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

For my construction i used my iPhone to film the sections of the video that the person was holding the pictures, and for the animated section i used a program called Autodesk 3DS max on my computer. Because i used my iPhone the quality of the film wasn't as good as it could have been but it was the best i could make do with because the other camera's wouldn't connect to my computer properly.

For my research is used the internet as the main tool. it helped me find out about the style of the

music and the generic idea's related to the music video's for that style of music. it also helped me present my ideas to other people to help get audience feedback. I used this feedback to help me make vital descions in my work.

For my planning i used mainly paper products, such as my storyboard to get the idea for my video across to people, as well as making shooting schedule's etc.

EVALUATION: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback I learnt more about the genre that I chose and it helped me make vital decisions in how to make my music video and my ancillary tasks should look, for instance Jack Holmes suggested that because of the style of the music and the plans for the video that I should change the heads of the band members into something slightly more weird, which I did, replacing the band members with a biscuit, a fox and a skull.

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

I think that my ancillary and main product (music video) are a very effective combination, they complement each other well as the all tie into each other, the people in the video with the animal heads etc. also appear on both the digipack and the advert, and the pictures that the person in the video held up also appear on the digipack. They all have the same kinds of theme, for instance both the video and the digipack are set in a light area.

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

There was one main way in which that I my music video conformed to the typical conventions of a music video is that it has several shots where the entire band is shown playing the song, this is a typical thing to do in music videos of my genre.

My advert also conformed to what the normal view of a magazine advert for an album would look like, it was simple but gave all the information which was needed.

FINAL PRODUCT: Ancillary Product - Advert

This is the final advert that i created by putting all the previously shown pieces together.

CONSTRUCTION: Advert

I constructed the advert using adobe photoshop. The page layout is A4 portrait (210mmx297mm) set for print at 300 dpi.

The advert is based on lots of adverts i found through my research in music magazines of the same genre.

Here is an example of the look i was going for.

To create the background I took the studio setting used in the video, inverted the colours in photoshop, and added a deep blue/purple tint to it.

I then added images of the band to the top half of the page and inverted the colours of the drummer to give him a colour negative appearance.

I then added the ‘The Rhinos’ band logo and the ‘Uncaged’ album name to the central portion of the image. Shrinking the ‘the’ to make the logo look more balanced.

Because the Text didn’t stand out enough, I applied layer effects to the text to re-colour it and put an outline around it.

I then pasted an image of the cd cover onto the bottom left hand corner of the page, tilting it slightly to make it look more interesting, and using a layer effect to put a red outline around it to make it stand out.

Finally, I added the sales text to the bottom right of the page, colouring it using layer effects

FINAL PRODUCT: Music Video

Here is what I finally ended up with for my music video.

CONSTRUCTION: 3Ds Max

I decided to use 3ds Max as a means to animate the video because it has fast and flexible animation tools.

Firstly I had to create some image files to apply to polygons.

I cut up the image of the band members so they could be used as a texture map in 3ds Max

Then I created an opacity map. This is used in 3ds Max to decide which bits of a texture map is transparent, and which is opaque

I then imported the image files into Max and applied them as a material to the polygons

Then I manipulated the polygons to build the band members and backdrop.

After that, I grouped the bits of the band members into an animation hierarchy and moved the pivot points so things would animate properly.

I then animated each band member strumming and dancing to the beat. At this stage the animations were too regular to be convincing, so I deleted keyframes at various points to make the animation more organic.

I then did several single frame test renders using a default lighting rig. This was to make sure the render wasn’t going to be too light, or too dark.

I then rendered each verse and each chorus as an uncompressed avi at 576x768 resolution (standard PAL definition).

Verse 1 - Changes from the original plan

Originally, I was going to have the whole band performing on each verse, but then decided to introduce. The biscuit-head singer on his own. In the first verse I had the singer performing with the camera gradually zooming to a close up.

Verse 2- Changes from the original plan

Verse 2 has all the band members on screen. Similar to the first verse, the camera slowly zooms in on the band over the course of the animation.

Verse 3 – Changes from the original plan

There’s a 10 second instrumental break at the start of the last verse. To make this more interesting, I cut some of the images I use during the choruses into the band performance by animating the visibility of polygons in 3ds Max. Also to add variety, I sourced a fractal picture off the web, and changed the colours in photoshop. I had this image fading in and rotating in the second half of the verse.

Choruses

I filmed all the choruses, and then decided to superimpose the band members over the top of the video. I did this by using the live action movie footage as a texture on the background polygon in 3ds Max.

In the first chorus only the Singer appears

In the second chorus, only the Fox headed bass player appears

In the third chorus the entire band appear.

Once all the sequences were rendered as avi’s, I imported them into adobe premiere dubbed the music track in, and edited the sequences together so they gelled.