Task 11: Print Artefacts: Magazine Advert Designs

First attempts at the magazine advert designs:


Questionnaire to gather audience feedback on initial designs:


I plan to distribute this questionnaire to my peers and individuals I would consider to be the target audience for my media products and artefacts. Responses will be scanned and embedded below and in a seperate blog post entitled "Task 12: Audience Feedback". Once I have these responses I can edit my designs accordingly and create a final version and prototype of the magazine advert.

Editing

When editing my A2 music video, I decided to use adobe premiere elements 9 instead of adobe premiere 6.0, which I had previously used when editing my AS media project of the opening sequence of a thriller/ horror film called "sub-rosa". I personally find adobe premiere elements easier to use as it has a simplified format in comparison to adobe premiere 6.0, whilst still offering the same amount of tools and effects to use when editing.

Another reason for my choice to use adobe premiere elements when editing instead of adobe premiere 6.0 is that adobe premiere elements was available for me to use at home, meaning that I could bypass the problems related to time limits and technical difficulties such as limited storage space and faulty hardware that I had previously encountered when choosing to edit in my sixth form's media editing suite.

The first thing that I needed to do when editing was to upload the footage from my camera's SD card to my computer. Then, I could import this footage to the editing work space in adobe premiere elements. I did this by dragging the video files from the folder they had been saved to on the computer into the open adobe premiere project. This then brought up a message that took me to the miniature "video importer" screen shown in the image below.

This will then copy my film clips to the workspace of my adobe premiere elements project, where I can drag them onto the editing timeline.

As I am making a music video, the most important aspect is the song itself, so the first thing I have done is to drag the mp4 version of the song onto the work-space timeline.

To remove the video from the audio track, I had to press the "Alt" key and right click on just the video track (shown in blue) before pressing the "delete" button. This leaves me with just the audio track of the song, allowing me to place my own video footage over the song.

Then, I had to remove the audio from my own video footage, so that only the song can be heard in the final music video. First of all, I selected all footage and audio on the editing timeline.

Then, by right clicking once everything on the timeline was selected, I could choose the option "Delete Audio". As this applied to all of the footage that was selected, by using this method I only had to remove unwanted audio tracks once.
Now that I had the audio track of the song and all of the footage, I could trim down the footage that I wanted to use and arrange it along the timeline in areas where it would complement the lyrics and/or tempo of the song. I discovered that the shortcuts for the razor tool (which allows you to cut and divide footage into separate clips) was pressing the "c" key. By pressing the "v" key, this then returned the cursor back to the normal selecting arrow. Unfortunately I could not get a screenshot to demonstrate this as the cursor does not appear on print-screens taken on a computer.
In order to ensure that my music video conformed to the convention of having the editing pace match the tempo of the music, I found that by setting markers at certain points on the timeline helped me when editing to identify key or significant changes in the tempo and lyrics of the song, letting me where to locate important video clips on the timeline and where to locate transitions between video clips. To set a marker, I chose the location where I wanted the marker, then clicked on the small blue symbol located between the video preview section f the screen (top right) and the timeline at the bottom of the screen. I then selected the options "timeline marker", "set timeline marker" and "unnamed". These markers have no effect on the actual video footage, and just act as an indicator for me to use throughout the editing process.
I soon realised that some of my footage contained too much dead space. To counteract this , I zoomed into the footage. To do this, I had to select the footage that I wanted to zoom into. I selected the footage either by simply clicking on it, or double clicking on it to open up another preview screen, as shown on the screenshots above and below. I then selected the tab "Edit" from the list of options along the top of the left hand side of the screen. At the bottom of this new screen, there is a button labelled "edit effects". By clicking on this, I was given the newdrop down options of "motion" and "opacity". 

To zoom into the video clip, I opened the drop down option labelled "motion" and moved the slider along the option "scale" until I was happy with the amount I had zoomed into (or out of) the original footage.

Once I had zoomed into the footage, by clicking on the video display at the top right section of the scree, I could drag the footage by the small circle that appears in the centre. This allows me to move the zoomed in footage in a way that moves the deadspace out of view, so that only the important action in the footage is focused on.

Progress Update 20/01/2017

As my work on editing the footage for my music video continues and I finish the creation of my print artefacts, I have began to write the script for my responses to the four evaluation questions.

In order to gain a greater level of feedback and criticism from my target audience, I plan to create a survey containing my completed print artefact designs. Then, after finding which design the majority finds the most appealing, I will either choose this as my final print artefact designs, or I will make further alterations based on the feedback given by my target audience.

As I write my responses to the evaluation questions, I have also been considering how to best present these using new media technologies, as this was a weakness in my foundation portfolio last year.

Task 11: Print Artefacts: Magazine Advert Initial Ideas

Task 11: Print Artefacts: Analysis of Existing Magazine Adverts

Task 10: Filming

Bloopers From Filming:

Task 11: Print Artefacts: Updated Album Cover Designs

Target Audience Feedback on Initial Ideas:

• "The island design looks better, It's easier to look at."
• "I prefer the one with the island on it, it's a lot more simplistic and I hate it when album artwork is over-complicated."
• "The design with the collection of pictures is nice, but it might be too complex for the front of a CD cover. Wouldn't it be better to have pictures of the artist elsewhere on the album cover?"

Updated Ideas in Consideration of Audience Feedback:
As most audience members found that the collage design was too complex, I decided to see if this was improved by adding a black and white filter to the images.

Although I like this design, i feel that there are too many elements involved for this to be a suitable album cover. However, I may use this design as part of the inside of the CD cover, which I shall explore in greater detail on a different blog post.



For the island design, I have neatened the edges and enlarged the artwork to improve the quality of this design. I attempted to add an object such as a stereo to the island, but could not make it look natural so left the artwork largely as it is. Because this island design received the most positive feedback from every member of the target audience that I asked for feedback from, I will use this island design on the front panel of my final digipak design.

Progress Update 2/1/2017

Due to the upcoming mock examinations, progress on my media coursework has been limited and slow in pace. 

Over the winter break I have completed more work on print artefacts as I lack the editing software required at home. 

I have also been planning some supplementary shots I believe might be needed in order to make the video footage last the entire duration of the song I have chosen. After going through the footage I currently have, a majority of it has been cut down in the initial editing process to remove mistakes/ bloopers .etc. Therefore, I have considered other possible shots that could be easily filmed and used if I encounter further problems during the process of editing.

I am also yet to film the performance aspects of the music video, as much of my creative process was postponed by the festive season and an increasingly demanding workload.

I intend to film these aspects as soon as I gain the opportunity of a clear background to film in front of.

Although my progress has been limited in terms of filming and editing, there is little I can do in relation to this aspect of my music video project until the storage issues encountered in the media studies editing suite has been resolved. Therefore, I feel that focusing on the print artefacts was the best investment of my time over my time off.