Vinces Evaluation ~

Media A2 Music Video Project Evaluation

Introduction

Our target for this project was to create a promotional package which consisted of a magazine advert, a digipak (DVD Cover) and a song of our choice from a CD selection. We were given 12 tracks to listen to so we condensed our choices to 3 songs that would be of most interest to us. We unanimously decided on adapting Sweet Tangerines by The Hush Sound as it contained the perfect upbeat rhythm for our ideas. In addition, we were required to produce two ancillary products. The main priority for these products was to create a visual link in order for them to be appeal to viewers.

(1) We decided to a pick an animation for our song choice “Sweet Tangerine” because we believed it would avoid many general conventions a live action would require. We believed the song's playful tone and lyrics generated some thoughtful ideas for us to mould together a suitable animation as well as appealing ancillary products. The vital selling point was the appearance of the tangerine man. After browsing Google images we came across a tangerine peel that was shaped into a character. We took this concept into close consideration as we believed this would provide a strong link between our 3 products. After searching for the lyrics we decided to incorporate the desired props that would suit the animation which included the curtains, rain drops and the clouds floating the sky. By this factor, we managed to implement the visual/lyrical link as mentioned in Goodwin’s Law. Our ancillary products we created also make great use of the conventions of media products. For the digipak and magazine advert used the Photoshop where combining layers made it possible to create terrific mise-en-scene. We chose to implement the dark sky background as this would inform viewers what kind settings will be presented in the animation. The most important step was to include the marketing features such as the record label, bar code, audience rating and affiliated websites. These components will allow viewers to see with confidence that we’re considered a non-refutable company for its manufacturing. The record label and age rating in particular show that this product has been seriously examined to provide necessary details to show off its credibility.

• Shows the artist/band throughout the video
• Some special effects utilized
• Usually a calm setting, but gradually develops into something bigger when music's rhythm kicks in
• Black and white filter may be used
• Tends to have a narrative
• Close ups of the artists/band are often incorporated
• Live show performances

(2)The similarity between the two is the mere presence of the main characters. For the magazine advert, we spoke about how we intended to let the audience know that our MV is an animation. We explicitly chose the colour scheme to be black & white so we could allow the orange patches on the characters stand out. We believed this would show a good lyrical and visual relationship as the song is called "Sweet Tangerine". Our aim was to make the ancillary products appeal from teen to young adult viewers. This is why we decided to edit the couple together with the night sky background on the DVD cover. The combination of these mise-en-scene devices would allow the audience to think there's some narrative involved with integrated themes such as romance and fantasy. We decided to present our artists (i.e. the cut out characters) as the iconic cast for the animation’s narrative. To do this we decided to think of which suitable costumes that the characters would wear. The song’s lyrics refer to many dreamy romantic themes so we decided that both characters should wear stylistic formal costumes. This choice of mise-en-scene for the artists would prove to be accessible to an audience of a wider age range.

(3) In general received positive reception for our animation in particular for our rough cut. For our pitch we managed to express our points by displaying our blog as well showing our draft sketches. We had shown a strong visual relationship between the 3 products. The vital feedback was the fact we kept our blog up to date with any trivialities that we thought of during pre-production. Before we designed a lot of rough sketches with the variety of props/decor we'd require before filming. To aid our planning we were suggested to refer to more relevant images from the internet. This would help compliment for any current idea's that needed developing. During the rough cut feedback, we were aware that we had a large gap due us running out of scenes to shoot. We also mistimed our sequences length as we didn’t follow the storyboard time line carefully enough. However we were praised by our teacher for the effective use of the child-like aesthetic props. This is because of the variety we created in order to compose a dream world the main character is imagining. This was easily complimented by the suitable backdrops of the sugar paper acting as the environmental background. An improvement suggested by our teacher was to incorporate more close ups of the artist. This was so we could follow the general conventions of a music video despite the whole format being an animation. The conventions as aforementioned don’t appear to be prominent in our music video. However the one of the main strong points we received for our peer to peer feedback was combined use of the detailed décor as well as the interaction between the characters and props.


(4) In order to achieve these results, a lot of research and planning was executed to confirm our idea's for the pitch. Overall, we had envisioned some great concepts of how our products would turn out. For the bulk of our research we utilized the internet to search on Google images for brief images to develop our characters. We also took a few samples from Google to construct a mood board in order for us expand our ideas as we moved towards the filming stage. We had examined the lyrics carefully to plan our scenes that would have lyrical/visual correlation. However, we didn't take into account the type of shots we'd film to compliment the video's pace. One of the main feedback comments was to include more variety of shots and to fix the inconsistent lighting. We eventually managed to get round to curing the dull lighting via the Final Cut Pro filters with the guide of a technician. Despite being taught the right filters to help sort out the footage, we wasted valuable time attempting to figure out the correct effect around Final Cut. This was due to our novice experience. To prevent this from happening I think we should try to experiment with the options beforehand so we don't need to rely on extra support.
The major influences for our concepts were previous animation video's that inspired us. An example is the milkmaid done by previous A2 students. We took into close consideration how they edited the sequence while examining the lighting and choreography implemented in each scene. In the end we decided to take the real life props and analyze how the characters were designed to perform movements with their limbs. We also used Google images to find a range of pictures to construct our mood board. This montage of images facilitated the film production of our animation so we wouldn't go off track from our story boarded scenes. However, we didn't anticipate us running out scenes to fill up the songs gap. This was due to our inexperience with iStopmotion as we weren't adapted to determining how much action should be filmed within a second. We were very fatigued after attempting to perfect the choreography in each scene so we ended up dismissing the time frame required per sequence. An improvement to work on this error is to keep referring to our storyboard time line in order to prevent us from creating extra ideas. Refreshing our technical pre-production materials such as the shot list and time line would definitely stop us from suffering deficient footage with our animation.

Before the post-production stage, we decided to experiment with the available filters in Final Cut. We did this to ensure that we could fix the lighting in case we encountered any inconsistencies whilst animating. Overall I believe our project has turned out to be successful despite the slight bumps along the way.