Final Music Video

This is my final music video for my media product.

Final CD Cover and advertisement

Q4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout my A2 media course I have used varies technologies both hardware and software to help produce my coursework to the highest possible standard. I have used these following technologies in every part of my coursework from the research where we used such sites as survey monkey, then in the planning where we used Google maps to help find locations that we needed to film in and finally in our construction where we used final cut to edit the music video together, the following presentation shows different technologies we used and a little descriptions to summarize what they do.

Q3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From doing my audience research I have been able to identify what aspects needed to be applied to my own products such as my music video and my ancillary task, the audience research I did earlier has been a great guide for what to aim for and also what the audience will be expecting,

this shows a sample of what the feedback was and the results, as you can see the majority has gone for close ups and mid shots which will clearly show the artist lip syncing,this first shot shows a shot that we used in our first draft and was one of our only close up/mid shots that we had in our video,

so when we looked back at our audience research we released that this would not be enough close ups and mid shots which the audience have specified what they want to see, therefore when making our second draft we made many more close ups where the artist is in clear shot of the whole frame, this is shown by the two screen shots below.

We also asked our class mates to evaluate and give feedback on one of our first drafts of our advert and CD cover, this helped to develop the products even further and also as our class mates fit into our target audience their feedback was very precise and relevant .




The CD cover and advertisement below  are from before our  audience feedback above, the overall response was that the genre is very recognizable  to the audience as folk/rock, however both the advertisement and CD cover don't really link together  with this is mind I decided to  update them.



Here are the adverts after we received the feedback, as you can see we have made multiple updates and made the CD cover and advertisement match in terms of colour and layout so that the audience will be able to detect straight away that the two types of media are for the same product.

Q2) How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?

When i look at both my main product(Music video) and my ancillary tasks(digi pak and advert) i think that they both combine very well and effectively, as they both use so many similar conventions and themes which help to build up this folk rock genre, as throughout the entire music video you can sense a theme of folk rock and also this paper theme of the birds which has become a real important part of our project as the paper birds are a narrative for the song therefore we have stuck to this constant idea and feel that we have used it very well in both the ancillary task and music video.
We have attempted to use the same colour in our adverts and digi paks, as the theme is evolved around paper the colours have stuck mainly to textured whites and browns as these are both folk related colour but also construct the paper based theme.
Below is a short video showing the comparison between my ancillary and music video and on how they combine to make  single media product.

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This my groups version of our advert to present the new album that our artist is releasing, when creating my advert we firstly researched into the genre of folk rock and analysed to common conventions and then decided if to follow the convention of not to, on the left is a Mumford and

sons advert, we have chosen to stick to the conventions as we have done some very similar styled effects on our advert, for example the use of a single coloured background which sets a soft and simple mood which takes all the attention to the objects and people instead, also with the text, the in the Mumford and sons advert is constant throughout however in terms of the size we did not follow the convention here, as in many adverts the name of the artist is largest, whereas in ours the album and main title is the largest font, this is because the artist we are making this for is already well established within the media and doesn't require his name to be branded in big letters, this is similar to the Ed Sheeran album below with the text.
Another convention we have followed is in terms of presenting the website and other companies on the advert, we have done this and have just left it to simplistic terms of just putting out now.


Both adverts showed have a clear close ups of the artist, with Ed Sheeran a filter has been put on to a colour overlay of orange which is his theme, whereas Mumford and sons have got effects to make it seem like an old photograph, to keep with the conventions we have put over some brush strokes to blend with the paper theme just like Ed Sheeran has done.

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

This is my final version of my digi pak with the front cover in the bottom left and the back in the bottom middle.
Within my Cd cover I have meet many conventions that you regular  see within the genre of folk/rock, one of these is where the artist is shown in many close ups so that the audience will automatically recognize his face, this is done with many folk album covers as the aim is to put all of the attention on the artist.
In many folk album covers there are images of custom shaped and drawings  we have kept to this by creating the drawn cranes on the back of the digi pak.

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

Audience Feedback

This is my audience feedback of my ancillary task, I asked other students within my class to review my groups work by asking them a set list of question, these are the questions we asked:
1) What genre does our poster and CD cover represent?
2) Is the mise en scene appropriate for our genre?
3) Does the colour scheme work well with the genre?
From this video the feedback is mostly positive as all the people we asked responded well to the first question as they all guessed it correctly, however the the second question was not all positive as they said that the location and objects used do not fully represented our genre and is pretty random so this is one part we must work on.
Another positive is that the colour scheme matches our genre of folk rock and all said that it is constant throughout and gives off the right mood.

First Draft(Music Video)

Here is my first draft of my music video, this includes all of the footage that we have currently filmed, it will help us tell what shots work and what doesn't.

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule

Prob, Costume List

Prop Costume and Make Up List

Shooting plan

Photo Shoot Plan

Advert Design Ideas

This is a practice design for the advert that will be made to advertise the artist and their new song/album, the advert clearly show the artist face as there is a n close up of just the face in the centre of the page, this will draw the attention to it making it obvious tot he audience who this advert is for, as for bug artist their face is all they need to advertise or present their work. the name of the album is writing down the side an at the bottom will be the record company logo and any other logo's required to present on a advert. The hanging paper cranes will be in the front focus and will be the first thing that the audience will view just before seeing the artist face located just in the layer behind. The colours for this will feature mainly blue and black as these are colours that are hugely related to our genre, also they create the good mix of feeling that the song creates.

Track Permission

This was the email sent to the record company to allow the use of their song in our video. The company we had to ask was Atlantic Records as they have the rights for Ed Sheeran song Little Bird.

Talent release form

This is form that we filled out to get permission from the talent in order to film and use their music.

CD Design Idea

Here is a design idea for my CD cover, this shows all sides of the cover with the chosen colours, throughout the design the background will be a mix of white and blue, blue is a colour that is well established within my chosen genre, on the front cover I have chosen to show the artist as the purpose of this is to advertise and promote the artist's CD, in the inside there will be images of instruments used in the genre.

Location Permission

Location shoot

In our video we will include a variety of different locations to help present our concept of the song, we have chosen to do around 3-5 locations to shoot in, this allows us to gather enough footage to create a successful music video.
Streets
Here we will have the artist walking down an empty street with houses is the background as he walks down the street, This setting creates the space that is described in Th lyrics and the distance that is described between the artist and the person he is signing about.

Dark Room/Performing room
These two sets will be created by my group in a drama room, like all music videos there are shoots of the artist performing on a stage or room, we have chosen to create a room with simply just a stall which he will sit on and perform, in this room will be hanging origami birds made from paper, these will relate to the song and by having them surround the artist will create the perfect atmosphere, at one point these will drop in slow motion. Another set we will create within the drama room where we have the artist creating these birds on a table with a single light source coming from a lamp, this will create the necessary mood in the video to show the feelings of the artist, with both set's the background will be black to make the full focus on the artist.

Conservatory  
Here we will have the artist performing with the area filled with origami birds, this will show the artist sitting in front of the open door with the birds blowing out, again relating to distance and the lyrics.

Animatic

This is my groups animatic where we have put the correct shots in the order they should be in the real video, we added the music also to it.

Storyboard

Here is a page from my storyboard, me and my group have created these storyboard in order to have an view of what our video will look like. We have written a short description with every shot to give an idea of the concept behind it, after we have written and drawn all our storyboards we will cut out each individual shot and then start to order them together so that we can plan the actual video.

 
This is a short video showing all of the storyboards that we have created. Also underneath a video of our group creating the storyboards by hand.


This is a animatic that my group has created, we used the storyboard pictures that we created and then individually select each shot and started to put them in order, once we had put all of the images into final-cut we imported the song, once the song was imported we could start to insert the clips in the order that they will be in for the real video, we have tried to time each shot to the most appropriate length as we want to get a fill for what the real thing will be like if that shot lasts that long.
 

Concept

The Concept
My group has decided to use Little Bird by Ed Sheeran for our chosen song; this song fits right into our genre and was performed by an artist which is known for that genre. The song itself has a couple of metaphors involved and also some emotive stories of him and another person or object. The main metaphor we have extracted is that there is a metaphor of distance and loss form another person, however we feel that we can somehow show this through different techniques rather than from the common videos with someone being sad and signing his emotion, we want to get away from that traditional convention and try to create a more detailed concept. To do this my group will have to try and prevent ourselves form doing too much of a narrative and maybe follow from Goodwin’s theory of illustrating the concept instead.
Location
My group have gathered information from our previous research and help come up with possible locations for shooting in, as this is a music video we are trying to have more of a montage then contuinity within it, so in order to achieve this we will have to come up with multiple locations to film in therefore having the option to mix up the clips more freely. 1. The first location type we have considered is the streets, as we want to create a meaning within the video and having a sense normality within it will help connect to the audience, also by having a mix of busy or empty streets can really help to set the mood within the shot to portray the feeling within the song.
2. Recording studio is another location that we thinking of filming in, this is to have a mix of performance shots and also some very small narrative/concept shots, the performance shots will help to have a balance and to have breaks between shots like in other music videos. Also we are trying to show a professional artist so this will help present them more professionally and give them the focus form the audience on their talent.
3. The group has discussed the possibility of having a room with very low key lighting and to have many probs and objects to relate to the concept of a song, it is important when doing this to not create a traditional room where the person is seen crying and being sorry for themselves.
4. Another location choice would be an open space where the artist will be seen away from civilisation, this would be done to show the distance concept form the lyrics and song, however this will be a difficult location to so as first we would have to find this type of location then secondly being able to make it interesting would be another thing, as there are no surrounding objects to relate the concept making 100% of the focus on the artist body motion alone.
Costumes
From my research I have found the conventions within my genre and been able to choose what clothing my group must use when making the video, the artist is the main focus of the whole video so it is important to portray them in the right clothing and give out the right attitude. One costume choose will be a combination of smart clothing in chino's and a shirt, with boat shoes, these clothes are very casual meaning that the audience will be able to connect with the artist, also we will be following the conventions which we found from our research. The second costume will be jeans and a hoodie with an indie t-shirt, again following the convention but the reason for this is because they are not trying to show off to anyone but only to perform their music and send out a message the audience, this will defiantly help to connect with the audience. The last costume will be very smart but in a more folk way, with a bowtie and blazer, this is relating to bands such as Mumford and sons who are a main artist within our genre of folk rock. This will finalise the artist look as they will see the money side and know that he is a famous artist who everyone listen to.
Effects
Within our genre there are not many noticeable special effects used, as there are not many artist trying to show bright flashing effects to look pretty, the main focus on effect is to help build an concept with the video to relate to the song. 1. Slow motion is the most used effect within all music videos, however within our genre It has appeared in every video and helps set the tone of the song. 2. Colour filters are another traditional effect used in the genre of folk rock, they are used a lot to show the emotion or feelings that the artist has at that specific moment in the song.

Image Annotations

 
 Here are a collection of images which show the costume choices we must consider when making our music video, Within our genre the clothing is a mix between casual and then really dramatic folk like Mumford and sons, another feature our genre has are little extra's like bracelets or a bow-tie, chino's and jeans are the primary type of clothing along with hoodies like the artist Ed Sheeran.

Song Lyric's analysis

These are the lyrics to my chosen song of "Little Bird" by Ed Sheeran, We have added comments relating to what we possible could show during that part of the lyrics and also the meaning of them lyrics so we can get a understanding of the narrative that has to be shown in the video.

Song Details

This is my groups brainstorm of details that we are to include when making our music video, the song that we have chosen is "Little Bird" by Ed Sheeran, the reason we have choosing this was that it fits perfectly into our genre of folk rock, this video shows all the details that we need to include like location or costume, also the variety of shot types. One of the main reasons we picked this song was due to that the other choices where all slow paced meaning it would be harder to make a music video, as more emphasis would have to be done on mis en scene rather then editing.

Photoshop Technique's

Here is a screenomatic explaining  a technique i used in Adobe Photoshop so that I could practice for when making my own CD cover,  In this video it will show how to blur a picture and then how to clear  a selected area that it will stand out form the rest of the blurred image, also on how to make colour changes such as brightness and contras to the image.

Here is an design that my group created as a practice o Photoshop, we used various tools such as the crop tool or the lasso tool, We added text and also the record company logo which would feature on any real CD cover.

Green screen Practise

This is our  task of practising using the green screen, to do this we first had to set up the green screen and then filmed the required footage over the green cover. Once we filmed the footage we uploaded the clips to final cut, then We added the filter of Chroma Key to the layers of clips, once I added the filter I had to select the colours that I wanted to remove which was green, once we selected a moderate amount of green from the clip, I then modified the filter to correct the image and try to find the right balance where the green is removed.

Initial Ideas

This mind map shows all the initial ideas we had when the group first talked, we officially decided that the chosen genre of Folk Rock and then we expanded on that chosen genre with clothes and locations.

Roles

This video is a short clip Saying which main roles that our group has taken:
Location(Jessica): It is Jessica's role to organize the locations which we will be filming in and to book if it is necessary to use a room or location.
Costume/Mack up(Jessica): This role involves the person to finalise and decide what costumes any minor or major role is to wear.
Filming(All Group members): This role involves taking charge of the camera and filming set shots, all members will be taking turns in filming so that we all have equal turns.
Editing(All Group members): This role will be spread out between the group so that we all choice equal amount of work whilst editing.
Character Roles: I shall be the main artist of the band or single artist. Minor roles will be done by Shaun and Jessica.
Casting(James):I shall be in charge of casting other role that are minor or extra's.
Directing(All Group Members): all members of the group will take it in turns to direct separate clips.
Mise-en-Scene(Shaun): This roles involves collecting objects and probs that will be in the video.
Lighting(James): To do this role I must create the right amount of lighting for each scene.
Research(Shaun): In order to do this role I they must research the lyrics and artists trends like clothes.