Evaluation question 4

Whilst creating our final music video we used different pieces of hardware and software to help us make our final piece. In this blog post I will discuss what hardware and software we used and what we used them for.

Use of hardware and software in the planning stage

During the planning stage the main pieces of hardware we used was digital cameras, computers and iMacs. The digital cameras were needed in order to photograph the storyboard to create an animatic and photograph our progress in the planning stages and early stages of filming/location hunting. The computers were vital in researching topics, bands and tips for our music video.

The software we used was blogger, youtube and adobe premiere. Adobe premiere was used to create our animatic during the planning stage, in later stages premiere became our most important piece of software.

Whilst planning and creating our product the macs were good to use, however when using programmes such as adobe photoshop we found that they were highly unoptimised for macs as they were made mainly for the windows platforms. We found this out when creating out digipak and magazine advert as the software was very hard to use on it due to poor optimisation. By switching to a windows PC the process was much simpler.

Use of Hardware

The cameras were vital during the process of creating our final piece, digipak and magazine advert. They also can be used as evidence to document the different stages of the project. We used 2 different cameras, the video camera that doubles as a digital camera and the digipak photos were taken using an iPhone 5s which gave us surprisingly high quality shots.

We found that the picture quality from the iPhone came out better than that of the video camera which tended to come out a bit dark.

The tripod is a very useful piece of equipment and without it it would have been impossible to have a steady shot. It also gave us the ability to set a fixed height. The only problem is portability as it became a nuisance to carry around whilst travelling a lot, also as we created our product in the colder months it was very cold to carry. 

Software

Photoshop; We used photoshop in order to create our digipak and magazine advert. It was good to use on the PC as it is a very intuitive piece of software which gave us the ability to create compelling products.

Adobe Premiere; We used this to edit our music video. I found this software very simple to use and there are lots of effective and easy to use video effects. Using this piece of software we could create a very high quality video.

evaluation question 3

Below is the results from the audience research on our final media products.

From this we can see that overall my music video went down okay but not bad. This means that improvements can be made.

An overwhelming amount of people think that our video shots are way too dragged out, if we were to do it again include faster cuts and more shot variation.

We can see that most people might watch our film again, fro me I count this as a success as it is very difficult for a new band to penetrate the market. So these people might tell their friends then It will be viewed more via word of mouth.

From this feedback we can see that overall my media product was okay, not great. Around 14% of people said it was outright bad and a similar amount said they wouldn't watch it again. A big problem we had with our video appears to be the slow edits and long shot duration, if I could do this again I would get more shots in order to have more variety of shots to chose from and make my video look more interesting.
Overall i found this feedback very effective as I now know what I did right and what I should change if i were to do it again.
Below is the finished media product and rough cut;

Evaluation question 2

Below is a popplet that I made

Evaluation question 1

In our music video we made sure to include many different genre conventions in order to
make it a good Rock video, this will help us .
Right from the start of the video the first thing you see is a close up.

Above is the opening shot of my music video.

We used the opening shot as inspiration from the foo fighters opening scene in The Pretender. Pictured above. 

This isn't the only genre characteristic from the rock genre that we used. We also used mid shots that show the whole band, this is common practise in rock videos.

You can see a clear resemblance between the band shot from my music video and the foo fighters band shot. The main difference is their more impressive location and a slightly wider angle and more people.

Before starting our project we didn't know too much about digipaks so we began researching them and took inspiration from the Gorillaz digipak which is relatively simple images with colours over them. Something like this was ideal for us as our photo editing skills are very limited.

As you can see these resemble each other quite closely, but we decided we wanted a higher range of brighter colours.

Constructing the Digipak

I found the digipak to be one of the hardest parts of the whole project, this was mainly due to the fact that I find editing with Photoshop very difficult. To get the digipak to a good standard it took more than one attempt.

In order to complete the digipak i undertook a lot of research and in the end decided to use the Gorillaz's digipak as inspiration for mine.

I found this digipak very helpful when creating mine as it shows that to make a good digipak you dont need to use loads of different special effects, you could just use simple images and colours.

In order to create the digipak I first used the camera on an iphone 5s in order to get the images to use.

The iPhone gave us some good shots, which was surprising for a phone.

Next i imported the images into adobe Photoshop. I found this program quite difficult to use however with practice you can create some quite amazing things.

Below is my finished digipak; 

Constructing the advert

Constructing the advert was a long process that we found quite difficult. This was because we had very limited Photoshop skills, to fix this we needed to go back to it multiple times in order to get it to a reasonable standard and learn how to use Photoshop on the Macs.

To get inspiration for my magazine advert I looked at real adverts and the adverts from previous year groups. I saw that all of the adverts featured a qr code and a website, which mine did not so it looked unprofessional.
To make the advert better me and my group went and took some group photos for the main advert image, we then removed the background and placed the image onto a backdrop that matched the theme of the song. I then created a qr code and added a website to make it look like a REAL advert.
Below is an early version of my advert cover, this one wasn't very good but was a good way to learn how to use the Photoshop software.

Overall I feel that the magazine advert is okay. The band shot shows that the band doesn't take itself too seriously in contrast the background shows that the song covers a serious topic. There is an iTunes advertisement, QR code and a website link. If i were to do it again I would use a better font and maybe use a better band shot just to give it the "extra" bit of professionalism.

I would make the website a little smaller.

 

Below is the final magazine advert;

 

Storyboard

Below is our storyboard. Shot duration is rough estimate.

Editing the music video

Editing the music video was a long and tedious process. This was because we had to have so many cuts in order to fit the pacing of our song. This was okay it was just our lack of shots that made it difficult to stick to this fast pacing, because of this you do see some repeated shots in the finished products but we got away with it a little bit due to the repeated shots being mainly band room footage so it still looks natural.

Below is a photo of me doing the music video.

When editing the video we had a play around with transitions and video effects to try and make our footage look a little more interesting, however when showing this to a small audience nobody liked the transitions and it looked as if it slowed down the pace of the editing whilst the some was very fast paced. We therefor decided that in our final piece we would have no video transitions or effects at all, this made our music video look a lot faster and more convincing as a music video.

Whilst editing our video I got a lot better at using the editing software which made the video look a lot smoother, this is because I learnt how to use all of the things that Adobe Premier Pro had to offer.
As a result I feel that the music video is very good and is the best product that I have made including last years thriller.

Overall I feel that our final product was very good, this is down to good shots and good editing. The music video would have been a lot better if we had more shot variation however this was not possible due to camera issues when filming and lack of time. If we had more time our final product could have been even better with a wide range of locations and more creativity, this had to be limited to to time and location constraints.

The video editing software that we used was Adobe Premier Pro, Below is screenshots from video editing.

Below is my finished music video.

Filming the music video

Filing the music video was a difficult and time consuming process. this was because it is hard to create a good music video that includes key conventions. We also had to overcome things such as weather and lighting difficulties as well as travelling to locations at a convenient time for everyone.

We also had to take in consideration how congested the place was as we didn't want random members of the public in our shots. Another difficulty was transporting the camera equipment, as we were travelling on crowded buses it became a nuisance to try and keep things such as the tripod out of peoples was.

The filming process was made a bit simpler by the use of high quality cameras and basic camera accessories such as a tripod, this guaranteed steady shots that would have been otherwise impossible. Even though we got good shots when we got to the editing stage we found that we did not have enough shot variation. This meant we had to go out again to get more footage in more locations, When we came to uploading our new footage we found that the camera didn't catch any of the footage, we later found that it was because the camera had ran our of storage however we didn't get no warning message so all of the footage from that day was lost. At this point we had no more time to film so had to use the footage we did have to the best of our abilities, this can be seen as our video has some repeated shots, mainly band room footage.

Below is an image of the group members just before filming commenced.

A problem we had whilst filming outside was the noise level, as we were playing the song in order for me to lip sync the sound became unhearable which meant I had to learn the song word for word and time it perfectly. The inside shots, the band scene, was much easier as it was a quiet environment with loud speakers.

Before creating our final piece we made a rough cut and showed it to a small audience, the feedback informed us that overall our video was good however they didn't like the video transitions and effects that we had on as it made it look more like a story instead of a music video. soin our final piece we had to video transitions, this gave our product a faster pace and look more convincing as a real music video.

Below is the rough cut;

Overall the shots we got were good thanks to a high quality camera and some smart camera positioning, this gave us the ability to create a quite convincing music video. We also knew that any problems we had with the footage could later be fixed during the editing stage, such as poor lighting.

Below is our final product.

Digipak

Finished music video

music video rough cut

After showing our video to other classmates we found that overall people thought the video was okay however the general consensus was that the transitions and video effects ruined a generally okay video.

Audience feedback

In order to create our media product we has to carry out some audience feedback on the rough cut in order to see if we are going along the right track for our final product.

From this feedback we can see that overall my media product was okay, not great. Around 14% of people said it was outright bad and a similar amount said they wouldn't watch it again. A big problem we had with our video appears to be the slow edits and long shot duration, if I could do this again I would get more shots in order to have more variety of shots to chose from and make my video look more interesting.
Overall i found this feedback very effective as I now know what I did right and what I should change if i were to do it again.
Below is the finished rough cut;

Magazine Advert

Animatic

model of the media

Filming Progress

We planned to film our music video project over the christmas holiday. However due to various circumstance, with recurring themes. However, we have managed finally to get some filming done, however, we have not been able to get as diverse an area or as much filming as we would like. however, we have managed to find some symbolism within our shots, making the best of a bad situation.

Our decisions were limited by time and locations, due to members of our team not having a lot of transportation outside of walking, and and a looming deadline assured that we had to take whatever footage we could grab, and worry about the quality of which later.

 On day 1 of filming we went over Hanault forest. however, due to our mistakes, instead of lip synching the full song, we only got about a minutes worth of footage per time. This means that although we got some decent footage whilst we was out, we had to go and get some more. This was fine as we had to go out and get some urban shots. There we got some shots of walking from different angles, to fit with the general theme of the song.

To finish the first bout of filming, we went and got some shots of us in the band room, to imitate the look of people playing instruments. however, due to a minor mix up between shots,  two of the members swapped instruments, and due a filming taking place at a later date, there was a sudden change of clothing halfway through.

Then we came to our first editing session. We were struggling to put together a coherent piece with accurate lip synching, so we had to go out and get more footage, especially of the band, since our current produce was disappointing with neither the lip synching or instrument playing being any good. However after we re-did the shots, it came out looking much better.

We needed some more shots to amplify the feel of the music, so we went out to Valence park, and did some recording there, namely on the different pieces of equipment.  Some of this was removed from the final product for looking too out of place.

Case study 1- Jamie thraves

Jamie Thraves is a director best known for making short films whilst at university, this gave him the ability to get his foot in the door. 
During his early career he began shooting music videos with the low budget of £5000.

After years of making low budget short films and music videos his recognition grew meaning that well known artists wanted his for their videos.

The budget for the above video was £100,000 and was shot in just 3 days.

The above video had a budget of £200,000 and also shot in 3 days.

Above is just 2 of Jamie Thraves' more known music videos.

Using his success in the music industry Thraves broke into the film industry with great success.

He has so far shot three feature films these are; The low down, The cry owl and Treacle.

Jamie thraves says that dont use lyrics for lyrics sake use them to portray true emotion.

Sexism in music videos

 Laura Mulvey's theories are; The theory of the male gaze and the triple gaze.
The male gaze- this states that the view we see on screen is that of a man. In films the male gaze is always active where is the female gaze is usually passive.
An example of the male gaze is in James Bond, Die another Day where Halle Berry appears from the water in slow motion and James looking on "enjoying the view".
Triple Gaze- Audience looking through the camera, looking at the man looking at the woman.
Below i will analyse Rhiannas shut up and drive using Laura Mulveys theories.

In this video the camera is constantly looking at Rhiannas body, there is clearly no fixing of cars going on in this video.
These shots show the theory of the male gaze in the way that Rhianna does a number of suxual poses.

Here we can see the men in the car looking at her body as she is walking along. 

Here Rhianna is thrusting vigorously in front of a car, this clearly shows the camera is from the prospective of a man.

Mulveys theories arent just present in music videos they also appear in movies too.  James Bond movies are a prime example of this.

Here the whole scene is taken up by a mans view of looking at a woman, this does nothing to develop the story. She even comes out of the water in slow motion.  This shows how prevalant sexism is in the entertainment industry.

Album art exercise

To this image i have changed the contrast and added a pink hue, this gives it a soft and gentle look, which is what i was going for. I also added some lens flare just to make the image a little more interesting to look at. I chose the font as it gives it a rustic look which is what the album is all about.

Below is the original image

Audience research

From these results we can see a clear like for rock bands and videos with a story, therefore our music video will be a rock song, from a band with a story in the video. By doing this we will reach the widest audience possible.

digipak

What is a Digipak?

•Digipaks typically consist of a bookfold paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. It means the CD comes in a cardboard flip-out case rather than a standard plastic hinged case.

•Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums and the tall DVD Digipak  is used as a premium package for DVDs and DVD sets. 

What goes on a digipak?

Six Panels

Spine

Bar code

Track List

Disk impression

Membership postcard

Band info section

Free image

The Digipak for michael Jacksons this is it is a tribute to the concert that never came to be. It features all of his best songs and a backstage look into rehearsals.The concert looked as if it was going to be a massive success but unfortunately michael passed away before it could get underway.

 

 Adeles digipak is very simplistic as adele is all about the music and not all about "Showing off". It appeals to a wide audience as it looks like just a music album and isnt specifically targeting a single group. Nothing stands out on the cover its just a simple photo with a track list on the back.

Above is a basic template for a digipak and it is the one ill be using when i come to create mine. We will have the disc held in the middle surrounded by photos of the band members and band props.

Narrative theory

Narrative theory is a way that a story is organised.

There are three elements of narrative, these include time, closure and enigma.

Like our thriller that we did last year classical hollywood is very linear.

Tzvetan Tudorov- equilibrium, disruption, enigma and new equilibrium.

My thriller is very linear as everything that takes place happens in the correct order.
Disruption of the equilibrium will cause enigmas which will need  resolution which will lead to a new equilibrium.
In the thriller i made the equilibrium is the person walking through the woods, the disruption is the character getting murdered, at that point in time there is no resolution and the new equilibrium is that the murderer will have the usb that he stole for evil. Next in the thriller the dead person will likely be avenged and the murderer will get the punishment that he deserves.In modern hollywood it is now common for stories to have multiple sub plots and for a film to cover a wider period of time.

Using Vlaimir Propps 8 characters in stories For Eminem Stan

Hero- Eminem
Villain- Stan
Donor- Eminem
Helper- Girlfriend
Father- Eminem
Dispatcher-
Princess- Eminem
False Hero


Applying Tzvetan Tudorov's theory to Eminems stan.

The equilibrium in the video is Stan is where stan is a big Eminem fan and he is living at home with his pregnant girlfriend.

The disruption is When Eminem doesn't reply to his letters.

The resolution to the video is where he kills him and his girlfriend by driving off a bridge.

The new equlibrium is stans little brother who is also a big eminem fan who follows in stans footsteps by dying his hair blonde.