Thursday 15 December 2011

Director's Commentary research - past students' work

Past Student's video

This video goes straight into the answers, and does not show/read out the question. This is not bad in any way at all, but we feel that our answers would make a lot more sense with the questions included whether these are read out by someone or appear on-screen.
Using the green screen
This group also used the green screen so they could show their work in the background as they spoke, and this is really effective at amplifying their points, as we see the work as they speak about it.
They also all spoke about everything and had an equal share, which is what we would like to do as we all have our individual points and ideas to talk about.
However, this group did not include any of their music video which we feel would benefit our commentary to help get our points across, as the viewer can see exactly what we are talking about as it plays. They also did not keep their backgrounds on all the time, which was a bit distracting and inconsistent.
Overall, this group's work was really good and they all are clear and confident speakers using natural tones which is want we would want to use, and they all get their points across clearly. However we have decided to show a bit more of our work to get our points explained exactly.

Reflection on our story board

It was quite interesting to look back on our storyboard and see how much we stuck to it. The first few frames are the same as the storyboard - quite long shots of Alannah and Joe separately, establishing the scene. However, we added in the idea of using the mirror in the frame after we did our storyboard, after we watched Katy Perry's Thinking of You music video.
The majority of our past montage shots are also similar to our story board, except we added more of the handheld camera as once we started doing that, we really loved it so added much more than we originally planned we would.
We also added more shots such as Joe looking towards the door as he hears the knock, and the end shot which fades up into the sky, but overall we did stick to our storyboard quite well except for the addition of some new shots.

Editing our director's commentary

After researching into real and past students' director's commentary, we have decided to do ours quite simply with our questions appearing on the screens with our chosen song 'Letters' playing in the background. We will then include the shots of each member of our group talking, giving an even amount of time to everyone to make it fair. We will also incorporate examples of what we talk about from our music video, for example when we talk about the golden/pink hues from our video we will show part of that montage in those colours, to amplify our points.
Starting to edit our commentary
We put our clips (as you can see in the left of the image) in it's own bin, to keep separated from our original sequence. We wanted our commentary to be quite simple and natural so we could focus on the video, so we did not add many effects except for the fades of the questions.

Editing Diaries (uploaded later)

Our editing has gone really well and we are all contributing new ideas and effects to help improve it.

ROUGH CUT EDITING
Wednesday 19th October:
Today we imported the song we're using into Final Cut, and loaded our shots. We've started the basic placing of our shots ready for our rough cut deadline, and added the whole shot of Joe singing the entire song on the timeline, so we can pick and choose what parts we want to show of that.

Thursday 20th October:
Using 'Color Corrector' to make a golden/pink hue
The outcome of our experimenting - the colouring we're using for our montages
Today we added more shots and started focusing on the colouring of our shots - we've started to experiment with the contrasts and brightness of the black and white shots. We also have decided on our golden/pink hue using colour corrector (shown above). We've also added most of our shots, except there is about a 15 second part where it is just Joe singing - we need to refine this.
We have received the feedback of our rough cut (blogged).

Wednesday 2nd November:
We blogged our rough cut, and organised our feedback which we also blogged.


FINAL CUT EDITING DIARY
Thursday 3rd November
After our feedback, we are experimenting with more effects and filters. We added in a cross dissolve to the start of the montages which creates a really nice effect as you see Joe singing on the left, as the couple bike into the shot from the right, creating a perfect framework.
Editing our piece - as you can see, we have perfected our golden tones and have organised our shots

Monday 7th November & Wednesday 9th November
We added more cross dissolves in the part where Alannah thinks about the memories as she reads the letter for the second time. This just creates a nice smooth effect for the transition from present to past and back again. We also added the vignette filter to the montages for the past, to add to the handheld-camera effect and to distinguish more the difference in past and present. We have also refined our shots and changed the order slightly, to make our lyrics and visuals relationship stronger. We feel as if our video is complete and will blog it next week.

Monday 14th November
Blogged our final piece

Analysis of previous students digipack


Here we have taken a previous students group's digipack and looked at some of the connections they have made between their advert and dvd cover. On the dvd cover they have used a similar font to ours with that swirly effect and the colours are quite bold in some areas to attract the audience. The back of the dvd cover is effective as they have used a close up image of the male artist playing the guitar and we can clearly tell that this is a solo artist. On the magazine advert they have used an image from their music video which is a strong image, however the advert comes across as more of a single than an album. From the use of colour on both of the products we can instantly see that the genre is rock, alternative as they have used the logo 'NME' which is for this particular genre. Overall this digipack is really effective and has worked well together and by looking at this digipack it helped us in terms of displaying images and the layout. 

Examples of directors commentary



We researched into other directors commentary from some films and we chose to look at a commentary from the film 'The Notebook'. From looking at this video it has helped us produce our commentary, as we looked at the style they presented it in and how long it lasted.
This commentary shows examples directly from the film itself which is something we would like to do with our music video, as it demonstrates the point perfectly.
The directors also use a natural, conversational tone which makes the whole thing much easier to watch and listen to.

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Final Directors Commentary Part Two

Research into past students' work


We have chosen to analyse a previous students music video. This was also a love, romance alternative theme and there is a definite connection theme in this genre of music video. This music video is similar to ours in many areas such as the relationship between the couple and having a main male artist singing about their relationship. The pace of this music video is quite slow and has used soft colours which is the effect we used in our final video. The use of clips in the video show happy and sad memories between the couple and they have used many transitions such as soft fades to create that upsetting mood. The use of split screening that this group have used of the male and female is really effective as it is showing that the couple are in that same situation. The use of close up shot's are effective as the viewer can establish the emotion between the two leading roles. The use of colour scheme is similar to ours as whilst the video is showing the happy memories between the two couples the colours show a higher contrast and as soon as a sad memory is shown the colour's saturation fades into a darker colour so the viewer can connect with the mood they are feeling.

Timeline


This timeline will help us to keep track of our progress and help us plan.

Other inspirational music video's




This Katy Perry music video "Thinking Of You" was another big inspiration because it was a love song as well as having the colour scheme and idea's we were looking at from the beginning. It is also in the 40's genre and style which is what we initially wanted but decided it would be difficult to create and we did not want to copy the music video. We did however get some idea's from it such as the scene's shown above.

Director's Commentary Part Two

Director's Commentary Part 2

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Deadlines

Editing Commentary - Wed 14th December
Improving individual evaluations - Monday 12th December
Blog work - Thursday 15th December

To do:

  • More director's commentary research (past students' work)
  • Evaluation of one of last year's music video
  • Evaluation of our own commentary
  • Upload: editing of our rough cut diary and final cut diary, analysis into digipaks/mag adverts from past students and real ones, inspiration from Katy Perry's 'Thinking of You' (saved on Word)

Friday 2 December 2011

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre of our music video was pop/alternative, as the song was unique, romantic and acoustic. We incorporated the conventions of a romantic music video into our own, such as using a narrative - the story of a couple. We also showed the artist a lot playing his guitar and used him as the male lead in the story of the couple, similar to Enrique Inglesias' video for 'Hero', where he was the male lead in the narrative. We also looked at Adele's 'Someone Like You' video for inspiration and used the idea of black and white to portray a melancholic feeling. However, for the happy memory scenes we used a pink, golden hue, also inspired by Enrique's 'Hero' video. The locations we used were also typical of romantic music videos and films, such as the park and homes. We got the idea for using the bicycles and the park from the film The Notebook, and also from Katy Perry's 'Thinking of You' video. Both of these used the idea of cycling together and going to the park, typical romantic ideas. Our shots are also quite long and slow to match the pace of the song, rather than fast cuts as that would fit more with a dance/hip-hop video. Our magazine advert really sells the artist and also carries on our visual themes of love, black and white vs colour and love letters. We used an image of a rose and a letter in both our magazine ad and digipak - traditional images of romance. We were inspired by the digipak of 'Roxy music - An Evening With Roxy Music' with the use of a letter on the back page for our track list on our digipak as it fits in well with our theme of love letters.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our main product and ancillary texts work well together as a promotional package as they all incorporate our visual themes of love, black and white vs colour and love letters. We were trying to highlight the main theme of love of the alum throughout all of our media products, using the colour red and the traditional romantic image of a rose in our ancillary products, and golden, pink hues in our video. They create a very sensitive, romantic image of the artist which would successfully attract a target audience of women of all ages, as he would be the image of a perfect lover.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The feedback we have received has always been very helpful to us in creating the right kind of music video. The feedback of our initial ideas helped us be a bit more realistic, as we wanted to use a 1940s theme, linking us more directly to The Notebook, and we wanted to end the video in the rain. Our feedback supported our ideas for the love story, but said the 1940s theme and ending in the rain would be unrealistic and hard to do. We agreed with this so decided to not use those ideas as they would take up lots of time and money which we did not have. Again, the feedback for our rough cut was very positive and successful. The audience said that the narrative was easy to understand and the slow pace fitted in with the genre and the performance of the characters were convincing and "adorable". They did say that some lyrics could be highlighted more, so we changed and added some more shots to highlight certain lyrics, such as when the lyrics are "I'll always love you" it's a shot of the female lead. They also said we could use more effects, so we added more fades and a vignette filter around the home videos to highlight the home movies more. We also added more noise to highlight the home video, old effect. They also suggested an alternative ending of the female lead dying before seeing the male lead, yet we felt this was very overdramatic and could not be done because of time constraints.
The feedback of our final cut was very positive. They said there was a good use of dark and light colours and lighting to highlight the different emotions which is what we intended to do. They also said the handheld camera was very effective and natural and that the lyrics and visuals relationship was stronger, for example when he was singing about being alone and he is actually shown alone in his house. This shows that our reaction to the rough cut's feedback worked well, as we changed some shots to amplify the lyrics more. Overall our feedback has always been very positive.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The software we used really helped to amplify the story of our music video. FInal Cut Express helped us make a productive, romantic music video as we used effects such as the vignette filter and fading to add a sensitive, soft atmosphere. Photoshop was also valuable in making our ancillary products. We used many layers in our magazine advert and digipak, of letters and roses to also create the feeling of love to highlight the theme of the entire album. Using Blogger was also really helpful in organising our ideas and research as well as our feedback. The HD cameras were also a great bonus to creating our music video as they made everything a lot sharper and realistic. All of these products helped enable us to be creative and to push our ideas even further.

Thursday 1 December 2011

Evaluation Questions

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product fits into a convention of a love song. As part of our music video, we have taken ideas from romantic films such as ‘the notebook’ and looked at other different types of romantic videos to give us some sort of inspiration. From looking at these different types of videos such as Enrique’s video ‘Hero’ we have taken a few ideas such as the lighting and colour, and put these into our own media product. The name of our song was called ‘Letters’. One way of which we met the conventions of a real media product is that our group successfully managed to fit our lyrics with the visuals and music, which looked really effective and pieced the song together well. Our opening sequence for our music video shows a shot of the girl reading the love letter smiling, from this you can clearly tell that our music video will be based on happiness and love as she is smiling whilst reading it. We decided to create montages of the couple together and create a hand held camera style for our video. The memories of the couple are in colour to create happiness and we have used effects on final cut to make them look home made. We made the lonely and sad clips of both of the couple into black and white. From the colour scheme we have used in our video, the audience can see that it’s obviously about a couple going through a bad time missing each other. We have made this look effective by using a range of shots of the boy and girl individually such as close ups to really catch that emotion. One effect that we are extremely pleased with when editing our video on final cut, is that we managed to fade out our lead singer slightly whilst showing a memory of the couple riding their bikes. We feel that this effect looked really effective as it is clear to the audience that he is thinking about the memories they had together. In one way in which we have challenged a convention of our media product was to think of another alternative ending. Instead of a happy romantic ending, we were suggested another ending which would be killing off the female character towards the end, to trick our audience thinking she would return to our main artist. This was an idea we considered but however we had lack of time to do this and also our group were very happy with the ending we had chosen for the final video.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I feel that the combination of our main product and our ancillary texts have turned out very effective. From all of the combinations I feel as if we have established our artist well as being a love artist, to suit our mainly female audience. All three products work well as a promotional package due to the use of colour they all share and the text fonts we have used. In our music video we have used soft and darker colours which we have included in our products. Our main song we used for our music video was named ‘Letters’. As the album is based on romance, we wanted to create old fashioned letter effect by placing an old fashioned effect of writing faded in the background. All three products also incorporate visual themes of love. We used a symbol of a red rose in our digi pack and our magazine cover. We chose to add a sensitive close up image of our main artist to attract our female audience.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback has been a great help for us as we now know areas in which we could improve on. We received positive feedback as well as negatives and our audience commented on how they thought our music video was effective and a good idea to represent a love song. Our audience also liked the use of our hand held camera effect we were going for and commented on how the colours we had used were effective. One negative comment we received was that our music video came across more of a film scene than a music video which we had to try and avoid. From our rough cut we received comments which helped us improve our final music video. We took all the comments into consideration and worked our best on trying to create our music video at the best advantage we could. The audience were pleased with our colour choice and liked the idea of the colours representing the mood of the video. Our negative feedback we received was to do with our editing skills. We were told to shorten some clips as the viewer found it went on for too long and felt slightly uncomfortable watching it. We were then advised to work on our montages involving finding certain techniques to try and make them look like a hand held movie. This made the movie look much more vintage and appealing to watch. Receiving this kind of feed back really helped our group as we could work on ways to improve our music video.
 How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The main technology we used to edit our music video was final cut express. All of our group were familiar to this programme as we all used it previously last year. Using final cut was a success to our group as we could all work efficiently and fast, and also learning to add effects and flirters that we had never learnt how to do before. Whilst we edited on final cut, we also wrote down our ideas and about the techniques we used on the blog to show our audience. When working on the digi pack we had to use the programme photoshop. Our group succeeded in this well as three of the members in our group including me, are photography students and use this programme a lot. This benefited us a lot as we could work fast and edit the main image we wanted to use well to stand out, being more creative. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of our editing skills on all programmes as we worked well as a group contributing our ideas together and editing on the programmes to make our products look professional. 

Music Video Director's Commentary Script

We want our commentary to look very natural and conversational, so we're going to focus on a few key points we want to make but not directly read from a script.

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

  • love theme - through song and narrative, 
  • inspirations - Enrique - colours, included in story. Adele - black and white. Katy Perry (thinking of you) - in the mirror, sadness in black clothes, memories of bikes and picnics (locations)
  • technical elements: fades, vignette filter, handheld camera
  • alternative endings
  • mag advert: date, title, artist - rose
  • digipak - inspired by Roxy Music - letter on back page for track list, rose

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

  • all incorporate visual themes of love, love letters and the colours we used
  • sensitive, romantic image of artist to attract female target audience (image of perfect lover) 
  • rose  

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

  • Our audience feedback was very valuable to us 
  • initial feedback: helped us be more realistic (1940s theme & rain) 
  • rough cut feedback: narrative easy to understand, convincing and adorable performance, needed better lip syncing, more effects, range of shots of Joe, visual+lyrics
  • alternative ending
  • positive final cut feedback: good use of colours/lighting to highlight emotions, good handheld camera, better visuals+lyrics

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

  • Final Cut Express: helped create a productive, romantic music video (effects and filters)
  • Photoshop: 3 photographers in group, photoshop good  to use layers in mag advert/digipak, letters + roses, to highlight theme of album
  • blogger: helped to organise ideas and inspirations, and to recieve feedback
  • dafont.com for fonts
  • HD cameras: sharp, realistic footage

Wednesday 30 November 2011

Evaluation Questions

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

Our finalised music video successfully fits the conventions of a typical love song for many reasons. The narrative takes the form of a love sequence and makes references to well known love films e.g 'The Notebook', bike riding scene. We did, however make it evident that it was a music video by establishing the artist and distinguishing the difference between him and his lady. One factor we were happy with was how we managed to link the lyrics with the visuals and music, making it more meaningful and believable through characters, concluding in a very sensitive love piece to attract our intended target audience. Our direct notion has been achieved through our camerawork, as we used POV shots to represent happy montages between the couple. As they are looking directly into the camera it gets the audience comfortably involved in the full extent of the relationship, not as if they are intruding. Again, the editing conforms to the conventions of the theme of love, mainly through our colour scheme. We converted the the lonely, sad times into black and white, whereas the happy montages where we used a warm summers day end colour. It allows the audience to adopt the characters emotions and understand their thoughts and feelings throughout. The only way in which we could have challenged our product would be by subverting from the typical 'happy ending' and followed an alternative ending. An example of this would be killing off the female character at the point of climax where the audience are led to believe she will return to the male character. We considered this as a potential ending, however due to lack of time and props we decided against the idea.

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

The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts are very effective in establishing the artist to suit our intended female audience through the romance displayed. All three products follow a similar colour scheme, contrasting between light and dark colours, allowing them to appear iconic to the artist, as opposed to just one of his songs. It is representative of an album makes the artist more recognizable to an audience. We also include an iconic symbol of a rose in both the magazine advertisement and our digipak. Through the close up effect of portraying the artist it successfully attracts our intended target audience as it shows the artist in positive light, therefore presenting as a person that the audience can relate to, as well as his music.

3.) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We learnt a lot of the audience feedback process. Initially the pitch we performed was a success capturing people's attention and generally being thought of as a good idea for a love song. Our only real criticism was the curiosity and concern that it may portrayed more as a film scene than a music video and that we may be pushing boundaries. We bared this in mind and successfully avoided that hurdle as we distinguished the artist very clearly through many different elements, particularly camerawork and editing. After completing the rough cut it was given very positive feedback. The chosen colour scheme and emotive skills by Alannah and myself were regularly commented on. Our only negative feedback was given towards our editing process. We were told to shorten certain shots as they were too uncomfortably for the audience to watch and didn't fit the tempo of the music. We were also told to neaten up the montages with an effect to make it feel more like a home movie. We took this advice into consideration and fixed the changes. The longer shots were cut down, which proved to fit much nicer with the music allowing the video to flow more. We also decided to add a vignette effect to the montage clips which visually made it appear more from the perspective of the character through a video camera and worked beautifully. Overall the feedback we were given through the process was great, allowing us to develop and create a fantastic music video.

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

There were a range of media technologies we had to use in order to develop our final product. To construct our video we had to use Final Cut, which was good as every member of our group was familiar with the programme from the previous year, therefore allowing us to work faster and more efficiently. To develop our magazine advertisement and digipak we had to use Photoshop. This was another programme we were happy to use as three members of our group were used to using it from their photography work. Again this allowed to us to work faster and develop a better product. the advanced level of the programme's we were using allowed us to be extremely creative with our work, particularly the editing processes. This is because we were able to add effects to our products to make them look more professional than we expected, and only on rare occasion would it slow us down.

Monday 28 November 2011

Homework - Director's commentary

Director's commentary can be presented as a video insert on a separate channel on the DVD. This commentary is a standard procedure when presenting additional media on a programmed DVD. In some cases you may see an interviewer and in other cases you will only see the director answering questions. Questions from interviewers could be, "What were your inspirations?" "Some critics say...what is your answer to these comments?" The directors usually give quite long, detailed answers.
The director usually talks about where the music video was shot and when, and why the director decided on these places and shots. The commentary also usually includes clips from the film/music video to demonstrate the director's points.

Monday 21 November 2011

Magazine advert draft

This is the draft for our magazine advert. We have layered an image of a 'love letter' behind and above an image of our artist. We did not want to use many effects and graphics as we feel our image is a very strong, emotional one which did not need much editing. By rubbing out the writing on our artist's face, we made his face stand out more, giving a 3D effect. We used  a slight sepia tone in the image to keep with our visual theme of sepia vs black and white, and we used the image of the love letter to also link with our other visual theme of letters/love.
We need to add a website and a kind of record label. We have also decided to change the layout slightly by moving the title as we feel it takes the eyes away from the artist too much. We also are going to change the date to 'out now' and remove the 'hmv.com' and the shadowing as it doesn't fit in with the image.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Visual Themes

The visual theme amongst our products (Music Video, Magazine Cover and Digipak) is the contrast of colours, interchanging between black and white, and the warm, golden, summers day effect.  Both effects resemble different emotions displayed by the characters with the black and white representing the sad times, and the warm colours taking the form of the characters happy times through montages.



For our digipak the front cover consist of an image revealing the artist. We intend on scheduling a photo-shoot so that we can use professional shots for our cover.

Another one of the main themes of our video is, obviously, 'love'. This is shown in our video through the narrative, and the whole idea of the album will be that it is a romantic, loving album. We want to tastefully convey the idea of love, and are thinking about using images such as love letters, roses and shots of our artist showing emotion to convey this theme. We also are going to use colours such as red/green and black to keep fitting in with this idea of love.

Font research for our magazine advert/digipak

We want to go for a soft, swirly font, like calligraphy. We looked at calligraphy on dafont.com and our favourites our these:

Analysis of magazine adverts

We have done some research on other student's and real examples of magazine adverts.

This is an example of a group of students' work from 2010.
We really like this image. The overlaying of images of swirls, music notes and the girl is extremely effective and creates a sensitive, romantic atmosphere. The colours, soft pinks and greys, also matches the romantic mood. The swirly, soft writing is effective, as well as the slight shadowing they used underneath it, reinforcing the band's name and song title.
As our video is a love song and is very romantic, we feel this kind of magazine advert would fit in well with our visual themes of colour/black and white, writing and love.
We have created a mood board with the kind of images we would like to use, and to test out our idea of overlaying images.

Monday 14 November 2011

Our Final Music Video!



We feel our music video was a great success and turned out better than we had hoped it would. Our initial ideas did not happen the way we wanted due to timing issues and money, however we were able to successfully adapt our ideas to suit the deadlines and create a moving piece. One of our most successful ideas came by accident; Joe accidentally filmed Alannah in our test shots shakily and it was actually really effective, so we came up with the idea of using handheld cameras, like home videos, in our memory montage. We also thought of an alternative ending, which was that Alannah was running to Joe's house and was dramatically hit by a car, and the letter blew away, so Joe would never know she was going back to him. Unfortunately, we could not film this because of time constraints, and we also felt that this ending would over-dramatize the video and would be too obvious, as it would have included more running shots to build the tension.

Wednesday 2 November 2011

Feedback for our rough cut

1. Goodwin: Good narrative and easy to understand; slow paced editing fits in with genre; lyrics+visuals - some lyrics could be highlighted more; good use of invisible camerawork
We are glad we have achieved the effect we wanted; for the video's narrative to be easy to understand and to fit in with the genre.
2. Editing: Pace fits music and editing is very natural; use of black and white works well; fade works well and could use more; doesn't need much more editing to keep natural style.
We're going to look into using effects such as fading and cross dissolves. We don't want to add too many effects as we would like to keep the video natural and not distracting.
3. Camerawork: shots steady with shaky hand held camera being a good contrast; could have a bigger variety of types but not a necessity; overall very good and clever shots.
We feel our shots have a good amount of variety, and any more would distract from the narrative. But we will look into our clips and see if we have any more different shots to use, to see how they'd fit in.
4. Mise en scene: Bikes were a good prop to match summer season and the happiness; costume was related and casual which matched feel of the song; location matched the music as well because the happy points were always outside
We are happy that the audience feel the location and props fit in well, as these were inspirations from the film The Notebook, one of the most romantic films of all time, and we are happy they worked well.
5. Creativity and Performance: very well lip synced, roles very convincing and adorable; story line suited the song and was very clear.
We wanted to convey a deep, meaningful emotion and glad this came across tastefully.

Overall, our feedback was really successful. We have a few more shots to add in and will use the feedback's ideas of using more effects such as fading/dissolving. We will also think about different styles of shots to use for which we'll need the emergency filming day.

Rough Cut

Sunday 30 October 2011

Film Diary

First day of filming (Monday):
So far, our filming has gone really well and mostly as we planned. We have finished the shots of Alannah in her house and her walking/running shots. We also finished the shots of Alannah and Joe's 'memory montage', which was in the country park in Milton. The outside shots were a bit difficult as we had to wait for the public to walk past, but eventually our shots were finished and as we had hoped. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to finish the running shots outside (for when Alannah gets to Joe's house) as the light had gone, and to keep the continuity in our video we could not carry on, but will film these shots at the same time as to get the same light.

Second day of filming (Tuesday):
Today we finished filming all of our shots and we feel it was really successful. We finished the shots of Alannah running outside and they were succesful as the lighting was the same. Alannah also made sure to wear the same outfits, hair etc as to keep the continuity. The shots of Joe also went really well. We had to swap locations a few times in his house to get the right lighting but eventually we decided on the shots and framing, such as him on the sofa and by the window looking out into the distance, and these shots worked really well. We also finished the shots of Alannah and Joe's reunion, and decided the best ending would be the camera slowly moving upwards from Alannah and Joe hugging to the sky. After trying this a few times due to camera shake, the shot was eventually finished and was really effective. It was the perfect ending to our romantic video and we think our shooting was very successful, and hopefully we will not need any emergency filming.

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Test Montage

We wanted to test our ideas out, so we used the college field to get an idea of what our framing and shots would be like. We feel the tests went really well, and are a perfect example of what we would like our final footage to be like, but more polished.
We also played around with the colours on Final Cut and, after this, have decided to do the present time in black and white, as black and white tones are quite melancholy, to fit in with the emotions of the song and video at that point in time. The memories and the final reunion will be in colour to represent happier times. The colour we have decided on is a desaturated tone with a gold/pink hue, as these colours represent happiness.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Genre Conventions Research

- The story is focused mainly on the development of a romantic relationship between two characters. Our video will concentrate on the relationship of Joe and Alannah as they decide to get back together. 
- There is a 'Happily Ever After' - usually resulting in the couple back together/finally getting together. In our music video, it will be a happy ending because the couple are reunited. The tension will build over the course of the video as Joe waits for news from Alannah, in reply to his letter which she reads throughout. 


Main elements of romance films/music videos/novels:
Conflict - There is usually a central conflict that divides the lovers. In our video, the conflict is unknown to the audience yet it is clear there was one in the past which split the pair in the first place.
Growth - Throughout the video, the characters are expected to grow - so the audience can find them more interesting and relate to them. Throughout our video, our story will become clearer and more defined and (thanks to close ups) the audience will be able to identify the emotions of the characters to make the story more understandable.
Resolution - Problems between the two are usually resolved and leave the audience satisfied. Our music video has a clear resolution at the end, as the two reunite. Audiences aren't usually satisfied if the reunion seems superficial, and not 'permanent and deep', so we hope to convey the emotions of our characters in a serious, realistic way using different shots and framing.




An example of 'Happily Ever After' is in the film The Notebook, one of our main inspirations. The conflict is that her parents do not want them to be together, and she moves away after the summer and gets engaged. It follows the characters growing up and the audience becomes more deeply involved in their turmoil. The film is resolved as the couple reunite at the end and realise how they are always meant to be together.


The Notebook - the couple, as adults, falling back in love (resolution)

Inspiration

Enrique Iglesias - Hero Music Video

Another source of inspiration is the romantic music video for Hero by Enrique Iglesias.

The colour scheme for our music video will be something similar to the hero music video - lots of gold, pink and sepia tones which we will edit into using Colour Correction in Final Cut.
These colours are traditionally used in romantic scenes of movies and music videos, and we feel would fit into our story well and add to the sensitive atmosphere. The colours also relate to a sunset - a traditionally romantic setting. The shots and framing are also very similar to what we hope to use in our music video. The majority of shots are close ups/medium close ups to easily convey the emotions the characters are feeling. The framing usually puts the couple/character in the centre, to make them the main point of focus.

Goodwin's Analysis of 'Hero' by Enrique Iglesias.
1. Genre characteristics: the music video tells a story of a couple in love which is a characteristic of a love song's music video.
2. The lyrics are illustrative, for example when he says 'touch your lips' they kiss in the music video, and when he says 'kiss away the pain' he is kissing her body.
3. The relationship between the music and visuals is illustrative, as there are moments where the villain in the story is playing the piano to match the music.
4. There are many close ups of Enrique in this video, and he is also a character in the story, making his emotions genuine. His direct role in the music video makes him easier to relate to for audiences.
5. There are notions of looking in this music video. Enrique continuously looks at the camera, straight at the audience, again making his emotions more genuine.



Adele - Someone Like You (music video)

Adele's Someone Like You is one of the most famous songs at the moment, well known for addressing pain and love. We'd like our video to convey these strong emotions, and have decided to try the idea of using black and white in our video in the present scenes to convey pain, similar to Adele's music video. Black and white makes the video a lot simpler, highlighting the emotion even more. The dark tones add to the overall atmosphere of the scene. The difference in colours will also highlight the difference in times between the montage of the past memories, and the present - making the video much clearer for our audience. Adele's video also has a slightly blurred edge - we need to experiment with effects to see if this would fit in with our video. Many close ups of Adele show her strong, painful emotions. We would like to follow Alannah on her walk to Joe's house, and hope we can do this as tastefully as Adele's video.

Monday 3 October 2011

Final Idea

After recieving feedback for our pitch, we have decided to add a more romantic setting and theme to our music video, and slightly change the shots and 'flashbacks' so the video can be more understandable. We have also decided to not use the 1940s theme for the dream/memories as we have too little time to find the right resources to make the idea successful.
The music video will follow our couple as they lead separate lives as well as their reunion, thanks to the letter Joe has written to Alannah.
The video will start with shots of Alannah walking through her house in a modern setting reading a letter, with a melancholy look on her face. The shots will be a variety of medium close ups and close ups, to clearly display the emotion on her face. Joe will then be introduced with medium close ups of him playing his guitar and singing the lyrics of the song. Alannah will be leaning in an extreme close up against her front door, clearly in turmoil about whether or not to go out, interlaced with shots of Joe sitting down, looking anxious and worried. It will then become clear that the two characters and the letter are linked.
Alannah will then leave her house and walk down streets, still reading the letter. She will keep turning back (through a series of long shots/medium close ups) - clearly undecided about whether or not to keep walking.
Memories are then clearly shown as the two are clearly thinking, as Alannah walks down the street and Joe looking out his window. Shots will be shown of the couple in traditionally romantic scenes, such as picnics and riding bikes together. We also have decided to use the idea of a handheld camera as if the two are videoing each other. This is quite a traditionally romantic idea. We intend to edit these shots with a slightly fuzzy quality and pinkish overtones to show it's clearly a dream/flashback.
Alannah then looks at the letter and pauses, looking back between her house and the direction she's walking in, unsure about what to do, and this is the key moment where she decides to definitely go to her lover and she starts running. Shots of her running will still be interlaced with shots of Joe anxiously walking around his house.
In this last section of the video, Joe opens the door and Alannah is there, holding the letter and smiling. The two will then hug and cheer, laughing in the driveway of Joe's house. We were hoping to conclude the video in the rain - a traditional characteristic of the romantic genre - however some of our feedback said it may be hard to do that with the unpredictable weather. We will still try to achieve this last scene in the rain, yet we still feel it will be effective without it, so we will do test shots without the rain.

Location Report

We will film in Milton Country Park for the majority of our music video, for the memory/fantasy scenes set in the 1940s. We will use the green in the park for the picnic and "bike ride".  This location is very romantic and natural and will fit in easily with our ideas for the romantic, sensitive song.
We will also film in Alannah's house for the shots of her reading the letter, and in Milton for the walking scenes. Locations such as the kitchen and bedroom to read the letter make the video more personal and relatable for our target audiences - the majority of which will be young women.
We will also use Joe's house for the shots of him on guitar and for the reunion of the couple.


Using the two different houses and the streets throughout Milton will add to the separation of the couple, and make the video more realistic. All of these locations fit in perfectly with our story and help to create the poetic atmosphere and helps the continuity of the video.

Pitch Presentation

 Concept
The concept of our music video is to express the romance within the song.
We will achieve this by having our music video resemble a love scene from a film between two people.
We want to establish him as an alternative artist, using our music video, digipak and magazine advert to sell the album. 
We also want to establish the artist individually as a love song writer, who’s music appeals generally to women.
Music Promo Video
It will include montages of both people, including shots on their own – possibly singing along to the lyrics, as if they are both thinking out loud about each other.
There will also be shots of the couple together, for example walking together, or cuddled up on the sofa laughing.
There will also be footage of the artist on his guitar singing, so we can make sure he is established as a romantic man.
The lighting will include soft, pure colours, such as whites and blues, to match the genre of music video.



Digipack 

          Our digipak’s design will incorporate the ideas from the main song of the album (the one used in our music video) to establish his identity to our audience. We want to create a romantic, sensitive image for our artist. Our digipak’s front cover will be of the artist himself, holding his guitar. The spine will include his name and the album name – “Letters”, which links to our music promo video. The back will include the rest of the song titles for the album, and have them written as if they were a list on a letter, similar to the image below. This all links in with the title of the album and sells the whole image of the artist. The colours we will use will be soft, pure colours such as white and blue – also linking to our music promo video.  

Magazine Advert
Our magazine advert will consist of a shot of our artist looking away from the camera behind pretty scenery to immediately highlight his style of genre.
It will include very light, pure colour, such as pinks and blues (potential horizon background) to connote the theme of love.
The magazine advert will include the image of the artist, the name of the album, a quote about the artist, the release date, and the website.
Potentially camera shots include close ups, medium shots or establishing shots.  
 
Target Audience
As our artist’s music is very romantic, and the songs relate to the theme of love, our intended target audience is women as we feel the style of our music video will appeal more.
Through following Goodwin’s theory, we will utilize the link of lyrics to visuals by presenting it in the style of a scene from a romantic film. This is to allow our audience to stay hooked to the video, following it as if it were a story.
Our video conforms to the typical narrative you would find in a romantic film, with a happy ending, leaving our audience with a smile on their face.
 

Timeline of Song

Intro: 0 seconds - 34 seconds

1st Verse: 34 seconds - 1min 11secs

Chorus: 1min 11secs - 1min 34secs

Instrumental: 1min 34secs - 1min 45secs

2nd Verse: 1min 45secs - 2min 42secs

3rd Verse and instrumental: 2min 42secs - 3min 15secs

Chorus x2: 3min 15secs - end

Artist Construction Task


Giuseppe Acanfora
The image we are trying to construct is a romantic, sensitive teenage heartthrob – one for the girls to lust over. Giuseppe Acanfora is tall, dark and handsome – the stereotypical love song artist. Our style icon is Enrique Iglesias – a well-known artist that oozes sex appeal and is very popular. Enrique is well known for his smouldering eyes and the pout – a factor we will incorporate into our magazine cover. These factors will all appeal to our target audience of teenage girls.
We will use the natural location of the woodland area on site to add to the natural effect of the cover. It will also make the cover more mysterious, appealing to our target audience. He will wear a shirt with a low cut white top underneath with a wooden necklace – a stereotypical outfit of a pop solo artist. The image with Giuseppe in the centre of the frame will give the idea that he is independent and alone which will appeal to the female audience. Our photograph will be a close up to sell the artist. Close ups are typical of the pop genre as it shows off the artist’s looks and style. It reveals the artist’s thoughts and emotions on camera to establish the type of music he plays and what they revolve around. The pose will be looking away from the camera into the distance, as if he is in a trance, which will add to the mystery of the artist and leave the audience wanting more.
Our genre is pop and our choices relate to the genre of pop as they are quite stereotypical for a male solo artist. The styling of quite a simple shirt and necklace is a typical style for a male artist – the simplicity of the outfit shows he is not trying too hard and highlights his independence. The whole background and styling is not too outrageous which links to our genre as Pop is never very extreme in styling – it is normally natural and on trend. The whole image will create the romantic atmosphere we want to establish the artist and sell the song.

Practise Moodboard for magazine ad:


Magazine ad (practise):

MTV Video Music Awards Task


Out of all the music video’s we liked the Mumford and Sons music video for the song the Cave because, it worked well with the song style and mood. The song atmosphere was quite relaxing and the music video showed that quite well. The directing of the music video was well thought out. You could tell that it had been storyboarded. Throughout the music video it showed a lot of emotion and there was a meaning behind it, there was a lot of soul.  The video was very different to a expected rock music video, it showed unique side to the band.  The use of the close up of the face captures the emotion well. The style of the video is old fashioned and vintage.

 
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