Friday 9 December 2011

Filming our Script

Our filming session consisted of going to the studio to record our script, whereby we talked and explained why we did what we did for our video. We have decided that we will have our music video audio quietly so that the commentary is the audiences main focus. We had to ensure that we got things done quick because we only had 1 lesson to film. We also decided to have our music video small in the top corner of the directors commentary clips, this should give it a fairly professional look.

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Script


QUESTION 1
Toby: It was essential for us to try to make our media product as professional as possible. To do this, we developed research on other professional music videos to generate ideas for our own production and to help us include conventions of real media products and therefore improving our music video.
Graeme: In order to understand the conventions of the genre of our chosen song we had to first listen to it and other songs from the band so we could find out what type of music they play and the characteristics that go along with the specific genre. It was clear to us that 'The Pink Spiders' are a Rock/ Indie type band and therefore we would have to conform with the conventions of a indie rock style music video and develop our ideas with this in mind.
George: When researching indie rock style videos by 'The Pink Spiders' and other bands we found that the majority of them are based around a performance in which the band plays the song directly addressing the different cameras. There is also normally a recurring theme throughout the video in order to make it more exciting and make the performance stand out. This is something that we felt should be included within our video so it would look more professional and therefore more successful.
Andrew: We also developed on this idea by having another element planned within the video that we could cut back to throughout; this was the character "Emily" at her 17th birthday party. In the original plan of the production we wanted this to be one of the main aims and elements that made up the video, by having two separate story lines that represented the two different sides of the character and a performance that introduced the band. However during the filming stage we released that this would of been harder to pull off successfully than a performance would be so we toned down our ideas and decided to only include a small storyline showing the character 'Emily' blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. I feel that this was a good decision that the group made as we had a limited amount of time to film.
Toby: Also by having a main storyline instead of a performance-based video slightly goes against the conventions of rock videos so this was a beneficial decision.

QUESTION 2
Graeme: Our music video and the ancillary text are effective. In our poster advertising a tour we used the band members to help connect the poster to the music video. The poster works well because the design and colours go with the typical style for the type of music. The magazine advert and the digipack work together because they use the same colour and font styles to help make a connection and give an effective combination. The music video is very focused around a boy band, this is then shown in the poster because the image used includes the band members posing in a very similar way to which a real band would, the image is also edited and given effects that help portray the characteristics that were shown of the character within the music video, these characteristics include being relaxed and messing around but at the same time getting a serious piece of music which they want to sell.
George: The music video does have a black and white filer that isn't used in the poster, this is because we want the poster to have colour to help attract people to the band. Because of this they aren't directly linked through the visuals but there still a good combination.
QUESTION 3
Andrew: As a group we have learnt a lot from the feedback we have received from other groups, a lot of the feedback was positive and recognized our aim to show a sort of behind the scenes/performance video, Expressing the band as what a band would do, messing around etc. A lot of the feedback also made us feels as though our ideas were not quite what were planned, for example someone said,
Toby: "You should've showed more of the girl to show more of the story behind the video."
Andrew: We agreed with this and made us wish that we had done. We were generally happy with the feedback because the comments related to what the initial idea was, and left us feeling as though we achieved the majority of the things we wanted to.
Graeme: For example, respectable performance in sync, visuals and lyrics relating, correct jump cuts and no long clips to make it boring etc. The feedback definitely reassured us because the video wasn't exactly what the plan was, even though many of the things we portrayed were correct with what we wanted, it was showed in different ways. So for people to say I liked the way you did so and so to show this, we were happy that people were able to see what we were trying to do.
QUESTION 4
Toby: We used a range of new media technologies in the different stages of our music video to have a successful music video produced as our final product.

For our research and planning we used a variety of tools on the PC including the Internet to produce blog posts with our own planning on and using video sites and other online tools to research other things that we would find relevant to our music video.
George: For example, we used youtube to view other music videos that were within the Indie Rock genre to get an idea behind the genre and generate a list on the blog of genre characteristics. This helped us develop an idea of what we wanted in our music video and helped us in the planning stage later on. Our online blogging was very beneficial to the planning and production of our music video. This was because we used it to record useful information we had found about the genre, ideas we had for our own music video and planning the different days in which we decided we were going to conduct our filming, to ensure that we had a successful day, and the most productive day possible. Other tools online that were useful were things such as facebook to help us get in contact with the band who's music we were developing a music video too.

Andrew: We also used a digital camera to record still shots. We used this effectively as we took shots of our location to create a location reccae to make sure that everything was in order for when we did our filming.  We were also able to check that we thought the location fitted in with the mise en scene that we were aiming to achieve, and gave usthe ability to include the genre characteristics within the video that we wanted.

Toby: We also used a HD video camera for the recording of our music video.This was incredibly useful for us as we had ability to record our whole music video portfolio of clips we needed as the video camera had the ability to store clips with the memory card. The HD video camera we used also gave us the ability to play back recorded clips on the spot. This was incredibly useful within our filming process as once we thought that we had done a clip to a standard that we were happy with, we were able to watch it back on the video camera to check for errors, and make sure that it was of an acceptable standard.

Graeme: Different programs were used on the computer to develop diffent aspects of our coursework. For example, we used iphoto to develop our digipack, and we used final cut express to do the editing on our music video

Tuesday 29 November 2011

George Tibbett - Evaluation Questions

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

Our media product is performance based and therefore does use conventional aspects of real media products such as other music videos by 'The Pink Spiders'. Within some of there music videos they also have a performance based mise-en-scene. Our media product which is a music video for the song 'Seventeen candles' by 'The Pink Spiders' uses a filter to make the hole video in black and white to fit with the genre of 'Indie Rock' and help display the meaning of the lyrics in which there is a story about a girl on her birthday but she isn't happy because she wants a different type of party. Even though we did this to fit with the genre of the song, the filter does challenge the typical media conventions of this genre of music which normally is very colourful and upbeat. Within our music video we used props to develop the forms and conventions of real media products, these props include the instruments such as a drum kit, guitar and a microphone. These develop the the conventions of real music videos because in our music video we used the microphone prop in a non-instrumental way, this is because one of the band members threw the microphone to help the meaning of the lyrics. In a normal music video there may be band members useing instruments but they may not use the props in the same way as we did. In our video all the characters dressed up to fit with the genre and make it seem as if we were an actual band. This helps with the conventions of real music videos because the band members of real bands are likely to dress in the same way.

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

Our music video and the ancillary text are effective. in our poster advertising a tour we used the band members to help connect the poster to the music video. The poster works well because the design and colours go with the typical style for the type of music. The magazine advert and the digipack work together because they use the same colour and font styles to help make a connection and give an effective combination. The music video is very focused around a boy band, this is then shown in the poster because the image used includes the band members posing in a very similar way to which a real band would, the image is also edited and given effects that help portray the characteristics that were shown of the character within the music video, these characteristics include being relaxed and messing around but at the same time getting a serious piece of music which they want to sell. The music video does have a black and white filer that isn't used in the poster, this is because we want the poster to have colour to help attract people to the band. Because of this they aren't directly linked through the visuals but there still a good combination.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback we have learnt that some people enjoy having more of a narrative so that they can gain a clearer understanding for the story of the lyrics which would be beneficial and could help people hear the lyrics. The audience enjoyed the filter used on the video because they felt that it went well with the genre, we used a black and white filter. The audience liked they way we filmed the music video, we filmed it in a relaxed way and at the same time had fun. We have learnt that many people want different things from video, we also learnt that one of the main things people want from a music video is the band members and the characters. The majority of the audience wanted a narrative and a performance based video, they wanted to see the characteristics of the band members within a narrative as well as in the performance.

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

In the filming stages of the production we used touch screen digital camera's, these gave a better image quality than that which we would have achieved using older and more outdated camera's. Although we used HD camera's, one of the camera's which was a personal camera of one of the group members, had a technical issue and the aspect ratio/image quality was not a god as the rest of the footage we had managed to capture. We used the social network site 'facebook' to contact 'The Pink Spiders' to ask them if it was ok for us to create the music video for there song 'Seventeen Candles'. We also used youtube to watch music videos that the band had previousely made to help us get an idea of the kind of videos they normally make. Using the editing software's 'iphoto' and 'Final Cut Express' we put together the clips that we had captured to create the music video, we synced the mouth movements with the song being sung. We then used the software to create a voice over where we put the music video in a smaller frame infront of our faces as we were talking about the different parts of the music video.

Evaluation Questions - Graeme Beck

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
          Within our media product we wanted to use and develop upon the conventions of real music videos in order to achieve a good believable end product. In order to understand the conventions of the genre of our chosen song we had to first listen to it and some other songs from the band so we could find out what type of music they play and the genres that go along with the specific genre. It was clear to us that 'The Pink Spiders' are a Rock/ Indie type band and therefore we would have to conform with the conventions of a indie rock style music video and develop our ideas with this in mind.
           When researching indie rock style videos by 'The Pink Spiders' and other band we found that the majority of them are based around a performance in which the band play the song directly addressing the different cameras. There is also normally a recurring theme throughout the video in order to make it more exciting and make the performance stand out. This is something that we felt should be included within our video so it would look more professional and therefore more successful. We also developed on this idea by having another element planned within the video and cut back to throughout, this was the character "Emily" at her 17th birthday party. When originally planning the production we wanted this to be one of the main aims and elements that made up the video, by having two separate story lines, representing the two different sides of the character and a performance that introduced the band. However during the filming stage we released that this would of been harder to pull off successfully than a performance would be and therefore we toned down our ideas and decided to only include a small storyline showing the character 'Emily' blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. I feel that this was a good decision that the group made as we had a limited amount of time to film and probably would not have had enough time to film 2 separate storyline in 2 different locations and a band performance in a further location. Therefore we filmed in 2 locations and only included part of 1 of the storyline. This gave us more time to film the performance part of the video in more detail and get more shots that would help keep the video interesting.
          Something else we did that that follows the conventions of indie rock productions is film the whole thing in a location that reflects the genre. For this we used an old barn, this suited the song quite well and

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

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

Evaluation Questions - Toby Moffat

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
It was essential for us to try to make our media product as professional as possible. To do this, we developed research on other professional music videos to generate ideas for our own and to help us include conventions of real media products and therefore improving our music video.

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

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

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

We used a range of new media technologies in the different stages of our music video to have a successful music video produced as our final product.

For our research and planning we used a variety of tools on the PC including the internet to produce blog posts with our own planning on and using video sites and other online tools to research other things that we would find relevant to our music video. For example, we used youtube to view other music videos that were within the Indie Rock genre to get an idea behind the genre and generate a list on the blog of genre characteristics. This helped us develop an idea of what we wanted in our music video and helped us in the planning stage later on. Our online blogging was very beneficial to the planning and production of our music video. This was because we used it to record useful information we had found about the genre, ideas we had for our own music video and planning the different days in which we decided we were going to conduct our filming, to ensure that we had a successful day, and the most productive day possible. Other tools online that were useful were things such as facebook to help us get in contact with the band who's music we were developing a music video too.

We also used a digital camera to record still shots. We used this effectively as we took shots of our location to create a location reccae to make sure that everything was in order for when we did our filming.  We were also able to check that we thought the location fitted in with the mise en scene that we were aiming to achieve, and gave usthe ability to include the genre characteristics within the video that we wanted.

We also used a HD video camera for the recording of our music video.This was incredibly useful for us as we had ability to record our whole music video portfolio of clips we needed as the video camera had the ability to store clips with the memory card. The HD video camera we used also gave us the ability to play back recorded clips on the spot. This was incredibly useful within our filming process as once we thought that we had done a clip to a standard that we were happy with, we were able to watch it back on the video camera to check for errors, and make sure that it was of an acceptable standard.

Different programs were used on the computer to develop diffent aspects of our coursework. For example, we used iphoto to develop our digipack, and we used final cut express to do the editing on our music video. 

Evaluation questions- Andrew

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

Our media product uses many conventions of a real media product in many ways, for example, performance based, mise-en-scene, micro and macro elements. The whole point of a music video is to promote the artist/band and to create the perfect image to fit their conventions. Therefore to fit the conventions of our band, we created a performance based video with black white filters on it. This helps fit with the genre of the music and how the band is portrayed and how it fits. We ensured that the mise-en-scene was in particular correct with the genre, for example location, costume, acting (facial expression, body language) and props. These are all incredibly important when you are trying to portray an artist/band in a particular way because if the conventions are not correct, the band will be portrayed in an odd and unusual way. There tends to be certain things that you would expect to be in certain music videos, for example a JLS music video you would expect the latest fashion, popular locations, props etc, whereas if a rock and roll band used the same mise-en-scene conventions then it would look odd.

We also used micro and macro elements that were correct with the genre, for example camera-work, close-ups with lip syncing and performance eg. drums, guitars. Editing, black and white filters, jump cuts.

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

What have you learnt from the audiences feedback? 

As a group we have learnt a lot from the feedback we have recieved from other groups, a lot of the feedback was positive and recognised our aim to show a sort of behind the scenes/performance video, Expressing the band as what a band would do, messing around etc. A lot of the feedback also made us feel as though our ideas were not quite what were planned, for example someone said "You should've showed more of the girl to show more of the story behind the video." We agreed with this and made us wish that we had done. We were generally happy with the feedback because the comments related to what the initial idea was, and left us feeling as though we achieved the majority of the things we wanted to. For example, respectable performance in sync, visuals and lyrics relating, correct jump cuts and no long clips to make it boring etc. The feedback definitely reassured us because the video wasn't exactly what the plan was, even though many of the things we portrayed were correct with what we wanted, it was showed in different ways. So for people to say I liked the way you did so and so to show this, we were happy that people were able to see what we were trying to do.

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Blog Assessment From P1-04

Your blog is well presented, clear titles make it easy for the viewer to see what the post is and makes it easy to find. The posts are of a good length, they give enough detail without becoming boring. This is partly to do with the length of the posts and partly to do with the good use of screen grabs to keep the viewer engaged and by keeping the post fun.
On the whole the blog is good. There needs to be more by the end of the project but i'm sure there will be.
Well done.
 
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