4) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I have watched and listened carefully to the audience feedback that i received and learnt a few things from them.
All three people I interviewed commented on the song choice and have said that they really liked that.
I have found that we should have mainly improved on our editing as we had a few glitches and getting it all to look smooth.
We also should have had more angles with the studio shots and a few more shots at the locations.
Our narration was good and it all linked well with prostitution and religion, the costume also worked well in this aspect.
There is one shot of the girl walking that doesn't look quite right because of the way the light hits her face so we should have redone that shot again to look better.

Our locations shots were good, especially at the start of our video when our girl is looking down on the Canary Wharf and the rest of London. 

Final video on Vimeo -

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

I mainly used websites like :

Google was mainly used for images to use on my digipak, advert and to also look at Coldplay's digipaks and student ones to get a general idea from them. I took screenshots of images I needed from google and uploaded them to my posts or used them on the digipak. I usually searched for certain things that I needed like, record label company logo's and the bar code.
Wikipedia was used to get information on Coldplay, Copyright infringement information to use on my Digipak and for other various minor things.
Youtube was used to look at student music videos, Coldplay's videos, Other videos that we were influenced by and Artists that didn't have band members in their video. I typed in certain band names into youtube and looked at several of their videos and picked the ones that applied to our music video idea of having a narrative video without much view of any of the band members.
Lastly blogger was used to blog all my progress, post everything I have learnt and what I have done and just for the entire planning, research and evaluation.

I also used programs like :

Photoshop CS4 was used to make my Digipak on it and also my advertisement.

I used various brushes from deviantart.com on my digipak.
I used took like the brush and bucket. The bucket was used to make the whole digipak black and the brush tool was to use all the downloaded brushes I possibly could. I also used the text tool to write my text on the digipak and change the colour of that text. 

Final cut pro was used to edit our music video and we used a few effects like changing the contrast, hue, fading effect and also edited it to be in sync with the actual song. My group members focused on getting everything all in sync whereas I focused on adding the fades and playing around with the contrast and hue till I found something that I felt worked well.

This was the template I used on photoshop to do my Digipak to start it. 

Lastly we used a professional video camera to film all our shots for our music video and a tripod to keep the camera on so that our shots are steady rather than shaky and tacky.

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

There are several bands that have digipaks that are graphical only which challenge the conventions of having the band members on a digipak cover. The band digipaks i looked at do not have the main band members on the front cover at all nor do they have them on the advertisement. I was influenced by this idea and it is what got me to have my digipak graphic based only.
Examples of this are :

For my digipak i used this template to start:

I then started editing it on photoshop using a bunch of different brushes from Deviantart.com to get my digipak to look like :

I got all the copyright stuff from wikipedia and record label logo images from google.
I also looked at a few digipaks that I owned to help with the way everything was set out.
My digipak has the front cover with the album name, the back cover with 8 songs, record label logo, websites and copyright text.
Then it has the CD itself with a design and the artists name and album name.
Lastly next to the CD template are the band members names, design and sound members and also the "thank you" note.

Secondly I made an advertisement for this digipak :

My advertisement has both the artists name and the album name. It looks like the front cover of the album so that it can be recognised.
It has a 4 star rating from NME and it is out in hmv and on itunes.
It also includes the website of the band and of the record company. 

I also done the advert on Photoshop CS4 using the same brushes I used on my digipak. 

The digipak links with the music video as it has the song name as the album cover and on the inside it has a image of a cross which is what we used in our music video.

That image is from the music video.

And the one above is from the digipak. 

Since we done Coldplay's song I was inspired by one of their album covers with my own.
They also have a paint like effect on their album cover so I got the idea from there and applied it to my own digipak.

The above image is of Coldplay's digipak cover. 

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (part 2)

Like the screen shot above from Coldplay's viva la vida we took a side shot of our main girl's face at in a high spot. 

Coldplay's video Viva la vida had a church shot and we also done the same as it went well with the lyrics of the song and what it represents.

We had out main girl in the music video to dress in revealing "prostitute" like clothing as if felt it linked well with the song since the song is about a person who once had everything and lost it.
We had her wear this :

She wore ripped fishnet stockings, studded high heels, shorts, a tight black top and a leather jacket.

She also had strong bright red lipstick on and heavy eye makeup to make her look more "prostitute" like.

At the start of the video we had the view of London because in the song it says "I used to rule the world" so having the girl look down on London from a high spot is symbolising her once having "ruled" the world.

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media?

Our media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media as there were a few videos we were influenced by that were by bands but did not often have the band members in the video but rather someone to act out the video. This does not occur often with bands, usually the singer at least is the main focus of a band and there are usually shots of the rest of the band members playing their instruments or simply part of the video so this is what made us challenge that idea, we changed it and had to have a girl in our video that was not part of the band and few shots of the band members. A few music videos that use this idea and influenced us are :

And :

Lastly the video we done our own to was Coldplay's viva la vida. We were most inspired by it. For example in our video we have shots outside a Church and in Coldplay's video they also have shots outside a church. It worked well with the lyrics since the lyrics talk about religion and Saints. Our video uses Andrew Goodwin's theory of amplification, disjuncture and illustration. This is shown as our video uses clear illustration since it is telling a story and it is linking with the song lyrics. The costume and location shots express the feelings and mood in the video. It also uses amplification as the song is about someone losing everything they have and not believing in religion any longer, this is evident in our video since we have shots of the girl standing in front of a church but not actually entering and holding a cross in her hand but putting it away.

Our planning for our music video when it got changed.

• Our target audience was anyone form the ages 18+ that are both male and female.
• The song we picked was Coldplay - Viva la vida.
• We based the music video around the lyrics of this song.
• The song talks about someone losing everything good they had and hence losing faith in religion and hope.
• We showed this by having the main girl in our music video look like a prostitute.  We made this visible by having her wear tight shorts, a tight black top that showed cleavage, ripped stockings matched perfectly by studded heels. She walks by places like Churches but does not enter them due to her lost faith/belief. 
• We start the video on a semi mountain/cliff with a huge view because the song starts by saying "I used to rule the world", therefore the main girl is looking down at the world in front of her but it's not just any world. She is specifically looking down at Greenwich and the Canary Wharf, a significant part of London. 
• We also have some shots of her at her house to show that she was once just an ordinary girl but because of the horrors she'd seen she had become something that was no longer her.
• The majority of the time we only see the girl. We chose to do this because the song talks about being alone/loneliness and we wanted to represent this by her solitude.
• In some parts we have the lead singer in the studio. It is a song done by a band and we needed at least one of the members visible in the video at some point to show that this was a song composed by male band members and that the lead singer was male not female. 
• The line "I know Saint Peter won't call my name" shows that this person no longer has any hope or faith. We show this by having shots of the Cross but the Cross gets put away by our main girl to symbolise her lack of faith.
• The settings for our music video were Reem's home, Greenwich and a Church in Highbury. We picked these places because they all fit perfectly with the song. The house shows how her life once was and how everything was in control, Greenwich park is where she is looking down on everything and lastly the Church to convey how she has lost everything and the religious part of the lyrics. 
• The music video would be shown on Kerrang, Scuzz, MTV, Youtube, bands website, other sites and magazines like NME and Rocksound .

My digipak

My advertisement for digipak

This is our final edit of our music video
Cold Play - Viva La Vida

Rough Cut -

Location Shots -

1. Reem's House

2. A Church

3. Greenwich Park





Filming - Day 3 (Greenwich Park) -