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

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In order to gain audience feedback I created a survey using the website SurveyMonkey.com.

The questions were:

• What is your gender?
• What is your age?
• What is your occupation?
• What is your favourite music genre?
• Please name your two favourite musicians/bands. 
• Do you feel that the music video suits the song?
• What do you think the narrative of the music videos about?
• What is your favourite part of the music video?
• Please comment below how you think the video could be improved. 

infogr.am

Born Again audience feedback
Create your own infographics

The main thing that I learnt from my feedback is how I can make improvements to my video so that it will appeal to more people, especially members outside of my target audience. The comments were very constructive and by using open questions I was able to obtain qualitative data which is full of information and was not restrictive for those answering the survey. 

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

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

Intertextuality within my video

In my previous post on textuality, I have shown example son how it has been used successfully within music videos countless times. When creating the look for my main character of my music video my main reference point was FX horror anthology television series American Horror Story. 

The character Tate has a very grunge-like appearance, appropriate to a teenager in the early 1990s. Like his musical idol Kurt Cobain, his disposition is primarily solemn and weary. This is the impression I wanted my character to give, by using this as inspiration and making a nod to the brilliance of the character I should achieve the solemn feel I wish to create. 

Within the gif below the character Tate is shown to be walking down a hallway with other students clearly scared of him and his appearance. 

By showing Ollie walking down a hallway and seeing people's reactions to him I am creating an image that I want the audience to decode. By presenting him as a bad/intimidating character the audience will view him this way too. 

Final Music Video

colour popping

As a part of the editing process I took time to figure out which editing programme would give me the ability to colour pop in a way that is similar to the 'sin city' effect.

I have decided to use Adobe Premier Pro CC 2015. By using the 'leave colour' editing effect I was able to isolate the colour which I wanted to keep and make the rest of the shot black and white. I will be selecting the colour red to keep in a variety of shots as it makes for a dramatic feel and the colour red has connotations of both anger and passion; two key components of my music video.

Colour correction, filters and colour popping experimentation

I have decided to use a still of Ollie to see how a change in colour will affect the mood of the shots. I have done so using an app called 'VSCO Cam' which is a photo editing app designed for iPhone and iPod. I allows me to apply preset filters and also adjust settings such as contrast, exposure, fade, highlights, shadows, colour tints and more.

 The original image

Filter HB2 applied

Filter SE1 applied, contrast +4 

Shadows tint blue +12 

Preset filter B1 applied, contrast +2, exposure -1, shadows tint blue +9

Preset filter B1 applied, contrast +2, exposure -1

My favourite outcome of these filters is the use of black and white as I feel it is the most dramatic and gives Ollie a more convincing appearance of a skull.

Colour Popping

Seeing as a large majority of the video may be in black and white, I may like some colours to be shown at times to give greater impact. For example, when the cards are being shown, the colour red would make the suit and number of card stand out more. 

Storyboard and Animatic

Shot list:

Sunsets

Beach panning

Flowers close up shallow depth of field

Rosie singing to camera

Moving shots of landscapes

Slow motion shots

Wildlife?

Instument(s)

Low angle shots of Rosie

High angle shots

Try to use sun and possibly lens flares

Slow motion shots

Animatic of storyboard 

Storyboard

Digipak

CD Case and inner leaflet 

Front of album cover

Front of CD booklet fold out. I have decided to use different images which would relate to Josh Garrels and places which have meaning to him, I have included a still from my music video as the images could relate to his music videos. the idea is that depending on how the booklet is folded, any of the four images could be the image on the front cover of the album once slipped into the sleeve. 

Technical skills used to create digipak and poster

When creating the cover images for my album cover, I decided to colourise all of the images using a light blue hue. I decided on the colour blue to the connotations of calmness etc which fit with the motif of my album case and the mood of Josh Garrels' music. 

In order to achieve my goal of using nay of the photos as the front cover of the album case, I had to make the images circular. i did this by using the ellipse tool to make a circle, selected the shape using the magic want tool, inverting the selection and deleting the remainder of my original image. 

After cropping the image into the shape I wanted, I adjusted the brightness/contrast in order to lighten some of the image and give the impression that it was a sunnier day. 

In order to create the CD design itself, i began with a circle shape. 

I used an image of Ollie who is the protagonist in my music video in order to tie it in with the video, I like this image as it is quite striking and contrasts well with the serene imagery used on the front and within the booklet of my digipak. By overlaying the image I have managed to make it blend in and I knew that once I added my text in later they would blend seamlessly. 

In order to remove the outer imagery I used the same technique that I mentioned earlier in this blog post using the magic wand tool and inverting my selection. 

When adding the text to my CD design I thought carefully about the placement of the title and artist's name. By placing the text behind the layer containing the image of Ollie with the overlay effect, I managed to create extra detail in the words 'Born Again' using the texture from his hair. I chose to use blue on the font as it linked well with the colour scheme of the rest of the digipak and the combination of Ollie's hair and the text can almost give the illusion of a wave effect.