Evaluation Question 1

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

In addition to the video, looking at Goodwin's theory, I noticed that our video challenges the common convention of electronic music of having disjuncture. We challenged that convention by having Dan Davids performing to the character, breaking the 4th wall, whilst maintaining a light narrative to be consistent all throughout it. Our video resulted to be a 70-30 ratio of performance to narrative, which I feel conforms to the convention of a regular pop music video, but intentionally matches the ratio of the original music video.

Link: http://dollasign7.wix.com/arcanedandavids

Evaluation question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I believe that over the course of the project we have greatly improved on our piece. We have done our best to act on both student and teacher feedback which is part of the reason why we are satisfied with the final piece. As seen below, we were advised to film in more locations which we did and by the end we had more locations then we could include which I think was great. It was also pointed out that we didn't have enough close-ups which we also improved on which gave us a balance and a wider shot variety in the final piece. By our second rough cut we still did not have all the shots we needed so our pace of editing and variety of shots suffered. After showing this rough cut to our teacher we have noticed that our change of costume was too frequent and sudden between the denim jacket and the black shirt. We have decided to film later that day with a more suitable costume which was the bomber jacket and the shirt. 

As seen below, we mostly received praise for the editing and use of location. We managed to maintain great continuity and flow throughout the piece that was clearly noticeable to the audience. Also, due to the frequent re-shooting, we managed to gather a wide range of locations which then gave us the comfort of always picking the best shot in the best possible location to our disposal.

When it comes to the cinema screening we have received very positive feedback both verbal and in the form of an impressive applause as can be seen below. We believe this is due to the fact that our final piece appeared to be up to industry quality thanks to its effective editing style and use of location.

As to to my digipak, I have tried to receive feedback from as many students including teachers. Students that have looked at my work liked the use of colours and implementing the use of the grey background from the album photoshoot.  The thing that worried me however is that not everyone noticed the use of the Arcane eye on the front panel. This was a problem as it is our main aspect of synergy between all platforms. In order to tackle this I have decided to add a large image of the eye on the left inside panel. Due to the inside's simplicity, the eye is almost the first thing you see and I believe it works very well with the image. I have also received feedback from a teacher regarding the use of font and colour. At first I went with a font that didn't really suit the electronic music genre I tried to represent as it was too swirly and unprofessional. I was the told the colour also did not work as I used a dark red which did not match with the overall colour scheme of the album cover. In response to this, I decided to implement a light/neon blue colour which I think is very effective on the song list against its black background. The lighter blue on the Album name "Voltage' also works as it also links to the definition of the word and the idea of electricity. Everyone that I have asked really liked the inside due to its simplicity and a powerful image that works really well.   

The feedback towards my website I believe was much more positive. People didn't fail to see the link in colour scheme between the website and the digipak. Due to being complemented on simplicity on the inside of the album, I decided to carry this over to the website by using only one large image with the music video over it. I decided to slightly change the font of the artist names in order for them to stand out more against their background whilst at the same time maintaining the black and white colour scheme. I also received positive feedback regarding the social media links as I made the stand out as much as possible which is an effective strategy for an upcoming artist to build a social media following. Also, I carried over the same font for the album name in order to create another synergy link so that the album name can be recognisable and have a name to it amongst audieneces. 

Finished Website

This is my finished website. 

evaluation question 2

Created with Padlet

Evaluation Question 1

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

3. Seun, Daniel, Beau, Chyna from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Some screenshots of websites that have influenced mine

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak/website)?

I feel the combination of our video and digipak/website are very strong, comparatively. The video, itself, was created to show a type of imbalance in attention, as Dan Davids was  given more screen time and focus compared to Arcane. With the video alone, a new viewer would assume that Dan Davids was the main artist as he is the one consistently seen from beginning to end.

Having said that, to the fans that recognise both Arcane and Dan Davids, they'd realise as he's the producer, he's shown in order to make him seem like he's any other person in the video. In response, however, for the album cover, I intentionally put the both of them on there in a sense of irony. To the newer viewers that would've thought "what's the significance of this person?", they're now seeing that same person on the front of the album cover. I feel this is very effective, as stated in question 1, it's not 100% common in electronic music to have images of the artists on the album cover. Therefore, it would theoretically be Dan Davids on the album covers, but I decided to go against that convention, commonly found in pop music.

Factors of synergy that were used, were the Arcane eye and both artists making appearances on the covers and in the music video. In order to maintain the continuity with all of the products, we realised it would've been best to keep both artists making an appearance in one way or another. On the other hand, for the website, I specifically intended to have only the Arcane eye on the website as it was my best way to remain minimal and focused on the content, similar to Calvin Harris' website.

The combination of the website, the digipak and the video, in my opinion, turned out to be very strong. The video matched the standards of industry music videos, the digipak kept that level of quality up, and I feel the overall package from all of the products turned out to be very strong, high-quality and effective in cohesion.

Evaluation question 3

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