Note to examiner

Dear Examiner, 

I hope you enjoy delving into my blog to witness the development of my project and the progression of my skills throughout. I had a great time working on my Media Studies coursework and I hope you enjoy this blog! 

Megan :) 

My Final Music Video

 

Final Digipak

Whole Digipak

  

Single Panels

Final Magazine Advert

Final Changes to Ancillaries - Professional Standard Changes (Annotated)

Final changes to ancillaries

My audience feedback was extremley positive but gave me many things to think about for improvements. Though I have evaluated my ancillaries I decided to create final tweaks to my digipak and magazine advert to illustrate my final pieces in my blog. The changes I made are explained below. Though I did not develop the ancillaries according to new designs, I fine tuned them to have complete, professional ancillary texts which pair with my music video to create my final, professional , industry style marketing package.

- Improving shadows on photographs - I utilised photoshop tools like 'layers' to lighten shadows on the images of The 1975 'Frontman' found on my magazine and digipak. This allowed me to elevate the star image in the final piece.  Below is an industry example of portraiture used with no shadows visible :

- Creating an industry style photoshop edit of my photographs - I used the blurr tool on photoshop to create an 'even' base for my frontman. As many magazine adverts and digipaks are manipulated to 'perfect' the star image I decided to focus on the visuals of my portraiture photographs. Though the industry is known for editing images to create 'perfect' visages, I decided to keep a somewhat natural visage with some 'imperfections' still slightly visible as THE 1975 brand relies on being true to yourself with transparency between fans and the band. An example of industry standard, 'perfect' visage is below :

- Ensuring my design and all text stands out for commercial use - I used the Gaussian Blur tool on photoshop to ensure my fonts and titles would be able to standout among other magazines and albums on commercial shelves and websites. I also made sure my image had a lower brightness to create a darker background for the white font of my title. Below is an example of an industry standard text with background :

THESE CHANGES MADE TO MY OWN PRODUCTS ARE FOUND IN THE FOLLOWING POST

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3 - Part C

Finally I collected audience feedback for my magazine advert, I decided to evaluate my findings by putting the results from my focus group into graphs. They are as followed :

Evaluation - Question 3 - Part B

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

Part B (Digipak Feedback)

I have also collected audience feedback for my digipak but this was completed in various structured interviews, here is the video of these interviews. 

Evaluation - Question 3 - Part A

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

Part A (Music Video Feedback)

Evaluation - Question 2

                           

The branding combined with my conventions used in my ancillaries is highly effective. In terms of the branding of photography I gave some short examples below :
- Frontman - Very typical of bands to include images of frontmen and significant band members on the digipak and all advertising like my magazine advert.
- Floral imagery - Typical of The 1975 band who utilise floral motifs in many examples of their branding like their music videos. 
-  Graphic design - Typically indie and found in many existing digipaks due to the interesting use of colour and shapes. 

Evaluation - Question 1

Audience Feedback - Digipak and Magazine Ad

Create your own user feedback survey

Audience Feedback - Final Draft

Create your own user feedback survey

Final Edit Music Video - Paris

 

Draft 3 digipak - New design

Draft 3 Magazine Ad - New design

Liquify Edits - How they were made

Draft 3 - Paris

Filming and Editing - Draft 2

For our second draft we had many filming and editing session to complete, this video explain our approach and my response to the sessions. 

Draft 2 - Music Video

Magazine Ad Draft 2

Digipak Draft 2

To Do List - Post Draft 1 Feedback

Feedback - Draft 1

Commentary - Draft 1 reflection

Changes after Draft 1

Editing for Draft 1

Filming for Draft 1

Audience Feedback - Draft 1 to Draft 2 Video

As we decided to completely develop our narrative and create a new music video I decided to trial my music video from draft one with a selection of people from within my target audience and a few people who fall outside of the 16-25 year old bracket. After gathering feedback from this group I decided I would then show the same group draft 2 to gather thoughts on the development of the drafts. 

I collected my results and evaluated these :





These charts illustrate some breakdowns of the groups's opinions regarding each aspect of the video in the first draft (our feedback for our second draft will be evaluated in an interview post production of final draft):

Original images before manipulation

Here are our original photographs which we plan to use for our digipak and magazine advert. This could change throughout the process but are the raw images and the best of each set from each shoot which could be used.

Titles

Chloe and I decided to develop our previous titles and make them relevant to this project, as music videos include titles of studios and other companies. Because of this we planned to utilise our own produced titles but wanted to develop the colours from red and blue to pink and blue as we believe the 3D style is effective but have decided to use pink and blue as our core colour scheme in our marketing package. The titles can be seen below :

  
The 3D style is appreciated by our fan base alongside the pink and blue colours. Pink and blue are main colours in our marketing package as the shades compliment the genre and target audience. As 'indie'music is becoming more popular with teenagers the style of fans changes. After researching online we found the fans of 'The 1975' and teenagers who appreciate the genre like to include these colours in their 'social media themes'. Because of this we believe the titles will attract our target audience and add another layer of appeal to our overall marketing. 

We tested our titles with our class peers who fit our target audience and recieved positive responses all round, this made us decide not to develop other designs and instead focus on filming. 

Draft- Music Video

Draft 1 - Magazine advert

Draft 1 - Digipak Panels

Camera movement shots - Practice

We have began filming over the past week and started to look at camera movement, these practice shots will be completed  during lesson time before we complete our main filming sessions over the following fortnight. This activity also allowed us to work on editing, pacing and equiptment practice. As we have not utilised a stabiliser or rig before we thought this would be the prime time to test our skills and knowledge. After this activity we feel more equpit to film our music video and will be using all appropriate skills developed in this task. 



We tested this video on our target audience in a focus group setting and found the following :

Ben
' I like the close-up shots and different angles in this, the movements were cool but I would like to see more variation and use of camera settings. '

Emily
' The handheld shots appealed to me and I loved the pans with close-up that worked really well, I would like this maybe for detailed shots in the music video. '

James
' Overall, it worked well but some shots were boring. So many angles and the speed wasn't consitent. I would work on some areas but the location was interesting.'

Ellie
' Personally, I like the use of movement in the shots and some static ones too. I agree with Ben that maybe some camera settings would be nice but it was great. '


From this we have decided to work on camera settings and maybe look into more shot variation. The close-up success has been consdiered and made us revise our original shot plan. This activity gave us a positive boost and makes us want to experiment more with our new skills.

Digipak Inspirations

Distribution of Ancillary Tasks

Myself and work partner Chloe decided to work collaboratively to produce our ancillary texts of a digipak for The 1975 album and a poster to market this. Chloe and I decided to plan our texts together and worked towards creating drafts before finalising our products. In order to split tasks and work to our individual strengths. Below are the tasks we allocated :

Digipak : Photography - Megan
          Graphics - Megan
          Fonts - Megan
          Colour Choice - Decided Together
          Photo Editing - Chloe
          Print - Chloe
          Layout - Decided together  

Poster : Photography - Chloe
         Photo Editing - Megan
         Fonts and colour choice - Decided together 
         Graphics and print - Megan  
         Layout - Decided together  

Though we planned a basic design together but the production will be split equally with responsibilty shared for each task and we both will take on the finalising of editing 3 digipak panels each. Overall, we will share responsibility and still consult each other when each significant edits have been made. 

Update Post Anicallry Production, I finalised and produced the lyric panel,front cover and CD design with input from Chloe who completed the production of the remaning.See below :

 

Props list

We have created a list of props that we will be using in our music video, here is an inforgraphic to explain which props will be used and why. This may develop during production based upon the narrative and any changes. 

    

Risk assessment

Chloe and I decided to take a session of planning to assess the risks we may face when filming in our chosen locations. As we have decided to utilise many public, outdoor locations we believe it is important to check which possible risks can occur as we want to protect our cast and make sure filming environments are effective and the best quality possible.

 

Location recee shots

We found during audience research that urban locations were popular among our target audience, a range of other locations also scored well in the questionnaire which has impacted our location choices. As our narrative follows teenagers we want our locations to reflect the type of places teenagers will visit in reality, because of this careful consideration allowed us to finalise our choices of locations which we have receed.

Locations we will use :

-Teen bedroom
-University open day
-Local fields 
-Museum/art gallery 
-Local town 
-Canal/nature reserve 
- Film in living room

Location by Megan Russell

Storyboard

Chloe and I decided to take a two hour session to evaluate our narrative and scene ideas which then allowed us to transfer our ideas into a storyboard which provides an outline of scenes which will be edited in sequence. We understand we will include many more individual frames when producing our music video but decided to stick to base scene content as we will be sticking to a number of scenes and putting these into varying sequences to give a narrative with mixed tenses and order. The basic list of scenes will be as followed :

-The scrapbook
-The flower
-The bike ride
-The open day
-The art gallery
-The film night
-The goodbye
-The performer

Here are the storyboard documents :

Costume shots

We have previously explored our characters and have sinced planned costumes for each actor which we will be using during filming to give an authentic and effective narrative. 


 CHARACTER         COSTUMES                               

Protagnist        Check shirt, band tee, ripped jeans            
'Emo'        

Best Friend       Tye-dye top, bright colour, jeans
Artsy       

Friend 1          Joggers, cycling shirt,trainers      
Sporty        

Friend 2          Hat, hoodie, glasses and jeans      
Nerdy        

Friend 3          Pink vest, blue jeans, trainers      
Girly         

Friend 4          Docs, jeans, jumper


Boyfriend         Jeans and shirt       
Dominant      

Performer        Dark jeans and jumper   


We have decided to create a character profile with costume and information on representation which will feature in our music video.      

Filming schedule

We have devised this filming schedule based upon our casting and narrative, this may not be a strict timetable as we are unsure which memebers of our cast will be available. The schedule will be a rough outline which we will refer to during our filming period and will be sent to all involved.

Characters and casting

Our narrative will be focused around a female protaganist and her friends, particullarly her best friends. The group will all represent various personalities and seterotypes , because of this we will be casting the protaganists and minor characters to ensure the narrative is realistic and reletable for our young target audience. 


CHARACTER ---  NAME ---- STEREOTYPE --- ACTOR 

Protagnist     Rosie      Emo           Chloe

Best Friend    Gemma      Artsy         Csenge

Friend 1       Karen      Sporty        Sophie

Friend 2       Lucy       Nerdy         Amelia

Friend 3       Lily       Girly         Ellie

Friend 4       Storm      Music fan     Megan

Boyfriend      Gareth     Dominant      Ben 

Performer       Matty      Cool         James

Audience feedback analysis

From previous audience questionnaires I have analysed some results to ensure I can understand the preferences of my target audience before creating my own music video. Below are findings I believe are important and will impact my music video creation. 

        

Draft of magazine advert and digipak

Draft of magazine advert with internet images :



Photography we will need to complete :
Mid-shot portrait with flower props

Draft of digipak :





Photography we will need to complete :
Still life, arial shot of flowers and book pages

Feedback has been collected in a focus group, these findings have been uploaded previously. 

Feedback for mockups

Chloe and I decided to hold a focus group with some people who fit our target audience to see what kind of reaction the digipak and magazine advert design would receive. Our findings allowed us to evaluate our next steps and are below :

Mock up - Digipak

Chloe and I began to discuss and plan our digital and magazine advert which we will be creating alongside our music video as features in our marketing package. We firstly decided on a fake album name and which elements of our narrative we want to incorporate from our music video into our marketing package. 

We decided to produce mock ups which give a simple indication to our designs and annotations to illustrate our ideas further. We came up with an idea each and drafted these out together before incorporating the elements that worked best into our final mock ups. 

DRAFTS

Here are our drafts for our digipak with annotations, we decided utilise an aesthetic we know is successful within our target audience whilst featuring props which are relevant to our narrative. An example is the use of flowers and photographs which are items we wish to utilise in our music video to reinforce the romantic and nostalgic theme. 

We both believed colour and images to be the best way to incorporate the band's style and include conventional use of still life images that relate to our narrative, the band's star image and audience appeal. Like the digipaks created for The 1975 both of our drafts do not feature images of the band which we believe attracts the audience and will work well in our product. We knew we would design our back cover and spine once our final piece was completed.
                                                   

FINAL

This is our final design for our digipak, we decided to utilise contemporary colours and boarders in the design as it reflects the style of The 1975 our music video. As for colours we have labelled pink and blue as our chosen theme as we believe these colours will compliment the style of the band and our marketing package. The use of an open book with flowers laying on top is an effective use on conventional still life images whilst remaining unique and in keeping with the star image of absence. 

The spine and back cover for the digipak are also minimal as the focal point of the back cover is the song title list and the minimal petal design which creates continuity in the design.
Colours will also create continuity in the design and the conventional use of numbers, legal ownership information and barcodes etc have been featured to indicate the overall layout. 


Feedback :
To be collected in focus group

Mock up - Magazine advert

After completing mock ups and designs for our digipak Chloe and I moved on to addressing our magazine advert designs. We worked in a similar way producing ideas for magazine adverts and creating a draft each before creating a final piece together with our favourite elements and conventions. We decided to take inspiration from our digipaks and music video narrative and then worked on our layout and final designs.


DRAFT
These are the annotated drafts we produced for our music magazine advert, we reassessed our previous research into magazine adverts for album releases and incorporated our narrative and digipak design. We both decided that the protagonists from our music video and significant symbols should be utilised to interest our target audience. The colours have not yet been decided as we would like to trial different uses of colour though we do know pink and blue hues will be found in our other products. 

The conventions for music magazines were also considered when making our drafts with the placing of ratings, reviews, titles etc but we have decided to produce a minimal composition with the main photography as our key focal point.

FINAL

The use of flowers and our protagonist is key in our magazine advert as we want to pull in our target audience through aesthetic and intrigue. 
 We utilised the band title, album title, release date and rating in the poster design as these conventions attract our target audience as discussed in a focus group format. Overall, we agreed the photography to be key in our magazine advert and favoured this design in our final piece as it is both relevant and effective.

FEEDBACK:

To be collected in focus group 

Pitch - Delevering in class 12/09/17

I will be delivering a presentation with my team partner Chloe to our class in school time in order to provide feedback from our peers regarding our initial plans, song choice and development. The presentation can be seen below




We have also provided feedback sheets to the class to provide us with information based on their thoughts towards the information provided in our presentation. These results will be show in a new post with analysed feedback. 

Lyric analysis

Chloe and I decided to sit down and analyse the lyrics to the song 'Paris' by The 1975 so we could ensure our narrative will be relevant to the lyrical content as our target audience enjoy a music video which correspond with lyrical content. We listened to the song and then printed a lyric copy to analyse, we decided to analyse the lyrics with our own understanding and then decided to look into interviews with the musician and lyricist Matty Healy to consolidate the meaning he wished to convey in his lyrics. Below is the analysis we completed

Initial Ideas

So far myself and Chloe have produced initial brainstorms to produce ideas for our narrative. We are currently working on details for our narrative we have chosen and are working together to plan detailed aspects like costume, characters, shot plans etc. Below are plans we have created together from initial ideas which we will be adding to when we have solidified our ideas further.