Our Directors Commentary

Music Video Evaluation

How effectively is the combination of your media product and ancillary texts?
 I think that our media product and our ancillary products work really well together, in our media our favourite type of editing was using the splitscreen effect for the whistles. We used this same feature on our DVD cover and promotion poster, splitting different pictures up. The pictures used in both the poster and the DVD cover are stills from our music video. We also used the same font on both of the ancillary products to get the same feeling throughout our digipack. Our reasons for using the softening of the images and the black background was to make our DVD cover easily recogniseable if you had seen the poster beforehand. The pictures were picked for a reason, the reason being that the band we choose; "Everything Everything" are a very random and odd band, although they are slightly different from the DVD case and the poster they do both have the same feel about them so this works really well. The lyrics were very unusual so i felt that by using random images it tied in with the band really well. The four band members don't feature on the DVD cover or the poster, as i think they are quite a mysterious band and aren't all about the publicity so we didn't use them on the ancillary products.

In what ways does your media product use, develope or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We followed Goodwins theory in the making process of our music video, firstly the clothes that we wore really suited the genre which was Indie, we wore clothes such as jumpers, cardigans, chinos, large coats.. etc. By wearing the same sort of clothes it sells the artists quite well as it makes them look really like a band, we also tried to give each band member their own unique personality, however im not sure that we did this to the best of our ability, we also didn't really have a lead singer in the video and this is something we would look to improve given more time. Our video features lots of shots of a rural area with plenty of people moving round, this suited the song as its a very fast and pacey song, we also used this to show happiness and a certain amount of love between the band members which worked really well in terms of selling the artist. There was only one piece of intertextuality in our video and it was the symbol, we didn't really want to include a massive amount of brands in our video as Indie music is quite untainted by the major brands and makes so we tried to continue this theme throughout our video. One of the major conventions is how the lyrics and the video fits together, we used very random shots in the video and cut on the beat to make it fit in well with the pacey song. We used close-ups, longshots, wideshots, high and low angle shots. We also used zooming in and out effectively. My favourite piece of editing is the bit with the 4 telephone boxes where we filmed 4 different clips of each of the band members in different telephone boxes and we came out of them and went back in, this looked really good we came to editing it together. The lyrics we had didn't really offer us a narrative so we did just use random shots but i think this looked really good in the end.

What have you learnt from the audience feedback?
In all 3 stages of our work we were given feedback by our peers in the class, we always tried to listen to what the class had to say about our work as the class are in our target audience so their opinion definitely matters. The feedback from our class was really appreciated and although they thought that we needed to add a bit more commitment to the singing as they thought the words were too fast for the effort on the faces of the singers. They also thought that some of the shots were a bit shakey but i think that the reason for our shots being shakey was so that it looked like the band mates were just having a good time so we removed some poorly placed shakey shots but did leave some in as we really thought they worked. I think that the feedback was really useful as it allowed us to correct some errors that we had not been able to pick up on due to us being slightly biased towards our own work. One piece of feedback was that the telephone box shot was too long, the reason for the length of the telephone box shot was because we felt that the piece of music didnt have any lyrics for around 30 seconds and it was a very slow beat so we didnt want to cut in loads of shots so instead we just put one base shot up to play throughout the sequence. When making our ancillary products we recieved feedback from our teachers, they told us how they thought that we should keep the splitscreen theme running through the ancillary products as the splitscreens are the main features of our video. We listened to this as we knew they had more of an idea about what needed to be in our digipack than we did.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
For the construction process of our media video we used FinalCutPro on the Macbooks at college, this programme was really good and suited our level of editing ability, there are more advanced programmes but i think it would take us too long to figure out how to use it and we wouldn't actually be able to create work as good as the work we have now. To get the footage for our music video we used HD cameras, these were a big improvement on the non-HD cameras we had used previously in AS. We did write to Everything Everything on their Facebook page and they sent us a reply telling us to watch a video where they discuss their album and talk about each song indepth, including Schoolin', this was really helpful during the research stage. We also reviewed Rizzle Kicks as we thought they were quite a hip indie/rap band, we screen grabbed the image of their album cover and we then reviewed it on Blogger.
Finally we used Blogger to record all of the feedback we recieved from our class mates, it was a really good place in which to type it up.
When making our ancillary products we found using Abode Photoshop was quite difficult as we had been only using Final Cut express before hand for a very long period of time so switching onto a new programme which we all knew relatively little about was quite challenging. We did eventually get used to using it and produced our DVD and poster to a standard which we thought was quite good.

1/12/11

Today we filmed our directors cut, it took us quite a while but we got what we needed and have good content.

Directors Commentary

There are two main different types of audio commentary -

• firstly there is partial or scene specific commentary which onl covers specific areas of the film. Sometimes these are recorded without the speaker viewing the film and the commentator may make more general comments than pointing out specific details.
• secondly there is feature length commentary where the speakers give their thoughts on the film and it is recorded by having the speaker watch the film from beginning to end.

The audio commentary is usually done by the directors and cast members however occasionally the writers and producers.

Digi pack cover

magazine final version

YAY!!!!!

Conventions of a Magazine advert.

These are a list of the conventions of a magazine advert:

• Title of the band
• The release date
• The age rating 
• Reviews 
• Pictures, should show the genre of the artists song
• Record label
• Text should be eye catching and show genre

With a magazine advert the main aim is to sell the DVD so the magazine ad should show clearly when and where it is coming out and who it is that is selling it. 

Conventions of a DVD cover.

On a DVD cover this is a list of things that should be included:

• A title
• Pictures of the characters or artists
• Age certificate 
• DVD symbol
• Tag line
• About the DVD
• The song list
• Synopsis

These all need to be included in a conventional DVD cover to show the content of the DVD and sell the artist.

Digitpak Research

1. analyse - a video/dvd cover/advert preferably from the same artist.

 - see if there is a running theme in all of them.
Yes, the location where the video was filmed has been used for both the DVD cover and for the advert, the song is about isolation and the theme of the dvd case is the two main characters being isolated from one another. The advert has a very professional finish to it and there isn't too much writing on it clogging it up. The way that the top and bottom of the picture has been blurred and darkened to give it a cold effect.

- discuss how they promote the artist.
They have put the main singer on the front cover of the DVD case with the secondary singer on the back. The artist does not feature on the advert but this helps promote the isolation.

- discuss images/font style.
The same style of image has been used for both of the advert and the dvd case. This gives it a good overall theme of the graffiti which appeals to the younger audience. The same font is also used in both of the advert and the DVD case giving it a good running theme.

2.  plan your own ideas plus upload photos/stills you use

Video Feedback

- The split screen was extremely effective
- Great shot variety
- The comedy was useful towards the type of song it was
- The lip syncing wasn't bad because of the speed of the lyrics
- They promote the artist successfully by by showing all members of the group when they are all together and separate in different shots
- They meet the genre conventions through the randomness of the shots within the footage
- The shot with the phone boxes was really good, good use of the fade transition

T2-40
WE LOVED IT
it meets the genre completely, group mentality, comical, selling the artist.
quirky, 'lads day in cambridge'
Fashion meets the genre.
Timed well, lip synced well.
really liked the split screening, and the multiple split screening, all the timing for the cuts was brilliant and fit in really well with the song.
Like how the end finished how it started but in rewind.
There's no narrative but there didn't need to be one because the lyrics and genre was all random and so that made the video interesting.
The only thing we would do differently, would be to add a bit more commitment to the signing.

T239
GOOD

Used loads of different techniques
Different camera angles
effective use of lighting and locations
fits with genre
appeals to the conventions
really enjoyable
Split screens

BAD
drags a little later in the song
camera is a bit shaky some times
ITS GOOD


T2-38

Good:

• SWANS
• Loads of variation in camera angles
• Lip synced reasonable well for the pace of the song.
• Ducks.
• Split screens used really effectively
• Ducks
• Colour correction on the police-car scene
• Randomly brilliant, no real story which worked well
• Swans.. 
• More Swans..
• Two swans in one shot..
• THE POODLE.
• Use of de-focussing camera
• Good use of camerawork, zooms, pans, tracks.
• SWANS.

Improvements:

• One split screen looks slightly odd with one addition
• The telephone box shot duration was a bit long but good effect.
• Some lighting is too contrasting

Our Response To Feedback

We agree with the criticism particularly that some of our shots are too shakey, however we feel that some  of these shaking shots add to the variety in our video. We're very happy that the animals are appreciated, as we thought these shots added to our video alot. We are glad that people understood the lack of narrative in our video, as the song offers no narrative either. Also that the lip syncing was very hard to do, people seem to think it was satisfactory!

Here it is!

Our video problem

our 'final cut' had some issues with it so we had to come and re-edit it.

Our Final Cut-music video

Diary Entry. Monday 14th November.

Today was our last day to edit!
We have now edited all or footage and we will now upload it to our blog. We have taken all the advice our other classmates and all our teachers have given us and tried to improve our video for the final cut. We feel it has gone very well today and we are ready to upload it.

Diary entry. Wednesday 9nd November

Today we are uploading the video footage we filmed on monday, we hope there is enough footage to fill the other few minutes of music.
After sending an email to Everything Everything we did get a reply however it wasn't as helpful as we had hoped. We asked them what message they were trying to portray in their song 'Schoolin'. We did this over facebook & one of their other fans posted a video where the band talk through each other their songs. We had already watched this video previously so this wasn't too helpful to us, however we appreciated their reply.
We hope to edit some more of our video today.

Diary entry. Monday 7th November.

Today we had our teacher watch our video to give us some constructive critisism. Essentially we were told to film more lip syncing and make use of more advance editing techniques.
After hearing this advice we starting creating ideas for different editing possibilities and quickly set out our footage to create some split screens, over the reoccurring whistling in the song.
We are filming tonight after college and this will be our final chance to film. We understand that we will be very rushed tonight, having to film 2 minutes worth of footage, as it gets dark very early.

Diary entry. Thursday 3rd November

Today we took our critisism from our peers into consideration and tried to correct some of the issues with our video.
After planning where and when we will film more lip syncing we left the classroom to go to film more footage of singing, drumming and whistling, including other 'random shots'. However unfortunately some of our footage was deleted, or not uploaded. We intend to upload the remaining footage next lesson.

Feedback from other students

Good feedback:

• Lots of shot types, angles and distances
• Good Location
• It is a fun video
• Interesting to watch
• Clothing is good

Criticism:

• Not enough lip syncing
• Sometimes a bit too random
• Some cuts aren't that smooth
• Could have more of a narritive
• Keep more footage of the band
• Make each band member have a character

Research into filters and special effects.

Blur, Border, Glow, Colour Correction, Channel, Distort, Image, Key, Matte, Perspective, Quicktime, Sharpen, Stylize, Tiling, Time, Video. These are all types of video filters which are used to make the footage more interesting and put a nice affect over the top of the original footage.

Research into transition types

Cut
The most common transition- an instant change from one shot to the next. The raw footage from your camera contains cuts between shots where you stop and start recording.


Crossfades
Crossfades have a more relaxed feel than a cut and are useful if you want a meandering pace, contemplative mood


Fade
Fades can be used between shots to create a sort of crossfade which, for example, fades briefly to white before fading to the next shot.

Wipe

One shot is progressively replaced by another shot in a geometric pattern.

Digital Effects

Most editing applications offer a large selection of digital transitions with various effects.