Media evaluation

1. Advanced Portfolio Evaluation.By Patrina Wheeler

2. Brief The brief I chose to do was the music video. This required me to get a song and make a music video to go with it, majority of music videos are made from footage using a camera however I have changed the idea of a music video into something better suited to my genre and song. I made my work into an animated video as it seemed the right way to illustrate the song I chose. There was a lot of comedy in the song and there were celebrities in it that I could obviously not get footage of, so with the combination of the limitations I had and the comedy in the song I thought animation could go great with the music.

3. Institutions Rough trade – post punk, alternative rock, folk Bar/none – alternative rock, indie rock, electric, folk Bar suk – pop, rock, indie Restless – alternative rock, punk rock, indie rock Zoe – folk rock, alternative pop

4. Diary plan 6th - 7th December – come up with an idea for your chosen brief. 8th – 12th December – selected idea for my chosen brief 13th – 23rd December Worked on new idea about 5 girls and the conflict between them, getting the cast, props and storyline and location ready. 24th December Started making poster 11th January – came up with another idea and chose a different brief. came up with stop motion idea, which moved onto still images created on computer. Creating images to go into video 14th January Annotated music lyrics and put ideas down for what I want to do. Creating images to go into video 21st Jan set up a time sheet for when I should have tasks done by. 22nd -23rd Jan researching music videos and digital packs, also created mock up designs of magazine posters and CD pack. 24th Jan researched posters on anti-folk 3rd February started putting images onto final cut pro 5th Feb started the digital pack and finished 6th February finished making poster 8th February put some images into final cut pro 10th February put more image on final cut pro 11th February finished music video 14th Feb made questionnaire and got people to answer the questions 18th Feb finished tweaking the music video.

5. Anti-Folk and what it is. Anti-folk has been describe as a genre that doesn’t have conventions based on the music length or musical style, the only few conventions it has is the need to rebel against politics, major labels and ideologies. People describe anti-folk as a genre that isn't just one genre, it can have parts of many genres. For a explanation of the genre I found this video on YouTube: Anti-folk – The Label

6. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Conventions of a anti-folk music video would be a mixture of things, based on the artist/s and their preferred style. For my artist they preferred to do music videos with a twist, so wearing odd clothing in their videos would be the norm to them. I subverted this by changing the complete style of their music video to be laid out as a cartoon. This is because the music video has a load of humour in it which I could see being betrayed better in cartoons and animation. I also thought that to create humour, I would create someone serious like George Bush and make fun of them through the cartoon image which represents him. Even though majority of my music video was still images, I used animation to attracted my audience to the video as it helped to bring the video to life. The length of the music video was 2:24 minutes, this is slightly under average but its not subverting the conventions of a real music video. However I did challenge the conventions by not using any transitions in my music video. Most music videos have at least two transitions, I only put the different images in without adding effects, although I did have to change the time limit on some of the moving images. I think that by not adding transitions in it made my work more effective as it did not cut time out of the song and it made the song more snappy.

7. How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary text? CD pack Magazine poster My main product was a music video for a humorous anti-folk song. The idea of making the video funny was my first idea and the next was how would I make the video. I knew that recording other people would be an issue so straight away I thought stop motion footage, which then went onto creating still and moving images. I then incorporated this idea onto my ancillary products. Keeping the idea of cartoons throughout my work was something I had decided at the beginning. When creating my ancillary products had had the dilemma of choosing between putting cartoons onto a real life background, but the images didn't work so I thought about bringing the cartoons to life. I did this through adding shadows and flections, which now makes my work look cheeky and really effective. My music video begins with still images and then has moving images brought into it which when I showed other people made them laugh and makes then like the style I chose.

8. What have you learned from your audience feedback? I learnt that mainstream music can have an effect on what people see as music and that it can also prevent people from discovering different genres. I found this out through myself and my audiences lack of knowledge about the genre anti-folk. I had to explain to them what it was about, they answered the questionnaire doubtfully and put guesses as their answers. When they were looking at the images they assumed the first one was a country music band. So it shows me that again lack of knowledge and the influence of mainstream industries are making young people think that music genres fit into perfect boxes and making them think their are only a few music genres. Rock, Pop, RnB, Garage, Blues, Country, Jazz, Soul, Musicals, Classical.

9. How did you use new media technologies in the construction stage? I used the internet, Photoshop, final cut pro and a video camera in the construction stage to create my work. I began my coursework wanting to make a horror trailer but then I moved from the group and decided to work on my own. When I was working on my own I had researched stop motion music videos. I began doing stop motion but I was boring and took too long to do a simple scene, so I changed my idea and begun working on the computer. I used Photoshop to create images and words that I had picked out from the music lyrics. the internet was used for photo referencing so I had an image to copy off and I also used the internet to get feedback off my friends about the quality and appearance of the images I had done. Final cut pro was the film software I had used to create the music video. I had to do some experiments with the software, to see if it would allow me to use images and GIFs in my video. The combination of these technologies helped me to produce and great music video and helped me to see the limitations of other technologies, such as the camera which would have taken me longer to make the music video and the quality would have been very poor.

10. Evidence of using Photoshop in my work This is a print screen that shows I created the text that is in my music video. I made the text look like hand writing because it makes the video look like its been created by the artist and I also fits in with the homemade style of the video. The video has a colourful background to make it all stand out and look attractive. Each text I use in my music video either has this background or had its own personal colour this is to make the text link together.

11. Evidence of using Photoshop and the internet for my work In my music video there were references to celebrities and famous people, because I did want plagiarize someone's photo it made it difficult to add photos of them into the work. I used images I found off the internet to have something to base my work on and I created a cartoon image of the people using shapes and various tools such as smudge. In this image I used smudge to create the hair and nose, this makes the hair look real and the nose is now more realistic as it isn’t a solid block. All of the images are made up of shapes, some of which I bent into shape using the warp tool.

12. Evidence of using GIFs in my work I used moving images in my work, these are called GIFs. They are still images which are changed in the slightest way or have been changed somehow. Then when you play it the image moves. The timeline at the bottom contains the slides and to the right are the layers which help create the image. The GIF helped to bring my music video to life, it also made my audience laugh when they saw the video. A variety of still and moving images helped to create a humorous and powerful video, which helped express the artists feelings toward numerous subjects mentioned in the song.

13. Evidence of using final cut pro in my work The box at the top left hand corner is the import section of all the images and music I used to create my video. The middle box is where I can make changes to the files such as time duration, size of object on screen, transitions and many more. The black box on the far right at the top is where I can see my final work in play mode.The bottom box is the timeline where I can put both video or images and audio. When making my video it was very difficult to use the software, but I have been using a similar software so it made it a little easier to use and now I feel confident using this software. When creating the music video it was crucial that I kept my images and audio in the same place or the program I was using wouldn't find the file source, this happened to me and I found it difficult to create the video, but now I have learnt from my mistakes. It was also crucial to listen carefully to when the words were said so that the images were displayed in time with the music creating a more professional music video.1

14. How did you use new media technologies in the research stage? I used the internet, more specifically I used Wikipedia, to research my artists music genre. When I first found out about the genre I my self didn't no what the genre was, so help create a successful music video, express the song and help the audience to understand the genre. I had to research and look at many example to understand what the genre was like and to see what other artist’s did to their songs. When I looked at other examples it became clear that this genre didn’t have specific codes and conventions, so it meant that you couldn’t exactly subvert them, also it was hard to find a pure anti-folk artist/s because so many of the artists' I look at mixed genres together. The internet made researching the genre, other artists’ and similar products very easy. The origin of anti-folk began in America and as I live in England it would be almost impossible to go top America and ask someone what anti-folk is. The internet has made finding information about everything from here to other parts of the world a lot easier and quicker.

15. I used Google to help search for poster advertising anti-folk festival and bands. But as the music genre is aimed at a niche market and is barely heard of where I live, searching for the posters were difficult and so I had to try and find alternative posters such as folk posters. This would then give me an idea of what I shouldn’t put on the poster. When I found some posters I looked at what I would use from them and then I looked at the artists I researched and thought about what elements I could incorporate into my work.

16. How did you use new media technologies in the planning stage? All the research then lead to the planning, the internet research help me to plan out any ideas I had about what my music video, magazine advertisement and CD pack would look like. My ideas that I planned out weren't always what my final idea turned out to be, for example my poster idea was kept the same but I began to be interested by Baudrillard's theory of simulation and simulacra and this then inspired me to make my characters realistic by making them enter realities laws of physics. I added shadows and reflections to bring the characters to life.To keep the poster and the CD pack following the same style I made them both look the same but with changes. While doing my mock ups I thought more about reality and wanted to have my cartoons placed on a real photo, with shadows and reflections but have only characters and some props in cartoon form. This idea didn't work as it seemed to cluttered and busy. I kept the idea from my planning and a few extra thoughts and they are now my final pieces.

17. Planning for my magazine poster and CD pack. These are my ideas for what my ancillary products could look like. I had a rough idea of what my music video would be like so I had and idea of what these would look like. I wanted everything to be consistent and have a flowing theme so everything had to have cartons incorporated into them. My mock ideas were different to my music video and complex looking so I didn't want to use them as my final pieces, but on their own they look really good. But they still are not what I would use as my final products.

18. CD Pack Mock Up This is my mock up of my CD pack, I loved the idea of bringing my cartoons into the real world and making them seem real. Once I’d finished I didn’t like the idea as the background images were to complex in colours and shapes that the cartoons didn't go well against them. My finished product looks a lot better as every think is simple and still has the elements of reality.

19. Magazine Advert Mock Up The idea was to use a postmodern theory of simulation and simulacra created by Jean Baudrillardin my work. I wanted to create cartoons which entered reality by obeying it’s laws E.g. Having shadows and reflections. I really like the look of this mock up, but because I wanted to keep my work consistent I couldn’t choose this idea as my final piece.

20. How did you use new media technologies in the evaluation stage? I used the internet website ‘blogger’ to upload my work that I have done throughout the year onto my media blog, this site has allowed my to insert my work and reflect upon it. I have been able to look at my research and planning and see how I have transformed my ideas and knowledge into a finished product. I have used Microsoft PowerPoint to present my evaluation as it has allowed me to insert images of my work and add text to analyse them. This has made evaluating my work very useful as everything I need to evaluate can be shown on the slides. I have used a website called slide share to upload my PowerPoint onto my media blog.