Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

                                          

Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

Question 1 - In what way does your music video use the conventions of real media texts?

Final Music Video

This is our final music video, I feel it went well as we used various editing, camerawork and lighting techniques in order to make the shots different and avoided repetition.

In terms of editing, I feel the video reversal worked well as the song had a 'to and fro' beat so the forward and backwards video effect worked well. I think that the superimposition shots worked well as they showed the relationship between the artists in the vague narrative by them being in the same place on camera but are actually in different locations. The time lapse of the clouds passing by worked well as it suited the slow pace of the song and the genre of indie pop. We used cuts that went to the beat of the song to make the visuals parallel to the audio, but also made some cuts that were off-beat in order to make it unique and more interesting for the audience. On the shots in which the female artist was on her own, we added a black and white filter effect in order to reflect her emotions. We feel this came through as we had a vague narrative but still wanted to tell a story with the video. We used keyframing to zoom into the artist's phone which then continued to play a video from that starting position, I think this went well as it is a more complex editing technique, this could have been improved by making the zoom more smooth. The shot where the male artist disappears from the frame I think worked well as it had a smooth transition to the female artist on her own and the image turning to black and white. This again showed the artists' relationship in a more effective way.

In terms of camerawork, I think that we used a variety of different and dynamic shots in order to make the video more interesting. For example, the use of the 'vlog' style footage when the artists are playing bowling works well as it shows what the artists are like and shows some of their personas to the audience. We used some extreme close-ups on the artist's mouth when she lip synchs so the audience focuses on the lyrics and to avoid using repetitive close-ups. We experimented with the composition of our shots, for example when we placed the artists at either side of the frame so only half of their faces were shot and it appears they are far apart. I think that the focus pull when the artist goes underwater in the bath works well as it could symbolise her vision as it goes blurry when in water and we feel it works well with the songs pace and overall feel. I think we used some interesting shots at the swings location, for example, we used a point of view shot from the male artist's perspective, looking at the female artist swinging on the swings beside him, we also used a point of view shot from the female artist's perspective when she looks down whilst she swings. I feel this works well as it is a similar style to other indie pop music videos.

In terms of lighting, I think the silhouette shots worked well as they give a clear outline of the artist and set the mood for the video in the fist shot, this lighting technique also worked well with the extreme close-up when the artist was lip synching. I think the blue tinted and wave projection lighting worked well as it fitted in with the lyrics of the song and reflects a calming mood to the video.

Overall, I think that our final video did well as it uses the conventions of music videos and of the indie pop genre, by using editing, camerawork and lighting in order to achieve this. If I were to improve from this, I would refine the editing in places, such as the zoom to the phone screen, I would also use more creative shots to add even more dynamics to the video.

Final Album Advertisement

This is our final album advertisement. We have included the following conventions:
artist name, album name, release date, reviews, singles included, social media, an image of the artist, image of the album cover.

I feel that this went well as we have followed conventions of professional album advertisements and used them to make ours as realistic as possible. I also feel this went well as we have used various Photoshop techniques in order to get to this result. For example, re-colouring the artist's eye on the polaroid photo by using the overlay tool, using brightness and contrast to match the polaroid photo to the overall photo of the artist. I also feel this worked well as we have used the same colour scheme as our digipack, therefore our products have synergy between them. I also feel we have integrated the social media icons into the advert well by changing the colour of them to the same as the rest of the poster and digipack.

I think that we have improved from our first draft of our advertisement as it is more interesting as we have made it different to usual advertisements by making it landscape. It also has a clean finish as we have not used a full-bleed photo so it does not appear to be crowded with the text and images.

Final Digipack

This is our final digipack product, I think that it went well as we have used synergy throughout with the same background texture and shade of blue, we have also linked the panels through the use of images as they all have an image of the artist or of a polaroid camera/polaroid prints. We made the front cover more complex as we used opacity settings to add a layer of water texture  which also means it links with the polaroid picture panel as it has an image of flowers in water.

We used digipack conventions in order to make ours more realistic, for example, we included the artist and album name and image of artist on the front cover, track list, record label logo, record label information and barcode on the back cover, and for the remaining panels, made sure we made synergy between them by using the same colour scheme and similar images.

I think this is an improvement from our first draft of our digipack as we have made it more complex, for example on the front cover, added a water texture layer on the main image, used the wood textured background, added a paint splat behind the bottom left panel photo to fill some negative space, changed the top right panel from just the glowing 'R' by continuing with the polaroid theme and showing the artist's various outfits that we also used in our music video in order for the artist's persona to show through to the audience.