Project Finished !

I have now completed everything on the music video project, Thank you for reading, Goodbye !!

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 4

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

In this project we used a range of different technologies that helped us create our video and printed products, without them we wouldn't of been able to complete the complex tasks needed to create anything for this project. The first obvious piece of technology we used was the computers and 'Blogger', after being introduced to blogger last year I was quite quick to start on the work this year not being new to the technology like the previous project, the computers we used this year were different though and to be honest they did cause a few problems with progress on our work. The new Apple iMacs were incredibly difficult to get used to and we still aren't totally used to them even now, simple tasks became exceedingly difficult because of the Mac's systems and sensitive mouse, there were also problems logging in where some computers never got a connetion and when others did they kept asking for a product key that I and no others knew. Blogging also became difficult because of filtering, some pages would allow you to edit whereas others did not, some researching was made difficult by this also.
The next piece of technology was Final Cut that was the software used to create our music videos from the footage filmed on our cameras, I was new to this software so I found incredibly complicated and at times very frustrating, getting the footage into sequence was simple when used to the program but it was getting used to it that was the problem. Footage at times caused problems when placed into sequence like when dragging it into place it would create a gap in the music track and sometimes shortening the clip so it fit into place caused some problems as well, most of these problems did disappear once we got used to the program though.
To film the footage we did use college cameras and caught stills for the animated sequence using our own, this was simple because we had got used to our own cameras, getting used to the college's cameras came suprisingly quickly because there settings were similar to our own. Filming the footage was alot of fun but we did feel limited because of the fiddly tripod which seemed to always be out of shape in some way, the quality was quite good on the cameras though so we weren't overly disappointed when the angle wasn't quite right. We also didn't feel limited when filming our ideas, it was difficult to get them filmed but our ideas came out quite well in the final cut of the video.
We didn't however use Web 2.0 technologies as efffectively as we could have, facebook was a technology that we all had access to but none of us used it to it's full potential, none of us really knew how to set up a focus group on it and how to gain members this was a big problem that we should of went into more detail on. We did however try to use YouTube for our videos which was also difficult when most of us didn't have an account and when we did create one uploading our video took an incredibly long time and this became frustrating.
I don't think that I felt limited by technology, it didn't define what I created for the promotional items, I used a few artistic techniques to create my items including watercolours, drawings and sketches, this is the way I like to work and the drawings came out very well when scanned in onto the computer. I did edit them slightly on Photoshop which is a program i'm already familiar with so I had no problems changing things on the drawing that I wasn't sure about. Photshop and Gimp are both programs that through my graphic design and Art & design work, I have got very used to, creating my digipak and advert came quite quickly once I had my intial ideas, I decided not to use photographs due to the animated sequence in our video, I thought due to this scene it would match the video well if I was to do the promotional itens in the same style, I believe I accomplished that and they do match quite well.

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 3

• What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

For the audience feedback I decided to use Facebook to it's full potential and created a focus group to collect all of my feedback, I was very suprised at how simple it was to create the group I was worried becuase even though I am part of the technological generation I am not fully confident with using Web 2.0 technologies, in fact I am a bit of a technophobe.

Once creating the group I added as many of the A2 Media students as I could from both classes, I was pleasantly suprised at how quickly comments started appearing on my posts for the digipak and advert all of them were very positive too and I was very pleased to see this. I also posted the final music video on the group to so that students who had still not seen the video could view it easily and comment if they wished to. I believe the printed products are being read better by our target audience than our final video, comments on our video have mostly been focused on the narrative which people have commented as being "confused", this is a shame but we are proud of our final video and we are not sure what could improve it, the main thing that's affecting me about the video is the animation part which I do not think flows quick enough, it steadies the pace of the video which is not what I wanted it to do, I wanted it to mean something to the audience, seeing that the narrative has been said to be "confused" means that we have not accomplished this.

Using Facebook I then added some questions to the group for them to answer, again answers came very quickly and were all quite positive, for the first question I asked whether they thought that the acting in our video was convincing, all the answers were 'yes' which I was pleased to see it meant that the actor playing the only character was doing it to the best of his ability, I made sure to put more options than yes/no including whether or not there wasn't enough acting in the video to comment and an option that said from time to time which proves that his acting was effective throughout the entire video. The next question I asked was for the music video I wanted to know whether the style of the video fit our chosen music genre which we planned on being indie/rock right from the beginning of the project, again the answers were positive with 100% answering 'yes' to the question, again I put other options including 'at times' which meant that it did not fit the genre throughout the video. The other question I asked was for the printed products which asked whether the style of my products worked with the style of our final video, the answers again were very positive and I also got many comments on the individual posts to prove their answers.

Throughout the group I have got many positive comments on my printed products including comments like "professionally done" and "amazing" which would please any designer creating products like these, the audience has read the products very well in some ways better than the final video, the images I illustrated on the covers match the narrative of the video very well and the drawings are all focused on the idea of escaping from a continuous cycle which is what I aimed at and I believe the audience has understood this better than the video.

The audience is taking something from my products and our video which is something I wanted to aim at, I did not want this video to be forgettable like so many being released these days in the music industry, I wanted the video to mean something to the audience because it's based around feelings that we all experience sometimes in our lifetime, to illustrate these feelings in the video and on my products was the real challenge but I believe our group have all done well to create very professional products.

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 2

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

Throughout our work on our printed products and on our music video there is a theme and colour scheme that looks very similar, the colours in our products seem to be mainly yellow, green and blue, the watercolours on the digipak complement each other very well making it all match together, on the advert the yellow rays of light work well over the black fine tip pen drawings that have become constant throughout all of the 'George Barnett' products.
The fonts I chose for the products are all of a hand-drawn style that fits with the drawings that appear in the music video, they also work well within our chosen genre which is the indie genre which features many bands with their own unique styles and imagery. I chose hand-drawn fonts because I believed they matched well with the animated sequence of the video, It also works with the imagery on the advert and digipak making the whole set suit each other for this particular album, this style works well with this album but the artists next album may have a different style that takes ingredients from this album to make the artist seem recognisable, for example the band 'Coldplay' has a different style for each of their albums like the old-fashioned Georgian album style of 'Viva La Vida' to the modern graffiti style of 'Mylo Xyloto', it makes their new releases fresh to their audience.
Originally the only defining prop we were planning on using was the symbolic red scarf that the main character wears, this however changed as we got further into the project, now the only real props are the drawings that feature in the video, there were close to 200 seperate images in the animated sequence.
Costumes is a difficult topic to comment on because the only person to appear in our video is only our nameless character, the character in our video is lonely and drifts through life thinking and aspiring he is also artistic and creative, he does however have a sense of style that would be recognisable to our target audience and that is the indie look that has grown in popularity since the mid 80's, he wears clothing like scarfs, khaki trousers and boots, these are typical stylings in the indie look, this style is constant throughout the video and works in our chosen genre.
The visual themes in our work are loneliness and creativity which appear in most of the promotional products, the front cover features the lonely stick-man making his way through a forest and the advert features an image of the stick-man again walking towards a light, the theme loneliness is the key element in our music video. Creativity does feature in our video like in the beginning there were the pieces of art that the character looks upon and admires, and then there are his drawings that feature elements of escaping reality.
From audience feedback it has been mentioned that our video can be a little confusing at times especially the beginning but I believe this to be because it's the opening of the video and I think introducing the character and setting can be the most difficult part of any kind of media, videos, books and film, we did respond to this though by editing in more clips of the main character from the class feedback earlier in the project, this worked very well and we appreciated the suggestions brought up by the class.
Throughout our video and printed products we have a recognisbale house style thats constant throughout, the text and imagery would become instantly recognisable with fans of the artist as well as recognisbale in the music industry. A constant style is important because it will become iconic with the certain artist and when ever that artist has a new release people will recognise the persons work. Our video does however break typical conventions with storytelling which may become a recognisable style with the artists work, open ended videos will make people ask questions about his work and this will gain him popularity as well as criticism, that is the risk with entropic themes. George Barnett's image of animated drawings and edgy text that I have designed will become as recognisable as his work and it will become his brand image in this particular genre, it breaks the typical conventions of cliched stories and eplicit imagery, and will get him recognised in the competitive music industry.

Music Video Project - Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation question presentation

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Front and Back Cover Version 3

This I believe will be my final version for the front cover, I added watercolours to the image and now it fits the style of the back cover very well, the image of the forest works with the setting of our video and again it features the stick-figure that appears throughout the video and the advert becoming something of an icon for the singer.

Inside cover and Disc Version 2

For the next version of the inside of the CD I decided to leave the image of the tree because i'm happy with that, so I added an image of birds flying in the sky drawn by me and then watercoloured, I believe it works much better than the sunshine effect and it's drawn style fits with the overall style of our entire range so far.

Front and Back Cover Version 2

For the second version I edited the front cover, making sure that the image doesn't look stretched and removing the the sunshine effect in the sky, it does look better than the previous version but I think that it now has a lack of colour and I may add some watercolours to the front image.

Front and Back Cover Version 1

This is my first attempt at creating a front and back cover for my digipak, i'm very pleased with the back cover that features a watercolour drawing of falling leaves, the text works well too because it matches the style of the album advert that I created earlier. The front cover is the part i'm really not pleased with because it looks stretched which is an effect that really makes it look unprofessional, i also really don't like the pattern in the sky, it worked on the advert but doesn't seem to work as well on this cover, I may come up with a new layout or perhaps an entirely new image.

Inside cover and Disc Version 1

To start on my digipak I decided to create some new drawings that matched the footage in our video, so I decided to create the image of the tree that appeared in the video then I added watercolours and pen, I decided to draw the stick-figure that appears on everything so far, he's become something of a symbol for the album. Then I started researching the lyrics from other tracks on the 'Sierra Planes' album and came across the quote 'I found Myself' which fit with the image of the tree very well. For the CD I decided to create a pattern that matched the sun rays from my album advert unfortunately I really don't like the pattern it appears too boring, it needs an image that fits in with the style of the artwork.

George Barnett Album Promotion - Version 2

After adding the sun rays on computer it seems to have made the advert quite interesting, It also fits in with the story of the music video where the main character wishes to escape, the sun shining through the trees shows where he wishes to escape to. I'm also very pleased with the text that fits in with the image perfectly, the black pen drawn style looks like it's been written in the same rough, cross-hatched style of the image.

This advert would appear as a small image in the back of a magazine, because of the unknown artist it would start off small but in the future if the artist gains popularity the advert may feature on a quarter of a page or even a full page.

George Barnett Album Promotion - Version 1

This is the first version of my album advert, i'm very pleased with the outcome of it but I believe that there is something missing from it, it seems to have a lack of colour, I'm thinking perhaps to add watercolours to the image or to the text, I also have another idea to add sun rays shining through the trees on the computer, this may work well but it may make the advert look a little unprofessional.

Fonts - Hand Drawn

The font I have in mind for my digipak and advert will look something like this, the rough and animated style of the writing fits the animated scenes in our video very well, I will definitely use a similar design to this, it maybe plain or I might use watercolours like I have here.

Final cut of music video

This is the final cut of our video, we have made the changes suggested by the class from the audience feedback, the beginning of the video now features scenes of the main character thinking in his home, looking at the art that surrounds him, these scenes do make the beginning seem much stronger and mean more, they make the personality of the character seem much more clearer. You can watch the final cut here...

Rough cut of music video with audience feedback

This is the first version of our music video, we are quite pleased with the outcome of it but after the audience feedback it is obvious that we have problems with the videos overall storyline, we have been told that at the beginning of the video it gets confused and this is a big problem for us. After asking the audience several questions about our video, there responses were:

• Do you understand the video? - the audience at first was a little confused but after explaining their thoughts they were actually quite clear about what the video was about, they said that "the video was about a lonely guy who illustrates what he wants his life to be like", this is what our video is about, the whole video is in fact the product of the main characters imagination, showing us through the footage that he wishes to escape.
• Does it fit with our chosen genre? - Our chosen genre was Indie rock which features many strange videos from bands like 'The Killers' and 'Kasabian', when asked "does it fit our chosen genre?", the audience believed that it did because of it's style and strange narrative.
• Does the animated scene fit in with the video? if not why? - The audience overall liked the animated scenes in our video but they did feel that it should have been drawn in pen so it was bolder, this would have been difficult though because each drawing needed to be edited for the next drawing, in total we had nearly two hundred seperate images on our camera. They also commented that they could have been quicker, this would have to be done by creating more images lasting perhaps 1-2 seconds each.
• Does the animated part fit the pace of the video? - Over than the previous comment they said that they liked where it was placed in the chorus of the video, this was the height of the music.
• Does the video's style match the song? - They commented that certain parts of the video matched the song perfectly, many scenes were edited so that they ended on the beats in the music.
• For the last question we asked whether there were any other problems with the video that they had noticed - The only problems mentioned were that there were no lip synch scenes, we felt that by adding scenes like this it may confuse the story even more. They also commented that the song was jumpy, this was a problem we've had since uploading the music to the program, it seems to be difficult to get a copy that doesn't lose it's quality as soon as you upload it to final cut. Also mentioned was the way the video started, the arty images at the beginning of the video were said to be a little confusing because they didn't really mean anything, their suggestion was to add scenes of the main character in between them so that we could show the artistic mind of the character.

Fonts - Researched from the web

These three fonts were some that caught my eye, they all have a style that I believe would fit our printed products well but I may design some of my own to see how they come out, My favourite of these is the second one because I love it's modern look, I also think would look great in a different colour complemented with a drawn image, a drawn image is what I intend to have on my final digipak.

Beginning of Printed Products

Today I will start researching font's that i could use for my album cover and album advertisement, I want something that looks modern or perhaps animated to match the animated scene in our music video, I will design a couple of my own as well as research others from the web, I will then be able to compare them to see which is the most effective.

Editing has finished

Today the video was successfully finished, this is the first draft and changes maybe made once i get some audience feedback, so far the video looks quite good but according to some the overall story of the video is a little confused, this will need to be altered.

Storyboard: Idea 3 - 'Stick-man sequence ending'

• After filming for our video, our ideas have changed vastly, we now have an idea to make part of the video a long stick figure sequence to show the imagination of the main characters mind, because our plan is to make the whole video a product of his own imagination.

Filming Update: 29th Feb

Today, we filmed more footage up at the castle for our video, we are not entirely sure if we will use this footage but we need to take as much footage as possible so we have a mix of shots and locations. The only problems we have encountered so far is that our main actor wears different clothing on different shots due to the day the footage was shot, we also have many shots which feature snow while others are taken on another day where the snow had melted, this isn't a big problem but we will have to come up with a solution that will hopefully make sure that the audience doesn't notice these changes.

Audience Theory

The Cultural Studies Approach to Audience:

Within the Birmingham Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies, David Morley researches how the media influences audiences, he encourages researchers to understand the active nature of certain audiences. His approach aims to understand the intended effects of media texts, he has noticed that audiences take different standpoints to values expressed in certain media texts, these are:

1. Preferred (or dominant) reading - the audience recognize the values being offered by the text and accepts them as natural and correct.
2. Negotiated reading - the audience recognize the values in the text as legitimate and accept them in general, but adapt their reading of the text to fit in with their experiences and interest.
3. Oppositional reading - the audience understands the values in the text, but disagrees with them and rejects them

• How might audiences read the values expressed in your video and print work in a preferred, negotiated and oppositional way? - I believe our target audience will recognize our video in a preferred way because of it's views of loneliness, the age of our target audience will relate to this because each of us experiences loneliness at some stage. I think our video could also be recognized in a negoitated way because our target audience could relate to the text and fit it in with their own personal experiences, they could also reognize it's artistic value because the main character is shown as a lonely but incredibly gifted individual and creates imagery from his dreams, many may relate themselves to his artistic talents. Our video could also be recognized in an oppositonal way where the target audience rejects our views of loneliness, in their own opinion our views could be said to be incorrect but then again their views could also be incorrect.

• What are you going to do to encourage the target audience to take a preferred reading? - To encourage our target audience to take a preferred reading to our video we will use an actor of a similar age range to the audience, we will also try to make him seem like a typical student just like themselves. Our video won't feature stereotyped characters that may offend our audience because young people stereotyped into different groups can be quite hurtful towards some people.

• What kind of person might take an oppositional reading? - Seeing our video is targetted at a younger audience some older people may disagree with our views of loneliness, they may understand them but may dislike the way we explained them on screen, this may be the same with some of the younger audience but the video wasn't designed to please everyone, some will like it whereas others may not.

Filming Photographs

Various Photographs of us from the filming, some photos show us to be having alot of fun with the making of the video, we also took a few funny photos of ourselves to show the members of our crew.

Filming Update: 27th Feb

Today we continued filming our video hoping to complete all the footage we need for the editing stage of the project, again we used a mixture of shots of our main actor running, we used long shots, point of view shots and tried to used some over the shoulder shots but were not sure how these will work in our final video.

Filming Update: 20th Feb

 Yesterday we successfully filmed some more footage for our music, we tried to use a mixture of various shots to make the video seem much more professional, we also got a few shots of the landscapes which could prove very useful for when the editing begins. We are trying to stick to our time plan which continues after the 20th feb, and we have said that we were planing on filming today but we do need to finish as soon as possible.

Music Video Risk Assessment

Potential danger	Potential outcomes	Actions to avoid potential outcomes	Further outcomes
Tripping over roots/brambles	Serious injury Cuts/bruising	Film away from thick undergrowth
Risk of tripping over power cables	Electrocution Serious injury	All cables to be kept above ground level and taped down	Sam will be supplying generator if we cannot get battery powered lights
Falling/tripping while filming running sequence	Broken limbs Cuts/bruising Concussion	Film in an open are with few obstructions
Falling from high stonework	Broken bones Concussion Bruising	Sensible foot wear Extreme caution taken Only film on easily accessible areas.
Slipping down banks etc. in the woods	Grazing Bruising Minor cuts	Do not film in wet conditions, this reduces risk of   slippery ground

Outfits

These drawings illustrate our ideas for the costumes in our video, the first is quite dull and colourless to match the style of the video which will also be very depressing and as dark as we can get it. After this it starts to lighten up as the character because much more happier and appreciates what he has, so for this his clothing becomes much more colourful.

Narrative Theories

For our video we needed to look at a few narrative theories that could help us with our video, the first was the Todorov theory...

Todorov's theory says that in the media these days there are five different stages within a music video and in films.

• original equilibrium (normality) - a state of balance where the world is at peace
• disruption - the peace or equilibrium is disturbed, the world has been purged into darkness.
• recognition (of disruption) - the disturbance has been found but getting the balance back will be a difficult task for the heroes.
• attempt to restore (original equilibrium) - they attempt to bring back the balance that once brought them peace.
• new equilibrium - the balance is restored, peace is back once again. 

Another theory we researched was levi Strauss' theory which states that there are opposites that are always in conflict with each other, and the audience immediately recognises which side they should be with.

• Good & bad, in films and music videos these almost always appear
• Rich & Poor, Usually the rich are the more powerful and the poor are the ones affected by the corruption of the rich.
• Eastern & Western Worlds
• Love & Hate

The last theory we looked at was Propp's theory which states that there are a set of characters including the...

• Hero - person on the quest
• Princess - Prize for the hero
• Helper -  helps the hero on his quest
• False hero - somebody who believes they are the hero
• Dispatcher - sends the hero on their quest
• Father - Rewards the hero
• Villain - attempts to stop the hero on his quest
• Donor - provides objects to help the hero on his quest

These sets of characters appear in many franchises of films and in many music videos that have stories, it's very important for the audience to have characters that they may start to care about close to the climax.

Music Video Actor/s

Actor/s:

Our main actor and so far our only actor for the video is Jack Purkis who shall be playing a depressed person who is tired of his repetitive and dull life which is on a never-ending loop of no reward, he wants to find something that gives his life meaning and involves a future. 

Time Management

December 2011:

• In december we started our blogs and needed to start the most basic of tasks to start our analyses and focuses on past music videos, this is very important because it will give us an idea of the pathways we could take to make our music video, obviously the budgets of these videos are much larger but we still have the inspiration to make our video to the best of our ability.

January 2012:

• Finish analyses on music videos and start illustrating ideas for the music videos, storyboards and ideas need to be posted so that our thoughts and ideas are shown. The storyboards will show how our ideas are changing as we think ideas through, we need to think about locations and how to make the story of the video seem obvious to the viewers, we don't want the video to become confusing to the viewer.

February 2012:

• Shooting needs to start and we need to finish off posts that should have been done earlier, the filming is priority so close to the end of the project, we will need to film alot of footage so that many shots are available for when we begin editing.

Location Scouting

• Ludford Bridge: We are quite lucky to have a town so scenic as Ludlow, there are many different places we could film at including the castle, the Teme river and even Mortimer's forest that we are planning to film in because of the many scenes in which the main character runs through the forest, Mortimer's forest and Whitcliffe would be perfect for this. This location is Ludford bridge which we plan on filming close to the beginning of the video where the main character is walking towards the forest, it would also be great to get a shot of him walking across the bridge from the viewpoint where this photo was taken.

• Whitcliffe: Whitcliffe will be perfect for many shots of our main character and even shots of nature around him, this will prove difficult but we have the forest which will be home to many animals, this will definitely help us. At the moment we are also having some interesting weather, so it would be nice to get some camera shots while the snow lasts.

• The River Teme: Another great feature we can film at, the river Teme has some great viewpoints which we could really use to great effect, we can also get some interesting shots filmed here.