A2 Media
Sunday, 10 March 2013
Closing Statement
Finally we have come to the end of my blog and my work has to be carefully and concisely marked. But before, I would like to express that my A2 media project has been thoroughly enjoyed throughout and in turn has made me develop a wide array of skills in media. It has also enabled me to showcase my creativity in numerous ways and influenced me to do more media related tasks in my spare time. I hope you have really enjoyed looking at my blog as much as I did creating it and overall discovered the hard work and effort I put into it. Thank you.
Final Music Video
As apart of our, promotional package for the release of an album I have created a Music Promo video for our artist Big Quan.
Final Website
As apart of our, promotional package for the release of an album I created a Website for our artist Big Quan. Below is the link to our website:
http://lbenjaminf.wix.com/bigquanofficial
http://lbenjaminf.wix.com/bigquanofficial
Final Digipak
As apart of our, promotional package for the release of an album I created a digipak for our artist Big Quan.
Evaluation Q4
Below is brainstorm of all the different media technologies that I have used in my A2 media project. Whilst being familiar with some of them, I faced the challenge of using new media technologies which in turn developed my skills further.
AS TO A2

For A2, the brief was a
promotional package for
the release of an album, which consisted of us creating a music promo video. It
also required us to make a website homepage for the band and a CD cover for its
release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package). I took interest in this task
because I felt that making a video would be an exciting task that would allow
all the members of my group to showcase their interests and ideas. It would
also bring out a lot of creativity skills from myself in particular because I
like to create things by constructing images, text, music and videos into one.
Research
Throughout
the media project we did a lot of research to give us a better interpretation
of what we had to create. At the beginning of the project we researched into
different music videos, theories, other student’s videos and the history of it.
Whilst some tasks were very time consuming (such as the history of music
videos), all the tasks were beneficial in the long run because we could later
apply it to our work in an effective way.
To
present these tasks I used the following media technologies: Slideshare, PowerPoint,
Prezi and blogger. These were all technologies that I had used prior to the
task and therefore had no problem operating them. However, the green screen
analysis of an inspirational video was a challenge which required a lot of concentration
skills. To begin with my group and I all decided on one inspirational video
which was ‘Destiny’s Child – Bills Bills Bills’. We next researched into the
song to explain what we liked about it, the conventions it met, general
information about it and so forth using Google (Wikipedia) as well as YouTube
which we referred to numerous times (to view it). We later were filmed in front
of a green screen whereby we read our analysis of the music video. We all found
this very difficult due to the fact that we hadn’t learnt the script off by
heart and was unable to look at the camera whilst reading. The most difficult
task was however editing on Final Cut Express. In AS we were introduced to this
advanced video editing software which we found very hard to operate. This difficulty increased in A2 because we
had to try and change the background from a green screen to show our
inspirational music video. This whole process was very time consuming and
consisted of altering the gages in order to get the right consistency
of colour. I did however, manage to grasp the technique and complete this task
with guidance from my teachers who showed me how to do it in the beginning.
After
Preproduction, we did another set of research on our ancillary tasks.
The first
ancillary task I researched into was the digipak which required me to explain
what it was and analyse the examples are teachers provided for us. I found them
really interesting to look at and was excited to produce one of my own. Other
student’s digipak also influenced me to come up with different ideas such as
using Photoshop to edit pictures. Two of these tasks were presented on Microsoft
PowerPoint because it was a good software to present my research on in a clear
and detailed way. To show other students digipaks I used Prezi because I could
show all what I needed on one page rather than on numerous slides. Although
Prezi takes long I still felt this media technology presents work in an
effective way. Lastly, I uploaded my work on slide share which is a quick and
easy process to work.


I
found researching into websites really interesting because it allowed me to see
how music genres influenced the way a website was presented. All that I
discovered from researching this task was very detailed, and so I used
Microsoft PowerPoint to present my discoveries.
Production
In our group, we made a decision to split the pre-production tasks between us in order to get the work done in a quicker time. We also made it fair by choosing a mixture of easy, detailed and long winded tasks. I chose to complete the idea treatment, moodboard, risk assessment, crew requirements, contingency plan and artist logo. For each of these tasks I used a variety of media technologies such as Word, Prezi, Mixbook and a Samsung Galaxy camera phone to take pictures on. As a group, we all helped to create a casting for our music video which was really fun because it gave us the opportunity to do some practical work with the camera. I edited the casting using Final Cut Express which took a very long time because I had to cut out unnecessary footage and amend faults by adding transitions and so forth to the timeline. During this task, I learnt how to add music from YouTube on to Final Cut Express and effectively make the footage flow. Overall the Pre-production stage of the task took long but I benefited from it by developing my skills.
In our group, we made a decision to split the pre-production tasks between us in order to get the work done in a quicker time. We also made it fair by choosing a mixture of easy, detailed and long winded tasks. I chose to complete the idea treatment, moodboard, risk assessment, crew requirements, contingency plan and artist logo. For each of these tasks I used a variety of media technologies such as Word, Prezi, Mixbook and a Samsung Galaxy camera phone to take pictures on. As a group, we all helped to create a casting for our music video which was really fun because it gave us the opportunity to do some practical work with the camera. I edited the casting using Final Cut Express which took a very long time because I had to cut out unnecessary footage and amend faults by adding transitions and so forth to the timeline. During this task, I learnt how to add music from YouTube on to Final Cut Express and effectively make the footage flow. Overall the Pre-production stage of the task took long but I benefited from it by developing my skills.
Planning
Planning
was a very consistent part of my media project because I always found myself
planning what work I had to do, how I was going to do it, what I needed to put
in it and lastly how I was going to present it. I did however enjoy it because
I have a passion to write and organise what I’m going to do in my work to make
it showcase my abilities in the best way possible.

The
digipak planning tasks were presented using the following media technologies:
Microsoft PowerPoint and Word as well as Slide share and Scribd (to upload them
onto blogger). For the design sketches, we drew our rough and final sketches
onto a template provided which was later put onto our blog using a Blackberry
camera phone which we took pictures on. All our photographs were taken on a professional
digital camera in different locations such as the computer rooms and green
screen room. We also used the camera stand to help us take a number of poses of
our artist.


Evaluation



Evaluation Q3
Using Survey Monkey we created a questionnaire that was made up of 10 questions. From this, we accumulated a good amount of audience feedback which was beneficial because we obtained what was good, bad and needed to be developed further.
Below is the second part to question three.
Evaluation Q2
Below is the answer to the first part of question two, which I have done on Glogster:

Overall I think our products will be easily identifiable to our audience because there is a consistency that we have tried to keep up in order for it to be recognisable and eye-catching by our target audience. This consists of our colour scheme, use of pictures, font, logo (in particular) and so forth. After researching into different websites as well as taking into consideration what I already know, I found one artist group whose products were highly identifiable and that was MMG. MMG which stands for Maybach Music Group is a hip hop music group that is made up of a number of artists of this genre. Over the years, their logo has become very iconic because it has been featured on their album covers, website and at the start of every music videos. This inspired my group to incorporate a similar idea into our music video at the start as well as on the website and digipak. In all, I think this will be very effective in the long run because this small symbolic icon will be memorable. In my opinion, I think my group and I did really well taking into account we had never done anything like this before. Despite it being a challenge throughout and very time consuming, I still believe we able to take on the tasks with determination and support from each member in the group.

Out of all three tasks, I think the ancillary tasks were most successful because they were well presented due to the careful and concise planning that we put into them. From researching into album covers, digipaks and websites, we also obtained a better view of what needed to be included in our ancillary tasks. Our digipak was made up of 6 panels that included pictures, our logo, disk tray, the artist’s signature, credits and lyrics page. However, I would have liked to include a disk tray for a dvd which would have made it more interesting. Despite of this, I was happy with how my group member Chloe constructed it. The website was created by myself, in which I was very happy and proud of. Yet, I did have my doubts because it was very hard to operate at first and at times I gave up on it because I felt I didn’t have the ability to do it. My group members were however very supportive as well as consistent on making sure I finished it which did help. When I finally finished creating my website that contained all the elements that I personally intended it to have, I was very satisfied and felt that I had made a good contribution to the group. Moreover, it met the conventions desired because I constantly referred to other websites of my genre and others throughout the construction process.
In contrast, the music video wasn’t as successful as I visualised it to be because it lacked some of the typical conventions you would see in an R’n’B and Hip-Hop music video as well as that overall exciting feel that you get when watching a music video of my genre. My video was perhaps one that would need a lot more footage and shot types in order for it to be a good flowing video. I also think the lip synching could have been improved for the reason that it wasn’t 100% in sync with the song which in turn showed a delay in the way he performed and what was being heard. On the other hand, if we had more practice or had a chance to do a video again, I believe it will be a lot more successful as we would have learnt from our mistakes and worked on it so that it could be better. Despite of the negative aspects to our video, I do however feel that there was a lot of effort put into the filming and editing but it just didn’t achieve or meet the high expectations I had for it. To conclude all our tasks reached the brief that was set for us which was our main goal.




Out of all three tasks, I think the ancillary tasks were most successful because they were well presented due to the careful and concise planning that we put into them. From researching into album covers, digipaks and websites, we also obtained a better view of what needed to be included in our ancillary tasks. Our digipak was made up of 6 panels that included pictures, our logo, disk tray, the artist’s signature, credits and lyrics page. However, I would have liked to include a disk tray for a dvd which would have made it more interesting. Despite of this, I was happy with how my group member Chloe constructed it. The website was created by myself, in which I was very happy and proud of. Yet, I did have my doubts because it was very hard to operate at first and at times I gave up on it because I felt I didn’t have the ability to do it. My group members were however very supportive as well as consistent on making sure I finished it which did help. When I finally finished creating my website that contained all the elements that I personally intended it to have, I was very satisfied and felt that I had made a good contribution to the group. Moreover, it met the conventions desired because I constantly referred to other websites of my genre and others throughout the construction process.

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