My Evaluation For the Advanced Porfolio

Technologies Used

These are some of the technologies which I had used in my media production:

Photoshop- I used Photoshop a lot throughout the creating and editing stages of my work. Photoshop helped me to edit the pictures and to create my digipak and it helped me to edit the pictures that went on my website. Photoshop helps to alternate pictures and gives them a more professorial look.

Prezi allows people to create more personal presentations which can be shared online. Prezi is a more modern way to present presentations as its features run in a smooth way. I used Prezi to create my evaluation for my portfolio and it was great, I had a beautiful image/template and it was quick and simple to use. Also, it automatically save your work for you when you have written something new which is an advantage as it prevents you from losing work.

Picmonkey was one of my favorite technologies to use as this was much more simpler and easy to use than Photoshop. It still gave my work a professorial look as well. I used this to edit all of my images for the ancillary tasks and on my website.

I used YouTube to do a lot of my research. It was a good site to use as you just type it any music video that you would like to watch and it is on there for you. It not only allowed me to watch artist's music video's, but it allowed me to watch video's that people have made themselves. I uploaded my music video which I had created on there which helped me to receive feedback.

Blogger allows me to present all of my work on one site. It is good way to present work, as you can see all the events and things people have done in order. You can also follow your friends so you can compare and check how much work they have done and share ideas.

Wix is a great way to create websites as it provides you with templates of different layouts so that you can choose which one suits you best. It also has categories to make it easier for people to choose which layout they would like depending on the type of music they are presenting. It is a good idea that they provide you with layouts as this will ensure that the website actually looks like a music page.

The completed Version of the Digipak

This is the front cover

This is the back cover 

This is the disk 

Creativity

When I was looking at other famous artist's inside page of their CD cover I established that it usually just has a picture of the artist. It can be the same image as the front or back cover. So this is where I thought I could have some fun and try out some of my editing skills. I wanted to show that I could use a range of picture editing skills throughout my Cd cover.
 I decided to use 3 images instead of one as I thought it would be more interesting to look at and many images in the inside page only have 1 so I thought that this would make my cover a bit different.

I didn't want the image on the inside cover to look exactly the same as the image on the back cover as it may have looked like I spent hardly any time doing it or that I was lazy to change it. So in inserted a heart in the artists hand as the heart is associated with the title of his album.

I used the eraser tool on Picmonkey to carefully erase some of the heart shape where his hand was to make it look like he was actually holding the heart.After that, I then faded the shape slightly to give a more realistic look.

The Template

I used this template of a digipak to help me place my front, back, Cd disk and inside cover into. It was quite useful as it showed me what the layout of the digipak should be like and where the images should go.

Creating the disk of the digipak

I had to do a lot of thinking before actually making the disk for the digipak because I had used Picmonkey for the background, so I needed to use it again in order to have the same background. The problem was for me to get cut the disk in the round shape without losing the background colour.

I saved a blank document from Photoshop, then uploaded it onto Picmonkey and applied the background. The i went onto paint to draw the circle shape. I could not draw the circle shape on Photoshop because it had cut out the image and made the disk cover white. Then I transferred the disk with the circle shape back onto Photoshop and used the magnetic lasso tool to cut out the circle which worked perfectly fine.

I changed my mind...

I had a look at my friends digipak who was working with me and I noticed  that her digipak all had the same colour scheme which made it look like a real CD cover. I then looked at other examples of CD covers and noticed that they normally have the same scheme throughout the cover. My front and back cover were two completely different designs so it made them look more like pictures. This is why I decided to change it and have a similar background to the one on my front page as it would all match and have the same scheme.

Creating the back cover for digipak

I have chosen to use this image of my artist for the back cover as it is a full length picture, and whilst researching into other CD back covers, I noticed that medium close up shots and full length pictures are often used. Also, I think that having a body length picture will allow the audience to gather an idea of what type of artist/person he is through his clothing.

I realized that if I wanted to use this image, that I couldn't have the background in it so I used the magnetic lasso tool on Photoshop to cut around this image.

Because I had used Picmonkey to choose a background for my front cover, I had to use the website again to choose a background for the front cover. I wanted a background similar to my front page, one that would still give the cover a professorial and sophisticated look.

Change of Font

In the end, I decided to not use the fonts on Picmonkey on the cover because it made the cover look more cheap. By using the text on Photoshop, it allowed me to make the text bold so it was eye-catching and noticeable. It is essential for the title on the Cd cover to be bold as this is partly what is going to attract the audience. A bold title will stand out from the other Cd's in the shop and will draw the audience to look at the rest of the CD. Also, by using Photoshop to do the font, it would allow me to keep the same font throughout the magazine.

Creating my front cover for digipak

I decided to use the same image that I used for my website as I thought that it would be easier for the

audience to recognise the artist as they would have been familiar with the image from the website.

I started to edit my picture on photoshop as you  can see in the image above. I chose the colour red as the albums name is called 'Words From My Heart' and a heart is associated with the colour red so I thought it would be a good match. Also, because the artist is mainly wearing blue and red and blue mix well together.

After researching and looking at other album covers, I realised that my album cover was quite dull and boring with the white background so I tried to change the background colour but realised that I had to cut the image out and paste it back onto the page in order to do so. I did not want to do this because I wanted to keep the yellow shading around the left side of his head and by cutting the image out I would of had to cut the shading out as well.

To overcome my problem of the Cd front cover being dull and boring, I decided to use the photo editing site called Picmonkey to edit the picture and make it look more appealing.

 I chose to use this background as it gave the picture a more glorifying look.





 I was very happy with this background in the end as I thought it made the cover look a lot more professional than it did before. I decided to use Picmonkey to edit the text on there as well as they had more creative styles of fonts on there and i could use the features to make the text underneath the 'Words From My Heart' bit turn upside down to make it look like a reflection of the writing.



Ancillary Task- Homepage of Website

This is the link to my website which I have made for my music artist called Lemar Johnson.

http://kadiishabbz.wix.com/lemar-johnson-
I  used the website maker called 'Wix' to help me create it.

I was having a bit of trouble publishing my site so just incase the link does not work here are some print screens of  the official website.

Creating my website

 

I have used Wix to create my website.It was quite simple and easy to use once you get the hang of it. I chose a layout that I wanted to use and then filled in the pieces of information I needed.  I added some of my own things on there like the writing at the top that says Home, photo's video's etc. I have uploaded 2 pieces of music from the artist on there using a music site called soundcloud. This took me quite some time to do as i had never used soundcloud before. I also uploaded the artists latest music video on there. I have nearly finished my website, I just need to do a few finishing touches to it.

 



My Music Video

This is the finished version of the music video which my colleague and I have created of Justin Timberlake's song Cry Me A River. This was made with no copyright intended.

Planning the location

In Justin Timberlake's music video he had a very nice big house and a flashy car in the scenes which made his video look posh and classy. So we decided that we wanted to stay along the same lines as this, by making our video look classy as this would make the video look more professorial if the mise-en-scene was appealing.
I wanted the video to look colourful and pretty so that it would make the video look more attractive to the audience as mise-en- scene is a very important thing when constructing music video's. The water gardens in Harlow Town Centre looked like a beautiful place to film, so we decided that we are going to start the music video with some footage from that area. Also, there is water and ponds there which is a bonus because at the start of the music video you hear the sound of rain.

We might shoot some night scenes here because when it gets dark, the water gardens light up with beautiful lights.

 Justin Timberlake did not really really re-in force the idea of stereotypes so we are going to try and identify this in our video through our location. We are going to have two young black character's acting out the main  parts in the video and there is the stereotype that black people or people from an ethnic background are not as wealthy as other races. So In the video, we are going to try and show the couple in deprived, run-down places so that it gives a negative representation and makes the audience think that they hardly have any money. The mix-raced character who is the dancer, will be shown in  more  nice places and his scenes will be very colourful to show the difference between white and black races.


Another location which I thought would be beautiful to film some scenes at was outside the playhouse in Harlow. This is a nice location because the council have recently just invested in different colored lights to shine against the wall in the evening,
We decided that we would film some parts in a bedroom as we need a place to show some good times of where the couple used to chill and the bedroom is a popular location for couples.

Research- Christina Aguilera

Christina Aguilera's music video 'Cant hold us down' Featuring Lil Kim is a similar genre to Justin Timberlake. The video relates to Andrew Goodwin's Theory because there is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals. Christina is speaking about how men do not respect women and how men think that women should be seen not heard. It is an attack on the double standard in society where men are praised for their sexual prowess while women with the same habits are looked down upon. She tries to get women to stand their ground and to not let men hold them down. So the lyrics and visuals link together because in the video, she gathers all of her female friends together to have a dance off with the males. The females give a lot of attitude to the males to show that they are brave, powerful women. Although, the visuals do contradict the lyrics as Christina and Lil Kim are wearing very little clothing, but yet, she expects men to treat her with respect. If she wants to be treated with respect, then she could possibly have worn more appropriate clothing.


The video uses various voyeuristic treatment of the female body. This helps to attract the male audience.
Voyeurism is also used in favor of the women. there are appealing shots of the males as well as the females.



This shot is a close up of the one of the main singers. This shows the emotion of anger on her face. This can also be voyeurism as the singer is wearing minimum clothing.

This is an R&B song, with elements of hip hop and dance-hall  The genre characteristics are shown through clothing. The females are dressed quite 'hood' wearing a lot of jewellery, hooped earrings and tight revealing clothing.

The characters are in a sub-urban area surrounded with various different black ethnic groups.

Research- Craig David.

Criag David is a similar artist to Justin Timberlake because the both produce a similar genre of music which is pop and RnB. I will be analysing Craig Davids video 'Seven Days' using Andrew Goodwin's theory to see how it does and does not relate to his theory.

In the song, Craig is speaking about when he met a woman on the way to meeting his friend. He talks about all the things that he would do with the woman on each of the seven days of the week. He met her on Monday, took her for a drink on Tuesday, they were making love by Wednesday, till Thursday, Friday and Saturday then they'd chill on Sundays. There is a link between the lyrics and visuals as the video shows Craig's journey through out the day. The video shows him talking to his friends in the Barbers, and the lyrics have questions in them as though he is speaking to his friends. This is what I mean by questions in the song >>> 'What was the deal? A pretty girl aged 24. So was she keen? She couldn't wait. Cinnamon queen? let me update.'

The video uses many close ups of the Craig David to establish who the main singer is. 

Multiple close-ups were used to put emphasis on Craig's facial expressions.

Voyeurism is also used towards the end of the video. This helped to attract the male attention a bit more as there were not many voyeuristic scenes in the rest of the video.

The lyrics link to the visuals as Craig talks about when he meets a lady, and the events that happened on his way to meeting her. So the video shows Craig as he goes through the journey of his day. It shows him waking up, going to the barbers and talking to his friends, meeting the woman and the different events that happened whilst he met the woman.






The genre characteristics are shown through the background of the scenes. The artist is in his local barbers a lot having chats with his guys. This gives the audience an idea that this is an urban type of video.

How I intended on targeting my audience

My target audience is aimed at young people aged around 16-27. The reason that I have chosen this age group is because Justin Timberlake produces a mixture of pop and R'n'B songs and young people normally listen to a lot of pop music. This song has a good upbeat rhythm and the words are very catchy, so I think that this will entice the audience to listen for longer and it will allow them to catch onto the song. This music video will attract the male and female audience. It reinforces stereotypes by showing that it is not mainly men that cheat, but women are also capable of cheating as well.

Firstly, I intend on targeting my audience by having a lot of different cuts. This will make the video more interesting for the audience to watch as the scenes will seem more action packed. Young people tend to have a lower attention span than older people, so this will help to keep the audience interested in the video so that they do not stop watching or occupy themselves by doing other things. Secondly, I will try to have a lot of dancing scenes to make the video entertaining to watch as it can be boring for viewers sometimes to just watch the same old people singing on camera.

We have established the idea of genre characteristics in our music video. We have have chosen to use a male and female for the main scenes, followed by a male dancing as this gives the video more of a Rn B/ urban look as the character will be hip-hop dancing.
We are also going to use a link between the lyrics and visuals. We will  do this by making the characters act out the things that the singer is singing about.

Justin Timberlake's Music Video

In Justin's song, he is singing about his ex- girlfriend Britney Spears who had cheated on him. In the song, their relationship ended after she cheated and he was very hurt, so to get his own back on her, he recorded a video with him and another girl having relations so that his ex could find out that he has moved on with his life. The girl gets upset and 'cries a river' because he makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with her anymore and she realises that she has made a big mistake and lost Justin forever.

For our music video we have decided to do something along the same lines of Justin's video by showing a couple who are in a happy relationship, but then the girl cheats on him, he finds out from his friend and he then dumps her.We will portray this by showing happy times of the couple together at the beginning, then revealing her meeting another boy in the middle, and then having the girl begging for forgiveness and saying that shes sorry at the end.

Lighting Problems

As it is winter time and it gets dark very quickly, every time we managed to make it to the ideal location of which we wished to film at, it would be dark. As a result to this, some of the scenes in our video are quite dark and you could hardly see our character. So we have had to film most of the shots again in the daytime; so this has delayed us a little bit. My partner did want to just use the scenes anyway and try to edit them to make them brighter, but unfortunately that did not work as this just made the whole screen turn a bit white and the contrast was not very good quality. Also, if we did choose to use the dark scenes then when we had finished making the video I don't think the quality would have been very good as it just would have turned out very distorted.
Although, this is going to delay us, I am happy that we have to film it again as this will enable the video to be more of a higher quality.


We have decided to film some of the scenes of our video inside- which was not our original idea as we wanted to film outside. Mise-en-scene is very important when filming, so after thinking of where to shoot so that we have a nice background we came across these boards which are used to create different scenes in drama.

 

As it is too dark outside, the brick wall is the closest thing I could find to the outside. As the song is called 'Cry Me A River' I think that having rain in the video will suit the title of the title of the song, so after the video has been taken, when I am editing it i can then add water/rain effects to this background to make it look more artificial. 

 

 

 

 

 

Change Of Plans

When we was researching similar artists to Nelly Furtado, we found Justin Timberlake. So we listened to one of his songs which was called ' Cry me a river' and decided that this would be a more fun and interesting video to record instead. As it is winter time, we thought that the song would suit the weather at this time because it was raining quite a lot. The artists which are similar to Justin Timberlake would be artists such as Neyo, Christina Aguilera, Daniel Beddingfield, Craig David and JC Chasez. Craig David is quite similar to Justin Timberlake as they are the same age and both have various different collaborations with different artists.

This music video will be targeted at a young audience aged from around 15-27. I think that the video will target this audience as they are young and experiencing relationships, so they may have been heartbroken before or can relate to the song as most young girls normally have crushes at these ages. I intend to target this group by making the video look quite attractive by having some colourful scenes in the video and to make the characters in the video young so that they can be similar to the age group of the target audience. I also intend to have some dancing to make the video more interesting to watch so that the audience doesn't get bored of watching the same thing for a long period of time. The song is quite a sad song so the video is going to be a bit emotional. Young people tend to have a shorter attention span than adults, so by having scenes with dancing in it, hopefully it will enable my target audience to be able to focus on the video for longer.