2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?
In my main product I wanted to create a storytelling narrative that would have a message held within that would also be relevant to its audience. My target demographic, sutible to genre, was teenagers just moving into adult life and experiencing new things. This concept I took on would target these issues of relationships and alcohol and try and mak
e them identifiable for the audience I was aiming the pro
duct at. The narrative aspect was done effectively be the use of many close upsto show emotion of the protagonist.
As part of the narrative I wanted to form it i
n the way of a conventional story, using the film theorist, Todorov's theory of Equilibrium. This included the equilibrium being disrupted (by alcohol) and restored by the protagonist. This gave the narrative an easier to follow structure.
The narrative aspect was used in combination with t
he digipak. The digipak is a sort of linear timeline, with the images chronologically telling the story.
Also, i wanted to create a brand identity, or an image that was constantly re-shown in everything the band produced. This had to fit in with the urban, grass roots sound that the band has taken on. This is becoming a very popular
style for pure music lovers, wanting out of the world of computerised, commercial pop that is currently in the charts. The image I selected was of railings you could find anywhere in suburban England,
taking the music and images back to the streets. This was popu
lar in my research as "Devlin" and "Arctic Monkeys" choose images similar in their own projects. This image was also replicated in the advert.
3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The audience f
eedback is a piece of informati
on that is imperative and vital for any new product to have. This shows how effective people think your product is, and also, more importantly what they think can be improved. I decided to show my product to the most relevant people as possible, which was my target audience. My project was aimed at 17-21 year olds, so I showed people in my media class. These are all people of the correct age, so i was hoping they would be able to relate to the images I was showing. They also have media experience because they are doing their own project, so they knew what could be changed and were realistic with their suggestions.
The first part I showed people was the r
ough c
ut. This is a viewing half way through the creation of the video, leaving enough time to change whatever they believed did work or didn't. The feedback I got was gen
erally good, especially for the range of shots I had produced and the quality of the editing so far. I found this part a little bit unreliable as much of my narrative was not filmed yet so was hard to follow.
People had a slightly difficult time working out what was actually happening because of the gaps in the narrative. I found that I had to explain most of what I was hoping to create narrative wise, so didn't really get any feedback on how the narrative worked. I was however very pleased that they enjoyed the quality of the camera angles, which is what I really wanted to create in an acting based video.
In the digipak, people felt it was good that I had linked in the narrative video. However, they felt that the images inside were slightly bland.
It was then that I started to add contrast and brightness to tailor the images into being more ascetically pleasing. I was unfortunately unable to act on the suggestions of adding in wording or lyrics to the middle pages because I personally felt it didn't leave enough space for the images to be interpreted correctly by the reader.
4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I used many new media technologies when I created my work. I used youtube and the internet extensively to research and gain ideas. IMovie, the feature that I used for editing is very good and easy to use. It has many different features that I used including Speeding up clips, Vignette style and black and white filters. Getting the footage onto IMovie is also very easy, so I was aided by this media technology.
The internet and their search engines helped me achieve all of my research. Also, I was able to gain a font that suited my digipak and advert perfectly via the internet. Youtube proved very helpful also.
Equipment wise, I used a tripod so that the scenes I filmed would be perfectly still. Also, I used a good quality camera that has an easy to access SD card and is easily uploaded to IMovie for the editing process to begin.
As i said before it has many features, and here are some of the features that I found most impressive and were used in my final video. Vignette which allows for a first person, keyhole view, which looked like the person was drunk. Then the speed up shot was used to match the tempo of the music. Finally, Black and white helped me show the changing tone and attitude in the narrative
1) Vignette
2) Speed up feature
3) Black and white filter
The editing screen allows you to link your footage to the music so that it plays over the top as one complete project. Without these media technologies, I would h
ave been unable to do the project whatsoeve
r, so they were the most important component in
my opinion.
