Progress: evaluation prep

Evaluation Prep and Start

Today and in our recent lessons we have been planning for our evaluation and taking some of the footage that we are going to use within this. We were able to get a group of people in our target market age range to give feedback on our music video and ancillary tasks to help us to answer the audience feedback reflection question - and we have finished the edit for this today: 

We feel that this has gone really well as we got a range of feedback from people with different preferences and interests, which means that we have a wide range of individual feedback to reflect and work on. This feedback was also really positive for us as many of the people understood the narrative and appreciated the shots, themes, editing techniques etc from all of our music video and ancillary tasks.

Magazine Advertisement - Testers

Our initial idea was to have a close up of the artist and use some sort of geometric design as this compliments the digipak. Above are all of our individual sketches, for the final choice we decided to incorporate all of the ideas, however focus on the layout of the bottom idea. Although the ideas were considered, alterations have been made for the first draft - we have changed the image slightly to have the artist looking to the left as we feel that this gives the ad a more edgy style, we have also added more of the information for the album including social networking links and website.
We were thinking of incorporating the double exposure effect with the church, similar to our digipak however we felt that this simplistic design fitted better with the brief.

Magazine Advertisement - First Draft

 

We also wanted to experiment with a different colour tone to see which one we preferred the most. With the brown, we felt that this gave the advert quite a 'vintage' and aged feel - which is effective, but mainly used for more acoustic genres and artists. So, we have decided to keep it grey as this matches our genre well and makes the artist look more modern and current which will help to appeal to our target market.

Process:

Progression of digipak: Inside covers

 Here you can say i have had a look at the panels as JPEGS so that i can then determine what order i would like them in.

 Ive started putting them into the order we have planned them to be. We, as group then had a look at this and realized that the bottom row so too dominating having most of the darker panels on that bottom row.

After this we decided to swap the shutter panels over so that there was a lighter panel on the bottom row.
                                                                                   

How to make the geometric shapes for the background for our panels

 This is how i made the geometric shapes. Pretty straight forward , i basically used the grid to get straight precise lines as well as using the line tool.

Tester: Double Exposure

For our artist image on the front cover, we are planning to use the technique of double exposure on Photoshop as we feel that this is an interesting and alternative effect, which will help to relate our album to the genre. We are also planning on using a church as this will help to create a link between our song and album,

How we did it:

We are happy with how this turned out, as it creates an interesting effect as the two images blend well together. We put it in black and white as this helps to blend the two images together better as there is no contrast of colour - and we are currently aiming to have a black and white/subdued colour theme for our digipak as this will help to match it to our genre.

As this was a tester, we only used two images from Google, so to develop this we will take our own primary images. We will also take more care with the editing as, currently when removing the background we have cut out some of the detail of the church as this was only a tester so wasn't as important - and we want to position the church in a place that works better with the image by experimenting with positioning etc.

Album Cover Inspiration

Third Draft

Second Draft

Title Planning

In our music video we have titles appearing at the beginning, as it is typical within our genre and it is also adds an interesting effect. We have looked at an array of choices;

Myriad Pro 

 Adobe Garamond Pro (small and big)

 

 Adobe Garamond Pro (Italic)

Myriad Pro (transparent)

 

 Adobe Garamond Pro (gradient colour)

Adobe Caslon Pro

  Adobe Caslon Pro (bigger)

 

Birch STD

First Draft

For a first draft, we are mostly happy with the result as it is a strong starting point for development into our final piece. We have been able to achieve high standard footage with interesting angles, which helps to set the professional and more unconventional atmosphere that our chosen genre usually promotes. The shots are mostly cut on the beat, especially at the start when the main focus of the music is on the strong beat in the background, which helps to add to the impact of the music and helps to match the shots to the sounds. The titles are only used here as a placeholder as we have yet to decide what font to use/what to officially say, however they give a vague idea of what we are aiming to go for. We have begun to show the subtle narrative that we are trying to achieve as we have shown the contrast between the 'church' and 'urban' girl well with the use of mise en scene and costume, the setting is definitely a key part of this as it helps to set the atmosphere for the shots however we may need to feature some more establishing shots and cut-a-ways to improve this.

To improve, we think that some of the shots need to be retaken in order to achieve a better quality, fix the framing or simply to improve the shot, and we have already completed most of these. Some of these shots include more lip syncing with better framed shots than what we already feature, and more cutaways of the church which we will be able to use in gaps, especially at the beginning. At the beginning, some of the shots don't run together smoothly and they look to 'random', to fix this we may try to make each of the shots correlate with each other more in order to make them fit in more - this may be achieved through making it a short narrative style with her walking to an area etc.

As the performer: I feel i am lip syncing to the best of my ability having full knowledge of the songs rhythm and lyrics. This paid off seeing the shot and made it much easier for our group to edit. We have three additional filming shoots to undertake to improve and complete our music video fully.
I feel as a group and a performer gathering thee shots were done in a professional and respectful manner to both the public and members of staff that were letting us film.

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule

This is our shooting schedule for the next couple of week, however there will more shooting schedules to come, but we are not sure when we will be doing it or which shots we will do.

Test Shots: Slow Mo with the Go Pro

After completing some test shots with the attachable camera and tint screens, we realized that we wanted to explore more advanced techniques and effects in preparation for our music video as we didn't initially think of them, and we want to improve the standard of our final project. 

 Here, we have experimented with the Go Pro camera by creating slow motion shots, we have done this by setting the Go Pro to 100 frames per second and 720p. After shooting, we went onto Adobe Premiere Pro to slow down the shots. 

We feel that this experimentation went well as we were able to achieve some really interesting effects by mixing the slow motion with the normal footage. Although we haven't originally planned to incorporate this into our music video, we feel that the slow motion technique could help to add effect and emphasis as less typical shots and effects are conventional for the indie genre. Also, as we feature a lot of tracking shots of the artist walking, sometimes focusing on the feet, and the slow motion effect could help to add effect and match the tone/pace of the music. Additionally, this effect could add atmosphere for the video which will show the audience that the artist is exploring the different settings, and emphasis the background/costume/etc.

Test shots: Light and Tints

 For some of the performance shots in our video, we were thinking about using tints with a light that attaches to the top of the camera. To test this, we used blue, orange and red tints;

 

We feel this went well as each tint adds a new emotion and atmosphere within the shot. For the blue, this creates quite a cold, rebellious atmosphere which fits in with our graffiti shots, it also relates to our genre well as it diffuses some of the background colour. For the orange and red, this relates well to both characters as they are both warm shades that create converse effects from the blue - we could use this tint in the shots within the church as it creates a warm and comfortable atmosphere, which will contrast from the blue.  It also creates warm colours in relation to the stain glass windows, as these are featured in many of our shots.

Learning how to use the GoPro & Development of test shots

As one of our feature shots in the video, we are planning to do a tracking shot off the artists feet walking through the church. We really like this idea as it is quite a different shot, and will add atmosphere as the framing is quite unconventional. 
We have tested this shot before, however we weren't able to access the Go Pro, so the shot looked messy and the movement was jagged.
To test this again, we have used the Go Pro camera on a dolly and pushed it across the floor.

This was our first attempt of creating the tracking shot with the Go Pro, we are quite happy with how it turned out as the speed is relative to the walking, and the movement is much smoother than our first attempt. However, towards the end of the clip the movement becomes much more jagged as we struggled to keep the speed steady.

To try and make the movement smoother, we tried to push the dolly down a slope as this meant we didnt have to push it. Although this worked well as we didn't need to touch it: the movement did become too fast and we lost the atmosphere that we want to create.

This was our final attempt at a smaller slope, however we did have to push it and battle with stronger winds. This made the movement a bit more jagged and uncontrolled. 

To improve, we will will attach a string to the dolly as this means that we can pull it across the floor without having to physically push it which will create smooth movements.

Our groups feedback

In order to get feedback on our animatic, we asked our class to answer some questions on what they thought of our animatic/video.

In this edit, we have shown the classes response to the animatic, as well as our own response and interpretation to what they have said.




When watching back the feedback from the classes response, there are a few things that we need to ensure that we work upon, in order to make our music video to the highest standard. To do this we have to make sure that we do not make the shots too long, if this is done it will then take away the narrative as there will be pauses when there should be continuous flow within the music video and can also make the video a bit boring.
We then have to make sure that we do not repeat the same shots too many times, as this will make the  music video  a bit too samey and therefore could lead to the audience to be disinterested .
 Lastly we have to make sure that the editing is on the beat, this key for any music video as its the conventional way to edit. Further more making sure the editing is on the right beat will mean it will not disorientate the audience as it will not distract them from the narrative and/or the song.

Reflecting on 2013 year 13 adivce

This post is purely based on the advice that that the year 13 from last year gave us in response to our music video and the way we undertake this project.

From this we have learnt:

• Not to waste any of our class time and own time. To make sure that we are constantly focused and working on relevant tasks appropriate to our project.
• To make sure that everyone in our group has an even role within our project and to have a balanced work load.
• Also we have taken into consideration that we should film nearer to us to make re shoots easier, however we are shooting some of our shots further away to go above and beyond. We also like the places better and feel it is more suitable for our music video in these places we have chosen.
• We have already finalized our costumes, so this advice just justifies our thoughts on our project and will make the costume much more professional. This will also look much better in the setting we are shooting in.

Record label permission

This is the emails that were sent to the managers of Meg Mac. This was just asking permission to use her song: Grandmas Hands for our media course.

 

Props

For our music video, we do not feature many props as we want to keep the main focus on the artist and the setting, as this will help to show the narrative. The only prop that we mainly use is the candle within the church, as this helps to push the narrative with the artist lighting the candle at the beginning, it burning in the middle of the video and then the artist blowing it out at the end. 

Costume

We have composed a short video to show our main costume ideas for the main two strands of our music video; Church Girl and Urban Girl. Some of the costumes may not be featured in the final music video, however having this video and testing the costume, and general look, for the artist has allowed us to analyze which outfits we prefer and will suit the genre/song. 

 





 

Hope you enjoyed :)