Final Music Video

http://vimeo.com/33397099

Directors Commentry

POSTER

We used Photoshop to Create our poster, we used a screen grab from are initial video highlighting all the characters in the video, the protagonist female, the angel and male character .We thought this picture best represented the narrative of our viedo showing the angel as the main focus on the poster as she had a huge part to play in the video, as well the poster displays how the angels character is always watching over and shadowing the female when she is in danger, as behind the background of the poster is a screen grab of a violent scene between the male and female character. At the bottom of the poster we added companies which could possibly support the single and sell copies of it, by displaying logos of big companies on a advertising poster for a piece of media, shows that it is successful and will help people to be more attracted to purchasing and viewing the video. In the bottom right hand corner we added the front cover of the single linking it together showing potential buyers what the single looks like making it recognizable which could promote sales.

Final CD Covers

Back cover of out single.
Where the CD will be.
Inside cover.

Front cover of our single.

PROPOSED CD COVERS

Proposed CD cover 1

Proposed CD cover 2

We created two CD covers with a differnt formats. After much disscusion we decided that it woud be best to use Proposed CD Cover 1 as for the colours linked more with the rest of the CD cover and there was a good contrast between the angel and the back ground as its white on black.Moreover we decied that the simple quality was better suited to the song as their isnt much going on which doesnt detract the attention for the main focus.

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages? (question 4)

We used extremely wide range for our media product through out all stages such as planning, constructing the video, research and evaluation.

Through our research part of the over all process technologies such as different websites came in useful to look up different artists and media styles to compare and analyze for our inspiration. An example of the websites we used is youtube came in to great use when watching music videos to analyze, such when we all came together to watch videos ‘love the way you lie’ by Rihanna and Eminem,’ Fighter’ by Christina Aguliara and ‘Whos laughing now’ by Jessie Jay. This enabled us to see helpful comparisons through different genres and styles of music in terms of music videos and what conventions each genre and style follow, supplying us with information we needed to start planning our music video. We did a great deal of planning and research as we all felt it was essential to have a full understanding of real media products before creating our own, when supplying images to put on the blog and study we used google images to save them from for example when researching costumes and different CD covers being beneficial for our planning. We also used images taken our self of location choices through the use of the cannon digital video camera supplied to us by the college.

When constructing our video the digital Cannon camera was used to film all scenes of the video. We used different techniques when filming such as when aiming for a very focused effect we used the tripod to ensure that the camera was still so that no movement would distract from what was happening in the scene. Another technique was handheld which was used when doing over the shoulder shots looking down on the female creating and intimidating atmosphere we did these shots using hand held as it was easier to get the correct angle we needed. We again used a hand held shot yet with the use of a fig rig when doing a panning shot toward the end of our video this allowed us to have more control over the camera yet still being hand held so still created a busy and shaky effect that we wanted. For the chorus of our video we used the green room suit but however removing the green screen and having a plane black back ground supplying mane focus of the angel who’s costume is white creating a contrast of the two colours and making the character stand out for a more dramatic effect, the lighting we used in the green room was bright white light focusing solely on the angel again enforcing that dramatic effect we needed.

During the editing part of our media production the main software used was ‘Final cut pro’ it was essential is allowed to add great effects to our music video such as contrasting lighting, light ray effect, black and white filter and changing motion from fast to slow. We uploaded clips from filming to final cut pro through the use of ‘Quick time player’ it was a fast and simple way of getting clips from A to B. We took the music for our song from youtube then converting it and adding to our timeline on final cut pro then we found difficulty fitting the music with the clips as we have a certain amount of lip synching in our video, and we also wanted the tempo of the song to fit with the mood and motion in the scene which, as we discovered through our research process, is a convention of most typical music videos. In some scenes we wanted to blur over two scenes over one another helping us to explain certain insinuations in our narrative, for example when the angel’s face is shadowing over the female characters when she is in states of distress we did this by overlaying the two images over two different sectors of our timeline.

Along with our music video with had to present example of CD cover, inside and back cover and a poster of how we would advertise this single. We used google images again to supply us with examples of different CD covers from professional artist and analyzed them to see different influences for our own CD cover and poster. After taking pictures to place on our CD cover through use of the digital camera also used images from our actual music video by using screen grabs. We moved on to using ‘Photoshop’ to edit and develop the images.

Through out all processes we were updating and adding information to our blog to display how what we have been doing and how we have moved through each stage. Uploading all images and typed information. With out all these media technologies we would never have been able to supply our video to the standard that it is and would have found the entire process extremely difficult.

Question 3. What did you learn from your audience feedback?

To collect information on our music video we asked a number of academic students and people inside the profession their opinion and asked some precise questions. We found overall a mainly positive response about our overall video.

We did have some negative feedback about our themes and ideas that represented in our music video. Some spectators felt that the domestic scenes were to negative and controversial for a wide audience, however other people thought that it fitted in with today’s pop culture. In today’s industry many artists and music video directors push the social boundaries; therefore we thought this would help us appeal more to our target audience.

When asking about the professional look of our video we had a mixed response, the spectators said that they liked the narrative along side with the performance and thought it was really affective, they also said they thought it made it look like a real music video as it followed certain conventions in a typical music video. Others thought that the camera and lighting let the video down when we used outside location. On the other hand they thought it gave the video a social realism affect, which a lot liked.

Many of the spectators commented on the mise en scene in our video, they thought the use of the symbolic angel was really effective, artistic and a different original idea. They liked how we had her in the studio with the bright lights they thought this looked very professional. Some spectators commented on the narratives costume, saying it might have been more effective if we had used more costume ranges but as we wanted it to be a continued story we decided to use the same costume throughout, many thought this was fine, and worked well. The male character was dressed stereotypical, lots of people commented say they really like that fact we reconsider media.

We also had some specific comments about the acting in our film, many people were surprised at the quality and how well the narrative was represented. A lot of people also commented on the precise lip-syncing. We also has specific comments about our use of transition fades and other editing effects, many said that they thought the fades between shots and the slow motion effects and the black and white filterand the dazed look gaved look we added made the over all vidio look more profetional.

We asked 5 people what their favourite thing was about are music video.

· 1^st Person- ‘ I loved the use of the angel , I thought it was really creative and I was impressed with the controversial .’

· 2^nd person- ‘I thought the different locations helped bring the music video alive.’

· 3^rd person-‘I liked the mise en scene, costume and locations of the video altogether had a brilliant effect.’

· 4^th person’ I thought all of the editing effects which were used for example slow motion and transition fades, in the video were really effective.’

· 5^th person-‘I like the way that loads of different camera angles were used high and low angled shots were used to show power and status, the cutaway and the shot reverse shot sequence made it look professional.

From what we have learnt from are audiences feedback, we realized that our use of mise en scene was very effective, the effects we used helped bring the narrative and performance elements together and the use of interesting camera effects such as the spinning pan made the overall video look professional and different. The changes that we would make would be that we would add more close ups to intensify the scared atmosphere. We would have wanted our first location of the house to be a grittier unpleasant house relating better to the themes in the song. Considering all these factors and feedback, overall we feel we made a successful music video that represented the strong image we had for the song, with more time and better equipment we feel our music video could have been of professional standards.