Blog Complete

Audio Commentary

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

Throughout the course of this project there has been a great deal of technology used in order to research and plan and even in the evaluation stages and of course the actual making of the product. First of all research and planning, perhaps the most obvious means of research was the internet this provided a great pool of resources for myself and James to pull on we were able to find alot of good examples of the “metal” related media and so hence able to base our product around these that we found. However at times we did not always find the internet the easiest thing to use, the genre we had chosen to do is not one of the most popular genres in today’s society and so at times it made it a little bit difficult to try and find some of these obscure albums and adverts for us to have a look at. In the end we did find a selection of album covers and album back covers and discs on the internet, however for the adverts we sought to photocopy them from a magazine this made it easier for us in a way as we knew they were genre specific but at the same time it proved that the internet cannot always be the easiest technology to navigate hence why in certain cases it was easier to just use the photocopier. As with last year’s project all of our research and planning was posted on the blog using blogger, the good thing about using blogger is that once me and James were following each other’s blogs it made it very easy for us to quickly flick onto the others persons blog and consult their research or for us to post something then the other would be able to see it instantly in this sense blogger was a great help to see what the other partner was doing. In relation to the creation of the ancillary products the main credit must be given to my partner who came along greatly in the use of Photoshop and so it lead to clear discussions about what we wanted then we would go away together to Photoshop and make the products, in particular James found a tutorial explaining to him how to create lightening on Photoshop this became the background of our advert and something which added a really good effect to our piece. An advantage of using Photoshop was that by the time James had shown me the basics it became very easy to replicate the pages of the Digi-Pack we were able to copy the layers of the texts and the glow effect from one project to another ensuring overall that there was a level of consistency among the pages making it look more professional. As for the video we mainly used adobe premier pro, for the majority of the project this worked well, both me and James had experience from the previous year so it did not take us long to begin learning new tricks on the system. Toward the end of the project I began to look into adobe after effects to create a fire or explosion effect. At first this proved a challenge after viewing several tutorials I began to think it impossible however eventually we found a tutorial that was doable on the version of after effects we were using, after a while I had the hang of putting the fire onto the video and after several go’s at it no longer needed the tutorial to guide me through and by the time me and James had come to decide that we wanted an explosion at the end I was more than prepared to create that explosion and even teach myself a few thing by playing around with the software I even managed to make the explosion turn green which I was really proud of. As for the filming of the project me and James used cameras and tripods however as we were filming on a short deadline, due to unfortunate events in the project, we decided to use three cameras and triple the footage we got, neither me or James had worked this many cameras at once and so it was an experience to do so and we definitely learned how much more of an advantage using more than one camera can be. In terms of the evaluation there is the obvious use of blogger to post my written evaluation, but there is the evaluation in front of our peers and also the evaluative interview with our teacher finally the audio commentary being recorded by use of my phone recording system and instead of premier using Windows Movie Maker. Overall I would say without a doubt my knowledge and understanding on media technology has increased once again this year by both help of experience, the help of my partner who taught me all about Photoshop and the use of internet tutorials to explain some of the more complicated software.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In comparison to the last project done at AS we used a significantly greater amount of audience feedback in order to shape and re-shape our final pieces. First of all the video, with the video we were consistently showing to the members of the band every time we updated it and also pushing family and friends to watch it to give us some feedback as to what they think was good and what they think was bad. The best feedback we got was obviously from members of the band who mainly praised us on what we were doing saying how they thought that the way we did the shots on the beat was good one criticism we got however is that not all the shots were on the beat, this we changed and by the time we had finished the video we had implemented this advice into our work. In particular we got a lot of audience feedback regarding the fire effect that was created on after effects, using my phone I recorded a video of the effect on the computer, then moving onto let anybody see it, this received a lot of positive feedback which was helpful for us, however there were a lot of people saying well maybe the fire should be bigger and that perhaps we needed to make it a different shade of green during the colour switch toward the end. Each of these things we implemented and fiddled around with the effect until eventually we had an ending that we were happy with. The print products were also largely shaped by audience feedback and we used a lot of feedback to make sure that what were creating in the advert and the Digi-pack was in fact in sync with the genre we were aiming to be in. Much like the video we often received much positive feedback for the ancillary texts, on one occasion me and James printed off copies of what we had done a few pages of the Digi-pack and the advert and took them to the pub to show to some of the band members who were there celebrating a birthday at which they gave us some amazing feedback suggesting the darkening of a few pieces and even gave us an opinion on the different logo we had created claiming it was better than the original. Overall this was the point in which when creating the ancillary texts we knew we were going along the right lines when we were told by people who know the genre that our products looked realistic and that they could believe that they were in fact created professionally and even giving us a little advice on how to make it look a little bit more “metal” it was these feedback that gave us the confidence to know what we were doing was correct and that we should carry on doing it. Audience feedback played a much greater role in our work this year than it ever has and especially with the ancillary texts it really helped us gain an understanding and some confidence with what we were creating.

Presentation Video

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

In certain respects the combination of our main product and the ancillary texts is quite effective, yet on the other hand in unison with the genre there is sometimes not the greatest deal of similarity between the video and the print products as often the band members do not feature on the print products except inside the Digi-Pack. However excluding the video the way in which the ancillary texts have been done is very effective, they all clearly follow a strong house style and each of them stick to the pre determined colour scheme of black and green. We even made sure that all of the text was in the same font as well using Photoshop we copied layers from each page to another to make sure that the colour remained the same and the text remained the same colour and font. So the ancillary products themselves are very effective it is clear that they are all from the same band and even the genre itself is obvious through the way they have been put together. Yet despite the fact that on the surface there may seem to be very little similarity between the ancillary products and the main products we made sure that there would be a few links in there in order to ensure that they can be presented as a package, one of the things we did was to use myself as the drummer for the band as we did not have a good picture of the real drummer to use, but also as I featured in the video created one link between the two products. However the best and most effective link it right at the end of the video, first of all the green fire then the emergence of the Vortex logo from that fire.

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

As me and James, my partner for this project, progressed we began to notice that through no choice of our own we were going to unable to fully conform to forms and conventions of the genre this being in terms of the video, yet on the other hand in terms of our ancillary products it is arguably very much alike to something out of the genre. As a whole our project both develops the forms and conventions while on another hand simultaneously challenges and subverts them.

First of all the music video, to start with when we began our research into the “metal” genre of music we watched a few videos that provided a narrative as well as featuring the band as we realised early on we could not make a video that was purely based on the band playing as it would have no narrative. We watched videos from “Evile”, “Deicide”, “Hammerfall” and “Megadeth”, the actual genre we were doing our video in is a one that is split into many sub genres itself predominantly the sub genre we were aiming for was “thrash” however we thought it best to look into different sub genres in order to get a wider grasp of what our video should look like and how realistic it would look if it were put out into the real world. The general forms and conventions that we found were that of fast paced edits between shots a plethora of close ups and extreme close-ups, we noticed often a use of a establishing shot to begin and end the video, in regards to the narrative it tended to be along the lines of a 50/50 split between shots of the band playing the song and then going to the narrative in order to connect the song with the video. Initially this is the plan that we went for, we tried on several occasions to get the band to come out to film but we had very little luck with us and so we put it off several times and tried again and again, on reflection now we should have changed the plans earlier rather than trying to stick with the band and instead just started on the final idea that we ended up doing, our determination to get a band in the film definitely cost us a few marks as we would have had more time to film our final idea and more time to add any extra effects and such to our final project. Eventually when we decided to give up on the band we came up with the idea of the demon summoning, influenced from some TV shows, the link this had to the genre however is that many bands from the “metal” genre are often accused of being “Satan Worshippers” it seems to be a common stigma with the genre, so in this sense we did in fact conform to what is expected of the genre. Despite the fact that now we were already challenging the codes and conventions of the genre by excluding the band we still felt that to some extent we should keep to the genre, and so when putting together the final video we used quick passed cuts between the shots moreover we made sure that these cuts were consistently on the beat not only linking the song to the video but also bringing the video into the genre through its makeup. Secondly despite the fact of not having a band to focus the close-ups on we merely used what was in the video, and in some ways the way we separated the summoning and the people at the beginning of the video could be looked at like the band and the narrative suggesting in a way that we did conform to the conventions of the genre to some extent. Yet it is clear to see where we did challenge the genre the most obvious fact that we did not include a band, which also may a resulted in us losing a few marks for the project. However upon reflection it seems that while our video did in some ways astoundingly subvert the genre, there are still many elements that do make it “metal” the pentagram drawn in red on the board a common image used by many bands in their logos and other artwork the use of fire another feature seen in many videos of the genre, it even acts as the predominant focus in Hammerfall’s “Any Means Necessary” video. Overall our video develops the forms and conventions yet at the same time challenges them making our video quite unique for the genre as obvious genre influence can be seen while at the same time James and myself added our own ideas into it.

The ancillary products on the other hand were much smoother than the video and went overall much better with very little problems being encountered. As with the video we began looking into research and we noticed that bands from the genre followed a particular colour scheme and hat they followed this rigidly throughout all of their print products in particular between the advert and the Digi-Pack. As we were using an already existing band looking for the colour scheme was not too difficult, as we were friends with the band as well, we got their logo as well as a piece of custom artwork, something that was very important as custom artwork was a feature of every single piece of research we looked at so we knew we needed this if we wanted to develop and keep in with the conventions of the genre. The predominant colour of the band is green and so the colour scheme we went for was green and black. For the advert we used pretty much three different colours green black and white, this was something that can be considered very typical of the genre one advert in particular that we took a lot of influence from was a photocopy from the “Terrorizer” magazine they used an orange and black colour scheme we took a lot of influence from this as well as a few others which led us to ultimately created an advert that could be compared to other adverts from the genre and be concluded that yes it looked realistic, it looked like it was made for the genre which for the print products was our aim, to make up for the aversion from the genre in certain respects in the video. As for the Digi-Pack we had a little bit more trouble with research trying to find multiple examples but eventually we found several Digi-Packs that contained pictures of the band members on the inside and so this is what we did for ours creating and 8 page booklet with the lyrics in green on a black background and adding in members of the band, James even successfully created a green glow around each member to further conform and fit in with the genre. As for the album artwork we were given from Vortex, the band we were using, it was initially very plain black and white we knew that the artwork had to fit in with the colour scheme and so we added green and darkened the image to make it fit in with the colour scheme. Without a doubt our print products fit much more neatly into the genre than our video, while it does still conform to the conventions to an extent.