Final Film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Szj85AXro

Evaluation

1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. According to Goodwin's theory of music videos, all music video's given in to the demands of the record label and so have lots of close-ups of the artist. So in my music video I also did this to try and replicate the conventions of real life media music video's and most, if not all music video's have lots of close up shots of the artist. 

2. One of the locations i used develops the conventions of real dance genre music video's as one of the locations i chose for my film was a underpass. I chose this because it was a very grimy looking are , and as I found out in my research many dance music videos, especially hard style, use many locations that are very sub-urban and grimy, such as a lot of Examples work.

 3. However I did also challenge the convection's that are in dance genre music videos, as many of the videos I watched for my researched had shots from inside of a busy nightclub. However I chose to use an empty hall for my DJ shots, this is because i wanted to challenge the audiences expectations, so they would be able to get the true meaning of the song. Which is about a DJ who is mixing because it is what he loves to do rather than for the fame and fortune.

4. I mixed in shots of the DJ with shot's of my dancer, this is very generic of dance music video's and has been used to Scooter - J'adore Hardcore as seen in my research. 

5. I edited my music video so that the clips change in time to the beat of the song, this is very generic of all music videos, but it also gives my music video a very fast paced edits, this is due to the high tempo of the song, however again this develops the conversions of real dance music videos as many do have fast faced videos that match the fast paced song. 

6. I also added a Mojo effect to my clips, this was again to try and conform to the conventions about dance music video's, I wanted my music video to look grimy and so added this effect to my clips, many real music video's use effects on the clips to make them look more professional or to engage the audiences emotions. 

 6. I Used many low angled shots which is also generic of the dance music video genre because it makes the DJ look powerful and this was seen many times in my research. 

7. I Also used the conventions I found in Scooter's J'adore Hardcore music video as they used a guy dancing the shuffle along to the beat of the song which I thought was very effective and so used it.

8. I challenged the conventions again however as I did not have a storyline to my music video, i purely had shot's of the dancer and the DJ, however this is because I believe the song did not need a story as it is just about this DJ who loves what he does. 

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

To answer this question, I created this short movie in Imovie:

Voice Over Script:

My main music video and ancillary tasks were very effective because there were key themes that ran throughout both of them which worked well with the genre of music video. These key themes were because of the inspiration I got from my research section were I looked at existing media products. 

The locations that I chose for my shoots worked very well with the hardstyle dance genre that i was creating a music video for. The first location was an underpass that looked very grimy, this effectively gave my music video the look i was after. Not only did i film there I also took some photos for my dig pack, this meant that my digi pack could continue with the grimy theme that i had created within my music video.

the fonts that were used on the dig pack and HMV poster were the same, I did this because I wanted the name of my artist to be recognised from the poster to the CD, this almost gives my artist a recognisable logo which I believe works well with the ancillary tasks. 

While looking at what to do for my front cover of my Cd case I looked at a lot of existing Cd covers from artist that do dance songs. I found that between 30 - 40 % of these had no pictures of the artist on the front cover but simply had writhing on with a texture and so i decided i would do this too because the song i was doing is about an artist who is not doing it for the fame and fortune but doing it for the love of the music. 

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?


For my audience feedback, I played my final video to the rest of my class. I then asked the to fill in a comments box which I had created using survey monkey. Bellow are a selection of the comments i received: 

• I like the way you have timed the clips of the dance to the beat of the song. In places you're lip syncing is a bit dodgy. Overall a great music video that fits in with the genre. 
• Not my ideal song, however i can appreciate how you have used the convension's of the dance genre to create a good music video for this genre. I like how you swap between the dancer and the DJ. 
• You could have done some more depth of field shots, maybe with the mixer. 
• The effect you have used on the clips works well and makes you're video look very professional.  

These comments have taught me lots of things. Most importantly that y everyone has different ideas and opinions of what they like to see in the music video. I think they liked the originality of my music video, however if I was to ever make another music video there are aspects I would change that I have learned from my audience feed back. These are:

• I would have taken more takes of my lip syncing, so that I could make sure when i came to edit my video it was all perfect and looking floorless.
• I would use some more depth of field shots, and use them as filler shots because through my audience feed back it has been highlighted that this is what my music video lacks. 
• I would also include a narative rather than simply having shots of the artist, as this my help engage thoes who do not tend to watch music video's of this genre.

Here is a quick interview with Jack after he watched my music video and he tells me what he likes and dislikes about my music video: 

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

Internet Sites

There were many media technologies that I used throughout my course. These included the use of YouTube, social networking sites such as Facebook, Blogger, camera equipment and Apple Mac programmes to put all of my work together to create my final piece. I found all of these media technologies very useful and they all had a major role to play in my course:

Youtube

Research: For part of my research, I used Youtube to look at many existing music videos and noted their conventions and compared them for each genre. This helped me to make my decision as to which genre I was going to choose for my final piece. These conventions included camera angles that were used in each genre, how the artist has applied Andrew Goodwin's theory (such as how the demands of the record label meant that there were many close-ups of the artist), and also what costumes and locations were used for each genre and how they worked well within the genre. 


Planning: For my planning, once I had chosen my genre (Dance/Hardstyle), I created a storyboard and made an animatic from the images I drew using Imovie. I movie gave me the ability to add ken burns to give me a feel for what my music video may look like when it is completed. This animatic was then uploaded to YouTube so that people could watch it and provide feedback. I found social networking sites, such as Facebook, very useful and easy to get responses and feedback. This was excellent in my planning section as I needed to collect responses from various audiences from a questionnaire that I created to hear peoples thoughts and opinions about generic music videos and what appeals to them. Once I collected the feedback using Facebook and surveymonkey, I could start to plan which genre of music I wanted to make a video for, and what conventions I should use in order to make this video successful.  I also had a chance to make other videos including 2 practice music video's ('Tenacious D - Tribute' and 'Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks') , equipment video, and a depth of field test. These were all uploaded to YouTube as well, and are also linked on my blog. For my ancillary tasks I needed to use Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. As I was not an expert using these programmes, I could also watch tutorials on how to use the programmes effectively, and practiced creating digipacks and posters, this was very helpful as it meant that I knew what I was doing when it came down to the real design. 

Evaluation: For my evaluation stage, I uploaded my final music video and made sure that everyone could see it on my wall. I then requested feedback from each viewer. Again, this was very easy, and I received lots of positive thoughts and opinions about my final music video. 

My Blog

The main purpose for Blogger throughout the planning, research and evaluation sections of my project was to keep a record of all the work that I had prepared and put together. This kept me up to date with the tasks that I had completed and had yet to do. This site made it easy to upload screen grabs from the YouTube videos that I used for my research section, upload the videos that I created in my planning section, and plan and write my evaluation questions with ease in the last section. Also, Blogger provides a 'comment' box within each post that I do. This was an easy way for people to leave feedback on the work as I did it. 

Technology

Research: For my research section, I looking at existing music videos on YouTube and Vimeo using an Apple Mac. I found using a Mac more useful than using a PC as this was quicker and easier to screen grab the shots I wanted to analyse. The programmes that I used throughout my research was just the internet, and a programme to create graphs from the responses of my survey, so that they were easy to compare and contrast, which meant that I could use this information to get a better idea of what to put in my music video. 

Apple Mac

Planning: I spent most of my planning time using the Canon 7D to take photos for my final digipaks, HMV posters, and location picture's as well as using the camera to film my music video on my chosen locations. On the days of filming, I also used other camera equipment including a tripod and dolly. Once the film had been shot, then I uploaded the footage onto my Mac and compressed it, to then input the footage into Final Cut Pro to edit and create my final music video. 

Evaluation: For my evaluation stage, my time was mostly used up by answering the given questions on the Mac. This meant looking back at my previous pieces of work that I had created throughout the year, and answering the questions to the best of my ability referring directly to my work. For some of the questions, I was also able to use the Mac and some of my footage of me talking to the camera, to create a video to answer the given question. This differentiated the ways in which I could answer a question to make it more interesting for the examiner. 

Ancillary Tasks

These are my final poster designs, the first I wanted to make it generic to the HMV posters and so used the HMV font for my artists name.

I also did another design were I wanted to go against the generics of a HMV music poster and so I used  a more grungy looking font. I also made the price slightly bigger.

Construction Post

Digipack

Today we looked at the Digipacks for the top 40 UK singles chart, we noticed that about 30-45% were just fonts and did not have any relevance to the artist. So i decided i wanted to give this a go so i downloaded a font of dafonts.com and attempted to create a similar look.

Below is an image of one of the Digipacks we looked at that shows the use of only a font.

I began by downloading two fonts of Dafont.com, Techno Hideo and Whoa!. I then simply added a black back ground and the added the words and changed the font. This is a very simple CD cover design but as we have seen while looking at other CD covers from the UK Top 40 i have found that some designs are like this such as the Flo Rida one and also David Guetta's CD covers. 

Bellow is a screen grab of me making the CD cover on Indesign. 

Here is the finished Cover:

I then went back on it because i was not to happy with it, so I went out and took lots of different pictures of different metals and used these as textures for my back ground. I went for a metal look because this give the front cover a more grimy feel to it. I also added a record label logo to it because this is generic of real digi-pack. 

Here is a screen shot of me while I am making the digi-pack, you can see how i used the texture as a good background for my CD cover and i believe that it looks a lot better than the plain black one i had earlier. You can also see that i had started to make my back cover which I used the fonts i downloaded again and found song names of the artist off google to put on the album. I also added the barcode, record company logo, copy right small print and website for the artist, which is generic to all digipacks according to my research. The back ground picture is a picture I took on the day of filming of one of my locations.   

Here is a screen shot of me making my CD design which I did on Indesign and then will import onto my digipack document. I used a software texture pack called riot gear for the back ground of the CD, i chose this texture because again it gives a grimy feel. I also used the same font that is on the CD cover to add some continuity to my digipack so a consumer can easily see that this CD comes from the digipack. I then used the 'type on a path tool' to add the copy right text around the edge of my CD. 

Poster

For my poster I used the photo of russell that i took during one of my shoots, I added it to the back ground of my poster and created a black border around it. Bellow is the picture I used for my poster.

 I then used a website called fontmeme.com to create a graffiti design with the artists name.

I then wanted to put this on the background wall in the picture I am using. To do this I opened the original picture in photoshop. 

I then added the graffiti design that I created and placed it on the wall. I then went to edit, transform and then skew. This made the graffiti look like it is part of the original picture because i could angle it to make it look like it was on the wall. I then set the blending mode for the graffiti layer as 'colour burn'. I then used the contrast tool to change the colour to a grimy looking colour. Once this had been done I saved the image as a JPEG. I then opened the image with Indesign and put a black border round the outside. 

I downloaded the HMV font that is called 'Arial Rounded MT Bold'. Once this font had installed i created the hmv logo and used the typical white or pink font colour. I also went on t

The internet and got the hmv dog, i did all of this because I am trying to accurately represent a hmv music poster. I finally added in my digi-pack front cover design to the corner and rotated it a little.   

Final Film

I started off by watching all my footage of the shoots, and deleting the rubbish shots were my actors were laughing or getting the lines wrong. All though i deleted the clips i kept them in the "Trash Can" just in case i needed to get the clips back.

While watching the clips i began to think about what order i would use the clips in my final film. I looked back at my story board and used this to help put the clips in order. I then began importing the clips into Final Cut Pro and also the audio track of the song. I could then begin the editing.

   Once all my footage was in the right order and cut down to size, i made sure the clips of lip syncing was in order with the audio. But I still was not happy with my film, this was because i felt it did not look grungy enough for my genera and so i began to try out with different filters. In the end i decided to use the "mojo" filter because i felt that this just added to my film giving it that grimy look. 

A Problem i found with adding a filter to my whole project was that it took ages to render. I was waiting about 50 minuets for Final Cut to render my footage with the mojo effect. 

I also had a problem with one of my clips were the camera was at an angle and so I rotated the clip and then added in a letter box to the top and bottom of the film to cover the edges, this then made the clip look like it had been filmed at the right angle. 

    

    

Possible Location

For one of my possible location, I have chosen to go for a underground tunnel, at the esplanade car park in jersey to film one of my dance scene's in. I have done this because I want my music video to have this grimy underground feel and so I believe this location would be a perfect location for one of my shoots, my research indicated that other music of this genre used similar locations and so i am trying to have the typical conventions of a grimy dance genera. Below is a picture I took of the location i am thinking about, I went to visit the location last weekend.
 

Aperture Test Footage

Equipment Test

This week I have been testing the equipment so i know exactly what i can use and how it works. The video bellow shows the footage of me testing the crane and the dolly. This is useful also because it has given me some time filming on the cameras, so when i come to film my real footage i will be able to use the cameras easily.