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

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

For me this whole project would have been at all stages if I was not able to use various different media technolgies to make my work come out as good as possible. I used media technologies throughout my Research, Planning, Construction and Evaluation.

I am firstly going to comment on how I used media technologies during my Reasearch. Some programmes/computing elements that were a big help during my Reaserch was:

•  Blogger
• Screen Grabs
• YouTube
• Google Docs

These things all played a big part in my research in various different ways. For one blogger is the place that I used to document the things that I found out during my research E.G Conventions of my genre. I used screen grabs to take examples of different things like pictures or certain parts of a music video. Youtube was used so that i can find different examples of music video's and google doc helped with my audience reseach.

Whilst Planning my music video I also had to use a variety of media technologies and they consisted of things like:

• Animatic(Imovie)
• Still Camera's
• Draft of CD cover (Photoshop)

The animatic that we made was made in IMovie, and it job was basically to help usvisualise what our music video was going to look like. It done this through the music playing in the back ground and me putting pictures over on the screen for a certain amount of seconds and cutting to another picture like in a music video(the pictures representing shot in the music video). The still camera was used to help us to get to grips with photoshop and upload photo and see what looked good on a CD cover E.G The contrast of the picture, Fonts ECT.

The construction of the music video and ancilliary tasks used the more complicated part of media technology we used things such as:

• Da Font
• Photoshop
• Tripod
• Figrig
• Final Cut
• Cameras Moving image
• Brusheez

We used Da font because it has thousands of different fonts on the website that you can download and we used it so that we could find the perfect font to put on our Ancillary tasks, to make sure they match and add to the dark effect we were trying to create. Photoshop was used to add effects to the pictures that we took again to add to the dark grousome effect that we were trying to create. Here is what the album cover and poster:

The tripod and figrig were both used to ensure that the camera had either a still image or a smooth moving image. I used Final Cut in order to edit the the footage that we got from various different locations, it also allowed us to add effects on the footage that I got and create a quality music video. Brusheez is basically a website I used to get some of the background effects on some of my ancilliary tasks I used it to make the spines on the CD Cover and on some of the picture.

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

The media product that I produced was an over extremely conventional piece and that goes for both my music video and ancillary task. The first piece of my practical work that I am going to write about is my music video. It is conventional to my specific genre and music video as a whole because it contains common conventions that normally make up a music video, for example Montage Editing.



As you can see from that short clip I have show a variety of performance shots, shot in three different places, and I have edited between the three locations. Here is another example of a Rock music video  from a band called 'Asking Alexandria' - "A Prophecy", that uses montage editing and follow conventions of a music video.





Another convention that I have used in my music video is the performance shots throughout the video. We have got our main vocalist to not only perform some of the shots but also to act in some as well in order for us to build up a story line, and try to prevent viewer fatigue with a variety of different shots and effects; we have also got another person to act in film again to add to the narrative and meaning of the song.



Here is another clip of a professional music video that uses a narrative mixed in with performance shots of the main artist in it in order to add to the entertainment of the video as a whole. This band is called 'Bring Me The Horizon' - "Blessed With A Curse".



The Mise en scene through out the music video is also very conventional and this is due to the fact that we show a lot of shots of the main vocalist and the band. The beginning of our music video has a lot of the bands instruments in there and this is in place to make it easy for audience to know what genre of music this video is and also to appeal to fans of the genre that may be watching the video.



For my genre showing the instrument and not only that showing the band playing the instruments is essential for the overall outcome out the video for a variety of reasons. One because it not only adds to the entertainment of the video but it also intrigues the person watching the video and gives the impression to the audience that they are there watching the band live. The band showed in the clip is named 'Capture The Crown' - "You Call That A Knife", This type of Mise En Scene is very common in music video of my genre, here is an example:



In my music video I followed a lot of conventions, and one of those conventions is lip synching. Most of the music video that have been made have incorporated lip synching in there video. It is now very conventional because, It is impossible to have a 'conventional' music video if you have not used lip synching, and we have included a combination of lip synching and narrative shots throughout the video.



This band Is called 'Shoot The Girl First' -"Last Breathe For A Capulet" and this is an example of a music video that has used lip synching:



My ancillary tasks are also very conventional in a variety of different ways. First of all we chose not to include pictures of the band in album cover because we thought it would add to the overall image of the album cover and would make it more conventional. The following is the layout of the album cover.

As you can see The overall Mise En Scene from the Album cover is dark and bloody. We chose to make the album cover genre specific because it would appeal to people who prefer music from this genre; As you can see we have a female model on posing throughout the album cover. I chose a female because it is a conventional in rock and also the facts that she is covered in blood makes the album cover more entertaining and also illustrates what the songs in the album are going to be like. Here is an example of a picture before and after we used Photoshop to edit it:

As you can see photoshop and Dafont enables us to make this part of the album cover that much more professional.

The album cover is the most important thing because it is the first thing anyone see when they go to buy the album, It would be the only thing they see on Itunes so we had to make it appealing and interesting to look at, and I think we were successful at doing this. Here is our Front cover and example of other bands front covers.

As you can see they all connotative with each other in a variety of ways. First of all they all have a very blank look in their eyes and either blood or organs in their hands. This is turn makes a obvious contrast and makes it seem as though the characters do not care that they have blood on their hands which again make the Album cover that much more interesting.