Music video final cut Vimeo

Magazine Advert Final

After taking the two versions of our magazine adverts into class, which I made last night, we received feedback from Nick and Barney about the advert. They preferred the beige coloured layout one as opposed to the red and white but thought we needed both 3D CD images on the advert as opposed to just one large one. They also thought the font that we used did not match with the swirly layout of the beige effect. Therefore we changed the font to 'Small roundhand'.

We thought this fitted a lot better with the image of the band etc and the layout cover. Overall I think this is a good magazine advert as it clearly advertises the CD, and this is its overall purpose. It features a store where you can buy the CD, a release date, special edition information etc.

CD Digipak Final

Here is mine and Matt's final CD digipak. It shows a front cover, a back cover and two inside pages, therefore 4 pages in total. Above is the template with our designs, and the additional booklet is shown too, also the CD holder is shown too. Overall I think this CD digipak is just what we were looking for and fulfills all the purposes of a digipak, after researching others and basing ideas on them.

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

Here is our 9 key frames for our first evaluation question. Each image is explained with text below it, click to enlarge the image.

9 key frames from other music videos

These are our 9 key frames from other music videos, which feature 4 different music videos. Click on the image to enlarge, and the explanations are shown below each picture.

For similarities between our work and other media texts, one video in which we researched earlier in the year similar to our idea of an empty hall, was the video 'Clutch - Electric Worry'. See the video again here.

The TV shows which would show our video perhaps would be BBC1, with the show 'Waterloo Road' which is set in a school and features prominent events that happen, such as fires, fights etc. - which links to the idea of our music video of the lyrics 'feeling the moment slip away'. This show shows at 8pm on Monday on BB1.

Another show would be E4 music which features upcoming bands, the music video could be on any time of the day, as it features nothing to stop it from doing so, but it would most likely be shown in the morning or early afternoon as opposed to nighttime.

The last show would be One Tree Hill, which features concerts and gigs in the actual drama to raise fundraising events. From the videos in the posts during research, you can see one of the gigs where the band 'Jack's Mannequin' perform, our video could be shown here or would play in the background, as the show features a lot of background music. This show airs at 9pm on Monday nights on E4, so this is likely to be the time in which our video would be shown.

Here are our pages which show our magazine advert and digipak similarities compared to the covers and digipaks we researched, click on them to enlarge.

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

VOICEOVER SCRIPT

Matt - Hi I'm Matt.

Tara - And I'm Tara,

'

Matt - And this is the music video we made for the band Feeder, called Feeling a Moment. The song is taken from their debut album 'Pushing the Senses'.

Tara - Feeder are a band based in the UK, and are quite popular among 15 to 25 year olds. Their music is an indie genre.

Matt - For our band’s image, we wanted to create an indie style music video with the characteristics of an indie video, including certain camera shots, angles and so on.

Tara - This involved research into indie genre music videos and camera angles used, such as close ups of the main singer, shots of instruments, and long shots of the band. We wanted to portray the main singer of the main member of the band, with the most camera angles as opposed to the other band members.

Matt - We had a clear and simple narrative, which we blended with the overlay effect in Final Cut after some feedback. The narrative is of a couple together, and is linked to the lyrics. Our feedback was that it didn't blend too well, so we overlayed the main singer over the top if this footage in Final Cut, which made it appear like the footage was in his thoughts or memories, and we think this blended a lot better.

Tara - I had a band and a singer from the early planning stages, so this really helped in terms of getting a band together for the song, we were really pleased with all the effort put in by each band member, such as learning lyrics and chords - and think this really helped them in terms of performance.

DROP DIGIPAK IN

Tara - Our digipak and magazine advert are also based on our music video, also hoping to create an indie genre music cover for our album after researching 'indie genre' album covers.

Matt - We created a collage of pictures in Photoshop, and used four seperate images of each member of the band, and to show them as the main images, we made them darker than the collage in the background.

Tara - For our additional information, we decided to add an additional booklet and a behind the scenes documentary, as well as the music video for 'Feeling a Moment'.

DROP MAGAZINE ADVERT IN

Tara - For the magazine advert, I did some planning at home, and liked the look of a few templates on Pages so tried these out as practice.

Matt - After looking at magazine adverts, I created 3D CD digipak album covers in After Effects and thought it would be a good idea to use these on the Magazine advert.

Tara - I created two magazine adverts originally, and after researching adverts on the blog, I chose the first one I did which featured a beige background and prominent layout.

Matt - The magazine advert and digipak showed clear links to our music video in terms of visual style and indie genre album covers and mag adverts.

OVERALL...

Tara - Overall, we felt that we achieved what we aimed to, and matched the characteristics, camera angles, and shots of an indie genre music video really well based on our research.

Matt - We think that we promoted the band effectively with the digipak and magazine advert, and we think the music video we made gave the band the correct image that a record company would want to put across.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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From our Youtube feedback, we received a 5 star rating and received one comment, which you can see from the screen grab.

Here are the 3 pages which explain our evaluation task 3, they are JPEG files so click on the images to enlarge and read the text and see the screengrabs.

For our social networking site feedback, the screengrab above shows that we have only received one comment of feedback, From Lauren Smith, who is an Manor Community College student, who also does the creative and media diploma, but level 2 as she is at GCSE level. She said she likes the effects used and the way everyone was focused, which is both good. Other than this, we received no other Facebook feedback, which may be due to the way we advertised the video on the social networking site.

On Youtube, we didn't receive any feedback written online, apart from the rough cut comment explained above, however we received a lot of views, (70 views in total) which meant people were watching the video but were leaving no feedback. However i believe 70 views is very good for the first couple of days of a music video going online, bearing in mind we had no other way of advertising other than feedback.

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

Here is a photo of me with all the technology we used, including a HD camera, a Tripod, a Mac Pro computer, a mouse, a keyboard, and Final Cut Express. Technologies have influenced our project in various ways, and if technologies were not so advanced we would not have been able to create the music video nearly as effectively. If technologies were not so advanced:

- We would have to use 'crash editing' using a form of two tapes and cutting from the tapes instead, which no doubt would be harder as we were not used to this editing.

- Our video would not contain any effects at all, no colour correction, deinterlace or overlapping effects used in final cut. Therefore our video would be a lot simpler than what we have done now, as technologies previously meant we couldn't have used final cut and would have to use 'crash editing'.

- We would also have no facebook or social networking sites to advertise on, as they would not have been created if technologies were not so advanced. Therefore we would've had to advertise using posters or leaflets which would cost money as opposed to advertising online for free.

- We would also not be able to have the same quality video, as HD cameras would not be made and standard DV cameras would have had to be used.

- We are now able to distribute our video to an immensely large audience, with social networking and Youtube, also Vimeo. The video is easily accessible online by going straight to Youtube. If technologies were not so advanced, we would actually need to show the video to a media producer or advertiser who would actually want to show our video, so if nobody wanted to show the video we would not be able to distribute it, other than show it in a room to an actual audience.

- We would have also had to get feedback differently, rather than online we would have to show the video to an audience of people and get them to write down their feedback.

Below are screengrabs of all the programmes we have used, and explanations of what we used them for.

Here is a screengrab of Myspace, which we used to contact the band and ask permission for the music track. We also used it to research initial artists, and to search for indie style artists for the indie style look their music videos had.

Here is a screengrab of facebook, which we used to advertise our video and to get views, as a terms of social networking advertising.

Here is a screengrab of Youtube, which we used to post our videos onto and to get views and feedback from industry professionals.

Here is a screengrab of Blogger, which shows the dashboard. This was our main input of research, where we put all of our research work for the music video project to show evidence of research.

Finally, here is a screengrab of Vimeo, which was another alternative to Youtube. We used this to upload our videos which showed them in better quality than Youtube.

Social networking advertising

Here is a form of advertising via social networking. I have posted the link to mine and Matt's music video final on social networking site www.facebook.com and have added the three evaluative questions, which are:

- In what ways does my video remind you of other music videos?
- What do you think are the strengths of my music video?
- What do you think are the weaknesses?

I will await feedback and see if anyone comments, I have also advertised our rough cut on the same website, when we published the rough cut on youtube. A screenshot is shown below:

Magazine Adverts

Today I created two magazine advert in pages, after picking two templates and editing them. You can see the various templates in the above image. I chose the templates 'Movie poster Large' and 'Musical poster Large'.

I use Matt's 3D images of our CD digipack, which he made 3D in after effects to go on the magazine advert. I used a lot of ideas based on the research Matt and I had done previously into digipacks, such as the Keane magazine advert in the previous posts etc to see a rough idea of what I would create. I used many aspects of the magazine advert, such as attractive fonts, big 3d images of the CD digipak and general information, when released, where available, and what special features were available.

I have then taken screenshots, as you can see above. However, the red and white magazine advert contains the back page of the CD cover plus the additional booklet, and I think the front cover may have to feature, but if not I think both magazine adverts are really attractive, I hope I have created what Matt and I hoped to achieve with our ideas.

Final Cut Music Video

This is our final cut for our music video, which we posted on Youtube. We made some changes from the rough cut,

including a new effect added, the Key Colour effect, to overlay footage.

Further editing of Digipak

Here you can see further shots of us editing the CD digipak in photoshop, with most of it finished. You can see us editing the track list at the back cover, the additional booklet you get with the digipak and the back and front covers.

Magazine Adverts

We looked at some magazine adverts for some upcoming album adverts, or some old album adverts that had been promoted in magazines. The first one was a Keane album, called Hopes and Fears.

As you can see from the left image, the magazine advert is similar to the visual style of Keane, very black and white. The advert only features a small amount of text, but shows the words 'Deluxe edition' which shows that when purchasing the album, you get some extra material as opposed to just buying the CD alone. It features a date, play.com sponsor, and a promotional quote.

The next magazine advert I looked at was a Rod Stewart album, which was different to the previous advert as it is an all time collection of 25 years. The text clearly explains the amount of songs and shows a clear image with 4 CDs, a booklet and a CD case.

Something like this would be a great idea for our CD album, as its simple and attractive. It shows a clear website to purchase that CD and others, also promoting other CDs in the process of promoting just one.

CD digipak design

Here is a screenshot from our process in photoshop, creating the picture idea and template for our CD digipak. Matt and I felt that these two images on the bottom of the template really worked, the right hand side image shows a collage of shots from the music video, plus a very prominent silhouette feature with the main band. It is easy to see each member of the band so we thought this was a good idea and quite creative. This would be the front cover of our digipak, so it needs to stand out and be really noticeable. I think this image does this, and Pete seemed to like the idea of our collage so we hope it is effective.

The left hand side image on the template shows the main band image taken again, but without the collage on the background and is made more of a silhouette effect after a filter in Final Cut. This would be the back of our CD cover, and we plan to have track listings on the back too, so will look at some fonts etc for the text at the back. We have yet to work out the inside covers, but we know one side will feature a CD. This is a progress screenshot showing the process Matt and I are taking towards creating the design for our CD digipak.

CD digipak templates

Here are some basic four sided panel digipaks for CD's are. I think this will be the best idea if we do the simplest design as it will not be too complicated.

Digipak image idea

This image is a very prominent one with a clear outline and clear focus. It is the CD cover for michael jackson's This Is It music tracks. The main image is michael jacskon himself, but only an outline - I was thinking if the other idea does not turn out to be effective (the overlay picture idea, shown in am example in the below posts) then this would be an excellent back up idea. I think we could have an outline of a guitar, drums microphone etc, but fill them with pictures from the music video or screenshots, just like the image above. I think this would be a good idea as it would clearly portray the band's genre etc.

Further feedback

Today at Colleridge we received some more feedback concerning our music video. After the effect explained in the previous post, this made the narrative a lot clearer and easier to understand. Our feedback from pete was as follows:

- The new overlapping effect works well with the narrative, it makes it a lot clearer and easier to understand, it also blends better with the music video.

- The narrative needs more fades to make it more smooth, as the footage is a bit choppy at the moment. 

- We should do more of the overlap effect on more of the shots in the video, especially where the shots are held longer as this will create a better effect and make the video look  better.

- One piece of footage needs to be stronger and the most prominent so that the audience know where to focus while watching the video.

Pete believed with these improvements the video will be almost ready and finished, which is excellent as we have plenty of time. I think the video works a lot better now with the overlapping effect too, and I am proud of all the effort we have put in for the video.

Screengrabs & editing process

These photos show our editing process further, with pictures to show that we have acted on the feedback received by people at the junction and teachers. 

For the narrative, we have faded certain shots in and out to show the shots clearer, and some shots were more prominent than others to allow the audience to focus more. From the picture to the left you can see the shots on the footage timeline. the lines are how far the shots are faded in or out. 

I think doing this has really helped our narrative, as our feedback was that the narrative did not blend that well and maybe it was unneeded. However with the new footage effects it appears like the significant moments are in the singer's mind, which blends a lot more and is more effective. 

CD idea in Photoshop

Here is a rough idea of our CD image, so that our audience can get a rough idea of the type of thing we hope to make.

If you look at the picture, you can see the four main members of the band which are bigger than the other pictures. The other pictures are screen grabs from our music video and the pictures from our editing process, and location shots etc.

As you can see, this is just a rough idea so nothing is finalised yet. We hope to make the pictures in the background a lot smaller so they are very small, with some faded in, some faded totally out and some really prominent to go with the idea of a 'feeling a moment slip away' lyrics to the song we used for our video. Perhaps we could make the four members a little bigger and also darker so they stand out a lot more, we also plan to add text to the image too.

DVD digipak moodboard

Here is the image moodboard for my CD cover idea, but they all feature pop genre artist CD covers i think, which are vibrant and bright colours. I am thinking more of an indie type genre CD cover, with less vibrant colours, perhaps with screenshots or pictures we used while we were filming our music video. I think this will be a good idea and very relevant to the lyrics.

DVD digipak ideas

Here is a good example of a DVD digipak, which unlike a CD digipak, is more rectangular as opposed to a square shaped pack. It is very similar to a CD digipak, with the inside leaflet and DVD on the other page. The pack opens like a film DVD pack, like an opening DVD case.

Here is some pictures which show the kind of idea I am thinking of for my digipak, having a collage of lots of pictures and having some fading out, some faded totally and some really prominent. I think this relates to the song very well as the lyrics are 'Feeling a moment slip away' so this is relevant I think. Having the text above all the images and really prominent is also the idea i quite like, like the picture above of the 'happy mondays' CD cover, it contains lots of various pictures with the text prominent above it.

The two pictures above the 'Happy mondays' CD cover also features a lot of pictures in the style of a collage, and all the 3 pictures above are taken from the book in class, 'The 100 best CD covers'. I have taken the pictures on my mobile phone and have used the pictures to help me with research.