Question 4

Question 1, 2 & 3

Final Music Video

Final Music Video from Ruqaiyah K on Vimeo.

Final Magazine Adverts

Final Digipak

Uploaded the jpg. version as quality is not looking good on Issuu.

Production Log: All Finished With Perfection

So I have nearly finished all my products and tasks. I may need to go back and check everything is there especially those tasks that involve Scribd documents as I had a few issues with it previously. I am in the middle of exporting my music video. I shall then upload it onto Vimeo and put it on Blogger. I have listened to all feedback and acted upon most of them. I also finished my evaluations. I decided to do questions 1 to 3 on Adobe InDesign as a magazine and I did question 4 on Prezi as I had quite a few videos to show. I feel I have done them to the best of my ability to get highest possible marks.

All 4 Drafts of Music Video

Side By Side Evaluation - All Four Versions from Ruqaiyah Kaderbhai on Vimeo.

Above shows all 4 versions of my music video. You can clearly see how I have improved it each time and how feedback is vital. 

Editing Using the CC Scatterize Effect on After Effects

Editing 2 from Ruqaiyah Kaderbhai on Vimeo.

 

 

Above shows a video on how made the effect CC Scatterize fit in with the beat of a song. 

Editing the Colour on the Outside Footage on After Effects

Editing 4 from Ruqaiyah Kaderbhai on Vimeo.

 

 

As my outside footage was too bright I had to add colour effects to it to make it look more appealing and make the grass look green. Above shows how I achieved that.

Alterations Made On The Way: Third and Final

Side By Side Evaluation - Third and Final Draft from Ruqaiyah K on Vimeo.

There are quite a few differences between my third and forth draft. My first difference is 5 seconds into the video where there is the Light Rays effect used on her stomach. This was mentioned in the survey results as to 'why is there light coming from her stomach?' So taking this into consideration I decided to try something new. I used the letter 'o' to create the effect in the forth draft. The 'light coming from her stomach' was also seen 9 seconds into the music video. I therefore changed it to CC Ball Action. Additionally one of the main reason for the forth draft was that the first lyric line was not in sync with the song. This meant that I had to open up Adobe Premiere Pro and adjust it on the timeline. Because of this change, it motivated me to change the other effects that people criticised about. Furthermore, I also changed the font for all the lyrics in the background. When discussing about visual progression, I was enlightened with the idea of having more lyric backgrounds towards the end. So my music video would visually progress as there would be more going on in the background as it got towards the end. I also made the lyrics appear differently each time and I added more 'funky' effects to them. I also made sure that all the text was in white and not in other colours as it did not fit in properly then. When I showed it to a few for further improvements they said it was 'an after effects extravaganza'. 

Production Log: One More Draft To Go

I have finished with my music video and will upload my final version of it at the end of next week. I also created a few more Camstudio videos and showed how I used my skills skill-fully. I may do one more Camstudio video. Otherwise the only thing I will have left is the evaluations. I will now also need to one more side by side evaluation of the third draft and final version of my music video.

As you can see it takes a long time to export so any tiny changes that I may be asked to improve I will most likely not do due to lack of time.

Editing a Clip into a Mirror Effect on After Effects

Editing 5 from Ruqaiyah Kaderbhai on Vimeo.

 

 

The above video shows what I did to fill up the whole frame. I duplicated the clip and made it into a mirror symetry effect. 

Editing Using the Effect CC Ball Action on After Affects

Editing 3 from Ruqaiyah Kaderbhai on Vimeo.

 

 

Above shows how I created the CC Ball Action effect and how it fits along with the beat of the song. 

Visual Progression + Image Systems

Visual Progression
When I was planning my music video whilst I was doing the storyboards, I kept thinking of how I was going to visually progress it. To have a music video that visually progresses means that their should be a significant difference between the beginning of a music video and the end of it. Before I started filming, my idea for visual progression was that it would start of slow with longer cuts and then towards the end it would get faster with fast cuts between each clip. However this was before I filmed on green screen. After filming on green screen I realised I had more ways I can visually progress my music video. I could make the colours of the effects more vibrant towards the end. Or I could start of with one colour and then end it with more colours. Furthermore I could start with less exciting effects and then end it with the opposite. But because I didn't know Adobe After Effects that well and I didn't what I could do exactly on it I had to think about visual progression as I edited my music video. Now that I have finished editing it, you can see that I have visually progressed it by adding in more lyrics towards the end. 

Image Systems
My main image system was always going to be solo dance moves. I had the main image system idea from the original music video. I wanted to use the similar hand actions as Selena Gomez did in the original music video. 

Production Log: Camstudio-ing

Now that I have finished drafting my evaluations I thought I'd continue improving my blog on a whole. Something I did quite a bit of last year was record myself doing certain things on Adobe InDesign. I felt it would more appropriate to do that this year as well as both software I used was quite complexed and I learnt a lot of new things from Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. So I decided to create more videos of showing how I did certain things. My aim is to create at least 5. It will be all on Adobe After Effects and how I created certain effects and how I implemented it for it to work for my music video. Once I have created these videos I will start putting my evaluations in creative media formats. 

Adobe After Effects Review

Above shows a short tutorial on how I used Adobe After Effects. As you follow the cursor it gives you an idea on how I created my music video and how I edited it. I have also showed you what effects I used. 

Editing First Clip on After Effects

Above shows a clip of how I edited the first clip but removing the green screen and adding background effects to make it more interesting. As you can see it was freezing towards the end as I tried to play it. This was one of the biggest issues I had with Adobe After Effects.

Production Log: Further Feedback Recieved

I showed my third draft of my music video to a few people who were expertise within media studies. I felt asking people who knew what was expected in music videos in terms of skills and effects would be best at this time as I need my music video to its very best without having to re-shoot anything. The feedback I received was positive with a few improvements which I was happy to do. Firstly, the font I had used in the background for the lyrics has to do be changed as it looked plain and boring. The font needed to be big and bold. Additionally I was advised to change the way I presented it. It looked boring as it appeared in the same way and didn't show my full skills in After Effects. Furthermore, for it to visually progress I was told to add more lyrical backgrounds gradually towards the end of the song. However I had to be cautious not to add too many lyrical backgrounds otherwise it will look like a lyrics video and not a music video. Also, some of the green screen effects was not tidy enough so I had to adjust some of them. I also showed my digipak and magazine advert to a few people to see if any improvements can be made. Majority said my magazine adverts were perfectly fine however my digipak can be improved but don't know how; especially the two inside pages. As I wasn't given any improvement ideas and I am quite happy with it I am going to leave it as it is and concentrate on improving my music video instead. 

Alterations Made On The Way - Second and Third Draft

Side By Side Evaluation - Second and Third Draft from Ruqaiyah K on Vimeo.

Above shows my second and third draft of my music video. You can clearly see the differences between the two and what I have improved using the feedback I received from the survey. Firstly, I do not have the cross dissolve transition effect at the very beginning. I have also colour corrected the outside location footage as in the second draft it looked too white due to the brightness of the outside. Furthermore I changed the bright red effect as it didn't seem to fit in with the other ones. This allowed me to explore further in the effects that After Effects had. Additionally I was advised to keep the background colour as black throughout so I changed the background colour from red to black. Also, I had the effect Strobe Lights 2 thirds into the music video and it was on top of her so it didn't look right. So I decided to get rid of it completely. Also at some points of the music video, there was no effects put in so I had to fill in the gaps. Some of the light ray effects were not placed properly around her and I felt changing them would be the best to do. I also changed the final effect as the one used in the second draft did not look appropriate with the beat. 

Question 4 - Draft

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

During this course I used numerous software, programmes and websites but during different stages of the project. They all varied in terms of what they offered and the complexity in the tools.

While doing the research tasks I used the Internet quite a bit in order to search for the relevant information. I used sites such as Slideshare and Prezi to find out what kind of information previous students included and to get some ideas when I did mine. I also used those sites to present my work to put onto Blogger which is another website that I used as a research tool. Blogger helped me the most in terms of quality and quantity of each research task. I was told which previous students’ blog were exceptionally good and that I should use them as a guide which is what I did. Furthermore, YouTube was a key website that I used throughout the entire course. During the research task I used YouTube in order to complete the task of existing products and products that I admire. Other general websites I used was Google, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter helped me to find out information about the artist.

During the planning stage, I used a few new programmes such as Celtx. I used this to write out of the script. The programme made it easier to layout the script properly. I also used Adobe Premiere Pro to create the mood board. I was quite happy that I used Adobe Premiere Pro to do this as it was extra practise before I started editing the music video.  Other than those programmes, I used similar software to the research tasks as well as Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word.

In terms of what hardware was used during the research and planning stage, nothing extravagant was used except a computer or laptop as well as my phone to post on to Blogger. However the main hardware was utilised during the construction stage, whilst creating the actual music video. During this stage I used a Canon 550D Camera with a tripod for easy manoeuvre for the camera with balanced focus. Within the camera there was other hardware that was in use as well, such as an SD Card to hold the footage when filming. The SD card was 16GB so it allowed me to hold quite a bit of footage. I used an 18-55mm lens to film for my music video which is casted as another piece of hardware. When I was filming in the studio a lot more hardware was present. To make the filming more effective I used studio lights to have the correct lighting. Additionally I used the green screen so that is another hardware to add to the list.

During the editing stage, I was using more complex software which was Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects. Adobe Premier Pro I was a bit familiar with it, as I have used it previously during GCSE as well as putting videos such as the mood board together. Adobe Premier Pro allowed me to cut footage and put it in the right place along to the song. I was able to add different transitions with different layers. One of the main tools I used throughout was the Razor Tool. This allowed me to cut a single clip into several different clips. I also used the Chroma key effect to remove the green screen. However the Chroma key did not get rid of all the green and I was therefore advised to use another software called Adobe After Effects. This was a much more multifarious software with a lot more to do.

On Adobe After Effects I removed the green screen more effectively and I also added different effects on the backgrounds. As it was one big clip I had to break it apart into its original individual clips so I can add different effects to different parts. I could have left it as one big on however it would have been a very tedious job to get each effect in the frame.

To remove the green screen I used the tool KeyLight 1.2 under the menu Effects. I then picked up all the green using the colour picker tool. I fiddled around with the colour matte tool until the background was black and the main model was white. I would then turn off the colour matte and put it on final result. To get different background effects I rummaged through the effects menu and tried to find effective effects to put as my background. Some looked really effective however some looked tacky.

Some effects were too big and bold on the model so I created a duplicate layer and put the effects on the behind layer so you can still see them but just not as big.

I also created a magazine advert and digipak. I found this quite easy as I was using the same software as last year when I created the magazine. I used Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is the programme I used to edit my images. I used a number of tools to get my images to the way I wanted them. The main tool I used was the colour range tool which removed the white background and anything else which I didn't want in the final image.

Another tool I used was the adjustment tool. This tool gave me a lot of options in order to improve image colour or brightness. I used this tool to change the colour of my model to 3 different colours; red, blue, green and its original black for the landscape magazine advert. Another way I used the adjustment tool was when I brightened the main image on the portrait magazine advert. I also used it to brighten up inside image of the digipak so it looks redder rather than a maroon.

Furthermore, a tool that was really effective in images was the refine edge tool. This allowed me to feather the edge and smoothen it so my editing didn't show at all or as much especially when it wasn't too neat.

Adobe InDesign is where I actually created the magazine adverts and digipak. Adobe InDesign CS6 had a feature where I could layout out all 3 creations within on document. I found this quite easy as it was all linked to one another. So if I was to change something on the portrait magazine advert it will change it on the landscape magazine advert as well. This allowed me to keep consistency between the 3 tasks.

Another thing I found useful and convenient is the Swatches. This made it easier to select the colours that I wanted to use throughout my magazine adverts and digipak. For example I wanted to use a particular shade of red so I added it to my Swatches to have an easier access to the colour rather than trying to find it in the colour picker.

Another tool is the FX Tool. This tool is also in Adobe Photoshop but as Adobe InDesign is the programme I used the most so therefore I used the FX Tool a lot more in Adobe InDesign. In the FX Tool I used bevel and emboss for the reviews in my magazine adverts. I used the bevel and emboss effect as it made text look really effective.

Overall technology has made a huge impact on all of my work. I had a variety of technology available for me to use and it allowed me produce the best quality.

Question 3 - Draft

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before I started thinking of a song I had to decide to who my target audience is with the resources I had available. This means that I had a 17 year old teenager as my actress/model, a green available to use and any other public locations. When putting all these resources together it was obvious that my target audience would be to teenagers from the ages 13 to a minimum of 24 because my model/actor was also within that age range. Furthermore the artist who sang the song originally, Selena Gomez also fits within the age range, as she is 22. I then decided to choose a song that would suit the age range and is quite popular. I also wanted to choose a song whereby my model/actress is comfortable with and with that thought in my mind she came to me with the song choice of ‘Come and Get It’ by Selena Gomez. This was very fortunate as she is within the age range and because she liked and felt comfortable with the song so will the majority of the target audience.

During the research and planning stage I realised the feedback is a crucial stage of any creative project. I recognised this while watching official music videos of popular artists and I sat their finding a few faults and issues or when something just didn’t look right. However that is classed as my own opinion. It became clearer when watching previous students music videos as they have gone through the same thing as I went through and either didn’t receive enough feedback or not qualitative feedback because I found plenty of issues which my peers also agreed with me. I wanted to make sure that I did not fall in the same trap. If they had got useful, qualitative feedback they could have improved a few of issues. Therefore feedback is an extremely important stage in the process.

The feedback I then received after completing the second draft of my music video was through surveys and focus group. I received feedback while I was creating my music video and this helped me think of questions for the survey. I created the survey on SurveyMonkey.com. I had used this website last year to create a survey for my AS Coursework so I was familiar with it. The whole purpose for the survey was to receive further feedback and how I could improve my music video. To create the questions I used the 9 types of questions idea which was having a question whereby the respondent would answer with a statement, a list, a yes/no, a agree/disagree, choosing options from a list that I would give them, a rank order, rating scale, a rating of how much you agree or disagree or a feeling about the particular topic, for example if it is boring or good. This helped me to get qualitative and quantitative data. I made sure I got the target audience to fill out my survey as it will help me improve the music video. I wanted to get those who do media to do my survey as well as non-media students because their feedback will be more informative as they will understand what software I have used and what I can do to make it better. I asked people to do my survey through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Whatsapp. So respondents varied from friends to random people. Some of these did include media students so results were quite critical which was good. I was quite happy with the results I received for my survey. I got 54 responses. Some were really helpful and made me think on how I can improve certain areas of my music video. Some people were really nice and gave me full marks and the best possible comment. On the other hand some people were plain rude and gave me the most impossible improvements to do at this stage of the process.

The questions I asked was about how professional my music video was on a scale of 1 to 10 which covers one of the 9 types of questions. The second question was about the costumes whether they fit with the song. The next question was about the locations and if they looked okay together in the music video as one is a field and another is green screen. Another question was how the flow was in my music video meaning did the music video go through smoothly or were there any glitches. Another question was about the editing and how ‘cool’ it looked. This was a key question for me as I did feel most improvements will be needed there. The last question was about improvements and what I need to do to improve it.  

For the professionalism of my music video question the average result was 7/10 where 10 is good and 1 is bad. I was quite happy with that result as I can always increase that to 8 at least with the improvements I do. For the costumes question the responses were quite mixed. Quite a few people questioned that why is the actress wearing a sari however my perception for this was that the song has an Indian introduction and to make it a bit original I added the sari element in. It was an advantage point that my model is also Asian so the sari suited her perfectly. Additionally I will be talking about the music video in my exam theoretically so I needed something to talk about and why my music video is different from current music videos especially the original music video of the song. With that reasoning I have decided to ignore that part of the feedback. Continuing to the next question about location. Again I had mixed responses on this. Some people didn’t notice anything about it; those who did notice felt they fit together nicely. However most people felt that the field footage looked out of place with the green screen footage. I put that as an option in the first place as a peer commented on that while I was editing the music video and I started to worry about that. Also I now feel that maybe people didn’t actually notice anything wrong about the locations until I mentioned it as an option nevertheless I cannot judge that. In terms of taking action about that feedback I will leave it just the way it is as 25/53 people said it looked fine. Majority of the people rated my flow as good and some said can be improved which I am working on.

Furthermore, the question about the editing was a multiple choice question with the choices really cool, looks good, too tacky, boring and too much going on. I also had a comment box which allows them to expand themselves further if they need to. The responses to my last question about improvements were somewhat all similar. One thing that at least 80% of the respondents said was the sound which I was also aware of. The volume of the sound kept changing from loud to quiet and was quite distracting. I didn’t know how to fix it the problem and therefore left it. I feel I should have mentioned it within the survey somehow and so I would have received better improvements. Other improvements that I received were to change location or get a better actress or change the song. These improvements I completely ignored, as they were next to impossible. The other useful improvements I received were to do with the effects. Quite a few people who were aged between 19-21 which suggested they were quite intellectual, said either to keep them consistent or some said to cut them down a bit, as they were too bright. Additionally some of them mentioned that the green screen could be a bit neater. These kinds of improvements I am able to do.

Moreover, I bought together a few people and carried out a focus group. All of the people were aged from 16-19 so it was within the target audience. The focus group I think was just a bit more successful as they were in front of me and were able to expand on their reasoning and comments. Their opinions were similar to the survey but they were realistic so it helped me a lot.

After doing this task I realised how important feedback is and how much it can help you to improve your work overall.

Question 2 - Draft

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

When pop artists release a new single or their album they want the entire world to know. For this to happen promotion and advertising is needed. This can happen through multiple ways; either through social networking sites, billboards, magazine adverts, etc. So along with the construction of our music video, I also had to create two ancillary texts. One of the ancillary texts was a digipak which had to be 4 more pages or more. The other ancillary text was a magazine advert. I had to create two magazine adverts; one landscape and another portrait. The magazine advert would be promoting the digipak.

To create the magazine advert and digipak I used software called Adobe InDesign. When planning out what I wanted to put on each page of the digipak, I did some research and gathered a few conventions which I saw in quite a few digipaks, more specifically pop genre digipaks. One of the key conventions was that the images used. Majority of the images were similar to music videos of songs that are in their digipaks. I found this quite effective as it signified different albums as each album of an artist had a different theme which came about from the songs and its music videos. So I took this convention on board for the magazine adverts and digipak and had a photoshoot where my model wore the same costumes and outfits as she did in the music video. I tried to produce and capture similar images as to the music video.

Furthermore, a digipak obviously has more than one song. So I researched the song I was doing for the music video and find out which album it came from and the other songs that were part of the album. I briefly analysed the songs and figured out what kind of emotion and feelings the lyrics were releasing and most of them were about love or nature freedom.

When pop artists release a new single or their album they want the entire world to know. For this to happen promotion and advertising is needed. This can happen through multiple ways; either through social networking sites, billboards, magazine adverts, etc. So along with the construction of our music video, I also had to create two ancillary texts. One of the ancillary texts was a digipak which had to be 4 more pages or more. The other ancillary text was a magazine advert. I had to create two magazine adverts; one landscape and another portrait. The magazine advert would be promoting the digipak.

To create the magazine advert and digipak I used software called Adobe InDesign. When planning out what I wanted to put on each page of the digipak, I did some research and gathered a few conventions which I saw in quite a few digipaks, more specifically pop genre digipaks. One of the key conventions was that the images used. Majority of the images were similar to music videos of songs that are in their digipaks. I found this quite effective as it signified different albums as each album of an artist had a different theme which came about from the songs and its music videos. So I took this convention on board for the magazine adverts and digipak and had a photoshoot where my model wore the same costumes and outfits as she did in the music video. I tried to produce and capture similar images as to the music video.

Furthermore, a digipak obviously has more than one song. So I researched the song I was doing for the music video and find out which album it came from and the other songs that were part of the album. I briefly analysed the songs and figured out what kind of emotion and feelings it was releasing and most of them were about love or nature freedom.

In my storyboard for the music video I said I was going to include red rose petals. The red roses and petals was a significant object therefore I have used it in my digipak as a background on the last page and as decorations around the model for the inside pages. My model is also holding the bunch of roses in the front cover of the magazine. I picked roses and not tulips or other flowers due to its colour and how it fits with my colour scheme of red, black and white. Unfortunately I was not able to use the red rose petals in my main product due to windy weather so it was not practical. I did try to use the petals when I used the green screen however it did not turn out the way I had pictured it and displayed on my storyboard.

Additionally, whilst researching the conventions, I also identified the use of maximum two fonts throughout the entire digipak. Finding the best font that would suit and fit my genre and song was quite hard. I used www.dafont.com. When I drew a sketch of what I wanted my magazine advert and digipak to look like, I didn't really think about the font. However looking through fonts I started to identify the kind of font I wanted for my ancillary products. This didn't have any immediate connection with my main product as I wasn't going to use any text except for at the beginning when it comes up with the information of what the song is and who's directed it. However as I got to the editing stage of my music video, I realised I will be using text to add lyrics in the background. So considering this, I had to choose a suitable font. The font I used was called 'Swatch It'. The font does not have capital letters which somehow gave it a good effect.

So there are quite a few similarities which combine by main product and ancillary products. The combination is clearly shown and visible between all three of my products.