final music video

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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:

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.