Final Music Video

Evaluation Question 4: What Have You Learnt From Your Audience Feedback?

Question 3: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Question 2 Evaluation: How Effective is the combination of your main product (Video) and ancillary texts (Digipak and Advertisement)?

Question 1 Evaluation: In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Q4. What have you learned from your audience, feedback?

Here is the wordle of the comments from the class feedback.
I think the only thing I would change would be the transition between the band performing and the black and white scenes, because I thought at times, it was a little bit slow and I think it needed to be slighter quicker.

Here is some feedback from the cinema viewing. Overall, it was generally good feedback, but there was one or two improvements that they note, which I would definitely change if i were to do it differently next time.

Because we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do, it was straight forward, what we were going to film and exactly what we wanted. We didn't film at any random time, we took consideration to what we intend to do.
Having this feedback, it does make me look at it in a different light, because at the time, we didn't realise the little detail that could've been improved, and now that we know, we would've been more careful. Also, I leant that how miss en scene is very important, because we didn't think of that - the clothing. One of the comments were: 'Michael is the only one wearing colour', which obviously distracts the eye, so net time, we could plan it next time and to dress in  certain colours. Another comment they said: 'I like the held camera in the black and white scene, because it looked good and was effective. it gave it a personal touch to it.' So, here, I wouldn't change it, because i think we achieved what we aimed and other people noticed it too.

Evaluation Q4: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Feedback Of Music Video: 

In terms Of my music video I have learned a lot and my audience feedback, however I did show my video to a forced audience and not my target audience. As i did not show my music video to my intended audience then that may have effected their feedback. The main aspect I would change for my music video is the performance from me and the rest of my band as with the establishing shot we looked bored as we did not know what to do. Next time I would want to make a plan and tell the band members what they can do so they are just not sitting there distracting the performance. One thing we could do is give them a directed script that they must follow. I also learned a lot from how effective it seemed especially with the black and white made it look effective.

Digipack and Advert Feedback:

For my digipack I did not learn as much as I did with my video as the feedback for my digipack was strong I feel that I used the photos well and the theme of instruments made my product I think have a s strong link. I also think for my digipack my intended audience will like it as it should fit there interest. The use of colours of the text and name of the band was used well with the photos of the instruments and the text being clear by using 'impact' so it is a clear read. I think and my audience feel worked well and sends a clear message especially on my advert as I wanted to send a clear message I.E. the tour dates and the out now are clear so my audience will know when they can buy the album and see RunRate live.

Q3. How did you use media technologies in the contruction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

I used media technologies by using vide cameras (with memory cards, obviously). That came n really handy because it allowed us to record with sound and had a good picture on it.
I also used blogger for the planning process, research (on google which was helpful and get useful information and change it iNto my own words.) and evaluation. I think the blogger works well, because it's like an on-line diary, where you put in everything- links/embedded videos, pictures anything. That helps a lot for what we were doing - keeping in track of what we've done.
The sites I used were: Youtube, to get an embedded video or a link of a particular song, or screenshots. Google images to get ideas and influences for the album covers of the band or researching the digipaks that were an inspiration to me. Wiki, to get precise information about a certain band that influenced me, or the precise dates of the album names/dates (year). Sometimes a band's official website to get more information and ideas for my ancillary. That was really interesting because all of them are different, and I had to be careful which ones I looked at, and it definitely gave ideas for our video and my ancillary. For example, I used Young Gun's official website, because of the genre and music was similar to our one.
For my ancillary texts, I didn't use Quark, however I did use Photoshop for both my advert and digipak. I decided to use Photoshop, because the effect I wanted to create - which was the black circle around the picture - old only be used on that programme. Also, I wanted it to look in a specific way and how I could easily put certain things together. I used to feather effect to do the black circle, and I drained the colour from the shoes and guitar to give it more of am impact and emphasising the object in it - shoes and guitar.  For the feather effect, i dyed the background black and cut a circle in  it, then transferred it to the picture I wanted over.
I used final cut pro for editing, which worked really good. We used the cross-fade transition between the performing band and 'real life', showing the contrast between the two and how time passes. Also, showing the differences and how it gave a 'homely' effect on it, making it seem more personal. Another thing, we slowed those scenes down (black and white), emphasising what was happening behind the stage. We didn't use a green screen as we thought that it wasn't necessary and it wouldn't work with the song we picked. Also, we wanted to keep it simple and not add a lot of things on our video, as we thought it would ruin the 'look' and green screen is mostly used for pop videos.
We did do an animatic, which was effective and told the story similar to how we made it final. it wasn't that  different.

These are the sites i used to help me with out video and ancillary texts. i found them very useful because it gave ideas and influences to do my own one, and precise information. :)

Evaluation Q3: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

For this unit of my coursework I used multiple programmes and many technological devices. All of the technological devices and programmes I used I found essential to produce my media project. The programmes and devices was used for different things in terms of production planning and evaluation stages of my coursework.

Stage one planning: In order to do a plan for our digipack we first had to

know what sort of music video we wanted to produce. We wanted to make a music video for the indie genre so we had to get inspiration for ideas for our video so we went on google and went to you tube to get inspiration. We found Kings of Leon music video very inspiring for our music video especially the backstage feel to the video.

Internet: When I was in YouTube I paid attention to the aspects of Kings of Leon music video Red Morning Light where I looked at aspects like variety's of close ups so i know how many close ups to put in my video. I also looked at the comments from the users of YouTube to see what they liked as fans so i could emulate what they think in my video.

In the planning stage we also had to produce an animatic for a digital storyboard of what our music video will entail. once we produced this animatic we had to show our teachers and the rest of our class to see if that thought it could work. Kirsty Produced the animatic in Movie maker. In Movie maker Kirsty created the animatic which was a visual story board of our music video plan.

By using the Internet like YouTube it helped me see what people thought of indie videos and see what is in an indie video which will help me make mine as effective as possible. 

Stage Two Production: In the production stage of our music video is where i used most of the technology. As I was filming and producing a digipack and advert i had to use multiple technologies devices like brand new HD cameras and photoshop.

Brand New HD Video Cameras: When i was filming we had to use HD video cameras to film our music video. In order to use this video camera you have to have tutorials of how to do it but with experience from filming in As we did not need one. On this video camera we could get the angles  we needed and would also film it on the memory cards that is in the video camera and when we produce our video we would need a video drive to save it on and a card read to read the memory cards for the mac.  

By using the The HD cameras it enabled me to film an effective music video of high quality. 

Final Cut Pro: Final cut pro is probably what i spent most of time as i used it to edit my music video and to make a voice over for evaluation question one and question two. As final cut pro is a programme used for editing and as it is for editing we would have to use multiple tools like markers which would be crucial for a music video as it has to be in sync and snapping as it will have to a smooth edit. Also as it is a music video we could also use special effects that would suite our genre.

When we was using final cut pro we only really used one special effect which was to make it look black and white or desaturate on final cut pro. we wanted to use this to make it look like a behind the scenes footage which is used in Kings of Leon Red Morning Light. to do this you have to go to video filters and then scroll down to image control and then desaturate and it will remove the colour and make it black and white and give the home footage effect.

Also In final cut pro we had to change the speed of our music video as some of the black and white footage we wanted to slow it down as that would appear within our genre and by doing this it makes it look affective and makes it look like a real music video we do this by going to modify and change speed tool where we slowed it down.

We also used transitions before and after the black and white footage and we done this by going to video transitions and put in a transition so the black and white looked affective and you could see the change to make it a clear edit.

By using final cut pro it helped me produce a music video that had all the aspects of real music video and it helped me make a video that had the write cuts and had the right effects like black and white to create the backstage footage and home video effect. 

Photoshop: Also in the production stage we had to use photoshop for our digipack and advert as that is how you create it. On photoshop I could use many different tools like the image tool to make it black and white. I made my front panel and the inside of my digipack black and white and the background of my digipack too. You can also put text on photoshop which I done for three panels of my digipack and on my advert. As well as cropping images.

By using photoshop I could create a digipack and advert that would stand out and catch my intended audience attention and try and create a digipack that they would be interested in buying and an advert that would promote the band successfully. 

Internet:digipack as I wanted to use the Mod target and in order to use this target in my digipack I would have to get it off google and use it in photoshop where i would magic wand it and paste it in my digipack and advert. I also used google for my evaluation as well with getting some pictures for it.

By using google and the Internet it helped my in most of stages as with google i could get pictures for my blog to make it look interesting and stand out and it would be essential to use pictures in my evaluation as i wanted to use media technology to its full and google helped me do this. 

Stage three Evaluation: My evaluation had to be done over blogger. On blogger i can post my work and do my evaluation and use media technology at its best as you can import videos, pictures and writing what i have done in this evaluation. I have also used blogger all the way through out my course work for all three stages; Planning, Production and evaluation.

Blogger was very helpful for me as i could post updates and do my evaluation on time. Also with blogger i could make it as interesting as possible by having the use of videos pictures and text. 

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think my promotion packet works really well, because I used the black and white effect on the back and front cover, which links to the 'home' video in our clip. There is a picture of the guiter that is shown in the video clip that is also in the digipak. Another thing was for the advertisement, I have the lead singer on the front, with mirco-phones are wrapped around him. There is a black circle around the singer as well, linking with the digipak, so people have a clear view that it's related, showing the audience that he's the band's identity. People can recognise it immediately. I used the same fonts as the digipak cover, so the audience can see it's for the same band. I think my main and ancillary texts are successful because it's easy to identify with the style and format. Another thing, there was a lot of of the colour black in our video (especially in the black and white 'home' scenes). That's where I wanted to show the consistant showing of the colour in my ancillary. I think my target audience would be attracted to them because it has a clear fit with the genre of the music, the colour is suitable for the band and there's a constant repetition of the theme. The colours I mostly stuck with were black - obviously, grey and black and white, blue and green, as well as colour. I made it quirky, different - mostly by adding the black circle around it, like it's closing in, a 'rock' effect and the band is 'indie' effect. Another thing is that it's completely directed at the audience, and it's obvious what genre it is, so other audiences would know the differences.  Here are some screen shots of our video which links to my ancillary texts. :)

Here are some of the screen shots from Youtube of the bands that influenced me with the music:
This one is Mcfly 'Tansylvania'. Here, I got the idea of the black circle for my ancillary texts where I thought I woud be really effective and different to other videos, making it seem like it's an 'old reel of film' and to add a bit of 'gist' to it. :) 

This one is Alter Bridge 'In Loving Memory'. I got my ideas from this song to use for our video and my ancillary texts. Making it homely, but as if there was something 'missing'.

Evaluation Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text and advert?

                                            

I think my audience will be able to see the like between my digipack and advert as they will be connected to my product as a whole as i have tried to fit to their interest i.e. using instruments in my product heavily as they will be attracted to it. I think my target audience will be attracted to my digipack and advert as with the digipack they will want to buy it as they are getting something extra especially with the use of pictures and band members names makes my digipack unique. I also feel they will like my digipack with the heavily use of instruments and as my product is in the indie genre my target audience will be musicians themselves and will appreciate the use of guitars and amps.

My target audience will also be attracted to my advert as it fits there interest with the use of instruments and image of my digipack. Also on my advert it is promoting the tour which my target audience will be very interested in as they will want to see my band live as they are fans and will want to find out where they are playing and when they are playing. On the advert it also said when the album is out and they will be interested in that as they will like the songs and my music video they will want to go out and buy the album. I think as a combined product my target audience will be very interested as it will fit there needs and interests.

Evaluation Q1: In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Feedback from draft evaluation

Hello group 35
If you've met the draft deadline then your blog entries will have been looked at by Jo.  You will find her comments by clicking the '1 comments' link at the bottom of your blogs.
Don't forget the final deadline is Friday.

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 Here are some embedded videos of the bands that influenced me for our own video.

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This is 'In Loving Memory' from Alter Bridge. :)

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This is 'Transylvania' from Mcfly :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZF03Q_SgBw&ob=av2el

This is a link to 'Red Morning Light' from Kings of Leon. :)

These were some of the digipaks that influenced me for my own one. :)

Evaluation: Q4 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Music video:

The music video was shown to a large audience, but this viewing wasn't exactly shown to its intended target audience, so this could have effected the feedback, but the general feedback for our music video is positive there were three main points that kept arising: unenthusiasm at times, lack of variety of shots and static shots. 

Some of the band members were unenthusiastic throughout the performance parts of the video. This was something we should have been looking for whilst filming, but didn't and so next time looking at the performance of those being filmed will be a priority as it takes away from the intended atmosphere. at the time of filming we weren't aware of how unenthusiastic they looked, but once we uploaded clips in final cut it was one of the things that we noticed instantly, but wasn't something we could easily change. So to take away the attention from the unenthusiastic we tried not to hold that shot for too long throughout the video. I've have learned that this could have been prevented through better direction throughout filming and a rehearsal of the performance.
Another area which was brought up was the lack of variety of shots. I learned that this made the video look rather repetitive at times, and like the unenthusiastic performance from some members took away the lively and carefree atmosphere and attitude of the band. Again this is something we only realised when we uploaded the clips to final cut, but tried to do the best with the footage we had. This  Use of static shots was brought up. Some said that use of a handheld during the performance would have given a more intimate and exciting performance, something that I would agree with. 

Digipak and advert:

From the feedback of my digipak and advert I have learned that the choice of using visual links between all three products works effectively an seems to be something people see conventional of the genre. The colours (red, black and white) and font (impact) that I chose to use stand out and catch the attention of the audience because I used capital letters.

Evaluation: Q3 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

 Throughout the construction and research, planning and evaluation of the main product and ancillary texts I used a number of technologies to produce the best quality products possible, besides using video camera and tripod, lighting and digital camera.

Final cut:

Throughout the production of our music video, final cut played the most important role. This program allowed us to cut our recorded clips of performance and narrative and piece it all together on a simple timeline. This program also allowed us to change the appearance of our video clips in the screen shot to the right you can see how we removed the colour from clips - this is how we wanted the audience to distinguish between performance and flash back scenes. To achieve this we had to use the video filter 'desaturate'.








 We also changed the speed of a number of shots throughout the music video but using the modify 'change speed' tool. This allows us to slow the rate of the clip and also of we wanted, to reverse the clip. We also used the effects tool to place transitions at various points in the video to smoothly change between performance and black and white. Final cut also allowed us to lip sync the original track with the clips that we recorded. This was done by placing markers on each clip at the same point so it could easily be matched and in sync.

                                                                                         Photoshop:

Photoshop like final cut, played the most important role in the creation of both digipak and advertisement. I used various tools within the program to completely distort the original images I photographed, such as 'stamp' and the paint bucket tool in areas of photos to change their colour and effect. I cut out parts of photographs and changed their orientation to fit my ideas.

Photoshop also helped to create images for the animatics made for the evaluation stages to show comparisons between other videos and my own work by dragging similar images onto a blank file and saving them as JPEGs and importing them into movie maker.

Photoshop also helped to create images for the animatics made for the evaluation stages to show comparisons between other videos and my own work by dragging similar images onto a blank file and saving them as JPEGs and importing them into movie maker.

Movie Maker:
I used windows movie maker to create the storyboard animatic during the planning stages, by simply dropping photographs of the drawn storyboard onto a time-line and then adding audio by importing tracks from itunes. To illustrate when we wanted each shot to be used and how we wanted to cut to the beat.
I have also used movie maker in the evaluation stage, creating animations with voice overs explaining processes and ideas.

The Internet:

The internet has allowed me to use many sites throughout planning, production and evaluation.

Youtube is one website that has allowed me to research music videos of the indie/rock genre so that I could identify and use conventions our my own. by typing band names into the search bar, for example "Kings of Leon" As a group, we also used youtube to create our shortlist of songs that we wanted to use at the very beginning. To get the official version of the song we chose, after searching it, we used you tube to download the track and import into final cut to use in the production stage, using the download tool and also used youtube to embed the music videos directly into blogger so that the video is watchable directly on the blog.

Google images allowed me to research all areas of advertisements and digipaks. By typing only band names , eg "Pigeon Detectives"into the search engine, from this got hundreds of images of the bands, digipack and adverts and from this I could identify conventions and colour schemes of the genre.

Blogger has allowed me to blog progress of all stages of this unit so that fellow group members, peers and teachers can see and check on all progress by opening our group blog page "group 35" The blog has allowed me to upload and import photographs and movies/animatics that i have made through the uploading tools provided in the tool bar. We're also able to embed music videos from youtube by pasting the embed code into the blog post. 

Evaluation: Q2 How effective is the combination of your main production and ancillary texts?

  

I think together all three products are successful because the use conventions of the genre and of the products themselves:

- The digipak features a number of bonus tracks shown by the use of a sticker on the front cover. This will appeal to the audience because they want more that what is featured on the CD and because they want more from the band. 

- The advertisement uses star ratings which are usually seen on advertisements. 

 

- And the music video uses a range of shot types and fast editing like others of its genre.  

I think the targeted audience will be attracted because of the aspects we chose to use from other music videos and I chose to develop of other digipaks and adverts, particularly the red and black colour scheme of both, but mainly because of the use of and focus on instruments and the backstage lives of the band members. We wanted the band to have the ability to attract an audience who loved music and had aspirations to be part of the music industry the music video is an indication of how it can happen to anybody and shows those passions.

Evaluation: Q1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Reflection of Digipak and Advert.

I think that overall, my digipak and advert worked well, because it gave the hint of indie and rock mixed together. My plan orginally was to do a black fading circle around the edges , making it look like the audience is looking through their lives, and also that it was giving VIP access to the audience,  showing what kind of life they have outside the world of performance. Also, I thought that I would keep the colours to minium. When I came to doing the actual digipak, I think it worked well, because it was exactly how I wanted it to be and it looked really effective. Same goes to the advert as well. I wanted to give the fact that it was 'misty', in a way. like you can see what's happening - or going on - but not sure on what. It pulls the audience, wanting to know more.I went through my albums at home, and I thought that Stone Sour  - Audio Secrecy 2010, had a good cover, and it linked with the 'misty' effect which I thought it would be good for my digipak. Also another one I thought was Kings of Leon's album. So, I mixed their ides together with mine, that gave me my idea of my final product.