Deadlines

The editing our commentary needs to be completed and on our blog by 14th December

Improving our individual evaluations needs to be finished by Monday 12th December

Our blog work needs to be finished by 15th

The editing of our product

For the editing we used a piece of software called Final cut. This software enabled us to add effects and generally edit our product to a professional level easily.

• The first step we took was to insert our footage into Final Cut. This was made easy through the use of a simple interface where you could drag the footage you wanted into a window where it would import into Final Cut.
• We then began to order our footage by following the storyboard and then putting it on the time-line. During this process we deleted any out-takes that we had filmed by mistake to make finding a particular piece of footage easier.
• We then made sure the lip-syncing was accurate to the music by having the soundtrack at the bottom of our time-line and lining it up with the music being played in the footage. This was made easier with the 'quick key' function on the keyboard with the use of '<' '>' these keys which moved the footage only slightly to either side so that we could line up the footage and the music with accuracy.



Colour correction image

• After this we began to add in effects like colour correction. This helped to enhance our videos visuals dramatically as we gave the scenes more of an Autumn glow and helped to make the footage seem more professional. 
• Then we added in cross fades to help the bridging between scenes so that the video as a whole runs smoother and more fluent. This is also an easy concept to handle as it is a simple drag and drop process. 
• After this we added in desaturation (black and white) to the flashback scenes to help illustrate that they are actually flashbacks. We also added in a faded white edges around the scenes to help them seem more surreal and dream like. 
• We then finally added a fade to white in the last scene to help initiate the ending of our product and make it seem more visually pleasing. 

Overall our product editing worked out well because we kept to a good schedule and added in a lot of effects to keep the audience interested and entertained.        

Initial Ideas

For our initial ideas we thought about doing a parody version of the song 'what do u want' by 'cassie' where a male would dress up as a female singer and perform in a stereotypical female mannor. We first had this idea because we thought it would be unique and might appeal more to the comical side of audiences. However do to peer feedback we found that this was a flawed idea because not everyone would understand the concept. Also it is hard to make a truly funny music video that isn't just funny for the people who made it; there is a fine line between humour and stupidity.
Therefore we decided to change our idea and approach. Therefore we then decided to look for a track that featured a male singer (do to our group being all males). However we could not find any songs that suited our ambitions and ideas and so we asked to look for a song on another CD track choice. We then found a song called 'Future in you' by Ne-Yo which we began to brainstorm for and decided that this was a good song for us to work with.

Change in filming location

During the exploration process for a location we found Trinity college to be a suitable filming location do to its good tree coverage (following with our Autumn theme) and also a good pathway that would create a nice scene. However do to restricted access on the premises we had to change our location to the fields around a nearby village: Bottisham. This turned out to be just as suitable because there was good coverage for trees and nice scenery with nearby fields. This also helped to be useful as it was closer to our houses and so travel was less of an issue. Also for the indoor scenes we were able to use our female actors house whom lives in Bottisham therefore again making travel to and forth the locations easy.

Album track listing research

Here is the back cover from Eminem debut album 'the Slim Shady LP'. This tracklist as you can see is wrapped around the left side of Eminem's body, this has been done most likely because Eminem writes his songs based on his own life and experiences, so by having the tracklist around his body shows that the tracks are close to his heart. This is a unique way of listing the track because it links the tracks to the image and shows Eminem's individuality and originality. The colour scheme used for the font is black, this works well in contrast with the background image.

We will use this technique in our own digipack because the text helps to attract the audiences eye to the artist do to the effect of leading lines. This also helps the text to blend in and work better with the background image if it fits with some of the curvatures of the subject as it looks more natural.

Evaluation - George Goldhawk

1.Our media product uses the conventions of a typical R&B music video. The lyrics in the music video are illustrative, the use of voyeurism is absent as our lyrics are about  a women; not objectifying them. The editing cuts were about 5-10 seconds long. This is inspiration from another real media product was ‘Ne-yo’ – ‘One in a million, as this follow the same conventions as our video.

Take that’s single ‘Patience’ inspired us to do our ‘walking’ themed video where our ‘ne-yo’ walked through the forest reminiscing. The lighting has been inspired from the ‘Greatest Day’ as the orange glare creates a happy effects.

2.All three work as a promotional package because they are all based on the artist in our album cover research we noticed that less established have their faces on the albums covers because they have less recognition, by doing the album face cover this gets them more public recognition. The image they create is one that makes our guy look a ladies man who doesn’t treat women as object but as one that completes him.  The album cover is especially food at attracting the audience as we use reviews from ‘NME’ as 5star, because this will ensure the audience that top critics back the song.

3.The feedback from the rough cut is all positive and most comment on the performance of our character and lip syncing. Also there is feedback on good intertextual references regarding the iPhone mirror shot, fashion was alos highlighted as this is more attracting to the target audience. The feedback from the initial pitch was very constructive as the plan was to dress Alex up as a female, but then after receiving the feedback we decided that this was not a good idea because the video may have come across as a comedy as this was not the message we wanted to send out.

4.Final cut played a massive part in the video as it was our ain editing software, HD cameras are a new technology that allowed us to film in very high quality and at a higher frame rate the only downside is that it takes longer to render. Photoshop was used to create our digipack, no body in our group is very experienced with Photoshop which made it hard for us to create a professional looking image but I still think it looked pretty good.

Commentary Evaluation

On the day of filming we travelled down to the black room where we began filming our video commentary. This went well as we did it quickly and efficiently with little out-takes.

Our commentary uses visual references such as clips from our product and images of our ancillary texts this helped to emphasise our points and make the commentary on a whole more visually appealing. We also integrated text shots of the questions so the audience can easily see what we were talking about and again makes it more interesting.

Overall I think our commentary video works well in providing information on what our product is about and what we intended for the product in a visually pleasing way.    

Story Board evaluation

Overall we think we have produced a successful storyboard that follows a good narrative that relates well to the song. Also we have put in many various shots to liven up the video and keep the audiences attention such as: close ups, pan shots, tracking shots, mid-shots, over the shoulder shots etc. Some of these shots such as close-ups, can also increase artist recognition do to the close view of the artist's face.

The timing with the soundtrack also goes well because with some of the scenes we have made it so it cuts to a flashback of the artist and the female character when the lyrics say "think about, you and me together".  This makes some of the scenes illustrative to the song as they visually demonstrate what the lyrics and saying verbally.

A negative with our storyboard would be the location, if we had more time then we would have been able to visit more visually interesting and dynamic scenery to help convey the emotions the artist is feeling and also give more varied and appealing scenes.

In conclusion I think out storyboard gives a good illustrative narrative to the song in a effective conventional pop genre way. 

Story Board changes

We made various changes to our storyboard when filming, such as:

• We changed the last scene where the two characters where walking down the lane together then slowly fade apart. This had to be changed because we could not find a suitable location to film the area and also do to time issues.
• Another thing we changed was the third character that's featured in the storyboard (the new boyfriend). This needed to be taken out simply because we didn't have another person to play that character and since it wasn't accentual to our video we took the character out.
• The final change we did to our storyboard was the 'phone call' scene which had inter-textual references through the use of the iphone and featured a phone call between the singer and the female character. We adapted this to a scene featuring the singer flicking through photos on his iphone. The previous idea was a good one however do to time errors we had to adapt it, however the new scene still features inter-textual references and so it works out well.

Timetable schedule

This was our timetable schedule that helped us to plan for and keep to deadlines. The grid format also helped us to quickly and easily decide what needed to be done and when. Overall this schedule helped us to make deadlines and was the backbone to our successful time keeping.

Story Board

Commentary

Evaluation - Jake Cowie

Our music video develops, challenges and uses forms and conventions of a real media product. we have analysed and gain inspiration from a few certain products. our main source of inspiration for our video was Take That's 'Patience'. We wanted to create a product similar to this as we enjoyed it and found it interesting and intriguing. We use the pop genre well in our music video, while editing we made sure the cuts were fast and the clips we used were reasonably short (5-10 seconds). We used jump cuts to keep the audience interested. as well as jump cuts, we used cross fades which added emotion and fluidity to our video. To keep to the conventions of a pop video we included a lot of close up shots, The reason for this is so that because he is a new artist people will begin to learn his face and he will become globally recognized.

In our video we made sure that there was a relationship between the music and the visuals. This was achieved by using certain locations to match the mood of the music. I think that our main product and ancillary texts combine and come together very well. The location used in all three is very similar, we did this because we wanted all three products to relate to one another. We wanted the location to be the recurring theme. The concept that we were trying to communicate was about a lonely man, who lost the love of his life. I believe the we succeeded in doing this through our ancillary texts as well as our video. We wanted to create a 'pure' and 'calm' image of the artist, as this is what the lyrics say. We chose a forest location for our video to help the image of the artist, as a forest portrays peace and serenity. We also wanted him to become a recognized face and person, so we decided to put him in a fashionable costume so that he was relate to his target audience. I think that we attracted the attention of our target audience very well, as we used many different inter-textual references e.g the iPhone scene and the clothing.

Our feedback has never been perfect, but we have used it all to construct our video and ancillary products into a very well designed package. The feedback on our initial pitch was that our ideas would not have worked and to make a funny and serious video is very difficult. We decided against using our original idea, and chose another song.

We learnt a lot from our feedback from Andrea and Amar. Amar gave us some good editing advice, which we used and our video now looks a lot more professional. Andrea also gave us some great advice on our ancillary products. She said that we should over edit the front cover image and it was not as strong as the back image. We took this advice on board and created a very good front cover. Our peers said that "the integrated story was good and added a new dynamic to the video". They also said "the lip syncing is good and the costume matches the target audience well". They did not give any criticisms about our work, so we could not make any changes based on peer feedback.

We used a range of different technologies when creating our main product and ancillary texts. The first was Final Cut, we used this to edit all of our music video. we did not find using this software to challenging as we all had previous experience using it. The second technology we used was Photoshop, we used this to create our album cover and promotional poster. We found that using Photoshop was difficult as none of us had any real experience of using it, but once was got some advice and help we managed to make a professional looking digipack. We also used the HD film recorders and stills cameras, we used these to film our video and the stills cameras to create a location recce. We also used blogger to save and post our work online. Blogger made it easy for other groups to view and comment on our blog. This meant that we could see all feedback about our work. We used all four of these products to help us create our music video, album cover and promotional poster, without them it would have been extremely challenging.

If we did the project again i would change the amount of time available to film. I think that we needed more time to film as this would have allowed us to travel to different locations to add more dynamic shots to our video. I would also like to learn new techniques on Photoshop as this would open up alot of new editing methods for me to use.

Professional video commentary

Here is an example of a professional music video commentary/behind the scenes of the video Never be a right time - Professor Green:

This video is a good example of a music video commentary because it cuts in well between the actual product and the 'behind the scenes' footage. It also has an instrumental of the song featured in the product running in the background of the video which helps to make it more interesting but also always keeps the viewer entertained. The video also features interviews with the cast members and crew with their feelings and motives of shots, scenes and their reactions of how it has turned out. Overall I think we can use many techniques used with this commentary for our own, one being the track underlay of the video as this is a good technique to keep the audience entertained.    

Previous Student Commentaries

Evaluation of group - 13T1-32

They begin their commentary with a text insert of the first question they are being asked, which immediately tells the audience what they will be talking about and what to expect. They also feature some clips from their product which helps for a visual representation of the verbal context of their points. We will try to use both these techniques within our own commentary as they are both visual elements that will help to not only explain the points we are making more clearly, but also to help make the watching experience more interesting and enjoyable for the audience. A negative towards their video is that it seems too one sided with the talking to begin with which gets a bit tiresome however this is picked up better during the second question when they begin to converge with each other more making it more fluent and enjoyable.
Overall we think their commentary is good with some great techniques that we will use with in our own commentary.

Here is a link to their commentary: http://32longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/2010/12/final-evaluation-music.html


Evaluation of group - 13T1-48

In this commentary they begin with the first 20 seconds of their music video which is a good way to immediately entice the audience as this is predominately the most interesting part of a music video as it has to immediately grab the audiences attention. They then go into the commentary itself with the clever introduction of each persons name written on the bottom of the screen; which is a professional and easy way to illustrate the names of the speakers. The feel of the commentary is very laid back which is a reflection of their video do to its laid back indie genre music. This also creates a more enjoyable watch because their conversation is fluent but casual. Within the commentary they feature more clips of their product and shots of their ancillary texts which gives a more interesting watch but also helps to emphasise their points.
Overall their commentary is very good because it keeps the attention of the audience but also explains motives and feelings towards their products very well. They also feature good techniques such as: editing on the commentary with the unusual camera effects, text and visual inserts. We hope to incorporate some of these techniques into our own commentary.

Here is a link to their commentary: http://48longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/2010/12/directors-commenatry.html

What is a directors commentary?

  A directors commentary is a voice recorded (or filmed) explanation and analysis of a product by one or more speakers, they are usually found on the bonus features of DVD's. They give a unique insight into the thoughts and motives behind the scenes and shots they used.
  Through the use of laserdisk technology, a directors commentary could be easily edited to play whilst the actual product is playing and keep cutting in between the soundtrack and commentary. The two main types of directors commentary are as follows:

• Partial or scene-specific, which only covers selected scenes of the film. Sometimes these are recorded without the speaker viewing the film and thus the commentator may make more general comments than pointing out specific details.
• Feature-length or screen-specific, which is recorded in one session: the speakers watch the movie from beginning to end and give their thoughts directly based on what is happening on-screen.

   The type of commentary that we will be doing is a 'partial or scene-specific' commentary as we feel this will be the most effect for our video.

Ancillary Texts: Digipak

Here is our Final Digipak cover, we are happy with how it has turned out.

Final Music Video

Here is our final music video edited through Final Cut.

Video Commentary Script

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

(Jake)

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. We learnt from other artists' music videos, including Beyonce's 'Run the World', that the camera shots we used (close-ups, High angle, low angle and long shot etc). These help to attract attention to the singer and help gain artist recognition within audiences. 

(George)

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. We also used cross fades to help the video flow better. 

(Alex)

For our ancillary texts, in particular the album cover uses the convention of a close-up image of the artist as the front cover in order to promote his appearance and make him more recognisable.

Also for our poster we used dark lighting and an image of the artist on his own to portray the artist in a lonely state. We used these techniques to stereotypically show the emotion of the artist.    

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

(Alex)

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.
(George)
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 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.
 (Jake)
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. 

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

(George)

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'.
 (Jake)
This helps us to confirm that this was a good shot because at first we were debating whether or not to keep it. 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.
 (Alex)
  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, desaturation, adjusted the levels and curves. 

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

(Alex)

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 to make the video have autumn seasonal colours.  

(George)

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.
We step by step edited our images and was made easier through the use of layers in Photoshop. The first step we did was to edit the contrast as this would make a basis for what we want. We then added the various effects of curves and levels to finalise the image.
(Jake)
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.