Our Directors Commentary

Music Video Evaluation

1. In what ways does it develop, challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I feel that our video challenges a lot of the conventions of a usual music video, a lot of artists try to show off their glamour and fame whereas we decided to not take our selves too seriously. A lot of the videos we analysed for example Rizzle Kicks involved some humor which is not always in the big videos so this this also challenged some conventions and we thought we'd try and incorporate this as well, also as our band falls into the same sort of genre.
A lot of our shots were quite random and this usually is not a usual convention in real music videos as videos generally show the story line of the song incorporates the lyrics quite literally, so this relates to Goodwins points of visuals and lyrics, another typical example of this is lip sycning and generally all the words are lipsynced and we decided against this and went to go straight for visual and music,  showing instruments and the band whistling to the song also we edited a lot of our shots to cut on the beat, this works really affectively as it makes the viewer really get into and expect the next humorous shot.
voyeurism was also a good point in our video, we wore very similar clothing to each other and also to other artists of our genre., this helped to show that the artist was modern and people can relate to the artist.

2. How effective is the combination of our main product and our ancillary texts?
In our video, digipack and magazine poster work quite well in conjunction with one another. All the images on the digipack and poster are taken form the video and they are all good shots that fit nicely together. I think that would work well together. I think that would work well in selling our product, because if someone saw the poster and wanted to look for the digipack they would find it easily, due to the similar design.
I think the design is very professional, so this could give off a good impression to the buyer. Our digipack and poster can almost give of a false image of the artist and this is also breaking conventions of a usual digipack as it is quite ironic and may not be selling the artist for what they are, or how we portrayed them. All three of our products would be good at attracting the target audience, and more, as from the seriousness of the poster to the fun filled shots of the video.
all the images help to create an image of an of the artist, in the case of ours we make the band seem quite quirky and different to other artists around at the moment, as shown in our video we made the song very fun and very different to a lot of different artists around.

3. What have learnt from the audience feedback?
We have received a lot of feedback from all three of our products, and generally they where all quite good on a our first ideas and rough cuts. Our digipack started of slowly and we changed ideas on more than one occasion with our teachers helping us in the right direction, and finally i think we ended up with a good product that got good feedback from everyone that saw it.
When we finished our rough cut, we showed it to our class and teacher and the only bad feedback we got was that we didn't have enough lipsycning, so we went out learnt more lyrics and then added it in, we than took more advanced shots and made all of our video better as the start wasn't as advanced as our ending was so we improved this and it was shown in our feedback after our final cut.
From our feedback we think we need to tone it down on the randomness and maybe needed to add more shot such as instruments, so we did adding the high hat and the other drums made it really affective and timed remarkably well

4. How did you use media technologies in constitution, research, planning and our evaluation stage?
 To make all three of our products we used, photoshop and Final cut express, we got used to both these programs quite quickly, mostly Final cut as we have used it before last year for coursework and for our preliminary. Some of the things we used in Final cut that we may not have used before was the split screen, this looked very effective in our final cut, I am proud of it and it makes it look very professional and advanced. Also we used colour corrector, i used this on the blue and red flashing lights of the police car and it looks very effective, although it took a long time it worked out a lot better than I even hoped. To research we used Youtube using safari, this was very helpful for ideas for the band (watching other of their videos and also looking at similar artists videos. We used blogger to put our ideas on and our diary etc.

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.

Digi pack cover

magazine final version

YAY!!!!!

Plan for the weeks ahead.

28th November Monday- Timed response to evaluation Questions
30th November Wednesday- No lesson. Type up timed response onto the Blog. Prepare your script.
1st December Thursday- Filming your script- 45 minutes in studio only.
5th December Monday- Editing.
7th December Wesnesday- Editing deadline.
8th December Thursday- Hear feedback on script.
12th December- /finalise blogs.

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.