Evaluation Question.1

Evaluation Q.3

Evalutaion Question 2

Evalution Question 4

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

I used Blogger to record all the information i gained from various media technologies in the research and planning stages of the music video, magazine advert and digipack. I created posts to explain where the music video was to be filmed and also which props and costumes were going to be used on the day. I also recorded the casting stages of the music video and which software and cameras were to be used during the production of the music video. I used my blog as a link to other technologies such as YouTube clips, Prezi documents and sildeshare files.

For filming the music video for You are the Empire's 'Love Diamonds' we used a Sony HDR-HC9 to record all footage seen in the video. We also used a tripod to shoot the first two scenes. This camera enabled us to create multiple camera shots, including a tracking shot of the girl walking down the corridor and close up shots of the girls face. We used natural lighting for all shots, inside and out in the construction stages. When editing our music video we used Final Cut Pro and imovie to create our final video. Final cut pro enabled us to add transitions between each section, we used a cross dissolve for each transition to keep the piece fluid and consistent throughout. We also used a stop motion filter and a black and white filter in different parts of the video. This software also allowed us to place the sound into the video easily and turn of all of the diegetic sounds picked up during filming. In the research stages of the music video i used YouTube to find other bands music videos from the same genre.

For the research stages of the digipack and magazine advert i used Google and Pinterest to find inspiration from similar bands of the genre, finding images of similar products created to advertise the bands style and music. I also used Microsoft power point to create a slideshow of other magazine adverts and analysed the key elements of the advert and then uploaded them on to Prezi. While creating my digipack i used a verity of software's in the construction stages, i used Photoshop to edit each photograph and Microsoft word to place them into a digipack template. I used various tools on photoshop to gain a my final images including the cropping tool, curves, text and layered images on top of one another after changing their opacity levels. For the text used throughout my print productions i used the font 'Onyx'. I took the photographs of the girl using a Nikon D3100 i then used these photographs to create all of the images on my final edit of my digipack.

To create my final magazine advert i used the same process as the digipack i edited the albums front cover on photoshop and then moved it into Microsoft Word. I created the text in the advert using text boxes so they were easy to maneuver around the page.

For the planning stages of the digipack and magazine advert i used blogger to record ideas and plans for the final productions.

Evaluation Question 4

This is a picture of a mind map i made using Bubbl, it shows the technologies i used for the construction and research and also the planning and evaluation parts of each task.

Digipack - Refined

Magazine Advert - Refined

Summarising Theories

Althusser - Interpellation
Interpellation is a concept in Marxist social and political theory associated with the work of the philosopher Louis Althusser, to describe the process by which ideology, embodied in major social and political institutions, constitutes the nature of individual subjects' identities through the very process of institutions and discourses. 

Barthes - Images reinforcing cultural myths
Many of Barthes monthly myth articles in the 50s had attempted to show how a photographic image could represent implied meanings and thus be used by bourgeois culture to infer ‘naturalistic truths’. But he still considered the photograph to have a unique potential for presenting a completely real representation of the world.

Barthes - Death of the author
"The Death of the Author" is a 1967 essay by the theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice ofincorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creator are unrelated.

Mulvey - Male Gaze Theory
The theory explores the idea that an audience has to watch cinema in the perspective of a heterosexual male. Subjecting women to the status of an object and the female viewer must watch the narrative secondarily, by identification from the male.

Winship - Gender Complicity
Winship argues that adverts which endow woen with the power offer a defferent scopic regime than earlier adverts, and frequently take as their topic the politics of looking that have been problematized by feminism.

Inspiration and Ideas for Digipak Cover

Location For our music video

Location

This is the location for our music video, we talked about it together and Nicole created this post on the topic after our discussion.

The shooting for our music video will take place at my house, as this allows us access to an internal area with the facilities that we require. Another strong reasoning for choosing this location was down to convenience, both for myself and the other casting members.

The majority of our shooting will take place within a bedroom. A bedroom is an ideal location for our storyline as this represents the loneliness of our character, being restricted by the four walls she's surrounded by. Hence, this anti-social behaviour is the result of her alcohol and drug abuse, witnessing a sense of isolation from society.This room was specifically chosen due to the dark colour of a wall face. The colour black is usually symbolic of death and mystery therefore, this reflects the mystery of the young girls addiction, conjuring thoughts of fear and the unknown. Internally, we will also be using a bathroom, due to the importance of reflections. From watching numerous influencing music videos with themes of relevance to our storyline such as, 'A-Team' by Ed Sheeran and 'Flashing Lights' by Chase&Status, we have seen that mirrored reflections are commonly used. We wish to include this is our own music video therefore, a bathroom seems like the most logical location for these shots. Furthermore, we plan to use a dark area such as a cupboard, for a section of our filming. The use of low key lighting will enable us to represent the night before, using a flash light to denote the alternating consciousness and unconsciousness of the girls mind. Props used inside the house will include, alcohol bottles, an injection, needles and a bandage. These will be situated in the girls bedroom, suggesting that rather than food and drink, these are being replaced with drugs and alcohol as her living essentials. 

A smaller ratio of our filming will also be shot externally, surrounding the house. This will only be used for the scene in which the girl comes in contact with a drug dealer. Considering reality, we considered an external surrounding to be better. However, we will be filming during the day so in response we will apply a black and white filter to our shots in order to apply a sense of darkness. This will additionally symbolise the negativity of the transaction taking place. For the exterior shooting, we will be using the props of money and flour.

The location of our music video furthermore links to other music videos that we have been studying such as; Time by Chase&Status which captures both an external and an internal home environment. This provides a location which a wide range of audiences can relate to but additionally, prodividing insights into the home lives of other individuals within society.

Magazine advert research

Research for digipaks from achase9drf

Editing Changes

After looking at our questionnaires that were filled out after the viewings, a few people suggested that we changed the filters. The main scene that was suggested was the one where the girl takes drugs, to add a darker tone to the image. We experimented with a red filter to heighten the sense of 'danger' and to add dramatic effect, however, the filter made the image hard to see and seemed blurry so we decided to keep the old scene and exclude the filter from our finished product.