Candidate Information

Candidate Information:

Jessie Plant

6087 

Wilmington Grammar School for Girls 

61119

Final Products

Shown below are our final products:

The Front Cover, The Spine and the Back Cover:

The inside cover:

The CD:

Behind the CD cover:

The Magazine Advert:

Evaluation Question 4

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

I used a slide share to present my answer to this question  
                         

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Getting the feedback:

For this evaluation question, I have managed to get the opinions of people who have looked at my products using a sound recording. This allowed me to replay my audience feedback so I could understand then evaluate it. Firstly, I showed members of my audience my music video.

Next, I did the same but looked at the ancillary task. 

From listening to these recordings, I managed to pick up good audience feedback allowing me to be able to successfully evaluate my task. 

As well as asking people what they thought of my products, I also did a questionnaire, which allows anonymous comments from many who have seen it. Instead of posting many photos, I wanted to make my feedback more interesting. I therefore, created another video which would allow me to put all of my answers to my questionnaire in one place. 

Quantitative data was also found: 

I have shown examples of this below: 

Response to the feedback:
I found many ways to get audience feedback (all of which were extremely helpful) and below are the things I have found have come up most often:

• The Actresses. Many of the comments, especially written in the questionnaire, commented on the acting being 'poor' or 'not as good as it could be'. Although we have seen this as an issue through our project, we did not have a lot of choice when it came to actresses. TO OVER COME THIS PROBLEM, we tried to use short clips through out editing and used close ups. This meant that our actresses did not have to act that much, instead we could use their eyes and facial expressions to convey our story and emotion. 
• The Target Audience. When listening to the voice recordings especially, I noticed that my video and products seem to appeal to a younger generation (mostly of females). This is great feedback as this is exactly the audience we wanted to address. Within the questionnaires  the person with the Pink pen was a teenage girl who listened to pop music. From her very positive feedback, I can see that our video has reached the target audience we wanted to. 

• Connection between the song and the story line. Many of my audience have noticed the connection between the song lyrics and our story (something which is extremely important). Many said that they linked well. This is something that I rate as extremely successful in the project. I believe they link very well as the music lyrics revolve around the idea that Alice cannot make herself 'perfect' no matter how hard she tries. P!NK's lyrics portray the idea that being perfect is not about your looks but she emphasizes the idea that you are perfect the way you are. 
• Connection between the Video and the Ancillary tasks. Something that we tried very hard to ensure through our project was that our video linked with our ancillary tasks. Through my audience feedback, I have been told that this link is very successful. However, it could be improved through use of a black and white video. This would allow the video to directly link with the video. Further comment of this is available in Evaluation Question number 2. 
• The Back Cover of the Digi-Pack. This appears to have been the most popular part of the Digi-pack. The use of the black back ground, the strong image, and the realistic CD features are something that has appeared to attract my audience. This has allowed them to give me positive feedback, something I was hoping to get. 

Evaluation Question 2

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

I believe that is was essential that our ancillary task linked to our video. This would mean that audiences would be advertised to our video.

I will use Adele as the example we used to help to ensure that our video linked to our ancillary task.

Both of the above songs are from Adele's album 21. In our creations, we have tried to use real products in order to see how our own video could link to our digi-pak and magazine advert. Below I will state the features which allow the combination of our main product and ancillary texts to be effective and successful. 

The Use of Make-up is largely used without our video to represent Alice's inner character. The black make up reflects the idea that Alice is rather depressed, darkened by her own faults. The make up also allows her eyes to stand out, capturing her deep emotions. By using the same make-up in the ancillary task, we are able to express the SAME emotions and depressing. It allows a direct link. Using running make-up on the magazine advert allows further connection. As Alice is in the bath, the use of the make up running down her face expresses her giving up. It could almost be seen as her AFTER the suicide. 

The clothing and hair is the same in both the video and the ancillary tasks. This ensures that the combination is realistic. The hair especially was used in an effective way in my opinion. By having it quit large in the photographs on our ancillary tasks, I believe that we are able to present her wild character. Her committing suicide is a rather bold move. This is something we believe we could reflect through the use of quite wild hair (and again, a lot of make up). 

The body language of Alice is something we tried to keep similar within all of our products. Within the video, we used actions that would display that of frustration or depression. This included having Alice have her hands on her head and running her fingers through hair. This is an action that we believed was regularly connected to anger and upset. We found this through our research. 

The name of the song on the back cover is very effective. Like many artists, we have put Alice's 'main single' Perfect as the first single on the album. This linked to our research of Adele, Rihanna and others. This is an effective feature as our audience will be able to look at the songs and instantly recognize the first song. I believe this is important when it comes to promoting and advertising our product. By putting ours as the first song, there is a major and obvious link. 

I will use slide point to present my findings in picture form. This allows me to present the evidence of what I have discussed. 

All together, I believe that the video and the ancillary tasks really link well together. The images of Alice on the Digi-pack and ancillary task mirror Alice's character within the video. As stated in some of the other evaluation questions, making the video itself black and white would improve the connection between tasks. 

The Ancillary Tasks all link together extremely well. This is because we have ensured to use the same font and the same colour scheme. 
Shown below is how the two ancillary tasks have linked. 

All of this process is shown in the editing process of my blog. I believe it was rather easy to keep my two ancillary tasks connected. I believe we have been very effective in remaining continuity. 

Evaluation Question 1

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

I have looked far into real media products throughout the project to ensure my own work remains professional, realistic and interesting. You tube was very beneficial for my research. First, I will show how my media product uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions of real media. 

To see how my products relate to real media, I have gone back to my previous research. I searched many videos on you tube and used features of these videos in my own. Examples are shown below: 

Looking at the eyes of the characters within the music videos, I saw that a lot of emotion can be expressed through just the eyes. I wanted to adapt this into my product. (Something I believe I have done). Using just the eyes of characters means that the acting of my actress is not as much of a concern. 

Close ups are used in many ways as they allow the camera to tell a story through use of facial expression. By   looking down, a character appears as feeling hopeless and as if they cannot continue on. Shown above are examples of how I have used real media and developed it to make my own products. Having Alice looking down a lot throughout the video allows a feel of sadness and little hope for an audience.

As shown here, I also took ideas for setting from my real products. Through looking at real products, I noticed that the bathroom seemed to be a place where characters were most depressed. I assume this is due to this being the place in which people are most private with themselves. No one can see them so therefore, we can feel their inner feelings. The use of the bath allows a character to reflect over their life. I believe having Alice in the bath by the end of our video was very successful in portraying her thinking over her life. (Flashbacks are shown here to further mirror this). 

As well as setting, I was able to gain ideas to improve and develop my own story line. Within many of the videos I researched, I saw that when depressed, the character tends to try and change something about themselves whilst at the mirror. In the examples I have shown here, the top especially shows the character trying to change herself (hoping this will help). I decided to have Alice put on her make up and then angrily wipe it off. I believe this would reflect how nothing she does helps with the negativity she feels about herself. 

In contrast to the stories on the left, a lot of videos portray this attempt at inner change as successful. However, for our video, we have shown Alice doing her make up as being hopeless. She does not feel any better portraying that no matter what she does, her depression will remain. 
One thing I noticed is that many of the depressing music videos such as Adeles 'someone like you' and Beyonce's 'if I were a boy' is that their videos are in Black and White. This is an effective technique as it means that the emotions of the character stands out clearly. If we had further discussed this idea as a group we may have changed the colour of our video. It would also cause it to link more to our ancillary tasks which are in black and white. 
However, our colouring (especially in the bathroom) is already quite dark and seems to have a type of grey-scale effect. Therefore, it is not a major problem. 

From my video research I was able to see key features, themes and settings (these are presented through the word cloud below).

Word cloud made with WordItOut

Next, I looked at my ancillary task. Addressing the real products for these products is something I have done a lot during the entire blog. Therefore, more can be found by looking at the label of 'comparing real media and our products'. 

Shown above are examples of how I went from real products to create my own. I believe I successfully stayed on task and all my products relate. Black and White imagery is used in our all of our digi-pack and magazine advert which relates directly to our research (especially of Adele). 

Adeles album: 

Adeles album '21' has been the most beneficial album to link our work to as we believe Adele expresses the same kind of emotion we want in our own product. Sticking to looking at real products allowed us to ensure that our product remained professional and looked realistic  My audience feedback allowed me to see that our Digi-pack (especially the back cover) looked like a real product. This is all we have been trying to achieve. 

The controversial scene: 

The outdoor scene when Alice admits her love to Jessie is one that our group added in in order to challenge conventions of media products. We did not want to create a typical love story where a girl falls out with her boyfriend. From our teachers advice, this would be rather bland and too similar to many other music videos. We wanted to do something different. By adding homosexuality into our video, we address a topic that is sometimes sensitive to work with. However, we believe it worked well, increasing the drama in our product. 

Realism: 

I believe we could have improve the realism of our product is if we had better choice of equipment and more time. It would be very beneficial for us to have a camera that we could easily use whenever we wanted. However, it was a piece of equipment from school. This meant that we had limited time with it. I still believe that our video and ancillary task have remained rather professional, generally, sticking to the normal conventions of media products.

Creation of the Magazine Advert

Now, we wanted to complete the second ancillary task. This meant that we needed to create a magazine advert for our project.

For our magazine advert, we wanted a photo that expressed Alice using more body language. The image we picked is shown below. We ensured to use the same make up and clothing which is present on the back of the CD cover. We also ensured to link our advert with our film as she is holding her hair back (something she does regularly in the video):

Again, we wanted to ensure continuity throughout our products. We therefore, decided to make the photograph black and white (just like the digi-pack). We did this in Photoshop.

Like the background to our CD cover, we wanted to have a dark, black background. By using the 'paint' tool and the 'eraser tool' around the edges of the photograph in order to make the background black.

Some parts of the photo were rather hard to edit like shown below:

We wanted to put the photo into Indesign to see how much the outline of the photograph stands out. We will probably have to put it into photo-shop again to edit the photograph further.

As shown, the image is still not professional looking. Therefore, we went back into photo-shop in order to further edit.

We were able to create a spacing around the image of Alice using the 'eraser' tool. This function allowed us to give a smudge effect around Alice, highlighting her.

When going back to in-design, we had a problem that the top of the image was too sharp, it did not look professional (this is highlighted below).

To solve this problem, we decided to decrease the size of the magazine advert, allowing us to get rid of the sharp cut at the top of the photograph. This did not cause a problem all of the key information still fit onto the page.

We tried to keep strong continuity throughout all of our ancillary task by keeping the colour scheme, fonts and outfit of Alice the same. Our first draft is shown below:

After having feedback from our teachers and class mates, we realized that this poster does not look professional enough. The smudge around Alice was not thought of as a nice feature. Therefore, we have decided to get rid of this: 

To get rid of the smudged white line, we went back into 'Photoshop' and used the 'eraser' tool. Some parts were very difficult to edit as we wanted to ensure not to accidentally erase any of Alice's arm. 

By then putting the photo back into 'In-design', we decided to add more typical magazine features to the poster. 

By looking back at our research, we focused on Olly Murs' which allowed us to see the major use of Red and also comments on the 'debut album'. We thought this was very effective (shown below) and therefore, used his feature on our own. 

Another feature we have decided to use is the use of red. This is something that was discussed earlier on. With our feedback, we decided to add this as a feature. As well as this, we decided to add on some ratings from magazines on our advert. This makes it look more real. By using real magazine names, we can increase the realism of our product. 

Shown below, highlighted in red are the new features we have added. We used the same Font throughout our products.

As well as making sure it relates to our research, we have ensured the advert links to our other ancillary products too. 

The final product is shown below:

Creation of the CD

The last part of the Digi-Pack that I need to create is the CD that is going to go inside of the CD Case. Most of our Digi-Pack is black and white colouring. This meant that to maintain continuity, we also made the CD black with white writing. We created the CD through 'Indesign'. For the writing, I have spaced out the lettering using the 'Character' box. We placed the text on the top of the CD. 

The next stage was to add an extra white circle in the middle of the CD in order to make the CD not as plain. We wanted to break up the black slightly. 

For the layout of our disk, we made such to link it to our research. As you can notice in my previous, CD research, we wanted to base our CD around Rihanna's 'talk that talk' CD. This is because we particularly liked the layout. 

(As shown below) in the real product, the artists name is the dominant image on the disc. However, we wanted to promote the CD more then the artist as we felt this was important. When looking back at other research such as Adele's CD, she has the name of the album rather then the artist (a feature which I believe is very effective). We have also added other details at the bottom of our CD such as copyright details, producer details and broadcasting information. This makes the CD more realistic. 

Our final product is therefore, shown below:

Creation of the Back Cover of Album

For the back cover of our Digi-pack, we decided to relate the picture at the back to our video. The front cover photograph was used to promote a whole album. This photo and the one on the magazine advert will have make up running down Alice down her face - this relates to Alice in the video (depressed and feeling useless). The photo below is the one we have chosen to use. I believe our model is successful in conveying extreme emotion:

Just like the front cover, we wanted to make the back cover black and white also. We used photo-shop to make the image black and white. Using the effect of 'halftone pattern' meant that as well as turning our image to black and white, it also made the photograph lighter. As a group, we decided that we really liked this effect:

Shown below is the photograph after the effects have been applied. I believe that the photograph manages to stand out. The photograph being lighter also allows emphasis on Alice's eyes. This is important as this is where all her emotions are shown.

As you can see, this photograph is put on a white background. After discussion, we decided we wanted the background to be darker as it would make Alice stand out. Like in Adele's album (shown below) there is use of smudge going from dark to white. This is something we wanted to incorporate into our own product.

I believe this feature makes the image look more professional and still draws attention towards Adele herself. Therefore, we started experimenting on photo-shop to see which effect would work best for us. Firstly, effects were put on the background of the photo. We left an outline around Alice's face so that once a darker background was put on, Alice's face would stand out. We did this by changing the diameter and hardness of the brush. This created a blurred effect around Alice. We deleted the rest of the background for now.

Highlighted below are some difficult parts of editing. Due to Alice's backcombed and rather messy hair, they are hard to edit around. Therefore, we will have to use zoom so that we can carefully edit.

The 'Paint' tool was then use to make the background completely black.

The outcome is shown below:

I believe this effect has been very successful in creating a great image for the back cover of our album. I believe that the use of the black background links well to the black makeup going down her face. I believe the use of black emphasises the darkness Alice feels in her life. It reflects the idea that she does not know what to do. It also links well to our research of Adele.

Turning to In-design,  allowed us to continue with the creation of our album back cover. The next stage we decided to work on was the song titles which are displayed on the back of the album. We decided to use the same font of 'Adobe Garamond Pro' in order to maintain continuity. We decided to have around 10 songs on the album as this reflected our research. We made sure that all of the songs were similar themed (all containing hints of pessimistic attitudes and depression).

After inserting the text, we decided to 'place' the photograph so that we could better picture what the background would look like.

Once we placed the photograph, we decided to move the text to the top as the photo took over the song titles. One thing we noticed as a problem was that in placing the image, the bottom and top of the photograph were cut off.

discussion as a group, we made the decision to move the photograph to the top of the page and have text etc at the bottom.

The evidence above proves that you can see the sharp different between when the photograph ends. This is something we needed to change as it looks unprofessional. Before trying to change it in 'effects' we will add the text and see if this makes a successful difference.

First thing we tried, was to add the name of the artist going down the side. This is a feature that Adele has on her own album. We have rotated the word 90 degrees so that it goes up the side.

We then began to add the title of the songs onto the image. Shown below is our first attempt. The words will be spread out more but we will tackle this later.

The bottom of the photograph still appears as rather sharp and violent. As a group, we did not like this. Therefore, we will adjust the photo to have it fade out at the bottom. By using the gradient function, we were able to make the bottom of the picture lighter. However, this Did not work. Therefore we tried editing the photograph to make the edges softer. I used colour and paint and in the end, Alice looked rather ghostly in the image (an effect we like). I believe it emphasizes her sadness.

We will then will place the image with the writing. The photograph above will be the one that is used on the cover.

Next, we decided to create the bar code of the cover. This was created on Microsoft word:

Shown below is the barcode placed onto our product:

We are happy so far with the process. For our next stage, we went Back to our research. Again, looking at Adele's album we took an idea from her cover to add 'bonus tracks' to our list of songs: (We have ensured all our songs are from the same artists)

Next, we added the terms and conditions onto the cover in order to let our audience know about the copy rights.

When putting on the terms and conditions, we wanted to ensure it looked professional. We kept it linked to the real products we researched. We used our own names for producers etc due to our product not being real:

Shown below is therefore, our final product with the bar-code, song titles and terms and conditions placed upon the image. I believe it is successful and goes well with our front cover.