Finished album cover

Here are the finished album covers, the photo of myself is the shadow figure photo we used for the front of the cover. Credit to Kieran for creating this album cover, we went with contrasting colours for the front cover of red and blue, this would reflect the album name 'Day N' Nite' as the day and night are different and oppose each other. Below is the image used for the front cover, the back of the album cover as well as the front:

Finished CD pack

This is the fully completed CD pack that the group have worked hard on for some time, I will guide you through the entire pack.

Here is the front cover of the CD pack, this will represent the entire album therefore needs to look the most presentable for our audience so it is appealing.

This is the inside of the booklet, it is similar to the front cover as it sticks to a futuristic theme. We also show some reflection our song Day N' Nite as the red and blue contrast each other massively.

This is the lyrics for our songs in the album, this is mainly for the audience as they can learn the lyrics and sing along at concerts. Here are the rest of the lyrics for all of the songs:

Here is the back of the album which contains all of the names of the songs in the album, this is so the CD pack looks professional and is also helpful to all of our audience.

Evaluation Q4

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



In our A2 music video project we used essential and optional equipment to create our final production video. We used different equipment for different purposes, this is the list of the equipment that was used to create our music video:

•  Camera 
• Tripod
• Computer software 

We used a Nikon DSLR camera to capture all of the footage that we needed for our music video throughout the time. Myself and the group all understood how to use the camera so we can enhance our knowledge on media technologies for future references. The camera produced good quality shots for our music video as they was all in focus at the time of recording and this increased our quality of our finished music, this will also increase audience feedback later on when discussing the quality of the music video.



Also during filming we used a tripod, this was attached to the camera when we wanted a steady shot the tripod would be ideal as it would always provide a steady shot given the camera has a stable stance when recording a scene. If we did not have a tripod then we would have a lot of shots which would be shaky, this would then reduce the quality of our finished music video.



After all of the completed filming we then used Premiere Pro to edit the shots. By this we can cut clips, insert them into a specific order so that the shots correlate with the song 'Day N' Nite'. We can also put any special effects on any chosen clips to make the music video more professional. We did put special black and white effects on some of the scenes in our music video which gave it that creative side to the video.



During the pre-production stage we did our research on our previous productions as well as ex-students music videos so that we could get a good idea on what kind of music video we would have liked to create. In the end we decided to go for a hip-hop theme because we all felt as though it was the most suited to all of the group members.



For our CD cover we used Photoshop CC to create a space like background which then had the shadow of a photo of myself in front of the background. This effect created an extra-terrestrial feel to the front of the CD cover, the back of the cover contains the name of the songs within the album as well as the name of the band on the spine of the cover. This was all done on Photoshop CC and helped massively to create this CD cover as I believe it is a huge success and looks very professional.

Our website that we created contains many interesting things such as merchandise, tour information and personal information  about each member of the band. Creating the website the way that we have in a modern setting with the classic look as it is predominantly black and white. I believe that we used this media technology to a great extent as it represents the band in a positive way but more importantly keeps its professionalism about it.



Overall we needed all of the media technologies provided for us, if we didn't have a single one of the media technologies that we used then I would doubt that we would be able to produce a similar quality of productions. We could have used a few more media technologies such as a shoulder mount for the equipment to get steadier moving shots, we could have also used more computer software such as Fireworks or use more of After Effects to create more special effects on our video but we did not want to put too many effects on the music video.

Evaluation Q2

Here is my answer to the second evalutation question, 'How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?', hope you enjoy!

 

Evaluation Q1

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



At the start of the campaign to create a music video, we as a group wanted a music video that made sense, correlates with the chosen song, this would help us when applying a theorist to our music video, by having visuals that match to the lyrics of the song we can apply Andrew Goodwin's theory as he explains that music and visuals have an important relationship when it comes to music videos. The music video we create I believe represented a strong relationship between the music and visuals presented to our audience.


To ensure that we represented this theory we had to be certain that the editing, miming, mise-en-scene, camera angles and shots were all up to good quality. Another way of showing this theory is that we made sure that the shots in the music video involved scenes in the day and the night, this is because the song we chose was Day N' Nite by Kid Cudi. Creating a music video with shots that consisted of different times of the day would help reflect the song that we chose. This will also help our audience understand what is being said in the song if the visuals are matched properly and in time to the song then our audience will have a clearer view on our music video.


I believe that our own music video has come across in some ways similar to Kid Cudi's official video of the song Day N' Nite, although there are some differences besides the obvious. One significant difference between the two videos is that the costumes used for the mise-en-scene for the videos are different, the character in our video wears less stereotypical hip-hop clothing such as sports tops, baggy jeans and trainers. Although the characters in both videos are represented in a similar way as they both are seen as isolated and enclosed members of society who want more in life, the lyrics from the song help display these characteristics of our main character in the music video.


Conclusively I believe that we as a group have attempted to compete with the stereotypical hip-hop music video but could improve in areas such as the involvement of more characters whether they play a significant role or not is regardless as it may defeat what is trying to be achieved by us as a group. I believe that our media product has developed, in some ways challenged forms and conventions of real media products and our A2 music video was a success.
 

Question 3 Evaluation

Here is our group's answers to the third question of our evaluation, 'what have you learned from your audience feedback?', the video is just below if you would like to find out what our responses are:

Finished Website

Below is the link to our completed website, enjoy!

http://kieranlukas1.wixsite.com/theassociation

Finished Music Video!

Here it is, the finished music video is now up onto YouTube! I hope you can spot some of the changes that were made before releasing this video, I will be uploading my answers to four evaluation questions in the upcoming future regarding this music video. Here is the final video:

Draft Music Video!

Here is the first draft of our music video, we will be altering changes to this later in the week as we have been given improvements to help make this draft better, the finished version should be up soon.

Update blog

We have now completed the music video so that it can be soon released. I will release a first draft version of the video soon onto my blog so that it can be available for viewing for you guys. We tried to get shots in the day time and night time to help represent the visuals in the video, as the song is called 'Day 'N Nite' we wanted to get scenes in both types of lighting.

Here are a few photos from us filming:

Update Blog

Hi all,


We have almost completed our filming for the music video, we hope to finish it all by this upcoming Sunday. After this we will finish the editing and get everything else completed such as the CD album cover. After filming is completed we should be able to release photos of our filming so it gives you guys a sneak peak at behind the scenes footage. More blogs will be coming soon!

Textual Analysis on J Cole's CD album cover

 This is my textual analysis on J Cole's CD album cover where I will discuss the way he is portrayed, the typography and more! Enjoy!

 

Kanye West - Stronger Practice Piece

This is one of our previous creations of music videos where we produced our own music video on Kanye West's song 'Stronger'. Through making this music video we have all gained needed experience which allows us to create a higher quality music video for our next production which will be 'Day 'n' Nite' by Kid Cudi.




One thing that we learnt from creating this music video is that we know that we had to contact the record label company so that we can explain that we are using their song for educational purposes only, this time we have attempted to contact the record label company but was unsuccessful as they had no email address. Although we tried to contact them is an improvement on the previous music video which will improve our organisational skills for the production of our latest music video.




Here is our last music video production 'Stronger' by Kanye West:

Emailing the record artists!

We have attempted to contact the record label artist companies called 'Universal Motown',  'GOOD Music' and 'Dream on Records' but however, we were unable to try and contact them by email to let them know that we are using the song 'Day N Nite' by Kid Cudi for educational and non-profitable purposes. We are disappointed to not get the thumbs up completely but we did try to find an email address for the companies but we could only find social media links.

This is the furthest we have got up to on completing our music video, another step done! 

Update blog

Hello,


We have currently finished our storyboard which brings us closer to getting the filming of our music video finished. In recent times we have been working on our website to make it look as professional as possible, specifically I have been working on the merchandise part of the website where items can be sold and the band could create an alternative income source (obviously we aren't actually selling any items being presented as we aren't an official band).


Hopefully the website should be finished soon and we are filming this weekend coming so I will be sure to update photos of the places we are filming and may be if we can be effective with our filming we can start editing the music video the following week but we may need to film extras if we need to before this process occurs.

Storyboard

Hello,

Here is our completed storyboard for our music video which we will be starting to film soon! I will keep you updated throughout the period where we will be filiming and I will also release some shots of the location of where we are filming and may be some small clips if possible! Here is the storyboard:

Update!

Hello there,

In recent times myself and the group have been doing our research and planning for our music video. We have looked at different locations and expressed our ideas and thoughts to an agreement where we will use the lyrics of 'Day 'n' Nite' to help the flow of the music video, this can be done by using the correct visuals to go with the type of line from the song.

We are also finishing off our storyboard so that we can soon start filming and then finish the filming to a good standard with plenty of clips to choose from. We hope that our music video will be completed for the set deadline and be a good standard by using different types of shots, lip syncing, visuals, costumes and other factors that will influence the flow of our music video.

Be on the look out for more updates in the upcoming future!