Music Video - Lego House by Ed Sheeran & P Money

here is our final music video for 'Lego House' by Ed Sheeran & P Money

Evaluation question 4

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

Through the course of completing our tasks and designing my products I have used a large varied amount of technologies to help me through the process. Having the convenience of all these technologies it has made the process easier and more varied in my approach and conclusion of each task. Most of the technologies I hadn't used before but now I have a firmer understanding about how different technologies work, individually and together.

Some of the technologies I used:

• Digital Camera 
• Apple macs
• Blogger
• YouTube
• Mobile Phone
• iMovie
• Photoshop
• Film Projector
• Slideshare

Digital Camera

the digital camera was essential in most aspects of the tasks we had to complete. We used it for recording our music video, and audience feedback. We decided to use one camera for the recording of our video, to keep a continuity in terms of quality. We did not experience any problems with the camera other than it's battery life being poor, where we found ourselves changing the batteries constantly during a scene. Our progress with the cameras have improved in comparison with last year. We now have a better understanding of how to use a camera 
to promote a message or a representation.

Apple macs

The macs were again, essential in completing our tasks. we used i t to edit our music video on, create my magazine advert  and create my CD cover. We also used it for blogging and researching similar products such as music videos.I have had some experience with the Apple Macs and was fairly familiar with them. the only problem was that they constantly froze and kept crashing during our editing or designing which became frustrating.

Blogger

Blogger was probably one of the most important technologies we've used in this course. We were able to record everything we did through blogs posts. All of our finished products were able to be put on blogger to be displayed too. We've had experience with blogger before as we used it last year so we were familiar with the website. A problem we faced with blogger is that the images wouldn't show until you published a post so we had to memorize what we were analyzing most of the time.

YouTube

YouTube enabled us to research existing products like similar music videos. We were also able to use YouTube to upload our products and audience feedback, because it's easily accessible and easy to embed into blogger and other sources.

Mobile phone

We used our mobile phones in contacting each other when to film, and more importantly, taking location shots and behind the scene stills of our music video which we were easily able to upload to blogger.

iMovie

iMovie was essential, it was the only editing software we had so we had to make full use of it. I have had experience with iMovie from last years production but this year i learnt more features it owns such as effects. We did experience problems with iMovie, in that it kept freezing, quitting the program and overall slow performance so iMovie did get frustrating to work with.

Photoshop

Photoshop was a fun program to use which was very important in the creation of my Digipak and magazine advert. Photoshop has so many features I still learn new ones each time I use it even though having used it in my media lessons for three years. the only issue with Photoshop is that it can get complicated because it has very advanced features and effects.

Film Projector

The film projector was used to show our films in the showcase we held. The film projector enabled us to put a showing of all our videos for an audience. This then enabled us to gain our audience feedback and response. the film projector allowed us to show our music video in front of a wide and larger audience rather than showing them individually.

Slideshare

Before making my evaluation through Slideshare i was completely inexperienced with Slideshare, but it was easy enough to learn. It essentially just embedded a presentation in my blog post. Slideshare enabled me to use more technologies in my blog and helped me make my evaluation more interesting to read.

BH

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Here is a series of clips we filmed after a screening of our music video in front of an audience. We also filmed some of the audience reactions and here, we filmed some audience members and their response to the film and the questions we asked them about our film.
Here are the questions we asked each of our selected audience members:

1. How do you feel after watching the video?

2. What message do you think the video was trying to get across?

3. What do you think could be improved?

4. What was your favorite part of our film (if any)?

From question 1's response it seems the audience feel an emotional attachment to the music video and character (s) in it. The audience members do sympathize with the main character in our music video which reinforces the message and themes we are trying to portray in the video.

Question 2 shows that the messages we were trying to create through the narrative perspective of the music video are visible to the audience, which is one of the primary targets of the music video. The message that the audience notice  the most is that of the relationship between the character and his father which was one of the few main narratives of the video. 

Through question 3 we were able to understand how the video could be improved and what is essentially wrong with it. This is in my opinion the most important question because the criticism can help develop us as better film makers and primarily develop and improve our music video. The answer that was frequently raised was use of the same shots too often which i agree with, we should of taken more shots on more locations, perhaps with more narrative orientated shots.

overall I think our film did promote a message to the audience and the shots and locations worked well in the video to create n emotional attachment between the audience and the main character. But i do think our video could of improved with more varied shots and more use of narrative based scenes which will create a stronger relationship between the audience and character in the music video.

                                                                                                                             BH  

Evaluation question 2

How effective is the combination between your main product and ancillary task? 

 Here is a slideshow presentation on the links, similarities, themes and marketing relationships between each of my products and tasks to promote the album package 'Lego House'. this is including the Music video, Digipak, and magazine advert.


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Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your promotion package for your album use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real music videos?

Music Video

To us the most important component to our promotion package was the music video, it took the longest to plan and create, and is seen as the main part. In terms of sales in the music industry, music videos play major role in advertising and promoting new singles and tracks. So it was the most important part of the package to create.

 We had three directions to go with the creation of our music video, one was to make it solely a narrative based video, to make it performance orientated or a mixture of the two. With consideration that the mixture of the two sticks to the stereotypical conventions of a rap genre video, we went for this option. originally we planned for the video to be partially performance with different shots of the main artist rapping and the majority narrative, but the song lyrics portrayed little opportunity to make the video solely narrative based. We wanted to follow conventions like that of  the theory portrayed by Andrew Goodwin, that some typical forms and conventions for music videos is the relationship between lyrics and visuals.

We felt the best way for us to portray any message, like the themes and messages we did use in the final edit, would be through narrative and not performance, we managed to portray a poor relationship between the artist/character and his dad, his physical inability to write lyrics etc, which were all pointed out by the audience in the audience feedback. 

We stuck to the typical codes and conventions of the rap genre and it's videos but, with the element of pop and alternative genre through the Ed Sheeran chorus we altered from most primary conventions of typical videos of this genre. Such as the character not being set in urban looking environments and settings, but instead in typical town settings that most audience members can relate to, than being set in big city locations. The general attire of our main character conforms with that of the rap genre (hat, jacket, jeans etc) but the actions he performs isn't that typical of rap conventions.

Digipak

For the digipak I used a simplistic looking digipak theme, by having the cover white with Lego bricks that are in relationship with he album title bordering the image. 

My digipak design certainly challenges conventions of a typical rap cover. Usually the typical rap/pop CD cover contains the artist on the front or on the rap side, an urban theme shown through the  images or typography. I wanted a digipak that was simple and effective, by reinforcing the theme or title of an album like Jay-Z's Magna Carter Holy grail where he uses classical, historical artifact based images which are in relationship with the title, while keeping the simplistic element like AM.

Magazine Advert

My magazine advert is of both the artist's featured in the title track of the album, and main single Lego House. I have used both artists (Ed Sheeran and P Money) facing forward towards the camera. I have used themes from the digipak, such as the blue and red lines, symbolizing the artists performing in unison, and the white background. While using themes that are typical of Ed Sheeran as an artist including the paw and orange theme.

 My magazine does stick to the conventions of a typical magazine advert from similar artists. The ones i have researched before i designed the advert all contain the artist facing forward. Of all the components of my promotional package the magazine advert forms conventions of magazine adverts of similar genres and artists.

BH

Peer assessment

As a class each group sat down and watched each others music videos. we each had a single aspect to look at being either camera, mise en scene or editing depending on which group. Then everybody chipped in together with their comments and constructive criticism to help us understand from a media skills point of view,what was good, bad and could be improved.

We learnt that our strengths were the effects we used and the strong narrative or shots created. the most frequent point we could of improved on was the frequent use of same shots.

Media Showcase

For our audience feedback we had a media showcase to premiere all of the music videos and thrillers made by sixth form made by media study students. This helped us get an understanding of what the audience thought of our film and any criticisms or feedback they had towards it.

pictures and program provided by Liam Bowen and Jodie Philips

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