James Heath Evaluation

For our music video we chose the song I Feel It All by Feist. We thought this song suited an indie audience so we felt a video with a low budget feel to it would be the right way to go. We went through the process of brainstorming ideas looking for something that would stick to certain conventions but also challenge them. We eventually settled on the idea of an audition, with different people singing the song whilst various things happened around them. We thought this challenged convention as it did not feature the artist and, unlike most music videos, would all take place in one location.

We wanted to make our music video feel very realistic and make it look like it was footage of a real audition compiled together to the song. We tried several techniques to make it look real and make sure people were aware they were watching a music video but being sucked into it at the same time.

We were very lucky to be able to book a local venue to shoot our video. We had access to spotlights and other kinds of stage equipment for our music video. The setup for our music video was very basic with just two sheets hanging and on the floor. We also used three different cameras so we could shoot multiple angles at the same time. This also helped us achieve the look of a fly-on-the-wall documentary style as other cameras can be seen in the background of certain shots. This is different to convention as most videos try to suck you into a fictional world of the song whereas we were trying to suck the viewer in to the real world of making our video.

Whereas our video challenged convention in quite a few ways our ancillary texts pretty much stuck to them. When researching the different genres we found some conventions that were true for certain types of music. Most Rap artists would have a very plain cover with either a picture of themselves or some sort of symbol they are associated with. Rock tend to go for a picture of the venue or the poster for the tour the live show was taken from and pop normally goes with the album cover. Indie artists were found to have some sort of artwork created either by a member of the group or someone close to them. We decided not to try anything fancy with our digipack cover as we thought it might be too much trying to market an indie artist in this way as it would be a bit too out different. We found that with real artists they tended to try something different like that once they had established a pretty solid fan base.

We did challenge convention in some ways though. We found when looking at real digipacks they very rarely linked directly to the music video and tended to link to the album cover or single. We used a particular image from our video for both the magazine advert and DVD cover.

It was an image of Ram, the girl from our video, covered in paint. We thought this was a great image to use as it was the climactic moment of our video and was also a really striking image. The white background as well as Ram’s white clothing really made the colours of the paint stand out on the page. We used a cropped version of the image for the magazine advert featuring just Ram. For our DVD cover we tried something a little more interesting using the whole image. The image has me throwing shredded paper at Ram covered in paint. We took this image and stretched it round from the front cover to the back cover. This worked really well as the front cover had me throwing the paper and the back cover had the image of Ram covered in paint.

The digipack we used as our final image wasn’t the first draft we had. We had originally done another one which we decided to improve on as it didn’t feature any of the visual links from the video or magazine advert or video and looked quite dark whereas the video was going for a light and nostalgic feel.

Our digipack and magazine advert received really positive feedback from our classmates as well as our teachers. This was a real boost for us as we had worked really hard on them to make them look really good and genuine. For our DVD cover we added some quotes from reviews of the artist we found on the internet. We also looked at how blurbs for digipacks were worded and tried to make ours similar. We also included the logos of the record label and distributor as well as an age certificate to make it look really genuine. With the magazine advert Sam did a really good job and editing the text to make it look like a real magazine advert by playing with font to emphasise certain words. A little blurb was included at the bottom of the magazine ad. The name of the artist is in bold to help people identify as well as the name of one our special feature ideas “Feist on Festivals”. He also included an ear to let people know where they could buy the DVD.

Our music video received mostly positive feedback but there was some negative feedback. Our classmates like the audition idea and thought we had filmed it really well. They also liked the mise-en-scene of the video and thought it looked very arty, which was great as this was something were trying to achieve.

The negative feedback was for things we were aware of but weren’t able to resolve in time for the deadline. One of the problems we had was the lip syncing was little out in some places. This was due to Ram filming some more shots without access to the song so her timing was a little off. We did manage to edit most of it to make it look good but we didn’t have time to finish it all as this footage was added at the last minute.

We were also told that the pace of the video slowed down in the middle. Again, this was something that we were aware of and we made efforts to fix. After our rough cut we realised that this section of the video needed a lot of work so went out and shot some more footage for the beginning and middle of the video. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get the same venue but we were able to find somewhere in college that looked similar so this worked out really well. In the final cut it is still a little slow but it’s a lot better than our rough cut.

We also had some problems with the footage from my camera. The video we had shot on my camera uploaded as a file that final cut didn’t recognise. This meant that we had to convert the footage using some software Ryan had which took some time. It also caused further problems once we got it into final cut. Every time we moved one of the clips, even a fraction of a second, we had to re-render it which cost us quite some time.

When it came to the software we were using we were quite advantaged as a group. Ram and Myself both study film studies so we have extra experience using Final Cut Express and Ryan and Ram both take photography so had more experience of using Photoshop. This made our editing quite a bit easier and we were able to try out new things we hadn’t done before. One thing we learned to do which we didn’t know about was the colour corrector tool on Final Cut. The school camera copied onto film whereas the other two cameras we used were digital so the saturation was a little different. We managed to fix it and now it isn’t noticeable in our final video.

We used other types of media to help with our research and planning. We used YouTube to look at existing videos and get some ideas of the type of things that are out there. We used Wikipedia to learn a bit more about the artist as well as similar artists we were researching, such as Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. On top of that we also used MySpace to try and contact the artist directly and tell her what we were doing, unfortunately we never heard back from her.

We kept track of all our progress using a blog which was really helpful as all our information was in one place which we could access from home as well as share easily with other. We had learned from previous experience that not planning enough could lead to problems later so we set out to plan as much as we could to make sure we were prepared. This was also good as sometimes we were all working on different things and this was a good way for us to share ideas. For example, Sam did lots of work on the magazine ad whilst myself, Ryan and Ram were editing. This allowed him to share his creative development easily with us. We worked well as a team like this, with all of us doing individual work and then bringing it all together at the end.

Overall I think we did a really good job and I am really pleased with the outcome. Throughout the process of making the music video I have learnt a few new tools on final cut express. I have also learnt that it always helps to plan as much as you can. This was a mistake I made last year so this year I fully prepared and it helped a lot. I also learnt that sometimes it’s best just to go with your instincts and that’s what we did for a lot of the shoot and ended up with some really great footage. In the future I would try to have a bit more time to shoot it and make sure we’ve got all the shots we need. I would also do multiple takes of everything as it always helps to have a choice for different shots.

Evaluation questions

These are the questions we have to answer for our media evaluation. We have to make notes for them, and we will have a timed essay to write on tuesday to answer these questions.

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

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

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

Final DVD Cover

DVD pack analysis

This is the cover for Michael Jackson's number ones DVD. The cover is going for the simple & minimalist look. The photo of Michael Jackson is well known, as it was on one of his hit selling albums. The back is also very simple with no exclamations on special features etc.

Digipak and Magazine ad re-draft

We are currently working on new ideas for our magazine ad and digipak. We are going to work on making the digipak a little more like the magazine ad. We will be including more colour rather than the dark colours in the current one. We are also going to work on a half page magazine ad just to expand what we have. We will have a few to choose from so we can enter our best one. They should be up soon.

Final Cut

Here is a picture of our project in final cut. It shows our complex editing with lots of layers of footage.

Digipack & magazine ad

Tom has given us some feedback on our ancillary products.

Magazine advert: Strong, but need to do some more ads, so we have more choice.
Also, trying out an advert in landscape as well as portrait, and how it would be situated (considering fold of magazine etc)

Digipack: Font too big and too Gothic, doesn't fit the theme and feel of our music video. Text is positioned over a strong image, maybe move things around a bit. Unbalanced and muddled.

So, we'll re-do our digipack and do a few more magazine adverts. This will give us more range, and we'll try and keep to the style of our video.

Final Music Video

Video Due

Our music video is due in today. We decided to do some last minute shots so we had some closeups of Ram's face covered in paint for the end of the video. She did this over the weekend at home and brought the footage in with her today so we have to do some last minute adjustments to the video to get the clips in. We knew we were going to be doing this in our last lesson so we made sure we were happy with the rest of the video so that we didn't have to worry about that and could focus on making sure we were happy with the ending.

The final video should be up on the blog in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Magazine Advert and DVD Cover

Below you can see the Magazine advert and DVD cover we have created for our music video.

We aimed to make the magazine advert bright and colourful so it would stand out. For this we decided to use a screen shot of us throwing paint at ram. This was good as the background was plain white with the bright colours of the paint over the top of it. We played with the font in the quote at the bottom to make some words bigger. This is something we have seen in adverts in magazines to make certain words stand out and it was something we wanted to use in our magazine advert to make it seem really genuine.

The DVD cover has quite a plain feel to it, with two parallel images on the back and front of the case. We included some quotes and a special features box. We also decided to include a universal logo and Feist's music label's logo on the DVD cover, again to give it more of a genuine feel. We didn't include a BBFC rating as we found in research that the majority of digipacks didn't have these.

Final Marketing Package

Rough Cut

Footage Problems

Sam and myself decided to bring our video cameras with us so we could shoot multiple angles. This worked very well at the time and we had lots of excellent footage. The footage from the school and sam's camera's uploaded fine, however the footage from my camera did not upload as the file format was not supported by final cut. A media technician said he should be able to sort it but he hasn't been here for the past two days so we aren't sure whether or not he has done it and if he has there is no way for us to get the footage at the moment. This is a problem as we had lots of footage that we wanted to use and at the moment we have lots of footage but from about 3 different angles with no close-ups. Ryan has some converting software at home so he is going to see if he can convert it tonight. Hopefully we will have all the footage tomorrow.

Digipack Info

Artist
Song title

Including;
Commentary
New single
On set diary
How we managed it all in just 4 hours
Out takes / deleted scenes
Interviews
Remix
Edit it yourself feature

Upload

So today we are uploading our footage and are going to be looking through it all to see what is good and what we can get rid of. We had three cameras at the shoot, sometimes all filming at the same time. This means that we have lots of footage, I think at least an hour, which will mean it will take a long time to go through.

Ryan has just finished the animatic which he will be uploading soon.

Shooting

On Sunday, we filmed our music video.

Sam managed to book the junction, so we could shoot there.

The filming went very well, and we got plenty of footage. We were slightly un-organised to begin with, but once we had everything, and we'd set everything up, we were ok. We filmed from 11-3:30.

Our final idea, was to have an audition process, where one of the "auditionees" stands infront of a blank white sheet, and sings the song; but whilst this's happening, they'd be pelted with random things, like shredded paper, confetti, icing sugar, glitter, balloons, sellotape, and paint. We also ran objects through the shots, like a trolley or a rubber tyre. We went for a very simplistic look, and purposely left the props like fans and chairs in the shots. We wanted it to look like an actual audition. We also used 3 camera's in total, to get a wide range of angles, of the same thing.

Whilst we were there, we thought it an opportune time to take photographs for our digipack. Whilst doing our storyboard we wanted to fill up small balloons with glitter, or shaving cream, and for them to be on the sheet behind the auditionee and to be popped at the beat. This didnt work very well, as the balloons were small, they werent easy to tie. (Below, trying to fill the balloons, which was unsuccessfull)

Overall, the whole shoot went very well, and once we look at the footage we got, we can decide if we'll need to film again. :)

Conflict

It seems there is a bit of conflict in the group towards the final idea. I am a bit unsure as to what is going on as I missed the pitch and when I came back the idea had changed.

This is something we will definitely need to sort out before we continue.

We will need to look at all of the different ideas and decide which one would be best for us to do. I think at the moment our idea is a bit too conventional and there won't really be anything special about it. I think we need to come up with an idea that will stand out and make our video different from anything anyone has seen before and I don't feel that will be accomplished with the current idea.

We'll let you know once we've come up with a definite idea and we will work hard to get that storyboarded. Ultimately we need to make sure we have something everyone is happy with otherwise there won't be 100% effort put in and we won't be performing to our full potential.

Animatic

This is our Animatic for our music video i have only managed to do half of it as the song is quite long and it became too time consuming. However from the Animatic you can get an idea of what we are trying to achieve.

Auteur research

P1 - Auteur Presentation - Anton Corbijn

View more presentations from Media Studies.

Final Idea

Final idea is that we will make a journey video of the band with them walking through a field and getting to a camping location. We are thinking about filming next Thursday but first Ryan, Sam and James are going to look round at locations to check whether they are good or not for filming.


We will post feedback on the location hunt later, with photos!

Also idea for editing would be to add film grain and sepia effect to create an old style to the footage, to continue with the genre of the music.