final music video

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.

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.

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.