Final Music Video

Evaluation Question 3

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

This whole process was contructed by using high tech technology which allowed us to produce at the highest standard. High quality camera's by the make 'JVC' were used to carry out our tasks in creating our music video. Large capacity memory cards allowed us to record masses of footage with out having to backup on other hardware devices then erase from the memory card device. Batteries with long lasting battery lifes were also very helpful in keeping us on top of the task as they allowed us to record upto 5 hours without having to recharge the video cameras.

Adobe Photoshop was my favourite program which has diverse effects which give a great impact on images if you have a good knowledge on using the program.



Final cut pro was another program which was used to produce our music videos. i gained knowledge on using final cut pro in my AS year which was then developed as i worked on it in my A2 year.

Research was carried out by using media streaming websites such as Youtube, Vimeo and Search egines like Google. Youtube played a big part in our research as we used this mostly to view videos of other music videos to gain more knowledge. Youtube has billions of videos, which are uploaded by fans, record companies and artists themselves.

Planning this project was done by creating a powerpoint presentation then presented to the class which helped us gain help on improving our plans.

Evaluation was done by using blogger.

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisment)?
I believe my music video has a clear strong link with my digipak and advert, this has been done using images from my music video on the digipak which contains the artist, and also the mise en scene and lighting is similar.

Here is my digipak and advert which both use elements of images that have strong links to my music video. i think i have successfully created the advert to sell as it has a clear recognisable image of the artist and important information such as, artist name, album name, release dat, biggest hit single, stores which it is sold in, uk tour areas etc.

i think my target audience of ages 18-25 will be attracted the contrast and context of my digipak and advert suit the age group in.

Evaluation- Question 4- Tanzila Huda

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the class analysis of the videos we received comments such as :

'Nicely shot but needs to be edited more'

'Good story line but needs a twist'

'Touching'

'Good use of camera shots '

after receiving these comments we thought hard about how to make it better for the audience to like it so we used the comments to motivate us to make it better, we did this by changing the story a bit by ending it at a sort of emotional climax and not a happy ending, we also edited certain shots so instead of colour they were in black and white to empathise memories.
we thought that this would work well because in reality not all love stories have happy endings and maybe the audience could relate to the story because what they've personally experienced.

After watching our video in the cinema our audience clapped and cheered which implied that they enjoyed it a lot, i say this because while watching our video the audience were quiet which means our changed that we made interested them in the storyline of the music video.

However i think that of we had more time we could have added more edits and there could have been a more better ending then what there is already, because our video portrays the girl character as 'heartless' but i think we could have changed this and showed her feelings at the end, maybe then the girls in the audience will be able to relate to it more.

While making the video i've learnt that audiences feedback is the most important thing because you have to sell your product to them you have to do this by making them see what they want to see.
looking at my products now i think that at the beginning when we started on the video we should've taken audience feedback more seriously because i regret that i couldn't make it better now.


the main thing i've learnt through this whole experience is without your audience your nothing.





 

Evaluation- Question 3- Tanzila Huda

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


I constructed this project with the use of media technology such as :

• Brand new state of the art cameras that use memory cards for filming my video and taking still images for the blogs and also to use for my Advert and Digipak, using memory cards were an advantage because it had a lot of space to store film footage and we didn't have a problem filming because of this. 

• Internet which i used for research, such as websites such as Youtube to search different videos, Google for researching also Blogger which i used for my research, planning &evaluation.

• Photoshop to create my digipak and advert designs.I then imported my digipak on to the template digipak panel in Quark express, Quark express is known for its variety of texts however i created my texts on Photoshop instead because i was more familiar with photoshop.

above is a screen shot while i was using Photoshop to crop an image for my digipak.

• I also used Final Cut Pro to edit my video, such as adding fades, cropping it and adding the soundtrack and making sure the lip syncs correct.

• Our group didn't have time to make an animatic or a digital storyboard because too much time was wasted deciding the storyline of our video, so we took pictures of our initial story boards which we drew out and uploaded it Blogger.

Evaluation-Question 2- Tanzila Huda

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisment)?

<<Advert with graphical effects

 <<Digipak with graphical effects

Many artists/bands choose to use graphical effects on their digipaks and adverts instead of images of themselves such as the image and digipak above, as i was researching digpaks and adverts i came across many of these,

<<Digipak that uses graphical effects also images of the artists.

<<Advert that uses images of the band members

 but the ones that caught my attention were the digpaks and adverts that used a selection images of the artists/band, i liked these particularly because i thought by doing this the audience could link to the video in a blink of an eye, this inspired me to use images of my artist on the front and back panels of my digipak also my advert.


I think the combination of my video with my advert and digipak works well, as i have put elements of the video itself such as images of the artist and also the misenscene in the digipak and the advert. i have chosen to do this because my audience will easily be able to link the video to the digipak and advert

 My audience are able to recognise that they are linked products because i captured a still from my video of the artist and used this for my front panel of my digipak also for the advert.

I also think my target audience which are 18-28 year olds would be attracted to my digipak and advert becase its not too bright and colourful however it isn't dull either so it suits the age group.


This is the still image from my video

I used the same image for  my advert.











I also used this image for my digipak, because i wanted to create direct visual links for my audience so they can easily recognise the artist.

Evaluation Question 1

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


We were given a task to search through a catalogue of music genres, which we carried out in class as a group and at home individually. Carrying this task out in class as a group proved to be a better option as we gathered more opinions compared it with a wide range of different genres that everyone was interested in. We came to a decision of producing a video of a indie pop/alternative rock genre. 


We also looked at R&B/Hip Hop genres and were planning on using songs from artists like 'Jay Sean' Who created the song 'Tonight'. In the end, the songs we selected was 'The Verve -Bittersweet Symphony' And 'Snow Patrol - Run' But The Song Run By Snow Patrol Was Finalised as the song for our music video which was of a indie pop/alternative genre.


'Coldplay - Fix You' a song of indie pop/alternative genre, was very influential in our production of our music video. The camera work of this video influenced us mostly, it has good shots of the waist and above which we were influenced by and used in our music video. Editing was also influential as they contain some good long clips which we also used




'The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony' was the second video which also influenced us with the plot of a man walking down the street. This is quite difficult to film, The verve video is very fluid and the artist is filmed from lots of different angles. This inspired us as we wanted to film our main artist walking along a  canal and this video gave us ideas on how to do that and make it visually stunning.

We have included same shots as the cold play video which is an extreme long shot. This came across as indie music video conventions so we used it in our own music video. Using Extreme long shots as in this screenshot was very effective.

When creating my digipak, i did research on digipaks, and came across many different styles. at the end i decided to use images from my music video as the front, back, and inside cover of my digipak rather than taking, and using any graphics.

This is my digipak which was inspired by coldplay as images of the artist were used on the front cover. This method is very effective in promotion as it creates a direct link from the music video to the album for example, if the music video was seen on tv, and then was seen in stores, the image will instantly tell the customer that this album is from the music video they viewed on tv.

This is my advert which has a large image of the artist taking up most of the advert with the information beside him. This image is taken from the music video which can help the audience relate.

Evaluation-Question 1-Tanzila Huda

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



We searched through a lot of videos looking at different genres, one genre that caught our eye was Rnb which made us look at Jay sean -'tonight', we thought this would be a good song choice because its modern, catchy and will also attract a younger audience, but then we thought that it would be a bad idea because it was too popular, so then we decided to go for a genre that was unique and different  such as Rock/ indie.







we were flicking through the rock/ indie videos when we came across Coldplay-'fix you' and we liked the idea of one man against the whole world so we decided to take this idea, we thought about doing this song when we came across a video we was watching in class called 'Bitter sweet symphony' by the verve









The verve influenced us alot because of the tracking shot of him walking through the streets whilst singing.



In the end we chose Snow Patrol- 'run'




We chose this because we thought it was different and it attracted a young audience also an older audience aswell, we thought that the Depressed feeling of the song would go together with the idea of the tracking shot of the man walking through the streets in cold play-'fix you'
we thought this would be a good idea for our video because our song is quite depressing so we thought tracking shots of the singer in the video walking would empathise the mood.

There are two screenshots of videos shown above, the first one is of Coldplay- 'Fix you' and the Second one is from our video, i've chosen these screen shots because they link mis en scene as both of the characters are walking through somewhere such as the streets also its the same tracking shot showing the singer walking and singing looking depressed.

 This screen shot is of a close up shot of the singers foot while walking from our video.

This screen shot is also a closeup shot of the singers foot while walking, this is from the 'Bitter sweet symphony' by verve

the video of 'Bitter Sweet symphony' influenced us to do a close up of the singer walking because it shows that he's depressed and that he might be looking down while walking.

Digipak

while researching digipaks and adverts i came across a lot of styles that have been used and i chose to use images from my video so it links instead of using graphical images on the digipak.

This digipak Of Snow patrol uses graphical effects instead of using images which link to the album such as the artist. i decided not to use a graphical effect because i wanted a more clearer link from my digipak to my video.

So i looked for digipaks which had images of the artist instead

I came across this digipak cover by Coldplay which had the bands/artists face on it this, i likes this because it had a clear visual link to the band and the song.

I also found this  Digipak cover  of Stereophonics which also has images of the band/ artists mixed with graphical effects of the 'sea', i liked this idea because it looked very challenging to do, but i thought it would be very time consuming so i decided to stick to the idea of using the artists image.

 This is my digipak, i was inspired by Coldplay because images of the band/artists were used in the front cover, by doing this it creates a clear link from the video.

Adverts

 While looking at adverts i came across these two adverts of Stereophonics and Razorlight, these influenced me because again the artists face is used to advertise the song and video which gives a clear link to the audience.

Above is my advert, i used the idea of the artists image as the background to give a clear link for the audience.

Evaluation Part 4 - Mehmet Tarhan

Evaluation Part 3 - Mehmet Tarhan

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


Construction:
Arguably the most important part of the whole process, the use of technologies in constructing our main product, as well as ancillary products. We used high quality professional JVC recording cameras to capture the artists performance. The use of the attachable microphone really aided me and the group. We could easily hear which part of the song I was singing, and then easily put the actual track on top of the video, so that the lip syncing would be spot on. The large capacity memory cards, and also the reliable batteries made it easy to record for 5 hours straight without any hassle or need to go to college and back to the locations if we required any equipment.

Photoshop was my favourite program because you could create really dramatic effects, and it was good to learn how to use it. My knowledge on how to use final cut stemmed from the AS year, making our thrillers. However, the method enlisted in putting together the bits and pieces of our video was very different. In the thriller we just stuck parts of it on, and cut parts of it off, but this time we needed to use precision, and needed to be aware of how much of a clip we needed to cut. This was all down to the most important thing in a music video. Lip syncing. If it had been off even for 2 or 3 seconds, it would of put our whole video into disarray. We needed to make sure that we edited to the beat of the music as well, otherwise the video would not of made sense.


This was made easy with the use of portable hard-drives, and an easy to use interface on the iMac. 


Research:

Our main format for research was the internet, and more specifically, YouTube and Vimeo. These websites are crucial for any form of research you wish to do. They have hundreds of millions of music videos, both original from the artists themselves, and from cover artists. These websites helped us in that we got to see how the ideas we wanted to use, were used by others and we judged how successful they were in the implementation of using that idea.   


Planning: 
I created a presentation on powerpoint outlining the main points, key information, that needed to be noted down. This project was then shown to the class, as we outlined what we wanted to achieve, and how we planned to do so. 
Powerpoint Presentation - You can view it by clicking this link.


We also created our storyboard, and scanned it in to the computers. It is available to watch here:
The Animatic


Evaluation:
Our medium to evaluate our work, to critique it, to show others it, is right here. Blogger, without it, and without its easy to use interface, countless features and simplistic handling, it would of been a great mission to evaluate our work. Blogger enables us to post and embed videos onto here, uploading our planning stage work, as well as showing our ancillary products. We can also change the design and fonts, and colours as well as the background, to make it different from other groups that are using blogger. 

Evaluation Part 2 - Mehmet Tarhan

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

The story in our music video is quite sad, and to show this we used a variety of shots to show the artists sadness with the use of close ups and mid shots. With this in mind, we used a rural area of space in the first couple of verses, because the artist is needs space, and needs to think about his loss.

Here are a couple of visual links about our video and my ancillary products.

Digipak Inside Covers

Run Video - Verse 1

Here, the background for my digipak is the same as the walk path in the canal. This is a good visual link and I chose to use this because the colours shown in the picture were appealing, the green and brown leaves as well as the trees were a link to the park in the second verse. The upside to choosing this was also I didn't have to add any effects, except for the sign post in the above digipak. The sign post was a good addition, it contains lyrics from the artists song.

Digipak Front & Back Covers

Advert

The advert and digipak are linked also, there is a small picture of the front cover of the album on the advert it self. The image is also the same. I think the advert will be successful because it shows the information that is crucial about the artist. These include the artists name, the album name, its biggest single, reviews, tour dates, and websites and where to buy. 

In selling the artist, I think that the ancillary products went well with the main product. 

Evaluation Part 1 - Mehmet Tarhan

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

We searched through various music videos, both in class and at home before the production of our video. The time spent was worthwhile because it was crucial that we made the correct choice, and that we were all up for the challenge. There would be no point in choosing the latest number 1, or a previous smash hit, if we had no opinions, or thoughts about the song. We chose Run in the end, although it was quite a well known song, and we would preferred if it were a less popular one, we decided that that was would be the song that we would produce best at. 

At first we looked at singers like Jay Sean, and his song Tonight. But we decided for a more indie/alternative genre, and looked at songs like Bittersweet Symphony - by The Verve, Fix You - By Coldplay, a nd ultimately, Run - by Snow Patrol. These songs all have a message, about loneliness, love and care and change. All of the videos have something in common, there is one lead singer, walking alone and signing the lyrics. I liked this.

In many ways there can are comparisons made with The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony to our video Run, the main protagonist of this video is the main singer, as it is with our video. The camera work is also worthwhile to note, many tracking shots of the artist, views from the side, front and back, as well as close ups on the artist. There are also striking differences between the two music videos. The Verve, has a more urbanised feel to the video, shooting wholly on a crowded and buzzing road. Compared to our video, with a slightly rural feel, as most of the video was shot in the canal, park. 

Coldplay - Fix You

The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony

Snow Patrol - Run (Our Cover)

As you can see with the screen shots from the videos above, we've followed some conventions of media.       

Such as the typical camera work included in the music video itself, the close-ups - which creates emphasis on the artist, because of the emotions showed in a close up shot. We've used a variety of other shots, long shots/ extreme long shots, and as the images above show,  mid-shots. We also used typical camera movements like pans and track shots.  

Our media product uses other platforms of media to promote itself. With the use of the ancillary products, our digipak and advertisement. 

Coldplay - Parachutes

The Verve - Forth

Mehmet Tarhan - Turbulence

Whereas Coldplay and The Verve have gone for different forms of art for their digipak covers; I decided to put the main artist on the cover. The reasoning for this was because our artist was new, and we wanted to show the audience what he looked like. By comparison with the other two, it would seem that we are challenging the conventions of indie/ alternative rock bands and artists.

I think my ancillary products are effective in selling the whole album, and not just the cover song.