Final music video

Final website

DJ Amnesia Official Website

Final CD digipack

Evaluation question 4 video

Script for the evaluation question 4-How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation on stages?

G - We used a large variety of media technologies in the production and post production of our media coursework. All examples mentioned were vital in the creation of the final product.

T - On the day of the shoot we used a Blackmagic URSA mini 4k this ultra high definition camera which has 3,840x2,160 pixels in comparison to 1080p 1920x 1080.

A - I was briefed on how to use the digital clapper board which played our chosen song through the speakers. The time code on the Ipad's screen at the beginning of each shot made editing far easier for Teddy when he needed to match the mp3 file to the shots we produced on the day. A short drumbeat followed by a snare gave a countdown for the artist and crew to get ready before the lipsyncing began.

G - We set up a Canon 5D on a tripod throughout the shoot day to capture a timelapse consisting of a picture every 20 seconds. This documented the shoot day for us in a small amount of time which was really interesting to see at the end of the day

T -  Manually adjusting the white balance was the next vital step so the colours looked as good as possible before shooting began. Zebra warnings informed us of areas in the shot that were too bright. I reduced the aperture so only the artists straight jacket was displaying zebras as this was the point of focus against the strong white padded walls. Using premier pro in post production I fixed these over exposed areas. Before we could start we needed to setup a TV to display our cameras footage live for the rest of the team to see. This was incredibly helpful when it came down to using the jib and being unable to look into the camera's viewfinder it was very helpful.

A - We used a composition app on an Iphone to make sure the shots were correctly composed. This saved time when it came to moving the bigger camera into position.

G - The first shots of the artist lipsyncing required a 85mm fixed lens to get up and close to capture his facial expressions. When we needed to capture more of the room we used the 25mm for a mid shot which really set the location of the shoot.

T - We set up a TV to display our cameras footage live for the rest of the team to see. This was incredibly helpful when I had to use the jib to pan up the hanging mans body. It is impossible to look into the camera's viewfinder whilst attached to the rig so the TV worked great for both me and the team mate on the back. This also helped Gabi work out how fast to push the dolly whilst I filmed and moved the camera.

A - YouTube enabled us to research existing real media texts, most importantly music videos. We took conventional themes that inspired us and when it came to planning our video It helped us to know what conventions we still needed. Additionally YouTube allowed us to upload our final music video into Hurtwood channel so it was a way of distributing our final product and making it more accessible for audiences to view.

G - Pinterest was also very helpful in the research stage. When it came to creating mood boards, which we used as inspiration for an initial idea this helped us to develop our ideas and find something original. I used wix to create a website for DJ Amnesia, Wix gave us the access to various tools which made our product far more creative and interesting.

T - When we edited our video we used colour grading to help bring out our music video. We used a slight hint of pink to show that our artist is girly as this would relate to our target audience. This made the video look more edgy and appealing to the audience. As our song is very fast paced we decided to make our cuts fast. For example, in the UV set the cuts are rapid, this helps as it goes to the beat of the song and is interesting for the audience to watch. We did this by using the arrow keys to slowly move along our footage,  and then we found the point at which the frequency was highest on the playback clip, then we knew to cut the video, using the blade tool at the point and then drag the clip back along the timeline in order for it to be correctly synced.

A - Adobe Premiere Pro is a professional of the shelf program that our group used to edit the music video. We had to look at all the clips and decide which shots were going to make the cut.

G - We needed all the clips to be in the preferred order and we also didn’t want to keep clicking on the same clips over and over again so we decided to name all of them after the types of shot they were which made the whole editing process much easier for Teddy later down the line once he finished the performance cut.

T - After naming all the clips we had to remove the audio and I began moulding this large set of clips into a fluent video. Using the timeline tool to zoom in on the arrangement of the clips.

T - I used Adobe Photoshop to create the Artists CD Digipack, using the empty CD Digipak template I worked with the bleed line and guides to place my set of underwater photographs on top. Using adobe lightroom I boosted the saturation and contrast in the set of images to make the colour ‘pop’ which matches what we did in the music video by overexposing the straightjacket. The layers and cropping function helped fit the different images into the shapes of the guide and using the layers pallet I was able to place the legal information such as disclaimers and the barcode.

Evaluation task 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation on stages?

During the process of creating our product, we used a variety of different digital technology to make our campaign more creative and so that my blogger can contain a lot more than just Power Point Presentation for example. Today during the lesson I dropped down some of the technologies that we have used and their main functions. So, that, for example, we used our iPhones quite regularly in order to record all the stages of what we were doing and that put them on our blog. Computer (Apple Mac computer) helped us during our editing process, as the whole work was done on it.
In terms of making our blog nice and pretty and with the use of different programs, we used Pinterest, which is a really good program for presenting something, we also used prezi which is another way of presenting our work and we were also using YouTube a lot, mainly to search for similar and relevant music videos from where we could get some inspiration.
In terms of editing : we used Adobe Pro for our music video, Photoshop for our CD digipack and Wix for our website.

Evaluation task 3- What have I learned from my audience feedback?

Focus group

What is a focus group? 

A focus group is a small, but demographically diverse group of people whose reactions are studied especially in market research or political analysis in guided or open discussions about a new product or something else to determine the reactions that can be expected from a larger population.

We have created some questions for our focus group.
1). What is your gender?
2). How old are you?
3). Have you seen a concept of a hanging man in any other music video?
4). Is the hanging man in any other music video?
5). Is the hanging man/underwater worms putting you off?
6). Do you think that the mad theme is presented in a good way?
7). Do you think that the hanging man is the artist or the DJ?

When we were gathering our audience feedback we received very different ones and every single person liked different things. Some people enjoyed the dancer some found a hanging man an interesting part of the music video. Usually, most of the videos have a narrative, ours doesn't and some people didn't understand that the DJ is something that is in the head of a hanging man. Overall I think that people enjoyed watching our music video and found it interesting and entertaining.

YouTube statistics

Here are some YouTube statistics on our music video.
The first screenshot shows the dates when the music video was watched by different people and when was the highest interest in it and when was the lowest.



This table shows how many males and females watched it and what their age was.



This screenshot shows the total watch time in minutes, how many views there were and also how many males and females watched it.



This table shows the countries where the video was watched, watch time in minutes, how many views, average view duration and average percentage viewed.



Here is just a general information that includes top geographies, gender, traffic sources and playback locations.

Evaluation task 2

Evaluation Task 2 

Conclusion for evaluation task 2

I think we have been very effective in communicating a star image as part of a campaign. Obviously the star image that we wanted to promote is a new artist and not a well known one. We have been trying to create our star image to be creepy and weird at the same time and the main point was all about identity and being an individual and not following others. His look helped us to show it to the audience as he was wearing a white hospital costume.

I also feel like I have given the campaign a unique selling point through the star image as our music video doesn't follow the conventions as a man hanging from the ceiling is something very unusual. I think that it is good that it doesn’t follow the typical conventions of music videos as it makes the audience want to finish watching it and find out what is going on.  We thought that our music video can attract people in a way that our main artist is unique. We wanted our audience to engage with the text of online media which helps spread, circulate and distribute meaning amongst fans.

We also wanted the audience to know who the DJ artist of our album is, so we put him on the back of our digipack. I think that it is really important to have his face somewhere as the publicity of the campaign is an effective way ensures that the artist will become popular and have many fans. I think that our campaign doesn’t really show the meaning of the song because if you think nature and mentally ill person have nothing in common but there is still this sense of being unique and have its own personality and not being like anyone else.

I think that the circulation of the campaigns across the audience will help to spread our artist’s name which will help me with marketing and promotion of the album.

Task 1 part 4 -In what ways does my website use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real website?

Our website does not have any similarities with our CD digipack, as there is no nature pictures or anything like that. Our website is quite dark and it has some similarities with Eminem website. Looking at the very front pages of the website, ours is slightly different as again it contains something to do with nature-sky. We wanted to make a link between the CD cover and between the website. I also think that the colour of our website symbolises the gender of an artist. I think that it is one of the main examples of how to differentiate who the artist is. In our case, it is clearly seen that it is a male artist, as the colours are dark.



Something that both pages have on their first pages is the latest work of the artist, which is ideal because it advertises both aspects of our campaign in one feature. The music video is also a good way to show what their latest song is.

I have also found that both websites have a shop in common. Talking about how we laid oud ours is that we have the price and the price is not as high as on Eminem's. Obviously, because our artist is not as famous as Eminem and secondly because our artist doesn't have a huge audience and people are not ready to pay a lot of money. Under a price, there is a small description of what the product is and then there is a possibility to choose a size, colour and a quantity.

Task 1 part 3- In what ways does my digipak use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real digipak's?

Here is the finished version of our digipack.



When creating an album cover, it is crucial that on the front cover there is a name of the artist and as you can see we followed that rule. There is a difference in the size of text between the name of the artist and between the name of the album. It is done on purpose as it is easier to recognise who the artist is. Some artists prefer their face to be on the front page, we did not want to do that and did not use our singer's face at all. We have only used one of our artist and we put him on the back cover.
Here are some examples of digipacks and on most of them we can see face of the artist.

Here are the front covers of two albums. One if the front cover of our album and the second one is of Flume. I was doing research on him earlier in my blog and me together with my group were 100 percent sure from the beginning that we want something similar. So, that is what we have done. The concept is similar and the main idea is to use nature. 

I have also done some research on another artist Flora Ep. Her CD cover looks very similar to ours as she also included nature as we did.

Task 1 part 2 - In what ways does my music video use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music video?

Close-ups, framework and shots





Mise en scene






Editing





Overall, I wouldn't say that our music video adheres to all the conventions of a real music video and it rather challenges them. There might be some predictable shots in our music video but otherwise while you are watching it it makes you think and ask a lot of questions.

Task 1 part1-In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge real media products?

The term convention means the familiar and predictable forms and techniques used by the media to communicate certain ideas or to convey a desired impression. I would say that my music video does challenge the forms and conventions of a proper music video. I wouldn’t say that my music video contains elements that people would expect to see in a typical music video. While filming we had to make sure that we have a wide range of different shots to choose from. The main focus in the video is the performance of the artist when he is hanging down from the ceiling and his singing. I will need to compare our CD pack artwork, website and video to the real music video examples. It would be really interesting to see whether they adhere to the same conventions or subvert them.

Our website

Here are some screenshots from our website and also a link to it.
http://teddybensted15.wixsite.com/mysite-1/tour

Digipack cover

Teddy had a big collection of underwater photographs that he took, so we thought that we can use them for our digipack cover. We had to make sure that his photographs link to the artist we had created. All these photographs really reminded me of my favourite artist's CD covers-Flume. His CD covers contain flowers which is quite similar to Teddie's photos. From the very beginning, the main idea was to create something calm and with the use of nature, again just like Flume did. I think that it is going to look great on our CD cover and have a clear connection between the artist and our pictures.




Here is a final version of our CD cover.