Group evaluation

Group evaluation on Prezi

Individual Evaluation

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

Whilst analysing a variety of music videos throughout this course one thing was very apparent to me, this was that varying genres of music follow a typical set of codes and conventions in their music video. For example, you are more than likely to find Dance music videos featuring nightclubs, flashing lights and skimpy outfits and in the majority of RnB music videos you would see expensive objects, gangs and females typically used as objects. Certain editing techniques are also used as conventions within pop promos, you would find that fast tempo'd songs would have quick, flashy shots with a variety of camera angles - perhaps even obscure if the song was very upbeat, whereas slower songs would have longer shot that are perhaps not as adventurous. Reasons for these codes and conventions in pop promos is to define what category the song lays in and to allow the audience to identify with this, it's also a good way of expressing the artists star construction. The artist can choose how they want to be presented via their music video so its important they are being portrayed in the way that they wish. Following on from music videos, the CD cover and Print ad is just as important whilst promoting a band. However, codes and conventions are not clearly outlined or followed when it comes to this - and styles can even differ from the same artist varying from something that is completely abstract and irrelevant to simply nothing else but the name of the band. The main importance of a CD cover is to grab the attention of potential buyers, and to promote themselves either with a picture of them on the front or show their artistic side by creating something 'different'. It's important that print ads and CD covers are very similar to one another - if not identical using the same image because the print ad is advertising the CD, so it must be recognisable. The second purpose for a Print ad is to give potential buyers or fans extra information of the band, sometimes promoting tour dates.

I took all of the above into account whilst creating my music video, CD and Print ad and after discovering our band 'HOUSE' is playing soft Rock we set about looking for codes and conventions we could follow and analysed similar bands promotional packages. I thought it was a good idea to ask 'HOUSE' if there are any bands they base themselves upon so we could have a deeper, more exclusive research stage, one that they mentioned was 'Kasabien' and you can see in a previous post I have analysed their music video. It became pretty evident that the main feature of Rock videos is band performance, showing all members individually playing their instrument but more frequently focusing on the lead singer who is 'the face' of the band and the whole band playing together. Other narratives in soft rock are usually quite light-hearted, taking 'Blink 182' for example who often have humerus narratives. It is evident that we applied these stylistics above to our own work, making performance the main focus and following the usual set up and performance footage (such as vocalists close-ups) and I noticed from doing similar artist research that most of the artists are very casual in appearance, so it was important we kept 'HOUSE' looking similarly casual which is how they wanted to be represented. I also took typical stage lighting into account with its main purpose to light key areas, but to also make sure each member stands out from the black background and to make the set look more interesting. I used certain ideas from other rock videos that I have studied that I thought would work well, such as the last shot where the camera zooms into the last strum of the guitar - although this is quite a common shot I thought it would fit in perfectly with the end of the song.

However when regarding the narrative of our music video, we began to develop what we found during our research - although we kept the feel light-hearted, we also made it heart-warming. With the song being 'Kiss Me', kissing of course needed to be the main focus, so we set about getting home-videos and random members of the public showing each other affection then applying it to our video as a montage in between shots of the band performance. Affection isn't usually something you would see within a rock video but our development of this typical view worked well and got good response. We also began to develop usual conventions by using hand held shots for the narrative, you would probably see hand held shots in Rock videos when the band is backstage (which would only be a few short seconds) - but we used this 'personal touch' technique for almost half our completed music video as it help makes the showing of affection more realistic than it would be if it were properly stage set-up. We also developed ideas when regarding cinematography, using original shots to make our video unique, taking the shot where the camera is strapped to the end of the guitar for example - we got good feedback from all areas about this shot and I think it works well stylistically and creatively. We tried too add in another original shot where the vocalist holds the camera and spins round whilst singing into it, however this did not get as good feedback, proving to us that trying to be original does not always work.

I think that our CD cover and Print Ad is a very original idea, and instead of using ideas from real media products, we challenged them. The image we used is quite distorted, and instead of the band being the focus we decided ideologies from the song should be the main feature. To apply this idea we took a picture of our class mates in a 'just about to kiss' pose - obviously relating to the song 'kiss me' - and then set about distorting it to make it more interesting and so it fit in the genre of Rock using dark and red colours. Like most Pop promos, we used the same image as we did for our CD cover but developed it further by effectively repeating the image four times rather than two. The layout we used for both of these tasks is very similar to the ones you would find in real medias, having the image and band/album name as the main focus - then extra information such as track listings or tour dates as the next, then commentaries from the band or other reviews as small print.

Overall I think we used the ideas we analysed from other similar media texts and applied them to our own work, this is so it correctly fits the genre it belongs to and is recognisable to the consumers - but also developed these ideas to make them original, and to work with what we got as well as we could.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Of course when making a whole promotional package, it is important to ensure the music video, the CD cover and the print ad work together to promote the band - to make sure its familiar and suits the overall feel of the band and song in question. The music video itself works well as a finished product, we made sure we used the forms and conventions we learnt about during our research stage and applied them where appropriate. We also developed and worked upon our initial findings to create something that is familiar but original at the same time. Given our band and song is soft rock but with the main topic of kissing, it was hard to find the balance of something sentimental and to portray the personality of the band, I think given what we could work with (obviously considering limitations of location etc) we, as a group created a respectable piece of work. The video is light hearted and energetic yet emotional - which are three fairly hard emotions to collaborate! Given that the band performance was energetic, comfortable performing and exceptional on the instruments, we could use our knowledge of cinematography and editing techniques (such as interesting angles, fast shots and zoom ins) to really emphasise their performance and help define them in the category of soft rock, giving the 'HOUSE' correct portrayal and getting good audience feedback.

When we were happy with the finished music video, we then began to design our CD cover. We all brought ideas to the table and one of my ideas (as you can see in a few posts below) involved a couple just about to kiss, this image was mirrored onto itself creating two of the same image which I thought was very simple yet effective, we got our main inspiration of this image and developed it into our own idea. We agreed that instead of having a picture of the band, our image would have a better effect - and I believe it did as it was soft, yet distorted and slightly eerie - which is common in Rock band visuals. The same concept applies to our Pop promo as it is exactly the same image but has been expanded upon, making four reflections instead of two. I really like the effect of the images used in our CD cover and print ad, and although they are irrelevant to HOUSE - it brings across ideologies from the song and the genre of the band and ties them in together. The three elements combine and work well together perhaps not obviously, but when regarding ideologies and themes there are clear relations - such as love and affection seen through kissing and hugging on the music video and through kissing and emphasised colours of red on the CD cover and Print Ad - yet theres also something dark and 'Rock' involved such as band performance and a dark setting in the music video and dark colours and distorted images in the CD cover and Print ad.
The three elements promote HOUSE as a sentimental, light-hearted band but with a darker side which is helpful in showing their diversity and will heighten interest. Not only will it perhaps create a broader audience for their own band, but perhaps even soft rock as a whole as it will show two different sides to the genre. The creativity and ideologies behind the images used in the CD cover and print ad would also attract attention of potential buyers and listeners.

3: What have you learned from your audience feeback?
Of course our main target audience would be people who enjoy soft rock and are familiar with bands like ours. Typically, you would find the main age group this would fall under would be 13-25 so quite a young audience who are perhaps in bands themselves and are interested in this genre, also people within this age group generally seem to have more spare money to spend on self fulfilment and luxuries. In media terms, our target audience would preferably be classified to be of a social grade C2 and their VALS to be between strivers and experiences as this covers more of what our believed audience will be; young with expendable money who want to achieve something as well as emulate those that they admire such as the artists of the soft rock genre. Knowing that our age group is young and active, its important we can target them by advertising and promoting our band via popular communication sites such as facebook and twitter.

To make sure we attract our target audience, it was important we got as much feedback as we could - positive and negative. Right back at the beginning of the project, we proposed our fist idea to the media class; this idea involved a couple growing old together and seeing them as children, teenagers then elderly. We gained a really good response from the class and they all agreed it was a very unique and interesting idea, however, it was apparent that we all worried upon the topic of getting the right people to be our characters and eventually, to ours and the class's disappointment, the idea had to be scrapped. Upon proposing our new idea for the first time the main arising concern was that the montage of the kissing narrative could come across as 'cheesy' or 'cheap' so we decided to attack this problem head on by coming up with the idea that it should be shot in black and white. Typically, when something is filmed in black and white, usual connotations would be 'old' or 'classy' as there are no harsh colours or lights - we also decided to contradict the idea of it looking cheap by making it all hand-held, so it purposely looks like a home video making it more personal. Once we had finished our music video, the media class watched it and gave us their individual opinions, and luckily the narrative went down really well which was reassuring and was good on our confidence. Because we had more time to add some final touches and to polish our music video, we took all the feedback into account so we could no longer find faults, we done this by adding more kissing shots into the montage and to focus on the band when they and the song are being more energetic. We also learnt that our ideas of a casual approach regarding band clothing, performance and cinematography were equally admired and they all could identify our band being similar to 'New found glory' - who HOUSE was covering. This feedback taught me that you don't have to be clever, use lots of money and use special effects etc to produce a video, as sometimes casual has a better feel and promotes the band as easy going. Overall our video gained a really good response from the band and our other audience, they all strongly agreed we got across the right feel of the band and song. Media students agreed that the cinematography and editing techniques contributed well in way that promoted the band and made the most out of their energetic performance, agreeing that the pace and rhythm complimented that of the songs and liked how shots changed on a noticeable rhythm. However, with HOUSE not having the same media knowledge, they could only comment on how they were portrayed - and they all were happy and even shocked at how well they were represented, although, their only doubts they had about our final piece was that they felt too much focus was on the lead singer and would have appreciated more shots of the band as a whole. Unfortunately we couldn't edit further but it showed us how we could have done things differently. 

Regarding print work and images we used for our CD cover and print ad, we felt that it was important to propose our idea to some members of our media class by showing them the image that inspired us, they admired the original image but made comment that it would be too soft for a rock band album - inspiring us to use darker colours. We took on board what they said and made sure blacks and reds would be the dominant colours and decided to take 'the dark side' to a different level by distorting our image. When we began to work on our images on photoshop we had to bare in mind it was meant to represent a real CD and Print ad, and could also not forget the image of the band we were promoting. We distorted the picture enough to make it interesting and eerie but not enough to completely loose focus of the near kiss pose which was the right effect we wanted it to have. We also took the study of voyeurism into account and kissing, especially seeing someone else kiss is regarded as a pleasure - so by distorting the image of this pleasure makes it even more exciting and it encourages you to try and work the image out.

The final print work, like the music video, gained positive feedback. The use of the dark colours and the 'trippy' image made it evident that the band its promoting belongs to a rock genre. The print ad was especially admired because of the four image rippled effect and it almost looks as if there is a CD in the middle of the image. Students thought it was a creative idea to use one photograph and create two different styles of image out of it (one for the CD cover and one for the Print Ad) as it still it noticeably promotes the same band, but also 'mixes it up'. Font colours we used came from a colour sample of the reds in the image because we thought it would create a good effect to make it go hand in hand with the photo, but also because we didn't want to use too many colours which would make it loose the original effect we were going for, our audience agreed with this idea and thought it was clever to use the colour sample. The font style was also said to compliment the genre and theme as it was block capital writing with quite a hard appearance, which again is important to suit the rock genre. Our band agreed that the style of our print work suited their style and could easily work as their CD cover or Print Ad, however they also thought it would be would be better from a promotional point of view, that pictures of them should be on the cover. We knew this comment may arise but we explained how we believed having something unique and trippy as the front cover would attract passers by and would show creativity, they eventually agreed with this idea and were happier when we reassured them a picture of the band together would feature on the inside cover of the CD above a band commentary.
So all in all I think it's safe to say the audience and band feedback was positive and we throughout the project we took every comment into account and appreciated peoples input. I've learnt feedback and familiarising with the target audience turned out to be one of the most important thing whilst creating media texts, because without that you wouldn't know if you are on the right tracks to achievement and inspiration off other people can help you go a long way.

4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Of course throughout this whole project, new medias have been helpful and necessary. The Internet has been the main device in which we find information, images and feedback - most importantly, the blog in which we track every aspect of our course has been used religiously.

During the research stage, the Internet provided us with information that we needed to understand ways in which music videos and pop promos work; it was useful when learning about the history of music videos such as the rise of MTV, learning about star construction and promotion, genres, codes and conventions and much more. Once we were put into groups it was important that we could all pitch our individual ideas to each other, of course its hard explaining to people the exact visuals and cinematography ideas you have in your head so using various pictures and examples helped paint a picture. An example of this is when the idea of the split screen came about for our original pitch, knowing similar stylistics were used in 'Alors on danse' we used Youtube to find this music video to bring our ideas to life. The research stage also involved us needing to research our bands similar artists, again Youtube was helpful in this as we could watch bands such as New Found Glory and Blink 182 in a number of their videos to get an overall feel of how they're represented - we could then apply similar stylistics to our own work. I decided to also search through fan pages of these similar bands to gain a wider understanding of their target audience as I knew ours would need a target fan base like this, it was also evident through this what their audience does and doesn't like. And of course my Blog was used often through the research stage as it was necessary to document my findings.

My planning stage, like my research stage, relied heavily on the Internet; to express ideas and to explore similar medias. However, as things started to become more 'set in stone' more technologies were needed to get the project going. PowerPoint presentations were used to pitch our ideas to wider audiences, here we embeded videos and stills from Youtube to show examples and to bring our ideas to life by interacting with the audience and expecting feedback. It was also important that my group and I stayed in contact whilst out of the class room so it was possible to express our ideas at any given time, for this Facebook instant messaging was most useful, if not this then we would e-mail each other perhaps with compressed files of videos and pictures, texting and calling on mobile phones were used also and Twitter was used - not particularly to communicate one on one, but to broadcast our ideas to a large audience.

New medias were very important during our production stage and our desired effect could not have been achieved - if anything at all without them. Whilst filming our band, we used three big, professional TV set cameras embedded onto their own wheels for smooth tracking and movement which was important to keep things looking professional. The cameras also contained their own microphone, colour correction, focus correction and would allow change to depth of field and had a smooth zoom effect - these cameras where easy to use and produced very clear moving images. During the filming of the band we also used the studio sound system, which was surround sound and came out from the speakers clearly, this was useful for the band as they could mime over the top of something they have already recorded. It was impossible to take these larger cameras out of the room, let alone out in the streets to film our narrative!..so for this we used a hand held Sony Z1 Camera, which was also easy to use and contained its own microphone and light. After filming our footage, we then needed to edit what we had filmed to create our music video. Technologies we needed for this was the mac computers which included final cut pro, and it was the most likely the most important technology used throughout the project, my skills on this software had improved dramatically since last year and I became more confident when I experimented with it. Final cut pro was needed when; synchronising the song to the visuals, cut unwanted footage, line up each line in the correct time and pretty much creating the whole video, it resulted in something effective and made it appear professional. After using this software and was happy with the final product, we needed to use Quicktime to compress our final edit into a much smaller file, yet without effecting quality which ultimately made it ready to be uploaded onto Youtube and my blog.

The print production stage also required a number of technologies to make things possible, effective cameras were used firstly to get the best possible still image of the 'close to kissing' shot - we then used photoshop to manipulate the picture by adding in a blurring effect, a smudge tool, lighting tools, ripple effect and mirror effect. I enjoyed using photoshop throughout this stage as I could experiment with a number of different tools and effects and it was easy to use and produced effective images that you could control completely. Stills from our music video were also used via compressors to ensure our band featured in the CD cover along with other images we used from the Internet. Internet sites such as 'cooltext' gave us ideas on logos and fonts, although weren't used it helped expand our mind to different ideas.

The group evaluation stage also required use of new medias such as Prezi to make the final piece of our work as interactive and as interesting as possible by engaging the viewers.

Band Feedback

Of course, those opinions who's matter most is our clients - the band HOUSE. If we were to make a music video as a real job and were getting paid for it, its the most important thing to make sure the client is happy with the final product because they are the ones on screen who will ultimatly want to make money off it, promote themselves and impress followers, fans or potential buyers.

 My group and I were fairly nervous on the way to meeting our band, hoping they are happy with the work we have created - plus we havnt seem them since filming them a few months back! The whole band apart from the lead singer turned up to view our video, which was unfortunate because the singer was the main focus throughout. Our band, plus a few members of another band crowed round our sceen in excitement to see their very first music video, when the video ended the first thing I heard was 'Wow! that was really good, I'm really happy with that!' - Lead guitarist.

We then needed to get some feedback - hopefully with complete honesty, it was evident the band seemed genuine throughout the discussion, but we needed to bare in mind that the band did not have the same knowledge of media terms as we do

1. Are you happy with how you are portrayed?
 "Yes, it was awesome! I honestly didn't think it would be like that - I really liked it." (Lead guitarist)

"Yeh I've never made a video before so that's really cool, we look like a proper band - Do you have this on Youtube? I wanna show people (laughs)" (Drummer)

2. What did you like best about it?

 "Well I really liked the shot with the camera tied on the end of the guitar with the close up of my fingers playing it, it's such a cool shot - I've never seen that before! It looks like I'm actually playing it...but honestly, I liked all of it" - (Lead guitarist)

"Yeh I liked that shot, I also like how you have so many different shots - there was loads" (Guitarist)

"To be honest I cant even remember making that video (laughs) but yeh it's quite good isn't it!" (Alex - Guitarist)

"I like the shots of all the people kissing, the narrative bit. I didn't realise you were going to do it but it works well, it would of just been boring if it was us playing the whole time" (Drummer)
"Oh, and that end bit - where you zoom into my hand after the last strum of the guitar, that's pretty cool" - (Lead guitarist)
"I really wasn't expecting the quality of the cameras to be like that either" - (Guitarist)

3. Is there anything your unhappy with?
"Hmm I'm not sure really, I think there was too many close up shots of the singer James if im honest - there's too much of that" - (Lead Guitarist) (All agree)
"I'm not too keen on that hand held shot of James either really" - (Alex - Guitarist)
"I can't really think of anything, but as a musician, I could tell we wern't really playing live - you can tell I wasn't hitting the symbol" - (Drummer)
"Yeh I noticed that too - the same with the guitars that wern't plugged in. You notice these things and it didn't look proffessional. I guess thats not your fault though!" (Guitarist)

4. What do you think of the pace and rythm?
"Yeh it worked really well with the song, it was quite fast and there were loads of shots so there was so much to look at. How did you do that?" - (Guitarist)
"Well I wish we could have chose our own song because I'm sure we could make a better rythm! - but yeh, I like what you've done with it" - (Drummer)

5. What would you have done differently?
"I'm not sure really, I would probably use more props, make the set more interesting I rekon" - (Guitarist)
"Yeh I probably wouldn't want to do it in that same set, It would of been good to have a proper location" - (Alex - Guitarist)
What about outside? 
"Yeh, yeh outside! that would have been good" - (Alex - Guitarist)
"Yeh outside would be good, but I suppose it would be hard to take all the equipment out wont it, plus it was winter!" (Lead guitarist)

6. Would you make a music video again?

"Yeh deffinatly! it was quite tedious at the time having to do it over and over - but now I've seen how it turns out, yeh!" (Lead guitarist)

"Yeh I would, it was fun - I feel like a proper musician now, I wish I could do more! (Alex - Guitarist)

"I wish we could do it again, I wasn't feeling well at all that day so I wish I could have put more energy into it" - (Drummer)

7. Would you hire us if you become famous and need a music video? (laughs)

"Haha, yeh I dont see why not - you done a good job!" - (Alex - Guitarist)

(Group work by Emily Stansfield)

Our Music Video!!

Final CD design and Print Ad

As we approach the finishing line of our complete music video, we began to work on our final design for our CD cover and Print Ad. We decided to leave working on this near the end of the music video because we wanted to make sure we knew what the overall feeling and presentation of the band is and then make sure we can apply it to the print production.Each member of my group collected images and fonts off the Internet individually and then we pitched our ideas to one another. We all had varying ideas regarding the CD cover and print ad, and one of the images I found was a soft, artistically styled image of a couple just about to kiss, I thought this image was fitting as the song was called 'Kiss Me'. The original image can be seen on the right -->
My group, and other members of my media class approved of this idea and we all agreed we could base our own idea on this one. However, we all agreed complete imitation of this image would represent something far too soft for the image our band HOUSE, so we began to think of ideas in which we could make a similar image more dark and fitting.

Firstly, we needed to take our own picture that is inspired by the one above. For this we asked two members of our media class if they could be our models, we then went down to the studio so we could manipulate the lighting and setting to get our perfect picture. We used the same black curtain for the background as we did for the music video, to make sure we had a running theme of dark background, and then we staged the two models using 3 point lighting to get an effective picture. We played around with the positions of the lights and focus of the camera and came out with a picture we were all pleased with, this picture is on the left hand side of this page.

Once we got the picture we were happy with, we uploaded it onto a photoshop software on the mac computers. Whilst Josh continued editing the music video, I began to play around with effects, colours and lights on photoshop, just to get comfortable with the software and see whats possible. I really like the effect of the smudge tool as it distorted the image slightly but was still recognisable, so I applied this effect to the final image. I also added in extra spot light in the middle where the heads nearly joined to show connection and just to get in extra light pin points, I then darkened the image so only blacks and reds were the predominant colours, the colour of the font is a colour sample taken from the reds evident in the original image . I done this because I always had to bare in mind that our band belonged in the Rock genre and it was important this was portrayed. Rita then started to work upon the image I had already made, and found the ripple effect which ultimately completed our desired effect. I love the distortion and colours used in our final design, it fits well with our song, our band and the genre of the song. To make the CD cover look as realistic as possible, we added in barcodes, company labels and track listings.

Not only did we have to design the outside of the CD cover, we also had to design the inside. For this we decided we needed to have images of our band HOUSE and decided to get a still from our music video as we thought it would look good to show the band in their stage gear and with their instruments. We also added in a band commentary to make the design more realistic.  

Once we had finished this we began to concentrate on our Print Ad, the print ad needs to hold a strong resemblance of the CD cover as the purpose of the Print Ad is to effectively sell and promote the band and CD. Using the same image, we thought it would be effected if we expanded it slightly by having four 'reflection' instead of two. The effect we ended up with reminded us of a kaleidoscope, which then inspired us to name the album Kaleidoscope instead of Kiss Me as we felt it suited our band more. To ensure the Print Ad looks as realistic as possible, we involved tour dates, facebook and twitter promotions, quotes from Zane Lowe and RollingStone. As a group, we are very happy with our final designs of the CD cover and Print Ad, and although they don't particularly promote the band by using their picture, it promotes the song, the genre and would attract attention of passers by and potential buyers.

 

Powerpoint presentation

Risk assessment

Locations, props, costumes

Group diary through the pre-production stage

January 2011 has begun and in doing so so has the planning for the filming of our music video ‘kiss me’ performed by house. So far the ideas from myself, Rita and Emily are being scanned through and an overall agreement will be made very soon as to which ideas will be used. First things are to correlate the whole pop promo making sure aspects that are to be used will have a matching style throughout. This will therefore make the overall pop package themed towards HOUSE making it easier to be made aware who and what your looking for.

Mid January:- After much deliberating we have decided to use Emily’s idea as the narrative. It follows a young couple through their relationship from the beginning through to the near end, transitioning between young couple and old. We will be including my idea of filming this via a split screen technique. This way we can focus on certain affections such as holding hands in one half of the screen and a sexual gaze/kiss from either male or female in the other side of the screen. Rita’s idea of mise-en-scene such as dress attire and locations were taken into account and an overall agreement on location was achieved. The location would be within a park and using a stand out object in the park such as a tree would be where our couple in love would continually go back to. This would also help show the transition from the young aged couple to old aged couple.

February:- The bands live performance has been shot!!! HOORAH The cogs have finally begun moving as the music video has moved in the production phase. We used the studio in the media department at 6th form and darkened in with black cloth. We then used lighting to develop shadows upon our band members faces and body and back lights to allow light to shine upon the groups figures. This gave out a nice effect especially on the lead guitarist. The only problem we seemed to have was that the studio was quite small therefore we couldn’t help but shoot some of the ceiling as well as some of the members of the band were extremely camera shy whilst others weren’t. This then made some of the shots of the awkward band members hard to use as it was quite dull to be seen!

Mid February:- Editing has been underway for a while now and the main cause for concern was that we hadn’t shot enough different shots of the bands performance. This wouldn’t have been such a problem if I song wasn’t so fast pace. This therefore needs constant cuts to the music especially when it speeds up during the chorus. This would therefore keep a continuous flow of music:visual, which would also be pleasing aesthetically. this in mind, we are still awaiting our couple of actors who will be playing the part of the narrative which means that more shot sequences will be on the way.

March:- Disaster has occurred! The narrative contained flaws to the overall plan. This therefore has caused we, the group to rethink the whole narrative and approach it at a different perspective. The problems we had firstly were the technicalities of what we were trying to achieve in the sense of a split screen styled music video. Secondly we couldn’t find ANY actors young and or old willing to act romantically in front of the camera. Thirdly, we were running out of time fast. The final deadline for coursework isn’t too far away so our previous idea for a narrative had to be scrapped. The new idea is to collect a vast amount of shots of kissing couples from the general public. This will give the video a more natural feeling. Though the possibility of getting some very negative feedback from the general public is a given!

Mid march:- Ok. Finally we have all the necessary shots that are required to finish of this music video production. With the inclusion of our kissing couples, the video not only will have this natural, comfortable feeling of seeing happy couples kissing but it will also contain a live performance of the band which should make it seem to the viewer that they are there watching this occur. that’s the idea anyway. After the editing is finally finished I will post an overview of what was good/what was bad and what needs to be changed after receiving feedback from the panel of viewers.

(Work done by Joshua Featherstone)

Crew Roles

My group consisted of myself and another two A2 media students, although our teach chose our groups for us we was all happy to be working together as we each have our strong points within media studies and could take control of our specialized areas to produce our best possible final piece.
As a group we did all take turns in all areas of pre and post production, however for the bulk of it we stuck to our individual roles.

Josh Featherstone: Editor...Camera...Set designer
Ana Rita: Producer...Music control...Set designer
Emily Stansfield (myself): Cinematographer..Camera...Set designer

Description of my role: As cinematographer my main role was to make sure everything on-screen was exactly how we wanted it; this varied from lighting positions, crew and band positions and camera angles (we used three cameras and done three takes with all of them in different positions, ultimatly leaving us with nine takes). I also had to make sure the band was up-to-scratch in performance (although they didn't need much encouragement) and to ensure we have all our desired shots before wrapping up. I enjoyed taking on this role because when I have an image in my head, I will try my hardest to make sure it becomes reality to the best possible standard. During the editing stage, when group member Josh went through our various shots I helped choose what footage is usable and works well.
I also worked behind the cameras during filming, for this I had to ensure we had as many interesting shots as possible. I used zoom ins and outs, tracking and panning in various positions of the room to make sure we cover all areas of the band, I was aware that some moments of my filming was wobboly or just a general bad angle but I knew we had and would get many more shots - although I would still correct my areas to ensure all shots we did get was of a high standard.

Description of Joshuas role: Josh felt the most comfortable when it came to editing, and he really was brilliant at it. For this he used final cut pro on the mac computers and was knowledgable when it came to this software. After we all looked through every take from all cameras and chose which ones we prefferd and what would work best, Josh began to cut takes and put together a rough sequence. I think the hardest bit was trying to make the music and the footage in sync, and after many trials and errors he managed to do this well. Finding the best footage from nine different takes to go in the right space took a fairly long time, but once we was all happy with the rough edit - Josh then began to polish the edit by making cuts sharper and more in tune with the music.

Josh also controled some of the cameras whilst filming to make sure he got shots he was happy with and also helped ensure we were happy with the set.

Description of Ritas role: Rita took on the role as a producer, she helped ensure the rough edit turned into the final edit and that we were all happy with the final production. She also came up with the idea of a montage of couples kissing and went out to get some shots of this from her family. Rita was good during the research stage as she enjoys this genre of music more than the rest of us, so when discussing target audiences and audience profile, her knowledge helped. She also knew the general feel simular music has to offer - so we tryed to portray this throughout our own production. Rita also helped during the filming by working one of the cameras, but what she done more of was the music control - making sure the band knew exactly when to start playing at the right point of the start of the music.

(Group work by Emily Stansfield)

First audience viewing and feedback

First viewing of our rough edit to an audience received many good reviews which helped increase the groups confidence as a whole due to our previous ‘scrapping’ of our original narrative idea. Once we had to re-think an idea for more of a performance based narrative and not a conceptual type, the confidence we had had before was beginning to waver due to the music video beginning to feel not as strong as it had been. Therefore our first screening definitely helped to boost it back up to previous levels.

Firstly the overall belief was that it faired well with the genre of pop-punk. That the band was definitely performing to their fullest, such is seen from previous pop-punk bands such as blink 182 and sum 41 (bands that have been analyzed in previous posts) Also an overall sense of achievement was felt once the audience likened it to ‘Newfound Glory’ and the type of music videos they made. This was excellent due to ‘Newfound Glory’ were the band that our band were covering!

There was also agreement that the clothes worn helped to convey a more comfortable approach to a band performance instead of having them wear matching tops or accessories etc which was good to hear, especially as the band had wanted this also. The production values were favoured. The shots used especially the zoom into and out of certain band members performing was enjoyed as again it helped to convey a more comfortable perception of the video as well as creating a point of view approach to the music video and also helped to compete against standard conventions of music videos that are seen today. Due to zooming in and out of band performances is a rarity now.

Mise-en-scene such as location used was favoured throughout. The fact that lighting had been used from the top of the studio and from the back of the performers helped to cast a shadow upon aspects of the bands face as well as giving of a slightly angelic effect upon their skin, causing it to glow.

One piece of cinematography that truly stood out to many was the handheld shot of the lead singer. This was created by giving the camera to the lead singer to hold when performing as if to express the feeling that he is singing to you the viewer and you only.
The chosen narrative to replace our previous idea was to collect a large amount of shots of kissing couples from the general public. This again was to convey a more comfortable/natural approach to the music video which was agreed as a whole from the audience. This certain aspect was considered one of the best parts of the music video.


Editing was suggested as good overall and that the pace of which it was being cut too helped to make the music video a success. Specific parts of the video the audience favoured due to the editing is when the chorus of the song begins to end. In this we chose to cut between the different shots that we had of the band to the quickened beat of the song as the chorus ends and the next verse of the song continues.

Specific improvements that were advised to take were as follows. It wasn’t necessarily the band performance that was required to change but the performance based narrative that we had chosen. Firstly a blur into the shots of our kissing couples was believed to be felt a good idea as this would soften the transition from band performance to kissing couples. Secondly, the colour of the kisses should be different. This was due to the colour of the band performance was mainly of a black backdrop with lighting involved to add character to the shoot. This added a more black and white approach to the performance.

These shots of our kissing couples were full of colour and it was criticised by the audience as creating a slight juxtapositioning to the two different shoots. And lastly there was a desire by all to add more shots of kissing couples as it was felt that there wasn’t enough in the music video.

Overall, not too bad a review for a first viewing of our rough edit!

( Group work by Joshua Featherstone

Audience Profile

Ollie:

Ollie, is a only child and he like art, and animals.
He listens to mainly Melodic Death metal bands like Dead by April and Sonic Syndicate, but he also likes alternative rock bands such as Green Day and Killdozer.
Likes hanging out with his mates in the park, getting drunk and going to house parties.
And Ollie absolutely loves the Inbetweeners.

Sarah:

Sarah is one of three siblings, she is the youngest, and she is 17 years old.
She really likes alternative rock bands, including Cage in Elephant, Cobra Starship, Death Cab for a Cutie and Paramore.
She goes to sixth form and likes hanging out with her fellow scene kids. She loves her big group of friends and her family. She enjoys drawing and being creative, she can play the guitar a little bit.
Sarah watches CSI, Twillight, Vampire Diaries, Jersey Shore and Tim Burton Stuff




(Group work done by Ana Rita)

Group Final Idea: Synopsis and Treatment

With our deadline for course work approaching, my group and I began to panic about our first initial idea. Although it would of been brilliant if it were achievable, we experienced some difficulties during the production stage. Firstly, it was hard to get together 3 different sets of people who were happy to be filmed being intimate and who had enough time to spare to be in our video and the idea of a split screen was too out of reach, especially when considering our time limit. We did actually do a test of split screening where we had to have a grid on the screen of the camera and keep the actor only on one side, for example, when we filmed the female we had to make sure she was on the left hand side of the grid at all times - and using a different camera, the male must stay on the right hand side at all times. After filming we could merge the two takes together to create the split screen effect, but of course to film a whole narrative like this would be very time consuming and difficult to create the exact look we were hoping for.
With that idea scrapped, it was clear my group and I had to come up with a different idea for our narrative quickly, as by this point we were starting to film the band performance.

Final Synopsis: The final idea for our music video would involve a band performance in the college studio, we would have prefferd to locate them somewhere more adventurous and perhaps outdoors but we had to think about practicalities and budget, not to mention we were filming in the middle of winter! Although we have a basic set to work with, our knowledge of lighting and mes-en-scene would help create a professional, interesting 'stage' for the band to perform on. Soft and hard lights would be used in a way to A/ focus on important areas (mainly meaning the lead singer) and B/ To create depth from the black curtains surrounding them, making the band step out from the back ground instead of blending in. The band would be dressed in casual, yet a little more dressed up than everyday clothing - like they effortlessly look 'cool' which would be part of their star construction. Their set-up would be the typical band set up, with the lead singer at center front, drummer at center back, lead guitarist one side and the other two guitarist on the opposite side. We would get as many shots as possible - using different angles, depths and camera movement in order to make sure our video is exciting and fast and also to make sure each band member gets camera time to do their thing and get recognition. Like many similar bands to House, we would like band members to be fun and energetic in performance, with hopefully some sort of interaction with each other to show their closeness, again which wold help their star construction.

Our music video would not only involve a band performance, and like other videos, we would need a narrative. Not straying too far from our first idea of a young couple growing old together with shots of kissing throughout, we decided to get a large variety of kissing and hugging shots from the general public or family members. What we wanted to portray through this idea was a general feel of love and affection, from all age groups and all different reasons to love, it would be quite a personal, emotional and light hearted montage throughout the video which would suit the music and topic of 'Kiss Me'. When regarding mes-en-scene and props, we must consider that our band would only be in a small college studio and not many props would be needed - just having the band stand infront of a black background with spot lights and stage lights surrounding them would be enough, and would also bring all attention to the band - the idea of our video is quite simple and 'home made' as it is, so I think the simple set fits into this theme. We would not really be able control the set, location or props of our narrative montage because we are just going to be asking the general public if they would be happy to quickly kiss for the camera (of course after explaining the reason why we are filming!) - but we're not anticipating a certain location because again, we are after a natural, home-made sequence.

(Group work done by Emily Stansfield)

Group First Initial Idea (not final)

Synopsis: After we came up with our ideas individually, my group and I got together to put all of our idea on the table. My group really liked my idea of a couple growing old together so we decided to go with that, of course the location was not possible to go ahead with, so as a group we thought perhaps we could use some sort of tree as a meeting point for the couple - perhaps with a calved in heart to represent their lengthy love, with the tree being a symbolism for something that is alive and growing. The visuals would relate to the lyrics that often refer to nature 'Kiss me, down by the broken tree house' 'Beside the green green grass'.We also agreed to shoot the band performing in the college studio with interesting spot lights and stage lights focusing on key areas and band members to make it more professional and so they would stand out from the black back ground. Filming in the studio would be a lot more practical for us and the band, we could also use the bigger, more professional cameras on the dolly's so we could track and pan easier and smoother.
We agreed costume would be dressed up but casual for the band and we also came up with the idea that one of the actors from the narrative would wear a certain piece of clothing (we thought perhaps the male was to wear a red top throughout the three stages of the narrative) which would help represent he is one person, because of course it would be hard to find three characters which could pass as the same person.

Treatment: One member of my group also came up with a brilliant editing idea for the narrative - we thought using a split screen (the right side concentrating on the female and the left on the male) we could also use the different sides of the screen to show the same scenario, but at different angles and different depths. For example, the right hand side has a close up of holding hands, whereas the left hand side perhaps a long shot of the couple holding hands..seeing the whole of their body. We would also follow my original idea regarding cinematography - making sure there are many close ups of intimate expressions or actions, making sure we apply the concept of voyeurism (looking) and making kissing a key element . Of course this means there would be a wide variety of shots and would keep the video interesting and unique..the inspiration for this idea came from 'Stromae's' video 'Alors on danse' - Snap shots of this video can be seen on the right hand side. To achieve our desired effect for the music video we would need to use final cut pro software on the Mac computers. Here we could easily log on what we filmed to edit and manipulate the shots until we're happy with what we created. We would also use a variety of cameras to film different angles of the performance and narrative, by using three cameras instead of one would speed up the process incredibly.  

Individual idea for CD cover

As I mentioned in my introduction, we have not only been given the task to make a music video for our band but we also have to make a whole promotional package which includes a CD cover. I would like to have a go at designing my own from scratch to ensure I can create it exactly how I would like it, I may have a go at this after I get a few ideas together, but for now I have collected a variety of images that I like the look of and think could work with our band.

I chose this image because obviously the theme of our song is kissing. I could have chosen a simple picture of just a couple kissing, but i really like the effect of this picture - its very soft, creative, unique and could quite easily be an album cover. I also like the colours used, they are very calm and easy on the eye. However, it doesn't exactly relate to the band as much as I would like, there needs to be more of a rock element.

These pictures are very different to the one above. I chose the one left because it is very simple, yet artistic. The guitar here is obviously used to represent the Rockiness of the band, but because they aren't exactly heavy metal or grunge I thought the details on the guitar make it look softer and therefor suites the genre of the band and song better. Its a similar idea why i chose the picture on the left, its simple - yet still contains music images which ties in the kissing and the song. However, i feel that these two pictures are too simple and wont show of the band to a desired effect.

 

I also tried out some different fonts using 'Cool Text'. The name of the band has to be noticed on the CD cover to grab attention of potential buyers. I prefer the font and the style on the left example as it looks quite classy and professional, it would also stand out and it is clear to read. However, the one on the right does look quite stylish and could quite possibly belong on a CD cover, it doesn't look as professional and wouldn't stand out as much..its also fairly obscure and difficult to read.

                       This is my individual mock CD cover, the main reason for doing this was to start using photoshop and get familiar with the different effects. The two images at the top represents the front and back cover whereas the two at the bottom represents the inside. You can see the image I used for my front cover is also used at the top of this post, however I edited the image to my desierd effect, using brush strokes, colour control, blurring tools, light effects and other photoshop tools. To make the CD cover look more realistic I added in bar codes, record labels and perental advisory labels. However I do realise that non of these images can be used for our real CD cover design as I got all the images of the internet so it would most probably be illegal or frowned upon if I use them.