Question 2 - How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

Question 2

Overall I feel that the combination of our three products was effective. I think this because they all share similar imagery and they would be easily identifiable by audiences. Our ancillary task is almost exactly how we wanted it to look. We planned the front of the digipak to have an image of the main performer with the strange Bird obsessed man kissing and holding the bird that is in the first chorus with the performer sitting in the back ground looking scared or disturbed, so I think we created the image we wanted for the front of our digipak. I tried to keep a strong feel of brand identity running through the ancillary tasks and our video which I think I did especially since all the subjects in the images used on the poster and digipak are featured in the video like the front background which is an image from the video of the first chorus. We were just trying to make the rest of the digipak relevant to the video so we had an image of the of the background wall that we used in the chorus of the video for the back and then used the lines of the bricks as lines for the song titles to run along. We decided to turn the back and front black and white because it is a convention of our genre to have a black and white digipak. The inside of the digipak is two images of objects that are featured in our video showing more brand identity to the video. I think that our audience would clearly see the brand identity between our 2 media products and in the effective connection to the video because of the identifiable actors that are in the video and on the digipak and advert.

(Shot from the video)

If I were to start a fresh with my digipak I wouldn’t change a lot, I might do more research into attractive colours for products and then get the right balance between general attractive colours and what looks good on my ancillary task.
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I think audiences would clearly relate our ancillary task to our music video because there are clear aspects of you our video in the poster and digipak that clearly relate to our video, and so therefore they are effective as a combination.

Question 3 What have you learned from your audience feed back

The first feed back we received was from the questionnaire that we produced. We made these questionnaires to see what our target audience expected from a music video in the indie genre and all the conventions that come along with that. Our target audience members thought that our music video should include varied shots, narrative and choreography. We used this information to gather our ideas and see what would look good and please our audience, we have tried including varied shot and a variation of a narrative but when it came to choreography we decided the song we had chosen would exactly fit a dance routine, as most video's in our genre don't involve any choreography we decided we wouldn't upset our audience if it wasn't included.
When we were in the production stage every few weeks we would get our media class to watch what we had done so far and used there criticism to help develop our video. Because there was lots of people watching it at the same time they could pick up on things that we may have missed and add to our video in some ways, giving us suggestions and ideas that could help make our video look better. We received positive criticism from our peer's things like little bits of video being out of sync and possible transitions that would look good for our video.

We uploaded our video to You Tube and linked it to Facebook then asked people to give us some feedback and see what our target audience really thought of our video, most of our friends in our target audience really enjoyed our video and liked what we had done with the song. The parts they enjoyed the most were the funny parts with ash acting, what they thought didn't quite go was the clash between the slightly boring serious acting in the performance clips with the funny acting of ash.Facebook was a great way of distributing and receiving feed back for our video as our friends will all be in our target audience and in the age range of 13-21 Years old, because this audience were the demographic i was aiming my video towards I could get the most constructive criticism.

Here is our finished music video of the song The Day I Died by Just Jack.

Question 4 – How Did You Use Media Technologies in the Construction, Research, Planning and Evaluation Stage?

Research and planning

Feedback for Digipak and Poster

I showed both of my ancilary tasks to the class asking for feedback in how to improve and their reasons why. It was important for me to understand their views in not only how the CD and poster looked, but whether the connection between them two and the music video was clear. The one question that was repeated a few times was about the over-laying colour on both the CD and poster as they were different! I felt that because the image is the same, the colouring can be different as the puplic would more likely distinguish who the star was in the image and not the colouring. However, I took this into account and both colours are dark (one being black and white and the other sepia). 

Some questions were raised as to why we chose the "pigeon" and "TNT-bomb vest" for the inside of the digipak. Both things are featured in the music video and from mainly choosing them from random as this relates to our music video. The bomb vest is also one of the last things the audience will see in the music video before it dips to black, this allows them to connect it, arguably, making the CD more personal to them.

Updated Poster

This is our finished digipak magazine advert. we binned the first draft because of of some of the unclear information like the artist title and "OUT NOW" feature. On the first draft i had "OUT NOW" and the release date which with the feed back we got from the first draft we found it wasn't a very advertising look so we decided to lose the release date and just keep the "OUT NOW" because it is very attention grabbing. We also added places where the album is available like HMV, ITunes and Spotify. I did edit there logos a little bit so that they would fit in with the poster but I kept the main aspects of the logos so they could still be identified as big music retailers. I also added the record label but again edited it so that it fit in with the rest of the image. I would imagine this poster would be featured in a magazine such as "Q magazine" as our genre would fit in with some of there previously featured artist's and they do a lot of full A4 page for big artists. we have gone for a full page because Mercury records are a very big recording company so it would be in Just Jack's capability to make a full page happen. 

First Draft Advert

Here is our first draft of our magazine advert 

(Example)

Poster Screen shot

Here is a screen shot of the editing process of making the poster using the digipak as the basis so that you can relate the two media texts through synigy. 

CD Cover Digipak

Aspects of Our Digipak

To create of digipack we used the programme Adobe Photoshop CS5, "one of the top image editing programmes to date"



We have looked at the conventions of digipaks that are in the same genre as our own and then from there decided what we should include in our own digipak.
We saw that the record label is a very important thing to promote on the DVD cover and we decided to find out Just Jack record label which is Mercury Records and here is the lable we used...


We also decide that a bar code would be nessesary mainly because of authenticity but we did decide to make is look a little bit different and made it blend in to our cover by removing the white background layer. here is the bar code we used...


CopyRight is also a very big thing these days so making sure that was involed in out digipak was very important, so in small print we have a little parragraph for that.

Digipak Comparisons

(Example)

Example 

(Example)

Drawn Digipak

Our Digipak Breif

"The brief is "a magazine advertisment for the digipak (CD/DVD package)"

Ancillary Task 1

A digipak is the cover of the DVD or CD that will give all information needed about the artist and production of the album/single. the main purpose of a digipak is to entice people into buying the album. So the cover needs to have all the right generic conventions so that the cover fits with the genre of the artist and looks attractive at the same time.

Conventions of a Digipak

• Bar code 
• Image of Artist 
• Artist name
• Name of album 
• Featured songs 
• Featured artists 
• Producer 
• Lyrics 
• Props
• Stickers 

Conventions of our own Digipak 

• Dark and light colouring - To show the funny but sad feel of the video.
• Props- Bird thing 
• Comedic - pulling faces 
• Image of artist - Performer 
• Name of Artist - Just Jack 
• Name of album - All Night Cinema 
• Featured songs - The day I died 
• Featured artists - Just Jack 
• Producer 
• Lyrics 
• Stickers 
• Bar code
• Font - Bold but colourful 
• Compostion of image 
• Scene from video as image  

Things to Consider in the Magazine

Things to consider in digipak:

·                     Layout/framing

·                     Font

·                     Main Image

·                     Information Shown

·                     Setting

·                     Colours

·                     Target Audience/genre

·                     Setting

Risk Assessment

Here is our risk assessment on the filming that we will be doing soon. It shows the things we need to watch out for and the possible things that could cause us or any of our equipment harm or damage. 

Analysis of Paolo Nutini's digipak

This album, "Sunny Side Up" as suggested in the title is a very jolly album. The digipak's conventions are lots of bright colours, swooping text title, comic book style writing for the list of lyrics and a astheticly pleasing drawn image. The bright colours used help bring the feel of happyness to the cover and songs, the nice image on the front with images in the background of kids playing and nice sunny days, egg for breakfast and the thought of the sounds that can be played for that guitar. Everything about this digipak shouts the genre of the music witch is very happy, also because of the use of bright colours and curvy writing it will atract alot of attention on a shelf in a store so it has great advertisement built in to its conventions.

Analysis of James Morrison's digipak

I think keeping a theme running from the back to the front is an important thing like this James Morrison album has. The images shown on this digipak are very calming with the clouds and the green grass which are convention of the genre of James Morrison's music which is calm and gentle.

Dark text is use mainly because of the lighter background but it could also suggest there is a darkness to some of the songs that are featured on this album but the text colour does have a gradient to it so the could be a mix of happy and sad. The main image on the front of the digipak is a close up of the artist face, there isn't much expresion shown by him, he just looks quite distant but a little sad. The songs on this album are very melo, on the edge of being sad except a few songs so i would say the conventions of the album cover corespond with the genre of music.

Analysis of Joshua Radin's digipak

Joshua Radins album cover is very simple but affective i would say. the photographer has used the rule of thirds so that the artist is just off centre but because of the subject in the image attention is still brought to him because he his one of the biggest things in the image. The red bucket and spade havent been turned to greyscale and keped red because it catches peoples eye and once they see that then they look over at the rest of the image. The red can also symbolise some aspeacts of the genre of music, some of the songs on this album are ironicly sad, im basing this on one of his videos but in it the lyrics are saying how his life is getting better even though in the viseo he is being runover getting beaten up and thrown out of vans so funny but ironic. i would say that theme is shown in the digipak mainly because he sitting in a sand pit, one of the most fun and amazing things in your childhood but yet he looks incredibly deprest.

Mise-en -Scene

The costumes are casual and modern. George will be wearing a shirt and jeans whilst some others are wearing what is specific to their job title (Will and Julian are wearing a white shirt, black tie, black shoes and black tie) their costume allows the audience to understand that they security guards.

The lighting will be natural light as we want this to be realistic and random which I feel the lighting can contribute in doing.

The acting needs to be quite elaborate for the people that he "bumps" into as me and George are wanting a comical element. E.g. A "Grandma" abruptly falls over and a trips over "her" - despite it being a 17 year old male playing him.  

No make-up is needed.

The settings are around school and down Lincoln high street. One of the reasons for filming around the school is because it's easy and reliable to get your cast. Also, if continuity is needed or something goes wrong, we could quickly get the footage filmed again. I am filming down the high street as the narrative is about a youth who is in a popular location to make it realistic why people are coming in and out of the shot. I know through research that it is a common place to film, so this helped me to decide. 

Shooting Schedule

We haven't sorted out the dates for our schedule yet but we will have it done soon, 

Characters

George Cooper

 Main performer

This Character is the main performer in our music video, he is me, we chose me because i have a performing background as i'm in a band as a front man so i'm quite suitable for this roll. Here i will be play the part of Just Jack and lots of bad things happen to me and around me this is because were trying to give a strong ironic side to our video as the first line in the chorus is "The day i died, was the best day of my life". I also perform (sing) most of the way though the video. 

Ash Scott

Bird Guy

Secretary 

Grandma

Ash plays three parts in this video, one is the Bird guy who is in love with this bird dies in the first chorus in front of the performer 

Sadie Richardson 

Inconvenient person

James Telfer 

Big tough Guy 

William Reynolds 

Gay security guard 1 

Tom Manson 

Guitarist performer 

Location Shots

These are the steps where George sings, this is part of the performance side.

This was took outside the window of where the security guards are chasing Ashley, as if it was a point-of-view shot.

This is another window, in the same room as the image above, the camera turns 180 degrees, keeping it like the point-of-view shot.

This is the kitchen where his "wife" is shown through camera (a mid-shot) and the lyrics. 

This is a wide-shot showing George with different characters interfering on his performance, this takes the focus away from George despite him meaning to be the star. 

  

This is a wide-shot where George comes down the stairs, he turns left and continues walking, this is shown in the image above.

This is the bedroom where George wakes up at the beginning and Gets ready for his day. The first line of the lyric is, drag myself out of bed, around twenty-past six.  

Video Print Screen

This is the first print screen of our editing process, so far we have the sound track on and the first half of the second chorus, we may need to re shoot some of the small parts of this section. 

Here we have done lots more on our project, the first section is almost complete, and the second verse. the green screen section (heaven scene) is almost complete as well we just need to do one shot where all the main character's loved ones appear behind him and then he will open his eyes and live again. The red sections you can see on top of the clips mean they have been sped up, this is because we used a different version of the song which was slightly slower than the song that is on our video so we sped the video up slightly so the video is now in sync. 

Lighting

All of the lighting through-out the music video will be on natural light. This is simple because I felt you only have lighting if there is a purpose behind, therefore, I felt no need for it. However, if the lighting in the editing process looks different when it cuts to different shots, we shall smooth down the lighting through editing it in Adobe PremierPro.

I did fear that when different cuts occur, the lighting will evdiently change. This is something I wanted to prevent and haven't come across as yet! If this does happen, filming again shall happen as I can distinguish the natural light and what our lighting looks like.

StoryBoard

First page of story board, starts with close up of singer lying in bed, then cuts to a mid shot then it will cut to shots of his morning as he sings thought it. this is where the narrative and performance mix together.

On the second page of the story board its the end of the first verse and the first chorus, there is a running theme of death in the chorus because of the songs theme and tile " The Day I Died", a pigeon falls in front of the performer.

Here is our second verse that involves the main character in the narrative and the performer.

Here is the 2nd chorus where the theme of death is still running though, in this one a grandmother dies in front of the singer.

Add caption

These are the final shots where the performer get hit by a comical card board taxi and there is like a heaven scene after that where there is all the singers favourite things floating by his head and then all his family and friends but then his eyes open and he's alive then he stands up brushes him self off and a bomber puts there arm around him and its cuts to black.