4. How did I use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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

I relied heavily on a range of media technologies throughout all stages of my production. Different technologies, suited to a variety of tasks, were at my disposal throughout, of which I could take full advantage to produce the highest quality music video and accompanying texts possible.

For my research and planning phases, I have relied heavily on services provided by Google, one of the largest digital corporations in the world, who dominate much of the market for these services. Due to the nature of my coursework assessment, I was able to complete work both at home, and at my sixth form college. This required data transfers from one place to another, and while traditionally a USB memory stick would have been the clear solution for this problem, I opted to use Google Drive to solve this problem. Google Drive is an online cloud-hosting service, which enabled me to edit and store my files online, and access them whenever, wherever. Using Google Drive also eliminated any risk of data loss, which, for example, could be caused by losing possession of the USB drive. This service is also bundled with Google’s ‘office’ applications, including Google Docs. Google Docs is an online word processing application, and an alternative to Microsoft Word, which includes an array of advantageous features. One of these is that Docs constantly saves and updates your progress as you type, which is another means of preventing data loss. On top of this, files can be opened in Google Drive and edited in Google Docs, without having to switch application, as the services are all web-based. This is a comfortable and effective use of synergy, which greatly aided me, particularly in my research and planning stages.

I also used Google Forms during my research phase. Google Forms allows the user to create, share and analyse surveys. This was particularly useful for my audience research task, as the service allows me to receive the survey results as soon as it is completed. Forms was a very efficient way of gathering data from my audience, and it had the added benefit of being under the Google platform, where it is therefore tied to the same account as my documents and files on Google Drive.
During the research phase of production, I took advantage of yet another Google platform to allow me to analyse existing music videos, YouTube. YouTube is an online video hosting and sharing website. Popular internet traffic measuring site Alexa Internet ranks YouTube as the second most popular website in the world, and it is a rich source for video content. I used YouTube as it hosts almost every popular music video produced in history. This meant that I was able to pick and choose which existing music videos to analyse, and YouTube’s scrubbing feature meant that I could go through each video frame-by-frame to achieve close-up analysis. Finally I used the Google-owned website Blogger to host my blog posts. Blogger sorts by date so that I was able to create a cohesive blog with which to store my research and planning documents. The majority of my planning phase took place inside Blogger, as it has a word-processing environment for writing and publishing blog posts inside which I detailed my planning.

The construction phase of development required an entirely new range of technologies. The construction phase required that I create two print artefacts to accompany my production: a CD digipak for an album and a magazine advert for the album. I used a DSLR camera to take the photograph for my album artwork, which would also appear on the magazine advert. I used no lighting manipulators, and instead relied on natural, midday lighting. These photographs were then transferred into Windows from the microSD card, after which I kept only the photographs that I believed were of good quality.
To craft my digipak and advert designs, I used the graphic-design website Canva. Canva is a free, web-based tool for graphic design solutions and features a simple interface for designing materials. This made it a suitable option for creating my digipak and advertisement. I did, however, only see Canva as a foundation for my design. It was always my intention that although I would start my digipak design on Canva, I would finish it on Adobe Photoshop. This was not the case for my magazine advert, however, as I believed that the advertisement should be more simple, elegant and design-focused, whereas my digipak required refinement and polish.
Adobe Photoshop is the world’s most popular solution for photo manipulation and it is no surprise why. The intricate tools presented in Photoshop allowed me to extend my initially basic digipak design into a polished, finished article. One such example is the Sketch filter in Photoshop. This allowed me to create an effect whereby it appears that an image has been drawn by hand onto paper, when in reality it was originally a photograph. Photoshop’s complex scaling and positioning tools also proved to be a great help when I began to insert the complete album lyrics into panels of my digipak. Such a task would have been monumentally difficult using Canva, and would only have been possible had I switched my design over to Photoshop.

I used another set of technologies in the filming and editing stages of construction, when my music video finally began to come to fruition. While I was provided Sony Handycam cameras by my sixth-form college, it was my view that using these for filming would be an inefficient choice, as they would not always be readily available to me, and this could disrupt my shooting schedule. Instead, I opted to use a camera that I would always have available to me; the camera built in to my phone. In particular, this was an iPhone 6S. On the popular camera quality measurement website DxOMark.com, the iPhone 6S’s camera was awarded a video score of 80, ranking it 13th on their table of all phone cameras (as of 2017). Around halfway through production, however, I changed the camera I was using, which proved to be an upgrade. I transferred from using an iPhone 6S to using an iPhone X. DxOMark.com gave the iPhone X a video score of 89, a great leap up from the 6S score. Rather than reshoot previous sequences, I elected to combine the footage shot from the two smartphones, as though there is a quality difference, they are both of high-enough quality whereby I thought reshoots would be unnecessary.
As both of the cameras that I used during production were not typical cameras and were in-fact smartphones, I required an external tripod mount. To solve this problem, I purchased Mudder’s ‘Universal Smartphone Tripod Adapter’ from Amazon.com. This purchase was inexpensive, delivered quickly and incredibly useful to my production. I also purchased the tripod itself from Amazon; in particular the AmazonBasics 60-inch Lightweight Tripod. This proved to be an efficient purchase, as aside from being a sturdy and useful tripod, its light weight also made it extremely portable, and therefore useful for carrying around while filming.
To transfer the video files from the iPhone to my computer, I used Apple’s USB-to-Lightning transfer cable.

The editing process began when I started filming. At this time, I set up my editing environment, so that I would be prepared for when I was ready to import my first batch of footage. The computer I used for editing was a 2017 MacBook Pro. My choice to use a notebook for editing, rather than a desktop computer, was based on the fact that I had the option of portability if I needed it, and that this computer was my main computer at home. The video-editing software that I settled on was a piece of free software named Hitfilm Express. This was an unconventional choice, considering that all of the computers in my sixth form had the much superior Adobe Premiere Pro installed on them. However, having considered this, I chose Hitfilm based on the notion that I wanted to be able to edit at home when I could, as this would allow me more time than what I would’ve been afforded at my sixth form. I could not install Adobe Premiere on my MacBook, though, as it has an astronomical price which I found unreasonable for an editing process that would last no more than a few months. Premiere does offer a free trial, however this only lasts for one week, and would also be very ineffective. Hitfilm Express then presented itself as the best alternative, as it was free, and I also had the benefit of having used the software in my free time in the past, meaning I was familiar with it’s interface.
I found that, upon importing my footage into Hitfilm Express, the footage was not compatible with the software. Upon researching online, I was made aware that the .mov file format used by iPhones is not compatible with the Hitfilm software, and I was required to convert the file format. This is where the software HandBrake came into play. HandBrake is used for converting files from one file format to another, and I was aware of it from online discussion. It proved to be a tedious process, importing every single video file I had shot, into HandBrake, and then exporting them. This was unfortunately a necessity, however.
Hitfilm contains an array of different tools to aid in my editing process. One such example of this is the masking tools, which allowed me to craft a unique transition in my music video, named a body wipe. This involves having a character walking across the frame, and then in post-production, masking out elements behind this character, so that the character’s movement instigates a wipe. To do this in Hitfilm, I first took my footage of my protagonist walking from the right of frame to the left and eventually out of frame. I then turned this shot into what Hitfilm calls a ‘Composite Shot’, which allows for most editing techniques to be applied. With the ‘Mask’ tool, I erased all of the elements behind the character. To make this an effective wipe, I used keyframing, and animated the motion of the mask, frame-by-frame, so that it would follow the character off screen. By the end of the shot, the character is out of frame, and the entire frame is transparent. When this composite shot was then returned to the editing sequence, I placed it on the track above the next shot. What this meant was that when when the elements behind the character are erased, the contents of the next shot bleed through. As the character walks further and further out of frame, more and more of the next shot is revealed, until a successful wipe is completed, and the two shots transition seamlessly.
I made use of other tools at my disposal with Hitfilm also. One such example is a pre-set colour grading effect called ‘auto colour’. This placed a simple colour grade on my footage, which I then manipulated for each shot by adjusting the red, green and blue colour components.
Hitfilm was used to its potential for everything I wished to achieve during the editing process, and proved very effective at delivering a fast, portable and free option for video editing, especially when compared with the expensive Adobe Premiere Pro.

Finally, during the evaluation phase of my work, I used many of the same technologies as stated before. My evaluation documents were initially written up on Google Docs. I used this as Google Drive has a range of intuitive formatting tools to aid in writing up essays, and has autosave features to prevent data loss. For my question 1 answer, I created a video essay that lasted approximately 10 minutes long. This video consisted of myself reading the initial essay I had written, edited over visuals that were relevant to the discussion. The audio was recorded in nine separate audio files, one for each paragraph. This was done using Apple’s QuickTime, a piece of media software that comes packaged with macOS. I used the built-in microphone found in the 2017 MacBook Pro. Each audio file was recorded, and then saved. Once all of the audio clips were imported into Hitfilm, I went through the video, and cut down any areas of the audio file where I had made a mistake, or left unnecessarily long breaks in speaking. From this, I had created the audio basis for my video essay. I relied heavily on the website www.converto.io throughout. This is an online service that allows downloads of YouTube videos. I used this to obtain short clips of existing music videos, along with real-world examples of transition use for my comparisons. I used Google Images to obtain images that I added for visual aid, such as a diagram representing linear storytelling. In terms of video-editing, my use of technology did not exceed simple dissolve and cut transitions, along with overlaying video tracks, and placing text over video. All of these features were available free with Hitfilm Express.
For my question 3 answer, I decided to create a slideshow, which I would then embed into my blog. I chose to do this, as I felt that with the number of charts that I had to display, which visualise my audience’s feedback, a slideshow would be a more efficient route to display these with text, than a written document. My audience feedback questionnaire was conducted on Google Docs, and I used the Windows application Snipping Tool to copy each of the response charts, which are automatically created by Google Forms. I then used Google Slides, an online slideshow service created by Google, to construct my answer. Google Slides offers almost identical features to Microsoft’s popular application Microsoft PowerPoint. However, I opted to go with Google Slides, as, much like other Google services, the application features auto-save features to prevent data loss, and is stored in my Google Drive alongside all of my other work. I also used Google Images to find images of the Google Forms logo and an image of Bill Gates, to be placed with a quote of his regarding the importance of feedback.
Once I had completed my slideshow, I had to find a way to embed it into my blog. Thankfully, Google Slides features an ‘embed’ feature, where I was able to get the auto-generated HTML code for the slideshow to be embedded seamlessly into my blog. The slideshow, as presented in my blog, moves to the next slide every 15 seconds, loops upon ending, and also features back and forward arrows for the viewer to interact with the slideshow themselves.

3. What have I learned from my audience feedback?

Audience Feedback

Following the completion of my production, I seeked out feedback from an audience. After the long phases of research, planning and production, I was keen to understand how an audience, whom had never seen the production, would view it. This was true not only for my music video production, but also for the print artefacts that accompanied it. These were a six-panel CD digipak, and a magazine advertisement.

To gauge audience feedback, I created two separate questionnaires. I packaged these with a video link to my music video, and both of my print artefacts. This package was then sent to exactly ten recipients of different ages and perspectives. Similarly to my early audience research, I created these questionnaires using Google Forms. This service allows me to receive responses immediately after they are submitted, and automatically presents them in graphs. For my questions, I offered audience members the chance to respond with numbered, quantitative data, along with written, qualitative data. All responses remained anonymous.

The two questionnaires can be seen below:

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

To coincide with my music video production, I was tasked with creating two print artefacts: an album digipak, and a promotional poster for my album.

A digipak is a form of CD or DVD packaging, typically constructed from cardboard, which includes a gatefold binding to house one or more disks. When researching existing digipaks available commercially, I found that the majority were 6-panel digipaks with one disc. These use the gatefold system to provide additional content, such as lyrics or additional artwork to add to the visual presentation of the album. The case opens up and reveals three panels on the inside, with the centre panel housing the CD.

To begin with the construction of my own digipak, I was first required to seek out the correct measurements. I recorded my dimensions in centimetres and in pixels, to aid my development in the computer environment, with image editing software.

Although I finished my design using Adobe Photoshop, I started out the the designing process using the graphic-design website Canva. I used Canva’s pre-set CD measurements, 1400x1400 pixels, as a starting point, which I also found to be the optimal resolution for album artwork used in the popular music service iTunes. A digipak of this proportion also includes six spines. A spine allows the six panels to connect along their hinge. Additionally, research into existing digipaks showed that artists commonly use the spine to display the artist name, album name and the record label. I then searched online and found the ratio between the width and height of the album spine in centimetres (approximately 1:25), which allowed me to calculate the pixel dimensions for the spine (56x1400). From there, I was able to calculate that, using 6 panels and 4 spines, the total canvas for my digipak would be 4312x2800.

The design of my digipak features a stark contrast between the front and back covers. For the front cover, I used a photograph of the artist, taken outside. It is common for album artwork to feature the artist in some form, and in similar vein to the Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’, the album from which I took my chosen song, the artist is looking directly into the camera for the photograph. I placed the artist at the centre of the cover, so as to draw direct attention to him from the audiences. The artist is wearing all black in the photograph. This allows him to stand out from the background, but also is visually symbolic of darkness. The colour black is associated with fear, sadness, but also strength. These are characteristics which I felt that the character in my music video exemplifies through his struggles with his place in the world. In the photograph, the artist also has his arms crossed. According to psychologists, the crossing of the arms is a classic gesture of defensiveness, and is also subconsciously used to convey feelings of insecurity. This, again, is another element with which I wished to create a connection between the visual presentation of the character in the album art, and the character in the video; as in the video, the protagonist repeatedly is ignorant towards others’ help, and displays feelings of insecurity throughout.

After the photograph was selected, I manipulated it using Adobe Photoshop CS5 to enhance it’s visual presence. Most notably, the colours were edited. I turned down the saturation on the image, so as to give it a more ‘drab’ and dull presence. This was done in order to reflect the visual styling of my music video, which also features muted colours to portray a distinct visual palette. On top of this, I manipulated the presence of individual colours, to manipulate the colour palette. I was inspired to do so, by looking at the album artwork for Rubber Soul, and wishing to pay homage to that album’s visual palette, which distinctly features green and brown tones, above others. To do this, I lowered the red and blue tones of my photograph in particular, primarily the blue. To achieve the exact colour that I was looking for required much experimentation, however I eventually reached a balance of colours which I was satisfied with, and I felt presented a muted, woodland colour palette.

Across the three ‘exterior’ panels of my digipak design, runs a consistent notepad-paper texture. The photograph for the front and back covers both tear into this, as if they are placed on top of the notepad. The goal with this was to create synergy between the digipak and the music video, by using the notepad to highlight the protagonist’s youth, as notepads and lined paper are often associated with school. Likewise, the album title and artist name are presented in uppercase using the font ‘Permanent Marker’, and the artist name is underlined, much like a student might underline their name on a piece of work. In the lower right-hand corner of the cover is the record label for Apple Corps, the record label founded by the Beatles towards the end of their time together. I chose this label as homage to the creators of my chosen song.

On the back cover of the album, the lined paper texture is much more prominent, which allows for the tracklisting to be displayed on each line, as if written on by a student. At the header, the album title is again displayed. It is written slightly below the line, to give it an authentic handwriting aesthetic. The tracklist itself is taken directly from ‘Rubber Soul’. I chose to rename the album, as part of my re-branding the original artist, to ‘Nowhere Man’, to place more focus on the name of the song on which my main production is based. The photograph seen at the bottom of the back cover features the character, with his hood up, walking away from his college establishment. The raised hood symbolises insecurity, and also shielding oneself from the world. I chose to have this photograph of the character walking away from his college, as it represents the idea of choosing to walk away from one’s stresses and troubles rather than confront them. This idea is reflected in the lyrics of the song, where the protagonist ‘knows not where he’s going to’.

The final panel to feature the paper texture is the exterior gatefold panel which is alongside the front cover. I decided for this panel, to take the opportunity to create something visually unique and artistic, which would add to the visual styling. For this, I added a photograph taken at the cover photoshoot as a layer in Adobe Photoshop and then applied the ‘Sketch’ filter. I then erased the environmental segments surrounding the character, so that he would be the focus. Finally, I used the eraser tool to add sharp ‘scratchy’ cuts to the bottom of the image, to further the illusion that it was drawn by hand using a pen or pencil. Again, in this image, the character has his arms folded, suggesting a defensive stance, however he is also smiling and looking upwards. This juxtaposition suggests that the character finds some comfort in his being somewhat insecure and introverted, which is briefly touched on in the music video.

The three inside panels of the digipak are centred around the CD itself. The centre panel sits behind the disc when inside a CD jewel case, and the two remaining panels sit either side. For the inside panels, I looked to other artists and existing products for inspiration, as I felt it would be unimaginative to simply fill all three panels with more photographs as filler. My inspiration did not come from far, however, as I researched the history of album covers, and found that the Beatles, whose song I had already chosen for my production, were the first to implement the lyrics of their songs on the cover of an album, with 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I again used the Beatles for inspiration, and decided to devote both the left and right inside panels to displaying the lyrics, in full, to every song from Rubber Soul, the tracklisting of which I adopted for my album. This proved to be a tedious process, searching, copying and aligning every lyric to every song and making them all fit. However, when completed, the result is an impressive collage of song lyrics which would add much more use to the role that the digipak serves. It encourages the audience to interact with their album artwork, as the Beatles did, and encourages a more interactive approach to music listening.

I also designed a magazine advert to promote my album. To successfully do this, I researched into existing advertisements for albums. I found that a number of elements were common between different examples. For instance, the vast majority of advertisements would include an image of the album artwork. This is important, as it allows consumers to know what they are looking for, if they were to purchase the album in a music store, for instance. Sharing imagery is also an effective method of establishing synergy between the advertisement and the product itself. Additionally, I found that also common was having the album title and the artist’s name be presented in bold lettering. This of course is what the advertiser wants consumers to remember, and so it is crucial that they be displayed as such. Finally, the third most prominent feature I found across real world examples of album advertisements, was displaying positive reviews of the album from trusted sources. These sources can typically are limited to music magazines and newspapers. Positive reviews encourage consumers that the album is worth their time, and thus worth purchasing or streaming.

When constructing my magazine advert, I took these three main conventions into account, and they were essential to the development of my advertisement from the beginning. I chose the base colour for the advert to be black, as this would reflect the introverted tone that is set by the artist’s clothing on not only the front cover of the album, but on photographs across the digipak. I also took into account how consumers would view the advert. For example, when looking at the image, the viewer’s attention is almost always drawn to the centre. This is because the centre of the image is typically at eye-level. With this in mind, I chose to place eight glowingly-positive reviews of my album in the centre.

For my reviews, I selected sources that I believed would be reputable for music opinion. These include music magazines Rolling Stone and NME, along with online music magazines AllMusic, Pitchfork and Consequence of Sound. I also included UK newspapers The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. The most unorthodox inclusion was a score from TheNeedleDrop, a YouTube-based music reviewer with over 1.3 million subscribers. In the modern age of the internet and social media, TheNeedleDrop is one of the most popular and successful music reviewers in the world, and so I viewed him as a worthy and progressive inclusion. I made sure to colour the ratings themselves, whether they be stars, scores or grades, in a soft gold tone, so as to make them stand out from the black background and grip the viewer’s attention.

Underneath these reviews I included three quotes from reviews. I viewed quotes as being an extension of reviews, which would further solidify to the audience that they are being offered a product of high-quality. Of the three quotes, one was fabricated by myself, however two others were taken word-for-word from retrospective reviews of Rubber Soul. This was also the case for the scores given above. I made this choice as I believed it would give a sense of authenticity and legitimacy to the reviews.

The album artwork was placed above the review scores. This was so that, upon their eyesight being initially drawn to the glowing reviews, consumers would next be drawn to the imagery of the album, thus creating an association between the high scores and the visual representation of the album itself. The artwork is at the top of the poster, as it is the ‘main feature’, and is placed as if it is ‘at the top of the pyramid’ so-to-speak.

Down near the bottom of the poster is placed the album title, artist name and release date. The album title is the largest and most bold of the three, as it is the most important. The title was written using the font Abril Fatface in size 52. After sifting through the selection of fonts available on Canva, I was drawn to Abril Fatface due to its bold nature when presented in uppercase, which made it an appropriate font for the album title.

The artist name and release date were placed above and below the title, respectively, and both in size 17. The artist name used the font Trocchi, while the release date used Montserrat. This was because I found that Montserrat presented more discreet, simple lettering in regard to numbering, and so was more appropriate for a date.

At the very bottom of my advertisement I placed three internet-based services. The first, on the left, was the handle for my artist’s Twitter account. This was included to encourage social media interaction between the artist and audience, and to push the more progressive, social-media approach to advertising that I adopted by using a review from TheNeedleDrop. Over on the bottom-right corner, I placed labels that inform consumers that the album is available on the two most popular subscription-based music-streaming platforms in the world: Spotify and Apple Music. While many of the existing album advertisements that I observed offered shops from which to purchase the music, I realised that in the current state of music, streaming is by far the dominant form of listening - especially with younger audiences. Other artists have noted this shift also, such as Kanye West, for example, whose 2016 album The Life of Pablo received no physical release, and was instead only available for listening using streaming services.

In conclusion, I believe that the combination of my digipak and magazine advert is very effective, and would also be effective in achieving their targeted purposes. The advert aims to create an association with consumers between the art of the digipak, and high quality as expressed through the reviews of respected journalists. The digipak itself then aims to be an interactive experience with the audience, by including all of the lyrics, and establishes synergy with the music video by its themes of youth and insecurity. The digipak, I believe, also accomplishes it’s final role, of being a visually striking and intriguing visual representation of the music and the music video.

1. In what ways does my media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Music Video: Callum Byrne - Nowhere Man

Print Artefacts: Magazine Advertisement