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.

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

Final Directors Commentary Part One

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)

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.

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