Music video final cut Vimeo

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,

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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.

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.

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.

Feedback from Junction

Today we had lessons at the Junction to show our rough cuts of our music videos. We had quite a few videos between the whole class, and we showed them one after each other, with feedback inbetween from Simon Bates (junction co-ordinator) Rob Tinkler and Pete Edwards, who also worked at the junction and specialised in gigs etc. We also had Tom and Emma there to supervise the class and also to watch the videos, as they hadn't seen our music video rough cuts either so it was new to them too.

After watching our video, we received some feedback which would be very helpful in our development stages of our music video, and luckily we were all still at the rough cut process, so any feedback would be appreciated and would help us with later editing for the final cut of our video. We received both positive feedback and constructive criticism.

- The constructive criticism was that the narrative was good but they really preferred the performance of the video, they wondered if the narrative is overall needed in the video. Matt and I will see what our teachers Pete, Nick and Barney suggest and if it turns out the narrative isn't needed then we will leave it out for the final music video.

- All of them really enjoyed the silhouette effect we had created with the lighting, and thought this worked really well with the music video and the music track.

- They liked the fact that as we hadn't been able to use the junction to film, the hall we did use was a really effective space to use, and thought it was a great idea and a great place to film.

This was mostly all the feedback we received, and afterwards Simon said he thought all the work was of really high quality work - and this proves the hypothesis that working in a work related area as opposed to just in the classroom really does make a difference and does help considerably, as we received help from all the industry professionals such as a lighting technician etc. He even would like a CD of all the finished work to showcase at the junction etc as he thought all the videos were really high standard.

More shots of editing process

Here are some more shots from our editing process, showing the transitions we put on such as colour correction, and where we actually fading the music out, as after Nick's feedback as well as Pete's we agreed it was too long so we have now shortened the song to 3.20 seconds. 

Music Video Rough Cut

Here is our rough cut for our music video. Overall, I think we edited the footage well and cut quite quickly too. We used a least 6 different angles not including close ups so this was great, we have loads of extra footage - but its always better to have extra footage than not enough.

I think the members of the band were all enthusiastic and was really pleased with the amount of effort everybody put in beforehand, such as learning lyrics, guitar chords and drums to the song.

Editing Progress

Here are some screenshots of our first editing process, we filmed Tuesday night and then uploaded the footage onto the mac computers at Colleridge. We then started to edit our 'significant moments' which go into our music at various points. 

Then we will add the main footage, (which we are filming tomorrow at half 4 roughly), onto the timeline and will edit it accordingly. Hopefully each bit of footage will blend well, and will be effective. We have added two significant moments, which are roughly 30 seconds long, and we have enough footage for another two if we need them.

Shooting day one

Above are the images I took on my digital camera while out filming our first days shoot. Today after college time we filmed the 'significant moments' that would go in our music video to add a little story to the video, so that it is not simply all performance.

We had previously checked the possible locations for the significant moment, which consisted of near the riverside, and various other places. In the end we chose to do the significant moments near the riverside and went there to see where we could film. We found some nice areas in which would be perfect for the video, and as you can see today I have taken photos of the locations we previously liked. We used these locations in our music video, these consisted of:

- A clearing of path with trees either side of it,

- A bench near the river with the sun setting,

- A bridge on the river overlooking the area,

- A behind shot of the couple sitting by the river.

For the significant moments after a discussion together Matt and I decided it would be a nice idea to have the main singer of the band with his girlfriend, which would could as the 'significant moments' throughout the song. Since they are a real couple this was fine for them and they enjoyed helping us.

I think overall today was a good experience and helped us establish what would blend in well with our music video. We still need to do a health and safety assessment for the area, which will be added soon, and I have noted down possible safety problems that may have occurred while filming.

Back Up Plan - Matt

If we can't use the junction we had to think of a backup plan:

We could still keep the similar storyline, with moments slipping away, i think that the pictures zooming out to the screen will still be good to do and we can shoot that pretty much anywhere, because the location is not that important for these shots. The main problem we have is if we can't use the junction because there is not enough space for us.

If this problem occurs then we will need to find somewhere else to shoot, I still think we can pull of a band performance, just maybe we can play on the point about being around no one, so we could have the performace in some deserted place such as deep in some woods somewhere or up on a big hill, the only problem with that is it would be very hard to put a drumkit up there so we would have to think of how we can still have drums in the video without having to take it to these locations.

Other then that the rest of our idea should be ok seeing as we can shoot these anywhere.

Pitch number 2 (Matt L's)

'The track is Feeder - Feeling a moment

Well the Start of the video is the whole video sped up into 9 seconds and in reverse, to start the track. it starts with the band at either the junction or some other location, Maybe even outside somewhere, but the Limitations of that would be that we could not get a drum kit outside.

There will be a few shots of members of the band either looking at photos or just showing them to the camera, which will then zoom in of random clips involving different band members with it fading out to static.

to maybe enhance the fact of being alone, they will seem like they are at a gig, with all the lights and stuff, but there are "crowd" shots which shows that the whole place is empty, like nobody showed up, like the concept of being alone.'

Here is Matt L's pitch for our music video project, we each did a pitch so we would have more ideas if any of them did not work out as well as we hoped, also to show we have not just had one solid idea - it also shows progress. I think the pitch is good, and especially like the idea of nobody being at the bands gig, which have clear relevance to the lyrics to the song.

I think this could be excellent if we made it look realistic - and would be a twist to the normal indie band music video scenario. This also links back to my previous post of some advertisement posters, we could have some of the band's gig advertisement posters around the junction, which would add emphasis to the fact nobody would be at the live gig.