1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video used, developed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media products. This was an intentional idea, as we wanted to create a memorable music video, that doesn’t really resemble anything of the similar genre. The song that we chose, ‘Sister Siam’ by The Whip, had a very distinctive 80’s style electro pop feel, at first we wanted to embrace this by having a video that uses that synth-pop feel in it’s video. After spending a while looking into this we found that this is just too stereotypical, and as I said earlier, this is not what we wanted. We changed our idea dramatically, from being a stereotypical 80’s style music video, to something completely different. We came up with the idea to make a collage of different artists that resemble the feel that we got from ‘Sister Siam’. This is the first thing that challenged the forms and conventions of products from the same genre. We initially got our idea for the music video from a Red Hot Chilli Peppers music video ‘Dani California’. We loved the idea of putting many different artists in a video, although we weren’t fond of the fact that the artists that were represented in ‘Dani California’ had little or no relevance to the genre. We wanted to have artists in our video that represented the genre of our music. This brings us to the way we used the forms and conventions of other 80’s style music videos.
Because our song had that particular 80’s feel that isn’t really that recognisable in this present day, we had a dilemma to overcome. We had to decide whether to include artists in our video from the 90’s and 00’s. We decided not to in the end, coming to a conclusion that this would in a way overpower the music, which is what we really didn’t want to do. We decided to go with artists from mainly the 80’s and early 90’s, the synth-pop era. These artists were, David Bowie, Rick Astley and Madonna. All of these artists stuck to the conventions, as in they all came from the era that electro music was popular. After thinking of artists that we could use, I introduced the idea of using some artists who weren’t from that specific era. I suggested this as I thought people of a younger generation would have a hard time recognising all the artists that we are portraying. The artists we decided to add that challenged conventions were, The Beatles, Vanilla Ice, Westlife and Elton John. Overall this worked as it broke up conventions and the number of artists primarily from the 80’s and brought some individuality to our video because of it being unique to any other video from the same genre.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of our main product and ancillary texts worked really well as we knew from the start of the planning stage what we wanted to represent. We wanted to represent an 80’s style feel as well as a more modern feel. We achieved this in many ways. Firstly we got the main idea from our music video, David Bowie. Bowie is the first artist to be shown in the music video; we thought that this should mean he should be the artist to represent all our ancillary texts as well. Another reason for using Bowie as the focus was that out of all the artists shown in the music video, he was the most recognisable to the viewers, or at least we wanted him to be.
For our magazine advert we decided to go for a theme that would stick with the other products, we wanted to show our products with an 80’s feel to them. Our magazine advert had a picture of Bowies face on the front with a light blue patterned background. Written across the advert was a pink banner saying ‘Sister Siam -The Whip’. We used some filters over the image to make Bowies face look a lot brighter than it was in the original shot. We used a lot of bright colours as we wanted to represent the 80’s feel that the music portrayed.
For our Digi-Pak, we decided to go with a very similar image to the one we used for the ad. We used the whole of Bowies face but and made him look brighter again, but this time we put him on a black background and round his head were lightning bolts, we did this as we wanted the Digi-Pak to be very similar to the advert, but no too similar as to be exactly the same, we didn’t want the buyer to have seen the advert and bought the Digi-Pak only to find they looked exactly the same, we thought that would be quite tedious, and may have looked lazy. Instead we wanted to have them quote different but similar in such a way as to know that they relate to each other.
In all, the combination of our main product and ancillary texts worked really well. We managed to portray the fact that they were all supposed to be connected, but we also managed to show that they were, very individual to each other, making the buyer feel that they have a new product each time.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The first lot of Audience feedback we got was from the rough cut of our piece. On the whole the feedback for that was generally constructive criticism; people thought that our video needed more artists to be entertaining, because at that point we only had four artists in the video, as we were yet to introduce the others. Another criticism that occurred was that they couldn’t easily tell who the artists, that were being represented, actually were. We overcome this later on with the introduction of more noticeable artists like, Elton John, Vanilla Ice and Westlife. Some of the feedback we got mentioned the fact that our video was not finished; it had many shots which were blank as we didn’t have any footage to put there. We asked for suggestions as to what to put there and many people came up with ideas that we decided to add to our video. Some of these ideas were more shots of artists that were less represented in the video, like The Beatles.
After we had completely finished our music video, we had another chance to get audience feedback. On the whole the feedback for our completed production was very good. We found that people understood the comedy that we wanted to add to it. They also realised that we wanted to generally represent the 80’s style of music through the artists. Another comment was that at no way through they didn’t get bored. This was good as it is what we had tried to avoid from the start, we didn’t want them the audience to get bored as this wouldn’t make them want to buy the other ancillary products.
We also got some comments on our lip syncing; it was generally good apart from one point where it was slightly off.
In all our feedback for our final product was really good, the criticisms that we got were very small generally about cuts in the footage that didn’t seem to fit.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many new and existing media technologies in the construction, research and evaluation stages of our final product. The technology that became most useful was the cameras and media editing software. Firstly the Cameras provided us with technology good enough for us to film exactly what we wanted with as little stress as possible. In conjunction with the cameras, we used tripods to hold the camera in static positions, this was especially helpful when it came to close up shots, for example the shots of bowie where the camera panned down from above Bowies head, this would have been almost impossible to achieve without the use of a tripod as the shot would have been extremely shaky and end up looking awful.
The editing software that we used was ‘Final Cut Express’. Over the years I have got more used to the dynamics of Final Cut and have managed to use it in ways that I never thought possible. We had to use the effects capabilities a huge amount in our music video because without added effects such as, Green Screen, Saturation and Colour Hue, the artists would not have been represented in such a way so that the audience would recognise them without too much hinting. For example, we wanted the audience to establish that Elton John appears in our video playing the piano, to achieve the desired effect of an ‘Elton John Style Video’ we had to watch a couple to get an idea. The video that stuck out the most (as in representing Elton John) was his music video for ‘Crocodile Rock’. This video was rather grainy in appearance and seemed to have a slight pink hue to it. We managed to replicate these effects almost exactly. We used the built in effect called ‘hue and saturation’ to create the grainy/pink hue that we saw in Elton’s video.
Another effect we had to master was the green screen effect as we were going to use this quite a lot in our production. At first we had no idea how to do a green screen effect, so I decided to look on YouTube for a green screen tutorial for Final Cut, and from that we learnt how to accurately achieve our desirable green screen effect.
Photoshop played a big part in our overall completion of all our media products. We used it most for our magazine advert and Digi-Pak. We did come upon a problem that we managed to overcome, what we initially wanted to do with the style of our magazine advert and Digi-Pak was to have lots of fancy brush tools to stick with the 80’s theme that our music video was like, but after looking, we found there really weren’t any that appealed to us. We overcame this dilemma by downloading free brush tools of a website that we found from Google, this was great as it gave us a whole load more ideas as to what we could do with these brushes.
Another technology that we did use was a Canon stills camera. We used this camera as a way to document what we were doing so that we could look back later on in our blog to identify forgotten ideas and the like. Likewise we used blogs to also capture our ideas that we may have forgotten, for example we put images of possible locations to record and we put possible costume ideas. Without the blog, it would have been almost impossible to document all these possible ideas to look back on and replenish.
Patrick Hallett- Evaluation.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In a sense, I think our media product uses, develops and challenges convention depending on which aspect you look at it.
Our media product is fairly conventional in the scene that it shows the band performing the song- a performance video. Performance videos are a good way of ‘putting a face’ to the artist, a performance video can help sell an artist’s music. A standard performance video might show the band in any environment from one of their live performances to video filmed in someone’s front room.
One way we challenged conventions of real media products was with the concept of our music video- we wanted to show the ‘The Whip’ performing but not as The Whip, we thought it would be an interesting way to differ from existing products by having the band pay homage to other artists that we thought might have influenced them when they were writing the song. We wanted the video to although not be a ‘comedy video’ if you like, but rather a playful, lighthearted way for the band to be able to poke fun at themselves whilst also selling the music. I think that The Whip’s music although modern, has no doubt been influenced by older artist from in particular the 80’s. So we wanted the band to pay tribute to some of these artist in an interesting original way. Another way we challenged convention is by making a video that is not meant to necessarily overtly funny, it will still hopefully make people laugh. The entire video has been shot very seriously, we are not ‘messing about’, so it’s like the band has been asked to perform their music, and they are also having fun dressing up. The band do want to be considered a joke, but at the same time they do not want to take themselves to seriously or risk appearing boring.
One way we developed existing media conventions is how we chose to ‘replicate’ some existing music videos. If you take for example the opening shot of me (as the frontman/lead singer of the band) playing David Bowie (0:00-:43) we used many techniques give a convincing feel of a David Bowie music video. With regard to camera work, we used his ‘Life On Mars?’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ) music video as a template- the fist shot pans down from above the character and then down and rests at an extreme close up shot showing from below the top of the forehead to the mouth. The life on mars video is shot in a white studio, as this was unavailable to use, we were able to use a green screen to reach the same effect. The make-up we used was to whilst replicate the same make-up Bowie wears in the ‘Life On Mars?’ video it is do with a ‘modern twist’- this is again a figurative way of showing how the music by The Whip is modern, it is heavily influenced by other artists before them.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think that the combination of our 3 products work well to compliment each other sell the music. The main thing you’ll notice about the 3 products is the picture of me playing David Bowie. A similar image is used on both of the ancillary products that is the opening shot of the music video its self. I think this is an effective way of establishing a relationship between the 3 products. Similarly, we used the same blue and pinks on all 3 products that uphold an electro feel that is present across all 3 products as well as The Whip’s musical style and David Bowie’s. The image used contains me in my David Bowie costume and shows me in the same make-up across all 3 products. I think that a customer could become aware of the song/band though any of the 3 medias and know that they were all the same product. I.e. if a consumer saw the music video, they would know that it was the same product as the digi-pack on the shelve in the record shop as well as the advert in a magazine.
When we were deciding what image/images to use for our ancillary products that would best support the video. As a group as well as though external feedback we decided that the shot that best represents the music video was the David Bowie shots. Also, as the first shot you see in the video, we agreed that this would be a good shot to use for both of our ancillary products. When we were filming the David Bowie section, we a small photo shoot to make sure we had good images incase we needed them, partly in anticipation of using them for the ancillary products. The image we used was very representative of the footage taken and therefore the video and product as a whole.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We received a lot of very helpful feedback from the screening of our rough cut. Much of it positive, the David Bowie shot and the Vanilla Ice 'Ice Ice Baby' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE) shots got praise in particular, someone said that the David Bowie shots “looked very professional” and people very able to identify him as the artist. Other aspects of the rough-cut however very not quite as polished, and received some helpful constructive criticism that helped us improve in time for our final cut deadline. For example at the point of the rough-cut, the shot of ‘The Beatles’ or ‘Ringo Starr’ we’re unidentifiable they it just appeared to be a shot of a generic drummer. People said that they could not tell who it was supposed to be. Learning from this feedback, we went out and re-shot some bits and edited a background from a club that The Beatles had famously played in, and edited the video to black and white. As a result, after showing our final cut to the group we had better results. People said that they were able to identify the character as Ringo Starr. Although in hindsight, I think we should have spent more time working on costume and make-up to make him more identifiable. Another improvement it would have been good to include would be a shot of the 4 of us playing The Beatles collectively.
YouTube also played a useful part in our audience feedback process. After our rough-cut was finished, we uploaded it to YouTube and so were able to show family and friends at home. It was useful to get the views of other people who aren’t media students and is a far better way of broader representative demographic.
Another form of feedback that I found vital to improvement was feedback from within the group. The Footage of me playing David Bowie was the first filming we did. I remember finding it hard to lip sync, but as we did more and more filming I think as a group as well as personally we all learnt how to improve our own performances. I have Experience as a theatre director so I was able to apply skills I'd learnt doing that to this project. As a result, as the filming process went on we all got more conformable with the performance factor and this meant we got better footage.
In hind sight, I think if I was doing another music video I would have invested more time and thought into the construction of the mise en scene. This is because mise en scene in particular the costume and make-up is the most important part of establishing the character and vital for the audience to be able to identify who they are supposed to be playing. I thought that we did not give this enough thought when we were filming our video, making it harder in the edit.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The use of some new media technologies was useful in multiple stages of our research and planning and vital to the construction of our product.
After we decided on the concept for our music video, we needed to research existing artist music videos to decide which artist would be good to feature in the video. Among others, we used David Bowie’s video for his song ‘Life On Mars?’ as reference. In this case, YouTube was an in invaluable for us. At the planning stage, I used the YouTube video to see how i was going to do my make-up and costume etc. And even in the construction stage, I had the ‘Life On Mars?’ video running when we were shooting, studying it between takes, to try and get into character and get my mannerisms accurate to David Bowie’s.
It was not possible for several reasons mainly practicality and budget to shoot in some of the locations that we were hoping to set some of the shots of our video in. In one particular example, ‘The Beatles shot’ where the drummer is in a club in the 60’s replicating a live performance. As we were unable to actually do this we booked the use of the music room on site at Long Road, and used a green screen behind all our shots. We then used the internet to source an image that was then edited in Photoshop to our requirements- cropped and put though some filters including a black and white filter. At this point, we used YouTube again to watch online video tutorials for final cut express, to make sure we knew how to use the green screening tool. Once ready, we imported into our final cut project and used the ‘blue & green screen’ tool to remove the green background and then laid the footage over our image to create the effect shown in the video. WIthout the use of the green screen and the other relevant technologies it would have been very difficult to achieve the effects we were able to.
The use of final cut pro's 'key frame animation' was helpful, we used it to fade a shot in at 0:39 in our video and again to increase the amount of an affect in a gradient at 0:23-0:37. This is an effect that until recently has only been available in high-end professional products.
Though our music video, because we were attempting to give our video the feel that the footage was shot at different times- some footage was supposed to look older than other shots. One way we achieved this was by applying video filters to our raw footage in final cut express, using some knowledge that I’d gained from previous projects as well as again, tutorial videos on YouTube I added ‘hues’ and ‘noise’ filters etc. to give some parts of the video the effect of being old.
In a sense, I think our media product uses, develops and challenges convention depending on which aspect you look at it.
Our media product is fairly conventional in the scene that it shows the band performing the song- a performance video. Performance videos are a good way of ‘putting a face’ to the artist, a performance video can help sell an artist’s music. A standard performance video might show the band in any environment from one of their live performances to video filmed in someone’s front room.
One way we challenged conventions of real media products was with the concept of our music video- we wanted to show the ‘The Whip’ performing but not as The Whip, we thought it would be an interesting way to differ from existing products by having the band pay homage to other artists that we thought might have influenced them when they were writing the song. We wanted the video to although not be a ‘comedy video’ if you like, but rather a playful, lighthearted way for the band to be able to poke fun at themselves whilst also selling the music. I think that The Whip’s music although modern, has no doubt been influenced by older artist from in particular the 80’s. So we wanted the band to pay tribute to some of these artist in an interesting original way. Another way we challenged convention is by making a video that is not meant to necessarily overtly funny, it will still hopefully make people laugh. The entire video has been shot very seriously, we are not ‘messing about’, so it’s like the band has been asked to perform their music, and they are also having fun dressing up. The band do want to be considered a joke, but at the same time they do not want to take themselves to seriously or risk appearing boring.
One way we developed existing media conventions is how we chose to ‘replicate’ some existing music videos. If you take for example the opening shot of me (as the frontman/lead singer of the band) playing David Bowie (0:00-:43) we used many techniques give a convincing feel of a David Bowie music video. With regard to camera work, we used his ‘Life On Mars?’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ) music video as a template- the fist shot pans down from above the character and then down and rests at an extreme close up shot showing from below the top of the forehead to the mouth. The life on mars video is shot in a white studio, as this was unavailable to use, we were able to use a green screen to reach the same effect. The make-up we used was to whilst replicate the same make-up Bowie wears in the ‘Life On Mars?’ video it is do with a ‘modern twist’- this is again a figurative way of showing how the music by The Whip is modern, it is heavily influenced by other artists before them.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think that the combination of our 3 products work well to compliment each other sell the music. The main thing you’ll notice about the 3 products is the picture of me playing David Bowie. A similar image is used on both of the ancillary products that is the opening shot of the music video its self. I think this is an effective way of establishing a relationship between the 3 products. Similarly, we used the same blue and pinks on all 3 products that uphold an electro feel that is present across all 3 products as well as The Whip’s musical style and David Bowie’s. The image used contains me in my David Bowie costume and shows me in the same make-up across all 3 products. I think that a customer could become aware of the song/band though any of the 3 medias and know that they were all the same product. I.e. if a consumer saw the music video, they would know that it was the same product as the digi-pack on the shelve in the record shop as well as the advert in a magazine.
When we were deciding what image/images to use for our ancillary products that would best support the video. As a group as well as though external feedback we decided that the shot that best represents the music video was the David Bowie shots. Also, as the first shot you see in the video, we agreed that this would be a good shot to use for both of our ancillary products. When we were filming the David Bowie section, we a small photo shoot to make sure we had good images incase we needed them, partly in anticipation of using them for the ancillary products. The image we used was very representative of the footage taken and therefore the video and product as a whole.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We received a lot of very helpful feedback from the screening of our rough cut. Much of it positive, the David Bowie shot and the Vanilla Ice 'Ice Ice Baby' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rog8ou-ZepE) shots got praise in particular, someone said that the David Bowie shots “looked very professional” and people very able to identify him as the artist. Other aspects of the rough-cut however very not quite as polished, and received some helpful constructive criticism that helped us improve in time for our final cut deadline. For example at the point of the rough-cut, the shot of ‘The Beatles’ or ‘Ringo Starr’ we’re unidentifiable they it just appeared to be a shot of a generic drummer. People said that they could not tell who it was supposed to be. Learning from this feedback, we went out and re-shot some bits and edited a background from a club that The Beatles had famously played in, and edited the video to black and white. As a result, after showing our final cut to the group we had better results. People said that they were able to identify the character as Ringo Starr. Although in hindsight, I think we should have spent more time working on costume and make-up to make him more identifiable. Another improvement it would have been good to include would be a shot of the 4 of us playing The Beatles collectively.
YouTube also played a useful part in our audience feedback process. After our rough-cut was finished, we uploaded it to YouTube and so were able to show family and friends at home. It was useful to get the views of other people who aren’t media students and is a far better way of broader representative demographic.
Another form of feedback that I found vital to improvement was feedback from within the group. The Footage of me playing David Bowie was the first filming we did. I remember finding it hard to lip sync, but as we did more and more filming I think as a group as well as personally we all learnt how to improve our own performances. I have Experience as a theatre director so I was able to apply skills I'd learnt doing that to this project. As a result, as the filming process went on we all got more conformable with the performance factor and this meant we got better footage.
In hind sight, I think if I was doing another music video I would have invested more time and thought into the construction of the mise en scene. This is because mise en scene in particular the costume and make-up is the most important part of establishing the character and vital for the audience to be able to identify who they are supposed to be playing. I thought that we did not give this enough thought when we were filming our video, making it harder in the edit.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The use of some new media technologies was useful in multiple stages of our research and planning and vital to the construction of our product.
After we decided on the concept for our music video, we needed to research existing artist music videos to decide which artist would be good to feature in the video. Among others, we used David Bowie’s video for his song ‘Life On Mars?’ as reference. In this case, YouTube was an in invaluable for us. At the planning stage, I used the YouTube video to see how i was going to do my make-up and costume etc. And even in the construction stage, I had the ‘Life On Mars?’ video running when we were shooting, studying it between takes, to try and get into character and get my mannerisms accurate to David Bowie’s.
It was not possible for several reasons mainly practicality and budget to shoot in some of the locations that we were hoping to set some of the shots of our video in. In one particular example, ‘The Beatles shot’ where the drummer is in a club in the 60’s replicating a live performance. As we were unable to actually do this we booked the use of the music room on site at Long Road, and used a green screen behind all our shots. We then used the internet to source an image that was then edited in Photoshop to our requirements- cropped and put though some filters including a black and white filter. At this point, we used YouTube again to watch online video tutorials for final cut express, to make sure we knew how to use the green screening tool. Once ready, we imported into our final cut project and used the ‘blue & green screen’ tool to remove the green background and then laid the footage over our image to create the effect shown in the video. WIthout the use of the green screen and the other relevant technologies it would have been very difficult to achieve the effects we were able to.
The use of final cut pro's 'key frame animation' was helpful, we used it to fade a shot in at 0:39 in our video and again to increase the amount of an affect in a gradient at 0:23-0:37. This is an effect that until recently has only been available in high-end professional products.
Though our music video, because we were attempting to give our video the feel that the footage was shot at different times- some footage was supposed to look older than other shots. One way we achieved this was by applying video filters to our raw footage in final cut express, using some knowledge that I’d gained from previous projects as well as again, tutorial videos on YouTube I added ‘hues’ and ‘noise’ filters etc. to give some parts of the video the effect of being old.
Evaluation by Ryan Goodrum
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video uses, develops and challenges form of conventions of real media products because we had such a variety of different artist and performances. Even from the beginning with David Bowie, which you could say it challenges the genre of the music because it’s quite a techno track and Bowie isn’t really the type of artist that is know for his techno. The David Bowie section that we have, we got the inspiration from his music video “life on mars”. So we had to get our artist playing Bowie, and put them in loads of bright make-up and costume to get the same image from his original video. I feel that after the editing it came out really well and looks and feels just like his, and this is how we stuck to conventions of his video, but then broke conventions by putting it in to our track and other footage. This fitted really so this is how it developed from his original “life on mars” in to our video. The video has quite a lot of extreme close up, and we didn’t want this big striking face to just appear on the screen so we had a small gradual fade in to the Bowie section at the beginning.
For “the Beatles” section we took it right back to their first gigs at the “Cavern club” using green screens. We kept it close to the conventions on there own music videos but the complete other for our music which is very techno. We made sure that we had the right costume (suit), and that we had the chance to use instalments. So that we could get the best footage first time. (Good plan because we weren’t given the opportunity to use the instalments again). Unfortunately when it got to the editing we didn’t have any guitar footage so we had to fill the section with just drumming witch fitted ok but would have look much better with a small guitar section in the middle. We had green screened the whole of this section, and we had got a still image of the cavern club from “Google” and imported that behind the drummer, but we had middle shots and close up and only the drummer was moving and the background stayed the same and for a performance it didn’t look right, so we had to go back a change the scale of the image to the right proportions of the artist.
The next artist to follow was “Elton John”, and the inspiration was from his “Crocodile Rock” video. I think that the way that we have edited it and the costume that I wore was much more modern that in his video, this wasn’t intentional but I think that it looks much better because it fits much better with the conventions and genre of the music. The pink hue that we put over modernises it and also make it look like the old style of his video. I think that the bit that give the artist away is definitely the pink heart shaped glasses and the ginger hair, the audience can really see the intertextual reference. We didn’t gather enough footage in this bit so we had to use the same bit of footage at the end twice, you can also see where we have done this because it has a small jump. The only way around it was to re-shoot it, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time. The low shot of my feet is the same shot as in his video, but the costumes has nothing to play on, unlike in his video, where he is wearing giant platform silver shoes.
“Vanilla Ice” was a very difficult section the shoot because there was dancing and green screening all going on, so it took us quite abit of time in the editing stages. We tried to get the same kind of feel from the setting as he did in the warehouse because it really set the scene for the dancing. We got our inspiration from there “Ice Ice baby” video. I choreographed a small section of dancing the rest of the group to do in the performance, but unfortunately the footages looked really bad because the dancing was off time and it didn’t look right. So we went back and decided to do key frame editing (which is where you shoot just the setting for the duration that you want and then shot what you want, like the dancing, and then back in the editing you can layer them so I am dancing in the setting, it is all done with layers) and put just me dancing on there layered three time. It worked really well but because of the artificial lighting that we had it caused a small shadow to appear on one of the other layer, but you could see where it had been cropped. Also after the draft and feedback we decided that we need more footage of the “Vanilla Ice” section. We watch the “Ice ice baby” video again and thought of how we could make sure that the audience can see the intertextual reference, and came up with the idea of having a wall of graffiti behind the artist as the finishes the singing. We got the video from YouTube and then imported it in to our sequence and then speeded it up. We also took the edit of saturating the artist and then zooming in on him to fade in the next artist.
The next artist to follow was “Westlife” (or any other stereotypical boy band). Boy bands have a very clear stereotypical image and feel to there video, so we tried to keep ourselves very close to the conventions on them. We changed the video so it is black and white, with a small amount of a blue hue over the top. We also slowed it down so it was like a dreamy section that boy bands have. I think that we achieved the boy band look at the beginning, but then because we didn’t have enough footage we had to shot again, and we decided that we would go for the more up to date boy band, with the extreme close ups and the small amount of dancing. We didn’t really have a dance routine for this section but we thought that after following the “Vanilla Ice” section which had a dance routine, that it would be enough. We also tried to put a small amount of voyeuristic view toward them, being a boy band. We also put this slow part in where the music drops so there is a relationship between music and visuals and you can really pick it up and it completely changes the feel to the video. We had the slow walk toward the camera at the beginning of the section, so we had gone from a long shot to a extreme close up and we had to fade this out fast so that the audience had enough time to see the footage underneath and that the extreme close up would disappear before it got to extreme.
Then we had a section that featured all artists together, so that the audience had the time to remember and see all the artists again.
Then we had a small section of “Madonna” because we didn’t have any female artist. We didn’t want to take this part to serious because we want the audience to find it funny but for it to still fit with the feel and the paces of the video. There was a small amount of inspiration and intertextual reference form her “Like a Virgin” video. It was shoot as a close up of her singing and also shaking her head as if she were dancing.
The final artist that we covered was “Rick Astley” in “Never gunna give it up” we watched this video very carefully so that we could get the way he moved and the convention of his videos right. We shot in outside in the courts because that was the location on the video. The camera angles and the way he moved was just like his video. We lighting wasn’t quite the same because it had just rain in our video and it is in the middle of summer in there video. We tried to correct this in the editing by making it brighter and putting a very small white hue over the top and very slightly saturating it. It finished with a fade and the video very slightly slowed down.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The main product of the video to the ancillary text being the digi-pak and the magazine advert, I feel fit together very well. They fit together brilliantly because we use the first person you see in the video, David Bowie, on the front of both the digi-pak and magazine advert.
The digi-pak we decided was going to be a collector edition and we changed the layout of the template to having three sides so that you can fold one of the edges in. we had a photo of Bowie as the front and then quote, references, record labels and bar code. We took the photo during the filming of the section on a green screen and then took it to Photoshop and edited it by putting a different background and using brushes which we downloaded from other website, to further enhance the picture. We also made his eyes brighter and made his skin clearer with the clone tool. We also put bonus features on the back of the digi-pak so that it looked just like a real DVD. We did a very similar thing with the magazine advert, we took a picture while filming and then took it to Photoshop to be edited out. We made sure that we used the same colours and the same text in both of the ancillary texts, so that the audience can relate them.
We made sure that we were selling the artist as much as we could in all the tasks, from the digi-pak to the video and in the magazine advert. By using the same text in both of the DVD and the advert it came to be a kind of logo for the artist. We feel that the relation and the effectiveness of all products has a very clear and strong combination and correlation.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
After our rough-cut we got some really good feedback telling us that our video look good and the Bowie section look really professional, and then we had even more really good constructive crittersisum. This told us that we needed more footage in places and how we would edit the footage we had to make them look more like the original video. Some of the feedback told us that not many people could tell who the artist were like “Vanilla Ice”, so this helped us to go away and research are artists and work out what made there video distinctive and stand out. When we had finish out research we were able to go out and reshoot more footage and get the shots that we wanted to get. Also in the editing, it helped us go away and make the improvements that the video need to be able to show who the artist are and what they are known for in there performances. We wanted to get the stereotypical vues on artist. We learnt that to make a music video look right you need to get as much feedback as you can, so then you can get the comments from the people who matter, the audience. The feedback also gave us ideas on what we can shoot and how the shoot it. The boy band section was very minimal at the rough cut and the feedback we got told us that we needed more stereotypical boy band and also maybe a more up to date boy band and they also gave us idea on the camera angle and difference ideas of the mise-en-scene. They also told us how our lip syncing was looking. It was fairly positive though, which is good. We also got a comment about the narrative to the video and there not being one and also that the performance and the shots may drag on abit. So we took this on board and cut some of out footage up so that it cut on a faster beat and that the narrative on the video being the many different artist and there performances much more clear. Which is what we want to achieve in the first place, and without the feedback couldn’t.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We had many different new media technologies used in the making of our music video. To start we had the green screening what was a very key part of our filming and went on throughout our video. Green screening is when you put a green sheet behind the artist and film the footage you need and then back in the editing you can edit the green out and put a completely different background behind them. It is all done in Final cut, and you do it by going to effect, video filters, key, then to chrome key or blue and green screen filter. Then you have to change the levels of the filter to get the right amount of green out. We did this quite a lot in our video, for example the David Bowie section is all green screened and then the background is plain saturated white.
We also had the flexibility of the Internet, which we used by going to YouTube and getting the research of all the artist we covered. Also getting the graffiti wall behind “Vanilla Ice”. We also got all our tutorials on how to green screen from YouTube, this is how we learnt the techniques to getting the right green screen and the different editing hints. The blog was also internet based, this is where all our ideas flouted and then came to life, in the filming and editing. We also put all of our planning on there so we know where we were up to. The Mac computers, they were the foundation of all the work that we have done. Final cut is an editing programme that is on the Macs, this is the programme that we used to cut and edit our footage together. We used different filter and effects in our video like the hue and saturations, also the speed and much more. Green screening used a lot of our time in the editing because it took a long time to get the right amount of green taken out of the footage, without taking to much out and cutting little part of the artist out.
We also had Photoshop, which is where we edited our photos for out ancillary text, digi-pak and magazine advert. We used many different tools on Photoshop from make the pictures brighter and putting hue over them and then making them saturated. We also downloaded new brushes from the internet so that we had a much larger range of ideas and capability to make a much better digi-pak and magazine advert. We also had digital cameras that we filmed all of out footage on to then put on the computers. We also used a few accessories for this like the tri-pod and dolly. We also used a digital camera to take the photos that we need to make are magazine advert and digi-pak, we then had to import them on to the Macs to start the editing stages. We also used quite a lot of artificial lighting in our video, so that we could get the right brightness and look from the artist. We many used it on David Bowie because he was our key artist and we also did a photo shoot with this artist.
We also used MySpace to contact are original song artist “The Whip” so that we could gather content and rights for the song. We also had PowerPoint so that we could show presentations of are director research, we research Michel Gondry. We had such a wide range of ne media technologies in our planning, research and evaluation stages.
Our music video uses, develops and challenges form of conventions of real media products because we had such a variety of different artist and performances. Even from the beginning with David Bowie, which you could say it challenges the genre of the music because it’s quite a techno track and Bowie isn’t really the type of artist that is know for his techno. The David Bowie section that we have, we got the inspiration from his music video “life on mars”. So we had to get our artist playing Bowie, and put them in loads of bright make-up and costume to get the same image from his original video. I feel that after the editing it came out really well and looks and feels just like his, and this is how we stuck to conventions of his video, but then broke conventions by putting it in to our track and other footage. This fitted really so this is how it developed from his original “life on mars” in to our video. The video has quite a lot of extreme close up, and we didn’t want this big striking face to just appear on the screen so we had a small gradual fade in to the Bowie section at the beginning.
For “the Beatles” section we took it right back to their first gigs at the “Cavern club” using green screens. We kept it close to the conventions on there own music videos but the complete other for our music which is very techno. We made sure that we had the right costume (suit), and that we had the chance to use instalments. So that we could get the best footage first time. (Good plan because we weren’t given the opportunity to use the instalments again). Unfortunately when it got to the editing we didn’t have any guitar footage so we had to fill the section with just drumming witch fitted ok but would have look much better with a small guitar section in the middle. We had green screened the whole of this section, and we had got a still image of the cavern club from “Google” and imported that behind the drummer, but we had middle shots and close up and only the drummer was moving and the background stayed the same and for a performance it didn’t look right, so we had to go back a change the scale of the image to the right proportions of the artist.
The next artist to follow was “Elton John”, and the inspiration was from his “Crocodile Rock” video. I think that the way that we have edited it and the costume that I wore was much more modern that in his video, this wasn’t intentional but I think that it looks much better because it fits much better with the conventions and genre of the music. The pink hue that we put over modernises it and also make it look like the old style of his video. I think that the bit that give the artist away is definitely the pink heart shaped glasses and the ginger hair, the audience can really see the intertextual reference. We didn’t gather enough footage in this bit so we had to use the same bit of footage at the end twice, you can also see where we have done this because it has a small jump. The only way around it was to re-shoot it, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time. The low shot of my feet is the same shot as in his video, but the costumes has nothing to play on, unlike in his video, where he is wearing giant platform silver shoes.
“Vanilla Ice” was a very difficult section the shoot because there was dancing and green screening all going on, so it took us quite abit of time in the editing stages. We tried to get the same kind of feel from the setting as he did in the warehouse because it really set the scene for the dancing. We got our inspiration from there “Ice Ice baby” video. I choreographed a small section of dancing the rest of the group to do in the performance, but unfortunately the footages looked really bad because the dancing was off time and it didn’t look right. So we went back and decided to do key frame editing (which is where you shoot just the setting for the duration that you want and then shot what you want, like the dancing, and then back in the editing you can layer them so I am dancing in the setting, it is all done with layers) and put just me dancing on there layered three time. It worked really well but because of the artificial lighting that we had it caused a small shadow to appear on one of the other layer, but you could see where it had been cropped. Also after the draft and feedback we decided that we need more footage of the “Vanilla Ice” section. We watch the “Ice ice baby” video again and thought of how we could make sure that the audience can see the intertextual reference, and came up with the idea of having a wall of graffiti behind the artist as the finishes the singing. We got the video from YouTube and then imported it in to our sequence and then speeded it up. We also took the edit of saturating the artist and then zooming in on him to fade in the next artist.
The next artist to follow was “Westlife” (or any other stereotypical boy band). Boy bands have a very clear stereotypical image and feel to there video, so we tried to keep ourselves very close to the conventions on them. We changed the video so it is black and white, with a small amount of a blue hue over the top. We also slowed it down so it was like a dreamy section that boy bands have. I think that we achieved the boy band look at the beginning, but then because we didn’t have enough footage we had to shot again, and we decided that we would go for the more up to date boy band, with the extreme close ups and the small amount of dancing. We didn’t really have a dance routine for this section but we thought that after following the “Vanilla Ice” section which had a dance routine, that it would be enough. We also tried to put a small amount of voyeuristic view toward them, being a boy band. We also put this slow part in where the music drops so there is a relationship between music and visuals and you can really pick it up and it completely changes the feel to the video. We had the slow walk toward the camera at the beginning of the section, so we had gone from a long shot to a extreme close up and we had to fade this out fast so that the audience had enough time to see the footage underneath and that the extreme close up would disappear before it got to extreme.
Then we had a section that featured all artists together, so that the audience had the time to remember and see all the artists again.
Then we had a small section of “Madonna” because we didn’t have any female artist. We didn’t want to take this part to serious because we want the audience to find it funny but for it to still fit with the feel and the paces of the video. There was a small amount of inspiration and intertextual reference form her “Like a Virgin” video. It was shoot as a close up of her singing and also shaking her head as if she were dancing.
The final artist that we covered was “Rick Astley” in “Never gunna give it up” we watched this video very carefully so that we could get the way he moved and the convention of his videos right. We shot in outside in the courts because that was the location on the video. The camera angles and the way he moved was just like his video. We lighting wasn’t quite the same because it had just rain in our video and it is in the middle of summer in there video. We tried to correct this in the editing by making it brighter and putting a very small white hue over the top and very slightly saturating it. It finished with a fade and the video very slightly slowed down.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The main product of the video to the ancillary text being the digi-pak and the magazine advert, I feel fit together very well. They fit together brilliantly because we use the first person you see in the video, David Bowie, on the front of both the digi-pak and magazine advert.
The digi-pak we decided was going to be a collector edition and we changed the layout of the template to having three sides so that you can fold one of the edges in. we had a photo of Bowie as the front and then quote, references, record labels and bar code. We took the photo during the filming of the section on a green screen and then took it to Photoshop and edited it by putting a different background and using brushes which we downloaded from other website, to further enhance the picture. We also made his eyes brighter and made his skin clearer with the clone tool. We also put bonus features on the back of the digi-pak so that it looked just like a real DVD. We did a very similar thing with the magazine advert, we took a picture while filming and then took it to Photoshop to be edited out. We made sure that we used the same colours and the same text in both of the ancillary texts, so that the audience can relate them.
We made sure that we were selling the artist as much as we could in all the tasks, from the digi-pak to the video and in the magazine advert. By using the same text in both of the DVD and the advert it came to be a kind of logo for the artist. We feel that the relation and the effectiveness of all products has a very clear and strong combination and correlation.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
After our rough-cut we got some really good feedback telling us that our video look good and the Bowie section look really professional, and then we had even more really good constructive crittersisum. This told us that we needed more footage in places and how we would edit the footage we had to make them look more like the original video. Some of the feedback told us that not many people could tell who the artist were like “Vanilla Ice”, so this helped us to go away and research are artists and work out what made there video distinctive and stand out. When we had finish out research we were able to go out and reshoot more footage and get the shots that we wanted to get. Also in the editing, it helped us go away and make the improvements that the video need to be able to show who the artist are and what they are known for in there performances. We wanted to get the stereotypical vues on artist. We learnt that to make a music video look right you need to get as much feedback as you can, so then you can get the comments from the people who matter, the audience. The feedback also gave us ideas on what we can shoot and how the shoot it. The boy band section was very minimal at the rough cut and the feedback we got told us that we needed more stereotypical boy band and also maybe a more up to date boy band and they also gave us idea on the camera angle and difference ideas of the mise-en-scene. They also told us how our lip syncing was looking. It was fairly positive though, which is good. We also got a comment about the narrative to the video and there not being one and also that the performance and the shots may drag on abit. So we took this on board and cut some of out footage up so that it cut on a faster beat and that the narrative on the video being the many different artist and there performances much more clear. Which is what we want to achieve in the first place, and without the feedback couldn’t.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We had many different new media technologies used in the making of our music video. To start we had the green screening what was a very key part of our filming and went on throughout our video. Green screening is when you put a green sheet behind the artist and film the footage you need and then back in the editing you can edit the green out and put a completely different background behind them. It is all done in Final cut, and you do it by going to effect, video filters, key, then to chrome key or blue and green screen filter. Then you have to change the levels of the filter to get the right amount of green out. We did this quite a lot in our video, for example the David Bowie section is all green screened and then the background is plain saturated white.
We also had the flexibility of the Internet, which we used by going to YouTube and getting the research of all the artist we covered. Also getting the graffiti wall behind “Vanilla Ice”. We also got all our tutorials on how to green screen from YouTube, this is how we learnt the techniques to getting the right green screen and the different editing hints. The blog was also internet based, this is where all our ideas flouted and then came to life, in the filming and editing. We also put all of our planning on there so we know where we were up to. The Mac computers, they were the foundation of all the work that we have done. Final cut is an editing programme that is on the Macs, this is the programme that we used to cut and edit our footage together. We used different filter and effects in our video like the hue and saturations, also the speed and much more. Green screening used a lot of our time in the editing because it took a long time to get the right amount of green taken out of the footage, without taking to much out and cutting little part of the artist out.
We also had Photoshop, which is where we edited our photos for out ancillary text, digi-pak and magazine advert. We used many different tools on Photoshop from make the pictures brighter and putting hue over them and then making them saturated. We also downloaded new brushes from the internet so that we had a much larger range of ideas and capability to make a much better digi-pak and magazine advert. We also had digital cameras that we filmed all of out footage on to then put on the computers. We also used a few accessories for this like the tri-pod and dolly. We also used a digital camera to take the photos that we need to make are magazine advert and digi-pak, we then had to import them on to the Macs to start the editing stages. We also used quite a lot of artificial lighting in our video, so that we could get the right brightness and look from the artist. We many used it on David Bowie because he was our key artist and we also did a photo shoot with this artist.
We also used MySpace to contact are original song artist “The Whip” so that we could gather content and rights for the song. We also had PowerPoint so that we could show presentations of are director research, we research Michel Gondry. We had such a wide range of ne media technologies in our planning, research and evaluation stages.
Thursday 10 December 2009
Evaluation By Luke
1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The link between the 3 products (Digipak, magazine cover, music video) lies in the music itself, my main involvement was with the Digipak and magazine cover, and i wanted the link to be more subconscious than visibly obvious, to make consumers think a little bit; i really wanted the music genre to represented visually through these ancillary texts - i started by thinking what should be on the cover apart from the obvious logos - DVD, Barcode, BBFC Rating etc. -
and i decided that David bowie represented what i, and my group, thought suited the genre best, so an image was used of Patrick as David Bowie on the front and back of the digipak using the same image but mirrored and a different image on the magazine cover; i wanted a colour scheme that went with the music genre of the song at hand "sister siam" by The Whip, the word electro and techno came to mind, and along with it the colours of electric blue, florescent green and purple, so we used those in both texts. The background was one of the trickier things, but i'll explain that in question 4. So we used the iconic David Bowie to represent and link the 2 texts with the strong performance from the music video, the colour schemes were similar in both texts and fonts were also reasonably matching as well. I applied various light effects and random images using custom photoshop brushes and playing with opacity and flow of brush, which looked great on the blue-to-purple textured background. I used new media technologies vastly, without them our products would be non-existent.
3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
After our rough-cut deadline our work was far from complete, even though we had few lessons after the deadline to complete it - i think this helped us focus, and knuckle down a lot, and the feedback was constructive rather than negative which was a nice surprise; we had about 60% of the footage in the right place, but the scenes that needed green screening still had green behind them and that made things look messy. We were told that the opening sequence was very strong and after editing and added effects it should look great; we were told that the gaps needed to be filled and when we told the audience what was going to be in there after filming they seemed to like our ideas, even the ones we were iffy about. In the original footage at the end we had the beatles, but the audience couldn't decipher who it was meant to be, so they helped us scrap that and think of something new and a bit more general rather than aiming at a band that are hard to get costumes for. The feedback included a comment about a montage of all the characters towards the end of the music video, we liked the idea and made it work (i hope) in our product.
4 How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
First and foremost, the Apple Mac was the core of our work, we used several programs like Final Cut Pro - to edit and add affects to our footage, Safari - to browse the web for info, images and tutorials, also to blog our planning and ideas, Photoshop - to compile images, layer and texturize to create amazing images for our ancillary texts. Final Cut allowed us to upload our recorded footage and then start cutting the bits we wanted, and binning the unwanted scenes, then lip syncing them to the music itself whilst fading shots together, eliminating the green screen so the background can be whatever you want, and adding effects using key frame animation, and the list goes on; it is a pretty amazing piece of software overall. Safari is the web browsing client used on apple appliances, we used it before we even thought about our music video in detail to start blogging about what our targets and goals were, then when we were given our song, we started heavy brainstorming on our blog to monitor our own ideas and progress. Photoshop was the key to our ancillary texts, we were given templates of the magazine cover and Digipak and the freedom to do what we will in that space... so i started off by putting our most relevant to the genre character on both texts - David Bowie; for the Digipak i had an image of Patrick as Bowie and put it in the lower left side of the front of the Digipak, and faded his blue shirt into the purple-blue background, and shrouded his head in blue and green horizontal light swirls; I applied green and blue light patterns behind the larger font, so the font wasn't just floating in mid-air. The background took a while to get right, i used the colour overlay to select the blue, then added a gradient overlay to have a diagonal fade from blue to purple, this looked okay but was very bland and boring, so i played with the texture and found a zigzag effect that looked great; i used some custom brushes downloaded from a website to create light forming from behind bowie on the back of the Digipak spiraling above him. I used light brushes with a hard or soft light effect to make them opaque yet florescent. These light effects were used because they help link the genre of music to the genre of music video and visuals.
evaluative commentary
We feel that just simply talking about the video as a voice over will be really boring to watch , even though we don't get marked on the visual of it, so we are going to evaluate out video but we are going to only have snippets of of the video and have shoots of the artists talking about the different sections. We are also going to have a funny twist on it by having each artist talking but as chin people, (which is where you draw eyes and a nose on your chin and it look funny because the face is out of proportion). We are still going to take the task seriously by answering the evaluation question to a high quality by make it look less serious and more visually funny.
The Evaluation Questions
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
These are the questions that we have to answer in both of our evaluation tasks, the commentary and the written task.
The Evaluation Questions
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
These are the questions that we have to answer in both of our evaluation tasks, the commentary and the written task.