final music video

Evaluation

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


Firstly, we gathered ideas from both previous groups videos and famous ones. We studied their ideas and how effective they look and turned them into our own. One of the main videos we looked at was Joshua Radin - I'd rather be with you, our idea wasn't based upon his although we discovered that it follows the same storyline. This helped us get a feel as to how we want to portray our video as also looked at the conventions he uses such as lighting and costume.
The enitial idea of the woodland scene and the guitar is very stereotypical for an acoustic video, however it works well for ours and we all had a similar idea when we first heard the song.
In terms of Goodwins points we looked at previous videos to see if they met the criteria, by doing this we saw what works well and what doesn't. We used voyerism in our video as the main character is dressed in a way that suits the genre (pop/rock) by doing this the audience can relate to the video better and it becomes easier to follow. We also gave the main character the most screen time, this promotes the artist and he becomes reconisable.
Furthermore, the lyrics are about a love story so we tried to link this to our video, by using flachbacks and making them desaturated we managed to distinguish the two so they are clear.

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



We tried to make all three of our products relate in some way. To do this we used either the main character or the guitar in both our digipack and magazine advert. For the digipack we used the same location as the video, this helps the audience to identify the song and the artist. Also, we featured the guitar a lot in our video so we thought it was necessary to use this object for our magazine advert. Despite this we changed the color of the guitar to a de-saturated b&w, this gave the effect that its quite a sad song and also relates to the color of the flashbacks in our video. 
The mood of both the video and ancillary texts is quite dull, we felt it would look effective to have the empty woodland in the texts as it shows how lonely the main character is, this also relates to the lyrics of the song as he has lost his 'girl'.
Furthermore, we quoted on the magazine advert that you can consume the digipack from hmv and itunes, we decided to use these as they are the most popular places for our target audience to get music.
Additionally, we labeled our video as certificate U, this is because there is no inappropriate content or scenes in our video that viewers would find disturbing. We made sure we featured this on the digipack so it is visible to our audience. 
Overall all three products relate in some way and they all include the same theme, this is recognizable to the fans and the target audience. 


What have you learnt from your audience feedback?


We felt that our audience feedback was appropriate and useful whilst we were in the process of making our video. By taking it into consideration we got a view other than our own about how it looks, this helped us improve and also notice things we may not have seen.
Firstly, we received feedback quoting that there was no lip syncing involved, at the time we had not done this however it was our plan to do it in the final cut. Also, people liked the idea of the flashbacks and how they fit in well with the lyrics, we decided to keep this idea but elaborate on it more so the flashbacks were more clear. Another quote we got was that we had a good variation of shots, at the time we weren't happy with what we filmed however this feedback influenced us to experiment even more with shot types. 
The feedback on our final video was mainly positive although most of the comments included how out of time the lip syncing and the guitar was, we found this hard to edit effectively and fit in. Despite this the other feedback suggested that people enjoyed our video and liked our idea. They commented on the flow of the story and the editing technique for the flashbacks mostly. Also, they liked the transitions and the simpleness of the overall video. 
In conclusion we found the feedback very useful especially for future preference, the one comment that stood out was that the main character wasn't enthusiastic enough, we would change this if we had the chance as we believe it would improve our video.


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


Over the entire duration of making our video we all advanced in several different programs and technologies. By using blogger to write all our research we found it easy to navigate and sort through it, we also liked the idea that we could all access the blog from different locations, this helped show that we can all have our own individual input. Other feedback was featured on here as-well so we were able to look at it in order and view who said what.
When we first got given the camera we already knew the basics, however we enjoyed looking for techniques and 'cheats' online. This research proved to be helpful as we found how to pan using an elastic band, we then used this whilst filming these shots. Also, the video quality was extremely good and this helped us make the video look effective and more professional.
When it came to editing our video we found final cut quite challenging despite having used it before. The effects we wanted to use were difficult to find and we had to render it a lot. Additionally, there were many clips which we weren't quite happy with, we found it hard to delete some of these without getting rid of the ones we wanted. Overall after we got used to the program we used it to our advantage and felt our editing techniques worked quite well.  
Furthermore, to portray a good effect on the ancillary texts we used a digital camera to take new pictures, this improved the quality of them and helped us when using photoshop. 
Luckily, everyone in our group knew how to use photoshop so we felt we done well in that part of the project.

Mark Nunn - Media Evaluation

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

My group made a music video for the song “Mayday” by the German band Tenbucks. I believe our video is a very effective fit for the song, and done to a relatively high standard. We had a collective idea of what we wanted to be included in our video from the moment that we heard the song, but also spent a large amount of time searching the internet for other inspiration along the same lines as our original idea. Our original idea was based on the very cliché music videos that the public are subjected to daily, I believe that to be the reason we all had such similar ideas for the video. Whilst searching, we found a video by the artist Joshua Radin, whose video was very similar to our concept, enabling us to gather our ideas and visualise what our video could potentially share a theme with. I believe the woodland setting of our video; although cliché and very common for acoustic songs worked very well for our song, and was the obvious choice amongst the group. The idea for our music video was to create a love story to match the sombre tale told by the lyrics. For this, we used two members of our group as the couple, and filmed the pair of them in romantic and “cute” situations (Such as playing in the woods, and at a pub). From this, we also filmed clips of the couple arguing to show the other side of the relationship that the lyrics convey, we included these clips throughout as flashbacks. As mentioned above, our music video and products may have embraced many conventions used in the past by real artists, but we believe we have also added our own touch by including the flashback scenes etc.

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

I believe that the ancillary products that our group created – The Digipack case and the poster – match our music video very well, both in terms of mood and style, for example, the poster highlights the genre by using a guitar as a main focal point of the image. Not only that, both the Digipack cover and the poster showed the environment that the video is set in, illustrating the location and mood of the video. I believe that these features are very effective at attracting a target audience as it is easily noticeable what sound the group have. Our ancillary products also have extra depth to them that we believe, as a group really add to the solemn sound of the track, for instance; the DVD cover shows the lead character of the video (Used to represent the lead vocalist of Tenbucks)  standing alone in the woods. The front of the Digipack shows the singer facing the camera, with the dark woods behind him, seemingly endless. This image is reversed on the rear of the video, where the singer is standing in the same position, just from the back, showing the other 180 degrees of environment – still empty woodland. The effect of having the singer isolated in this dark, somewhat dreary environment is that it shows just how alone he really is, to match the lyrics which show his sorrow at losing his love interest. As for the poster/advert that we created for the video, the group came up with the idea to use the guitar as the main focus, to really show those who see the poster what type of genre and sound the band have without even listening to the music.

In my opinion, all of the products that we created link very well together as a package, all of them complimenting each other and showing the public/audience what the band sounds like, and what their music is all about.

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

There are numerous lessons that we have learnt from feedback over the period of making the music video, almost all of it very helpful and constructive, helping us to improve the piece drastically. The feedback on the initial idea was overall very positive and showed that the class were very interested to see the product that we had envisioned and shared. The only issue that the class raised was “How are the night time scenes going to be lit?” This issue was evaded in the final product since the group decided against using the night scenes as we agreed that we couldn’t make them fit well in the storyline. Once our first cut was produced and shown to the class for feedback, the overall response was, again, very positive. We did understandably receive some creative criticism, with some saying that parts of the flashbacks were too bright, which mad it slightly difficult to make out some of the facial expressions within them. This was a very easy fix as we just had to return to FinalCut and lower the intensity of the effects that we applied to the flashback scenes. The second and final piece of feedback we received was that there weren’t actually any lip synced sections included in the video. This issue was down to an error involving mis-communication regarding when we could borrow the camera from the media department. Our planned date was supposedly unavailable, leaving us to film the whole of our rough cut in one lesson, without the lyrics prepared. This issue was already noted by the group, and justified in our second filming period where we re-filmed all of the clips that we had rushed in the previous session with lip syncing.  The final piece of feedback that we received was that that the storyline was a little difficult to follow, and that it should be made clearer. We took this feedback on and went straight back to the project to justify the issue. This was also a simple fix and just involved rearranging a few of the clips into a more obvious order to make the story clearer.

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

In terms of the programs that we used to learn everything we know now and create the products that we used, there were numerous vital to the task’s completion. The first of these technological aspects was the website Blogger.com where all of our work is showcased. This website acts as a portfolio for the whole project, and shows when the products were completed etc. The next most important media technologies involved in the project, were most definitely the Final Cut and Photoshop programs, without these, we wouldn't have been able to create the products that we had spent all of our time planning.

I knew how to use these programs relatively well before beginning the topic, so I didn't feel that I learnt many new skills in the process of making our music video. The one thing I did learn was how to use Chroma Keyer and a green screen to impose visuals on top of a pre-existing film.


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All in all I thoroughly enjoyed the project, I enjoyed using my pre-existing skills and developing them further.

evaluation

Evaluation questions

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

For our music video we decided as a team to choose a song by a German band called Tenbucks, the song was called “mayday” we thought this was the best choice as when we listened to all the tracks, we thought it was the best one and we all immediately liked it and had lots of ideas that we thought we could do for the video. As a group we picked the song out of a list of seven tracks that we were given I our class.

I think that our product used the conventions that we were given, such as Goodwin’s points because it follows them well, one of the points was selling the artist, we did this in our video by giving the main character (the artist) the most screen time, and only had the second character (love interest) in some sections of the video, which kept the attention on the artist, this helps to sell the artist because people remember his face and what he looks like from the video.  

 We all had ideas for what we wanted to have on the music video and from looking at previous students work and music videos from famous artists we found inspiration from famous artist’s songs theses were, “I’d rather be with you” by Joshua Radin and “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias’s, we liked theses two songs because they had the style, features and content in them that our group had thought about and we wanted to include in our music video, such as in Joshua Radin’s video of “I’d rather be with you” there is a clip of him sitting by a river playing his guitar and singing, which fitted perfectly with the style and sound of our song so we wanted to incorporate that into ours. We analysed the song by Joshua Radin and wrote down ideas and points that we thought were effective and liked to include in our video, such as flash backs and guitar shots.

We used voyeurism in our music video because we had the characters in costume that suited the style and genre of the song which was pop-rock, our main character wore skinny jeans and a shirt. As the song is a quite slow song we had a mixture of longs and short cuts between shots which looks good.

The lyrics fit well with the visuals, because when the main character is singing about his love for the love interest they are together. And when he is sitting or standing on his own playing the guitar it is in the slow or sad parts of the song which when you watch and listen to the music video really fits well.

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

The combination of the three products, the music video its self, the magazine advert and the DVD digi pack look and fit well together and relate well to the genre, this is because it promotes the artist without being  full of pictures of him as he features in two of the three products, the guitar is a strong feature in the video so we thought it would be a good item to put in one of the three products and we decided that it fitted best in the magazine advert as it is selling the artist because he plays the guitar in the video and people will remember that, it is involved with the whole promotional package but doesn’t take away from the feel of it all. The image that the product creates of the artist is good image as it shows him in the woods, which is in the music video when the artist and the second character are walking arm in arm thought he woods.  All three of the products tie in together as they have to wood theme which runs through all of them and the ancillary texts have something in them from the music video (artist, guitar and woodland)

It is successful in attracting the target audience, because it has the rating of the music video on the cover of the digi pack which we decided as a group to put as a U as it doesn’t have any contexnbt that would be inappropriate for children such as bad language and content of a sexual nature.

On the magazine we have included the name of the band and what you can expect to see in the digi pack, also where you will be able to purchase the digi pack which we put as on iTunes and HMV which are the best and most used places now to buy music. We also wrote a rating from a magazine that the music video would be talked about in and a star rating that the magazine gave it.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From the feedback that we were given for all of our products, the pitch, the rough cut and the final music video were mostly positive but some negative criticism that we needed to take onboard to help us improve the products. The audience thought that our pitch was good and that we had a lot of good ideas and that it could look good if we made sure we followed through with the ideas.

For the rough cut the audience thought that we had some good ideas such as the flash backs because it fit well with the song and they thought that we used a good range of shots, and that it was the beginning of a really good music video, but they did say that there was no lip syncing as we hadn’t put any in at that time, and the guitar sections needed to be cleaner as at some points it was obvious he wasn’t playing it as it didn’t fit with the guitar of the track, they said that they ideas and shots were good but different shots were needed and the shots we had needed to be improved they thought that we had a good story line running through with the main and second character. They said that there were some areas that we needed to improve on.

On our final music video the audience feedback was positive, they thought that we had a good range of ideas and we followed them though well, they liked the range of shots that we had and said that they thought that the short and long shots work well. Some people thought that the lighting was good but as we filmed during the day the light was pretty good but we made sure that we had good light where we were and made sure that we weren’t in dark or little light but some people did think that it could have been improved. They thought that the flashbacks were effective and liked how we changed the colour to show a different time period. They thought that the story line was good and they really felt the emotion from the two characters and the acting was good.  Some people commented that our camera angles were simple but effective. People thought that the continuity editing was well edited. The negative feedback that we received was that the guitar sync could have been improved as it was out of time in some areas, and the lip syncing needed improvement as it was sometimes out of time. Some thought that the argument was too short and they would have liked to have seen it play out longer through the video. They also said that our main character didn’t seem very confident singing and didn’t put very much effort into it.

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

Technology is extremely important to help us with the making and the running of the project, if we didn’t have the use of the Macs every lesson we would have found it hard to complete everything as we used them for mostly every aspect of the project.

For the construction of our music video we used the Macs at college to do mostly everything such as edit the shots that we took when we went out filming, which we filmed on the school HD video cameras which gave us high quality videos and shots which without the quality we couldn’t have produced the music video at a high standard, we used final cut to edited the shots that we took and put them on a time line with the track to make the music video. For the research we use the internet such as Google and YouTube and CD’s that we were given by our teacher. For the digi pack we used iphoto to choose the pictures that we took using the college cameras and Photoshop to manipulate the photos to how we wanted them to look on our ancillary texts.

For the planning we used blogger which is what the college uses for everyone to blog and keep track of what is going on, we blogged our ideas for the music video and what we did in the lessons and things such as analysis of artists and music videos and evaluations also we used it to put all of our work that we had done such as the ancillary texts and the music videos (rough cuts) etc. We also tried out photo booth as we thought we needed a picture so we took it in the lesson but realised that it wasn’t what we wanted.

Evaluation of music video

Evaluation of our music video

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

The song we chose was a very stereotypical acoustic-pop song. The song was “Mayday” by Tenbucks. As we began to research this genre of music, we came to the realisation that the videos of this genre had various things in common. Through looking at videos such as Enrique Iglesias “Takin’ Back My Love” we realised that these videos often have a love interest and some kind of argument between the two characters. The lead singer of the song is also normally the main character. We incorporated this idea and made it our own. Although we obviously did not have the lead singer of Tenbucks we made it obvious that the character was supposed to be the lead singer by having him singing in the video and having him on the DVD we created. We used parallel editing to have our lead singer character playing the song to himself in the woods while the love story plays out in-between these shots. We also looked at Joshua Radin’s music video “I’d Rather Be With You” and all agreed that the style of video fitted very well with our song. The video shows a man alone playing a guitar and singing the song while he thinks about a love interest he once had. We liked the idea of having the artist as the main character of our video and so incorporated it in to our own. The song is about a girl he was in love with and then they fell out of love. With the combination of the sets, camera angles and narrative the video is very emotional. This is what we were trying to achieve with our music video. We also decided that the costume of our characters was important in make the video seem authentic. The right clothes were essential to make sure we followed the conventions of a acoustic-pop music video. We dressed our main character in smart casual clothes. We felt this reflect the general feel of the song. It look mature and showed that the artist is serious about their music. Making the main character look fashionable also helps to sell the artist as fans would want to copy the fashion sense that the artist will be associated with.

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

As a group we decided it would be best to link our ancillary texts as best as we possible could to the music video. This would help to promote the video and would join the artist’s work together. The magazine cover we created as a group features the guitar played in the video leaning up against a tree. By doing this we are linking the magazine cover to the music video we created in numerous ways. The guitar links to the artist and their genre of music and the tree links back to the setting of the video. Someone who had seen the video would instantly be able to link it to the magazine cover. Our DVD cover also links to the video. The cover shows the main character/artist in the same woods the video was shot. He is standing by himself, as the woods appear to go on for miles behind him. On the back cover there is the same picture but taken from behind the character. This signifies the meaning of the song as it is about the singer feeling lonely, isolated and unloved. Because all of our products are connected by a reoccurring theme they will all promote each other. Fans will be able to find the artists material more easily due to the reoccurring themes.  We tried to make the images in our ancillary text as interesting as possible in order to attract audiences. We decided to have contrasting effects on our DVD cover, as it would make the project look unique. The mosque style background helps to make the main character stand out from the picture.  As a whole the products when combined together create a recognisable theme of which the audiences and fans can remember. We all decided upon having two pictures on our DVD cover. The front cover was to have the artist facing the camera and the picture on the back was to be the same picture but from behind the artist. We all felt this worked very well and looked very effective. We felt that by giving the audience a view from in front and behind the character the audience would get the impression that the person is completely alone and almost isolated in the woods.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback of our rough-cut video we learnt that our overall concept was good and we executed it very well. A lot of People felt that our storyline was very effective and it helped make the video interesting and was useful in explaining the story behind the song. Various people also felt that our characters were suitably dressed and the editing we did for the flash backs of our video was effective. Some people also made comments towards our camera angles and believed that although they were simple they were very effective.  However, there are things that people suggested we could improve in our music video. They suggested that we improve some of the lighting in our shots. Others suggested that we should try and make our guitar more in sync with the music to make it seem more realistic. We learnt from all of these comments and re-filmed the shots that did not come out great the first time. We also were able to lip sync in our new footage as complications with music prevented us from doing this the first time round. The feedback we got for our final piece was overall quite positive. A lot of people mentioned that our narrative was effective and our editing helped a lot towards the continuity of it. People also liked the changes we made to the colour correction of our flashback clips. Another positive mentioned in the feedback of our final piece was that the locations we used in our video made the narrative seem very believable. However, they did say that our editing could have been better in the climax of the song and suggested that we could have edited our video around the climax. They also believed that our lip-syncing could have been better in some areas of our video. Some people also felt that we should have given our story more time in the video as it seemed like it had been rushed into a small space of time. As a group we took all these criticisms on board and will use them to ensure our next project is as good as it can be.

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

Research was vital in the making of our music video and there are numerous programs that aided us in fulfilling our research into various music videos and genres. The first was “Safari” which allowed us to search the Internet for influences and ideas. We also used “Blogger” to blog all of our thoughts and ideas on our research and our music video. Blogger was an area where every person in our group could post individually so we had a way of keeping all our ideas organised and in the same place and it helped us enormously. Blogger also gave us the opportunity to show others our project and to collect feedback from them. Without this we would not have been able to improve upon our project from where it was when it was a rough cut and our project may not have been as good as it is now. The HD video camera we used to film our project gave us high quality videos for us to use and made the whole process very easy. The camera was incredibly simple to operate and we could not have completed our project to the standards we would have liked without it. We also used a HD digital camera to take the pictures of our storyboards so we could post them on the blog, the DVD cover and the magazine cover. This provided us with very good quality images for us to use to make our project look professional. To edit our video we used “Final Cut”. This was incredibly helpful as it allowed us to get all of our shots in order, to the places that we wanted them and allowed us to place effects on our footage such as fades and colour corrections. Final Cut was essential in our editing; it allowed us to syncing the video to the music efficiently and easily and allowed us to place effects on the video. These actions were essential in make our narrative flow continuously and without confusion. Final Cut also allowed us to edit the footage we filmed in front of a green-screen for our director’s commentary. This allowed us to have footage from our music video rolling in the background while each one of us explained how we filmed our project and how we went about editing it.  “Photoshop” was essential in producing our ancillary texts. We used Photoshop to edit the pictures we took for our DVD cover and Magazine cover. Without Photoshop we would not have been able to create the mosque effect we used for the DVD cover or add text and pictures to the images we had. Thanks to all of these produces and programs we were ale to produce professional looking projects efficiently and easily.

draft

Script for our Directors Cut:

Mark: We decided to film a music video for the German band Tenbucks. As the song is pop-rock we felt it was necessary to follow the conventions of that genre.

Harriet: We achieved this by having a story line running throughout the video, which is common in a lot of pop rock videos. There was a love interest in our video as we felt it reflected the lyrics of the song.

Beth: We all had a collective idea about what we wanted to feature in the video. By using ideas that many music videos had used before we took inspiration from Joshua Radin’s music video “I’d rather be with you” and Enrique Iglesias’s video “hero”. Both of these had elements that we thought would look and be good for our music. Despite this we tried to make ours more unique by practising with different techniques.

Jack: In terms of Goodwins points we looked at previous groups videos and famous ones also to see if they follow the criteria. We then used this to our advantage as we knew what looks effective and what sells the song.

Mark: Firstly, we made sure the main character (artist) has the most screen time, this helps to promote and makes the viewers remember his identity for future preference. We also felt that people can relate easily to our video as breaking up in a relationship is a common scenario, this goes along with the lyrics and creates part of the target audience.

Harriet: Despite this we did feel it is stereotypical for an acoustic video, however the setting and the atmosphere worked well with the song.

Jack: Our ancillary texts worked really well when it comes to all 3 as a product. We tried to keep the mood and style similar throughout so the band is recognisable. Also, our main character who plays the guitar, the guitar is used for the magazine advert to make it related to the video, without making it the same and therefore making it look boring.

Beth: The ancillary texts are an advertisement for the music video and vice versa. They are both affective at attracting the target audience as the images reflect our video.

Mark: In terms of the genre we had to assume that all their songs are similar because we couldn’t find any others. We researched this so the digipack would look effective for a band rather than the song on its own.

This is just our draft, we added more when we came to filming the commentary.        

Magazine Advert

Analysis of "Razorlight - Up All Night" CD cover

The Front Cover-

The front of the cover of the CD shows a plain white background scattered with items that are either important to the band or featured in the album. Amongst the items is an "Old-style" TV which appears to be playing a video made by the band, hotel room keys - most likely used by the band, set lists and Vinyl record covers. We thought this was a very effective and attractive cover to represent Razorlight's album. The cover also fits in well with the band's sound, as the band have a relatively "Indie-rock" sound.

The Rear Cover-

The rear cover of this album has the text as if printed on a train ticket or receipt. this looks very effective and continuing with the theme on the front of the CD. The rear of the CD shows the features on both discs and the track listing on "CD 1". We really enjoyed the simplicity of the rear  cover, having such a plain background and incorporating the information on the receipt was a nice touch.

Analysing a CD cover

- Even though we are doing a DVD cover the conventions of this CD cover can help...
Firstly, Kelly Rowland features on both the front and back of the CD, the pictures have simular contrast and colour and the theme is kept throughout, this makes the cover flow easier and look more proffesional. Also, there is glitter featured on the cover, this is shown by the glitter on her dress on the front and her back on the flipside. This looks effective as its shown differently on each side, for example if she wore the dress on both it would look boring.
Furthermore, both sides are not full of too much information, this simple effect prevents it from looking too packed and its easier to read and follow. Moreover, Kelly is central on the front therefore the focus is entirely on her. Also, the text suits the genre of the CD as most R&B text is similar to this, by doing this it makes the CD identifiable.
On the actual CD cover it looks slightly different to the pictures above although these give a good idea as to the layout of the CD.

Feedback evaluation

The feedback we got on our video was generally quite positive. People believed our narrative was effective and our editing to make sure there was continuity helped towards this. The people watching our video also believed that our flash back editing was good especial when the video goes into black and white. They also thought that our costumes were appropriate and effective and the locations we used were also very good in make the story seem believable. 

However, they did say that our editing could have been better in the climax of the song and suggested that we could have edited our video around this climax. They also believed that our lip syncing could have been better in some areas of our video. 

As a group we have taken on board the criticisms of our video and will use them in order to make our future projects better. 

evaluation on feedback on the music video

Overall i think that everyone enjoyed our music video, they said that it was well filmed and the editing was good.
they like the shots and angles that we used such as the close up of Jack playing the guitar and when he walked away from it at the end and thought that it really captured the emotion of the artist.
they liked the transactions for the past shots with a fade in and out, adnthought that it was uncomplicated and easy to understand.
they thought that the lighting and set we used were well thought out and our costums were good as they suited the style of the song.
they thought that we sold the artist well by the way he was dressed and they thought this was done well through showing his behaviour and personality with the relationship with the other character.
the thought that we needed to improve on the lip syncing was the down point as they  thought that our main character wasnt putting enough feeling and and confidence into it.
if we could do it again i would have inproved on the lip syncing so that it looked better and there was more of it.

group 28 evaluation yeah?!

- The editing kept continuity which really help the narrative of the music video be told
- The video effects were good (the black and white parts etc)
- It had a really good narrative.
- Lip syncing could have been better.
- could have edited to the beat where the drums build up.
- could have used lighting more effectively.
- costumes were great.
- Locations were used very effectively.

s1-29 feedback on music video

editing:
the editing was good as the video flowed well with some of the fading and transitions because it fit in with the feeling of the song. However the lip syncing and the guitar syncing wasn't too good, if it was synced well would be a really good video, but still good either way. Some of the scenes like the argument scene could of been distributed throughout the music video in a larger time span as the whole story line was too much for such a short period of time, but good story line anyway. The filters such as desaturate to represent some of the past is a good use of visual effects to lyric representation.

camera angles:
Good camera angles throughout the music video using long shots, close ups, pnning etc. + it wasnt too shky s the rest of the groups.

Feedback- group 25

The lip synching was not very clear as Jack did not seem very confident or enthusiastic performing. not enough emphsis on lip syncing or action/acting during chorus.

good use of lighting and setting.
not complicated
very good variety of interesting shots and angles especially the close up of the guitar with jack walking away.
good transitions

Group 30
The lip syncing was one of the main let downs f this video as it was well out of time and it was very noticeable. The editing between was good and the different variety of shots and locations makes the video a lot more interesting.It was not a complicated video which suited it well and acomplied by good transitions and a very good and interesting story line. the story line was a key positive for this video. really liked how the song covered a story of love between the two. however felt it dragged on a little bit and the lack of good shots were limited.

feedback on final

26
Genre conventions- they met the conventions of the genre- indie rock- by the choice of costumes e.g skinny jeans, hairstyles. the props linked in as well such as the guitar.

Lip syncing could have been improved because at points it was difficult to tell whether or not the artist was meant to be singing or not.

The use of editing techniques were used well. Colour correction was used to create a better mood for the song which worked really well. The past and present was made really clear due to the fade of colour which allowed the audience to keep track of the narrative.

A variety of camera angles and shot types were used to capture the emotions of the artist. The close up and mid shots were used to allow the audience to identify the artist and the long shots were used to capture the location. The zooming of the shots were really effective, however they were slightly jolty at times.

Selling the artist- This was done well through showing his behaviour and personality with the relationship with the other character

directors cut from a famous music video

digi pack ideas

Because our music video is pop rock i thought that for the cover of the digi pack we could mix the to genres.

here are some ideas; 

because they are a band we need all the band members so here are a few that i thought of,

14/11/11

this is the last day that we are aloud to finish all the editing on our music video, we are nearly finished but we just need to check that everything looks good and is neat and tidy and we have included all of the footage and have a wide range of different shot types and make sure that it is interesting to watch.

Lesson - 11/11/11

This lesson was spent editting the finalised footage of our project. The whole group took part in editting so that the final product was just how everyone had imagined it, and that everyone was proud of the final piece.

Second filming session overview

On Friday the 4th of November, the group used the lesson to finish the filming of the music video. We had more or less all of the clips that we wanted, yet due to the aformentioned problems we still needed to film all of the clips that included lip syncing - one of the most important parts of the project!

Before the filming session, we had decided that we needed the following things:

• To re-film the sections of the video that needed lip syncing included (But had been missed because of certain circumstances).
• To film the main character from different angles to add depth to the video and generally improve the video artistically.
• To film more clips that we had initially discussed but had forgotten/were unable to film.

In the filming session, we were able to film all of the clips that we had needed and re-filmed a few that we knew we could improve! It was a very productive filming day for many reasons.

There were no issues encountered in this session unlike the first, which please the group highly!

Analysis of a music video

This is the rock song we decided to analyse, as our song is both pop and rock and we have already analysed the pop video we are now going to do the same with the rock video, we decided to choose nickelback because they are a rock band that everyone knows and was an obvious choice.

The video is set in a city and is also the theme song to spiderman, you can tell this as it has scenes from the movie and the video is very intense, this creates an atmosphere which builds up. This also helps to promote the film and make it look good.

analysis of a music video

because our song is a pop-rock track, I am going to analyse a pop video and a rock video.



this is a very "poppy" song, as you can tell by watching the music video. The video's creators have made it look very sweet and innocent with the ballons floating in the sky and the "Bubble-gum sugar sweet" candy feel to it, with them walking through the streets while she is singing about her love for this male character. They are trying to sell the artist as a young teenager who is falling in love with said male, as she is the sole artist of the video. Because she is a solo artist she has the camera mostly on her with some wide angle shots of the sky with the ballons in the sky.

they have cut the video well to fit with the feel of the song, long and short shots and they match with the beat.

Target Audience

Our target audience is all ages, however some people will be able to relate to it more than others. An example of this is teenagers the same age as the actors in the video, they have probably experienced a simular situation where one has broke up with the other etc.
Also, our video is very simple and easy to understand, therefore the younger audience will be able to watch it and know roughly what is happening. This will also relate to how clear we edit the flashbacks in comparison to the actual video.

Classification

Our video will contain nothing inappropriate and will be suitable for anyone to watch, even children. We have also taken into consideration the lyrcis and checked if there was any bad language or sayings. Despite this we didn't have an issue as there wasn't anything we needed to change.

feedback for our draft

positive: 

"Flashback effect looks cool"

"Shot types were good"

"Really good narrative, easily understandble"

"Shot frequency and variety makes it interesting"

"Good use of shots, simple but VERY effective"

"Very effective ending"

"Good skills with the guitar"

"Good setting"

Negative:

"Improve lighting"

"Why does she give him her jacket?"

"More feeling could be included in the jacket, especially facial expressions"

"Guitar in sync"

"Work on syncing couple need a bit more chemistry. Lighting is too bright so lose face at points" 

"Guitar sync, fade out at big strum."

"Could be lip synced to the guitar"

feedback from rough cut

positive

- nice variety of shots.

- good shots.

- good lighting effects.

- a good variety of shots that fit in the video and song really well.

- romance is beautiful and creative editing on couple together.

- tells a story with good shots and good ending shot.

negative

- bit of the lighting could be toned down. I realize its a flashback but it sometimes looks weird.

- the actor is laughing, shots change to quickly and need to make the storyline clearer.

- guitar isn't on sync and the fades are too bright. 

- not so keen on the bright effects when sitting on riverside against a tree.

- editing is too bright, would look better b&w.

- more camera angles.

- to make it look leng you need to sync the guitar and sing.

Our Rough Cut video

This is the rough cut we have made of our music video:

Potential effect to add to the final cut

When I was helping to edit the rough cut video, I accidentally clicked on the wrong effect, and it gave a nice looking effect where the top and bottom border of the film were splitscreen, involving other parts of the video.

An example of this, is in the video So Sick by Ne-Yo, where you can clearly see the effect in full:



I believe we could easily utilize this effect into our final cut to good effect, if the group tests the effect out and likes the results. Opposed to "So Sick", we would be using clips of forests during the scenes set in the woods and with Jack singing/playing the guitar, and city shots during all the scenes set elsewhere.

Who are Tenbucks?

Tenbucks are a German rock group that aren't well known in the UK even though they sing most of their songs in english, they don't have any music videos on Youtube and their videos on Youtube are just a picture of the band.

The group have tried to research the band the best that we can, however there is very limited information on the internet about the band themselves, seeing as the band are very small and do not have a large following.

Lesson Update 21/10/11

We are finishing the rough cut version of our music video so that Holly can upload it onto the blog so we can watch them next lesson, and making sure that we have lots of information on the blog about what we are doing. 

we are adding affects to the rough cut like in the dream scenes, we are making them dream-like, so sparkly and shinny.

we are also looking at famous music videos that have good effects that we could use in our video to make it look well made and professional.

Lesson Update 18/10/11

In this lesson, the group will be aiming to finish the editing of the rough cut piece, by finalizing the placement of the clips, and adding video effects and transitions.

Bethan and Harriet also undertook some research into music videos that include couple's arguments and fights to aid the acting skills of the characters and ensure the argument scene is as realistic looking as possible.

Fundamental changes to our plans 21/10/11

During our rough cut filming, as the group was unprepared, Jack was dressed more appropriately to play the lead role of the music video. For this reason, he took my place as the lead role and did an excellent job of acting with Harriet.

Since we now have multiple clips of Jack playing guitar, we will keep most of these clips for our final cut. However, on reviewing our music video, we also had the idea to use Jack's girlfriend as the main female character, since there would obviously be slightly better chemistry between the couple - not that they didn't both act very well in the rough cut!

Problems encountered during the rough cut process

As previously stated, our group was looking to film on Wednesday the 12th and Thursday the 13th. However, once the day came to shoot our music video, and take our camera from the media department, there was confusion regarding how long we would be able to have the camera off school grounds.

Due to this mishap, our group were unable to film on these to days so ended up being behind the other groups as we didn't get enough time to film all of the scenes that we wanted, this resulted in our group filming on school grounds - not our chosen filming site, whilst being under pressure from time constraints.

Having said this, we were able to get some very nice shots which we will use in our final piece. Most of the shots of the lead character, playing the guitar, and some of the environmental and relationship clips will be kept.

We want to feature an argument in our video between the couple, whilst researching we came across this  video. Despite this we wont film the argument to this extent although it has given us many ideas, especially of shot types etc.

Tenbucks - Mayday lyrics

I met you at a party,

In the car of a friend,
When your in my lonelyness,
it came to an end,


It started out so good,
Felt like we really had,
At least some things in common,
But the guess was bad,

Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Woke up the next day,
Back in my own place
I wanted to avoid,
that she'd seen my face

Thought it'd be good,

If we'd forget as fast,

If there was any way possible,

I thought that might be,

Best,

Mayday, Mayday

I'm breaking in,

Mayday, Mayday

Where've i been,
Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


And i know we've both changed,
So it's all good,
If i could chose differant,
Then i guess i would,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,
Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been,


Mayday, Mayday
I'm breaking in,
Mayday, Mayday
Where've i been.


These lyrics will be important in the lip syncing of our video. Without our actor knowing all the lyrics to our song and where and how they are said in the song the lip syncing will look unprofessional and bad. 

star analysis- representation of a star through there career

Britney Spears

this is her first video
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4&feature=relmfu- hit me baby one more time
she looks very innocent and young, but the way they have dressed her is trying to make her look older, such as the crop tops and the skirts.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJWtLf4-WWs&feature=relmfu - stronger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4FF6MpcsRw&feature=relmfu - piece of me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZYSiWHW8V0&feature=relmfu - over protected

Analysis of previous group music video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klsK0ToqbmI

We chose to analyze this video because in many ways it relates to what we plan for ours.
The video is well lip synced and easy to follow, it leaves the audience wanting to find out more about the relationship between the two characters.
Also the overall theme of the video relates to the track and lyrics, therefore the video becomes more meaningful and easy to understand.
Furthermore, they have used a guitar and a boy singing about a previous relationship in the woods. This is the same as our concept however we are going to make sure it is different and unique.
Also, we like the colour of the clips of him singing. The colour is de-saturated and we thought we could use a similar effect when we edit the flashbacks.

Filming Preparation

The group has planned to do filming preparation before we actually head out to Burwell, the practice will involve test shots of some of the more difficult camera shots, as explained below:

• Clip 15 on our shot list involves filming with the camera focused on a guitar in the foreground, and the main protagonist skimming stones in the background, slightly blurred so that the focus is noticeably on the guitar (Included for stylistic purposes, not integral to the plot/storyline). We thought that this may be difficult to film, so a practice is essential.
• We were looking to practice the second clip of the bar (Shot 17), where we have the male standing alone in the bar, with the female imposed over the top of the shot, as if he is sat alone thinking of her. his can be practiced at any time due to this being just an editing feature opposed to a filming issue.
• A good time to practice using what we learned in the Youtube clip in the previous post, would be in a preparation for shot 7 - the clip involving the camera panning across the bridge that the male is sat on. We can try filming this in a lesson dedicated to shot practice, using the tips learnt in the Youtube clip.

The above features will be practiced in a preparation lesson before we head to Burwell to film the actual video. 

shot list

story board

this is our story board in picture:

Target Audience

When we initially heard the song, it was clear that the class and group really enjoyed the song, showing a clear audience in the teenage age group.

I believe that one of the main reasons for this target audience enjoying the song is down to multiple reasons. Firstly I believe the lyrics and instrumental are well laid out and catchy, making the song easily listenable for people of all ages.

The group believes that another reason for the song being so popular is down to the similarity the band has to other artists of the same genre, such as Ed Sheeran, The Fray and Goo Goo Dolls, all of which are well known in pop culture.

Along with the teenage age group, I think that the song would also be popular with people slightly older, with lyrics that most can relate to and the easy-going sound provided by the accompanying band.

camera tips we will be using in our project

We were searching the internet for tips on filming and came across this great video which will surely help our scenes that require panning shots.

Health and Saftey

Environment:

• As we are filming next to a river we will have to be extra careful near the water as the banks could be slippery. 
• When filming in the woods we must be careful on roots and other objects we could trip on.
• We are driving to the location of filming and so must be careful when driving there are find a suitable place to park.
• A few of our shots are shot on a bridge and so we must be extra careful and help our actor onto the side of the bridge to ensure he does not fall in. 
• We must also be prepared for the weather and take coats, umbrellas and jumpers. 

Equipment:

• We must be careful with the camera especially when around the water and in the woods.
• We must also be careful of the tripod as it fragile and one of us could easily trip on it. 
• We will do practice shots in school groups so we know what is necessary in order to get the shot we want.
• If it begins to rain we will use our umbrella in order to get our equipment to the car to keep it dry. If we need to film when it is rain we will use the umbrella to prevent the camera getting wet. 
• We will ensure the camera is fully charged, however, if the camera runs out of battery we drive to Beth's house and charge the camera there. Beth's house is close to the location so this will not take long.

call sheet

- we are getting the camera out on - Wednesday the 12 of October for Wednesday after college and .
Thursday

- mark will pick up the camera

- we are taking the camera to a river so we need to make sure that we don't drop it in the water or fll in, so

-we will make sure that we are at a safe distance from the water and when mark is sitting on the bridge - we will watch to make sure he is safe.

- also we are filming in a pub so we might need to ask the landlord if it would be okay to film in the pub as there will be people in the bar and in the restaurant.

- the characters are the singer which is going to be player by mark, and the girl/ lover is going to be played by harriet.

- the clothing is going to be casual like jumpers, jeans casual shoes.

-  contact info of everyone in the group and make sure that everyone knows and have the numbers and info

- we are filming at Burwell river and inside the pub the anchor and in beths house, but our backup locations are going to be Rampton woods in Rampton and Steeple Morden rec and the pub the wagon and horses.

- the scenes that we re going to film there are the river scenes like where they re skimming stones and where he is sitting plying his guitar, and the pub scene where they are sitting eating and drinking.

- the props that we are going to use are  guitar, wine glasses and wine.

- the people tht we need are Harriet and Mark who are the chracters in the video and Beth and Jack who are filming and directing.

- we need minimal makeup as its only Harriet that needs to where it


- if it rains we will go in to the pub and film all of the pub scenes and the bit in Beth's house and then when the rain clears up we will go outside

- it doesn't really matter if i gets dark as it will give a good atmosphere in the evening light
 but we do need light aswell

- as mark got the camera out we thought it would be easier for him to take it back

- mark is going to put the song on a cd and we are going to take a cd player to play the song on

- Harriet will bring the call and the shoot lists

Feedback from group on Pitch

Below are the questions asked by the class when our group presented our ideas.

Q - "What sort of lighting are you going to be using throughout your filming?"

A - We have chosen to use all natural lighting in our filming, however the time of day and weather are going to be very important when deciding when to film. We are looking to be filming on a dry evening to have the perfect conditions. We are ideally looking for a low sun, for a bright but calm lighting. We all just imagined the weather to be dry when we discussed the filming, so we will aim to film during that weather. We will consult the weather forecast when deciding the filming date.

Q - "What forms of editing will you be using?"

A - The group had decided that we would be looking to keep the video as simple as possible in terms of editing, so through the main part of the video will be kept simple, with basic cuts. As for the flashback sections, we thought we would edit the clips in post-production by adding a "Fuzzy" border around the clips.

Q - "Who will be the actors in your video?"

A - Our group decided from the beginning that the video would only have two characters, the male singer and the female "Girlfriend character". Mark has been chosen to play the male character with Harriet playing the female.

Location Ideas

We have many ideas as to where to film our music video, we are still yet to decide where is best.

Burwell

This is one of our possible locations, fortunately one of our group members lives here and another can drive. Also, there is a pub nearby which we can also film in as we need bar scenes. 

Wicken Fenn

This location is quite far away although it has the perfect atmosphere depending on the weather. 

Our other locations include Waterbeach and Steeple Morden 

We will decide by next lesson.

Deadlines

Deadlines

• Monday 17th October: Music Video Shooting Deadline
• Friday 21st October (last lesson of week): Music Video Rough Cut Deadline:
• Friday 11th November (last lesson of week): Music Video Final Deadline

• Friday 25th November (last lesson of week): Ancillary Products Deadline
• Friday 16th December (last lesson of week): Evaluative Commentary:

Cameras

1. Before the rough cut deadline, you will be able to take a camera for 2 overnights or 1 weekend. The first opportunity you will have for filming is Friday 30th September from 4.10pm.
2. Between the rough cut and the final deadline, you will be able to have a camera in the lessons and for 1 overnight. No weekends.
3. You can have a stills camera in the lessons and for 1 overnight, from the point where filming commences. It is possible to have your video and stills cameras at the same time. This actually might be advisable.

By watching this video it has given us a few new ideas as to what to include, it is extremely similar to what we are pitching and has given us an insight as to what type of mood to try give off etc.

Our pitch to have track 7 - "Tenbucks - Mayday"

Our group would very much like to film a video for the track 7 of the mix-CD. The song we have chosen is called "Mayday" by the german band Tenbucks.

The reason we have chosen this song is because as soon as we heard the track for the first time and discussed our idea, we all had very similar ideas, and just generally enjoyed the song.

The song would suit just having just two actors in it. A man who sings and a woman who would act as a 'love interest'. The location would be mostly outside, by a river, a wooded area and flashbacks of the two in various romantic scenes such as lying in a bed. 

the costumes would be just casual clothes in order to make the man relatable to the audience. the woman would also wear casual clothes.

The lighting in the video would be bright sunlight as it would contrast with the sad subject of the song in order to amplify the depressing tones of the song. 

The props will be a guitar played by the man in the video, by the river and in the woods. the narrative will be a man remembering the relationship he had with the woman. he will have flashbacks of significant times in their relationship in the locations he visits. 

The colors will be normal greens and blues and white, however, the flashbacks will be faded and slightly transparent to make it apparent the man is having a flashback. 

The overall mood of the song will be quite depressing, despite this our video can brighten the mood and make the song much more meaningful. 

5 Favourite Tracks

Our group was set with the task to listen to 12 anonymous tracks and write about the best features and any ideas that came to mind when whilst we listened.

Our favorite 5 tracks are as follows:

1. Track 3 gave us a feeling of excitement as the track was sexy and mysterious. The color that came to mind was red; the reason behind this was that red is symbolistic of love and passion, this can be mixed with   the color black to show the mysterious side of the track.

The locations the came to mind when we heard this track were potentially a bedroom, or outside in a city setting - walking down a street or outside a club.

2. Track 7
we all agreed on our ideas for track 7 in that we all believed the video would be best suited to a single male playing guitar by a river or in a forest, whilst having flashbacks to a happier time, most likely with a  girl.

The color that we envisioned was a dark blue to add to the sad and sorrowful sound imagined when listening to this track.

The only prop that we imagined we would have to include is the guitar for the male actor to play throughout, unless we can think of any props required in the flashbacks.

3. Track 8
Track 8 again made us feel excited, and we all discussed that the track made us imagine the colour grey, when listening to the track we all thought of just a male, rapper walking through the city, on a busy day, walking amongst or though crowds.

The only prop we thought we would need is a microphone especially since the lyrics state "me, myself and my microphone"

4. Track 9
This song instantly made us think of an indie type of girl in a field, we got this idea off other videos and fitted her voice into a stereotype. It made us feel happy and gave us possible ideas for our own video. The song reminded us of different bright colours associated with summer.

We wouldn't really need a prop if we were to do this song as it is really simple, despite this the girl would need to be wearing flowers in her hair and a dress etc.

5. Track 12
We knew who the artist was straight away with this song as he's well known, the song reminded us of a typical video of girls in different scenes such as in a bar, bedroom or against a car. We imagined the colours to be classy, for example red, black or gold. (sexy)

For this video we would need many props as our idea is quite complex, this includes buying new outfits and finding a car to film with.