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.
Ollies Evaluation
Media Evaluation:
Introduction:
For this project we were given the task of producing a promotional package (a music video, DVD case and poster) based on a song that we would pitch to the rest of the class and to our teacher for. Making a decision on what song to do was for my group a pretty easy task as we all have the same musical tastes. From the 12 original songs given to us to listen to we condensed this number in to the three we thought most appropriate (The Rifle by Alelea Diane, A Long Time Ago by David Ford and Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound).
We already had some ideas in mind for our music video and we had previously decided to do an animation. We came up with some ideas to pitch to the class with for each of the songs above and then selected what we felt was the strongest of the three pitches, this is how we ended up choosing to do the song Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound. We felt that this song with its strong links between lyrics and visuals and with a fast, catchy and interesting beat would be by far the best to do in animation when compared with our other options.
In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?
The band that we chose to do our promotional package for was The Hush Sound who are an indie quartet from Illinois. The conventions of indie music videos are that they are generally performance based with many shots of band members throughout; an example of this is the band Fall Out Boy whose members always make an appearance in their music videos. Other characteristics of this genre are:
· Some special effects utilized
· Usually a calm setting, but gradually develops in to something more extravagant when the music’s rhythm kicks in
· Black and white filters may be used, sepia is also a popular filter
· Tends to be a narrative throughout
· Close ups of the artist/band members
· Band members often incorporated
· Live show performances
For our music video however we chose to do an animation which is a form not often used by indie artists as the music does not generally lend itself to an animation and also due to the high failure rate of animation. We chose to do an animation because of this originality and also because we felt that it would be the best way of displaying all of our group talents. Our animation would be done in istop motion with all of the animation hand drawn on cardboard or paper. One of the inspirations for our music video was the video was a music video called The Milkmaid done by a previous group at Longroad. Their video was also done in istop motion, in cardboard and paper and it was also hand drawn. However we developed their product ideas and moulded them in to our own ideas which challenged more conventions of this music video style. For example the music we chose has a much faster tempo than that of the milkmaid and instead of following the lyrics very closely and basing the music video on those lyrics like the group who did the milkmaid did we chose to base our music video on a dream sequence idea which only in part drew its inspiration from the song lyrics. By doing a dream sequence we were able to make our video as random as we wanted incorporating clips that didn’t fit with the lyrics but still fit with the songs tempo and style. Also by doing a dream sequence we did not follow the usual styles for an animation music video due to its random nature.
For our DVD case we chose to follow conventions to aid us in producing a product that would be the most eye-catching and appropriate. We chose to incorporate our main character prop from our music video to create clear links between our music video and auxiliary products. We also chose to incorporate the members of our group (myself, Vincent, Beth and Nicola) as stand in band members in the main image. The links between our music video and DVD cover were strengthened further by the images of clouds and stars which were shown throughout our music video. Some of the conventions we used were track list, website, album title, visual link to our music video, production company logo, reviews, barcode, ratings e.g. PG, running times, band artwork, band members represented and star rating. All of these conventions can be seen represented on our DVD case.
Our magazine advert shows strong Intertextuality between not only our music video with the two main characters from the music video being a key part of the magazine advert but there is also a strong link between the DVD packaging and the magazine advert, this is through one of our group members (Vincent) masquerading as one of the band members in both of these ancillary products. Generally a magazine advert shows only the artist or an image from the music video however we chose to show both a band member and an image from our music video to create stronger links between our complete promotional package. The inspiration for our magazine advert came from a poster by the musician Mika, we chose this as our inspiration due to its Intertextual references between his music video and himself as an artist. The conventions that we chose to include on our magazine advert were song/band title, visual links to the music video (intertextuality), reviews, condensed information, release date, artist name and record label logo.
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Products And Ancillary Tasks?
I chose this image as it is a still taken from our music video and I feel that it is one of the strongest images from our music video. The image depicts the two main characters from the music video and as they are used in the ancillary tasks as well this makes for a much stronger overall production package. Our main product (the music video) and the ancillary tasks (the DVD cover and the magazine advert) all have very strong Intertextual links with each other, for example in both of the ancillary tasks there are images of the main characters from our music video. In both there are also backgrounds from the music video in the form of the starlit background from the flying cloud random images scene in our music video. Each member of my group chose different images that we felt would be the best representational picture for either the DVD pack or the magazine advert; my choice is below.
What Have You Learned From Audience Feedback?
Throughout this project there were numerous opportunities to receive audience feedback. A part of this was during the period that we created our rough cut. During the rough cut stage in our music video project we received feedback from our teacher and the other groups in our class, we also commented on their rough cuts to give them feedback. The feedback we received told us that the clips we had currently in our music video were far too long and monotonous, they also pointed out that we had an issue with timings of clips, clip order and we also did not have enough ideas in order to progress and finish our product. However the feedback we received was not all negative, our teacher throughout the project had told us that our product was going well and gave us constant tips on how to improve not just in the build up to the rough cut but also through the editing stages.
The people in my class are the exact age of the target audience that music videos try to aim themselves at. As such any feedback from them is very valuable and any changes they recommend are from their own personal experiences of watching music videos. My group also used my class as a sample audience for each stage of our music video. As we were doing an animation as our music video attracting this sample audience wasn’t difficult as there were always new stages for people to see. Any feedback we received from them was essential as the fact that what we had shown them had only recently been filmed it was easy to rewind and change it to make it better.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the research phases of our project we used the internet in order to watch music videos created by other people for inspiration, gain information on our band and genre characteristics and to get ideas for props to use in our music video. An example of this is our main male character; the inspiration for his style was gained from an image search in Google. In the research for the ancillary products we used image searches in order to gain the logos necessary for those products; we also used internet searches to gain the information we needed on conventions for these products. (Right: group using istop motion software during animation stages)
Through the construction phase of the tasks we used Apple Macs and programs such as final cut, istop motion and Adobe Photoshop CS3. These technologies helped us in creating our finished production package by being the basis of all three components. During the construction of our music video we used a video camera to take still images that were instantly uploaded to the computer through a fire wire. This technology helped us to keep a track on all of the images we had taken, the number of images we had taken, where we had just move a prop, what prop we were moving, if anything had moved accidentally and what needed to be moved next. The program the camera was connected to is called istop motion; this is a program that is used during sequence animation. We have previously used this software last year however were not fully familiar with it at the start of our project as such we had a few trial runs in order to become more proficient.
While planning for our promotional package we constantly uploaded and noted our ideas down on a site called blogger.com. This site allowed us to blog all of the stages of our product; this blog is a part of the project initially set to us and is a priority if high marks want to be achieved. As such we blogged all of the planning stages even utilizing the school cameras in order to post images of various pictures and storyboards on to the blog.
(Above: my groups blogger home page)
We also used technologies such as internet searches during the planning stage, these internet searches provided the spark for some of the ideas we would later use in our promotional package.
During the evaluation stage we have used many different technologies for example I am currently using word to write up this evaluation. For the evaluation section we were required not only to do this but also provide an audio commentary either on our own or as a group piece on our music video, during this evaluation we would answer these question but through the medium of either film or audio, the audio would eventually be dubbed over the music video explaining the ideas that went in to it throughout and the film would either be used as a prequel to showing the music video or cut in at certain points and explain what was going on in that specific section.
We looked at examples of DVD director’s commentaries with Baz Luhrmann commentating on films such as Romeo & Juliette and Spike Jonze commenting on some of the music videos he has produced. With these as a guide we set about creating our filmed evaluation. We chose to do a group instead of an individual evaluation as the time we had to complete this task was too short to edit them if we had all done separate evaluations.
Introduction:
For this project we were given the task of producing a promotional package (a music video, DVD case and poster) based on a song that we would pitch to the rest of the class and to our teacher for. Making a decision on what song to do was for my group a pretty easy task as we all have the same musical tastes. From the 12 original songs given to us to listen to we condensed this number in to the three we thought most appropriate (The Rifle by Alelea Diane, A Long Time Ago by David Ford and Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound).
We already had some ideas in mind for our music video and we had previously decided to do an animation. We came up with some ideas to pitch to the class with for each of the songs above and then selected what we felt was the strongest of the three pitches, this is how we ended up choosing to do the song Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound. We felt that this song with its strong links between lyrics and visuals and with a fast, catchy and interesting beat would be by far the best to do in animation when compared with our other options.
In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?
The band that we chose to do our promotional package for was The Hush Sound who are an indie quartet from Illinois. The conventions of indie music videos are that they are generally performance based with many shots of band members throughout; an example of this is the band Fall Out Boy whose members always make an appearance in their music videos. Other characteristics of this genre are:
· Some special effects utilized
· Usually a calm setting, but gradually develops in to something more extravagant when the music’s rhythm kicks in
· Black and white filters may be used, sepia is also a popular filter
· Tends to be a narrative throughout
· Close ups of the artist/band members
· Band members often incorporated
· Live show performances
For our music video however we chose to do an animation which is a form not often used by indie artists as the music does not generally lend itself to an animation and also due to the high failure rate of animation. We chose to do an animation because of this originality and also because we felt that it would be the best way of displaying all of our group talents. Our animation would be done in istop motion with all of the animation hand drawn on cardboard or paper. One of the inspirations for our music video was the video was a music video called The Milkmaid done by a previous group at Longroad. Their video was also done in istop motion, in cardboard and paper and it was also hand drawn. However we developed their product ideas and moulded them in to our own ideas which challenged more conventions of this music video style. For example the music we chose has a much faster tempo than that of the milkmaid and instead of following the lyrics very closely and basing the music video on those lyrics like the group who did the milkmaid did we chose to base our music video on a dream sequence idea which only in part drew its inspiration from the song lyrics. By doing a dream sequence we were able to make our video as random as we wanted incorporating clips that didn’t fit with the lyrics but still fit with the songs tempo and style. Also by doing a dream sequence we did not follow the usual styles for an animation music video due to its random nature.
For our DVD case we chose to follow conventions to aid us in producing a product that would be the most eye-catching and appropriate. We chose to incorporate our main character prop from our music video to create clear links between our music video and auxiliary products. We also chose to incorporate the members of our group (myself, Vincent, Beth and Nicola) as stand in band members in the main image. The links between our music video and DVD cover were strengthened further by the images of clouds and stars which were shown throughout our music video. Some of the conventions we used were track list, website, album title, visual link to our music video, production company logo, reviews, barcode, ratings e.g. PG, running times, band artwork, band members represented and star rating. All of these conventions can be seen represented on our DVD case.
Our magazine advert shows strong Intertextuality between not only our music video with the two main characters from the music video being a key part of the magazine advert but there is also a strong link between the DVD packaging and the magazine advert, this is through one of our group members (Vincent) masquerading as one of the band members in both of these ancillary products. Generally a magazine advert shows only the artist or an image from the music video however we chose to show both a band member and an image from our music video to create stronger links between our complete promotional package. The inspiration for our magazine advert came from a poster by the musician Mika, we chose this as our inspiration due to its Intertextual references between his music video and himself as an artist. The conventions that we chose to include on our magazine advert were song/band title, visual links to the music video (intertextuality), reviews, condensed information, release date, artist name and record label logo.
How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Products And Ancillary Tasks?
I chose this image as it is a still taken from our music video and I feel that it is one of the strongest images from our music video. The image depicts the two main characters from the music video and as they are used in the ancillary tasks as well this makes for a much stronger overall production package. Our main product (the music video) and the ancillary tasks (the DVD cover and the magazine advert) all have very strong Intertextual links with each other, for example in both of the ancillary tasks there are images of the main characters from our music video. In both there are also backgrounds from the music video in the form of the starlit background from the flying cloud random images scene in our music video. Each member of my group chose different images that we felt would be the best representational picture for either the DVD pack or the magazine advert; my choice is below.
What Have You Learned From Audience Feedback?
Throughout this project there were numerous opportunities to receive audience feedback. A part of this was during the period that we created our rough cut. During the rough cut stage in our music video project we received feedback from our teacher and the other groups in our class, we also commented on their rough cuts to give them feedback. The feedback we received told us that the clips we had currently in our music video were far too long and monotonous, they also pointed out that we had an issue with timings of clips, clip order and we also did not have enough ideas in order to progress and finish our product. However the feedback we received was not all negative, our teacher throughout the project had told us that our product was going well and gave us constant tips on how to improve not just in the build up to the rough cut but also through the editing stages.
The people in my class are the exact age of the target audience that music videos try to aim themselves at. As such any feedback from them is very valuable and any changes they recommend are from their own personal experiences of watching music videos. My group also used my class as a sample audience for each stage of our music video. As we were doing an animation as our music video attracting this sample audience wasn’t difficult as there were always new stages for people to see. Any feedback we received from them was essential as the fact that what we had shown them had only recently been filmed it was easy to rewind and change it to make it better.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the research phases of our project we used the internet in order to watch music videos created by other people for inspiration, gain information on our band and genre characteristics and to get ideas for props to use in our music video. An example of this is our main male character; the inspiration for his style was gained from an image search in Google. In the research for the ancillary products we used image searches in order to gain the logos necessary for those products; we also used internet searches to gain the information we needed on conventions for these products. (Right: group using istop motion software during animation stages)
Through the construction phase of the tasks we used Apple Macs and programs such as final cut, istop motion and Adobe Photoshop CS3. These technologies helped us in creating our finished production package by being the basis of all three components. During the construction of our music video we used a video camera to take still images that were instantly uploaded to the computer through a fire wire. This technology helped us to keep a track on all of the images we had taken, the number of images we had taken, where we had just move a prop, what prop we were moving, if anything had moved accidentally and what needed to be moved next. The program the camera was connected to is called istop motion; this is a program that is used during sequence animation. We have previously used this software last year however were not fully familiar with it at the start of our project as such we had a few trial runs in order to become more proficient.
While planning for our promotional package we constantly uploaded and noted our ideas down on a site called blogger.com. This site allowed us to blog all of the stages of our product; this blog is a part of the project initially set to us and is a priority if high marks want to be achieved. As such we blogged all of the planning stages even utilizing the school cameras in order to post images of various pictures and storyboards on to the blog.
(Above: my groups blogger home page)
We also used technologies such as internet searches during the planning stage, these internet searches provided the spark for some of the ideas we would later use in our promotional package.
During the evaluation stage we have used many different technologies for example I am currently using word to write up this evaluation. For the evaluation section we were required not only to do this but also provide an audio commentary either on our own or as a group piece on our music video, during this evaluation we would answer these question but through the medium of either film or audio, the audio would eventually be dubbed over the music video explaining the ideas that went in to it throughout and the film would either be used as a prequel to showing the music video or cut in at certain points and explain what was going on in that specific section.
We looked at examples of DVD director’s commentaries with Baz Luhrmann commentating on films such as Romeo & Juliette and Spike Jonze commenting on some of the music videos he has produced. With these as a guide we set about creating our filmed evaluation. We chose to do a group instead of an individual evaluation as the time we had to complete this task was too short to edit them if we had all done separate evaluations.
Nicola's evaluation
Music Video Evaluation
1)Our products such as the DVD cover & magazine follow then conventions of having the main character on the front of them, so if people see the music video, then the digipack in shops then can relate back to the video and know what they are buying. Our DVD cover has all the basic detailing on it that follows the conventions of DVD covers such as the DVD rating, the companies that created the DVD logo, barcodes and a track listing on the back. The magazine advert follows the conventions, of having a release date to let know people when they can buy the product, the band name and singers. The production company logo and information about what is available on the DVD. Even though the song style of ‘indie’ wouldn’t often be put with an animation, because often for this style most videos are live action, we thought we have done a good job of linking the lyrics to our video for example the songs talks about rain falling on the mans head, so at the beginning of our video we created these lyrics. We also linked the music to the video by in the middle of the song a piano is played, so we had our characters jump around on a piano in time with the music. We tried to incorporate intertextuality into our video by having the space invaders sequence.
2) I think the combination of all 3 of our products has been very effective. We used the main male & female from our music video on the magazine advert & also we used the main male on our DVD cover; we done this so if people saw the video they can see the ancillary tasks they know what they are buying. We also used the visual motif of the colour orange through out our products which relates to the title of our song. During our music video, we have a starry sky which is something we brought through to our DVD cover & used it as our background. Originally we had created many idea’s for our DVD cover & magazine advert these included such as a guy standing having tangerines falling onto him; this was a good idea as it includes a reference to the song but compared to other idea’s it was not as strong. Another idea was having heads with speech bubbles coming out saying ‘The Hush Sounds’ but we felt this wasn’t a very exciting idea & does not have much reference to the video. As we didn’t have long to complete our ancillary tasks we spilt into 2 groups, one group doing the DVD cover & the other doing the magazine advert, we felt this would been an effective use of our time & skills.
3) We learnt a lot from our audience feedback; the first feedback we had was after we done our pitch. Our teacher told us we had an excellent pitch and we had clear ideas so this gave us the motivation to carry on with what we were doing. Once we completed our rough-cut we showed it to our fellow class mates & teacher, we thought showing it to our class mates was a good way of getting feedback from people that are the target audience our song has. Most of our peers said that, many of our shots were too long in time & we didn’t have many different shots, as we didn’t use many close ups. After receiving this feedback, we watched back our video and noticed what our peers said about the length of the shots, so at the beginning shot we decided to add close ups of his thought bubbles; we done this as it breaks up the length of the shot & gives us the opportunity to use close ups. Our teacher’s feedback was to include our tangerine character more, so we carried on using him as a main feature of the video such as he demolished the stack of furniture and knocked the heart over.
4) We used a lot of new media technologies in creating our music video & the ancillary tasks. To get some of the idea’s for our video we used YouTube to look up idea’s and found a previous group of long road student’s work, who created the ‘milkmaid’ video. There concept is very similar to how we wanted to create our video. When making our video we used Istop animation, a programme that as a group we were not very familiar with, so we were constantly learning through our project the difficulties that come with creating an animation using Istop such as lighting & just how long it takes to create an animation. We also had to use Photoshop to create our ancillary tasks, for our DVD cover, we had to take pictures of us against a plain background; upload it to Photoshop then use the magnetic lasso to draw around us, so we could then add it to the background. We also used our online blog to keep up to date with all the planning of our work and to get peer feedback about our work; using the blog was a great way for us to visually see our work, as sometimes we had so much going on we forgot we had to do, so referring back to our blog was useful. We used websites such as play.com & amazon.com to look up ideas for our DVD cover & magazine advert, as we were not sure of the conventions that were used. To find out about the band we used MySpace to find out about them & to contact them for permission and idea’s for their song.
1)Our products such as the DVD cover & magazine follow then conventions of having the main character on the front of them, so if people see the music video, then the digipack in shops then can relate back to the video and know what they are buying. Our DVD cover has all the basic detailing on it that follows the conventions of DVD covers such as the DVD rating, the companies that created the DVD logo, barcodes and a track listing on the back. The magazine advert follows the conventions, of having a release date to let know people when they can buy the product, the band name and singers. The production company logo and information about what is available on the DVD. Even though the song style of ‘indie’ wouldn’t often be put with an animation, because often for this style most videos are live action, we thought we have done a good job of linking the lyrics to our video for example the songs talks about rain falling on the mans head, so at the beginning of our video we created these lyrics. We also linked the music to the video by in the middle of the song a piano is played, so we had our characters jump around on a piano in time with the music. We tried to incorporate intertextuality into our video by having the space invaders sequence.
2) I think the combination of all 3 of our products has been very effective. We used the main male & female from our music video on the magazine advert & also we used the main male on our DVD cover; we done this so if people saw the video they can see the ancillary tasks they know what they are buying. We also used the visual motif of the colour orange through out our products which relates to the title of our song. During our music video, we have a starry sky which is something we brought through to our DVD cover & used it as our background. Originally we had created many idea’s for our DVD cover & magazine advert these included such as a guy standing having tangerines falling onto him; this was a good idea as it includes a reference to the song but compared to other idea’s it was not as strong. Another idea was having heads with speech bubbles coming out saying ‘The Hush Sounds’ but we felt this wasn’t a very exciting idea & does not have much reference to the video. As we didn’t have long to complete our ancillary tasks we spilt into 2 groups, one group doing the DVD cover & the other doing the magazine advert, we felt this would been an effective use of our time & skills.
3) We learnt a lot from our audience feedback; the first feedback we had was after we done our pitch. Our teacher told us we had an excellent pitch and we had clear ideas so this gave us the motivation to carry on with what we were doing. Once we completed our rough-cut we showed it to our fellow class mates & teacher, we thought showing it to our class mates was a good way of getting feedback from people that are the target audience our song has. Most of our peers said that, many of our shots were too long in time & we didn’t have many different shots, as we didn’t use many close ups. After receiving this feedback, we watched back our video and noticed what our peers said about the length of the shots, so at the beginning shot we decided to add close ups of his thought bubbles; we done this as it breaks up the length of the shot & gives us the opportunity to use close ups. Our teacher’s feedback was to include our tangerine character more, so we carried on using him as a main feature of the video such as he demolished the stack of furniture and knocked the heart over.
4) We used a lot of new media technologies in creating our music video & the ancillary tasks. To get some of the idea’s for our video we used YouTube to look up idea’s and found a previous group of long road student’s work, who created the ‘milkmaid’ video. There concept is very similar to how we wanted to create our video. When making our video we used Istop animation, a programme that as a group we were not very familiar with, so we were constantly learning through our project the difficulties that come with creating an animation using Istop such as lighting & just how long it takes to create an animation. We also had to use Photoshop to create our ancillary tasks, for our DVD cover, we had to take pictures of us against a plain background; upload it to Photoshop then use the magnetic lasso to draw around us, so we could then add it to the background. We also used our online blog to keep up to date with all the planning of our work and to get peer feedback about our work; using the blog was a great way for us to visually see our work, as sometimes we had so much going on we forgot we had to do, so referring back to our blog was useful. We used websites such as play.com & amazon.com to look up ideas for our DVD cover & magazine advert, as we were not sure of the conventions that were used. To find out about the band we used MySpace to find out about them & to contact them for permission and idea’s for their song.
Transcript Music Commentary Evaluation
Transcription
Ollie – What was the brief? / What were the initial ideas? / Where did the ideas come from?
For this project we were told to make a promotional package, consisting of a digipak, magazine advert and a music video.
Our music video was based on a song we chose. We first had 12 songs for a CD. We then picked 3 songs in order to condense our choices so we could generate some brief ideas. We picked the song by The Hush Sound called “Sweet Tangerine”. We chose to do an animation for our project because it was the best way to represent our talents and the best way to show this music.
The research for our project was simple. We already had a rough idea of the storyline that was posted on the blog based on the first storyboard we had. We needed to see what we needed to include in those shots, what kind of props we would need and how long we’d need it to be filmed as a close up or long shot. The fact we did this an animation made this a lot harder. Because we needed to make so many props we ended up with 150 props.
Our time frame for this project was really large. So we needed to get all the animation as quickly as possible so we had time for editing. Our ideas for the props from Google and other places and the other idea for the tangerine man came from an image from Google of a small man made out of a tangerine peel within a tangerine in the centre and we decided to use this as the key roles in our project. The main male character was designed from an image found on Google of a man drawn in a suit and the female character was from our imagination. The props such as the stars, clouds, sun are miscellaneous props apart from the sun appear more than once.
Beth – Pitch
In our pitch we had to explain why we chose the song we did and say our initial idea’s for the video and the ancillary tasks. We decided the video should be a little random like a dream, because we had some ideas about flying objects such as clouds and floating characters. So we decided to pick “Sweet Tangerine” because it has a random tone. We felt that the pitch went well for the music video. But we didn’t feel that we didn’t have enough developed ideas for the ancillary products. The pitch was detailed for the music video but it was relatively vague for the ancillary products which we should have planned more.
Ollie – Idea for Video
The idea for our music video came from a selection of research we did. We found a music video called the milkmaid from a previous group of students. We based our ideas around that animation because it used istopmotion and it was done in cardboard like we wanted to do. It also had the effects we wanted to do. So we watched it, made notes and then brought these over to make our final music video.
Vincent – How did the filming go?
We it came to the film stages we encountered a few technical difficulties. One of them was that we weren’t familiar with istopmotion. We had a environmental disruptions such as the lighting which caused a few pauses to how we wanted our backgrounds to appear. In other words we had to communicate with our other colleagues just to confirm whether it was alright to turn off the classroom nights. When it came to the editing stage we also had trouble trying to tamper with the colour filters such as the trying to do the piano background keys to light up as the couple would dance around. This was part of our original idea which we attempted to try out. But most importantly when it came to the rough cut, we had tried to upload it onto any sort of websites that would distribute our product. But unfortunately, we were infringing on their copyrights.
Nicola – Rough cut
To begin with didn’t actually meet with our rougt cut deadline. Because it takes such a long time to shoot the animation because it was a week afterwards to feel the gaps. Once we had completed we received peer feedback from our colleagues and teacher saying that we should include close up shots to break up the sequence in order to improve the flow.
Vincent – How did you use the blog?
One of the important aspects of the task was that to frequently update our blog. We needed to this in order to keep referring to our progress in case we ran out of ideas or expand on it so we could keep the flow of our project going. We wanted to implement Goodwin’s Law by interpreting the lyrics with the visuals to create a narrative link. So we searched up the lyrics for our song and so we tried to make sure we found the suitable scenes in conjunction with the relevant lyrics. Other than that, we started to neglect our blog a bit when it came to the ancillary tasks because we were total novices with photoshop. So we didn’t really know how to perform the right functions to achieve the desired effect such as adjusting the layers, including the relevant visual conventions of an ancillary product. For the magazine advert we did some analysis just so we could tell what combination of info was required to be made appealing to the audience. This would eventually get the right package together.
Beth – Which conventions were followed?
We think that the typical conventions are included for our digipak and magazine advert. It contains pictures of the band and both of them have images of the main characters from our animation. So if someone see’s the video and wants to go out and buy then it’ll be easy for them to find because of the prominent appearance of the characters.
Nicola – New Media Technologies
We used a lot of media technology in creating our music video project. We used the internet by searching on Google images for examples of sketched characters that we could that would an inspiration for our character concept. We used istopmotion to film the animation, it was a software that none of us were really confident with. We were required to connect our camcorder to the Mac in order to make animation a lot convenient rather than using a normal camera to take stills one by one. It would grant us the ability to take stills from istopmotion to create a continuous flow.
We had to frequently use our blog to communicate with the teacher so we could receive feedback on our progress on a whole for the project. To contact the band we used utilized media technology by searching up their contact details on their myspace page. We did this to confirm from them that we had official rights to use their music to create our project. Unfortunately we didn’t get word back from them so we had to press on without formal approval.
Ollie – Feedback
Throughout this project we have received peer to peer feedback and from our teacher. The feedback we received has aided is in improving the downsides in our music video as well as our ancillary products. We were told our animation seemed repetitive during the rough cut stage. We resolved this b y having quicker and shorter cuts and including more shot types and different pieces of footage. Our teacher told us that our project was based overall on good ideas. However she believed we could’ve improved it further from the rough cut. So with her ideas on board we chose to create a variety of shots. For example we decided to create a sequence of close up’s near the initial dream thought bubble scene where the camera zooms onto the male characters face. This was somewhat better in helping us to break up the lengthy birds -eye view shot we had previously.
Beth – Links between products
Our brief was to make a promotional package which included the music video, digipak and the magazine advert. We were told to link the three together. We tried to link the music video and the ancillary tasks in various different ways. We carried the single orange colour throughout the whole project just to create the familiar tone with the song. Obviously there’s the tangerine man that plays a major whole in serving as the song’s mascot. As for the ancillary products, the text was also coloured in orange. We’ve got the characters included in the digipak from music video as well as the sparkly night sky in both ancillary products. We did suffer some difficulties with the ancillary task since we didn’t have enough time to finish putting on the appropriate filters to achieve the desired effect.
Beths evaluation
The brief for this project was to create a promotional package, including a music video, a magazine advert and a digipack.
One of the first things we did was to choose a song out of 12 choices. We decided to do an animation because we felt that it suited our group better and we could create a stronger video. Although animation goes against the typical conventions of the indie rock genre, I feel that we managed to create good links between the song (music/lyrics) and the visuals. We chose to challenge the conventions of the indie rock genre by doing an animation because we felt that it would shock our audience and would attract them to watch the video.
We chose to have a narrative based video but with an abstract concept included. Some of the feedback after the rough-cut said that we challenged the conventions of a typical music video by having slightly longer shots and that the narrative wasn’t very clear.
For the research and planning for the ancillary tasks, we looked at previous digipacks and magazine adverts, and noted down the conventions. We followed a lot of the conventions for a magazine advert such as having the song title and artists name clearly written, visual links to the video by displaying the characters from the video, reviews, the details of when and where it would be released and the record company logo. The digipack also conformed to the conventions by consisting of a track list, the album title, visual links to the video in the same way as the magazine advert, the production company logo, reviews and star ratings.
I think that although we conformed to the typical conventions, we could have spent more time completing both tasks. Due to time constraints, we divided our group into two groups of two and each group was assigned to on task. As we had already discussed ideas and how we wanted the products to look, this meant that the products were completed faster and more efficiently.
As well as following the conventions of a typical magazine advert and digipack, we have followed the conventions set out by Andrew Goodwin. We feel that the relationship between the music and visuals can be strong at times, for example when you can hear a piano playing, our characters are dancing on a piano. The video also cuts to the beat of the music at times. The relationship between lyrics and visuals is also strong. When the song says there are rain drops falling on his head the video shows this, when it says that ‘she’ is all his, the female character is standing with another man. The song also says about feelings leaving and there is a visual of a heart breaking. The most obvious relationship is with the song title and the tangerine msn in the video. We have also included intertextuality with the milkmaid video and the classic space invaders game.
I think that there are some very strong links between all three products. For example, the characters are the prominent feature in all three products. Another link would be the visual motif of colour, and this links strongly with the song title as tangerines are orange. This appears on many of the props throughout the music video and is used as one of the main colours in both the digipack and magazine advert. The last link between the three products is the starry background. This background can be found in both ancillary tasks and is a frequently used background in the video.
I feel that the magazine works well at attracting audience because it is unusual in the sense that it had both real people and drawn characters in it. I think that the digipack is effective and useful because the main object on the front is the main character in the music video. This is useful for people looking for the digipack and now knowing the name.
The whole class had to pitch for their chosen song and this was done using our blog and mood board to help us illustrate our ideas. The feedback from our teacher and audience was good and they told us that our ideas were very good and detailed. However, I feel that we should have planned the digipack and magazine advert in more detail at that stage.
We noticed that our original storyboard is very similar to our final product so I am pleased with our planning for our music video. When planning our timings, we underestimated how long it would take to film the whole video.
By the time the rough-cut deadline was upon us we had put all the footage we had in the correct order and had started to edit some shots. However, we didn’t have enough footage to fit the whole length of the song.
In response to the rough-cut feedback and because we had completed all our ideas on the storyboard we decided to add some more short scenes to keep it interesting and to have a variety of shots.
The initial ideas for our music video came from a video called ‘The milkmaid’, made by previous students. This video was found using the internet during our research and planning stage. The milkmaid made us choose to draw our props rather than use toys or plasticine. This resulted in us having a total of 153 individual drawings but we were pleased with the results. Drawing the props gave us the freedom of choosing whatever we wanted in our video. Some of the original ideas for props included the two characters, the stars, the clouds and the cow.
Some of the difficulties with the timing of filming was due to us using Istop motion, which was a program which was completely new to us all. Throughout the project we got more confident in using this new technology.
We used final cut to edit our footage and this process went reasonably well with only a few problems. One of these problems was lighting, where we had filmed the same scene on two different days. To fix this problem we used some of the filters on final cut to change the saturation and brightness.
Throughout the project we have been regularly updating our blog, showing our progress. This blog includes any ideas we have had, evaluations of our work so far, planning for work that needs to be done, feedback from peers and our teacher and evidence of the work we have done. We have found this a useful way of documenting our work as it is easy to access and edit.
We used emails and MySpace to contact the band in our research stage to make sure they knew we were using their song, and to see if they had any thoughts on ideas. For the ancillary tasks we also used the internet with sites such as play.com to check the top 25 DVDs out at the moment.
I feel that overall we had a very successful project.
One of the first things we did was to choose a song out of 12 choices. We decided to do an animation because we felt that it suited our group better and we could create a stronger video. Although animation goes against the typical conventions of the indie rock genre, I feel that we managed to create good links between the song (music/lyrics) and the visuals. We chose to challenge the conventions of the indie rock genre by doing an animation because we felt that it would shock our audience and would attract them to watch the video.
We chose to have a narrative based video but with an abstract concept included. Some of the feedback after the rough-cut said that we challenged the conventions of a typical music video by having slightly longer shots and that the narrative wasn’t very clear.
For the research and planning for the ancillary tasks, we looked at previous digipacks and magazine adverts, and noted down the conventions. We followed a lot of the conventions for a magazine advert such as having the song title and artists name clearly written, visual links to the video by displaying the characters from the video, reviews, the details of when and where it would be released and the record company logo. The digipack also conformed to the conventions by consisting of a track list, the album title, visual links to the video in the same way as the magazine advert, the production company logo, reviews and star ratings.
I think that although we conformed to the typical conventions, we could have spent more time completing both tasks. Due to time constraints, we divided our group into two groups of two and each group was assigned to on task. As we had already discussed ideas and how we wanted the products to look, this meant that the products were completed faster and more efficiently.
As well as following the conventions of a typical magazine advert and digipack, we have followed the conventions set out by Andrew Goodwin. We feel that the relationship between the music and visuals can be strong at times, for example when you can hear a piano playing, our characters are dancing on a piano. The video also cuts to the beat of the music at times. The relationship between lyrics and visuals is also strong. When the song says there are rain drops falling on his head the video shows this, when it says that ‘she’ is all his, the female character is standing with another man. The song also says about feelings leaving and there is a visual of a heart breaking. The most obvious relationship is with the song title and the tangerine msn in the video. We have also included intertextuality with the milkmaid video and the classic space invaders game.
I think that there are some very strong links between all three products. For example, the characters are the prominent feature in all three products. Another link would be the visual motif of colour, and this links strongly with the song title as tangerines are orange. This appears on many of the props throughout the music video and is used as one of the main colours in both the digipack and magazine advert. The last link between the three products is the starry background. This background can be found in both ancillary tasks and is a frequently used background in the video.
I feel that the magazine works well at attracting audience because it is unusual in the sense that it had both real people and drawn characters in it. I think that the digipack is effective and useful because the main object on the front is the main character in the music video. This is useful for people looking for the digipack and now knowing the name.
The whole class had to pitch for their chosen song and this was done using our blog and mood board to help us illustrate our ideas. The feedback from our teacher and audience was good and they told us that our ideas were very good and detailed. However, I feel that we should have planned the digipack and magazine advert in more detail at that stage.
We noticed that our original storyboard is very similar to our final product so I am pleased with our planning for our music video. When planning our timings, we underestimated how long it would take to film the whole video.
By the time the rough-cut deadline was upon us we had put all the footage we had in the correct order and had started to edit some shots. However, we didn’t have enough footage to fit the whole length of the song.
In response to the rough-cut feedback and because we had completed all our ideas on the storyboard we decided to add some more short scenes to keep it interesting and to have a variety of shots.
The initial ideas for our music video came from a video called ‘The milkmaid’, made by previous students. This video was found using the internet during our research and planning stage. The milkmaid made us choose to draw our props rather than use toys or plasticine. This resulted in us having a total of 153 individual drawings but we were pleased with the results. Drawing the props gave us the freedom of choosing whatever we wanted in our video. Some of the original ideas for props included the two characters, the stars, the clouds and the cow.
Some of the difficulties with the timing of filming was due to us using Istop motion, which was a program which was completely new to us all. Throughout the project we got more confident in using this new technology.
We used final cut to edit our footage and this process went reasonably well with only a few problems. One of these problems was lighting, where we had filmed the same scene on two different days. To fix this problem we used some of the filters on final cut to change the saturation and brightness.
Throughout the project we have been regularly updating our blog, showing our progress. This blog includes any ideas we have had, evaluations of our work so far, planning for work that needs to be done, feedback from peers and our teacher and evidence of the work we have done. We have found this a useful way of documenting our work as it is easy to access and edit.
We used emails and MySpace to contact the band in our research stage to make sure they knew we were using their song, and to see if they had any thoughts on ideas. For the ancillary tasks we also used the internet with sites such as play.com to check the top 25 DVDs out at the moment.
I feel that overall we had a very successful project.
Wednesday 9 December 2009
Post Production Technical Difficulties Commentary
Our commentary sequence will need to be re-arranged into a logical order so that each clip answers the relevant questions. To do this, we'll be renaming the clips so we can identify which topic we specifically spoke about.
We have found that during this commentary we have had some issues. We have found that although we have enough footage and have enough material on the topic questions provided. We found that cutting and ordering theses clips was difficult as all the clips blend together and we did not shoot them in a specific order. Whilst uploading the footage from the camera a part of our footage had become out of sync with the audio; as such we had to trim and rematch both the audio and video strands. This took valuable time and has set us back in our second day of editing.
We were recommended by our teacher to include texts and photos to our commentary in order to convey a clear message to the examiners. We were also required to work on our transcript.
We have found that during this commentary we have had some issues. We have found that although we have enough footage and have enough material on the topic questions provided. We found that cutting and ordering theses clips was difficult as all the clips blend together and we did not shoot them in a specific order. Whilst uploading the footage from the camera a part of our footage had become out of sync with the audio; as such we had to trim and rematch both the audio and video strands. This took valuable time and has set us back in our second day of editing.
We were recommended by our teacher to include texts and photos to our commentary in order to convey a clear message to the examiners. We were also required to work on our transcript.
Friday 4 December 2009
Evaluation Commentary Shooting
These are a list of topics roughly noted that we spoke about while filming -
- Create a promotional package for music album.
- Present a pitch to receive feedback for our concept
- Character idea's i.e. the suit guy, female character and tangerine character
- Story boarding media technology, filming process, prop/decor design
- Contextual themes, intertextual references, Goodwin's law with visuals/lyrical relationships
- Rough cut feedback
- Referring and updating our blog
- Copyright issues and official permission for song rights
- Compare the three products, how effective they were
- Technical issues we encountered
- Improvised some additional scenes
- Talk about the peer feedback received overall
(Draft for final evaluation - Vincent)
For our commentary evaluation video, we decided to find a suitable location where we'd have no disruption. Beforehand, we planned what topics to talk about for each question. Our teacher had also given us a clear explanation what answers the questions were demanding. The 2nd question was on the subject on comparing our three media products which required us to think objectively. This question required us to talk about the textual relationship between the music video and our ancillary products. We spoke on how the mise-en-scene for each of the ancillary product has a close resemblance.
(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 color 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.
(3) In general received positive reception for our animation in particular for our rough cut. For our pitch we managed the assertively express our points by displaying our blog. 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. Before we designed a lot of rough sketches with the variety of props/decor we'd require. 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 need developing.
(4) In order the achieve these results, a lot of research and planning was executed to confirm our idea's for the pitch. Overall, we had envisioned great ideas foor how our products would turn out. 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 found 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 the 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.
Wednesday 2 December 2009
Planning for Audio Commentary
Content
Outline of brief
Pitch and feedback
Research and planning- new media technologies and conventions
Challenges of shoot
Rough cut and feedback
Final cut- conventions, Goodwin theory
Research and planning ancillary tasks - conventions and new media technologies
Feedback from peer and teacher
Final ancillary tasks- effectiveness of combination
Finally how successful you were at meeting brief
Techniques
Textual prompts
Formal- Structures and scripted
Informal setting- Spontaneous
Specific
Summary
Multiple points of view
Screen Grabs- Blog, Products
Split screens
Talking heads
Clips from film- No particular order
Voice over while video runs
Artists/director
Outline of brief
Pitch and feedback
Research and planning- new media technologies and conventions
Challenges of shoot
Rough cut and feedback
Final cut- conventions, Goodwin theory
Research and planning ancillary tasks - conventions and new media technologies
Feedback from peer and teacher
Final ancillary tasks- effectiveness of combination
Finally how successful you were at meeting brief
Techniques
Textual prompts
Formal- Structures and scripted
Informal setting- Spontaneous
Specific
Summary
Multiple points of view
Screen Grabs- Blog, Products
Split screens
Talking heads
Clips from film- No particular order
Voice over while video runs
Artists/director