Fina

Final Video

09. Steve, Lauren, Analiza, Andy from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Final Advertisement

TimeToast on progress since AS.

Evaluation Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the editing stages, the audience feedback we received was mixed. At the beginning, we had an idea to add in the Queen of Hearts as well. This was changes as we chose to film at night and the footage was not of a very high quality/standard therefore, due to overall imagery and mixed feedback, we decided to get rid of this part. 
This was quite hard as we were two days pre-deadline and didn't have any other footage to cover another essential/crucial two minutes of the music video. Again, this was something we pulled through as a group and chose to add in the intro, when Alice falls asleep, as well as the end, when she wakes up.

This clearly made the audience feedback immediately more positive as we shot this during the day therefore the lighting and quality was much better, and also, it turned out that it suited better with the story line.
Below are a few videos of audience feedback after the music video.

The ancillary products received attention as well. I went on a website; 

and got the following feedback:

I also then filmed the reaction we got immediately after the music video had ended:

Evaluation Question 3

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

In these stages, we used social media a great deal by this point. Our instagram page was used to update our teachers on our progress.

This is the artists' instagram. The name is 'liza__dasilva'. We have a picture of Alice and every character shown in the music video in order to keep the audience's view consistent. 

This is some of the brand new state of the art equipment that we used. 

We decided to use a DSLR Camera as it was the camera with the best quality whilst the lens was changed, as well as a better camera overall for our music video than the video camera.

We also used to fig rig for stability as we needed to move the camera around a great deal during filming.

Other equipment includes the mini speaker so that the artist could hear the music whilst lip syncing so that it looked much more realistic. 

Before initially shooting, we did a mini tutorial at which the artist had to lip sync a song given to us by the teacher. This production was planned entirely differently to my AS production. It entailed much more thorough research as well as was more hard work owing to the artist having to lip sync in sync with the song. Lip syncing was the hardest part as I was chosen to be the artist. Lip syncing wasn't needed last year as we just shot the opening to a film. This only meant that we had to act, aswell as edit to a beat. This year, we had to make sure that not only did we edit to the beat, but that we had enough shots to edit owing to the location we chose. This was exceptionally hard as myself and my group all live quite far away from eachother, and a significant distance away from our chosen location; Alexandra Palace. This meant that we had to film very precisely and plan more cautiously, especially when it came to shots and outfits. Even our hair had to be exactly the same as if it wasn't, we wouldn't be able to thoroughly edit the shots in order for them to look like they were shot at the same time on the same day. This wasn't needed last year as we had less to fit into the project meaning more time to film when we didn't have the right shots etc...

For editing, in Final Cut Pro, we changed a few features throughout such as making everything black and white when the artist said black and white etc. 

This is all made evident within the ancillary work as well as the posters, for example, entail the same colours, fonts and technology as the video. In addition, the social media is included as well.

Evaluation Question 2

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

The main aspect of the video and ancillary products being effective is keeping this like the fonts, colour pallettes, and outset from the beginning consistent. I made sure of this as I want a member of the target audience to see one type of product whether it is the main products or the ancillary texts and understand/subconsciously remember where they'd seen it before.

A good example to portray how I was inspired to keep everything throughout consistent would be 'Daft Punk's' music video and CD Cover. The colour pallette remains the same (golds, silvers, whites and blacks) throughout each and every product.


The CD Cover (left) and the poster (right) both entail the same colours as well as the same image. The image of which is a merge of two astronaut type helmets, sets the theme for the music video as well. This allows for a consistence scheme of events, as well as a successful approach at synergy.



The helmets are also featured in the video.






















My products entail the same principles:

Evaluation Question 1

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

My media product uses, develops and challenges forms of conventions of real life media products in many ways. My media products use conventions of real life media products through out, such as the use of male gaze (a theory by Laura Mulvey; http://www.slideshare.net/beccacobb/laura-mulvey-the-male-gaze) in certain parts of the music video. The male gaze idea was solely influenced by Rihanna's 'Only girl in the world'. Rihanna is generally an artist that abides by the male gaze in order to gain an audience through the way that she looks.

For example, in order to distinguish the change/difference between the chorus and the verses, our artist twirls around to the slow beat of the song at that moment and a mid shot is used to shoot the whole of her body. This indicates male gaze, as shown below.

http://vimeo.com/channels/858396/114963009#t=63s

This is also evident within Rihanna's music video right from the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa14VNsdSYM

My media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products as there isn't often the idea of an old tale involved within a music video. Usually, a music video consists of an artist lip syncing with a story line to do with a mainstream subject that sells such as love or money. My music video focusses more on an old tale (Alice in Wonderland). This was the main focus owing to most of the world knowing about the story therefore attracting a wider audience, but most importantly attracting our target audience. 

Other media products of which use/develop forms and conventions of real media products include my ancillary work. My poster, for example, continues on with the theme of male gaze as it is a picture of the artist and her body whilst wearing a small top. 

The inside of my CD cover

I began with the exact same list from the back cover, which contains the same font and colour palettes, in order to keep the theme of the CD Cover consistent through the use of the same reds, blues, whites and blacks. 

I then added the record labels (without the barcode) and where the description states that "All Rights Are Reserved" in order to again, keep the layout and aspects that I used the same.

After, I felt it was essential to add the 'credits' of who was responsible for editing, producing  and directing the product etc.

In addition, I made it personal by adding a special thanks message from the artists of which is 'signed' underneath. This will enable the audience who listens to the CD to empathise with the artist more. 

The back of the CD Cover consists of pictures of the artist in blues and reds mirroring each other. I decided to keep this theme consistent and add this on the back as well, but with a picture of the artist facing the other way.

This is the end result! 

Evaluation Question 4

 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Watching the feedback we got from our rough cut, some said that the editing technique of the ' special effect ' that we create at the beginning of the song and at the end of the song. Another feedback we had from our rough cut is that they said we really focused on the costume that helps with the story telling in the music video.

Improvements that needed to be done; was really focus with the lip-syncing that matches with the song, another one was that our weak point was at the end, the last chorus.

Changes we made from the rough-cut feedback is that we top notch the lip syncing. We cut out the last chorus of the song along with the video so we won't have a weak spot in our music video.

At the cinema screen, I'm really please that we made major changes from the rough-cut feedback. It really did made big differences to our main product. If we didn’t make any changes at all, it would of make the Music Video look very weak at the end and it will put all hype from the beginning till half way.

I recorded a audio only for my audience feedback for the ancillary that I produced. Reflecting on the ancillary work, I kept it simple along with the Advertisement, keeping these two both very similar to each other to link with the synergy rather than having one completely different from the other. Otherwise it wouldn’t work. If there no connection between the two, it would be a real media product.  

Evaluation Question 3

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

I'll be breaking this question into stages from the beginning of production to end of production.

Research:

Before we could begin to film our music video, I had to research on what the conventions of a music video are in general and within our genre. For this I had used blogger to keep track all of our research that I had found and found multiple music videos on Youtube to support our findings and points. 

This were two theory that we had to researched about and it was Carol Vernallis and Muvley

Lip Syncing:

After doing some researching by using the internet, we then went into a testing for our lip syncing skills before filming the actual music video. 

This is our 50 second Music video that we have to produce to see how much we know about lip syncing.

The improvements that I wish I could do is that if we had more time to produce this 50 sec MV, but other than that, I think we done a pretty good job with the time we had to film this 50 second MV

Researching more about our Music Video:

After we had finished our lip sync practical and was pleased with the outcome. We then started thinking of our own music video, as a group we had to research and blog about everything we planned to involve within our music video, this included things such as, what equipment we will be using, location, concept, costume, props, synergy, our target audience, social media that we would plan use, draft digipaks, storyboards, a production schedule that we will plan to stick to and more. Whilst making all this research we would use applications such as prezi and slideshare so it was a lot clearer to present our information.

Pre-production:

Storyboard was needed for our production. 

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After making a storyboard, we then made a production schedule on Timetoast.

Production:

Equipments that we used for our production.

  We used a DSLR rather than a Film camera as we all agree to use a DSLR as I explained why we should use one. A DSLR is able to change settings that can make the filming or Music Video at a high quality. The college provided us with this DSLR and in addition, they change the lens for it which means better zoom-in, better focus and better quality than the Film camera. 

We wanted to make sure that DSLR filming settings was suitable for final cut pro, we done a little film testing with the DSLR.

A Figrig for stabilisation while filming.

Mini Speakers to listen to the sound track during production, that we picked out and for the artist to lip sync the lyrics.

During Production, we wanted to keep up to date with the audience, so we took some sneak peak images for audience to stay in touch with us. 

Editing:

Right after filming all our footages that we needed during production, we then headed to the editing suite where we can edit our Music Video. We used Macs as Final Cut pro is only available on macs. During Post-production, we downloaded the sound track and added to the timeline, after that we added the footages on the timeline where want them to be. 

This will be a standard draft where all the footage is on the timeline. After being happy where all the footage is, we then edited by cutting the footages precisely.

Took 3 weeks ( 4.5 hours per week ) to have the final draft finished. After showing it to the class, we then recorded a feedback from the class for the draft before actually finishing the editing. 

Ancillary: 

After finishing the editing, we then headed to creating/producing our Digipak and Advertisement for our brand new artist. We all used Photoshop with a template to guide our way making the Digipak. In every creation or producing, we had to do some research with real products that has been released to get inspired by or to look at as a guidance.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

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

 Carol Vernallis Theory - The music video editing cuts to the beat. - Have a slight camera movement- Jump Cuts - Speed things up- Base tracks

 In our music video, we have followed as much as we can in her theory. Since our music is a house music genre, we done a lot of editing to the beat so that the audience will generally know that we is a up beat music video. 

During production, we done allot of camera movement while filming to get that view of illusion to the edit where there isn't any. But in general, whilst filming, we done allot of movement as we were telling the story all along, so there will be characters walking, dancing, running and some hopping. To grab all these action, the cameraman would have to be fast on his/her feet to film and capture the moment.

we have several base tracks but didn't have all the base track, because both cameraman and artist had issues. The camera man wouldn't been able to film 3 minutes straight while holding the figrig along walking around which can be a hazard. The artist didn't have the courage to be filmed for 3 minutes straight as it would put her under-pressure. So what we done was to film base tracks for each chorus and verse separately.

 Goodwin Theory - Links between lyrics and visuals - Amplifying, illustrative, a bit of both

• Amplifying music videos- The actions within the music video match perfectly with the lyrics. The people/actions within the video act the lyrics out.

• Illustrative music videos- It’s basically the same as amplifying music videos but its more subtle and less noticable. The video goes with the meaning of the video but the lyrics aren’t acted out.

 Our music video was a challenging as we mainly focused on location/props/costume along with a story to tell. It was challenging because we had to find a perfect location for our Music video, however within our music video, we also decided to base the music video on a theme, which is Alice in wonderland. Which meant ordering the exact costume that was used in the movie. Finding a similar location to the movie. The music itself? The lyrics were the perfect choice we made. Before planning, we had to make up our mind what genre we wanted to do, and we thought house music would be easy which wasn't but we did really have excited with the plan we came up with.

Our music video was a bit of both of Amplifying and Illustrative.

Ancillary:

 My Digipak and advertisement has been kept very similar as if I wanted it to be distributed, I would personally want audience to think that they saw this similar poster around the corner and would pass around their people, word of mouth is another promotion this brand new artist. Making the digipak was a bit challenging as

Ancillary Feedback ( Audio Only )

Evaluation:Question4 what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation:Question3 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

This to your right is a short music video that we had to create demonstrating lip syncing.This didn't go as well as planned however, we used final cut pro to embed the footage and then edited it lip syncing it to the song which was Delilah-why you do.


After we had completed this takt and began to feel confident editing different footage to music we then began to brainstorm thinking about our own music video.We all had to research, plan and blog about everything we wanted to include in our own music video that we were going to produce in the up coming week.This started from the basics such as location, synergy,genre, mise en scene such as costume and props.We had a good idea of who our target audience was and what genre we wanted to do which was house music.This allowed us to think outside of the box producing a unique music video which was deeply thought about.We also thought about the different social media that we were going to approach promoting our artist.I began to start using applications such as slideshare,abc notes, prezi, slidely and emaze ect.

I began to use different ICT early such as an app called ABC notes which is useful for documenting thoughts on our music video.I started to make targets for myself earlier on in the project to help keep me on track.Above is something i presented on the blog where i was reflecting on the previous year and what we have done so far.

Before beginning our music video I researched in depth them and regularly posted different information and techniques i found out.Above is a blog post I created before beginning to shoot our rough cut.(video below)

This was a video taken in class receiving feedback from our rough cut.
Here is a time toast schedule below that we followed as a group in order to pick up our equipment on time and be at certain locations at different times and also improving on our feedback given on our rough cut from peers.

                                                FILMING

As we were able to get hold of the DSLR camera before any other group we were able to shoot some high quality footage for our music video.We aimed that some footage consisting in our music video will be at night time so one of our group members went into a dark clasroom to see if the light was strong enough and if the footage files would be suitable for final cut pro.

To your right is the footage testing out the camera and this meant that we will not have any problems with our footage whilst editing.

From the very start of our music project we created social networking sites promoting our artist keeping everyone updated on where we are and what stage we are at filming.

We finished filming before coming back from half term ready to edit.As we are all experienced using final cut pro we was able to start editing straight away.We got rid of all unwanted footage that we filmed and started adding special effects as we discussed ideas as watching the footage back over again.This helped us create a unique music video following the theme of Alice in Wonderland,

During editing we added a 360 twist turn introducing the song in slow motion which gave a good effect.We also added in a cross dissolve from our artist sleeping turning into Alice in our semi real wonderland we created.

Another effect created was we added a black and white filter to emphasise the lyrics"when everything goes black&white"This was more of a straight forward task as it was just adding a black and white filter on certain clips.We also had to make some changes along the way getting rid of unsteady footage from not using a tripod at all times as we had to film certain scenes within a tight space.

ANCILLARY WORK

I used photoshop to create all of my ancillary products including the front and inside cover of my digipack and the concert advertisement.I took time to expirment and get back to grips with photoshop.This was a good opportunity for me to bring together some ideas. 

I looked at several backgrounds I could use which would to promote our artist well.I looked at random artists cd cases online aswell as those of the same genre as our artist including rudimental and headcandi both had different kind of vibes presented which isnt unusual as house is a broad genre demonstrating soft music to heavy loud music.This is a popular reason why people are into house as there are many subgenres that it consists of allowing people to listen to different ones at particular times.I thought using a brick wall background would reflect well on our artist releasing a casual upbeat vibe.

As we were unfortunately not able to create a photoshoot with our artist we all had to make do with photographs we have already had from earlier on in the project.

I then looked back on my notes and blogs searching for pivotal element that need to be included on a digipack such as a promotional sticker at the front if they have released a single on the album.Also keeping the font noticeable and the same throughout.

Here is where I have added the artists name on the front cover of my digipack.This was one ofthe most appropriate font to use out of the options.

Here is where I added our artists name on the side of the front cover making it clear who the artist is.

To the left as you can see i have used the same font from the cover but minimised the font size listing the singles on the album including her new single"Losing"

Here is where I added in the barcode and the record company our artist belong too which is Island Records.

Here is my final concert advertisement as part of my ancillary work.
Now that the ancillary deadline has ended i have been focusing on the evaluation.These are to be posted on our blogs using different applications such as prezi,ABC notes and as i wasnt able to use amaze for this question i thought this was a clear way to present the media technologies I have used in the construction, planning.