Summer Holiday Homeworks:

1. A Prezi (or similar) of a genre of game. This should have an explanation or a definition of what the genre is you’re going to be looking at and then a selection of screenshots that somehow demonstrate different aspects of that genre. The screenshots should have the name of the game, year released and platform releaed on, as well as the description of what each game shows about that genre.

 2. Using a photo pinning website or callage maker, collect a range of screenshots that eflects the variety of styles in ONE genre. This genre should be one you haven’t looked at yet. Inbclude as many photos as possible and include MINIMAL text, perhaps just name of game and year released, focusing on a variety of different images to show off the variety of styles and examples for that genre. Think early versions and modern versions, changes through sequels etc.

Websistes that might be of use for this task are:
www.pintrest.com
http://slide.ly
http://www.cincopa.com/media-platform/services/create-slideshowhttp://visualslideshow.com/http://www.photosnack.com/http://www.photovisi.com/
http://notcouture.notcot.org/
https://svpply.com/
http://dwellinggawker.com/
http://designspiration.net/
http://www.siteinspire.com/
http://www.baubauhaus.com/
http://fontsinuse.com/
http://notventures.notcot.org/

http://dribbble.com/


 3. Finally, the main task for the Summer: a video presentation of LOTS of different things from different games that you like or appreciate in some way. This should be large collection of different elements from different games, gamplay, music, loading screens, character select screens, maps, control explanations, anything that invoves design ideas that you could use as an influence. It will need to be created as a video to allow you to add video and music, so you could incorporate gameplay videos from YouTuve for example. You will also need an explanation of each game element you’ve chosen and this can be done via a commentarry from you recorded or by words on screen. This is perhaps best done in PowerPoint; there’s plenty of example videos and tutorials on how to make a video using PowerPoint online. Any issues/problems/questions, leave a comment below. And have a lovely Summer!

Cover Art and Audience

In a blog post on your own blog:

For each of these below, identify the genre as much as possible, using just the information presented on the cover. Look at font, arrangement of images, colour palette, screenshots and information provided. Look carefully at the language and the information provided. 

Then, analyse audience. Who is the audience? What tells us this? How have the designers made the box art suited towards them? 

How you present this is up to you. I would expect as a minimum something like a Word or PowerPoint document with annotations, but would rather see something like a video podcast, Prezi, or some other format that's a bit more interesting/original. 

Key things here: AUDIENCE and HOW THEY ARE AIMED AT. Consider why these covers look different-they are essentially adverts used in the shops to get you to buy the game. 

Mission Maker Help!

Guide:
http://www.immersiveeducation.eu/pdf/products/MissionMakerUserGuide.pdf


Video guides:
http://www.immersiveeducation.eu/index.php/downloadspg/missionmaker-downloads-page/missionmaker-guides

Final task: evaluation

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?



Question 1: This part of the evaluation asks you to explain what examples of 'real' products that you have looked at have influenced your final designs. This needs to be done to explain what you wanted to create for your own video, print advert and digipack. For each, you will need to include 9 examples, either as screen shots or in the case of the videos, an embedded YouTube version of the video. For each example you need to explain the specific parts of the poster, digipack or video that you were influenced by and why. For each section, once you have explained what you were influenced by you will then explain how these ideas fit in with your own ideas and own song.

For your video, using the 9 shot grid as key frames from your music video is an excellent idea that allows you to communicate about a range of ideas and production techniques. This is an example of what this could look like:

 Some good examples of question 1 can be seen here:
http://chloestevenson.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/a2-g324-evaluation-of-music-video/ and http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nine-key-frames.html http://musicvideoalexanderwhitcombe.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/evaluation-task-one-part-two.html


 This will be a long blog post with much detail in it. Use the examples above as a guide if unsure.



Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
This question asks you to think about what the point of your work is and how well you managed to achieve what you set out to achieve.
Is your music video like any of the videos that influenced yours? Does your video feature any of the techniques that you wanted to use, such as ones that are used in the videos you looked at? Does your video get across a key idea or emotion in a way that you wanted to?
Don't forget about the technical side of things-did your editing or cinematography create an effective video for example?

You also need to think about how your other products combine and work with your video to promote the song as something that you want people to buy. How well have you managed to make your poster look like your digipack for example? Have you used a feature or technique in one product that you've used in another that helps to make all of your products look 'similar', like they have an identity. What could you do better? How could you create a clear identity for your products by changing them? What sorts of things might you do differently when creating the 'whole package'?

Make sure that there are plenty of clear and obvious links and evaluations between products. Something like this example below is good...

Though it doesn't go into a huge amount of detail.
A better version that uses more interesting technology would be a Prezi such as this:

Of which there is a link to here: http://prezi.com/sp-itp45hvrx/question-2-how-effective-is-the-combination-of-your-main-p/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?
You will firstly need to get some people to watch your final video and to look at your final products and then ask them to complete a questionnaire about it and their feelings of it.
Then you will need to evaluate what you have learnt based on this feedback.

Was the feedback positive? Was it negative apart from one specific area? What was the audience's favourite aspect of your video? What did they like about your poster or digipack?

What is crucial here is not to simply explain what your audience told you about your products, but more about what you learnt from this feedback and how this would change or affect your choices if you were to make these products again.

Use graphs and charts to explain your findings. Perhaps ask for feedback via twitter, instagram or on your blog. Use screenshots of their replies and include these in a blog post to show your feedback.

 

This example shows a wonderful range of techologies and varieties of responses: http://rominamusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/evaluation-question-three.html

A good website to use for gaining responses electronically is https://www.surveymonkey.com
but as you can seen in the link below, paper questionnaires are perfectly fine, though not effective in showing off your range of media skills.

A more interesting suggestion would be to create a director's commentary which includes clips from the music video and vox-pop reactions from the audience.


Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Magazine Advert Task 2

When your magazine advert is created, there are still some tasks that need completing.

Firstly, do you have on your blog:

• The initial designs? These should be sketches on paper, possibly a range of ideas. 
• The first version you did of your magazine advert.
• Different versions that show how you made changes and edits all the way through the process.

Lastly, you need to get feedback for your advert and then make any changes based on the feedback. It's crucial that throughout this you upload all images and provided a running commentary for each image and why you made certain changes.

A great example can be found here:
http://rominamusicvideo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/magazine-advert.html

Magazine Advert

The final production task is creating a magazine advert for the album, featuring your single.

This should feature imagery and photos taken in the making of your digipack to create a style and coherent 'look' to your advertising campaign.

Before you create your electronic version of the poster, first plan as a drawing what it could look like and what photo/s it could contain. This will help in your planning section of your work.

Examples of which are seen below. Look at the small features and range of things included to get an idea of what you might want to use on your own.

Examples of digipacks

Click each image for a larger version: