that were focused on me, and I was wearing a t-shirt, jumper and jacket, which didn’t help the conditions, so I had to made sure I didn’t use close ups with a drop of sweat sliding down my forehead.
But apart from that, everything went according to plan. I made sure we filmed the entire song for each shot, so if I needed more when it came to editing, I had plenty to choose from. I learnt this lesson from the website I made the previous year, when I took a camera out to take images for the website. But I didn’t have a clear idea of what images I wanted and ended up not having anything that I needed, or anything usable and relative to the website, so I ended up going out three times in order to take pictures for the website before being finally happy with the ones I had taken.
For editing, we used the Final Cut Pro software on Apple Mac’s, which were very different to the PC’s I was used to using, especially with the saving arrangements enforced upon us by our teacher. If we were to save something outside our own personal folder, it would be deleted at the end of the week, so I had to be very careful not to save anything anywhere but in my folder. Although there are a few differences in the interfaces of the computers I was used to using, and the Mac’s, I found it fairly easy to get used to the major differences that would hinder my progress.
The super impose effect was one I found fitted my video very well. Instead of cutting to a frame solely for the picture I wanted to show, I could super impose it over the video, to make it seem as if the singer is thinking about the image, remembering it from the past.


For the advertising poster, I wanted it to relate loosely to the video, but still be unique. Sticking with the theme of urban back streets, I sketched a couple of simple designs out for me to model the final product on. The first design involved an actor rested against a JCB digger on a building site, with the picture being taken from behind a fence. The aim of this was to use the building site as a way of representing the youth of today breaking in to places, they shouldn’t be, represented by the bars. The purpose of the building site is to show the backstreets of the city, in juxtaposition to the built up areas commonly associated with big cities. When made in Adobe’s Photoshop, I was able to near enough recreate my design exactly how I wanted it due to the school I attend currently undergoing building works. I asked permission of the head teacher if I was allowed to use the sight as a location and he was okay for me to take pictures on there, as long as we didn’t touch or move anything on the site. I also downloaded a font from www.dafont.com, which I thought fitted the urban look more than the preset fonts on the program. The feedback I received for this product was very positive, with many people saying “the look fitted the sound of the band,” and it was “eye catching” which is always essential when trying to shout out to viewers to buy the single. Some people however thought there was a bit “too much going on” for it to be a advertisement, and that the focus was on the picture rather than the band name and their song title.
The second design involved a typical bandit machine in a stereotypical English pub. I wanted to use this to relate to the alcohol obsessed youth Britain is now known for across the world. I wanted to include an empty beer glass on top of the bandit, to show people had been drinking and gambling there. The bandit, associated with bars also relates to the title of the song, which links to beer.
Initially the feedback for this wasn’t as positive as it was for the first design. I was told there was too much empty space that could be put to better use, and the font had no real placing and looked like I had put it where it was without any thought.
To combat this, I took a close up of the buttons on the bandit and decided that instead of using the entire machine. The bright colours that contrast each other make it easily recognisable as a bandit, and I chose to take pictures of the buttons to again make it easy for the reader to recognise what it was. By only using a small proportion of the machine, there was no empty space around the edges and the bright colours made it more eye catching. I chose to use the same font I had used for the first design, because I wanted to emphasize the urban look of the band, and the font presents this well. I had learned from the website I made in my AS course that it was essential to use a font that linked to what you was trying to say, rather than settling for one that isn’t really what you want.
The feedback I received for this final design was more positive, with people saying it was eye catching and that the bandit showed what the British youth of today had become.
To offer an alternative from the urban look, I decided my final poster would offer a different image of the band. I used beige and blue stripes, which I thought were fairly nice colours to show the band don’t make unfriendly music. It also relates to popular colours of clothing worn by the genre the music is aimed at. I made the image in the bottom of the poster white, to match the white font I had elected to use in the top half of the advert. The aim of the image was just to show that the band were like any other people, and I chose to get an image of some friends just sat around enjoying themselves in an attempt to link the audience to the band. I didn’t want to use black on the advert at all, because although it may stand out more, I thought it would contrast with the beige and blue too much and make it look dirty. I found the white, a lot more neutral with the colours, but the feedback I received didn’t match this opinion. They thought the white font “blended in too much and made it hard to read from a glance.” Despite this, I chose to stick to what I thought because I was certain if I was to change my font to a darker colour, the advert would look worse.
After viewing all of the feedback, I came to the conclusion that my first design was the one I wanted to use as the band’s advertising poster. I thought the feedback I received from this was very preferential to this design, and it was a personal favourite, mainly because it was the one I had modelled on my opinion of the bands look and sound. Instead of having the bands name across the whole of the bottom half of the poster, I chose to put it in one corner, mainly because I thought this made it a little less ‘in your face’ and a bit more professional.I also opted to use the rule of thirds, because making picture's agree with this rule make them look more proffesional.

For my digi-packs, I was keen to keep a theme running through with the advertising poster. To plan out the designs, I near enough used the same images as I did for the advertising poster. To start of with, I needed to know how it would all piece together, and for this I used a template from the internet, just to show me where I should put the front, back and tray sides. These were just really rough sketches because I knew what pictures I wanted to use.
The second task was getting the images, and this again was a tough task because the previous year, I had obtained a lot of images I thought were no good, where as this time, I got less pictures, but took more care that they were ones I could use. These were the same images I took to use for the advertising poster.
I also used the same font I downloaded to keep continuity throughout the theme.
I am happy with how my product turned out because I think it looks like a professional digi-pack that wouldn’t look out of place on the shelves of record stores. I also used specific shots like mid-shots and close ups, to emphasize different subjects in the images; these rules were also learnt in the planning stages of my charity website.

In conclusion, I am happy with all of my products as I think they resemble products from the genre of music, and image of band I’m trying to promote. I also think by using an actor rather than the singer resembles work done by the Arctic Monkeys and Reverend and the Makers, both who come from the same city and area as my band. The style of music as well relates back to the images used on the products, and the black and white of the video, adds to the effect of grungy city streets.