My final post!

Thank you for coming with me on this journey through my media course, I've thoroughly enjoyed the time creating and exhibiting my pieces over the two years and I hope you've enjoyed them too!
Thank you! :)
-Felix

My finished ancilliaries and music video

This is my final finished music video, it is the culmination of a lot of hard work and Alex and I are both very proud of how it has turned out. Below this are my two ancillaries, my digipak and my album poster.

 (Above is my digipak)

(Above is my album poster)

I have changed some things since last uploading my ancillaries, upon asking people in my primary and secondary audience I was told that my digipak should have spines along each fold and also a parental advisory logo as then it would adhere well with the conventions of other media products, as lots of other hip hop albums contain this detail.

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

Evaluation question 4 media from Felix Lamb

Evalutaion question 3: What have you learned from audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation question 1: In what way does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As well as this prezi Alex and I have made a video in which we both go over the forms and conventions that we have used in our piece.

In my ancillaries I have also taken into account and acted upon the forms and conventions that can be expected in real life digipaks and magazine advertisements:

In my final magazine ad I have included a range of different aspects that can be expected from any magazine ad, For example:

- I have included a song list to allow viewers to be informed on what songs will be included     in the album.

- I have added a release date which is essential for any album release advertisement as it       tells viewers and fans when the album will be available.

- I have added social media links in the bottom right hand corner, this is common in                 advertisements however not always found. I decided to include these in mine however as I    think it suits the image of the band and also looks very effective on the poster.

- I have also included the two main characters in my music video, as many alt hip-hop             album covers and advertisements often have this feature (using instead the artist) and also   it offers an eye catching focus for people who would be flicking through the magazine.

- I have subverted the common theme that in alt rock magazine ads and album covers the       colours are often quite dark, I have instead included bright background colours as I believe   they help the ad to 'pop' and stand out instead of looking dull and uninteresting

For my digipak there were also a range of different stylistic conventions that I have taken into account:

- I decided to also include bright eye catching colours in the digipak as the pattern used as  the background is very aesthetically pleasing and reinforces the 'fun' and 'funky' feeling of  the Gorillaz's music.

- I also made the decision to include a band photo of sorts in the bottom left hand corner of  the digipak, this is a common feature in alt rap albums, which ofthe have a picture of the  artist on the front cover, however i have subverted this convention by instead placing mine  inside the digipak.

- I included a 'Parental Advisory' logo on the front cover of the digipak as is common with a  lot of alt hip hop albums and digipaks, as can be seen in my previous post analysing  existing alt hip hop album covers.
- I have challenged the common theme among alt hip hop albums of having the artist on the  front of the album or digipak and insted have creatively used a leather texture that plays on  the wallet like shape of a folded digipak and also is a subtle link to one of the props used in  my video.

Online feedback for my music video

Having posted my music video up online I can now use facebook to obtain some audience feedback.

When I uploaded my music video to Facebook it had a very wide reception, gaining 69 likes (or reacts) and being shared 4 times. This is very reassuring as it opened my eyes to the fact that my film does appeal to a wider audience.

Many of my Facebook friends were very reassuring, and told me that they liked my video, including my Facebook friend Ali Henham, who is 50, this helps me be sure in the knowledge that my product does not only appeal to a younger audience.

I had a few comments praising my editing which was nice as it showed that the work that I have put in has paid off. Lots of people also described it as 'Sick' which is a positive.

Overall I am glad my product has received such positive feedback.

Online feedback for my ancillaries

Recently I uploaded some prictures of my ancilary tasks onto facebook to try to gain some wider audience feedback, this can be seen below

I recived some good positive feedback on the tasks and my friends and acquaintances on facebook had some good things to say about my two pieces.

Caius further elaborated on his point before, mentioning that the colour palette I have used is complementary to the style, and likens it to the artwork of Jamie Hewlett, the artist behind the actual Gorillaz artwork. This was very flattering as I was trying to channel this idea through my work.

My other friends also had some good things to say, with Thomas offering some encouraging feedback, that having seen my video he could easily make a link between my ancillaries and video. I also received some feedback implying that my product would appeal to a young audience, as intended, and that my font used was aesthetically pleasing. 

Ancillary 2: Digipak

Ancillary 1: Magazine advertisement

Below is my first ancillary task, to create a magazine advertisement for the band who's music Alex and I created a music video to:

The bands actual name is 'Gorillaz', however due to the fact that i could not use their logo and had to create my own, but wanted to use the font of their logo, I had to change the band name to 'Siscos Club Band'.
I created this poster using Adobe Photoshop and the process of creation was very useful to me as it allowed me to broaden my skills in photoshop, which are now applicable to the creation of real life media products.

Using the paint tool on After Effects

This screenshot documents the use of the paint tool in After effects to create a flicker like effect round the dead protagonist, I have found this to be a very therapeutic process and is very creative.

Screenshots using After Effects

These screenshots show the process of using Adobe after Effects to edit my music video, this software is incredibly complicated and I have found it to be a very hard learning curve.

Using a Wacom tablet to edit

I have thoroughly enjoyed using the Wacom tablet to accurately draw on effects onto my media footage, I have found that it allows me to create good looking effects much easier than if I were using a mouse. The device consists of a touchpad and a linked pen to allow me to draw on effects as if I were drawing on paper. This has been a very useful piece of kit throughout my editing.

Pictures for my ancillaries

Pictures for ancilliaries from Felix Lamb

Screenshots of editing

These screenshots show the use of Adobe Premier pro in the editing process of creating our music video, these show evidence of simple editing techniques such as adding colour grading effects to footage and cutting footage to the right lengths to fit with the beat. These pictures also show the painstaking process that is waiting for the footage to render.

Glitch photography

Whilst brainstorming ideas to use for my ancillary tasks I was told about glitch photography by my teacher, this is where you open an images coding using the application 'text edit' and by altering the coding of the image you can create very nice edited images out of the information store in the picture. To create my piece i copy and pasted small parts of the text throughout the rest of the coding, deleted chunks and added symbols in random places, this is what I turned out with:

The actual coding that you edit in 'text edit' is quite interesting and looks like this:

Due to the complicating nature of the pictures coding it is very difficult to be able to tell what each copy and paste or different edit you make to the text will actually do, so it is mostly guesswork. Despite this I am quite happy with how my experiments turned out.

Some other glitch photography that I like the look of is:

-Benny hutch

-Heitor Magno

-Marc Olivier

This experimenting into glitch photography is very useful as I may end up using glitch photography in one or both of my ancillaries.

Almost finished music video feedback

Recently we showed our whole class our music video close to completion, they had mostly positive feedback, however offered some constructive criticism as well, the main points were:

-The shot showing Ruben on the floor with cuts to vodka being poured got repetitive after a while, so to alternate between this vodka shot and something else.

-The middle section when Ruben is stabbed needs audio.

This was all very helpful and will allow us to complete our project to a high standard.

Rough cut of my music video

This is a work in progress version of my music video, there are a few shots that we still need to shoot and some that we need to reshoot however we plan to shoot these soon. After having done these I will edit the footage together and hopefully end up with a high quality final piece.

Mock ancillary

Below is a mock up that I have made from the pictures that I have taken of Ruben of what I may want my ancillaries to look like, obviously this is not in the format of either a digipak or a magazine advert, however it is just a test to allow me to play around with ideas that I may use for my final ancillaries. I created this using Adobe Photoshop.