We cut out the bathroom scene by replacing it with a shot of her entering then leaving the bathroom changes clothes.
We cut the bus scene as it were too difficult to film.
We filmed in Jocolatte instead of Costa.
We cut of the shop scene and cinema as no permission to film in there.
We changed the ending by adding a scene outside of the church.
We added artist scenes.
Thursday 15 December 2011
Friday 9 December 2011
Friday 2 December 2011
Director's Commentary Script
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- I believe our music video complies with real media products as we have considered and featured all of the Goodwins points.
- Our genre is Pop Ballad and we follow the characteristics by featuring the artist singing on the piano. Another convention is that we used a variety of effects such as black and white on our performance shots and de-saturation on our other clips.
- We didn't literally follow the lyrics however we used the imagery of an Angel. We amplify this image by uses an Angel sitting alone. We did use stop motion in our rough cut where we wrote the lyrics using different things.
- We made certain things happen on the beat for example the kicking of the cardigan and we also made sure that all of the cuts were on the beat. We made the cut rate fit with the music by lengthening or shortening the clips.
- With the demands of the record label in mind we created an angelic visual image for the artist and featured a close up of her face on the digipak cover for the audience to associate her with the video.
- Voyeurism is a key feature in our video. The way we film this video makes the audience feel like they are watching the artist while she is oblivious to them. For example; her getting out of bed, eating lunch, shopping, making tea.
- We aimed our video at a general audience. We achieved this by using a simple digipak therefore not having a gender or age specific references.
- influence and inspiration for our video include; lynx excite advert, ellie golding's 'your song' and Chalene Soraia 'Wherever you Will Go'
-we originally gained inspiration from trains soul sister for istop motion but we ended up cutting the clips out of our videos.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- As a whole our promotional package is very effective because as they all subtly link and we keep the theme of angelic innocence.
- also use of black and white
- we opted for a very natural appearance, using light makeup on holly and simple clothes that the audience can relate to.
- To prevent the digipak from appearing plain we've used a shot for the back outside cover of Holly standing, arms slightly raised outwards, with wings created from light.This links to our video through the use of angel wings, but we haven't extracted the exact feature as in our video we used a real prop
- on the right inside cover we used the same effect of the wings made of light but blacked out Holly in the photo so the wings made a circle that outlines the CD holder.
-In our Magazine ad we've stuck to the angelic approach and had her pose very natural - with a slight laugh which makes her appear friendly - also we raised the contrast which made the bright white background glow around her body.
Directors commentary scipt
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
- our initial idea was a video for a different song, however people thought it had been done before and felt it wasnt a strong enough pitch, as it was very narrative based and cliche.with this in mind we chose Jessica Simpsons cover of 'Angels' with the idea of an angel doing every day things such as making tea, shopping, having lunch etc. We felt this was a very original concept and recieved good comments.
- After our rough cut many people said that they didn't quite understand the concept of the video and why she was wearing wings. They also said that our stop motion looked really good but didn't really fit with the video. We decided that they were right and therefore removed the stop motion and added shots of the artist singing and playing the piano, the teachers also said that the angles and variety of shots were good however the bright colours in the clips detracted from the narrative of the video, they suggested we add an effect over the top to make them duller and link to the meaning of the song.
- The majority of feedback we were given for our Final music video were positive comments including; how the black and white effect seporates the cut-ins from the narrative, found the concept comical and entertaining, variety of shots and angles that build up a professionalism within the video. Although it was realised that Holly couldnt actually play the piano and another felt we could have used more exciting clips where there were peaks in the song.
How did you use new media technologies in construction, research planning and evaluation?
-Blogger was the first technology vital to our planning process, as we used it to upload video and images from the internet along with analysis' and i (Bekki) was even able to create and post a blog post using my phone as the website is highly accessible.
-As they were easy to hold we were able to film in Cambridge at busy times. We used the tripod on nearly all of our shots to make sure they were all still and steady and were able to get some really good shots and when used with the trolly they allowed for smooth tracking and panning shots, such as the sideways scroll in the shop.
-We also used a DSLR camera to take photos for our photoshoot, we used the slowest shutter speed on this camera to create the Angel wings
image with the torches in the dark.
-The most important thing for the construction of our video was final cut, which allowed us to do nearly everything. We were able to change the colour of all of our clips and put them in the order and length that we wanted, however there were a few things features we would have liked to use, also the annoyingly long rendering put real time pressure on our already limited time frame.
-We also used iStopmotion to captures things such as scrabble moving on its own. We used this to create the lyrics in different ways and found it was really simple to use however took a long time to get right.
-Using Photoshop enabled us to edit our pictures for the ancillary products with relative ease and also allowed us to create mood boards for research but some features were a tad tricky to start with, which was slightly frustrating as they didn't come out as we were hoping it would. However, once got to grips with it allowed us to effectively make our digi-pak and magazine ad into professional looking products and helped us to use a black and white effect, much like the one from our video this aiding us in linking the products to each other better.
- our initial idea was a video for a different song, however people thought it had been done before and felt it wasnt a strong enough pitch, as it was very narrative based and cliche.with this in mind we chose Jessica Simpsons cover of 'Angels' with the idea of an angel doing every day things such as making tea, shopping, having lunch etc. We felt this was a very original concept and recieved good comments.
- After our rough cut many people said that they didn't quite understand the concept of the video and why she was wearing wings. They also said that our stop motion looked really good but didn't really fit with the video. We decided that they were right and therefore removed the stop motion and added shots of the artist singing and playing the piano, the teachers also said that the angles and variety of shots were good however the bright colours in the clips detracted from the narrative of the video, they suggested we add an effect over the top to make them duller and link to the meaning of the song.
- The majority of feedback we were given for our Final music video were positive comments including; how the black and white effect seporates the cut-ins from the narrative, found the concept comical and entertaining, variety of shots and angles that build up a professionalism within the video. Although it was realised that Holly couldnt actually play the piano and another felt we could have used more exciting clips where there were peaks in the song.
How did you use new media technologies in construction, research planning and evaluation?
-Blogger was the first technology vital to our planning process, as we used it to upload video and images from the internet along with analysis' and i (Bekki) was even able to create and post a blog post using my phone as the website is highly accessible.
-As they were easy to hold we were able to film in Cambridge at busy times. We used the tripod on nearly all of our shots to make sure they were all still and steady and were able to get some really good shots and when used with the trolly they allowed for smooth tracking and panning shots, such as the sideways scroll in the shop.
-We also used a DSLR camera to take photos for our photoshoot, we used the slowest shutter speed on this camera to create the Angel wings
image with the torches in the dark.
-The most important thing for the construction of our video was final cut, which allowed us to do nearly everything. We were able to change the colour of all of our clips and put them in the order and length that we wanted, however there were a few things features we would have liked to use, also the annoyingly long rendering put real time pressure on our already limited time frame.
-We also used iStopmotion to captures things such as scrabble moving on its own. We used this to create the lyrics in different ways and found it was really simple to use however took a long time to get right.
-Using Photoshop enabled us to edit our pictures for the ancillary products with relative ease and also allowed us to create mood boards for research but some features were a tad tricky to start with, which was slightly frustrating as they didn't come out as we were hoping it would. However, once got to grips with it allowed us to effectively make our digi-pak and magazine ad into professional looking products and helped us to use a black and white effect, much like the one from our video this aiding us in linking the products to each other better.
Feedback On Final Cut from Jaelle
I feel that your video uses Goodwins Theory really well, whether it's to amplify what's being said or just to stick with media conventions, it works and makes it appear more profressional. You've greatly linked the lyrics to the visuals to emphasize the lyrics; for instance whenever the word 'Angle' occured there'd be some footage of something related to Angles; from the name of a shop to the arrangment of alphabetti spaghetti on a plate.
The narrative was also strong, staying consistent and relevant to the lyrics throughout. The wide variety of shots made it fast paced and kept it engaging as there was always something to look at. Furthermore, as well as many shots there was also many locations, again keep it fresh and captivating.
Although the artist did feature within the video a fair, bit with different shots each time; I would of liked to see the artist singing elsewhere as opposed to behind a piano all of the time. Possibly walking towards the camera singing, I feel this would create a sense of interaction with the audience and allow us to get a better grasp of your emotion.
The narrative was also strong, staying consistent and relevant to the lyrics throughout. The wide variety of shots made it fast paced and kept it engaging as there was always something to look at. Furthermore, as well as many shots there was also many locations, again keep it fresh and captivating.
Although the artist did feature within the video a fair, bit with different shots each time; I would of liked to see the artist singing elsewhere as opposed to behind a piano all of the time. Possibly walking towards the camera singing, I feel this would create a sense of interaction with the audience and allow us to get a better grasp of your emotion.
Ideas for director commentary
from other evaluations that i have watched, i found that it was effective to film the commentary in one of the locations featured in the music video, for instance we could film in the music room we used. I also like the idea of filming infront of a green screen and changing it to either the music video, or images to support what is being said. I feel that the slow paced evalutions were uninteresting, so it would be a good idea to learn our lines so that the pace is quicker and prehaps have the music playing in the background to get rid of any background noise.
Previous students evaluations
Thursday 1 December 2011
Student Evaluation
1. Our product is mainly convention following, going by Goodwin's points we fulfilled most of the typical conventions of music videos. For example, our music video related to the lyrics by featuring an angel as the protagonist, while at the same time we interpreted them amplifying as the song isn't actually about an angel being alone but more from another person's perspective while our music video showed it all from the angel's point of view. Angels is a ballad and one common convention of a ballad is the artist shots feature them playing an appropriate instrument, in our case a piano.
We used regular close ups to help identify the artist, another of Goodwin's points and we kept her alone to make sure she is perceived as an individual, this was also a key theme of the song.
One point we did semi-challenge was the relationship between music and visuals as, although we often cut on the beat, our video didn't do anything special during the peaks of the song.
2. Our digi-pak also featured most conventions of it's media. We used a CD as our base product and used the theme of being angelic throughout. To show this theme we used close ups from higher angles and with a slow shutter speed drew angel wings in the sky behind Holly. We used the same theme across on our magazine advert.
Our advert and CD shared conventions with many others, both student and real, such as the use of artist face shots to let the audience know who they're looking at. Also our artist name stood out a lot on our advert, getting attention of any readers.
As an artist we wanted to create an angelic image, a sort of happy-sad sweet but not in an overly cutesy kinda way, as we thought that a friendly face is the best way to attract our target audience, pre-teen girls, we used this theme across our three products to keep them linked. We thought this would be the most successful technique for attracting that audience because they are also the target for Disney based artists, who often use either the cute or independent-woman images. Ours was a combination of both, which we portrayed using angelic close ups to make her seem cute but also kept her alone and separate from everyone else, thus making her independent. I think that as a whole the 3 products worked well, as they're linked without looking identical and helped to complement each other.
3. Our initial pitch feedback proved useless, our original plan was to use Sitting, Watching, Waiting but we were rejected as our idea was far too narrative heavy and cliché. So instead we moved to Angels and again we found that our initial idea was too narrative but we built on it to change that.
Our rough cut was reasonably well received in terms of camerawork and editing however, we lacked artist shots, some clips were too long and got boring and out stopmotion clips, although well done, didn't fit the mood and was eventually scrapped.
Our final cut was much better, we used a "tremendous amount of shots", often played on voyeurism and was put together well, playing on the subject of a lone angel walking around going unnoticed by the general public. However, there were still a couple of problems.
Firstly the song had powerful peaks but our video never really acknowledged them and stayed rather slow, calm and somewhat boring instead of having an epic shot of someone falling to their knees and flinging their arms above their their heads in a sudden epiphany-ish moment. Secondly another issue was how we still had very few artist shots, which arguably made the video too narrative based, ideally, with more time this is one thing we'd have changed of given more time.
4. The HD camera's were a great asset as they allowed for us to capture good quality footage with ease paired with a tripod and dolly they allowed for smooth tracking and panning shots, such as the sideways scroll in the shop.
We also used the editing software, Final Cut many times in the past which, having grown used to it, is more or less easy to use and gave us a vast selection of effects and filters, Final Cut was a useful tool, especially when it came to adding the noise and black and white filters to clips. However, the annoyingly long rendering put real time pressure on our already limited time frame. Blogger was a useful asset to show our theory of the subject and gave us credit for analysing past work . Photoshop was, although a powerful tool, also a large hassle and awkward to use for someone used to different things.
However, once got to grips with it allowed us to effectively make our digi-pak and magazine ad into professional looking products and helped us to use a black and white effect, much like the one from our video this aiding us in linking the products to each other better.
We used regular close ups to help identify the artist, another of Goodwin's points and we kept her alone to make sure she is perceived as an individual, this was also a key theme of the song.
One point we did semi-challenge was the relationship between music and visuals as, although we often cut on the beat, our video didn't do anything special during the peaks of the song.
2. Our digi-pak also featured most conventions of it's media. We used a CD as our base product and used the theme of being angelic throughout. To show this theme we used close ups from higher angles and with a slow shutter speed drew angel wings in the sky behind Holly. We used the same theme across on our magazine advert.
Our advert and CD shared conventions with many others, both student and real, such as the use of artist face shots to let the audience know who they're looking at. Also our artist name stood out a lot on our advert, getting attention of any readers.
As an artist we wanted to create an angelic image, a sort of happy-sad sweet but not in an overly cutesy kinda way, as we thought that a friendly face is the best way to attract our target audience, pre-teen girls, we used this theme across our three products to keep them linked. We thought this would be the most successful technique for attracting that audience because they are also the target for Disney based artists, who often use either the cute or independent-woman images. Ours was a combination of both, which we portrayed using angelic close ups to make her seem cute but also kept her alone and separate from everyone else, thus making her independent. I think that as a whole the 3 products worked well, as they're linked without looking identical and helped to complement each other.
3. Our initial pitch feedback proved useless, our original plan was to use Sitting, Watching, Waiting but we were rejected as our idea was far too narrative heavy and cliché. So instead we moved to Angels and again we found that our initial idea was too narrative but we built on it to change that.
Our rough cut was reasonably well received in terms of camerawork and editing however, we lacked artist shots, some clips were too long and got boring and out stopmotion clips, although well done, didn't fit the mood and was eventually scrapped.
Our final cut was much better, we used a "tremendous amount of shots", often played on voyeurism and was put together well, playing on the subject of a lone angel walking around going unnoticed by the general public. However, there were still a couple of problems.
Firstly the song had powerful peaks but our video never really acknowledged them and stayed rather slow, calm and somewhat boring instead of having an epic shot of someone falling to their knees and flinging their arms above their their heads in a sudden epiphany-ish moment. Secondly another issue was how we still had very few artist shots, which arguably made the video too narrative based, ideally, with more time this is one thing we'd have changed of given more time.
4. The HD camera's were a great asset as they allowed for us to capture good quality footage with ease paired with a tripod and dolly they allowed for smooth tracking and panning shots, such as the sideways scroll in the shop.
We also used the editing software, Final Cut many times in the past which, having grown used to it, is more or less easy to use and gave us a vast selection of effects and filters, Final Cut was a useful tool, especially when it came to adding the noise and black and white filters to clips. However, the annoyingly long rendering put real time pressure on our already limited time frame. Blogger was a useful asset to show our theory of the subject and gave us credit for analysing past work . Photoshop was, although a powerful tool, also a large hassle and awkward to use for someone used to different things.
However, once got to grips with it allowed us to effectively make our digi-pak and magazine ad into professional looking products and helped us to use a black and white effect, much like the one from our video this aiding us in linking the products to each other better.
Evaluation Questions
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product is very realistic in the fact that in confroms to Goodwins theory and has information from other music videos to again make it like a real media text. It also confroms to genre characteristics, the song we chose, Jessica Simpson- Angels, is a pop ballard, i think that our video illustrates this through the use of a slow cut rate mostly and some black and white clips, we also decided to soften the colour on most of the clips to give the video an edge and make it seem like a lonely place for the angel character. We conformed to all of Goodwins points, for instance we played to the notion of looking, but for a different effect than usual, we decided that although most videos have the artists looking into the camera to create an audience relationship, we wanted to have all the clips from a different perspective, with the artist never looking directly into the camera, this choice supported the narrative of the angel being lonely and not really connecting with anyone except her dog, this point is portrayed through the use of a point of view shot where she looks back at the camera as the dog in the house. The idea of her not looking at the camera creates an artist identity, making her seem innocent and just another member of the public but a little bit different, this is the demand of the record label. We considered the demands of the record label in our digi-pack as well. the use of bright whites and black and white is often associated with innocence, similarly the image of the artist looking into the distance, smiling, again gives the artist a happy personality. There is also a sense of voyuerism as we are shown the Angels daily routine at home and through the day which we as a veiwer wouldnt normally see. In editing we ensured that there was a strong relationsip between music and visuals as the cuts of the clips happened on the beats in the music, similarly the cut rate increases as the tempo does, we also faded the final clip and the audio out at the same time. We tried to make the lyrics and visuals link fairly abstractly, by only making one word the main focus of the video, 'Angels'. However in the rough cut the visuals were more illustrative because we made use of stopmotion, which were short clips of various lyrics throughout the song. By contrast to Goowins theory we decided not to use intertextuality because we felt that references to other media texts would not add anything to the video. We did our own research into other artists before filming our video and making our products. We looked into videos by ellie goulding to inpire our ballard pop theme,and a video by Train for inspiration on using stop motion in our video. We also looked at previous student work t get an idea on how to structure our digipack and what features to include.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As a whole i think our promotional package is very effective because it is all subtely linked, because although we havent used any clips, props or costumes in both the video and digipack, it is still clear that they have a relationship through the use of the wing images and the artist photo. The concept of our package was to most importantly give the artist a good image, while always pivoting on the idea of innocence and a happy smile, but keeping it loosely tied to the video. Although we wanted 'angels' o be the name of the album we knew not to focus too much n this for the artwork, so we went out and did two more photoshoots, one to create an interesting angel image using torches- which again links to another of the songs on the track list, 'lights'. The second shoot was bearing in mind the demands of the record label so we set out to shoot some simplistic images of the artist for use on the album and magazine, we remembered to make space in the photographs, with the use of a plain white background to add text on top without obscuring the image. We also utilised the notion of looking in our digipack as we decided to place our text in the artists eyeline in the image. our target audience was mostly teenagers upwards, because we thought that this was who the song was aimed at so we created the promotional package accordingly athough i feel our audience would be mostly female i believe our digipack is appealing to both genders as it is very simple and depicts the artist as the main focus so that people will recognise her from the videoi think the audience is attracted and engaged through a wide range of shots and an interesting narratve.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The feedback that we got throughout the process definately shaped our final product,, for instance our initial idea was a video for a different song, however people thought it had been done before and felt it wasnt a strong enough pitch, so we scrapped it all together and came up with this new and original idea for Angels. Our teachers felt that this idea was far stronger so we developed it further until we came up with the narrativeof an angel going through every day life not being noticed by the public as different at all. The next piece of vital feedback came after the rough cut, the teachers said that the angles and variety of shots were good however the brigh colours in the clips detracted from the narrative of the video, they suggested we add an effect over the top to make them duller and link to the meaning of the song. We also had feedback from our classmates, they had lots of compliments, although they found the narrative hard to understand and felt that the stopmotion clips werent placed very well, they also suggested that we have clips of a vocalist between shots. we took note of this feedback and made changes to our video, firstly by taking the stopmotion clips out of the video completely, adding an effect ove all the clips to match the narrative and genre and we also did extra filming of the artist singing and playing the piano, which we made black and white to give an impression of a different time. finally we had feedback of our final cut, overall they said that the video was great and the variety of shots made it interesting and professional, with a good narrative concept, however that felt that the music and lyrics werent synched very well and didnt have a strong enough relationship.
How did you use new media technologies in construction, research planning and evaluation?
Blogger was the first technology vital to our planning process, as we used it to upload video and images from the internet along with analysis'. The most importnat thing for the construction of our video was final cut, whereas we used photoshop to create our promotional package. we used a HD video camera to film our video, along with a digital still camera to take photos for our photoshoot, we used the slowest shutter speed on this camera to create the Angel image with the torches in the dark.
Our media product is very realistic in the fact that in confroms to Goodwins theory and has information from other music videos to again make it like a real media text. It also confroms to genre characteristics, the song we chose, Jessica Simpson- Angels, is a pop ballard, i think that our video illustrates this through the use of a slow cut rate mostly and some black and white clips, we also decided to soften the colour on most of the clips to give the video an edge and make it seem like a lonely place for the angel character. We conformed to all of Goodwins points, for instance we played to the notion of looking, but for a different effect than usual, we decided that although most videos have the artists looking into the camera to create an audience relationship, we wanted to have all the clips from a different perspective, with the artist never looking directly into the camera, this choice supported the narrative of the angel being lonely and not really connecting with anyone except her dog, this point is portrayed through the use of a point of view shot where she looks back at the camera as the dog in the house. The idea of her not looking at the camera creates an artist identity, making her seem innocent and just another member of the public but a little bit different, this is the demand of the record label. We considered the demands of the record label in our digi-pack as well. the use of bright whites and black and white is often associated with innocence, similarly the image of the artist looking into the distance, smiling, again gives the artist a happy personality. There is also a sense of voyuerism as we are shown the Angels daily routine at home and through the day which we as a veiwer wouldnt normally see. In editing we ensured that there was a strong relationsip between music and visuals as the cuts of the clips happened on the beats in the music, similarly the cut rate increases as the tempo does, we also faded the final clip and the audio out at the same time. We tried to make the lyrics and visuals link fairly abstractly, by only making one word the main focus of the video, 'Angels'. However in the rough cut the visuals were more illustrative because we made use of stopmotion, which were short clips of various lyrics throughout the song. By contrast to Goowins theory we decided not to use intertextuality because we felt that references to other media texts would not add anything to the video. We did our own research into other artists before filming our video and making our products. We looked into videos by ellie goulding to inpire our ballard pop theme,and a video by Train for inspiration on using stop motion in our video. We also looked at previous student work t get an idea on how to structure our digipack and what features to include.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As a whole i think our promotional package is very effective because it is all subtely linked, because although we havent used any clips, props or costumes in both the video and digipack, it is still clear that they have a relationship through the use of the wing images and the artist photo. The concept of our package was to most importantly give the artist a good image, while always pivoting on the idea of innocence and a happy smile, but keeping it loosely tied to the video. Although we wanted 'angels' o be the name of the album we knew not to focus too much n this for the artwork, so we went out and did two more photoshoots, one to create an interesting angel image using torches- which again links to another of the songs on the track list, 'lights'. The second shoot was bearing in mind the demands of the record label so we set out to shoot some simplistic images of the artist for use on the album and magazine, we remembered to make space in the photographs, with the use of a plain white background to add text on top without obscuring the image. We also utilised the notion of looking in our digipack as we decided to place our text in the artists eyeline in the image. our target audience was mostly teenagers upwards, because we thought that this was who the song was aimed at so we created the promotional package accordingly athough i feel our audience would be mostly female i believe our digipack is appealing to both genders as it is very simple and depicts the artist as the main focus so that people will recognise her from the videoi think the audience is attracted and engaged through a wide range of shots and an interesting narratve.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The feedback that we got throughout the process definately shaped our final product,, for instance our initial idea was a video for a different song, however people thought it had been done before and felt it wasnt a strong enough pitch, so we scrapped it all together and came up with this new and original idea for Angels. Our teachers felt that this idea was far stronger so we developed it further until we came up with the narrativeof an angel going through every day life not being noticed by the public as different at all. The next piece of vital feedback came after the rough cut, the teachers said that the angles and variety of shots were good however the brigh colours in the clips detracted from the narrative of the video, they suggested we add an effect over the top to make them duller and link to the meaning of the song. We also had feedback from our classmates, they had lots of compliments, although they found the narrative hard to understand and felt that the stopmotion clips werent placed very well, they also suggested that we have clips of a vocalist between shots. we took note of this feedback and made changes to our video, firstly by taking the stopmotion clips out of the video completely, adding an effect ove all the clips to match the narrative and genre and we also did extra filming of the artist singing and playing the piano, which we made black and white to give an impression of a different time. finally we had feedback of our final cut, overall they said that the video was great and the variety of shots made it interesting and professional, with a good narrative concept, however that felt that the music and lyrics werent synched very well and didnt have a strong enough relationship.
How did you use new media technologies in construction, research planning and evaluation?
Blogger was the first technology vital to our planning process, as we used it to upload video and images from the internet along with analysis'. The most importnat thing for the construction of our video was final cut, whereas we used photoshop to create our promotional package. we used a HD video camera to film our video, along with a digital still camera to take photos for our photoshoot, we used the slowest shutter speed on this camera to create the Angel image with the torches in the dark.
Evaluating exsisting products
These two images are both variations of the album artwork for Jessica Simpsons Album featuring the song Angels, as you can see, although we did not research these before creating our own promotional package they are very similar, in the fact that the both feature an image on the artist depicted in a shy and innocent manner, similarly she is shown to the side of the image so that there is room for text on the other side. whereas as the second one has the text on top of the image it is still very similar in the way that Jessica is portrayed as an innocent and feminin way, she is also depicted without a top on, this conforms to goodwins theory of voyeurism with the fact that we see a female body.
Evaluation Questions
1) Our genre is ballad and therefore the main characteristics are that they are normally either in black and white or dimmed/darken colours. We used both of these effects as we used the black and white effect in our scenes of the singing on the piano and the dimmed coloured effect on all of the narrative scenes. We chose to keep this convention as it fits well with our video and in some places we had some really strong colours in some scenes that clashed with the music. Another convention is that they are slow paced videos. We did use some long scenes however not all of it was slow. We tried to use as many shots as possible but with them still fitting with the music. We also tired to make sure all of the cuts were on the beat which i think we achieved well. Ballads normally don't have much intertexual references therefore we tried not to as well however they do have some voyeurism. We tried doing this by making it so that you are watching the angel in places you normally wouldn't see them and when she is sitting on her own and vulnerable. We made the lyrics and visual link together by literally following the lyrics and having a real angel. We also made the word angel appear or link every time it is said, for example the word made out of alpha-betti spagetti. I looked at the video 'wherever you will go' by Charlene Soraia and this video uses most of these concepts for example the colour is very dark when looking at the piano and the shots are all quite slow, however there is no narrative in this video whereas ours there is a lot. I also looked at Ellie Goulding 'Your Song' which has the same amount of narrative as ours however this video is slightly faster paced. We took things from both of these videos however developed on them to make a slightly slower paced narrative with black and white shots of just the singing. Our digi-pak also follows these conventions by being in black and white. We have her smiling and a close up of her face this was a demand of the record label as we made a social character for her where she looks happy, innocent and friendly.
2) I think that our product links well with our ancillary texts as we keep the theme of an angelic innocence. In the music video Holly is wearing angel wings which is where the original theme came from. To make sure our CD wasn't just for the video we had the front of it have her looking up with a slight smile and of just a close up of her face instead of her in the angel wings again. This gives her the angelic look needed to fit the theme as she looks innocent and sweet, the fact that she isn't wearing angel wings means that this image links to all of her songs not just Angels. On the back we made it so she did have wings but they were made in a very different way. We made these wings in the dark using torches this then means it does not link too strongly to our video however does have a link that's needed. Our magazine ad has the same effect as the front cover of the CD as it only uses Holly looking angelic and to the side therefore both to the CD cover and to the music video. We also made all of the CD and magazine ad in black and white. This adds to the angelic look and also adds another links to our video as we used black and white and dimmed colours on all of the shots. We create the image of our artist being innocent, happy and a friendly character. I think we attract our target audience well as we don't use bright colours and we use sweet images that most people would admire.
3) Our feed back was getting better as the making of the video went on. Our feedback at the very beginning was that we had a good idea however had to be careful not to make it boring and to make sure it linked with the music. After our rough cut many people said that they didn't quite understand the concept of the video and why she was wearing wings. They also said that our stop motion looked really good but didn't really fit with the video. We decided that they were right and therefore removed the stop motion and added shots of holly singing and playing the piano. We had more of these shots which meant we able to cut out some of the more boring pieces of narrative and make the video more interesting to watch and less narrative based. We then got feed back from our final cut and i was really pleased. Now that there were less narrative pieces and no stop motion they understood the concept better and liked the performance shots. One thing was said about the fact that sometimes in our video the song peaks and becomes dramatic however our video does not but instead stays the same. They said they would prefer for something more interesting to happen in those moments and I completely agree with them. I also think that we needed more performance shoots of Holly on the piano as sometimes the video can get boring as she isn't necessarily doing anything however i am really pleased with the comments we got and with our video.
4) The first piece of software we used was blogger. We used this software for all of our planning and research. After finding different things on the Internet and videos from youtube we were able to post about them on blogger. this was a great way to keep all of the groups work together and so that all of us could access it at home. It also allowed us to post videos and images to make the work more interesting. We then used the HD cameras. These cameras were easy to use and were great quality.As they were easy to hold we were able to film in Cambridge at busy times. We used the tripod on nearly all of our shots to make sure they were all still and steady and were able to get some really good shots. We then uploaded the videos on to the Mac's and used Final Cut. This software allowed us to do nearly everything. We were able to change the colour of all of our clips and put them in the order and length that we wanted. There were a couple of things we would have liked to have added however could not figure out how / couldn't do on final cut. We also used iStopmotion to captures things such as scrabble moving on its own. We used this to create the lyrics in different ways and found it was really simple to use however took a long time to get right. We also used a DSLR camera for a photo shoot for the digipak. Luckily the camera was my own therefore i knew how to use it in the way that we wanted which allowed us to use a slow shutter speed to make wings out of light however if we didn't know how to use the camera then would have not have been able to do what we wanted and our creativity would have been limited. We edited all of our photos on Photoshop which was slightly frustrating as we didn't know how do to what we wanted and sometimes it didn't come out as we were hoping it would. We were able to change the images into balck and white and change other aspects of them as well as adding what we needed such as texts and other images. Photoshop did slightly limited what we wanted to do however we were still able to do most of what we wanted. All of the software and hardware we used was really good and we were able to do most of the things we wanted with everything and if we had more time we would have been able to do more. Overall i am pleased with both our video and our digipak.
2) I think that our product links well with our ancillary texts as we keep the theme of an angelic innocence. In the music video Holly is wearing angel wings which is where the original theme came from. To make sure our CD wasn't just for the video we had the front of it have her looking up with a slight smile and of just a close up of her face instead of her in the angel wings again. This gives her the angelic look needed to fit the theme as she looks innocent and sweet, the fact that she isn't wearing angel wings means that this image links to all of her songs not just Angels. On the back we made it so she did have wings but they were made in a very different way. We made these wings in the dark using torches this then means it does not link too strongly to our video however does have a link that's needed. Our magazine ad has the same effect as the front cover of the CD as it only uses Holly looking angelic and to the side therefore both to the CD cover and to the music video. We also made all of the CD and magazine ad in black and white. This adds to the angelic look and also adds another links to our video as we used black and white and dimmed colours on all of the shots. We create the image of our artist being innocent, happy and a friendly character. I think we attract our target audience well as we don't use bright colours and we use sweet images that most people would admire.
3) Our feed back was getting better as the making of the video went on. Our feedback at the very beginning was that we had a good idea however had to be careful not to make it boring and to make sure it linked with the music. After our rough cut many people said that they didn't quite understand the concept of the video and why she was wearing wings. They also said that our stop motion looked really good but didn't really fit with the video. We decided that they were right and therefore removed the stop motion and added shots of holly singing and playing the piano. We had more of these shots which meant we able to cut out some of the more boring pieces of narrative and make the video more interesting to watch and less narrative based. We then got feed back from our final cut and i was really pleased. Now that there were less narrative pieces and no stop motion they understood the concept better and liked the performance shots. One thing was said about the fact that sometimes in our video the song peaks and becomes dramatic however our video does not but instead stays the same. They said they would prefer for something more interesting to happen in those moments and I completely agree with them. I also think that we needed more performance shoots of Holly on the piano as sometimes the video can get boring as she isn't necessarily doing anything however i am really pleased with the comments we got and with our video.
4) The first piece of software we used was blogger. We used this software for all of our planning and research. After finding different things on the Internet and videos from youtube we were able to post about them on blogger. this was a great way to keep all of the groups work together and so that all of us could access it at home. It also allowed us to post videos and images to make the work more interesting. We then used the HD cameras. These cameras were easy to use and were great quality.As they were easy to hold we were able to film in Cambridge at busy times. We used the tripod on nearly all of our shots to make sure they were all still and steady and were able to get some really good shots. We then uploaded the videos on to the Mac's and used Final Cut. This software allowed us to do nearly everything. We were able to change the colour of all of our clips and put them in the order and length that we wanted. There were a couple of things we would have liked to have added however could not figure out how / couldn't do on final cut. We also used iStopmotion to captures things such as scrabble moving on its own. We used this to create the lyrics in different ways and found it was really simple to use however took a long time to get right. We also used a DSLR camera for a photo shoot for the digipak. Luckily the camera was my own therefore i knew how to use it in the way that we wanted which allowed us to use a slow shutter speed to make wings out of light however if we didn't know how to use the camera then would have not have been able to do what we wanted and our creativity would have been limited. We edited all of our photos on Photoshop which was slightly frustrating as we didn't know how do to what we wanted and sometimes it didn't come out as we were hoping it would. We were able to change the images into balck and white and change other aspects of them as well as adding what we needed such as texts and other images. Photoshop did slightly limited what we wanted to do however we were still able to do most of what we wanted. All of the software and hardware we used was really good and we were able to do most of the things we wanted with everything and if we had more time we would have been able to do more. Overall i am pleased with both our video and our digipak.
Previous Student Evaluations
Evaluation of group 13P2-10 -- 2010/11
http://10longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/2010/12/evaluation-commentary-video.html
The group showed videos along side the four of them speaking to help demonstrate their points (like when they were talking about the relationship of visuals to lyrics they showed a clip whilst explaining it)
I think this is a very good method of helping emphasize points and is something we should consider to add into our evaluation commentary. The four of them sat close together as they answered the questions like they were all in conversation with eachother; an example being when one of them said 'i think all of our products go quite well together, dont you?' and how they back up eachothers points. Although i think this is a good way to tackle the questions, it can look a little staged when a planned conversation is made and i think it shows in this evaluation, saying this it doesnt effect the information that they share.
Evaluation of group 13T2-40 -- 2010/11
http://40longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/2010/12/commentry.html
This group has typed the question up in the screen before answering in person, i think this is a quicker way of presenting and organising which question is being answered. The group answer bits of the question seporately and i think this works well as its clearer than the previous group i analysed as its flicking constantly from one to another where its clear who is speaking and whats being said this way. In our evaluation i think we should include clips of individual answers as well as clips with the group all together or in two's. They include images popping up to demonstrate what they are talking about and they show all products together.
http://10longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/2010/12/evaluation-commentary-video.html
The group showed videos along side the four of them speaking to help demonstrate their points (like when they were talking about the relationship of visuals to lyrics they showed a clip whilst explaining it)
I think this is a very good method of helping emphasize points and is something we should consider to add into our evaluation commentary. The four of them sat close together as they answered the questions like they were all in conversation with eachother; an example being when one of them said 'i think all of our products go quite well together, dont you?' and how they back up eachothers points. Although i think this is a good way to tackle the questions, it can look a little staged when a planned conversation is made and i think it shows in this evaluation, saying this it doesnt effect the information that they share.
Evaluation of group 13T2-40 -- 2010/11
http://40longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/2010/12/commentry.html
This group has typed the question up in the screen before answering in person, i think this is a quicker way of presenting and organising which question is being answered. The group answer bits of the question seporately and i think this works well as its clearer than the previous group i analysed as its flicking constantly from one to another where its clear who is speaking and whats being said this way. In our evaluation i think we should include clips of individual answers as well as clips with the group all together or in two's. They include images popping up to demonstrate what they are talking about and they show all products together.
Evaluation
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I believe our music video complies with real media products as we have considered and featured all of Andrew Goodwins points. Our song choice 'Jessica Simpson - Angels' is a Pop Ballad and I think we have achieved to aim our music video and ancillary products to target a wide general audience. Keeping to our genre characteristics we've included cut-ins of the artist singing in between the narrative that we created to maintain the viewers interest and indicate that she is the artist. We also used a black and white effect on our ancillary products for a simple approach without going into age or gender specifics. We chose to take an amplifying approach to the relationship between the lyrics and visuals by having an angel doing every day things, we thought this was a more creative idea rather than following the lyrics literally. The majority of our transitions fall in beat with the music and some actions in the video follow this too, an example being when Holly kicks the bench in time with the symbol being hit in the song. Holly's lipsynching was really successful and in time with the lyrics although she found it difficult to use the piano as she has never played before, but we felt it would be more interesting than her just singing. Thinking about the demands of the Record company we selected (eleveneleven) we featured a close up on the artists face for the digipak front cover and using the cut-ins of Holly singing with the piano we establish that she is the artist. The visual image we wanted to create for the artist was an angelic innocence. Voyeurism is a key concept in our video as the audience feel like they are watching the angel while she is oblivious and to build up tension her face isn't isn't shown until 25 seconds in. The use of hand held tracking aids the voyeuristic features as we used this method whilst filming Holly over the shoulder as she walks through town, making the viewer feel as if they're following her. Enhancing the voyeurism more with little details like close up of her hands on the coffee cup and a close up of her feet as she kicks off her shoes - these shots gives the effect of the viewer glancing at her. I think we've managed to show the artist as a natural and beautiful girl without objectifying her, but instead observing her. Our video has similarities towards the Lynx 'excite' advert for men's deodorant, the slogan in their advert is 'even angels will fall' as in the ad angels fall from the sky into various places in what was an every day situation. We gained inspiration from Ellie Golding's music video 'Your Song' as it contains various shots of Ellie in different locations with cut-ins of her playing the piano. With our ancillary products we have included the traditional conventions such as the Title of the ablum and Artists name on both the Digipak and Magazine Advert; on our magazine advert we have used the same simple font throughout except for the ablum name 'angels' which looks like handwriting to stand out from the rest of the text. Within the advert we have also included a review from The Sun because we felt it was a relevant judge of the Video and the newspaper is aimed at a wide range of people. On both ancillary products we have added websites where the viewer find out more information about the artist or album.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?
We've chosen a subtle angelic theme for our video and ancillary texts and the digipak and magazine ad both work really well as supporting products to our video; the artist is portrayed as very innocent with a natural appearance. This angelic view of her is carried over into our ancillary texts. We wanted the digipak not only to link to the video, but to give a general theme of the album as a whole of showing the artist as angelic, this theme could work across other releases from that album. In both the video and photoshoots we opted for Holly to have a very natural look with casual clothes to relate to the audience as a regular girl with an incredible talent. Using close ups of her face for the front outside and inside cover of the digipak promotes an intimate feel to it. To prevent the digipak from appearing plain and un original, and also to link to our video, we've used a shot for the back outside cover of Holly standing, arms slightly raised outwards, with wings created from light. This links to our video through the use of angel wings, but we haven't extracted the exact feature as in our video we used a real prop, so to generalise the concept of 'angelic' we used torches and an extended shutter speed on the camera to create the light effect which worked even better than we planned and the first picture we took we ended up using. For the CD holder on the right inside cover we used the same effect of the wings made of light but blacked out Holly in the photo so the wings made a circle that outlines where the CD would go. Following the angelic approach, the magazine ad is very natural as we've shown the artist in a casual pose where she is slightly laughing. The bright white back ground glows around her body as we raised the contrast in photoshop. Having all the ancillary products black and white applies a simple atmosphere to the product as a whole and backs up the subtle theme within the video.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our original idea and pitch was the song 'sitting waiting wishing' by jack johnson and the video was to feature a girl going to meet a boy who forgets to show but he runs to her house and ends up at her doorstep with cut-ins of the artist singing in various positions on bench. this song choice was also pitched by three other groups, all with a simlilar concept to ours, the feedback we recieved was that the idea came across as un orginal and cliched. with this in mind we chose Jessica Simpsons cover of 'Angels' with the idea of an angel doing every day things such as making tea, shopping, having lunch etc. We felt this was a very original concept and recieved good comments.
For our rough cut feedback we were given good remarks over our strong use of voyeurism, the relationship between lyrics and visuals aswell as music and visuals, the steady pace of the clips, continuity editing and creativity of using istop motion. We also recieved criticism over the use of basic cut transitions, random use of istop motion, no vocalist and an unclear narrative. We found this criticism useful and decided to take out the use of istop motion and replace the clips with cut-ins of Holly singing in black and white, which would help indicate to the audience who the artist was and break down the narrative.
The majority of feedback we were given for our Final music video were positive comments including; how the black and white effect separates the cut-ins from the narrative, found the concept comical and entertaining, variety of shots and angles that build up a professionalism within the video. Although it was realised that Holly couldn't actually play the piano and another felt we could have used more exciting clips where there were peaks in the song.
We received feedback on our ancillary texts that we shouldn't base our digipak and magazine ad entirely on our video, but go with a lighter concept of an Angelic appearance and we did this by, following our teachers suggestions, taking close up shots of the artists face - which worked really well to link the digipak as a whole.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?
Blogger.com was incredibly useful to us as we were able to embed videos and pictures for research and blog on our progress, problems and plans either at college or at home and i was even able to create and post a blog post using my phone as the website is highly accessible. Blogger helped us a lot with organizing and planning.
Final Cut Express was very easy to use and organize clips as there is a separate box in the corner for all clips to be stored, a time line to move the clips around and a box to add or change filters to the clips. The downside to Final Cut Express is the rendering process which took up alot of time as we had many filters on.
Although we didn't end up using our istop motion clips we still really enjoyed the process of making them, but they took a lot longer to create than we'd planned for them. It was a little difficult to make the clips smooth but fortunately istop featured a transparent picture over the top of the viewing frame to show what picture had previously been taken. Overall it wasted a huge amount of time as we fitted the clips into the video and had to render everything only to have to take them all out again.
Using Photoshop enabled us to edit our pictures for the ancillary products with ease and also allowed us to create mood boards for research.
All the camera equiptment was really light and portable making it more manageable to film in public, we used a dolly to film the clip of holly shopping (3.45 minutes into the video) and the tripod made alot of our footage smoother. With our photoshoot we were able to extend the shutter speed so more light could filter in and using torches we were able to play around with different effects from the light.
All of these Media technologies were exceedingly useful and each contributes towards the making of our video and ancillary products.
I believe our music video complies with real media products as we have considered and featured all of Andrew Goodwins points. Our song choice 'Jessica Simpson - Angels' is a Pop Ballad and I think we have achieved to aim our music video and ancillary products to target a wide general audience. Keeping to our genre characteristics we've included cut-ins of the artist singing in between the narrative that we created to maintain the viewers interest and indicate that she is the artist. We also used a black and white effect on our ancillary products for a simple approach without going into age or gender specifics. We chose to take an amplifying approach to the relationship between the lyrics and visuals by having an angel doing every day things, we thought this was a more creative idea rather than following the lyrics literally. The majority of our transitions fall in beat with the music and some actions in the video follow this too, an example being when Holly kicks the bench in time with the symbol being hit in the song. Holly's lipsynching was really successful and in time with the lyrics although she found it difficult to use the piano as she has never played before, but we felt it would be more interesting than her just singing. Thinking about the demands of the Record company we selected (eleveneleven) we featured a close up on the artists face for the digipak front cover and using the cut-ins of Holly singing with the piano we establish that she is the artist. The visual image we wanted to create for the artist was an angelic innocence. Voyeurism is a key concept in our video as the audience feel like they are watching the angel while she is oblivious and to build up tension her face isn't isn't shown until 25 seconds in. The use of hand held tracking aids the voyeuristic features as we used this method whilst filming Holly over the shoulder as she walks through town, making the viewer feel as if they're following her. Enhancing the voyeurism more with little details like close up of her hands on the coffee cup and a close up of her feet as she kicks off her shoes - these shots gives the effect of the viewer glancing at her. I think we've managed to show the artist as a natural and beautiful girl without objectifying her, but instead observing her. Our video has similarities towards the Lynx 'excite' advert for men's deodorant, the slogan in their advert is 'even angels will fall' as in the ad angels fall from the sky into various places in what was an every day situation. We gained inspiration from Ellie Golding's music video 'Your Song' as it contains various shots of Ellie in different locations with cut-ins of her playing the piano. With our ancillary products we have included the traditional conventions such as the Title of the ablum and Artists name on both the Digipak and Magazine Advert; on our magazine advert we have used the same simple font throughout except for the ablum name 'angels' which looks like handwriting to stand out from the rest of the text. Within the advert we have also included a review from The Sun because we felt it was a relevant judge of the Video and the newspaper is aimed at a wide range of people. On both ancillary products we have added websites where the viewer find out more information about the artist or album.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancilliary texts?
We've chosen a subtle angelic theme for our video and ancillary texts and the digipak and magazine ad both work really well as supporting products to our video; the artist is portrayed as very innocent with a natural appearance. This angelic view of her is carried over into our ancillary texts. We wanted the digipak not only to link to the video, but to give a general theme of the album as a whole of showing the artist as angelic, this theme could work across other releases from that album. In both the video and photoshoots we opted for Holly to have a very natural look with casual clothes to relate to the audience as a regular girl with an incredible talent. Using close ups of her face for the front outside and inside cover of the digipak promotes an intimate feel to it. To prevent the digipak from appearing plain and un original, and also to link to our video, we've used a shot for the back outside cover of Holly standing, arms slightly raised outwards, with wings created from light. This links to our video through the use of angel wings, but we haven't extracted the exact feature as in our video we used a real prop, so to generalise the concept of 'angelic' we used torches and an extended shutter speed on the camera to create the light effect which worked even better than we planned and the first picture we took we ended up using. For the CD holder on the right inside cover we used the same effect of the wings made of light but blacked out Holly in the photo so the wings made a circle that outlines where the CD would go. Following the angelic approach, the magazine ad is very natural as we've shown the artist in a casual pose where she is slightly laughing. The bright white back ground glows around her body as we raised the contrast in photoshop. Having all the ancillary products black and white applies a simple atmosphere to the product as a whole and backs up the subtle theme within the video.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our original idea and pitch was the song 'sitting waiting wishing' by jack johnson and the video was to feature a girl going to meet a boy who forgets to show but he runs to her house and ends up at her doorstep with cut-ins of the artist singing in various positions on bench. this song choice was also pitched by three other groups, all with a simlilar concept to ours, the feedback we recieved was that the idea came across as un orginal and cliched. with this in mind we chose Jessica Simpsons cover of 'Angels' with the idea of an angel doing every day things such as making tea, shopping, having lunch etc. We felt this was a very original concept and recieved good comments.
For our rough cut feedback we were given good remarks over our strong use of voyeurism, the relationship between lyrics and visuals aswell as music and visuals, the steady pace of the clips, continuity editing and creativity of using istop motion. We also recieved criticism over the use of basic cut transitions, random use of istop motion, no vocalist and an unclear narrative. We found this criticism useful and decided to take out the use of istop motion and replace the clips with cut-ins of Holly singing in black and white, which would help indicate to the audience who the artist was and break down the narrative.
The majority of feedback we were given for our Final music video were positive comments including; how the black and white effect separates the cut-ins from the narrative, found the concept comical and entertaining, variety of shots and angles that build up a professionalism within the video. Although it was realised that Holly couldn't actually play the piano and another felt we could have used more exciting clips where there were peaks in the song.
We received feedback on our ancillary texts that we shouldn't base our digipak and magazine ad entirely on our video, but go with a lighter concept of an Angelic appearance and we did this by, following our teachers suggestions, taking close up shots of the artists face - which worked really well to link the digipak as a whole.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stages?
Blogger.com was incredibly useful to us as we were able to embed videos and pictures for research and blog on our progress, problems and plans either at college or at home and i was even able to create and post a blog post using my phone as the website is highly accessible. Blogger helped us a lot with organizing and planning.
Final Cut Express was very easy to use and organize clips as there is a separate box in the corner for all clips to be stored, a time line to move the clips around and a box to add or change filters to the clips. The downside to Final Cut Express is the rendering process which took up alot of time as we had many filters on.
Although we didn't end up using our istop motion clips we still really enjoyed the process of making them, but they took a lot longer to create than we'd planned for them. It was a little difficult to make the clips smooth but fortunately istop featured a transparent picture over the top of the viewing frame to show what picture had previously been taken. Overall it wasted a huge amount of time as we fitted the clips into the video and had to render everything only to have to take them all out again.
Using Photoshop enabled us to edit our pictures for the ancillary products with ease and also allowed us to create mood boards for research.
All the camera equiptment was really light and portable making it more manageable to film in public, we used a dolly to film the clip of holly shopping (3.45 minutes into the video) and the tripod made alot of our footage smoother. With our photoshoot we were able to extend the shutter speed so more light could filter in and using torches we were able to play around with different effects from the light.
All of these Media technologies were exceedingly useful and each contributes towards the making of our video and ancillary products.
Director's Commentary
What is a director's commentary?
A director's commentary is where the creators of a piece of video dub over it to talk about how they made it and why they made the why they did. It is often used as bonus media on DVDs and with music videos as a "behind the scenes" style extra. An example of one could be:
Wednesday 30 November 2011
Feedback of Final cut
A tremendus amount of shots were used and these were the highlight of
the whole video, for each shot there was a reaction shot or a shot from
another angle which made the video much more interesting to watch and
more professional. I think shot in the supermarket i believe was the
best, the bright colours of the shop looked great on camera and the hint
of voiurism made it look incredibly professional.
The only thing i think could be improved would be the link between the music and the video. At times in the music track there would be a peak i.e. "and through it all (all is where it peaks) he offers me protection". This really strong part in the songand seemed a bit out of touch with what was going on in the video. I think would have looked fantastic if you had of filmed some "epic" shots for which you could sync with the audio. I had in mind someone dropping to their knees, flinging their arms out and looking up to the sky for this would amplify the really significant part in the song.
I really liked the actual concept of the music video of having an angel in real life situations who no one actually notices or cares for, and following her completing a normal day but seeming to be agitated and annoyed about herself. (hopefully i got this right? haha)
I think the idea was great and obviously worked well due to the fantasic product. The factor which helped this alot was that none of the normal people actually looked up or stared. I think this was down to the perfect costume choice of not over doing it and keeping her looking normal.
The video is put together very well and this is its strong point, however i think that one of the main problems i have, related to the music and video link i mentioned earlier, was how the audio didnt sometimes work with the video. This can be seen on in the already mentioned places and any of the vocal parts where the lyrics were very soulful but is accompanied by pretty normal video footage. This one picky problem i feel your video has could be fixed with much more clips of artist singing and a bit more time spent syncing the clips with audio parts. Other than that minor issue i think its GREAT :D
The only thing i think could be improved would be the link between the music and the video. At times in the music track there would be a peak i.e. "and through it all (all is where it peaks) he offers me protection". This really strong part in the songand seemed a bit out of touch with what was going on in the video. I think would have looked fantastic if you had of filmed some "epic" shots for which you could sync with the audio. I had in mind someone dropping to their knees, flinging their arms out and looking up to the sky for this would amplify the really significant part in the song.
I really liked the actual concept of the music video of having an angel in real life situations who no one actually notices or cares for, and following her completing a normal day but seeming to be agitated and annoyed about herself. (hopefully i got this right? haha)
I think the idea was great and obviously worked well due to the fantasic product. The factor which helped this alot was that none of the normal people actually looked up or stared. I think this was down to the perfect costume choice of not over doing it and keeping her looking normal.
The video is put together very well and this is its strong point, however i think that one of the main problems i have, related to the music and video link i mentioned earlier, was how the audio didnt sometimes work with the video. This can be seen on in the already mentioned places and any of the vocal parts where the lyrics were very soulful but is accompanied by pretty normal video footage. This one picky problem i feel your video has could be fixed with much more clips of artist singing and a bit more time spent syncing the clips with audio parts. Other than that minor issue i think its GREAT :D
examples of a commentary
^^^^
This clip is an example of a directors view of the making of a music video, although it is not conventional, as it is not in the form of a voice over i think that is is a very modern and more interesting take on it, because it has both the music video in it, behind the scenes shots and the directors decisions in it, although he does not explain them.
what is a directors commentary
A directors commentary is a video or voiceover featuring the director of a music video, film or television programme. It discusses the directors choices and decisiions into everything to do with the text. The reason behind these comentaries is to get the veiwer to think more about the media text and appreciate the decisions made and almost analyse them further, it also gives the director the opportunity to evaluate his work. It is more often than not in either a voice over or mini clip format, so that the commentary can be shown alongside or over the top of the text so that the audience can hear and see both, in order to understand the directors explainations.
Directors Commentary Analysis: The Mummy
The commentary includes Stephen Sommers (writer/director or The Mummy) and Bob Duscay (editor)
The film also includes another commentary by Actor Brendan Fraser.
They overlay the voices over the film as you watch.
-Stephen starts really casually and introduces himself as Stephen Sommers, telling the audience 'its really Steve' but his mother makes him use his formal name. I think this is a nice way of starting as he wins over the viewer by revealing something about himself and the two joke between them.
-They talk about how much the movie cost, what kind of atmosphere they wanted to create and what they like about different camera shots.
-They run through the various effects they used and list the problems involved with the editing and mention the practical effects used like the rising of the sand.
-They pointed out little flaws and talked about lighting problems and clothing malfunctions.
-They talk about what scenes they had to cut out for different reasons like timing and pace and not wanting to reveal everything too soon.
-They revealed that the scene where eve was standing on the ladder was a stunt man in drag, and they used the same room to play a different one in the film later on.
-They talk about how important light is in the film and in the desert scenes they had a filming window of 4am - 8.30am.
-Used a professor to keep things as factual as possible, the professor also taught the actors ancient egyption with cassette tapes.
The whole commentary was really informal, and because it felt like a conversation the audience can feel involved - over all really enjoyable.
The film also includes another commentary by Actor Brendan Fraser.
They overlay the voices over the film as you watch.
-Stephen starts really casually and introduces himself as Stephen Sommers, telling the audience 'its really Steve' but his mother makes him use his formal name. I think this is a nice way of starting as he wins over the viewer by revealing something about himself and the two joke between them.
-They talk about how much the movie cost, what kind of atmosphere they wanted to create and what they like about different camera shots.
-They run through the various effects they used and list the problems involved with the editing and mention the practical effects used like the rising of the sand.
-They pointed out little flaws and talked about lighting problems and clothing malfunctions.
-They talk about what scenes they had to cut out for different reasons like timing and pace and not wanting to reveal everything too soon.
-They revealed that the scene where eve was standing on the ladder was a stunt man in drag, and they used the same room to play a different one in the film later on.
-They talk about how important light is in the film and in the desert scenes they had a filming window of 4am - 8.30am.
-Used a professor to keep things as factual as possible, the professor also taught the actors ancient egyption with cassette tapes.
The whole commentary was really informal, and because it felt like a conversation the audience can feel involved - over all really enjoyable.
Directors Commentary Research
A directors commentary is used in various media products such as music videos, adverts, video games, tv series and more commonly films.
A directors commentary can include the director, cast membors, writers and the producers. Some commentaries may even include film critics or historians depending on the type of film.
Types of commentary:
-Partial / scene specific commentary: only covers selected scenes of the movie/music video.
-Feature length / screen specific commentary: recorded in one session, the speakers watch the movie/music video all the way through and comment on it during.
http://www.ratethatcommentary.com/top100.php
http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2008/07/the-best-and-worst-dvd-commentary-tracks/
the links above are both sites that have rated various directors comentaries.
A directors commentary can include the director, cast membors, writers and the producers. Some commentaries may even include film critics or historians depending on the type of film.
Types of commentary:
-Partial / scene specific commentary: only covers selected scenes of the movie/music video.
-Feature length / screen specific commentary: recorded in one session, the speakers watch the movie/music video all the way through and comment on it during.
http://www.ratethatcommentary.com/top100.php
http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2008/07/the-best-and-worst-dvd-commentary-tracks/
the links above are both sites that have rated various directors comentaries.
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Promotion- Facebook page
I decided to create a fan page to support and market the artist and album, on the facebook page i uploaded the magazine ad, and the album cover, so that fans on facebook can keep up to date with the artist. i think this is a very modern and effective form of promotion and use of technology.
Monday 28 November 2011
analysing original video
Robbie Williams- Angels
We purposely decided not to watch this video before making our music video for the same song, because we didnt want to get any ideas from it and make it too similar, however because of goodwins theory being applied to both they have turned out fairly similar.
Goodwins theory
Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band).
This song is a pop/ ballard song, it conforms to conventions by having performance shots, of robbie singing at the camera, also, because it is a fairly soft and slow ballard, the use of black and white effect aids this.
There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
the visuals do not illustrate the lyrics of the song, however they are not completely contradicting, because they do illustrate the storyline and the lyrics as a whole, because they have a narrative about a girl and him loving her, and the visuals do support this.
There is a relationship between music and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)
the relationship between the music and the visuals is amplifying as the cut rate is very in tune with the tempo of the music, as the beat quickens there are more different shots and they also change on the beats, whereas when the music isnt as fast, there are very few shots that are quite long.
The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
there are lots of close ups of robbie in this video and he is depicted as the main focus of the video, be is also shown to be riding a big motorbike, which shows his masculinity, this could be a demand of the record label to support his sexual image to the female audience.
There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
Robbie often talks straight into the camera, looking at the audeince, also the idea of voyeurism is there, as the camera looks at robbie and the female character through the netball game, so it is as if we shouldnt see this and they are being spied on.
analysis of a student digipak
Although i like this digipak and it is effective i think that it could be better, for instance, the use of white writing on a white background doesnt stand out very well, and the front image isnt very striking, i think it would look better reversed so that the paint image was on the front cover. also although it links to the music video as it is a still from it, it doesnt associate as much with the magazine advertisment because the font doesnt follow a house style.
analysis of a student Magazine ad
The Name of the Artist - Feist
The Name of the Album - i feel it all
Where its available - Hmv
Record Label Branding - Universals
the image on the advert also links to the music video, as it is a still from it, this is effective because the image is memorable and the audience will remember it from the video.
Sunday 27 November 2011
student digipak cover analysis
The digipak cover features what appears to the lead singer from torso upwards semi facing the left. He's wearing headphones which suggest he is involved with music and the focus on him is concentrated as the background is completely black, edging softly around his outline. The asrtists name is positioned top centre of the image and the bold metalic looking font draws the viewers attention, and like various other examples the title of the album is directly under the artists name in smaller font. They have included where the album is available in the bottom left hand corner with the logo's of 'hmv' and 'play.com'. Filling the gap on the left side, they have added when the new album is released plus two reviews of the album.
The digipak cover as a whole gives the impression the singer is quite urban, indicated by his attire and headphones.
digipak poster analysis
The image is a close up of a male and female holding hands, as a representation of the ablum and artist it suggest his songs are about love or relationships. Aiding this suggestion is the colour effect that emphasizes the colour red and highlights certain features such as the red nail and cardigan on the female, the red shirt sleeve on the male and various tones in the out of focus background behind.
Wednesday 23 November 2011
2nd photo shoot idea.
Because the digipak photos have to relate to the album as a whole rather than just linking completely to the music video, our second shoot will involve close up shots of Holly's face for the front cover of the digipak.
We'll use the white room to have a blank background, and this angelic view of holly's face looking innocent and natural will link to the video of Angels but will also keep the concept of being angelic through out the album.
Overview of First Photo Shoot
Our first photo was on Monday 21st November where we went to Isleham for the Church. We started by photographing with a slow shutter speed with Bekki standing behind her with two torches drawing wings around her. This effect worked really well and we felt that it was a really strong image for our digi pak.
When we got back into the classroom and started editing this picture for our digi pak we realised it doesn't necessarily go with our video as it is not set at night and the photo is quite dark. We also thought that as this image is strongly based around angels we may need to add something as we are trying to sell an album not just the video or the song Angels. As we still really liked the image aboth we decided to use in on the back of the CD cover with the track listing going down around the wings.
We then tried getting the effects of cars driving pass and Holly. This effect worked slightly however all of the photos looked slightly blury or weren't a good photo of Holly. Also the background didn't looked great as it was of a house with its lights on. We therefore decided not to use any of these photos.
The last location that we used were at the Church with the light shining onto it. We used this location in the video at the end to symbolise the ending. We thought that the light shining up on the church makes a good shadow of her and the wings. We liked these photos however felt that they didn't fit with the theme of the video as its quite dark. However we may crop out just Holly and use her lite up as part of the digi pak.
Tuesday 22 November 2011
Examples from Photo Shoot
track listing - winter essentials
- Angels
- Little Sunday
- Like oxygen
- With every smile
- Held
- Weightless
- Clearer
- Sweeter Everyday
- One In The Same
- Beautiful
- Fading Colours
-BONUS TRACK - Iris Cover ( Goo Goo Dolls)
- Little Sunday
- Like oxygen
- With every smile
- Held
- Weightless
- Clearer
- Sweeter Everyday
- One In The Same
- Beautiful
- Fading Colours
-BONUS TRACK - Iris Cover ( Goo Goo Dolls)
Student Digi Pak
This is a past Long Road student's Digi Pak and uses the theme of a fairground, which is carried out well throughout, the band name, "The Thrills" written in black stands out well against the lighter background making sure the audience sees it first, the album name at the base is smaller and stands out slightly less so it doesn't distract the viewer from the band title. The album name incorporates the word "thrill" playing on the band name, which is a common convention.
The back of the case shows a number of images in the style of polaroid pictures, similar to those which may be taken at a fairground, which feature the band members allowing the audience to get to know and recognise the band, this is even more effective because of the playful style making them look like personal pictures so the audience connects to them more.
There is also a featured quote from MME giving the album 4 stars, this not only communicates the album as high quality but also tells us what sort of band The Thrills are by connecting them to MME.
Kassidy Hope St. Magazine Advert Analysis
A real published magazine ad for the band "Kassidy" to advertise their new album "Hope St." The ad offers many of the usual conventions, firstly the band name is the first thing you see, written in large and bold font, stands out and attracts the attention of the reader so they remember the name. The second thing we see is probably the large image taking up most of the page it is the same as that used on the album cover and features the band members, which allows people top recognise both the album and the band themselves.
The ad also features two reviews, one from "Mojo" and another from "Q Magazine", which likens then to a well known and well respected similar band by calling them "the British Kings of Leon", by likening Kassidy to this band they may attract the fan base of The Kings of Leon. We also see two songs by the band which will appear on the album and are told a website where we can learn more about them.
Although our album will be of a different genre, many of the conventions and techniques carry over, for example we will also be featuring the artist on our advert so the reader feels they can get to know the artist more and will recognise her easier. Also when we add our quotes they will be from relevant sources. We chose Reggie Yates as he is well known and is much more relevant to the genre than, for example, Tinie Tempah.
Student Digi Pak Analysis
The front cover of this DVD pack has a really nice strong image and it shows what their video was about really well as like the video it has a mixture of animation and real life by putting their animated person inside a location that is 'real'. The front has minimal information on it as it only shows the name of the artist and album therefore it could add something else, such as record label, at the top as it is very bare.
The back of this Digi pak has all of the information and it is presented clearly however i don't really like it. I think this is because it is set out in a way that doesn't look very natural and it is in blocks of text boxes. Also as the background picture had been made to be dimmed therefore it doesn't stand out, so not to over power the information, however this makes it slightly boring.
Student Magazine Analysis
In this magazine ad you can see the hands throwing the paint and the fact that they are slightly blured shows that they are in movement. You can also see the paint flying through the air and hitting the girl.
This magazine ad has all of the information needed for the audience. It says when and where you can buy, who it is and the name of the album, reviews on it and product information such as the record label and website information.
I think this is a really good magazine ad as it catches you attention and gives you all the information quickly and effectively.
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