Wednesday 30 November 2011

Evaluation - Alex Breeze

1. Our music video uses and develops on a lot of pop genre forms and conventions. We focused on these four main conventions; camera angles, costume, editing transitions and lighting. Firstly the camera angles within our music video featured a lot of close-ups and tracking shots. We learnt from other artists' music videos, including Beyonce's 'Run the World', that these camera shots help to attract attention to the singer and artist recognition within audiences.
  The costume within our music video was focused on a teenage 'indie' look, inspired by artists such as One direction, JLS and Justin Bieber. This worked well in our video as it used and developed on costume conventions of a current modern pop genre artist. This also made our artist more relatable to the targeted audience of teenagers and young adults.
  The editing transitions within our music video are quick and fast paced. From our research into other music videos we learnt that this helps to keep the audience engaged and interested in the video. An example of an artist that uses fast paced shots and quick transitions in their video would be 'Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work'.
  Finally the lighting within our music video was inspired by the music video 'Greatest Day' by Take That as within their video it is bright and summery which is what we tried to portray in our own video. We also tried to achieve glare on the camera lens which is also featured in the Take That video. This is because it is a unique effect and can help to represent the mood and atmosphere of our video. For example within in our product we used glowing Autumn light that suggests Ne-Yo is over coming his sadness because its still dark, but its getting lighter. Also with the scenes when Ne-Yo is in the past with the female character, it is bright and happy; showing the mood of the scene. This is not a convention of pop videos to have past and present scenes of happiness and sadness however I think it works well with the song and lyrics.
  Overall our video conforms to and challenges the conventions of a pop music video however I am pleased with the various elements we have chosen to focus on and I think we have demonstrated the atmosphere of the song well. The lyrics fit well with the illustrative nature of our video through the use of characters and a storyline throughout the song.

2. The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts work well because we have a key theme running throughout: emotions. As the song is quite emotional and Ne-Yo is trying to portray these emotions through his lyrics, we have tried to captures these feelings through the use of acting in our video, imagery in our ancillary texts and lighting in all our products.
  The acting within our video features a sad and depressed teen which is illustrative to the lyrics as he is sad from just losing his girlfriend. We tried to capture these emotions through the way the character walks and the expressions that are made. This attracts the audience because it shows the artist being vulnerable and so the audience can relate to this.
  This imagery within our poster and digipak represents the emotions of the artist. For example within the poster there is graffiti that is aggressive in some places but sad in others. All of these represent the feelings our artist is feelings within this vulnerable time in his life.
  The lighting within all our products is a key illustration of our theme: emotions. For example within our video it is light in some places but dark in others which signals the feelings and emotions the artist is feeling at these points in the song. Also the lighting on our ancillary texts are dark and gloomy again representing the feelings of the artist. The front cover of our digipak is a close-up of the artists face which helps for artist recognition but also to connect with the audience as they can feel closer to him due to his vulnerable expression.
  Overall the products we have made work well together because they have a sharing theme of emotions and help to display the artist in an unusual way from what is normal. For example Ne-Yo is usually shown as a 'player' and a womaniser in his videos, but with this video and promotional pack we hope to shine light on his vulnerable side.

3. Our audience feedback has helped us to improve in all of our our products. For example with the rough cut of our video we received feedback stating 'the mirror shot of the iphone shows good inter textual references of the target audience'. This helped us to confirm that this was a good shot because at first we were debating whether or not to keep it. We also received feedback stating that our lip syncing was OK but could do with improvement, from this feedback we made sure that in our final product all the lyrics were lip synced.
  Our advice from Amar was the most useful because he suggested we have shorter scenes and more scenes featuring the female extra. This was good advice as we later received compliments on how the video kept the audience entertained and on their toes.
  We also received feedback on our ancillary texts from Andrea, this was to over edit some of the images so they stand out as much as possible. For example with the front cover image of the album, before the advice it was hardly edited on Photoshop however once finished we had added more contrast, de-saturation, adjusted the levels and curves. This advice made our images look at lot better and stand out a lot more.  
  Overall we took full advantage of the feedback given and improved on all our products.

4. We used three main media technologies including Final Cut, Photoshop and Blogger.
  Within Final Cut we edited and enhanced our video from using such effects as cutting, contrasting and adding transitions. We also used image enhancing tools within Final Cut that colour corrected the scenes to give them more of a professional look and also an Autumn seasonal glow. Another technique we used was making the flashback scenes black and white with also a white glow round the outside to help convey that the scenes were in the past. This was a pinnacle part of our illustrative storyline because with out this technique the flashbacks wouldn't have been obvious and so the story wouldn't have made sense.  Without Final Cut we would not have been able to edit our project and with ease.
  The media technology Photoshop was a key part to the making of our ancillary products as we used the programme to edit and enhance the images but also to add in text which is a fundamental convention to the digipak. These adjustments improved our digipak massively as through Photoshop we were able to add more contrast to the images, adjust curves, levels and change the saturation. Without these edits our images would have appeared dull and unprofessional. Overall Photoshop made enhancing our images a lot more easier and quicker.
  Another media technology we used was Blogger. This made it easy for us to document and record our ideas, thoughts and feelings towards our products. Also it made it easy for others to pass on feedback and for to immediately see and respond to this feedback.
  Overall, all of these software packages carried our creativity forward instead of hindering it and helped us to create a product and ancillary texts at a professional level.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Advice from Andrea

While creating our album cover we got some advice from Andrea to edit our simple and bold picture to make it seem more graphical than an actual photo. She also told us to over edit the images so they appear more professional by being over contrasted and exposed.

Our advice from Amar.

When editing our music video we asked Amar for adviceon how to make our video look more proffessional. he gave us alot of good ideas as to what we could do to improve, so we took all of these ideas onboard and added his ideas.
one of his ideas was to bring a scene with the female character in further towards the beggining. This was because if the audience only saw a quick, short clip of her they would want to see more. This would keep the veiwers interested throughout the first part of the video.
Another idea Amar had was to add more transitions like crossfades. This was to add emotion and sadness to our video. He also said to compliment this we should use shorter clips in our video as this would keep the video fresh and also keep the veiwers interested.

Objectives of the lesson: 23/11/2011

Our objectives of this lesson were:

1. To complete the poster for our music video.
2. To make a start on the album cover of our album.

We completed both of these targets. we completed the poster to a good standard and also made a good start on our album cover. we have chosen a main photo and have begun editing it. We are thinking about editing it to make it black and white as this adds a dark and gloomy effect which relates to the artists feelings throughout the album.

Final poster advert

This is our final promotional album poster. 

Monday 21 November 2011

Rough first design.



This is a first draft of our poster for our digipack. we used this location because it represents how the artist is feeling. The yellow graffiti on the wall that says "hold your head high, heavy heart.." relates very strongly to our video as it is a written representation of the feelings that he feels throughout the video. The artist is also sitting in a corner, this shows how secluded and vulnerable he feels. as though he has been pushed into a corner and cannot get out.
The images on the wall to the right are a representation of how he feels in some scenes in the video, such as when he gets kicked out of his girlfriends house; the images display anger and resentment.
We chose this font as it grabs the attention of the consumer and fits with the conventions of a pop song/video.
The editing we used was curves to alter the brightness and contrast of the image, we used this to give the poster a more dramatic feel. We also darkened areas to help other parts of the poster stand out to the buyers. We also added in a gradient that faded in white from the right hand side to lighten the image in this area, we altered this gradient to how we thought it would look best. we also used an effect called 'hard mix', this effect added exaggerated contrast.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Our visual theme.

Our visual them that runs throughout our music video is emotions, we have portrayed this theme in our video by showing the lead singer on his own and having emotional scenes with himself.
We hope to follow this theme through into our digipak and our poster by having images of our lead singer on his own. The front cover will most likely be more of a close-up to engage the consumer and stand out more on the shop shelf. A close-up of the artist with help to make him more noticeable and recognised within the music industry.
The back cover of our digipak will be a silhouetted distant image of our artist as this illustrates that he is distant and lonely. The silhouette of the artist is to show that he is different because he is black and faceless. The images that we will take will also be edited and adjusted on photoshop to enhance the images. We will use various effects such as Levels to adjust the darks and lights of the image and over exaggerate them to make it appear more professional. We will also add in lighting and fading effects similar to the picture shown below by using the gradient effect on photoshop. This will help lighten up the image and give more dramatic lighting. We will also ad the effect of desaturation in order to remove the colour from the image and give a more dramatic feel to the image. Also the black and white will help represent the artist feelings because it is grey and miserable. Also he will stand out better against the black background because he will be in light white.       

Wednesday 2 November 2011

ROUGH CUT


Here is our rough cut where you can see the basic idea of our video. There are no transitions or effects in our video yet however we plan to put some in.
 
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