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

The media product in which my group has successfully constructed is in relation to Mumford & Sons ‘Lover of the Light’. The filming for my video is shot in a number of different locations; this creates a sense of time passing. The setting of the video includes firstly outdoor shots that are taken within the surroundings of the environment presenting the idea of realism with the natural lighting and real location. I also filmed inside a studio room that offers a blank backdrop to the subject of the character where the cinematography captures the creation of the song as it’s constructed, inside a radio studio where we captured the production of the song it-self and I have also filmed within the dance hall, where the character is centred at the final performance upon a stage. Within the dance hall the lighting was set with spotlights, which presents the performer as the main focus of the video.

Within my ancillary one I have constructed a front cover for my album cover, where I have used my main subject of the photograph on the cover to suggest the sense of the album. Using Hall’s genre theory the audience is encoded into believing the image is a manipulation of an elliptic image, this creates the sense of the alternative, house, indie genre of music my album project. Ancillary two has a running theme, which is connected within ancillary one. I have used the influence of ‘Maya Jane Coles’ and ‘Annie Mac’ and how they present their albums to an audience as they use a dark theme across their house/dance genre. Using these artists’ albums I have constructed the colours, the dark lighting and the contrast of the image to show the theme of the alternative look the album is going towards. I have kept in the range of the same audience, keeping the poster for ancillary two simple in order to appeal to the audience for the album in ancillary one, this can be seen by the posters I have looked at ‘All Time Low’, ‘FUN.’ and ‘The Maccabees’. My ancillary one constructed project is titled ‘Electric Epilepsy’ for the artists name ‘Wilson’. I have chosen these names as ‘Electric Epilepsy’ reveals an indication and reference towards the genre. ‘Wilson’ is titled for the artist, as it is the subject’s name. I have kept my ancillary simple in order to promote the album; no props were captured within the images I have used which are my own.

The cinematography that is used within my main project video uses a range of different shots, long shots that set the location of the music video. The medium close ups that capture the main performer whilst they are performing and close ups which give a clear view of the performers

facial expressions this can be seen in ‘All American Rejects’ video performance of ‘Dirty Little Secret’ as the sense of realism creates the audience into believing that they are there. This develops the music video to come across with emotion this shows the understanding of parallel music within the video, as the cinematography of the characters emotions matches with the music.

I have used one photograph within my ancillary one and two; the photograph is my own of my cat. I have used a close up of my cat in order to show the details. I was happy with the outcome that the picture offers to the digipack as it offers a different outlook upon other albums that are promoted today in stores. I used different products in order to help me change my ancillary. I looked at ‘The Maccabees’, ‘Aiden Grimshaw’ and ’30 Seconds To Mars’ album covers in order to help with the development of my own digipack, the contrast of colours and the main focus captured within the cover.

I have used many different existing texts in order to help produce my ancillary projects. I have used the conventions of album digipacks, where I have studied four different albums to help create my own. I have looked at ‘Misty Eye’ (Aiden Grimshaw), ‘The Listening’ (Lights), ‘Unbroken’ (Demi Lovato), ‘Danger Days: The True Lives of Fabulous Killjoys’ (30 Seconds To Mars), all in which have different styles and layouts which helped me produce my own digipack within ancillary one. I looked at the differences within the albums and came to the conclusion of the digipack has to reveal the genre of music to the audience, this is a way to create a successful digipack. I then looked at DJ’s and their albums for example ‘DJ- Kicks’ (Maya Jane Coles) and ‘Presents 2010’ (Annie Mac) where their albums feature darker themes, the colours are simple and black with the focus of the subject being the main focus within the digipack itself. This for my project helped me sway towards darkening my digipack to create an alternative genre.

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

My ancillary has helped with my main product as the lighting is presented within the mise en scene of the video, showing the subject of the video being into the white spotlight. This represents that there is only one subject focus of the video, as there is only one character used throughout the video.

The cinematography of the close ups representing the characteristics of the character relate towards my ancillary as it captures the expressions of the subject and the feeling within the characters extreme close ups of his eyes.

I believe that my ancillary works well in relation towards my main project as the low-key lighting and contrasted images that are included within my ancillary projects are presented within the video. The cinematography works well within the video as it presents the character to the audience, creating the realism of the natural lighting and real locations, which in somewhat way can be seen as documentary style like. I was happy with my main project as the song ‘Lover of the Light’ can relate towards songs that my ancillary two promote. ‘City Lights’, as I did not use the real name of the song I related my own title song on my ancillary projects to make my work more creative. This works well within my ancillary projects and my main product because they relate in ways that are creative and show comparison.

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

In both of my ancillary projects I used Adobe Photoshop to produce my products. I used my own photograph of my cat as the focus subject and edited the image with contrast and brightness with duplication and opacity to create the epileptic effect that my ancillary projects was aiming towards. I then cropped, rotated the image to construct the product in different ways, showing a more creative difference using the same layout and dark black theme throughout the product. I used Photoshop to help produce and construct my products within my own creative way in which I was happy with.

I then used Audacity to change the length of the song ‘Lover of the Light’ to 3 minutes. This helped with the main project as the long instrumental was then cut out along with a chorus. Then I used Adobe Premiere to edit the footage into the software where I then placed the footage in order deleting unwanted practice footage. Placing the footage in order I then began to edit the effects within the video that I wanted to be shown to create the sense of emotion and flow within the video.

To help create my main product and to produce my ancillary projects I used YouTube to search and use video’s from other artists to create the products. This helped me to see how real products are produced and edited to a wide mainstream audience. I also used Slideshare which was an easy site to use to upload any word documents that I have done research on, onto my blog. Eblogger was used as a main site within my projects; my work was uploaded onto the site to show what I have produced. The site was simple to use and easy to categories my product research, market research, planning, final product and evaluations together showing my stages of production presented to others.

To present my evaluations I used Prezi in order to show how I have produced and constructed my main project and ancillaries. The site was firstly difficult to work around as it was new software to me; I began to insert my text and work out how to use the site by the tutorial and my own help by trying out different things to work around my presentation. My music video feedback was gathered by distributing my finished edited music video of ‘Lover of the Light’ onto

YoutTube that I then shared with a group of friends who directly commented onto the video itself. To gather my feedback I used a focus group on Facebook by creating an event for people who are invited to answer a number of questions about the video, this was an easier way of conveying the results to reveal my overall feedback.