A2 Main & Ancillary Task EvaluationBy Sam Walton

(These images are from our planning process.)

A Pre-Raphaelite painting called “Lanterns.” This has influenced our group for our night shots for our music video. We experimented with lanterns during our second attempt because our first attempt didn’t work well due to blurred footage. We wanted to highlight the style of our music video with the influence pre-Raphaelite paintings such as this one. We did this to appeal to our intended audience of festival goers and consumers who listen to indie music .

The style of the main artist in the band has influenced us on how to style our actress in our music video. Florence Welch has a dominated permanent style that her fans can associate with. She is commonly recognised for her fiery red hair. Our actress Georgia, has red hair and in our magazine advert we have used tools that highlight her hair as the main focus and feature that our fans can associate with. We have researched the conventions of her lyrics by what they mean and how we can present her words visually, by analysing her music videos and how they connect to her audiences as well as appealing to the younger generation which we want to achieve.

Our first idea was to create our magazine advert in the style of black and white but from our feedback our peers wanted more colour. So with the help of Adobe Photoshop, I brightened the main image so it stands out.

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

During our research process for the ancillary task, we intended for our magazine advert to advertise the album but through time we decided to make it into an advert advertising a tour. We would see our magazine advert in an indie magazine called NME which advertises tours. We wanted to relate to real media products by using actual old dates from Florence and the Machine tour.

Florence and the Machine presents The Dog Days Are Over tour

2011

Monday 13th June and Tuesday 14th June 2011

(The 02 Arena)

Friday 17th June and Saturday 18th June 2011

(Wembley Arena)

Monday 20th June 2011(Manchester Evening News Arena)

Thursday 23rd June and Friday 24th 2011.(N.E.C Arena Birmingham)

Thursday 30th June and Friday 1st July 2011

(Odyssey Arena Belfast)

This is the first draft of our magazine advert.

We had to change:

•The font size

•The brand name style.

•Brighten up our main image.

•Make her hair brighter.

We did this to make our tour advert bright and appealing to people who consume this magazine.

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

Florence and the Machine

Dog days are over

Run fast for your mother run fast for your father.

The combination between our main production and the ancillary tasks, is effective, because in our Digipack we thought about using the locations of nature and forests from our main production and incorporate them into our ancillary tasks. We did this by designing a background for our Digipack by using colours such as green and browns to link to the concept of the artist and what genre this music video belongs to.

During our first rough draft of the inside booklet for the Digipack, I have incorporated still images from the main production to show a link and how we are not drifting away from the concept with our creative ideas. In addition, I have also used snippets from the lyrics that relate to the pictures. We were influenced by the album Lungs by Florence and the Machine who also uses images of the main artist. We used their album cover as an outline but we made it our own

When I presented my designs of the inside booklet to the rest of my group they liked it but they didn’t continue with them and incorporate them into the Digipack because the colour scheme wasn’t right, it wasn’t created right on the publication I used, and I could’ve used more exciting pictures to grab our target audiences attention. We all worked together on creating the Digipack but my job was to create the inside booklet. I struggled with the designs, and my first attempt didn’t achieve a high standard, so instead we all worked together and created the style of the Digipack to match the mood and style of the song. We made our background as a collage of images overlapping each other to bring across our genre. It worked well because we had images of bird cages, scores of music and other images that don’t mean anything symbolic or don’t work well together. Over the top of this creative collage, Emily had the responsibility of writing snippets of the lyrics to go on top of the background. Our writing style changed throughout the whole process but we wanted a fixed style that our audience that associate the artist with and it is a reoccurring brand.

All throughout the main production and the two ancillary tasks, we have made our actress the main centre of attention. In our Digipack, she is our main focus on the front page and we have kept it minimalistic by not adding any words or the brand name because we wanted our audience

Continuation:

She hid around corners and she hid under beds

“It's brilliant.”

“It's a masterful yet primal tour-de-force of folk/pop/rock that reveals a beguiling talent that should surely be regarded

as one of the finds of the musical year.”

“'Dog Days Are Over' succeeds in capturing a powerfully 'live'

studio sound”

Target Audience Feedback:

Alex Harpley 17Sam Whitehouse 18They both like indie music.

To help us get opinions on our music video I held a focus group for people who go to festivals and enjoy listening to indie pop music or folkie music.I had a range of questions that I asked my focus on what they thought about our music and whether it appeals to our target audience. I also asked them if we can improve any elements of our video or if some sections don’t entirely work.

Questions included:1.Did our music video appeal to you and the target audience?2.What elements did you think links to the indie genre?3.What elements did you like?4.What elements do you think we can improve on?

• Did our music video appeal to you and the target audience?Alex: It appealed to me because I liked how it built up into an anti-climax and I liked

the use of the lanterns highlighting her facial features. • What elements did you think links to the indie genre?Samantha: The costume and the overall style of the girl links to Florence and the

Machine and the different camera shots and angles highlight the girl and the dress.

• What elements did you like?Alex :I liked how you reversed the shot of the leaves drifting from the water.Samantha: How the visuals linked to the lyrics such as the shot of the horse.• What elements do you think we can improve on?Alex: The horse shot in my opinion was too blurry.Samantha: Some of the nature shots went on for too longAlex: I didn’t understand the concept of the light thing that follows the girl.

From our audience feedback, we have learnt

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

We used media technologies in the construction of our media production by using adobe premiere to edit our main production. We used a range of effects such as a lens flare (below) to give our actress more of a motive and it links to the style of our piece and it was a risk because it could work or it couldn’t. In my opinion, it did work because the girl is acting as if she is looking up at it while it follows her. The two other members of my group, didn’t like it at first but I thought it worked because I spent two hours working and polishing it.

We used an animatic for our research process which shows our overall storyboaard. We filmed it because we wanted to tie it with the words.