Transcipt Evaluation Commentaries
Tom Halkyard: Ok, so we were set the task of coming up with 3 media products for the release of an album as part of a promotional package. This had to include a Digipak magazine advert and a music video all created by ourselves.
Tom Halkyard: We were given the track, ‘Much Against Everyone’s Advice’ by Soulwax. We didn’t know much about the band but after researching them we were very happy with our choice.
Alex Winter: Our first step was to come up with ideas for the products we were going to produce. We created a pitch and presented it in front of our peers and got feedback used to improve ideas for our products
Tom Halkyard: Feedback we received was very useful and had lot of positives in it as to why our ideas were useful to our product. We received some feedback that helped us and put us off going with our ideas but most of it was good and we followed through with most or our ideas.
Keeley Moore: After receiving feedback from our pitch we researched further into the band soulwax and other bands from the genre indie/rock. We then e-mailed the band soulwax and asked their permission to film a new music video using their pre-existing track. They then e-mailed us back a few days later giving us their permission.
Using these ideas we created a storyboard and a shot by shot timeline so on our shooting day it would be easier to film all the footage we needed.
Tom Halkyard: So it came to the day of the shoot and we were all very excited and we had the storyboard and the shot by shot timeline ready for us so that we could stick to the script of what we had to do. There were a few challenges of our shoot such as:
Alex Winter: All our music video needed to be in the daytime so time was a massive issue
Tom Halkyard: We were only given a day to complete our filming so everything had to be planned very well in order to fit it all in.
Keeley Moore: It started raining in the beginning of the morning when we were planning to shoot.
Alex Winter: We did face some problems while filming, one of these was that it rained quite heavily in the night and the morning which hindered us going to some of our chosen locations.
Tom Halkyard: Also the rainy atmosphere was not part of the mise-en-scene we had planned for so we had to make some alterations to things such as camera angles.
Keeley Moore: Later in the day the weather turned out to be quite sunny there was still rain on the floor which created some glare on the camera in some of our locations.
Using the footage we filmed on the filming day we managed to compile a rough cut of our music video
But our rough cut was nothing like our final product due to time issues.
Tom Halkyard: The feedback wasn’t on the perfect rough cut we would have hoped for so some of the feedback we received was going to be negative anyway and we had already taken it into consideration. However, some feedback we received really did help us with thinking about how we can improve it for our final cut. This included techniques and other ideas of how to improve music video.
When we came up with the different frames idea we decided to practice the technique on simple images. Here is how it turned out.
Alex Winter: To improve the authenticity of the lip syncing we had the music playing in the background while we were filming and also the lyrics.
Tom Halkyard: The feedback we took into consideration the most was that we needed to include more close-ups. This way we would have better representation of the artist and everyone would know who the band members are closer up whereas before in the rough cut we had quite long distance shots
Alex Winter: So we decided to film tom, the main singer of the band singing the whole song in 3 different locations.
Tom Halkyard: This way we could cut to and from the distance shots to have good varied shot lengths.
Keeley Moore: Using this extra footage we collected we edited it and mixed into our original footage to create our final music video.
Tom Halkyard: Now our music video was complete we moved onto the ancillary products. The first of which was the Digipak. We looked at samples of them from real life examples such as Blur and Alicia Keys.
Alex Winter: We looked at the conventions of indie/rock genre Digipaks. We found from this that they are quite colourful.
Tom Halkyard: Other, more obvious, features of the Digipak are; the album title, the artist, the record label and the track listings as well as others.
Keeley Moore: After researching more into this information we then went out to our previous locations we filmed in to take pictures for the digipak and magazine advert.
Tom Halkyard: Going back to take pictures where we filmed added to the effectiveness of the combination of the products.
Alex Winter: It also created a link.
Tom Halkyard: We also looked at examples of magazine adverts particularly from our genre and the conventions of these.
Alex Winter: The conventions of the magazine advert have more advertising details such as the release date of the album.
Tom Halkyard: After research and planning we set about creating our ancillary products using many of the conventions we had found from the samples
Keeley Moore: We used many of the different photoshop tools to edit our images to make them look the best for our magazine advert and for our Digipak.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Evaluation - Tom
When we were originally coming up with the ideas for our media products for the Rock/ Indie track, Much Against Everyone’s Advice, we decided that we wanted to follow well-known conventions for it’s genre, which we researched. We used this tactic throughout our three media products; music video, magazine advert, Digipak. In order to follow the Rock/ Indie genre we considered clear artist representation to be the most important aspect to all our products. We wanted our audience to see us and know who the band members are to increase the intensity of the relationship between the viewer and those on screen. This links to an increase in popularity from the audience if they feel they can relate to the band and this would tie in with the demands of the record label, an important aspect according to Goodwin’s theories. Another very key aspect to our music video was the inclusion of guitars so that instantly, our audience will be able to see that we are a band and know what sort of music to expect. This ties in with the rock genre music video convention of a performance taking place in front of the camera. However, a less mainstream approach that we took was, to include the name of the song at some different stages of the music video. We used a technique called key framing in the programme FinalCut Express to make the letters of the words move in and out of the frame. This was something that gave our video a unique selling point and will differentiate our music video from our competitors'. We also followed the basic conventions of music videos such as cutting from shots to other shots in time to the music on the beats. This is very important as without it, the production would seem very amateur and not have the same effect and link between music and visuals.
The main factor, which we thought about throughout the creation of our three media products, was making sure they all strongly related to each other so the audience or consumer knew instantly that the product belonged to us. We considered this brand awareness to be crucial to the impact our brand wanted to have on the market. We included a picture on both our Digipak and magazine advert which uses the same location and band members as in the music video so that our audience will recognise the link and the artist representation.
When we planned the creation of the products we thought that these links of the drawing out colour from band members in dull, lifeless locations would add to the effectiveness of the product combination.
Throughout the creation process of our products, we received a lot of feedback from different sources, from our target audience to our teacher, to the real band, Soulwax. We contacted the band themselves to ask permission to use their track and they got back to us very quickly which helped us to push on with our planning.
After we pitched our initial ideas to our target audience, we received some valuable feedback as to what might work or what might be less effective. It was good to have a different perspective from that of our own. One example was that when we spoke about the idea to have different frames showing different footage, it was thought that it could look too busy. We took this into consideration and thought about how we could tackle this. We planned to use text or letters in the different frames instead so the footage wasn’t moving and therefore less busy.
We again received feedback after we compiled a rough cut of our music video. We knew upon completion that the rough cut would not at all reflect how our final product would look. We had a very tight schedule to film and put our footage together and therefore we couldn’t complete the video for the whole song and also the video wasn’t always synced with the music. A lot of the feedback we received for improvements to our work, we already knew needed to be changed and therefore some of it was less relevant or useful.
However, a good piece of feedback that we received and really appreciated was that we needed a wider variety of shot lengths. The inclusion of close-ups of the artists was what they particularly made reference to, "There are a number of long shots, these need to be punctuated with close-ups. You need to incorporate close-ups very early on to visually establish your artist straight away". When reflecting upon our footage we realised that this was indeed the case so we had another filming session. This time we filmed the lead singer and member of the group singing the whole of the track in 2 different locations and 3 different lengths of shots. We then mixed this into our music video, ensuring the music and visuals were synced correctly for precise use of lip syncing, and we were very happy with the result.
During the whole project, we presented, constructed and planned our ideas all using new media technologies and different software. Without the use of the internet, our products would not have been of the quality we would hope for. It allowed us to research conventions and examples of products which were very helpful for inspiring our products as well as allowing us to research Soulwax and their products and other products from the genre. We used the internet to view the band, Soulwax’s website and products which gave us a feel of how they conduct themselves in their work and how we can use some of their themes in our products. We looked at examples of Digipak’s such as Blur’s Greatest Hits and work from Jennifer Lopez which helped us to see what needed to be included in the product and conventions we needed to follow for our own product we were able to access these by using amazon, online shopping website. The use of the online Blog ‘housed’ our whole project as we continuously uploaded our work and posted our progress throughout the project. Without this we wouldn’t have been able to display our work as effectively and we wouldn’t have been able to access it so easily. We used it to record our ideas and the feedback we received at each stage of our project and its all there for everyone to see. The two main pieces of professional software that we used to create our products were, FinalCut Express and Photoshop.
FinalCut Express was the video compiling and editing programme that we used to physically create the video. We captured footage from a digital video recorder and were able to place it straight into the programme and could add it to our music video timeline. It’s simple to use the programme and use the many tools it provides to edit video clips. These include, trimming clips, fading in and out of clips, introducing filters to change the colour of clips and animating clips within a frame to name only a few. All of these were needed in the production of our music video.
Photoshop was used mostly for the ancillary products. Providing a library of tools and effects to manipulate raw pictures into professional looking, refined images. We used its clever tool, magic wand, in order to select band members and make part, or all, of them a solid colour whilst keeping the rest of the image the same. This made a good effective and professional look, highlighting the band members, which we used in both our Digipak and magazine advert in a continuing theme.
Of course, the availability of the video camera and tripod, the digital camera and the Apple Mac computer were the foundation of our success giving us the opportunity and provision to complete such a media project. These media technologies really did facilitate the research, the planning and the producing of everything we did.
Images
I think this would be a good image to use as both a magazine advert and as part of the digipak. I think this because it shows the main singer, me, who represents the band aswell as the name of the band behind him. I think it is a strong image that tells the audience about this band and the main member.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Digipak
- Collector's Item
- Interviews with Band/ Behind the Scenes on Tour/ Documentaries
- 'Making of' Featurette
- Live Performance (video and audio)
- B-sides/ Covers/ Rare songs
- Greatest Hits
Conventions:
- Song/ Album title
- Artist's Name
- Visual links to video - intertextuality
- Reviews - newspaper/music press/celebrities/DJs
- Tracklistings
- Ratings
- Record Label Logo
- Running Time
- Band Members - Pictures
- Personal Notes
Magazine Advert
- to promote the artist
- sell the song
- eye catching - visually striking
must include:
- song and album title
- visual link to video
- reviews - newspaper - music press - celebrities
condense information content:
- release date
- artist name
- where you can buy it
- record label
- website
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Evaluation of Filming and Editing
We were also able to film in our desired locations without having to change for unexpected reasons.
However, a problem we did face was the fact that we were trying to film in a daylight mise en scene and as we were filming in autumn there were less daylight hours for us to film in but we tackled this by scheduling our shooting time to accomodate the problem.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Response to Feedback
we agree that we took a lot of inspiration from current videos of are genre. we used performance and the use of instruments as seen in real professional work. The comment made about many bands using three members is also true and it does make our video seem more realistic.
Lyrics and Visuals
we appreciate that performanc ebased music videos do often not have a huge relationship between lyrics and visuals but it is a technique we tried to implement. this however may not have come across as we chose not to show the whole video as a rough cut. had they seen the whole video they would have seen that some actual lyrics are displayed on the screen throughout the video.
Music and Visuals
Again, with the choice to end the rough cut footage half way through the actual song we realised this wouldn't give the true impression of our whole work so we agree that the current ending is not good enough.
We tried to insert the worded visuals well and we spent time making this the case and are glad that has been accredited.
we are still in the process of fitting our footage into the most appropriate places to create the best effect and putting the heavier guitar footage with the heavier guitar passages in the song is a main focus.
Genre Characteristics
We studied our genre and the general characteristics of music videos inside of it. Dark clothing was one of our focusses to follow conventions aswwell as instruments, live performance, relating to the band and of course transitioning between shots in time with the music.
Monday, 5 October 2009
Testing Multiple Frames Idea Video
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Souwax Album Cover
Soulwax - Nite Versions Album Cover
Soulwax - Any Minute Now Album Cover
Lyrics - for Much Against Everyone's Advice
seem to have a history
at missing the point
at this stuff
apparently
very absentmindedly
I care
but never enough
for
you
TIME -to put the record straight
TIME -to stop communicating
please anticipate
AND I'M TRYING TO COMPREHEND THE THINGS I WRITE
AND I'M LIVING THE LIE THAT I CANNOT SATISFY
MUCH AGAINST EVERYONE'S ADVICE
I'M STILL TRYING I'M TRYING I'M TRYING I'M TRYING
faith
cheated me of everything
but I laughed until
I stopped
publicly
very, very openly
I sat alone with my thoughts
for
you
TIME-to put the record straight
TIME-to stop communicating
please anticipate
AND I'M TRYING TO COMPREHEND THE THINGS I WRITE
AND I'M LIVING THE LIE THAT I CANNOT SATISFY
MUCH AGAINST EVERYONE'S ADVICE
I'M STILL TRYING I'M TRYING I'M TRYING I'M TRYING
These are the lyrics to our chosen song, the writing in RED are the words that we are going to be spelling out on screen. We are going to spell out the title of our song within the video one word at a time and with each letter in the word being set in a different location and in a separate frame starting with "Much", then "Against", then "Everyone's" and finally "Advice", so through our video the title will have been shown, and at the end we are going to put the words one after another to illustrate that we had spelt out the songs title within the song.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Contacting the Band, Soulwax
Anotn Corbijn's Auteur Theory
Approach to film that emphasizes the role of the director as the expressive force behind a film and sees a director's body of work as united by common theories via signatures
