Q4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Critical evaluation Question 4
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the promo package project, I have used many different forms of software, programmes and hardware, that helped me to accomplish the three different medias, to the high quality that they were completed at. This was thanks to the use of web 2.0 technology, with the use of search engines such as google for initial research, social networking sites for advertising, and prosumer software to create the promo package for no fee, and on my own.

Facebook

This website was used to advertise the music video, so that I could then gain feedback from a selected audience. Due to facebook acting as the global village on web 2.0, it was an ideal location for me to begin advertising my music video for others to see. It ended up being where most of the views from the music video came from, so it was a very successful idea.

The closest referral other than facebook was 39, so you can see how effective networking sites are with promotion and getting information out there to people.

Blogspot

Blogspot was where all of my research and planning was placed, so that I could know what I was doing step by step, and could work on it from home, and carry on in school also. Using this allowed me to create an appealing, detailed coursework project, showing everything I have done by date and time, and also allowing me to see how I have progressed, from doing initial research on main-stream artists, to then end up creating my own music video, DVD Digipak and magazine advert, to copy some of their styles. Blogspot enables me to broadcast instantly to the public, displaying any videos, images or written documents, making me take the role of an editor.

YouTube

This website is possibly the most well-known and most used areas for hosting music videos. I decided to use this website to upload my own music video, tagged according to what similar artists have included on their videos, but also giving certain keywords that relate to the artist, in terms of genre, locations, music channels and similar artists. The global village principle links with websites such as YouTube, allowing you to post something that would be seen by people from all around the country, as my music video did show this, as I had people watch it from areas such as USA and Germany.

YouTube allows people to post user-created content, whether it be professional, and amateur. This lets people be creative in what they do, and have people from all across the globe view what they upload. For us this was really helpful, because of the feedback we could gain from it.

In terms of hardware, I was able to gain access to some of the best quality cameras and video camcorders available. During the prep work, I took a lot of pictures of locations with an SLR camera, allowing me to get a big resolution of the images so I could get a good idea of what a scene would look like in this location. When the recording took place, I used a normal video camera, and then used a HD video camera for the green screen footage, that was then converted back to a standard resolution to suit the rest of the footage. The reason for using a normal video camera is due to it being easier to use in the department that we would edit in, as they work with the computers, and because there are so many of these standard video cameras, I didn’t have to worry about there not being one available when I needed to go out and film.

I did use certain other pieces of hardware during the further stages of the course. I used a scanner to copy some images from researched magazines onto the computer, so that I could include them as reference images for my research into magazine adverts.

There wasn’t a lot of different software that was used during the project, but that’s due to the software being able to do all of the tasks without needing many different ones to do every little part.

iMovie

During the stage of creating the music video, all that was used in terms of software was iMovie, a free programme with Apple Mac computers, allowing the use of pro-sumer technology to create a music video that would be shown to the public. So much footage was gained that several iMovie files were created, to allow files to not get confused and so that each stage of the editing could be backed up.

In terms of special effects that were included, in the final product many of them were not used that we had initially created. One that was included, was a simple fade out at the end, to represent with the fact that it is the end of the video, and also to link with the audio effect, where the artist puts his headphones on and walks off, where the audio changes to signify him listening through his headphones.

A black and white effect was used on the green screen footage. This was to help contrast with the scenery footage that we had alongside it in the music video. As we had no image in the background, using a black and white effect to lay on top of the green screen footage allows it to look completely different with the other footage, and show simplicity.

A negative effect was used on two clips of footage, to emphasis on the words "vocal power", creating a sense of important on those words, and also with the character. From the feedback, we found out that this effect was effective, again because it creates a contrast in the video.

Adobe Photoshop

This programme was used for both the DVD Digipak and magazine advert. It can do anything you want to do with image manipulation and editing, and with my previous experience in using the programme, I was able to do everything that I wanted with it, and also copy other music artist’s styles for their work, as I knew how it was done.

With the DVD Digipak, I decided to follow the style of artists, Drake and Mark Hudson, which meant creating a silhouette image, that had some idea of a 3D effect being used. I managed to create this quiet successfully. To get the effect, I took a picture of myself, applied the 'levels' tool onto the image to make it a lot darker, and then erased the areas that I didn't need, giving a final image of a silhouette character.

For the magazine advert, I decided to include an image taken from the music video itself. I felt the image looked too basic, so I decided to try some effects to make it suit more with the DVD Digipak's colour style and layout. I ended up using an 'artistic' filter, called cutout. Personally I think it was very effective, it suited the idea of cartoon/graphic images, and the colours were the same as what were in my DVD Digipak.

A photo template was used to show previews on the DVD frontcover of the music video. This was achieved by simply sellotape, drawing a square, and then a smaller one inside it. The bigger one would have a shadow on top of the smaller one, and then a low opacity line would be placed ontop to look like.

You can't see the image too well here, but it's the image in the top left of the picture. It gives a nice effect, and suits the whole retro feel that the whole promo package is trying to create.

Q3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Critical evaluation Question 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The intended target audience for the artist, and the promo package was anyone aged 14 up to around the early twenties. This is basically the youth, and young adult audience, which generally are the biggest group that would listen to the genre of music that the artist is aimed towards; grime, rap, hip hop and r&b, all for their separate reasons due to the typical effects and styles used within them.

Web 2.0 has recently become the first place a new upcoming artist would begin their road to fame. This is due to how easy it is to begin to promote yourself on the web, and how many people there are that could possibly view your web page. To try this out I decided to upload my created music video onto ‘YouTube’, the most used resource for music videos, and new music. I decided to tag my video with words that would relate to the genre of my artist, with some other artist names such as Tinchy Stryder. Wiley and JME. Also a music channel that would fit the genre was included, MTV which typically shows rap music videos, and a lot of r&b also.

After a month I didn’t receive a lot of ratings, or comments from people that I didn’t ask to watch the video, but I received around 250 views, and by looking at the statistics, it was from worldwide.

As you can see, people from America and Germany have viewed the music video, therefore showing that the tags given to the video have been successful in gaining potentially new fans to now listen to the artist. There have been 105 views from a referral on website ‘Facebook’, which shows that using web 2.0 to promote an artist is a very strong way of going about making an artist known by the targeted audience quickly, linking to the idea of the global village principle.

A screening of the music video took place to gain a direct set of responses from the intended audience age range, and a varied set of preferred music genres that they like to listen to. I gathered eighteen people to then view the full length of the video, while answering a questionnaire that I made to gain specific information from them.

1. How old are you?
2. What genre of music do you listen to?
3. What genre would you think this song fits to?
4. Did you like the video? explain your answer with reasons.
5. What music channels would you expect to find this video?

KISS MTV Viva 4music Other (please specify)

6. What artists do you think relate to the artist in this video?
7. What is your opinion on the green screen footage (white background), do you think it worked, or did you think it didn't fit with the contrast of the scenery shots used?
8. What part of the video did you like the most?
9. Do you think the locations suited the song and video?
10. What music videos do you think are similar to this?

The group for the screening were aged 16-18, which is right in the middle of the intended audience. The most common genres that they listened to were rock, indie and then pop, meaning that as my artist’s genre did not fit any of these, that the opinions would not be biased towards the music video.

The kind of music channels which that listed as being where they would expect to see this kind of music video included; MTV, Viva(new version of TMF), KISS and Smash hits, which are in fact all well-known mainstream music channels.

Their favorite part of the music video was where the scenery was used instead of green screen footage, mainly with the shot that was aimed to mimic the shot taken in La Roux’s video ‘Bulletproof’, which made my attempt a success as the audience recognized where a similar effect has been used in a well-known music video.

They also liked the way that the music video was well-timed with what is going on with the footage, such as with the drum beat in the chorus, where the footage is cut quickly to fit the beat, and also where a shot of a foot stomping to the beat has been used also.

As far as improvements are concerned, they suggested that the green screen footage could have been possibly used less as it was overused, although it did create a good contrast, a little bit more variety would have made the video better. They also mentioned that maybe some of the scenes were too dark and could have been taken during the day, however we were aiming to follow the influence of Tinchy Stryder’s music video ‘Your not alone’, therefore using a darker scene suits it better for the reason that it is copying conventions of Tinchy Stryder’s music video. We did have a lot of other scenes for the music video that were unfortunately not used, due to the fact that the artist had a demand for using a lot of green screen footage, although I did initially think that it would not work.

In many cases some of the additional unused footage wouldn’t have looked good, but for example, some of the shots shown above would have suited with the other scenery that was used within the music video, and would have improved the overall quality and flow of it.

As my client was in fact the artist that worked with me in creation for the music video, his response was similar to my own is towards the music video. He enjoyed working with me, and saw a potential to a possible future business partnership in making music videos for his artist name, because of how well it went as far as ourselves working together is concerned. When I took him to visit the tunnel scene he felt the inspiration and it led from there, which then created what became the final idea for the music video. The improvements that he felt would improve it he made, due to him working with me on the project, and having some knowledge with using the editing software also. It was his idea of creating the contrast with the addition of green screen footage, and from the feedback it seems to have been a successful decision by him.

My overall feedback has shown me that it’s not only a specific type of the age group you target that will conclude in being the only audience for the music video. Many people who prefer different genres would still like this video due to the effects and camera shots used with the scenery. It would be shown on several different music channels therefore suiting several different audience tastes and being a wide genre-based music video, open to everyone.

My feedback from web 2.0 has shown me that the feedback will be minimal in comparison to that of a direct response through something like a screening, because they have a better experience viewing it, and are given a detailed questionnaire to answer also. People that I chose to watch areas of the film specifically were those that gave the most analytical response, due to them being asked to do so, (refer to post http://stcmkhpp1309.blogspot.com/2009/12/long-awaited-music-video.html for selected audience feedback). The most useful feedback however was from the screening, due to it being a mass group of a varied audience in terms of their music tastes and ideas for what kind of videos that they prefer, but mainly because they will all be from the targeted audience for the music video.