Media technologies and their use in the stages of my productions.

Adobe InDesign

I used quite a few techniques and effects in the construction of my DVD cover and DVD advert. Obviously my cover took more time to construct than my advert, I used a few similar techniques though.

Isolate Blending - This makes titles that I made from 'Dafont.com' lose their backgrounds so they can look like they are part of a picture.

Send Backwards - I used this to layer my images. If a new image was placed onto the dashboard I would have to 'arrange' it so it was covering up a flaw in a picture or where I wanted it to be placed.

Fit content to frame - This very handy when trying to fit content to the size you dragged an image. For example the picture with the band members on was originally over 1200 pixels by 800 in size so that has to be made smaller to be practical. When the border is dragged smaller, the image size stays the same, so I used this technique to make the image the same size as the frame.

Of course I used text boxes and titles aswell, but they are not as complex as those other three.

What I Have Learned From My Audience Feedback

Not only did I put my video online but I also showed my minor tasks to members of my targeted audience. (See finalising and audience feedback)

What I learnt was that my minor tasks appealed to the audience and worked well with the music I was promoting. My explosive themed DVD cover emphasised the explosive nature of rock music. My advert shared conventions with the genre aswell. Becuase artists rarely ever publish live tours on DVD, it was hard for me to see what they looked like as i've said. I had to do it by just judging on my own. The audience members I asked said that I had captured it all well.

Main and Ancillary Effectiveness

I believe my products have a sense of brand identity in them. All my products use the same font for the names and stick to the same layout. My DVD advert and DVD cover especially. This is why i was required to resubmit originally, becuase my DVD cover and my DVD advert were pretty much identical, just one black, one white.

I took this to heart when working on my resubmission. My DVD advert was kept the same as I believed it to be very effective, as you would see a DVD advert in a magazine.

Even though it looks very plain I think of it as a teaser trailer for a film, only showing what you need to see. I wasn't sure if I should put down some tour dates but then I thought that this would only be the announcement. Then the viewers would look out for updates on the band wesite on myspace.

Keeping Media Conventions

To look back on my project and criticise it. I would say that the regular conventions of a music video are kept, with a video playing and the audio track layered above it. One convention I may have not kept the same is the way there is no band playing in the video, it is purely one subject.

These conventions make these media products very successful. I used fast pace action to go on with a fast paced music track and I kept the trend of rock videos not always having a solid plot.

The aimed audience is not only for people who would view the video, but for people who would listen to the music. So I aimed it at early teens through to mid 20's. I did this by playing safe and not actually giving any characters personality, that way the characters are only objects emphasising the music.

If televisions were to show the video, it would be played on MTV rocks or Kerrang! because those are the channels that show this kind of music. I attracted this audience by making the video very easy to follow and having easy listening mainstream rock music with no overly technical musical aspects.

Finalising and Audience Feedback

After spending 4 hours putting together my final piece, I went over it again just to work out some of the dodgy bits. After the final piece was done I watched over and I was pleased with the results. I showed it to my parents and they said some of the scenes were a bit long. So i added more cuts in, I see what they meant as then it kept the flow of the video a lot better. Some people said my minor tasks were a bit plain, but I then told them my minimalistic philosophy and they understood.

I also posted my video on youtube for the public to view and comment, this is a great way for my video to be seen, through web 2.0 and the peer to peer viewing sites. I also thought of uploading my video to facebook, but my feedback may be biased as only my friends could comment on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL1ZHGmVR40