Chapter 24: Evaluation

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

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What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When I had received all the feedback that I needed and had analyzed it all thoroughly, I had come to the conclusion that there were certain things that I should have considered in the filming process. One thing that came up more than once was the story line, considering that I wanted to make a video that spoke for itself, people thought that it was difficult to follow the basic story line as much as I'd hoped.

The Audience feedback is very important as part of my research and so it was difficult to ask the public an intricate question that included media terms and detailed answers when most of the time, the person wouldn't understand what I was asking. I learnt that to get a more specific answer, you need to ask specific questions, but to the more detailed answers, you would need to ask either media students or members of the public that have a deeper meaning for the media world. The Temper Trap had originally become popular in their home country, Australia, and so I thought that it would ideal to have two 'Natives' give feedback for a band that they know and love. The two girls below are very strong followers of The Temper Trap and I was thankful that they were so close by when I needed them;

I also wanted to get a different country and begin to see how they found this certain music genre and the music video. This would give me the opportunity to see whether my video had made an impact on areas that weren't covered in the target audience. Two German students volunteered to answer some simple questions and I was please to find out that I had reached them. This meant that I had automatically enlarged my target audience and given the band more popularity than they had originally.

The advantage of living in a boarding house filled with a wide variety of nationalities was the fact that I could receive a lot more audience feedback. I also wanted audience feedback from all ages and so as you see from my video, I have included ages such 12-35 giving me another advantage of variety.

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

The combination of my main product and ancillary texts are effective and successful in the term of originality and popularity. One of the main reasons why my combination is so effective is because of the genre I have chosen. Indie music is very open to new ideas and new styles. Indie music (also known as Independent Music) is very experimental and alot of different styles of music are named as Indie and the reason for this is because their music style or the emphasis on their lyrics gives them an individuality that is so different to any other genre let alone the Indie genre they are currently in. One of my main aims was to give the Temper Trap an individual Indie style that would stand out, I felt that the music video that they currently have for "Sweet Disposition" wasn't very challenging and didn't give the band a chance to show off what they can do but at the same time show the public that they are individual and easy going.

I wanted the main product and the ancillary texts to be extremely different and so the music video became a very natural and very narrative. The digipack and the magazine ad were intended to be very different and so the designs for them were either very busy and extreme or very basic. This gave the band a very approachable personality and, in my opinion, has helped to widen their target audience and increase their popularity. The ancillary tasks were created with Photoshop CS4 and so the use of this high tech program gave me the opportunity to create something as high quality as any other ancillary texts that we see in magazines and album covers everywhere. My main product was something that i wanted to stand out compared to the ancillary texts but also have a relation to it also, and so the use of natural settings for the digipak design became the link between the main task and the ancillary tasks.

The natural setting gave the band a more down-to-earth image that also gave them the opportunity to liven up the image by creating other music videos that would be more extreme compared to my music video. This would also attract the public's eye as they begin to see different sides the band has to offer. My music video becomes the 'root' of the beginning of their future successes.

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How did you use media technologies in the constructions and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Chapter 23: Audience Response

Chapter 22: Final Magazine Advertisement

When looking at some of the advertisements, most of them have an image of the band. This may be a problem for me because of copyright on all of the images of The Temper Trap, but as I did some more research I found that some indie advertisements have a significant feature from the album and a basic background as advertisement. This is going to be my approach and I am aiming to extract the title from the digipak design and create a magazine ad that will, as the digipak, portray the band's individuality. I am going to stick to the same colour theme as it will assure similarity and the relationship between the album and its advertisement.

My finished product is shown below;

Chapter 21: Digipak Process & Final Product

Earlier in the year I had decided to create a similar styled album cover that The Temper Trap already had at the time. I wanted to incorporate the mosaic type pattern and the signature styled writing as part of the design, one of the main features I wanted for the digipak design was the main image that would be used to represent the band and its style of music. After looking through my research of the genre, Indie, I came to the conclusion that it is the type of music that is down to earth and more based around life events instead of 'sex, drugs and rock n roll'.

After take several hundreds of photographs I was able to choose this image;

What I liked this photo was the contrast between the silhouettes of the tree and it's branches, with the blue sky behind. I felt that this was extremely suitable for the band as it creates a unique type of imagery towards The Temper Trap and also portrays their style of life; Their music is the outline of the trees that reach out to so many different people, cultures and age groups and we are able to see how far these musicians have reached to satisfy every aspect of their target audience. This also indicates that the album has something for everyone and doesn't have to be loved by Indie lovers alone, but by anyone.

I then began to experiment with mosaic type of effects using Adobe Photoshop CS4. Below are my favourite three effects using the image above;

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The first effect was automatically the type of effect that I wanted but I began to feel like this type of effect was extremely similar to The Temper Trap's current album cover and so I decided to go for the next best thing. The second effect was ideal for having both similarity and conflict for my album cover and so after I had finished contrasting the darker and lighter colours of the image, cropping the image to the right size with the more detailed part of the photo was done, I was able to begin looking at the logo for The Temper Trap. I wanted to keep the logo in the top left hand corner as I felt that this was something the band would do to portray their individuality.

My top three logos are shown below;

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As you can see, the third logo attempt is different compared to the first two, the reason for this was as I was experimenting, I placed the logo in different areas of the image to see the certain type of effects that would be created and this certain image was a possibility that I thought could work, but after looking at them again I felt that the first one was more appropriate for the band. It supports the individuality of the band and gives the audience the sense of importance as it seems the band signed the front of the album.

It was then on to the title of the album and the fonts that I would use and also the location of the title. These are shown below;

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I felt that when it came to this part of creating the digipak, the title becomes very important for the design and so I struggled finding the one font/position to make the album look professional but to also keep the individuality of the band. For these two specific reasons I felt that the first design was suitable.

Final Digipak Design:

Front & Back & Fold In Piece ( CLICK TO ENLARGE);

Inside (CLICK TO ENLARGE);

Chapter 20: Final Music Video

I have officially finished my filming. Several tweaks were made to the video compared to the animatic. I felt that i could do a lot more in the narrative than what I had planned and is shown in the animatic. I added more shots to the video to create a sense of timing and accuracy as well as an upbeat and interesting narrative story that could be interpreted widely by its target audience, thus giving them a deeper meaning of the video and the sense of a connection between the band and them, personally.

The final product is shown below;

Chapter 19: Filming Finished, Editing Started

I am now currently working on two aspects of my coursework, the editing and the digipak design. I aim to get most of the editing done by the end of next week and so I will be updating this specific entry for the next few days. Editing will be done on Final Cut Pro and the digipak design will be done on Adobe Photoshop.

I began by looking through the footage I had taken and began to put them in order, trying to stick to the times for each shot I have been able to do this without importing the music so far. This, however, may cause complications further on in the editing process. I am also considering changing some of the shots as during filiming i was able to get some good shots that weren't in the storyboard.

I began to find it difficult to fit the shots without the music and so I imported the music and began to cut the shots to the beat of the music. I found that some of the footage taken had a lot more going on and so I have begun to incorporate other footage to the video to make it flow more. With the additional footage used, I am able to create an effortless story line. The editing process is a slow one and it is taking time to incorporate all the original shots that I had planned and the comparison with the actual footage taken. This means that more footage is used in the music video yet giving the final video to be more solid and unique.

Chapter 18 - Filming & It's Complications

After spending two weeks on filming my music video I have now completely finished filming and will begin editing next week. Whilst filming I came across several problems that meant that either changes had to be made to the story board or the settings for certain scenes had to changed. Most of the problems I had were with the mise en scene; outdoor scenes had to be filmed quickly and at the right time as we are coming up up to christmas and day light was minimum.

One of the scenes that was meant to be recorded in the lower light was difficult to film as the camera struggled to make out the three actresses walking towards it and so that shot had to be changed to be a scene walking down the main street.

My main issue was the time of year that I was aiming for. When looking at the story board we find that there are lots of shots that include the sun and so we struggled to get shots with the sun (especially when weather had been extremely bad). The outcome for this was to change the time of year from summer to winter.