Music Video Blog
Danni Harris (0152) & Sarah Kingston (0190)
Wednesday 20 April 2011
NEW Booklet for Digi Pack!
We had plans about what we wanted to change our original ideas to so to do this we needed to change the layout and some of the colours for the booklet also.
We found that the original booklet was too simple and basic. We found that having the second chance has enabled us to use a widen range of knowledge when using photoshop.
An example of this is that we have taken the background of the website and placed it onto different backgrounds of the booklet pages. We have also used a photo of the band as the background for the lyrics page but we have made this more interesting by adjusting the opacity of the picture. This makes it easier for audience members to read the lyrics.
We are pleased with both our new products as we both feel they are more professional and attractive.
Front Cover
Page 1
(Back of Front Cover)
Page 2
Page 3 & 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Back Cover
(We also managed to put Signatures on this edit which was something that we did not do last time)
NEW Digi-pack!
Sunday 6 March 2011
Evaluation update ...
Friday 4 March 2011
Our Website
Saturday 26 February 2011
Editing our Evaluation
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Firstly for our music video we researched different directors and found different elements of their work that we liked and disliked. This helped us recognize things that we straight off did/didn’t want to include in our own videos. From here, we analysed different music videos and directors on our blogs that influenced us for different reasons. We also used audience feed back via questionnaires to help us decide on the content of our video. We studied the conventions of music videos (especially Goodwin 6) and kept these ideas in the back of our minds when making and planning the video. For example one of Goodwin’s 6 is a link between lyrics and visuals. As you can see, in this clip we have a punch bowl. This links to the lyrics in the song “punch-drunk love”. This is a subtle link, however a more obvious one to lyric and visuals in our music video is, as you can see, at the beginning when our lead singer first sings and mentions the word ‘girl’, we then see a clip of her. This is not only a convention but makes a clear connection for our audience. Another one of Goodwin’s 6 is that “the demands of the record label will require lots of close ups and clear shots of the artists”. This too is another convention we have taken on board and developed. We liked the idea and process of creating98 our ‘band’ and did this via the website, digipak and music video. Therefore we took on this convention (as effectively being the record label as well) in the music video having close ups and clear shots of the band. From us, being the record label, this would help our ‘band’ become a more successful young pop/indie group. Our lead singer obviously has more close ups and holds the story line within the music video. It is quite typical, and therefore a convention we too followed, for a lead singer of a band to be the main face and most well known member, especially to begin with. Perhaps over time when our ‘band’ would be more well known, future music videos could feature more of the rest of the band members (E.g.- involving them in narrative). A convention, however, that we challenged, within the music video, is that Goodwin 6 stated music videos often have voyeuristic treatment of the female body. We challenge this convention, as we have no voyeurism exploited whereas we have a more romantic and ‘cute’ love story rather than sexual references. Our music video was narrative and performance based and therefore was conventional and slotted into one of the 3 typical types of music videos. We used elements of postmodernism in the video where we have 2 shots of people (including lead singer) from a non-choreographed point of view. This shows the fun element of the party and is postmodern as it s not a ‘real’ clear proper shot.
When creating our website we enabled the help of previous students A2 websites, actual band websites and audience feedback. Within our questionnaire we asked the question “What would entice you to visit a bands website?”. Some of the most popular answers to these questions we took on board and included them in our website. For example, ‘Free stuff’ was a popular answer, so we therefore have included a free download version of the song (punch-drunk love) that is acoustic. Audience feedback helped a lot here as this would benefit the band by bringing people onto the bands website and in turn increasing there fan base/popularity.
A convention, we found, when reasearching other bands websites is that they have a gallery/photos sections. We liked this idea because not only did our audience feedback suggest they too liked galleries, but it would also make the band more recognizable and eventually increasing there recognition.
We challenged the normal convention of having music videos on a bands website by adding more than just the music video to the ‘videos’ section of our website. Here we also, unlike some previous students and sometimes unlike actual bands websites, we made and added a ‘behind the scenes’ video of the making of the music video. This helps the fans connect with the band and make them feel part of there ‘journey’.
When planning our digipaks we analysed real digipaks and what was included and why. From here we decided what we wanted to include on our digipak. This is where our audience feedback, again, became useful. We asked in our questionnaire what they would want to be included on it and the most common answer was lyrics. So obviously we took note and included lyrics within our digipak. We picked what type of digipak we wanted to create and then made it using Photoshop. We found a common convention was having a little booklet inside with pictures and lyrics in. So we took created a booklet to go inside the digipak.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We created a ‘brand’ for our band that reflected the song we chose. ‘Punch-drunk love’ has a pop-rock feel that we wanted to spread throughout all three of our pieces. A particular genre of music always has a particular style and substance to it so we embraced the pop-rock/indie theme associated with the song. A way of starting this is with the overall look of the band themselves. We researched into the types of clothing the band should wear. We did this by looking at pictures of The Summer Set themselves and by audience feedback. From the overall ‘look’ of the band (being important for pictures used for the digipak and website) the style for these two things then flowed. For example, when picking a website for the band, some looked quite ‘DJ’ orientated with bright illumines colours. This we knew didn’t suit our theme. Which was quite laied back and ‘rural’- which we reflected in our music video itself- with parts being shot outside. We did, however have a common colour of red run throughout all three products. The red in the music video was shown in all three locations. In the two outside locations our lead singer is subtly wearing an element of red and in the house party he and a band member are wearing red, followed by a red kitchen and red punch. The red overall is to reflect the thought of the punch drink and to the thought of romance and love. We therefore after including it in the music video included it in both the website and digipak to create a common theme. As said another theme, was the idea of rurality. We see this in the music video and is again reflected in the pictures taken outside on both the digipak and website. The rurality idea comes from what can be seen on their bios page on the website about the way they have grown up and formed outside of urban life, in tern this creates another link. Our name is Unplugged Records and is our bands ‘record label’. It is a common link and seen in all three of our products. There is a sense of synergy within our products. For example on our website there is a link to iTunes whereby people can buy the song and music video directly. We always had this idea of having a link to buying the product on the website. However we used our questionnaire to acquire knowledge about what was the most popular way of buying music. It became clear that it was via iTunes, therefore iTunes was the link we submitted onto our website. As said iTunes would also sell the music video, as we know live in an age of iPhones and iPods where this has become more popular. However, we also have the video available to watch on our website under the ‘videos’ page. Our digipak also links to our website by advertising it on the back.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Before we started the process of making the products, we did a questionnaire. This asked but in turn answered some simple questions that would affect things a lot. For example in our questionnaire we asked what concept type of music video is preferred. The answer came back that a narrative and performance base was more popular. This too, we agreed on. However if we had of had a big majority preferring, for example just a narrative, then this may have swayed us to change our ideas to fit what our audience wanted.
After roughly finishing our music video we wanted some more audience feedback. We did this by gathering a few members of students (we chose students as they in particular are our target audience who we are aiming the video at – aka young hopefuls). As you can see we recorded them watching the video and their reactions. We then asked them a few questions, including what they would change. This was very useful as it confirmed some ideas we had portrayed as being correct. For example the lighting effect at the party. It was useful to hear a critical comment about the lead singer in the tree. We would have loved to have then changed it as it didn’t work, but unfortunately we didn’t have any other clips. This is something we would go back and change if we could.
If we could do this project again, we would have made better use of the HD camera. We were lucky enough to use it and although its quality is very good we think it would have been even better if we had the right lighting on set. The audience pointed out that they actually really enjoyed the postmodern clips within the video. We wish now that we had included more of them. To get round this aspect of not knowing it was enjoyable till it was too late would be to have audience feedback sooner than we got It (i.e.- before we finished it)!
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
When researching we used YouTube a lot to embed videos onto blogger, this made sure we had high quality videos and meant we could fit them exactly to the size of our blog. Wikipedia and Google was used to research different directors. We scanned our questionnaires and storyboards onto blogger. Blogger wasn’t new to us, as we had used it in year 12. However this year we had the ability to make it more creative, for example we used our own picture as a background and edited the frames and text to fit the colours of the photo. We used excel to analyzed our questionnaires to produce averages, pie charts and bar graphs. Screen grabs were used during our research to help annotate our findings. We went on location shoots, took pictures when filming and posted these onto the blog.
During the construction we got the change to use the HD camera, which was a new experience for both of us. Along with this the dolly became incredibley useful. This required a small lesson on how to work both bits of the equipment with Mr. Phillips. We uploaded the footage to iMovie and from there imported it into final cut. Final Cut was again new to both of us and so we enabled the help of YouTube videos. We struggled to begin with but it got easier the more we got used to it. We learnt how to quickly razor and ‘in’ and ‘out’ clips with shortcuts. This made the process quicker and easier. We also used a normal camera for backstage clips. This was useful as it meant on location two things could be done at once. iTunes was our source for the sound track and this was an easy process as we both have iTunes accounts. Facebook was a way in which we communicated with everyone involved in the production of the music video. We used a group email as everyone, minus one, had Facebook and used it regularly and would get the message quickly.
Disk wizards was a useful website that enabled us to downloaded a template of a digipak. This was useful as it saved time and gave exact measurements. This was helpful when making the digipak in Photoshop. Photoshop was relatively new to me, although Danni had, had experience with paintshop pro, which she applied to Photoshop. In the end, we both took on roles of designing the booklet and digipak. This has widened our knowledge on Photoshop as we learnt different aspects and how to deal with layers. Wix was used in the construction of our website. Although neither of us had used it we picked up the functions quickly and managed to add new pages, pictures and videos.
We downloaded the ancillary texts to the iDVD, this included making a menu page.
In our evaluation we have used photo booth to record our audience feedback, which we then imported into final cut and added to this, our evaluation. We have used screen grabs and footage from our piece. This has helped highlight what we were talking about. We have used different effects to show these screen grabs/footage to make it more interesting.
Using all these techniques shows our abilities and creativity and has enhanced our work. However, including all of these has meant we have had to be organized in terms of what and how something got done (e.g.- who puts blogs up and when).
Audience Feedback
Wednesday 23 February 2011
Merchandise
Sunday 20 February 2011
Our 'Behind The Scenes' Video!
Our Finished Music Video!
Monday 14 February 2011
Website!
Further blogging to come on the process of creating the website.
www.wix.com/danniixx/thesummerset
Inside booklet for DigiPack
Here is pictures of our booklet below:
Front Cover
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3 & 4
This would be the same hieght as the other ones, this is because it is two pages put into one.
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Back Page
The back page is just a plain white page, we have done this so that on the small booklet we will have the band members signatures here. Just to make it look good.
Our completed digipak!
Friday 11 February 2011
Website analysis
Wednesday 9 February 2011
Pictures for Gallery
Margot kindly let us use her house and garden which is were we wanted to shoots some shots and the band inside and outside. We also took some pictures of each of the individuals as we are hoping to put a small biography about each of the band members on the website and also the Digi-pack.
This gave us a chance to experiment with different heights, angles close-ups that we believed work best. We use My camera as it is a very good quality camera which in previous editing experiences I have had an excellent quality with the final edit.
At this moment in time I am unable to upload and of our head shots and pictures we have taken but they will be following this blog shortly.
Monday 7 February 2011
DigiPak Anaysis
The above shows, the continuing theme of the apple as well as the younger picture taken at the same location used for the front of the red album.
The digipak has 6 panels. The first one is a pocket containing a booklet. This booklet contains various pictures, detailed history of the band and the lyrics for the songs that appear on the CD's. This is something we would like to do with our digipak. However, obviously our band doesn't have a lot of history but from our audience feed back it seems that they would want lyrics, pictures and bios of the band members, all of which is achievable. Panels 2 and 3 contain the CD's. Over the 'slips' that hold the CD's is a black and white picture taken at St. Pancras Old Church in London in 1969. Although it's meant to look like a crowd, perhaps watching The Beatles, all four band members are in the scene.
Friday 4 February 2011
Editing/More Filming
Sunday 30 January 2011
Filming- 2nd location
- Shots of George and Ellie in separate mirrors
- George walking down a corridor/stairs
- Ellie walking in with extras
- Boys (Band members and extras) standing together, while George see's Ellie
- Band performing at party (ones with crowd and close ups, where audience isn't seen)
- Shots of the audience watching the performance
- Shots of audience, with Ellie in foreground, singing along
Sunday 23 January 2011
Website for the Band
We have decided that we wanted to design a website and also a Digi-pack as part of our advertising of he band.
To start the website I used Wix.comn which I find really easy to work around and simple.
What we want to advertise on our website is a number of different products:
- The Song. So you can listen to it without the video.
- A Bonus track. Which myself and sarah have found of the song! It is an acoustic version of Punch-Drunk Love which is interesting.
- AGallery. Numerous pictures of the band at different venues an areas. These will give the idea that they have been at a number of Photoshoots.
- The music video. Once it is finished and compelted.
- Tour Dates. To make it look more realistic.
- Contact page. This is so hat 'fan' can contact the band and directors.
Currently I am working on the design of the page. Looking at most of the templates there is a lot of 'DJ' templates which our band is not. I have found a simple templae which expresses an Indie band, which is our aim. I am working on changing some of the background and colours to make it more unique.
This is a picture of the front page. The white blank spot is where I am going to put a picture of the band, as I believe this wll advertise well.
Friday 14 January 2011
Props
- A punch bowl
- A juice (preferably Red) to put in the punch bowl
Sunday 16th - Filming!
Wednesday 12 January 2011
Final Cut Experience
I find it more difficult to use than iMovie because you have one window for iMovie. Whereas in Final Cut you have a number of different windows to work on drafts and final video clips. This helps with the editing as it can be split into two different areas. This also gives us a chance to preview our work before we finally use and edit it.
I have learnt how to cut tracks and cut clips by using the razor icon. Louis has also helped me and Sarah by showing us how to zoom in and out of the shots. This was a great help because there was a clip that we couldn't see very well without having to zoom in, so Louis kindly helped us.
I am enjoying working with Final Cut becaus I feel that there is so much we can do with it. I need to do my research and start learning how to do more with FInal Cut so we can make our editing and final music video more interesting.