Note To Examiner:

Dear Examiner,

Thank you for taking the time to look through my media coursework I have completed this year. I have throughly enjoyed this coursework widening my knowledge of various elements such as Photoshop and iMovie in order to create my products. I have labelled all of my work accordingly and I hope you enjoy looking through my work as much as myself and Steph have enjoyed creating it.

Ceri Lewis

Final Music Video

Final Digipak(s)

Final Magazine Advert

Evaluation One- Final

Evaluation One from Ceri Lewis
This is a presentation created on Microsoft Powerpoint using slideshare to upload. Below are gifs of my music video which was made by screen-shotting the shots I wanted to use and adding them to the website http://gifmaker.me. These gifs correspond to the slides of my powerpoint which are labelled in brackets to demonstrate my point and clearly support my evaluation.

Purple Lights (Slide Three)

Dancers (Slide Four)

Shot at 0.08 showing the cross dissolve transition (Slide Five)

Shot showing the normality styling of our artist which features a plain black top and minimal makeup (Slide Six)

Shot introducing the dancers- shows their outfits (Slide Six)

Sam Smith Inspiration shot- panning the artist in a circular motion to add movement to our video. (Slide Seven)

Shot Inspiration from Sia's music videos- allows us to film closer to the dancers and create a more effective shot. (Slide Seven)

Shot at 3.11 with the lyrics (amem, amen, amen) showing how there is an illustrative relationship between the lyrics and the visuals proving how Andrew Goodwin's theory is shown in our music video. (Slide Eight)

How the back of our digipak follows conventions (Slide Eleven)

How we gained inspiration and followed conventions of various real media products (Slide Fourteen and Fifteen)

Evaluation Two- Final

Formats used: Voiceover app, Photoshop for various images such as showing the three fonts, iMovie to edit the footage and YouTube to display my product.

Audio needed to watch:

 

Evaluation Three- Final

Made on Piktochart:

Evaluation Three
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

     V
MUSIC
      D
      E
      O

We first gained feedback from our original idea in preparation for the filming of our draft music video from a class pitch myself and Steph did in which we handed out feedback sheets. We first originally planned to film in a Church and outside due to the literal association with the title of our song ‘Take me to Church’ to present an illustrative approach to work with our performance based music video. Our pitch to our classed consisted of 17-18 year olds with a mix of both genders and our feedback sheets meant we could gain a valuable first impression from our target audience. The importance of this was the issues raised in terms of our setting which myself and Steph had not previously considered and let to us re-thinking our idea. This was mainly due to the limited resources in terms of being able to have appropriate lighting in the Church as the cuts to outside will be very different and most likely not very effective.  We spoke to many people within our target audience and eventually created a new idea based on inspiration from the dance show and  various music videos deciding to set our music video on the stage with purple  lights. The reason we chose to use a stage as another piece of feedback we received in our pitch was the query about how much room we could have for our dancers so in order to ensure successful filming, we felt a stage would be more appropriate especially due to the fact multiple dance shows have taken place on this stage. This shows how we learned from our audience feedback and it allowed us to consider certain issues  in the filming of our video which we had not previously considered and led to  us changing the setting of our idea.

However, the positive feedback we received in our feedback was beneficial as it reassured myself and Steph that our concept including dancers and the styling worked with our target audience. Due to the fact that the majority of our negative feedback was about our location, it assured myself and Steph the rest of our pitch was successful ensuring that elements of our music video will appeal to our target audience. An element of the song we changed was using a female cover as we wanted to use a female artist in our final video but we received positive feedback on this securing our decision and allowing us to make preparations ensuring we had all of the outfit we wanted to use in the styling of our artist. This shows the importance of my audience feedback as it demonstrates the changes we made to the original song will still stand out to the target audience which builds up the profile of my artist especially due to the fact she is a small artist so the release of her products will need to be vitally focused on being successful with her target audience.

In the submission of my draft music video, we received feedback from our teacher and peers and although our teacher does not meet our target audience we felt his guidance would help with the professional and effective element of our music video. The first piece of feedback we received was the consideration of a title card with a close up of the stained glass which upon more research of various music videos (both indie and other genres), myself and Steph realised this is a common convention used in music videos which we had overlooked originally and decided to film this element when we re-filmed the majority of our video. Feedback we received from our peers included how we used cut edits as transitions which they believed to be too harsh and didn’t work with the styling of our video. After experimenting with various transitions in our video, we decided to use a cross dissolve as this presented fluency in the dancing and made the overall video look more professional.

Another piece of feedback I received from my teacher was to remove our statement cardigan as he believed this didn’t work with the styling of our video and contrasted with how we wanted to present our artist to the target audience. After receiving the feedback and taking steps to re-film our video, I feel this demonstrates Katz’s theory usin the artist as identifiable as the removal of this cardigan will make her more relatable to the target audience. We were suggested to include more outfits in our video but myself and Steph felt that due to the fact in our research the main transition that included an outfit change was a change of location but as we were only filming in one place, we felt this piece of feedback wouldn’t work with our video. After consulting this idea with many peers that were in the 16-24-year-old age range and listen to a lot of indie music, they also agreed with us that an outfit change would be unnecessary and simply re-filming without the cardigan would make the styling of our artist more appropriate for our target audience.

Another issue that was highlighted in our teacher feedback was the lack of close ups in our video which would help clearly convey the passion and emotion shown in the performance. We also were shown how the shots in which the singer and dancers were on stage looked awkward and unprofessional as the bright lighting on the stage minimised the effect the dance had on the audience. Taking on board this feedback, myself and Steph re-filmed the majority of the video ensuring to be as close to the singer and dancers as possible and after the re-filming of this process and presenting the footage to our target audience, the response we gained showed the improvements to our footage and how the feedback had guided us to create an effective and successful music video. This shows how the feedback was important as it helped us with not only needing to improve our draft video, but how we can improve it in a way that will suit our target audience.

In the filming of our draft video, we used a steadicam for various movement elements of our video but after receiving feedback from pour target audience that the shots were still slightly shaky (as shown in our draft video at 1.37 when we were tracking the dancers. Taking into consideration this feedback, in the re-film of our music video we decided to add movement into our shots with a dolly as we had also received feedback from our teacher that our shots were very static so we used the dolly for these shots as well. This ensures our shots ran smoothly and achieved a professional effect throughout our music video. This demonstrates how our music video feedback was beneficial as in comparison to our old footage, the quality difference is a lot more polished and effective which is due to the feedback to film closer, add movement and ensure the shots are smoother.

However, a piece of audience feedback we chose to not follow was by two 16-17 year olds who gave us the recommendation to use a different location in parts of the video and to use different lighting. We decided that this wouldn’t work with the styling of our video as different locations would cause a major lighting issue and perhaps make the video not flow as effectively. This was also a negative comment we received with our pitch as myself and Steph initially were going to film in the church and outside but many felt it would cause a ‘lighting jump’ which would perhaps make the video look unprofessional. Due to the large contradiction of this idea and many of our target audience and teachers feeling our idea simply on the stage works well with the concept of the video it over-ruled this feedback. For the change of lighting feedback, we felt the purple lights would achieve the dramatic effect we wanted in our video and believed different coloured lights would look fairly harsh and not work with the styling of our video. For example, we wanted to achieve a dramatic effect and purple lights have an ominous feel to them which is why we chose this colour in comparison to having red lights which would have connotations of passion or anger which would contradict the presentation and feel of the music video. However, both of the pieces of feedback myself and Steph chose to not follow ere by audience members that do not have a particular interest in the indie genre suggesting a tone of personal preference rather than our idea not working with our target audience. This overall shows how our audience feedback guided the production of our video as it allowed myself and Steph to create a product that is effective and works with our target audience.

DIGIPAK(S)

I received feedback from both my peers and my teacher for my draft digipak and the main component was how I missed the spine of the digipak. This is a key element needed on my digipak and as I overlooked it, it showed me the importance of audience feedback as I may have continued to not notice how I was missing this vital aspect. The general design of my digipak was successful with the pink/purple colour theme running through my digipak and was told it linked well to my lighting in my draft music video presents continuality across my products. I also received positive feedback how I focus on including the artist and the dancers in the background yet due to the opacity of the image, the dancers are not fully shown which suggests a sense of ambiguity and to which my audience feedback commented on how this makes them wonder who they are and why they are featured on the digipak. In my research, I created a list of 14 songs and set a copy of these to various 17/18 year olds to help me decide which of these song names would stand out more to my target audience. After this, I chose 10 songs that appeared to be the most successful with my peers and their feedback was important to me and they listen to various indie music as well as the fact they are in my target age audience which suggests that if my main target audience give me an insight into which songs would intrigue them the most, this guarantees more success for my artist in the selling of this product.

I was also suggested in my teacher feedback to change the layout of my main image on the opening of my digipak so taking inspiration from my digipak analysis research from the digipak ‘Ultraviolence’ by Lana Del Rey’, I moved my main image to the right and had the digipak title underneath. After experimenting with various ways I could present my stained glass window effect, I cut of parts of an image with my artist to achieve a representation of a stained glass window which many of my target audience liked and felt this design conveyed an indie effect. Upon selecting which digipak to chose as my final, I received positive feedback from my target audience about two I created with strengths selected from both. For example, many of my target audience felt the effect with the dancers worked well in the first digipak with the stained glass window effect as the main front image however many liked the placement of my artist and how the title of the digipak stood out against the image and how the inside of the digipak both connoted a stained glass window effect. After conferring with my teacher, he said that I should include both as my final digipak(s) due to the positive response from my target audience about both.  This shows how I learned from my audience feedback as it was this that led me to the decision to include both digipaks as my final product.

DRAFT

FINAL

MAGAZINE
ADVERT

The majority of the feedback I received from my audience and teachers was positive and only received a few comments to change. The first one was to see how my magazine advert would look without the stained glass window overlay in which I removed and felt that this made my advert look more effective and professional. The other piece of feedback I received from my teacher was to change my wording of “CD, Digital, Lyric Book, Poster” which demonstrates to the audience what the digipak includes and what it’s being released on and it was changed to “CD, Vinyl, Digital”. This overall adds a more of a professional effect to my magazine advert and will be more effective in promote ng my artist to my target audience. I received positive feedback on my use of image, use of border, how the colour scheme works with my digipak and music video, promoting the artist’s social media and the use of saying which songs are featured. This shows me how my products suit my target audience and how the feedback will help me do this in a more effective way.

DRAFT

FINAL