Dear Moderator

Dear Moderator,

My name is  Francesca Watkins and my candidate number is 9151.

I have created a music video, digipak and a website, all of which can be found on this blog.

Thank you for taking the time to asses my work! :)

Here is the link to my other members blogs;
Isobel - http://a2mediaisobelmoss9112.blogspot.co.uk/
Hannah - http://hannahkirstyyates9349.blogspot.co.uk/

Final music video

This is our final music video. This is also the link to YouTube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCrMvrFIB5M

 

Overall I am really happy with the result, and I think we did make this song more up to date by having a narrative. I also think the varied locations helped to improve the music video.

Final album use of digipak

This is my final digipak. The cd cover has been taken out to show how it will fit into the cd case. Overall I am happy with the result, I have kept the consistency with pinks and black to make my album look more realistic. Overall I am happy with the result.

Final album cover, inside cover, back cover and cd cover

 

This is my final album. My thoughts on the album can be found in the prezi link below; http://prezi.com/et4ofxmhzeg3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

The prezi can also be seen at the bottom of this post.

 

This is my final album cover.

This is my final back cover.

This is my cd cover.

This is my final inside cover.

               This is the spine of my cover



Final website

This is the link to my published website;

http://francescawatkins2896.wix.com/natalieimbrugliaweb#

 

This is the link to the photos of my website which I uploaded through PhotoSnack below is the website pictures; http://www.photosnack.com/95F6CBC7C6F/ptnadsll?UA_PHPSESSID=hg9p7s6qle0pjqqi6nch0ueo41

 

If we knew then what we know now..

Through this whole process, we have learnt a lot. Although it isn't possible to make all of the changes that we want to especially on our music video due to timing as a group we discussed our thoughts on how we could improve. We kept the first bit in because it made us laugh! It also shows we didn't script what we said which shows it is our genuine thoughts.

This is also the link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOJ7wLZabaw&list=UUzCuzU6TJVKZ_Khku1FndtQ

Evaluation Question 4

This is mine and my groups evaulation for question 4. This is the link to youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPWYPjmIfbQ and below is the clip. The question we are responding to is; How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation?

 

 

 

Evaluation Question 3

This mine and my groups evaluation. The question we are responding to is; What have you learned from audience feedback. This is the link to youtube and below is the clip; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJqi5ce0J1E

 

Evaluation Question 2

This is the link to my question 2 for the evaluation. I used a website called wevideo. I have also posted the video below as well.
https://www.wevideo.com/view/183158574

Evaluation Question 1

This is mine and my groups evaulation. The question we are responding to is; In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media products? This is the link to the youtube clip; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaC-liZ5gFc and below is the clip.

 

Pictures not my own on the digipak

In order to make my CD as realistic as possible, i needed to include a bar code and the record label.
This is the link to the bar code i used; http://www.judaismvschristianity.com/666_in_barcodes.

This is the bar code i used. I think that by adding this bar code although its not my own, it does help to make my digipak seem more realistic as all Cd's have to include this. I also think it helps to make my album stand up against real life albums and artists.

This is the link to the record label i used; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RCA_Records_(logo).svg

Like with the bar code all music artists also include the record label they are signed too. At the time of the release of torn Natalie Imbruglia was singed to RCA record. To make my digipak realistic i wanted to include the logo so that people could identify what record label Natalie Imbruglia was signed too.

Changes to my final album front cover

 

Originally this is what my album looked like. However when I got feedback from my teacher, she felt that it didn't suit the pop genre enough as the background was black and white and the album wasn't very colour. Although I liked the album, I did understand that it didn't look realistic enough therefore I made changes to my front cover. This was the result...

 

This is my improved version of my album. I used a forest location, this also links in with my music video as we also used this theme. Overall I am happy with the result and think this looks much more realistic.

Re-creating real life albums

When I was taking photos of Hannah for our albums, we started to run out of ideas of various shots. We decided to look at artitst on our phone to see if we could get some ideas. These were the results;

This is a shot of Hannah that we tryed to re-create from A FINE FRENZY's album. I dont think this shot worked that great either, this was also down to the location and due to Hannah being in white she didnt stand out as much un-like the artist as she has yellow on which brightened up the album front cover.

In this shot we tryed to do something similar to Christina Aguilera. I dont think this shot worked that well and wont be using it how ever we learned from this shot that the green theme was  a good idea and focused more on making the background look effective rather than adding other objects into the shots.

Overall
Although the shots didnt work as well as we hoped, the ideas allowed us to foucs more on the backgroung and this improved our shots more. I have decided to use some of these shots on my album in a gallery therefore it was still worthwhile to take them. It was also a good use of technology as we were just able to look at our albums on our music to come up with these ideas.

Progression of website

So far on my website,  I have completed adding the album cover. I thought this was a good idea to add to my album cover, and it helps to promote the artists and make my album more realistic. I decided that this would be the first thing that people would see, when they click on the page so that they know what the album cover looks like.

I decided to include the name of the artists above the whole page, so that the audience know the artists. The font used is Chelsea Market from my research , I know Natalie Imbruglia doesn't use this style of font. However as I am trying to show her as a current artists, and as I am trying to target 13-18 year old teenagers  I thought this is a font that would appeal to them. I have used this throughout the website as I think it is interesting and also stands out from other fonts. It also helps to make my website seem more realistic.

I think adding social networking sites is important as currently technology has improve significantly and nearly everyone is on at least one social networking sites. As I had extra space rather than leave it empty I felt that this would work well. The images were already on the sites, as a lot of website use links. This helped to make my website seem more realistic and stand up to current artists websites.

Editing process for inside cover on photoshop

I have created a how to video, as I had to change the sizes so that all of the pictures on my inside cover were of an event size. I used stupeflix to create the how to video and have posted it on YouTube. This is the link to it; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf9ffjdFMY8

 



 

This is the how to video.

 

This is the beginning process of my inside cover for my digipak.

 

 

 

Digpack template

I have decided to use a specific digipak template for my album cover as the measurements are already on the front cover meaning that when It comes to creating each side of my album I know what size to make them. I found this digipak on Google after my teacher suggested that this was the best one to use. This is the link for the digipak; https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpi9utzPi_o9tR2bULeSMW1uVT9jrC7ofZQO8e4GVw0KiwbmIsEM17pEnkOyWjLt5cDzV6Whi7eRlUhYM7i_OCyLWjVW1qcfB2bNJyN02tyiR6stg8AuW2YhH1w7jTCNqsiehPGO_Hc2w/s1600/Digipac_layout.gif

This is the template I will be using, it also has all the pages that  I need to include on my album so that i know where to put them.

Editing process for inside cover on photoshop

After doing the research into CD covers by real artists i found some of them used pictures from music videos. So that i could ensure that my CD cover was realistic i decided to do the same. Although i didnt want all of the pictures i used to look exactly the same as the music video, as i wanted the artist to stand out. To show you how to do this I created a video on stupeflix and posted it to youtube this is the link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDm7m_PEeh8

 

This is the final result. Overall I was happy with it as you it made the artist stand out. It also helped to make my inside cover photos all look different.

Editing process for inside cover on photoshop

I decided to take some shots from my music video for the inside cover, as through research i noticed a lot of artists do this as well. I decided that I wasn't happy with the colour of the shot so i decided to change it to black and white. To do this I used photoshop to, this is the link to my how to video on how I did this. I did this through stupleflix and this is the video link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPPiYC93j28

 

 

 

This is my final result!

Wix

To create my website i have deicded to use wix, as i haven't made many websites before i think trying to use cod[ing would be difficult. Wix is also free and can be accessed wherever you are which means that i can constantly edit my webiste.
This is the link to wix's homepage; http://www.wix.com/

Draft for my website

This is the draft for my website. I used a draft so that I knew when it come to using the website which was www.wix.com I knew exactly what I needed to include to ensure that my website was as good as it can be.

This is my Natalie Imbruglia website, I have labelled each area. Although some of the boxes will be from templates I have decided to change a lot of the website around. Some of the things I have decided to include is the album cover and music video as when I researched into website a lot of artists promote their recent work. I have also decided to add a latest news so that the artist looks like they are interacting with the target audience. A lot of website now use social media links I decided to do the same on my front cover as I had some spare space and I thought that this would make my website look more realistic. After looking at fonts I chose a font called 'Chelsea Market' and 'Anton' I chose these particular fonts as they looked realistic, but also fun as some of the fonts made my website look unrealistic. I have decided to mainly use pink and black. Although I struggled to find a good colour first of all I think these colours work well together and aren't to over used on the page.

Draft for my CD

These are my drafts for my; Front cover, Inside cover, disc cover and the back of the cd case. I have used a specific template so that I can ensure the digi pak is the right size.

 

This is my draft for my front cover, I have decided to use a shot of Hannah the main singer sitting on a bench looking directly at the camera. I have decided not to add lots to the front cover as when I researched into other album covers they didn't add lots to there's either. I have decided to have the back ground in black and white and the main singer in colour. This will help the singer stand out.

This is my inside cover, all of the boxes will be photos of Hannah the main singer. Some will be from the video so that the target audience will recognise it. I am also going to take photos from different days of filming this will help to make the inside cover more realistic. I decided to use this idea as I felt it was original all album inside covers are varied meaning I had the freedom to make mine, however I wanted too.

This is my back cover draft,  I have decided to have the photos of black and white as I have used a similar theme throughout the album. I am also going to include a barcode and the record labels logo so that it makes the album more realistic. I have decided to use the same pink font that I used on the front cover. The shot will be of Hannah walking up by the river as I think this would be a good place, it also links in with the music video.

 

 

 

This is my cd cover, it is a photo that I took whilst we were filming our music video of the underground sign. I decided to use this photo as I felt I had used the main singer to much on my album and I wanted to use something different. I have decided to keep with the theme of black and white. However I want to include the underground sign in colour so that is stands out as I think this effect works really well.

Photo's for website and digipak

Here are some of the photos we took for our website and digipak's as a group. We took all of the photo's near the School as their is a pond nearby and we didn't feel we needed to go back to London as we needed to ensure that our website and digipak was different compared to our music video.

This the link to my photos; http://s1278.photobucket.com/user/francescawatkins/story/121763

I used photo bucket so that I could show a wide variety of shots. I have also posted some of the picture below and if you click on the photos this will also take you straight to the website.

Research into websites

 I decided to research into other pop artists websites so that I could follow the conventions of real life artists websites. I decided to create my research into a prezi this is the link; http://prezi.com/l-k2sbvb3idb/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
I have also posted the prezi below as well.

Research into CD covers

I have decided to look into real album covers to try and get some ideas for my own front cover.

This is Demi Lovato's album cover, i decided to look at her album covers as she is a well known pop singer like Natalie Imbruglia meaning the conventions of their album covers are likely to be similar. One idea that i have gained from looking at her album cover is the fact that she has a close up picture. Although the background has nothing in it because she is very well known she doesn't have to add to much to the album cover as she is already recognisable. I have decided that i also want to use a close up picture for my album cover as i think this will help to make it more realistic.

In my research i also looked at Rita Ora's album cover. I noticed from looking at her album cover that she has her name at the top like Demi Lovato this is something that i want to consider with my own album cover as it looks realistic and people will instantly know the artist from doing this.

First draft of our music video

This is the first draft of our final music video. 

Although we are going to make some changes. I am happy with how it looks so far something we need to change since posting this video is some of the cuts as some shots go straight into other shots which makes our music video look less realistic.