2. Evaluation Tasks
• In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?
• How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
• What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
• How did you use new media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
3. In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
• See table, develop into proper
powerpoint/prez.
4. How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
• During our production of our video, we created our own ancillary texts in order to complement the video: our
Digipak, and our magazine advert. These were also made in order to help further sell our band and product to
audiences.
• We chose to make a Digipak to help encourage sales of our band’s CD as opposed to just buying the digital tracks,
or resorting to illegal downloading. This way instead of having an impersonal, dull single leaflet holding a CD they
get a Digipak which has more personal information about the artists to help the fans feel closer to them,
interesting artwork and design to own. This effect was built upon by having our final panel of the Digipak have
photos of the making of our video of the album’s key song ‘For King & Country’ in a show reel. These things in the
Digipak cannot be found online and do not come with the digital tracks, and so by buying these it helps the fan
feel more connected with the band, and give insight into their lives and work.
• For the front cover, we played on their name ‘Jamie Thorn & The Mystery Pacific’ and joined their meaning by
having a sea of thorns on the front cover. In keeping with the nautical theme, a pirate ship was displayed next to
the band name floating on top of the sea of thorns – this also kept the convention of having nature within the art
design of the Digipak, and nature in the video as we filmed in a field keeping the band close to nature. This design
was kept consistent by also having the ship featured on the magazine advert, reminiscent to the audience of the
‘sea of thorns’ on the Digipak. The advert design also had the same font for the band name as did the Digipak - in
this way our Digipak and advert design were made very similar, so that when shopping in stores for our band’s CD
it would be quickly recognized from the advert design.
• In editing our music video all footage of the band was high stylized, made largely black and white except for parts
where the guitar or the leaves were emphasized by being highlighted in red. This was kept consistent with our
advert where the image of the band is highly stylized, the photo edited to look more like art with a more cartoon-
like feel. Although the video is mostly greyscale with only hints of colour, we chose to use bolder colours in the
advert to draw attention and catch the eye of passersby, and also as it would be in tune with the conventions of
other posts which are full of vibrant colours e.g. Bon Iver. The main portrait photo used of our band on both our
Digipak and our advert is one where they are dressed in a manner conventional of the typical folk rock artist; their
clothes are kept simple in dark colours, leather jacket and hoodie. They are not depicted as particularly interested
in glamour as indicated by their casual dress, showing them to be humble and their solemn expressions show they
are serious, introspective and thinking about the music – this is a common convention of the depiction of folk rock
artists, as can be seen in Bon Iver, Laura Marling, and Iron & Wine whenever their artists are seen. The band
gazing straight towards the camera shows they want to reach out to their audiences, their posture and expression
helping the audience feel more connected to the band. Themes of introspection, simplicity and humbleness are
kept similar throughout our video, Digipak and advert, creating a consistent atmosphere of feeling.
6. How did you use new media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and evaluation
stages?
• Slideshare was used throughout the project to upload Word documents of the script and as well as our general
work on PowerPoint files. This was useful as it meant that group based work could be more easily shared by using
the embed code, and as an alternative to USB keys making sure there was somewhere secure to store continuous
copies of our work as we went along somewhere online that would accessible from both school and home
networks.
• We used a Panasonic HD camera to film the video. This was an upgrade from the standard MiniDV 250 camera
which we had used the year before, and the quality was noticeable in the footage we had when uploaded onto
the camera and viewed through iMovie HD – it was also used to take stills of our video in the making and behind
the scenes to show our construction in our project.
• A group photobucket was created with a custom URL to make it easier to remember where we had stored our
work at photobucket.com/forkingandcountry. I found this site useful in uploading the stills of the video in the
making and of the stock footage used where it was accessible to everyone online from home, school, etc.
• Youtube was used to research different music videos in the folk rock genre, to take screenshots of and help in the
analysis of the genre. I also found Pitchfork.com to be helpful in researching different album covers, both front
and backs, which was essential in the Digipak research and analysis to help in the formation of our own Digipak.
• I used the sound recorder program on my Windows Vista to record audio clips in place of written work in some
instances e.g. analysing the results of the target audience research. I then uploaded the audio files to
Dropbox.com in the public folder so it would be open to anyone to listen, and linked the files in a blogger post.
This was done as unfortunately I found in embedding the audio file as it was to listen to on the blog would either
not show up, or start automatically no matter how I changed the code – and this was a problem as I had more
than one audio clip, so I chose to link them via Dropbox instead.
• The program iMovieHD was used to edit the video – it was more convenient as it was suited to the Mac computers
that we were using, and had a wide variety of effects for the video which we found useful i.e. the colour editing so
that the guitar and leaves of the footage would be red, the sepia tone of the narrative footage, the speed and
pacing effects, the audio splicing and so on which all helped to keep the music and footage in sync as well as be
presented the way we wanted it.
