Final Cut of Music Video

This is the finished copy of our music video. It took a long time for me to edit the entire video as every time I finished the editing process I would have to change something as I did not feel that the video was as good as it could be. A lot of my time editing was spent on trying to compensate for shaky shots and camera work that was incompatible with the song and the editing style required.

Digipak

Digipak Pannels

Album Advert

This is our advert that we created for the album. We used the same picture for the advert as we did on the album cover and disk panel, with the exception of not adding effect. This is common among album covers as this allows viewers and potential customers to recognise the album due to seeing the advert. Adverts for albums will usually have positive reviews from newspapers and magazines in order to gain credibility and possibly sway people to purchase the album. We also added large font with an eye-catching colour to grab peoples attention, this is especially useful as this is an advert designed to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, so that when a reader is flicking through pages it will get their attention and they may read the advert.

Evaluation Question 1

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

1.

We cut to this shot of the guitar being played close to the camera multiple times throughout the music video. This type of shot is a big convention in videos for this genre of music as it demonstrates the band members playing their instruments and making the muic that their fans listen to. These types of shots are not seen in many pop videos as a lot of the time  instruments are not a part of the music and that is not how the artists identify  themselves, as opposed to indie/rock artists.

2.

This is also a common shot used in videos for this genre of music. Looking into the camera whilst lip-synching allows the viewer to connect more to the lead singer of the band/group. This type of shot accentuates the lyrics of a song as it forces the viewer to focus on the vocals of the song. 

3.

This is a shot that is commonly seen in any genre where the band/group contains multiple members. Generally the lead singer will be at the front, with instrumentalists at either side and a drummer at the back, however in our video we did not use a drummer. These conventions can be seen in almost any music video from the rock genre.

4.

This type of shot is not commonly seen in the genre of music videos that we have created, they are more common in pop, rap and modern hip hop videos. A shot like this would mostly be used for product placement purposes, however we have used this shot in order to assist the narrative and help the viewers understand the story better. Therefore by using this shot we have broken genrre conventions and I believe it majorly helps benefit the video.

5.

This is a shot that is hardly ever seen in music videos and is mostly used in films. A shot like this would generally be used in a romantic context, which is why we used it, as it implies a romantic connection between the two characters. This is shot is breaking conventions completely as it is not only absent in this genre but it is rarely ever seen in music videos at all. 

6.

This shot is similar to the shot of the entire band and the shot of the lead singer on his own, however this takes aspeccts of them both in order to create a different shot. The shot is more intimate than the shot of the entire band as it is closer to the band members and the focus is on less people, although it has a more dynamic feel to it that gives the viewer the imprresson of a band performing. This is a very common convention for the video to switch from a narrative to a band sequence at different angles. 

7.

This is another shot that breaks conventions of a music video as it is not commonly seen in music videos at all, however it follows the convention of a romance story. 

8. 

Our digipak does not break any conventions for our genre as the style we followed is a very common one and we used the same techniques commonly seen in digipaks, especially from the same genre of music that we used. On the included inside we included a message from the band as well as links to the bands twitter and facebook, it is common for a band to put a message to the fans on the inside of the digipak as only the customers that bought the digipak would see it. There is a picture of the entire band and a picture of myself, the lead singer, which is also a commonly seen convention with bands/groups a lot of the time the front-man is who the band is identified by.

9.

We followed the convention of creating a simple album cover, which is simply the image of the werewolf that we also used in the advert with the album name and artist name. The back cover of the digipak simply just contains the song list and has the same editing style on the picture as on the front cover. Half of the panels on our digipak contain pictures from our narrative, featuring the werewolf character, the other half contain images of myself and the other band members in the same location as some of the shots in our video. 

10. 

The magazine advert that we created is effective as we related it to our album cover, by using the same picture, but unedited. We followed the conventions of album adverts by using large, eye-catching font which gains peoples attention. Positive reviews are also seen very often on album adverts as this attracts people to purchase the album.  

Evaluation Question 2

We attempted to make clear links between our main product and our ancillary tasks by using images for the digipak that reflect images seen in our music video. For example, the music video focuses on a character who becomes a werewolf at the end of the narrative, this is why we included images of the werewolf in the digipak. The digipak also contains images of the band that is seen playing the song throughout the song, this gives the viewer a sense of relationship between the album and the video. A number of the pictures for the digipak are taken in a location that is seen in the video in order to create that link between the main product and the ancillary tasks. It is a common trait for artists to link their music videos and album covers/posters/advertisements together in order to keep the consistency and maintain a theme.

Evaluation Question 3

This is a collection of the key words used in the answers given form our vox-pop, focus group and survey. The larger the words the more that the words were used by our target audience, this helped give us a good idea on what our demorgraphic looks for in a music video. This image that I created in an online program called 'wordle' allowed our group to understand that people enjoy music videos that are creative, original, lively and unique.

This is a screenshot from a focus group that we carried out by asking two students about our three separate ideas for a narrative and which idea they preferred best. After explaining the three possible narratives to the students they both agreed that the best idea for a narrative was to create a spin on the fairy-tale 'Little Red Riding Hood'. Although we were already confident on this idea as a narrative for our music video, this focus group allowed us to confirm that this was the best idea and that we did not need to rethink any of our other narratives.

These are multiple screenshots from a vox pop that we created before the planning stage of the process. We asked our interviewees about their favourite music videos, what makes a good music video and where/when they watch music videos. This vox pop enabled us to create a brainstorm of ideas, which we elaborated on in order to get a collection of ideas and start to plan our music video. A vox pop is an effective technique as it allows us gather a large amount of peoples ideas in a short amount of time, which we can edit together and play all the responses to a single question one after the other. Completing these vox pops allowed us to decide what type of video to create and what conventions are needed for a successful music video.

These notes show feedback that we received after showing the rough cut of our music video to students applying to study higher level media at university. This feedback helped us to polish off our last minute editing mistakes and confirm whether our editing style was adequate and enjoyable.

Evaluation Question 4

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

Creating our music video we used multiple different new media technologies, which without using would have meant a completely different filmmaking experience and we would have had to have used different techniques and learn new skills. These technologies include:

• Digital camcorder
• Apple iMac computer 
• Tripod 
• Monopod 
• Boom mic 
• Boom pole
• Headphones
• Final Cut Express 
• Photoshop 
• Blogger 
• Bluetooth
• Survey Monkey 
• Apple iPhone 
• x-mini music speaker 
• Facebook
• Animoto
• Prezi
• Wordle
• YouTube 

Some of these new media technologies I have put into an animated video presentation, which I created in an online software program called 'Animoto'.

New Media Technologies Used

Research:

During the research stage of creating our video we carried out a number of different tasks in order to collect the relevant information needed to learn about music videos and formulate our ideas which would lead us on to the planning stage of making our music video.
One of the tasks we carried out for the research stage was a vox pop, in which we used technologies such as a digital camcorder, a tripod, a boom mic and a boom pole. We used these technologies to interview people about music videos and gather ideas for our video. Later on we had to edit this video and upload it to YouTube, this required us to used Final Cut Express on an Apple iMac computer then upload the video on to the website YouTube. This is a large amount of new media technologies all working together in order to create one task from which we could gather information. We also used the same collection of technology when we created the focus group and asked students about our three possible narratives.
We carried out surveys online using an online service called 'SurveyMonkey' and then posting them on to social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, we would then upload the results to Blogger in order to track our progress and show the journey. SurveyMonkey is a good service as it displays the results in an easy to read format and will create graphs for multiple choice questions.

Planning:

For the planning stage we did not need to use many new media technologies as a lot of the process involved communicating our ideas with each other and writing them down on paper, such as when we created a brainstorm for our ideas.
We drew out a storyboard and created an animatic so we had a clear idea in our head as to how the narrative would unfold, it was also an effective way to demonstrate the progress and evolution of the music video. For the animatic we took picture using an iPhone and used Bluetooth to transfer the images to an iMac computer on which we could use Final Cut Express to create a video and upload the animatic to YouTube and Blogger.

Construction:

The construction of the video was the part of the process that took the most amount of time and in which we used the most new media technologies. For the filming of the video we used a digital camcorder,  with a tripod and monopod. The digital camcorder was very easy to use and very lightweight which enabled us to transport it easily and go to locations to get shots in a very short amount of time. The tripod allowed us to keep the camera completely still which was especially useful for filming the band sequence as we did not have a fourth member to film us while playing the instruments and lip-synching. The monopod was used for getting smooth shots that we would not have been able to get by simply holding the camera with our hands. 

After the filming of the music video we had to upload the footage on to an iMac computer using a Firewire cable, then we could edit the footage using the editing software 'Final Cut Express'. Final Cut is a very high-end editing software that is used by many professionals to edit films, music videos etc. 

Once our music video was completed we had to create a digipak and an advertisemnt for our album. To take to pictures for the digipak and advert we used our mobile phones, as the camera's on them are good enough quality to use and they are much easier to use and much more portable than a digital camera. We then used Bluetooth technology to transfer the images to the iMac, on which we could edit the images using Adobe Photoshop. These new media technologies that we used were very important to the making of our music video and it would have been a completely different process trying to create a music video without them.

Evaluation:

The final process of creating our music was the evaluation, in which we did not use a very large amount of new media technologies such as in the construction phase, however the new media technologies that we did use were very beneficial and noteable. 

I used an online service called 'prezi.com' in order to create a presentation evaluating how beneficial the compination of our main product and ancillary tasks are. This service helped me to lay out my thoughts and ideas in an easy to digest format. 

I also used Photoshop to create 10 images, comparing our music video and digipak to professional products. Again, this allowed me to formulate all of my thoughts and ideas in a way that demonstrates to other why we done things in a certain way etc. Photoshop is a image editing program that has a rather large learning curve, however as I had already had experience with Photoshop it was not difficult for me to create the images.