dodging and burning

This video inspired us when editing the main photograph of our artist for our digipak and magazine advert on photoshop. We really liked the effect it created which helped us to give our image more depth.

                  original                                                                                                     edited

From watching the youtube tutorial, dodging gave us the darker effect at the top and bottom of the image. This works well because it gives the background more depth, and gives the image an urban feel which fits with our star persona.

Evaluation

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

Task 1

Goodwin's points:

1.) Music Videos Demonstrate Genre Characteristics. (e.g stage performance in rock video, dance routine for boy/girl band)

2.) There Is A Relationship Between Lyrics and Visuals. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting.)

3.) There Is A Relationship Between Music and Visuals. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting.)

4.) The Demands Of The Record Label Will Include The Need For Lots Of Close-Ups Of The Artist and The Artist May Develop Motifs Which Recur Across Their Work. ( a visual style)

5.) There Is Frequently Reference To Notion Of Looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

6.) There is Often Intertextual Reference. (to films, T.V programs, other music videos.)

Throughout our Music Video and the two ancillary tasks, I feel that we used a range of conventions typical to the music genre of our chosen song, referring back to Goodwin's points.

1)

The first shot in our music video is a panning shot of a city, straight away establishing where the artist is from/living. Which links to the urban feel we are trying to give our artist/music video. Even though our genre is a pop ballad we want the artist to come across urban, up to date and trendy. Which is why we establish the city setting straight away, this also works well as the beginning of the song is just music which is a perfect time to put it in.

2)

As soon as the lyrics start in the song we have a medium close up of the artist lip syncing. Which is typical of the pop genre. From this shot the audience have a clear view of what the artist looks like and what their style is. We wanted the artist to look casual but at the same time we wanted him to appeal to our target audience by creating a star persona. We did this by using a popular branded jumper, jeans and trainers for his costume in this shot. This will appeal to teenage boys who may aspire to be like him, it will also make him look desirable to teenage girls. For the background of this shot we used a plain wall and then used torches and gels to create the different lighting effects. We used a variation of close up shots of the artist throughout the music video to sell him as a person and making him appeal to an audience.

3)

In this shot the lyrics were 'You've carried on so long you couldn't stop it you tried..' so here we created a scene where Sam is sitting watching Jess as she walks away, this is a typical convention used in this genre of music- Lyrics matching the visuals. As in this scene the male artist is singing, we used a torch to light his face, therefore he is the main focus of the shot. This shot is also an example of cutting on the beat, Jess walks onto the shot just as the beat changes, I feel this technique is very important when making a music video.

4)

This image is used throughout the chorus of our music video, we used two torches to light up the sides of his face and set it at night so the background was pitch black, therefore the light really outlines the artists face, making him stand out and also giving the shot a professional look and feel. This close up shot helps to generate a star image as he is again wearing a popular branded product, the shot makes him look desirable to girls. This shot also meets the demands of the record label as it is a close up of the artist which is shown more than once in the music video, promoting the artist.

5)

In this shot we followed the convention of the lyrics matching the visuals. When the artist sings "You built your wall so high" we used a long shot of Sam standing in the dark and as the lyric said "high" he put his head up and looked to the sky and the camera tilted upwards and then came back down to a long shot of Jess, which linked her to the lyrics as that is who he is singing about. This shot added movement to the video typical of a music video that is telling the story of the lyrics.

6)

The genre of our music video is a pop ballad and one of Goodwin's points is to convey genre characteristics so after looking into music videos of this genre in more depth we found that they use a wide range of different shot types and angles, also different editing techniques are used throughout, in the first shot we used a medium close up panning shot of the female artist which then dissolved in to a medium shot of the artist from front view. We did this to make sure we had a wide variety of shots throughout this verse as it was quite long and we wanted to keep movement in the video and keep it interesting, we edited this shot using final cut. We wanted to keep the shot simple so we filmed on a plain white background keeping the artist as the main focus .

7)

This shot in the music video matches the lyrics 'you built your walls so high' so as the word 'high' is sung the artist lifts his head up, again matching the lyrics to the visuals. We slowed this clip down to make sure Sam lifting his head was the same duration as the words being sung. The use of the torch lighting his face is to keep him the main focus of this shot, meeting the demands of a record label, we used a range of close ups of the artist throughout.

8)

In this shot the camera is panning down the artists body from head to toe, this is an example of voyeurism paying close attention to the female body, this shot will attract a male audience as it encourages them to enjoy the video. We used a pretty female to star in our video therefore she is desirable to males but will also attract a female audience as they may aspire to be like her or look up to her, paying attention to costume in particular.

9)

This close up panning shot of the two artists together shows the love interest between the two of them as they sing to each other, this is very typical of a pop genre music video as it tells a story. It will really appeal to our target audience as they will be interested in what happens between the two artists, in particular this will appeal to females as the relationship shown in the music video is a 'perfect' relationship.

10)

This is a screen shot of our digipak, we edited all of this using Photoshop, we looked at a range of other artists digipak's and got inspiration from Rhiannas new album, where the photographs were black and white on the inside and color on the outside. We wanted to make sure that our digipak linked to the video and album cover so the whole project comes together well. We linked them by using a photograph of London city for the back of the album keeping it personal to the artist as he is a city boy, in the music video we used a panning shot of a city as well, linking the two. We wanted to continue the urban feel throughout therefore we took our photographs against a brick wall and edited using the burn tool. We found that most album cover are quite simple so we wanted to stick to the conventions so we just had a photo, the name of the artist and the name of the album on the front. We kept the costume very casual and he is wearing something that  our target audience would wear, making him very appealing as a person.

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

Task 2

Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task 3

Throughout our music video project we have been given different types of feedback, we have had a lot of positive feedback but we have also been given points we can improve on, helping us to make our project appeal more to a target audience.

 The two main pieces of feedback we received were on our rough cut video where we showed it to our class and they told us what bits they liked and the what could be improved. The same applies for our final video and our two ancillary task.

Rough cut feedback:

-Fill in blank gap, make sure that you get all the footage you need.
-Make a few more cuts.
-Fewer static shots.
-Lighting was really good/well thought out.
-Just fill in blank spaces and improve girls lip syncing.
-More camera movements and angles.
-Cut the kiss scene before the actors walk away.
-Fill blanks, otherwise best we've seen.
-Shots were really good, but some were a bit too long. 

The main faults we picked out from the feedback we were given was that there were too many long duration shots and not enough camera angles, shot types, edits etc. So we decided that the longer shots needed a lot more movement in order to make the video interesting. We then decided to re-film some shots and  film them at different angles so we could cut between a range of different shots. We also found we needed to improve on the female artists lip syncing so we re-filmed her singing shots so we could match the lyrics and music correctly.

Final music video and Ancillary tasks feedback:

- I liked the digi-pak and magazine advert, they look really professional
-The lighting in the video went well with the tone of the song
-The magazine advert and the digi-pak were simple but really effective, I liked the use of black and white images
-I like the variation of different shots in the video
-I liked the fact you had scenes of the boy and girl separately
-I liked the fading transitions, it looks professional 
-When the song changed to the chorus the lip syncing needed more impact as the song got louder and more upbeat
-The digi-pak needs more variety of shots, change of outfit
-The magazine advert has all the information you need on it
-The star persona is clear throughout all three tasks

From comparing the feedback we got from our rough cut video and then looking at the feedback from our final video, I feel we improved on all the negative comments made as we received completely different feedback, we had a lot more positive comments, overall I am happy with the feedback given.

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

Task 4

Throughout the project we have used a range of different technologies to design and make our products. The 3 main ones are:
-Final Cut
-Photoshop
-YouTube

Each technology has really helped to improve our project.

Final Cut
We used this technology the most, this is where we added our clips after filming, we decided which ones were worth keeping and then were able to place the right clips in the right order to go with the music. We were able to match the lyrics in the song to the clips of our artists singing them by using markers to find the exact place. We were able to shorten clips by cutting them which created a good range of short duration shots, adding depth to the video giving it a diverse range of editing styles. We were able to edit shots using 'fade' which enabled us to have shots crossing over each other, I feel this really gave the video a professional feel. We also edited some of our shots on final cut using the brightness and contrast, this helped to make some of our shots really stand out, especially the shots of the male artist therefore we were keeping him the main focus of the video. We used a technique called 'key frame' which enabled us to give a static shot the illusion of panning. We used this edit a couple of times in our video were we felt it needed a bit more movement.

YouTube
YouTube was a big help with our project, we used it for a variety of different reasons. When planning are video there was a number of different things to take into account, one of the main ones was lighting. We used YouTube to find a tutorial that would help us light the artist when we were filming at night, but we still wanted to keep it quite natural looking, therefore we were able to figure out what equipment was needed to create this effect and do it properly. The tutorial also showed us the effects you can make using colored filters which we then used in our final video to add different shades of lighting, we used blue and red filters which link to the colour scheme used on our digipak and magazine advert. We also used YouTube tutorials when editing our digipak and magazine advert photographs on Photoshop. We wanted to use a really good editing style that would really make the main image stand out so we found a tutorial on dodging and burning, which we used for the photograph on our magazine advert and album cover. We have used YouTube to upload our rough cut and final video to get the embed code to then upload to our blog.

Photoshop
We used Photoshop to edit all of our pictures of the artist. We used a range of different editing styles to make our photographs look professional and stand out. For the close up shots of our artist we cleared his skin up so it looked perfect which is typical of any photographs used for album covers. We also used it to edit the photo for our magazine advert, using the burn tool, giving the photo a really urban/rough feel which is what we were aiming for when creating our star persona. Overall Photoshop helped us to create a particular style and feel throughout our project.

Here I have created a step by step tutorial of how to get clear skin when editing a photo with Photoshop.

complete magazine advert design

complete digi pak design

Problems with the digi pak regarding copyright

When designing our Digi pak and magazine advert, we noticed that a lot of the song titles and album names we liked had already been used my major artists, after researching into it we then realised we couldn't use them because of copyright and came up with different ideas. 

Copyright is a legal means of protecting an author's work. It is a type of intellectual property that provides exclusive publication, distribution, and usage rights for the author. This means whatever content the author created cannot be used or published by anyone else without the consent of the author. The length of copyright protection may vary from country to country, but it usually lasts for the life of the author plus 50 to 100 years. Many different types of content can be protected by copyright. Examples include books, poems, plays, songs, films, and artwork.

Idea's for Digi Pak

For our digi pak idea we got our inspiration from a rihanna album cover ect. On the outside of the digi pak is all in colour, whereas the inside is black and white. We wanted to implicate this because its affected and would apeal to the target audience. It also includes different shot types in example, close ups to attract the audience to the artist and mid shots/long shots to show the location. There are also different locations which makes the digi pak more intesting rather than using a plain background it gives depth to the image.

Final music video

Copyright

"Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights. It is a form of intellectual property (like the patent, the trademark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete."

Throughout making our music video we have been very aware of copyright issues. We have taken certain ideas from other artists such as location settings, editing styles and costume styling for example from other artists as inspiration, but have never directly copied. We have had no issues throughout our music video with copyright until we started to plan our album cover. I think that the hardest part was trying to find a suitable album name for our artist to use, a lot of names which we suggested were already used by other artists. We planned to use the album name 'Discovery' but have just noticed that is has already been used by Tinie Tempah so we need to think of a new one before the deadline 29th Nov. 

Album Name Ideas

As a group in class we thought about possible album name ideas that we could use. We wanted it to sound inventive and uncommon, and were very aware that we need something original due to copyright restrictions. As this is our artists first album, he is new to audience and the music industry, therefore we wanted to use an album name that captures this idea - as if the audience are finding him. 
Possible ideas were:

• Shadows
• Steps
• Layers
• Discovery
• Attachments
• Colours

Our favourite was Discovery and we planned to use that, however just today we learnt that Tinie Tempah used this name as his album cover, so we are going to have to re think it and find something better with no copyright issues. 

Magazine Advert

As a group we have looked at a range of existing magazine adverts to get an idea of what they look like and how other artists have promoted themselves. I noticed that magazine adverts in comparison to album covers are very similar and often use the same photo in the same style.

With research we noticed we need to include certain points on our magazine cover:

• Release Date
• Star Rating
• How to buy - itunes, play.com, HMV
• Artists name
• Album name
• Well known songs
• featuring artists 
• Photo that captures style & personality of star

We are currently at the stage of our magazine cover where we have edited the photo, using the same as our album cover, and have edited on our artists name 'Rasdall' and our album name 'Discovery'. We need to now put more detail and colour on there to make it more professional and eye catching for our target audience. Taylor Swifts album cover & Bow Wows album cover inspired us with the style of writing and we incorporated the two styles together.

Digipack Update

In the past few lessons after finishing our music video we started to make our digipack and magazine cover. 

We have done quite a lot of research into digipacks and the style of other artists. One that we really liked was Rihannas, we liked how all the outside used a range of shots and bright colours to capture the audiences eye, then inside the cover the shots were in black and white with her in a different costume and styling. We organised ourselves by making a paper copy and planning the type of shots we wanted to use. A problem we have faced is the lack of shots we have. We took these photos of Sam while filming to plan ahead, however looking at them we have realised we don't have a range of shots. We haven't had a chance as a group to take more photos, Sam hasn't been available so we have worked with the shots we have. We have focused heavily on editing styles to make each shot different and interesting, but to also work together. We have kept to the style of Rihannas case and put black and white styled photos inside the digipack. The colour palette of our shots overall are quite bland and dark so we have been using blur and colour tools on Photoshop to improve them. I think we will get this finished for the deadline 29th November we just need to work fast and focus on whats left to do and improve.  

Copyright

 
Copyright is a legal concept, giving the creator of an original work exclusive right to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work and who may financially benefit from it.

Copyright is an important concept to look at when creating a music video and makes you aware at all times not to duplicate any work that has already been made. In doing this project we also had to look at copyright when making the digipack and album cover to make sure there were no other artists with the same name. We have names our album 'Discovery' and have recently found out that this might be another album name already, after finding this information out we are going to research into it and if true, come up with a different name.

Magazine adverts

I looked at a few magazine adverts to see what the main features were:

-Big picture of the artist (usually cloe-up)

-Name of the artist/band in big bold letters

-The name of the album also in big bold letters

-When the album is out

-Where it is available to buy/download e.g. itunes

-Star ratings from magazines or newspapers

-Mention the hit singles

-Mention the production or promotions company

-Use a limited amount of colours (maybe two of three for the information)

Plan for digi-pack

For the images that are shown on the outside of it we plan to have those in color and for the images used on the inside we plan to have those in black and white, we were inspired by Rhianas album cover. For the front cover we want to use a close up photograph as this is used a lot for album covers in the genre of music that our song comes from, and will have 'Rasdall' written down the right hand side of the cover. We will use different outfits and settings for the photographs to give it some depth, we will keep the settings quite urban throughout the range of photographs as that appeals to our target market therefor they will mostly be taken in the city or with the city in the background of the image. We will be using different outfits in the photographs but each one will fit with the star persona, keeping the artist looking up to date and trendy. We will use different shot types e.g. Close ups, long shots, high angle shots etc to keep it interesting and also to fit with the settings used. We will be editing our images on photoshop using different colour editing styles such as brightness and contrast.

Homework for Wednesday 28th November

You need to have an attempt at two of the evaluation questions by next week. I apologise for not going through this in lesson today but any start you can make with this will benefit you. The FINAL DEADLINE FOR EVALUATION IS 14TH DECEMBER so the sooner you start the better. I would like to see something significant from you next week for FOR QUESTIONS 1 AND 4 ONLY. See text in red below for extra guidance with this homework.

Word Count should be approximately 400-500 words per question (excluding question 3 which is in video form)

G324 Evaluation Tasks.

Below are the 4 questions you need to answer for your coursework Evaluation. The task for Question 3 should be done in your group. The other tasks are individual. When you have completed the tasks post all 4 onto the same post and tag it with YOUR NAME.

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

Task: Select 10 stills/ images from your Music Video and the 2 ancillary tasks (you cannot annotate ancillary tasks just yet obviously). Annotate each one of them in Photoshop or Powerpoint to indicate which conventions you have used at which point. Explain which conventions you followed/challenged and how/why? Use Goodwin's 6 points as a guide here.   

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

Task: Create a Prezi which makes clear links between your 3 products.

 Q3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Task: Create a director’s commentary which includes clips from the music video and ancillary tasks, as well as vox-pop presentations of audience feedback.

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

Task: Create a video presentation which discusses the technologies you used at each stage of the project. This video needs to be different from the Director’s commentary in terms of its presentation and content ie. Presented as a ‘How to use…’/ Teaching (in character?) style of video that could then be used as a future teaching aid. For homework for wednesday, you need to write the script for this and try to collect relevant screen grab images. Choose 3 technologies that you used and explain how you used them or you can 

Re filming

After looking at the clips of our first look of filming and putting them onto final cut, we realised parts that we had filmed maybe don't look right without lip singing and other reasons. Because of the reasons this led us to the decision of filming another time. The things that we had to re film are:
-The initial shots
(we filmed these shots on a plain brick white wall, the background looks effective but the emotion on the singers faces doesn't match the emotion in the song, we need to re film this to match the emotions other wise this could be confusing for the viewer)
- More lip syncing towards the end
(In the first lot of shots there is quite a bit of lip syncing happening but towards the end it wears off, this makes the music video seem unbalanced and less interesting towards the end)
- More movement
(On the first lot of filming the majority of our shots were static, we want to include more panning shots and more movement to out shots to make it more conventional to a pop music video, we also want to include more angles of the same shot the make the video more interesting and less repetative, and also making it more conventional to a pop music video)

Album covers

We researched into album covers and picked out a few that particularly caught our eye.

We like the simplicity of this cover. The close up shot makes it quite personal, yet the lighting is effective in making the shot mysterious. The title is clear and really stands out, linking the title of the album to the colour of her lips, connoting love, giving a taste of the album content.

We like the out of this world feel in this album cover. The blue lighting effect is something we can achieve by using a blue filter. The costume of the artist is modern, clean cut and smart.

We find this album cover intersting as there is so much detail. The background pattern merges with his tattoo creating an artistic feel. We also like the side shot of his face as its quite unique compared to other album covers.

The black and white is very effective and original on this cover. We like the fact that the album title is in colour making it really stand out which will help in promoting the album.

 

The plain white background keeps the focus on the artist, contrasting the white with his black jacket. His costume is very modern yet casual which is the kind of look we have been trying to achieve throughout our project.

Email to the Artist

Definition of copyright:
"Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights. It is a form of intellectual property applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete."

Dear Mr Rasdall,
                           We are writing to you to inform you of the legal rights while shooting the music video.

Half Term Homework

Advanced Portfolio Half Term Homework:

You must think seriously now about how your music video works in combination with your magazine advert (advertising the digi-pack) and the digi-pack cover (at least 4 sides).

Answer the following questions:

1.       What is your finalised star persona? Include a photograph of your star that best communicates their persona. Discuss what ideas/ideologies they communicate (materialism, rebellion, innocence, the cultural “ideal”, alternative to the “ideal” etc.). How do they communicate these ideas? How is their persona expressed visually? (costume, hair, makeup, bogy language, lighting, framing etc) How is it expressed through lyrics, genre?
2.       How are you going to ensure continuity between the 3 products? Remember your digi-pack cover cannot look like a single (can’t be images from the music video) but an album. Compare your ideas for the digi pack cover with professional promo images. A digi-pack is a combination of audio and video (a cd and a dvd with special features such as a few music videos or concert videos)
3.       Write down all of your individual or group ideas for the digi-pack cover and magazine advert. Ideas for costume, setting, lighting, colour, hair, makeup, Photoshop special effects etc. If you can do some mock ups of your own, or experiment with effects in photoshop.
Word count : 500 words minimum

ALSO Catch up with your blogging. Make sure Target audience work is complete and you have done at least 25 individual posts since the start of the project! It is not just the amount that counts though but the content!

Photographs from filming (second attempt)

Here are some photographs I took while filming for the second time after recieving feedback on our roughcut, the photographs show techniques and lighting that were used, also some locations that were used.

Filming Photos

While we were filming our second round of footage I took a few photos to show locations, layout, props, characters and equipment. We used my house to film and i feel it went successfully. We managed to get a lot done using more camera movement, shot types and changing costumes and lighting styles. 

Rough cut

Class feedback on roughcut

Each group(4 groups) in our class watched our roughcut video and answered yes/no questions about the video.

Questions:

1) Have they shot material appropriate for a music video?
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes

2) Has close attention been payed to mise-en-scene?
-No
-No
-No
-No

3) Is there controlled use of the camera?
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes

4) Is there a variety of shot types and angles?
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes

5) Is the editing effective at contructing a linear or non-linear meaning?
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes

6) Is there appropiate use of transitions and other effects?
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes

7) Does the pace of the editing work well with the pace of the song?
-Yes
-Yes
(Length of some of the shots are too long)

8) If there is lip syncing, is it effective?
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
-Yes
(The girls lip syncing could improve)

9) Is the video effective at communicating a star persona?
-Yes
-Yes
-No
-Yes

10) Do you think they need to re-film anything or film anything else? if so, what?
-Fill in the blank shot
-Re-film the girls lip syncing
-Fill blanks
-Fill in blank shots

Level:
-31/40
-34/40
-34/40
-33/40

 Class comments and feedback on video:

-Fill in blank gap, make sure that you get all the footage you need.
-Make a few more cuts.
-Fewer static shots.
-Lighting was really good/well thought out.
-Just fill in blank spaces and improve girls lip syncing.
-More camera movements and angles.
-Cut the kiss scene before the actors walk away.
-Fill blanks, otherwise best we've seen.
-Shots were really good, but some were a bit too long.

After recieving this feedback from the class it gave us more ideas and motivation to get a lot more shots filmed from different angles e.g. low angle and panning shots to ensure there is a variety of different shots in our video, we aim to make our shots less static and add some movement. We also decided to re-film the main shots were the female is lip syncing as we had a few negative comments about the effectiveness of the lip syncing, mainly on the girls part. We also wanted to add different locations.

locations

When looking at different locations for where we want to film out music video we need to keep in mind what kind of mood the setting will make in the viewer and what kind of look we want to achieve with our lighting tequniques and where will be the best locations for achieving these goals.

When thinking about the story line of our music video, the main storyline we want to portray is mystery and love. In my opinion the best way in portraying the image of mysterious is to not have a lot going on in the background and to make the location and the person as unclear as possible, this is possible best achieved at night time where you cant see anything apart from the stars face. The best location to achieve love, one way, could be in a romantic setting with romantic lighting such as candles. This will set the mood and having a clear location will be clear to the viewer what is going on in the shot.

The locations that we shot in were -
Charlies house
Car park
Parkers Piece