Evaluation Question 4

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

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

http://lucysaunders240.wix.com/evaluationquestion3

Evaluation Question 2

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

Evaluation Question 1

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

Final Website

I have finally completed my website for Noxa! I decided to stick with the theme of black and white that was presented in our music video and I am very pleased with the way my website came out. The site contains a home page, news, about, videos, gallery, shows and store page which are all filled with relevant content. This is the final site:

http://lucysaunders240.wix.com/noxawebsite

Final Music Video!

After a spending months planning, filming and editing our final sequence for our music video, "Narcissistic Cannibal", is complete! The final version includes the story of Noxa and her version of a personal purgatory, which takes place in a never-ending forest, that taunts her through eery signs that have been left for her. We mixed this in with artistic shots that are metaphors for our character and how she is feeling during the song. We have all worked so hard to create this video and we now, finally, have completed it!

Shotgun Records presents Noxa - 'Narcissistic Cannibal':

Final Digipak

This is my final digipak which I am very please with. As the title of Noxa's first single is 'Narcissistic Cannibal' I decided that this would be an appropriate name for the album.  I went for a more artistic theme basing my digipak around aspects of images such as silhouettes, overlays and matching texts. The digipak displays both Noxa's innocent side but also her darker personality. This is the final product:

Glog:

Scroll down on the text to read more

If the glog is not working please use this link:

http://media123.edu.glogster.com/lucy-saunders-digipak/

Digipak Back Cover

This is the back cover of the digipak and contains the list of Noxa's songs. Due to the colour of the image I may change to an entirely new image but for now their are currently 7 songs which all relate back to her character. The image contains a barcode and the picture was edited to look polarised and slightly more bleak:

Digipak Front Cover

My digipak front cover is complete and I am extremely happy with the way it turned out. I decided I wanted something simple yet artistic, two usually contrasting aspects of a image, but I really wanted something along these lines. I had previously edited an image were Noxa was covered in a paint-like effect and decided I wanted this to be my front cover:

I then made the image a little brighter so Noxa was stood out against the black:

I was happy with this as the theme one of our main colours, black, was largely present in the image. I then added in Noxa's logo but put a white glow around it to make it stand out against the black background:

I wanted to leave the cover like this but realised I needed to add the album title. I decided to simply go for the song title 'Narcissistic Cannibal as it can be considered Noxa's first song / music video. I chose a simple font that was slightly jagged on the sides as I thought it matched Noxa's overall persona. I then put a white glow around the text to match the artists name:

However I was unhappy with the placement of the title. I knew I wanted the artists name to be larger than the title as I consider this to be her first album and I wanted to promote her rather than the name of the album. I decided to make the title smaller and move it into the corner to make it stand out even more against the background. This is the end result:

Green Day Website Analysis

As a band that has produced several alternative rock songs and a band I am very familiar with I decided to analysis Green Day's website on how they present their star image and how they can be linked back to their fans.

Digipak Practise - Eyes

For my digipak I wanted to make sure our main colour scheme of black and white show to be the theme of my digipak which lead to me using the black and white effect to get the look I wanted. I took a screenshot from the footage where Noxa opens her eyes and decided to put it into Photoshop:

I started by using the blemish fixer to make Noxa's skin and eyebrows look neater and then put a black and white filter on to the image and played around with the fade and contrast until I ended up with this image:

This image makes Noxa's eyes and lashes look much more defined and match the theme that I wanted to display in my digipak. However I wanted to see if I could add a darker feel to the image showing that Noxa is not someone to be messed with. I put the image above into PicMonkey and began to put shadow effects and darkened the overall image. I also added a dark frame around image to make the whole picture darker. This is what I ended up with:

Similar to the second image this effect makes Noxa's eyes and lashes stand out against her skin. I love this effect as her eyes are completely black showing no emotions at all - which matches her character in 'Narcissistic Cannibal'. However I think this image really stands out and may clash with the other images that I have planned so I will have to consider which image I want to use carefully.

Shotgun Records Logo

As my group and I are designing our digipak's design we realised that we needed a logo our our record label. Initially we thought about using a shotgun image due to the name being 'Shotgun Records" but instead we decided to keep it simple. We used a black CD as the 'O' in records to make it a bit more interesting to look at but no so complicated that it looks out of place on our digipak. Our logo also matches our star's image and theme of black and white to keep it relevant and linked to Noxa at all times. This way when people look at the Shotgun Records logo they will think of Noxa.

This is our logo:

Editing Progress - Almost Finished!

Although we still have a lot of tweaking to do my group and I have nearly completed adding all of the shots we need to our music video sequence! I am so happy to see the whole video come together at last and am eager to make it perfect by taking on the advice that we got during the screening and tweaking it to our audience's liking. This is the progress we have made since the first editing blog post:

I think that during the weeks we have had to edit that we have progressed pretty far and have made lots of changes to the sequence than when we first started. All we need to do now is fill in the final three gaps, sync all of the shots to the music, change the colour with the 'three-way colour corrector' effect and we should be finished!

Evanescene Digipak Analysis

Whilst thinking about how I wanted to present my digipak for my artist Noxa I decided to look into another alternative rock band that had a main female singer. I decided to look at Evanescene as I relate their music to our song choice and thought that the image they had created would be suitable for Noxa. The following is a analysis of Evanescene's digipak and what it includes so I remember to add the small details to my own digipak:

I love the colour scheme of the digipak and as one of the main themes of my video is the colours black and white it might be a good idea to consider them as a colour scheme. I also love the use of both the name and logo used on the digipak as their fans will identify both with their image. I will definitely use some of the techniques presented in this digipak for my own!

Website Analysis - Paramore

The following video is a screen recorded navigation of Paramore's website, as they are a similar genre and theme to EarlyRise and our song choice. As I was unkeen on speaking in the video I decided to have a computer generated voice take the listener on a tour through the sight.

Unfortunately the watermark of the screen recorder is on the screen and I cannot remove it.

(the editing is a bit slow due to the editing software I using but this will be fixed as soon as possible)

First Screening

Today we held our first screening for our target audience to get as much feedback on the current state of our video. We also filmed the reaction of our two friends whilst they watched the video to see their thoughts on the video as they watched it.

Bloopers + Gag Reel

We have a lot of fun whilst filming and this can often lead to a lot of laughter and some mistakes being made while the camera is still rolling. My group and I made a quick montage of our favourite bloopers over all of our shoots to contrast with the seriousness of our actual video and song!

Photoshop Practice #2

As I will soon be starting my digipak I wanted to practice some more photo editing on Photoshop. I decided to edit something with meaning behind it and choose to edit a screenshot of Noxa wearing the white mask:

I wanted to simply add another picture on top to add something else to a already meaningful image. Sticking with the theme of innocence being lost I decided to make the mask cracked and chipped to look like her facade slowly begin to fade - linking to the loss of innocence. I faded all of the cracks to make them look old and different sizes so the mask is still intact but will so be broken:

Digipak and CD Covers

In preparation for creating my own digipak I have done some research into the front covers of alternative rock artists (and artists that have created some alternative rock tracks) to get some inspiration for my own digipak cover. These are the album covers that I found the most appealing:

There are many differences but also a lot of similarities between each album cover which is what makes them all interesting. Very few of these albums use there artists on the cover, unlike many pop artists would have, as the others take a more artistic approach. The colours black and white are the most popular being present on every cover which are two colours that I will definitely be hoping to use in my own digipak. Something I noticed that I think I will incorporate into my own cover is that most of these covers have the artist name larger and more noticeable than the album name. It is either larger or bolder than the album name and is promoting the band more than the actual album. I like the idea of promoting Noxa more than her album, for my digipak, especially as it is her first album. This could also potentially lead people to her website, other music and merchandise.

Editing - Continued

After the holidays had past my group and I returned to editing the sequence and preparing for the mock exams. The editing of the sequence is a currently moving at a slower pace than we would like but we want to make sure we are happy with what we are editing. We have also been looking back at our animatic to see if we are following the structure that we initially planned. Many of the shots were in the same place (with the exception of quicker edits) as the shots like back to their drawn out partner:

We hope to continue on this route as the animatic makes the structure of our video a bit easier when it comes to editing our first draft.