Thursday Update

 Check out my flow chart of what I have this afternoon!

This is how far we have gotten with our podcast for question 1 so far!  

OUR MUSIC VIDEO!

Here is our final music video! It is pretty bad quality because it is the only way which we could it to upload onto YouTube. We hope you like it!!!!



(We haven't included any credits but we may do in the HD version that we official hand in!)

Thursday!

In our free this morning Amy and I have decided to do some more work on our evaluation! At the moment Amy is applying more images and video clips to our podcast for the question "In What Ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?" She is including images and video from real music videos, as well as some from our own. To fill spaces we are including images and video of items that are relevant to the answers we have given to the question.

I have now began working on Question 4 of our evaluation; "How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?" In my free yesterday I made basic notes on some of the technologies that we have used throughout the construction and evaluation stages. I have found this question quite hard to answer because we have used SO many technologies for everything we have done.

Here is a word bubble of some of our technologies that I created on worditout.com:

Word cloud made with WordItOut

From this I have started writing out the actual answer, I have set it out so we will answer each bullet point for each technology in one section. For example I have spoken about YouTube in the research stage all at once.

Once I have finished this, I will email it to Amy as I did before so she is able to add in our make any changes that she would like to make. The technology we are going to use to for this question will be a powerpoint, which will then be uploaded via Slideshare or a similar website. Amy and I have looked at some previous student examples of powerpoints so that we have a basic idea of the sort of thing that we need to do. Most of the ones we looked at were about 30pages long, but this was probably the most detailed:

This is the beginning paragraph on Google and YouTube:

Ancillary and evaluation

30.1.13 by carolinelautey on GoAnimate

Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate.

Another evaluation update!

Listen to the Voki to find out what Caroline and I have been doing in our free period today!

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation

Evaluation update!

During Fridays lesson, I began making a Prezi for our evlauation.

Since then, I have completed question 2 of the evaluation on Prezi. I have added in all the text and lots of images to make it visually interesting for the viewer. Next lesson, I think Caroline and I should film ourselves speaking question 1 and then we can edit the video on final cut express; adding in images and clips from our music video (again) to make it more visually interesting. Finally, we can upload this on to our Prezi, and question 1 and 2 will be complete!

This is what I have done so far:

http://prezi.com/yrordjvdr6xu/present/?auth_key=txgz8hk&follow=no9q_cd7g9pl

Hopefully, by next lesson Caroline will have completed the evaluation script for question 3 and 4 so we can create a podcast for question 3 and come up with a new technology for question 4 :)

Website and Evaluation

In our lesson today Amy and I have been battling with Prezi to start presenting our evaluation! We decided to choose to a very simple layout because the website is so complicated, we chose a layout that originally looked like this:

To begin with we were planning on putting Question One the first box, Question Two in the second and so on.. Then we felt that this looked really boring and so asked our teacher what we were doing. Ms Hill then showed us these two Prezi evaluations done by past Media students- http://prezi.com/2ukkc5pqxsfm/a2-media-studies-evaluation/ and http://prezi.com/2ukkc5pqxsfm/a2-media-studies-evaluation/ Viewing these was a good thing as we were able to see what we were doing wrong, the main thing is that we have to use a different type of media for each question as well as using different types on media within each question. So we have decided to do one of our questions as a Prezi and then link it to the next question. We then began to put together a new Prezi, and we changed he background to a images that was actually related to our coursework.
This is the image we chose as our Prezi background:

Website..

In today's lesson I have continued to work on our website whilst Amy works on the Digi Pack, we decided this was easiest as the Digi-Pack is saved on her Mac account.

My main aim was so sort out the 'Tour Dates' page, as at the end of last lesson it looked awful and unorganised. I spent the first half of the lesson on photoshop creating images of number in our chosen phone and then importing them onto Wix. Next to these images I included the date and venue information where the performance would take place. BUT the internet crashed and I was unable to save it so then i had to spend the second half of the lesson re-doing it, which was so annoying and stressful!

I was planning on adding images of the actual band to the bottom of the page, but I didnt not have time so I will do that next time.

Dijipak editing!

In todays lesson, I added all the info at the bottom of the back on the dijipak! It took ages, but at least it's finally coming together :)
Mrs Mullen suggested putting the Crash lyrics on the top left (inside right), so we might do that! But we're going to wait until we get our feedback from Miss Hill before we decide on anything. If it will up our grade then we'll definitely do it :)

Once I finished with the dijipak I carried on working on the evaluation script. I've written two pages now for question one, I am just going to write about the website and then I will start question 2. By Fridays lesson, we will start making it technical!

Update!

During my free period last lesson, I was working on the evaluation script as Caroline said... And then my computer crashed and I lost everything! So I am no further with the evaluation than I was yesterday :(

In todays lesson, I will continue working on the evaluation script. And I will also work on the digipak. I bought in some CDs that have been made with Sony.
I have Pink's album The Truth About Love, Beyonce's album 4 and Rihanna's album Talk That Talk.

Pink and Beyonce's album are both made with Sony. Rihanna's however, is made with Jay Z's record label.
I thought we could copy either one of the information/layout on to our on one of these CDs as they are both made with big companies; therefore we would get the funding we would need for our album! :)

More Wix Editing

In our Free today Amy is doing some more work on her evaluation questions, so I decided to continue editing our Wix page.

I have continued the title editing from yesterday - whereby I have changed all the page titles to images of the words that way we are able to use our chosen font! After this I went on to re-arrange some of the pages so they do not resemble our starting template as we are choosing our own style to use. For example I rearranged the music page, and in our gallery I have split the page into two. Half being images, and the other is now video bloopers from the filming of our 'Crash' music video! In our next lesson I plan to work on the Tour Dates page, as so far it is very boring and I don't really think it fits in with the rest of our website (even though there is not a lot on it at the moment).

This is what are gallery page looks like now:

For our merchandise page i have the idea that we could take pictures of their bands actual previous CD'd and other Merchandise EG T-shirts, and use them as our fake merchandise! I actually have some of the band's T-shirts and CD's so i will take photos of them at home and add them as the images on our merch page.

Editing Wix

Today, we decided that we should sort out our fonts, and eventually we chose that we are going to use the 'Plane Crash' font that we used in our You Me At Six logo for all the page titles, and for all the other writing we would use the menu font!

At first I couldn't figure out how to get the font onto the website, but one of Wix's issues is that you can not import your own font. Because of this I decided that I would write out what word we wanted as images on Photoshop then change the background opacity to 0% so that the image would just purely be our chosen font and the words we wanted. At first this did not work as we were saving the image as Jpeg and transparency did not work with this and it came up as a plain white image. After this I googled what we should save the file as and it was a PNG. From this I have changed most of the page titles to images of the title word so they all match.



Here are some examples:

Unsupervised lesson 2

This is how much I have written for the evaluation script:

This is only for question 1; the first page and the first paragraph on the second page is all relevant to the music video and the second paragraph on the second page is the beginning of the dijipak. Hopefully, I will finish this tonight. And will be at least half way through question 2.

Therefore, tomorrow we will be able to start our evaluation as question 1 will be complete!

Unsupervised lesson!

In todays lesson I am going to carry on working on question 1 and 2 of the evaluation.
I will also edit our Wix page!

I am going to try and edit the text on all the pages.

I will use this font for all the headings:

And this font for all the body:

However, Wix is being really weird and won't work properly. I started editing the font but it wouldn't work for every text box, so I'm gonna work on the script for the evaluation for the rest of the lesson.

Evaluation question 1 planning

Play the Voki below to see what's happening with the evaluation so far! :)

Friday lunch!

At the beginning of lunch I have just begun to do some more editing on our website. I have edited the 'contact' page so the image at the top is one we created earlier today of You Me At Six with our own font as the writing on. I also edited the image on wix, and put an effect on it, which created a border which had the same rustic look as our font. here is our 'contact' page:

I also had the idea that we should put individual 'about' boxes on the 'about' page. I think we should include similar looking head shots of each of the band members, and then include their information in a text box next to them. So far I have found and cut some from a poster I found on Tumblr, and I have put the rustic effect over the top, but now I have done that I'm not so sure. I will wait until Amy looks at our about page, and see what she thinks about it!

Above are the edited images on the about page. I think that they look look in a line, but it could possibly be put them in a line vertically as the we would be able to put text boxes next to them!

Draft ancillary text 2

Here is a draft of our website:

http://sadleramy.wix.com/youmeatsix

We know we still have a lot to do, in terms of matching all the fonts and colours etc, but now that we know what we're definitely doing with the look of our website. We should be able to complete this soon :)

Draft ancillary texts!

Today we have to hand in a draft of our ancillary texts! So, in our free period today Caroline and I worked on our digi pack.

Here is a draft:

(the black top left square is where the CD will go)

We still have a lot to do, we're a bit unsure about a spine so we're going to wait until we get some feedback from our teacher before we decide what to do.

We also need to add in all the information on the back of the CD cover, we had planned on doing that today, as we thought we would be able to get the information from the internet, however this wasn't the case. So, we are going to bring in a CD (for inspiration) next week and add it on then.

But for now, here it is miss!

Next lesson we are going to work on our website.

Evaluation analysis

In class we were asked to analyse three music videos for homework! We had to look at the good points, the bad points, the use of technology and any influences on our own work :)

The first video I analysed is embedded below:

Good points:

• When they are answering question two (about the ancillary texts) they talk a lot about the audience they are targeting their product at which I think is very important and Caroline and I should definitely do this with ours!
• In the same question, they showed an image of their CD cover, although this is a bit of an obvious thing to do, I think it is important to include as the viewer knows what you are talking about.
• When I was creating notes for question four, I completely forgot about talking about posting our video on Facebook. The boys in their evaluation talk a lot about Facebook and how it helped them proliferate their video as loads of people could view it! Caroline and I can take influence from this and include this in our answer to question four as we also posted our video on Facebook.
• Again although it is quite obvious, it's good that they typed out what the questions were as it just makes it a lot easier for the viewer/examiner. 

Bad points:

• I felt that even though they were speaking loud, the music playing behind the voice over was still quite distracting; making them difficult to hear. Although, I feel this may also be because some of them are rushing what they are saying and some seem to be finding it difficult to get their words out. So, when Caroline and I use a voice over (in a video or a podcast etc) I think we should be VERY clear in what we say, and not rush it at all as this boy seems almost inaudible and I can imagine for the examiner it must have been difficult to grade.
• I also thought that the actual content of what they were all saying wasn't very good. For example, question one is about codes and conventions of real media products and how you developed, challenged or used these... And the first thing he begins to talk about is the target audience. There is a set question concerning the audience so I think Caroline and I should be careful not to steer too far from the question being asked.
• The whole evaluation is just a pod cast; all we hear is the boys voice over screen grabs from his work and clips from his video. This makes the evaluation VERY boring to watch as he only used one form of technology!
• Towards the end, you hear them turning over a piece of paper they are reading over; I thought this was very unprofessional and Caroline and I should definitely not do this!

The second video I analysed was:

Good points:

• Only 30 seconds in and this evaluation is already so much better than the first one I analysed! The use of text makes it so much easier to follow what the voice over is saying. I also felt that it interacted more with the audience.
• Rather than seeing images from her work and clips from her video for long amounts of time, this is cut up with screens of text which makes it more interesting to view as a member of the audience.
• I really like how she's made the look of her evaluation match the look of her video and her ancillary texts. It looks a lot more professional and more interesting to watch.
• She talks about Goodwins theory straight away! And considering he is a key theorist, this is very important.
• She is speaking clearly and she has recorded her voice over without any background noise, which makes it a lot nicer to listen to.
• Everything she is saying is very relevant to the questions; she never goes off topic and in terms of content she's done a really good job!

Bad points:

• She doesn't really use any forms of technology other than the pod cast. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing as this video was created last year, so she didn't have to use four different forms of technology. And as her evaluation isn't very long, it doesn't get boring.
• However, the fact that her evaluation is so short kind of implied it isn't very good and that she may have missed some stuff out. Although when I was watching it, I didn't feel she had left anything out. We have been advised to spend five minutes on each question. I wouldn't want the examiner to get the impression I got when I saw how long this was if mine and Caroline's evaluation was also quite short, so I think we should definitely stick to the guidelines we have been given.

The final video I analysed is just below:

Good points:

• She spoke about Andrew Goodwin straight away in question one; the key theorist we studied for this topic! Caroline and I will definitely include Andrew Goodwin and his 'theory of seven...' in our evaluation.
• She uses an interesting backing track to make it more entertaining. The music for question one is very tinny and mechanic and fits in with what she's talking about (robots). As an audience member, little things like this make it a lot more interesting. Perhaps Caroline and I should consider using something like this, rather than the actual 'Crash' song as in the first evaluation I analysed, the music in the background is very distracting!
• She speaks very clearly, and uses a good microphone. After watching the first evaluation in comparison to these two, I do think it is very important to a good microphone and to speak very clearly as it is a lot easier to watch and listen to. So, Caroline and I will take this on board when we create our evaluation and will definitely use the macs at school to make a podcast as the microphone on there is good.

Bad points:

• She only uses one form of technology; a podcast! I do think a podcast is a really good way of answering the questions, but when it is literally just a podcast, it does get very boring!
• There were no titles to indicate what question she was answering. I think you definitely need to include the titles for which question you are answering otherwise it appears sloppy and un-organised. And I picked up on it straight away, so an examiner easily could too! Caroline and I will make sure we don't forget to.

Wednesday

Today is the first lesson that Amy and I have both been together in a while, so at the start of the lesson we discussed our evaluation and what we could possibly do for it. Amy had the idea that we should each do two of the questions, and then swap them over and edit what the other person had put so that each question would have both of our input, but at the same time not take up as much time. On Friday a draft of our auxiliary tasks has to be in and so far we only have half of our digi-pack done. We discussed with Miss Hill what we need to do, and had a look at some more previous student examples to help give us some ideas. We spent most of the lesson looking at images from our music video that we could use on the back cover of our digi-pack where we will also be putting the track listing, barcode and trademark information. We both really like the idea of using the images where you can see the sun and it creates flare; there are 2 examples.. one where just dj is sitting on the bench at the end of the music video or the other is when Amy and Dj meet and are both sat on the bench. However, we also have the other options of Amy walking away in the trees, or Amy and dj sitting in a field. All of these images have been manipulated on photoshop by us, and specifically given a similar color look to our other digi-pack images.

These are some of the things we've made:

We made some others but accidentally saved them as tif files!

We have also added a twitter feed to our website which is linked to the actual You Me At Six twitter!

Tuesday's Lesson!

Today Amy has an exam so she won't be here for this lesson!

I have missed the past couple of lessons so I don't really know what we are doing evaluation-wise, so i'll wait for tomorrows lesson so Amy can fill me in.

I'm not really sure what to do today, I know we have to have a draft of our ancillary tasks in some point soon, but i don't really want to make any changes to the digi-Pack whilst Amy isn't here. I have also linked all our buttons to the actual you me at six pages for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and I also added a YouTube icon and linked that as well.

         ->

I plan on working on the about page, even if we decide to get rid of it as we will then have the text we need about the band to possibly use in the digi-pack or the page we create instead. Also at the moment we still have a lot to do on our digi-pack, I was thinking that we should make a sort of booklet with the 'about' information inside it like you get with some CD's, including the bands 'thankyous' and information about their 'production company' and so on.

Todays lesson!

In todays lesson, Caroline was absent... So again, I didn't want to work too much on our evaluation as we are marked on our contribution and it would be unfair for me to do loads as Caroline hasn't got the chance.
So, I've been working on our website! Again, I've been adding to the content, rather than the look because once we get all the information on the site, we can then edit all the fonts, pictures, colours and style the same and just make it all consistent and matching our video and diji pack! :)

So far, I have edited the 'CONTACT', 'CRASH' and our 'NEWS' page!

I have completed our NEWS page in terms of content, I think there is a few more things we could write, but the videos say it all really:

Obviously we still need to make all the text matching etc, but I think the videos were a better idea rather than just text... So I created this page from scratch and deleted our other news page. It doesn't matter though as there was nothing on our old news page.

I looked at the YMAS official page (but it was really weird...) and the McFly website for inspiration:

I like how they have an 'enter site' button that links you to the main webpage. They also have a picture of the band, logo, and info about the band so you can easily recognize everything. I think we should maybe consider this rather than having the About page, as it is much more interesting than just having loads of text about the band... However, I need to discuss this with Caroline, but I won't be in next lesson as I have an exam. So, this won't be done until next wednesday.

We also got our feedback and our grade back today on our music video draft, so we have some changes we need to make. 

The start of the evaluation!

It's in note form, but Caroline and I can elaborate on them next lesson, and hopefully write two of the complete answers at least!

Back to School!

Today is our first day back of school after Christmas, and in todays lesson we've been working on our website!

We worked a lot on our dig pack last term, so we thought we'd focus more on our website this term!

We have mainly worked on the content on our page rather than the look!

For example, we have added pictures from the making of Crash:

We've created a music page:

And, begun to edit the 'About' page:

We still have a lot to do in terms of design, but we're going to all the info on first and then edit the way it looks as we think this won't take as long!