Thursday, 29 March 2012

Wednesday, 28 March 2012

Music Industry

Follow this link for some interesting information about the business side of the industry. There are some stats on The Big Four's yearly revenue, as well as information about new and emerging platforms such as The Pirate Bay and Spotify.

Remember to keep doing wider reading and rtaking notes to build up your case studies for the exam.

http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/ISG/MCI/documents/04.MUSICPresentationIPTSmusicOctober2011versie5.pdf

Music Industry

Listen to Steve Jobs talk about the revolution of the music industry.

Tuesday, 27 March 2012

year 12 Media just got cooler...

GoAnimate.com: Brian and Simon chat about the evaluation by misslane.ashcroft

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Music Industry

Also, check out this link for some really innovative marketing strategies being used in the music industry now.


http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/6-case-studies-on-successful-online-music-marketing.html

The Music Industry - Interesting Reading

This is a very detailed slideshare about patterns of sales and consum,ption of music in a digital age. While some of it is very industry-focused, it is worth having a look at some of the stats once you have done some independent reading for your case studies.

Want to make a comic for your evaluation?

http://www.pixton.com/uk/

Guidance for Evaluations

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (real world music magazines)

As part of your planning and research you should have looked at Music Magazines and selected a sub-genre of music that your magazine would focus on, e.g. hip hop, RnB, metal etc. Find an example of a real life music magazine which matches your magazine's sub genre, paste it into your blog and highlight the key generic conventions of the magazine.

You should go through the final version of your project and select elements which follow conventions and any which do not. Explain your reasons for either following or challenging these conventions.

Areas for analysis include:

The title of the magazine
Page layouts
Costumes, props, iconography used to reflect genre (e.g. chains and headphones etc)
Camerawork and framing of images
Title, article, header etc font and style
Genre and how the magazine cover, contents and spread suggests it
How your artist(s) are represented
Colour scheme


How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Select one or two key images from your finished product and paste it into a program like fireworks or photoshop (or even powerpoint) next to a selection of other images, showing how stars are conventionally represented in your chosen sub-genre.

You can discuss how you represented your cover star and why you chose to either use, develop or challenge stereotypical representations of this social group.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Start off by researching who distributes the magazines you looked at in the research and planning stages of your task. Now ask yourself why this company might distribute your magazine.

Perhaps they have too many similar products already out in the market.
Maybe there is a publisher that has similar reach, but fewer titles similar to yours. Maybe your magazine is quite niche, and a specialist publisher would be more suitable. Select a magazine pulisher and state your reasons for choosing it.

Consider making a powerpoint for this one, using key images of your magazine, the company's logo and images of their other title. Or, you could make a short video using software like iMovie or Movie Maker and make your commentary a voice-over for the images listed above.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Consider doing a detailed readership profile, similar to the NME one I showed you in class. You could also have short videos of you interviewing members of your target audience or post photos and notes about them on your blog.

How did you attract/address your audience?

For this one, you could video an interview or several short Q&A sessions with your target audience, where they say what it is about your magazine that makes them want to pick it up offf the shelf (cover star, colours, puffs etc). Have a full sized colour copy ready to show them before you ask them your questions.

You could also use the annotation tools in youtube to comment on how your magazine attracts your target audience. You should refer to what you learned about appealing to your target audience in the research stages of this project. Click on the link below for help on using this function in youtube.

 
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

For this question, there are lots of options for how you present your information. You could use the company logos for each piece of software you used. You could paste in screenshots of you using the programs/software or even take screencasts of you using it. You could make a collage or a Prezi of these images, too, and include annotations of howou used each piece of technology and how your knowledge and skill developed from preliminary to final product.

Looking back at your preliminary task (the school magazine task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Finally, this one is a bit more open ended. You could video yourself reflecting on this. Or if you are camera shy, why not use Go Animate http://goanimate.com/ to make a funny video of your reflections. I think you guys developed your photography quite a lot since the beginning of the year. You definitely develped your attention to detail in terms of costume and mise-en-scene since the preliminary task. Your use of technology has also developed.

Don't forget to talk about:
- creativity
- use of digital technology
- use of real media texts
- research and planning
- post production

Example of Foundation Portfolio Blog

This one is very good:

http://winstanleymediagreg3.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2011-05-12T06:14:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false

Friday, 16 March 2012

Vital Study Material

I followed the instructions on my earlier post and managed to embed this hugely informative video onto my blog. I expect that you really put effort into making your evaluations media-rich and stay away from just writing loads of drivel about your process of creation.

We don't need a blow-by-blow account of how you made your magazine, so just focus on the seven key questions.

Don't make your posts long and rambling. Be concise and to the point. Make every word, image and annotation count.

How To Embed a Slideshare Presentation On Your Blog

Thursday, 8 March 2012

Evaluation Inspiration... see what I did there?

Dudes, check out this level 4 candidate:
http://www.joeymorton-as-media.blogspot.com/

This student developed reader profiles when discussing their target audience. It might be worth looking into, but don't let a profile take the place of a discussion about your audience as a group.
http://www.erinwalshasmedia.blogspot.com/

This candidate conducted a focus group and posted graphs and video responses to her final product as part of her evaluation:
http://www.taylakeirasmedia.blogspot.com/


Adding Videos to your blog

To put a video, from YouTube, in your blog you should;
1. Create a new post
2. Select edit HTML
3. Paste the embed code in from YouTube
4. Publish the post

Evaluation for Foundation Portfolio

Time to start on your evaluations of your magazines.

The OCR specification reminds you that you need to approach this task in a creative way and produce an interesting mulit-modal evaluation. It encourages you to use images, audio/music, video and links to other sites in your evaluation. Overall, your evaluation should be: well -organised under headings (the seven questions); full of colour and creativity; rich in content, so son't just write a paragraph for every question; and, it should round up all your learning from your initial research and your preliniary task, as well as discussing your finished product.

From the spec: "In all cases, candidates should be encouraged to see the evaluation as a creative task and the potential of the format chosen should be exploited through the use of images, audio, video and links to online resources. Marks should be supported by teacher comments and may be supported by other forms such as audio or video presentations. "

In the evaluation the following seven questions must be addressed:

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

·         How does your media product represent particular social groups?

·         What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

·         Who would be the audience for your media product?

·         How did you attract/address your audience?

·         What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

·         Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?


I really want to see you think outside the box.

Consider setting up a facebook page for your magazine and inviting people who fit your audience profile to like it and comment on your finished product. That way you can link to the actual page itself, as well as quoting the comments/reactions of your target audience in your blog.

Why not interview a "typical" reader of your magazine and ask them what features really appeal to them and what it is about your front page that would make them want to pick it up off the shelf and flip through it. Or you could print your finished product, take it around to several members of the target audience and film their initial reactions. You could edit it together, post it onto youtube or vimeo and embed the video into your blog post under the right heading.

Try to do a screen cast of some of the techniques you used on picnik or fireworks, filming some of your edits and commentating your creative and technical process.

Compare your final product to simialr real-world media products and annotate them, highlighting features that are similar/different. This will allow you to SHOW where you used/adapted/challenged conventions and representations. For example, you could pate the cover of King magazine alongside your own and circle where you conformed to the convention of the head over the masthead, or a provocatively dressed female cover star. Perhaps you could circle cleavage/headphones/puffs/fonts etc to show where you used or adpated specific conventions and ad a commentary at the bottom of the post.

Consider linking or embedding some of the music from the genre that your magazine covers. Take some screen shots to support how you used/adapted/challenged conventions of mise-en-scene in your own photography.

Show a timeline of your photography, commenting on your how your style/ideas/skill changed as you experimented.

Video yourself talking about representation and add this to your post about representation. Include images that show common constructions of gender/age/ethnicity in similar products.

Use some of your screenshots from your production to show how you edited your work and which tools you used.

Research a range of magazine publishers to figure out which one is best positioned to distribute your product. Talk about their current titles. Is your product filling a gap in their list or is it in direct comeptition with other titles they publish? Is it similar to another title, but aimed more at audiences of the opposite gender?

The more interactive, creative and media-rich your evaluation, the better it will be.

Good luck!