Music video production. Evaluation.

1)In what ways does you video use develop or challenge forms and convections of real media products. As a group, we did a lot of research into other music videos of the same genre (R n B, folk and indie music). This was to help us see what the typical conventions there are for our chosen genre and to get influence for our music video production. We also made a marketing aims profile before making each product. This allowed us to get ideas of how we could be selling and promoting our products successfully.

Our finished music video uses some convections of the R n B genre but also challenges some. We chose to use the structure of a R n B/rock video – where there's a band performance and an underlying narratives. The main influence of how our video is set came from the scouting for girls video – “Elvis aint dead”. We were influenced by mainly the band setting and lighting. Just like the scouting for girls video, our video is set in a stage(church stage) and we used similar props – the keyboard, the microphone etc. We wanted to copy the style of lighting with candles but it was impossible as it of high risk and a fire hazard. The narrative style is similar – as we used a narrative and actors that is totally different from the band performance.

The tone and pace of our music video was also influenced majorly by skylar grey “invisible” music. In the sense that slow paced and has a eerie atmosphere which is what aimed to achieve. Our camera work and visual style was mostly influenced by “Lana Del Rey`s video game music video. For instance, the shot of the pigeons, clouds and boat in our music video was done to look like some of the Lana Del Rey`s video. Also, the fact that some of the shots are not in synch with the music - (the music is slow paced and some of the shot are normal paced) – this was an effect that we wanted to create too and we achieved that in the couple`s fight scene – the actors actions where a little bit faster than the music pace. We chose to this because we did not want to follow all the convections of an R n B video.

Digipak.

Website.

2)How effective is the combination of your product(video) and the ancillary text (digigpak and homepage. The digipak and website are currently still in the process of been made but already there are are links. Website: I`m currently making the home page of the website in photoshop and have decided to make the main home page monotone – just black and white which would reflect the mood atmosphere of the main music video. I've planned to make the masthead a photo- montage of different inanimate objects or a montage of different long exposure picture, this would link it visualy to our finished music video as our music video focuses on different montages of life – specifically couples. Space for screen grabs/shot of website.

Links between music video, website and digipak. My digipak is not finished yet but there are already clear links between my digipak and website. Firstly, I've stuck to the black and white main colour just like I did with the website. Also, I've decided to use a different photo-montage (just like I did with the website but a different one), this in turn reflects the idea of a montage that's in the music video. I've also used the same font to write the name of the band in both the website and the digipak and is placed in a similar position in both – the top right. This is a normal convection in music video website. I think this is successful as the audience would be able to visualy link the digiak and website becuase of the link beween the photo-montage masthead in the website and the photo-montage background in the website – this would help them link the promotional material to the idea of a montage in the music video. space for screen shots.

How did you use media technology in the construction and research planning and evaluation. During the pre and post production aspects of creating our music video, I have used a variety of media technology. Pre-production.  wordpress – throughout pre and post production we`ve used wordpress to document all our work which includes, research, planning and production. I`ve also used slideshare to embed powerpoints to my wordpress account. For thus i had to set up an account to be able to use it for sharing purposes.  Internet for research purpose – I majorly used the internet to research similar music video. I used youtube to watch and compare videos which helped us to make a descision on what genre of music to use. We also used last fm online listening ( ) to search for artist and to easily find similar artist as it has a link that directs you to similar artists to the one you`ve searched for.

Production and post-production.  Video cameras- we used cannon video camera for all the filming. This was quite challenging as none of had used one before. At first we`re filming and overwriting what we already filmed because we tried to watch back what we had filmed and forgot to fast-forward it. When we filmed the band scene (lip-synching) we took out the micro-phone from the camera to act as a micro-phone for the singer – unbeknown to us that it was actually the sound recorder. When we started editing we realised that all the scenes of the lead singer had no sound. This made making his singing in synch with the actual song almost impossible.  Final cut pro – we used final cut pro to edit. We all had impute in the editing and we all too turns in logging and capturing the clips we need. I added some of the transitions like the cross dissolve between the shot of the birds and the fast cloud. I also sped up the shot of cloud by increasing the speed from a 100% to 200% - thus compressing it from a five minute clip to a less that 20 seconds. I also added mild filters to some of the clips i.e. I reduced the contrast in the clips of the birds and the clouds. Space for screen shots of editing in final cut pro.

 Photoshop - having used Photoshop before, I was quite familiar with most of the features. I`ve used photoshop to make the background/layout for my the website and to add pictures and the masthead to the website, I will develop this further in dreamweaver and add html and links. I have also used Photoshop to make the digipak by adding and editing pictures to fit into the montage of photos and to design the font. I've also used dafont.com to get fonts that I've used in my digipak. Space for screen shots from photoshop.  Dreamweaver -

What have you learned from you audience feedback? Class feedback – our finished music video was played in class and we received some feedback from out peers. They said  The camera work was good: to be specific they said the camera work on the scenes with the first couple was good and the setting was specifically good and they liked the fact that we had a variety of shots from different angle.  Editing – they commented on the editing and favoured our editing of the shots. Although we could have used less transition as it was not needed. I agree with this and would remove some of the “fade in fade out” transition effects if i was giving another chance to correct the editing.  The random cut out scene makes the music video more interesting – I also agree with this and would had more random shots if i could to fit into the montage.  The story line could have been more clearer – this true and evident in the music video. If I was to film again I would add in more couples to make the montage more effective and I would keep the actions in the scenes simple so that is understandable to everyone and not just those of out target audience. The storyline is not clear because the actors where too shy to act out some of the scenes that we intended to shoot. If i had more time, I would do some more filming to make up for it.

Video of audience feedback. i`m still collecting audience feedback ( by filming).