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.