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?

Magazine Ad Final

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

Group 5 Feedback

the video was rather eccentric but the was not enough shot variation and the one setting didn't provide much interest. the directors view approach to the video is interesting but i dont think it really works to well with this artist or genre of song. there where a few close ups in the video but it could benefit from a few more so in the respect the video does represent the artist but improvements could be made, maybe by including extreme close ups of the singers face.
the video feel quite dark but the song is upbeat and feels happy so maybe the group could edit the brightness in the shots.
the video starts well by editing different shots in time to the piano.
the video could include landscape shot to provide variation but this may not be the image the group want to portray.

Peer Feedback

The lyrics had no connection to the visuals, and I don't think the music video itself fit the music. The video had a very playful and immature feel to it but the music sounded more mature than the video made out. The video had no clear narrative, nor had much performance. The footage itself was well shot and there was clearly a lot of effort put into filming. Also the beginning, where the lights come on in time with the music was a good effect.

peer feedback

music and visuals
-cut on the beat
-at the end the shot duration is to long
-also the lip syncing was slightly off.
-get repetative need something new toward middle.

Peer Feedback Group 03

Genre characteristics - The music genre fits the video very well, there is an artistic feel to the piece that gives a calm relaxing feel to accompany the song. It feels appropriate and fitting to the melody of the song.
Overall the strong points of the video are how the artistic feel of the video fits the song also with alot of good angles and shots. You could possibly use more close ups to cut the time of certain shots.

Rough Cut Feedback - TAW

The style an design of your video is very consistent and shows a lot of control. The images in the video also match the mood of the designs for the digi pack and advert. I do feel there are long sections of the video that are in long shot and these are not as satisfactory as the close ups and parts where things are happening. I think you might want to shoot the three performers in close up in front of a white sheet and play around with the lighting using a shot lamp?

Are you going to continue with your animation ideas?

Ideas For DVD Pack + CD inlay

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

digipack idea

not sure about this yet, just an initial idea

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.

Idea for DVD cover

This is a photo i took whilst shooting the footage and i have edited it a little in photo shop to enhance the contrast a bit more. --->

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. :)

Feedback

It seems as if you're all working individually, against one another, not so much as a team and posting random posts to make up numbers. On the other hand you've done a lot of research to influence your ideas which has worked well.

Feedback

Loads of content on your blog which is really good. You have a lot of other music video examples to show and give more explanation of what you mean, which is good as its visual and not boring.

Inspiration

Eagle Vs. Shark, is a very mellow, love story. The characters are unconventional and awkward, i really like the look to this film (images taken from the trailer at youtube.com, and google images)
It's very low budget, and simple.

Inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDeUssDFE0

The above link is for the Cure- Close to me.

I really like this video, as its very close up, and is in one area the whole time. I think if we did our video in one confined space, it'll make it look more effective, and mean we could shoot at any time, and in one location, so we could film for as long as we wanted.
We could also improve it a lot in editing, and still add animation.



This is the video for Paramore- ignorance. This video is also very confined, and dark, i like how there's a single spotlight, which is cleverly used to highlight each band member.
i like the closeness of this video too, and the use of light, we could do a video like this, and use large lamps, to brighten the area, without making it look grungy or dark, because our artist is more indie/folk.

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.

Video Analysis

This is Night by Benga & Coki Coki

I really like this video, as the music and visuals works really well. It has a very heay bassline, which is amplified with the octopus's movements, and lights. The flow of the song, is quite slow, which is again presented through the octopus.

Auteur research

P1 - Auteur Presentation - Anton Corbijn

View more presentations from Media Studies.

Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas

Another idea:
To have that game young children play, when you lift a huge sheet into the air, and someone has to run to the other side before it falls down.

But, it'd be slightly different. The sheet wouldn't fall down; and the whole video would be a huge tracking shot to the right, following our lead singer. The sheet would be white, or any bright colour, and it'd keep changing throughout the whole thing. Along the way she'd do or see things relating to the lyrics. We wouldn't see anything from the outside, just her, and whatever she comes across, as if she's in her own world.

Things she'd come across:

• When the lyrics say "the wings are wide, the wings are wide," wings could sprout from behind her.
• When the lyrics say "wild card inside, wild card inside" we could do a close up of her spreading a pack of cards (as if to do a magic trick) and then throw them up in the air above her
• When the lyrics say "I'll be the one who'll break my heart," we could have an animated heart on her, then break it in half.
• When the lyrics say "I love you more, i love you more" she could be holding a flower, and picking the petals off, (like when young children go: "he loves me, he loves me not")
• When the lyrics say "But now i know i wanna win the war" we could animate small explosions around her
• When the lyrics say "No one likes to take a test" we could animate numbers, and equations around her head, and she bats them away, and they turn to smoke
• When the lyrics say "put your weight against the door" she could open an animated door, and walk through it.
• When the lyrics say "kick drum on the basement floor" she could kick a drum across the floor.
• When the lyrics say "stranded in a fog of words" she could have a cloud around and above her head, with words coming out of them, then she could bat them away, clearing the air.
• When the lyrics say "loved him like a winter bird" we could animate birds above her head, and one of them to rest on her finger
• When the lyrics say "on my head the water pours" we could animate a bucket of water falling on her. Or pour a real bucket of water over her head.
• When the lyrics say "fly away, fly away to what you want to make" we could have an animated hot air balloon in the semi-distance with someone waving out of it.
• Then, the same thing when the lyrics say "the wings are wide the wings are wide" and "wild card inside, wild card inside" and "I'll be the one to break my heart"
• When the lyrics say " the truth lied, and lies divide" we could animate, the whole shot being torn in half. Then to two pieces of "paper" would get blown away in the wind.

I think this idea would maybe be a lot easier to execute, as we could do it anywhere, and wouldn't need many people. We would also need a lot of small props, which would relate to the lyrics. But we'd have to film soon, as a lot of it would has animation in it. This would mean there'd be a lot of class, and outside work, rather than more filming. The video would have a very clean, almost sterile look to it, which i think would work well with the artist, as she's quite feminine.

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.

Teacher Feedback on Blog

Your blog looks incredible - the amount of content and the detail of the content is fantastic. Well done.
The only recommendations I would make for improving your blog further is to embed the auteur presentations we did in the first couple of weeks, these can be found on slideshare.net if you type P1-Auteur into the search box.
My only other tip would be to remember that your blog is an academic piece of work. It is fine to reflect the personality of the group but do remember it is read by examiners and is assessed.
Excellent work so far, keep going.

like i said,

here's a VERY rough version of our magazine ad, in monoprint.

Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas Ideas

I've had another idea, that we could film at dusk/ night or very early morning.
We could bring paper lanterns & little tea lights.
I think this'd look good if we were to do the scene of a picnic/tea party.
Or to see the couple holding hands and walking through a field/woods.

Contacting Feist

After e-mailing Feist via her myspace page, we still haven't got a reply as of today.
Maybe she's just really busy?

I've tried to find an official e-mail address, but no luck.
Will keep trying though!

We also did our pitch today.
It went very well, even if we were a bit over prepared (not that its a bad thing)
The likelihood of us getting our chosen track is pretty high, as i dont think anyone else has actually pitched for it.

So, overall yay us :)

However from the feedback from the rest of the class we found we need to do more work on the narrative because we are not sure on whether we are doing a love story or journey story.

sams idea no. 4

Costumes/Props

Costumes

• Dress up clothes - pretty dresses, superheroes
• Dungarees
• Tweed suit
• Glasses
• Bright colours

Props

• Cardboard rocket
• picnic stuff
• tricycle
• giant mirror
• acoustic guitar
• drum
• toys
• teddy bears
• old car
  

These are just some initial ideas we came up with when thinking about costumes/props. We will expand on this a lot more once we have come up with a finite idea for what we are doing.

Locations

Some possible locations and where to find them:

Bottisham

• Woods
• Big Open Fields
• Abandoned Barn
• James, Ryan and Sam's houses
• Play area
  

Lode

• Abandoned train station
• Windmill and surrounding area
  

Fulbourn

• Nature Reserve

St. Ives

• Ram's dad's farm
• Big fields
• Ram's house
  

sams idea no. 3

i had an idea for the digipack cover. we could try and make it a monoprint, like this "black cat" piece.

i'll make a rough version later on, just wanted to see what everyone else thought.

sams idea no. 2

imagine this, in a field, less funeral like clothing, less people, more skipping and running and laughing, and a cardboard rocket being built, and you get the picture.

i love the visual style of this video, the slight blurriness and the faded colours. i know i will be heavily influenced by this during the editing process.

Digipack ideas

We started thinking about the types of things you would want to see on the digipack of a singer/songwriter.

As Feist is just one person we thought that they would be the primary focus for someone who would buy the digipack. Based on this we thought having interviews with her would be a fantastic idea. As there might be too much focus on her we thought that having interviews with the director/producers of the video would be a good idea as this may provide more insight into the inspiration for the artist as well as the inspiration the artist can generate.

We started thinking about the genre of music and the type of person who would be likely to buy the digipack. The music is quite a laid-back style known as "New Folk". We thought about the type of extras someone like this would be interested in watching. We would include:

• On set diary
• On tour diary
• Feist's festival survival guide
• Interview with Fesit
• Interview with director/producers
• Badges/stickers
• Video for "Mushaboom"
• Poster
• Cardboard case (recycled)
• CD-Rom capabilities - desktops, screensavers etc.
  

idea and prop list

i really like the style of this photo, the seting and the colours.
just an idea.

PROP LIST

A drum
An acoustic guitar?
Hats
Feathers
Sticks
Cardboard
Tin Foil
Wooden utensils?
Marker pens
Stones
Flowers
Pots and pans?
Camping bags
Drumsticks
Dice
Telescope!

honestly

i prefer my moon my man

Spike Jonze

I decided to have look into Spike Jonze's body of work. I saw the trailer for Where The Wild Things Are this morning. I liked the story about the child escaping the real world, in which his mother pays him no attention, into a world of his imagination. As the idea of imagination was something we had for our music video I thought I would have a look at some of his videos. I had a look at 'Y Control' by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 'Get Back' by Ludacris and 'Weapon of Choice' by Fat Boy Slim.

Annoyingly all three videos have embedding disabled so I have provided the links.

Y Control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3zPbBMbnjI

This video features children acting as an anarchist mob of some kind. The idea behind this video is that children learn from copying so it is possible for children to end up bad as they are very impressionable. We have an interest in using children in our video, however I think we would be using them in quite a different way. The message is quite similar though, as we would be looking at how everything was nice and innocent when you were a child and you had no worries in the world. This goes with the lyrics of the song as they are about the worries when in love.

Get Back - Ludacris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJeZe50ut5A

This video is a completely different genre to the previous but Jonze still manages to bring his own unique visual style to it. This video doesn't have any children but it does have certain visuals to relate to what's going on. In the video Ludacris gets into a fight with someone and his muscles on his arms are blown to a funny proportion. This could be something we can consider for our video; taking something from reality and changing it in some way to make it humourous in the way it looks.

Weapon of Choice - Fat Boy Slim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZwZiU0kKs

This video doens't really have any special effects in the way of distortion of image. It is really a simple concept; Christopher Walken dancing around an empty hotel and ends up flying. I really liked this as it was just one man having a good time to music. This was one of our ideas for our music video so finding something like this showed how a simple context like that can look really good.

Ideas - Frightened Rabbit

I looked at some more music videos that i thought were quite interesting.



I really like the animation in this video and i think we can achieve this with some live footage as well. Also the sketchy kind of feel to it will fit really well in our music video and it will make it more enjoyable for our target audience.



Another interesting video by the same band is 'Bright Pink Bookmark' I think this is an excellent video because it has a very interesting concept and you can watch it multiple times without getting bored.
Looking into Goodwins points, this video has some really good features; such as the visual images of things growing fits nicely with the calm relaxed music, making the video very hypnotic. This is key for this video because it has no lyrics so it is important to keep the viewer interested in watching so that they remember it. This kind of video is very typical of this genre so it makes the visual advertising for the band more difficult but yet it helps them greatly because the people who like this genre generally like this kind of video.

Both of these videos are of a similar genre to 'I feel it all' so looking at these videos will help gage what the target audience likes and what competition there is out there.

Text Experiments

I had a bit of free time this evening and decided to play around with the text a little bit.

I took influence from the fonts we had looked at and decided to just try writing the name of the song in a similar font. I did three different designs. One with a shaded 3D effect and no colour. The second had the same shaded 3D effect and added colour. The third had a full black 3D effect with the same colour as the second. The examples are below.

































































Ryan - I saw James' idea and I wanted to see what it would look like animated so I made a simple GIF file.




Ryan's Gif looks really cool. Although it has just dawned on me that I got the name of the song wrong. Oh well, it still looks good.

An idea from James

This evening I watched Live And Let Die, which in my mind is one of the best James Bond films. This then got me thinking about some of the iconic figures of cinema that all young boys and girls which they could be. I thought that this may be an interesting idea to consider when it came to our video.

As one of our main ideas was a young couple having a good time I thought that the idea of dressing up as some of these characters and have the characters acting like them. James Bond was a particular inspiration in this as every young boy wants to be him and he is a figure many girls find attractive.

This got me thinking about other similar characters. I thought about Indiana Jones and Han Solo as well. These characters are both instantly recognisable and also have female counterparts eg. Marion and Princess Leia repsectively.

This is just an idea that I am yet to discuss with my group but I just wanted to put it on the blog so the idea was there if it was to develop.

Font Mood Board

Collectively, we all decided that we wanted a sketchy style font to be used in our video. This sketch style will be repeated in the animation that'll be added to our video.

For example: when the lyrics "the wings are wide" are sung, animated wings will be edited around the subject. (This is not final, just an idea)

This will be the same for the fonts.

More inspiration

This is a really cool ad i saw by Mini, who drew out their ad on an etch a sketch.

I think the idea is really simple and works well with Mini, who're an established brand, and have an iconic car.

To pull something like this off would be really good, but also quite difficult.
We could maybe do something like this for our magazine advert. An advert of the DVD cover.


Also, another etch a sketch inspiration, i found this video by Maldroid- Rock N Roll
The video is of the band, and shows them each drawing on an etch a sketch. The drawings are animations of them performing etc. I think it really works for this band, as they almost have a "nerdy" or quirky tinge to their music & style.

Concept art

I have done some concept art based on our initial ideas.

This picture would be used for the magazine advert and hopefully be a screenshot from the actual video once we have added some animation to the clips. It could also be the front cover of the DVD as this would create a similarity throughout all of our products.

Mood Board

This is our mood board, it is a collection of our ideas for the music video. We want to make some of the video animated, like the video Sam posted before.

Whoo! Alright! Yeah! Uhuh!

Watch!

you should watch this. it has the perfect animation style, incorporated into the video.

Initial Ideas

Following on from the influences of Juno, Nick and Norah and Away We Go I think that an interesting idea to do would be something about a young couple in love.


One of my ideas is the the couple doing fun stuff and just generally having a good time together. This would take place in some sort of location they could go together.

Some possible ideas for location

• The Park
• The Seaside
• A Field
• A Farm
• Town

Some possible ideas for what they could be doing

• Having a picnic
• Building a rocket
• Making a sandcastle
• Playing on swings etc.
• Playing in the sea
• Running really fast down a hill
• Making mudcakes
• Cartwheels
• Riding bikes
• Making a cake

We definitely like the idea of a couple. We could take influence from Juno and Nick and Norah and focus on a teenage couple. An alternative to this that would break convention in to focus on a young couple aged around 8-10. This would be quite a nice idea as it would focus on the innocence of love.

NOTE. I think maybe it should be people our age, acting young, living old memories. Sam

Another idea Ram had, at the end. Would be to have a couple (boy & girl) get really close, either about to kiss, or kiss (nothing major, don't get too excited :) and then have the whole shot tear in half. Then the torn paper could either get caught in the wind, or dropped on the floor. If they're dropped on the floor, i think it'd look good if two different people pick up a piece each and walk away.

BIG IDEA FLASH

THEY COULD BE GOING TO THE FOREST TO BUILD A ROCKET.

i'm startin to feel it all

this is the kind of video style that would suit this song.
at the moment i have the idea of a group of friends, or just a boy or girl, walking to certain place, in a forest or wood, carrying something, a drum kit or a chest of drawers, something rustic. the video would have a very neutral color, almost sepia, and would seem like an old movie.

More influences

Following on from Noah and the Whale I also felt some influences from films.

I really like independent films and thought that some of these would offere great influences when it came to our video.

In particular I like Juno, Nick and Norah's Infinite Play-list and Away We Go.




Juno is a quirky story about a teenage couple who get pregnant. The film follows Juno's story as she tries to find a couple to adopt the baby when it's born. The film features an interesting soundtrack as well.














Nick and Norah's Infinite Play-list is, again, a quirky film about a young boy and girl who fall in love over one crazy night in New York. This film also had an interesting soundtrack.


















Away We Go is a little different to Juno and Nick and Norah as it isn't about teenagers. It focuses on a 30-something couple who are looking for the perfect place to raise their child.


















What I like about all these films is the low-budget feel about them. It makes the locations and costumes a lot more interesting as they actually have to be filmed in real locations rather than building a set in a studio. The costumes tend to be a lot more interesting as well as they just use cheap clothes which makes for some interesting outfits and costumes for the characters.

I also think that something like this will be a lot easier to recreate as we are working on no budget and will just have to use stuff we can find ourselves.

Friendly Fires Band Poster

Ryan and Sam copied out the Friendly Fires band poster. We looked into the different ways in which the poster is used to advertise the band.

Influences

My idea when I heard the song was some sort of independent homemade feel.

A music video that immediately came to mind was the video for 5 Years Time by Noah and the Whale.



I like the way this video looks and how it shows the band as well as some sort of story. I also like the visual representation of the lyrics as part of the performance.

Intertextual reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHFk4tOXzSU

Above is the link to Jennifer Lopez- I'm glad.

(The enbedding was disabled, sorry)

The video has direct references to Flashdance throughout.

It opens with the most memorable part of the film; the protagonist's audition into dance school.

The song then kicks in, and Jennfier Lopez re-plays key scenes from flashdance (such as, the performance on stage with the bucket of water and chain, the protagonist working out, etc)

The costume is also very alike, such as when Jennifer Lopez is sitting on a stool, she's wearing red heels and an oversized jumper. Alex, from flashdance does this also.

Here are some examples to compare with