Monday, 3 May 2010

Will Wardle's Evaluation

While listening to the stereotypical genre of love songs, a rush of understanding and emotion seems to flow deep within the very veins of its audience. Created from the general notion of loss and heartbreak, which men and women commonly suffer at the vindictive hands of idolized lovers, it becomes apparent that this genre of music can support itself by its own weight of imagination. The genre allows artists and song writers alike to spill their own experiences into the open ears of the audience. It does this with a relatively low risk of being mocked and misunderstood, due to the growing acceptance that modern society has towards all areas of music. Romance, being one of the most popular sub genres reflected in music, and, by extension, music videos, creates a connection with its audience by voicing the words in their hearts, causing an open relationship to form between audience and song. As it does so, it widens the boundaries of both imagination and feeling; it feeds the public's endless hunger for entertainment through the depiction of love and loss. Most people, it seems can identify with the idea of a broken heart and the sadness it brings. As this undoubtedly popular choice of genre became more appealing to our group, we chose our love song and developed our initial thoughts and ideas on how to create a music video that would reach out to the specific audience of our choice, young people in their teens and twenties. This culminated in our choice of the song 'Heartless' covered by The Fray.
There are many contrasting styles in conventional music videos, ranging from a pure performance viewpoint, or narrative, telling a story through the music, using animation or a cameo performance by the singer or even a mixture of all these. We chose to produce a narrative and atmospheric video using flashbacks to tell the story, thus keeping faith with convention in this respect.
Often the conventions of simple love songs depict the women as the heartbroken victims of bad relationships, showing men as the heartless ‘bad guys’ of the romantic world, shown so well in the video ‘Broken Hearted Girl’ by Beyonce (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v8bSHlZIyU). We challenged these typical conventions of this music style, firstly placing our lead role in the hands of a male character. We showed him depressed and miserable within the confines of his dimly lit bedroom, seeking refuge in his own memories and imagination.



As most music videos in this style portray their character as verbal and expressive in their sadness, we chose to ignore this common trait, and we curled our character up within his own arms, showing him broken and melancholy, whilst the traditional music videos often show their emotions through the singer’s wide actions of their hands and expressive body language, e.g ‘All The Right Moves’ by OneRepublic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrOeGCJdZe4&a=IoO78Fn-koc&playnext_from=ML) But as shown in OneRepublics music video, this would not suit our character’s emotions and personality so we showed him miserable and saddened throughout the video, further contrasting to the normal conventions of our chosen genre of music video.
However, we didn’t stray too far away from typical conventions as we deliberately chose to use continuity editing. Using this to set our scene and make our shots flow into each other, illustrated beautifully in the video ‘Stylo’ by The Gorillaz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vAOzYz-Qs). We used these filming techniques towards the beginning of the film then descended into cross fade transitions and jumps, to different environments and scenes. We also chose to include past memory sequences in picture frames as they are both standalone shots, but also creative and free, adding to the weight of the story line. Editing the footage to suit the music, giving it a more melancholy feel, helped to depict the character tumbling downwards into depression, becoming less coherent as he becomes more and more unhappy. We felt that these techniques, conventions used often in music videos, suited our purpose and helped create a convincing story line.
Also important was our use of mise-en-scene. This is often used in modern music videos. We chose a beautiful rural location for the green screen scenes, to depict a romantic moment in their past relationship. Props were minimal, using only the beer cans and liquor bottles to imply despair, and costumes were chosen for their everyday simplicity. This I feel gave the audience an authentic connection to the well-known familiar situation of young love followed by the heartbreak of separation.


Another music video convention that is becoming more widespread is the use of green screen. I feel the most eye catching and impressive shots of our movie were the green screen shots. As I filmed and edited all of our video, I am particularly proud of the green screen results. We used the photo frames dotted around the room as hosts for these shots, showing scenes from our character’s past. This worked almost perfectly, showing the picture moving, perfectly capturing the romantic atmosphere of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, setting the scene and showing the audience a more in-depth back story, giving the viewers much more information than a regular photo would. The green screen gives our film a tool to flip from our bedroom scenes to our memory scenes, fading the background and emphasising the picture to give the impression that we are diving into the memory contained within the picture frame. This I felt, worked particularly well.
As stated, Green screen is not uncommon in the music industry, many music videos use green screen. the most recent green screen music to hit the music channels is Rhianna’s ‘Rude Boy’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82VE8UtW8A). Using a green screen and vibrant colours to a ridiculous level to represent the absurd nature of Rhianna’s lyrics.
Using colour in films can determine a mood, the quality of the environment, create tension, add emphasis to a certain shot/line of dialogue and thoroughly change the way a certain scene is portrayed. This convention is usually portrays the present as colourful and new whilst rendering the past as colourless and gloomy. We decided against this convention. We used this editing technique and applied it to our film in reverse, using muted colours for the bedroom scenes and bright vibrant colours in the flashbacks, exaggerating the transition between present day and the past.





We chose to challenge this convention in this way to represent and exaggerate the mind state and depression of our male character; it suggests that the past was a happier and brighter time. Again I felt this worked well and suited our purpose.







With our audience age group being the broad teenage and young adult group, spanning from 13 yrs olds right up to early twenties, we chose to promote out video through media that would reach this audience the easiest and the most effective. We chose the magazine advert and digi-pak.

With our colour layout and choice of photography/photoshop, we strived to make the digi-pak reach out of the shelves and to grab the passing potential buyers attention. After several designs of our digi-pak we settled on our basic but very effective scribble design. It represents his frustration towards his situation. This combination of magazine adverts and CD designs was considered very effective by our target audience and our own group, we and the chosen audience members thought that they were eye catching and captured the essence of the song and its story line.
Once our film was rendered and finished we held a premiere for several of our class mates and passing students. The random students were crucial as they would supply us with unbiased reviews, meaning we could have a truthful opinion about our film. The gathering of this audience was to ensure a mixed set of reviews; we had the general evaluation by the general students plus the media students who would provide the technical and further informative appraisal that the general audience would not be able to give. After our film was premiered we gained a thorough analysis from our audience, they loved the green screen effect and the work on the dulled/over contrasting colours. The character feedback was appreciated. We had many audience members compliment the depth of the characters personality and the actual acting skills of our actors. They said they could identify with the emotional state of mind the music and the video portrayed. They felt that the editing was excellent at providing a coherent story line. I personally felt that the movie could have explored the couples past relationship, in a more varied manner, using more enjoyable sequences such as fun in the park and on the swings or at a fun fair, bringing more action to the memory scenes to further contrast the scenes and emphasise the enjoyment of the past.
Although our feedback was mainly positive we also had constructive feedback including a general irritation towards the limited locations of our shots and the lack of variety of dream like flashbacks, plus the choice of song, as it generated a lot of cliché scenes that sometimes made the film seem somewhat simplistic. This created a considerable amount of useful information and advice. Overall, I think the audience feedback proved that our film was a success and we felt we had achieved our purpose in a very effective manner and in the way we had planned at the outset.
Throughout the whole process, our use of the blog has been immensely helpful. We used the simple layout and design of our customized blog to create ease of access, using its easy navigation and simplistic eye for editing and refining posts. This allowed us to slowly develop certain blogposts, mainly focusing on film and sound research to create a database of information that was used and useful to all members of the group. Sharing a blog meant a project based on team work and involvement in all improvements and changes. This meant we could focus our group effort on the research that mattered, sharing the load as we all focused on different aspects of media investigation. The main down side using the blog is that on more than one occasion we were met by slow loading times and the sites inability to post certain photos and items that were useful to our coursework.
The internet was a crucial aspect of our research, giving us the chance to view and record many different genres of music and music videos mainly through Youtube and Itunes. We could scour the internet as we studied the varied conventions used in this form of media. We took different elements of our internet based research and we compiled large amounts of references such as album covers/art, songs, many music adverts and band/gig posters on which we based our ancillary products.
Our use of other media technology involved choosing to use a Panasonic HDD video camera. This gave us impressive amounts of high quality footage whilst being portable. It also had a large battery capacity, which meant we could focus more on the shooting of our film and not the equipment battery life and the memory status. Once we’d shot our footage I was placed with the job of editing our film. We had Apple Macs at our disposal; they provided us with fast and functional support through its easy user interface and simplicity. We Chose Final Cut Pro as it holds great respect from all film and footage editing professionals. It boasts a massive amount of optional content for editing, from easy ‘cut and drag’ abilities all the way through to its own CGI software that could potential rival that of small successful budget movies. The ability to take footage from the camera to the FCP software was relatively easy, although long waiting times meant frustration built as eagerness to finish the movie conflicted with endless loading bars and inaccurate countdown timers. But as I progressed through editing the film, the green screen was incorporated seamlessly using Final Cut Pro’s own green screen editor.



I used a chroma-key to highlight the shade of the green screen, removing any potential mistakes from background colours, such as the green of the beer can props which would have been edited to include the memory footage. This meant only the shade of green inside the picture frames were edited out of the film. Final Cut Pro was invaluable in the production of the final music video that matched and exceeded our initial aims and objectives.

In summary, this has been a very rewarding and interesting experience, not only as a piece of film-making, but also as an exercise in team work and co-operation. Everyone has their own skills to bring to the project and I feel my technical skills were well used in this operation. We have as a group taken on board the constructive criticism that has been offered and in evaluating the experience I feel we achieved what we set out to do – producing a well made and well-received music video.

Sunday, 25 April 2010

Dan's Evaluation

Use of conventions:

In the music video we used different conventions of media. The First thing was the use of romantic setting using semiotics like love harts in the tree, which shows the love between them. Love hearts in the tree + showing them together and the love they share = love/relationship. We used a song that was about someone’s heart breaking and formed a romantic setting in order to make the flash back. This screen shot shows our use of romantic setting. We also go against the conventions of media forms as in music videos the audience is used to seeing a young women or a teenaged girl upset and mopping, in our video we looked at how the male would be and show the audience how it is on the other side of a break up. The mise en scene of the flash back worked really well with the footage in the bed room with the juxtaposition of happy and sad. This created juxtaposition between the footage and the song. The clothes our actors wore also worked well with the contrasting lyrics and mood of piece, dull and heavy clothes for the present day, which shows the hurt of the man and summery light and colourful clothes for the flashback, showing happier times, this use of clothing again contrasts with the lyrics of the song. The screen shot shows a good example of the dull clothing used within the present day and the change of mood from past to present.
We wanted to portray a breakup within out video and felt we achieved this with the use of green screen and flashback to show what the relationship used to be like and how the person feels now.

Combination of Main Task and Ancillary Products:

We decided that is would be a good idea to try and keep a theme within our advertisements and so used pictures of the couple together for thing such as the CD cover and tried to use the idea of hearts breaking throughout our adverts, we also tried to use muted colours to enhance the mood of sadness. The picture shows an example of the CD cover with the couple together. Our idea of a heartbreaking has become a good symbol for our video and advertisement ideas it means our audience have a symbol to recognise with the product. This is an example of our hearbreak idea.
We could advertise our product on sited such as YouTube and online magazine, also self bought magazines targeted towards music would encourage our target audience to buy our product. TV adverts and posters for billboards would also be very successful aids in promoting out product. This is an idea for an advertisement for our product.

Audience Feedback:

Our target audience is 17-24. When we showed our package to our group they were very impressed and thought is aimed at our target audience well. They were impressed with our green screen and thought this targeted our audience well because it was inventive and fulfilled the use of special effects which for our target audience come to expect from a new video, they always want it to be fresh and modern. It helped with our flashback because the green screen meant rather than just fading into the past or cutting to it we could go to the past through the photo frame. This screen shot shows an example of our use of green screen.
The group commented on the effectiveness of our editing technique, they thought the piece flowed well and that our link of past and present through green screen had been very successful and well edited. The group thought our music video went together well and fitted the genre of romance and heart break. We were concerned the video would become repetitive but with the many different shots our audience said that it flowed well.
We believed we had one weakness that we had to cut a little bit of the original song in order to have the footage flow and have enough without the story becoming repetitive if we had been able to get more footage this may not have been an issue.

Use Of Media Technologies:

The use of the blog to document the development of our work was very useful. It made it easier for us to get ideas and improvements from other class members, and teachers, this meant we could make changes easily and quickly. It was easier for the group to keep on top of our work load this way and meant we could set individual tasks for each member of the group and then we could go away, do them in our own time and easily upload the information on to the blog when it was ready. This meant when the work was complete the rest of the group could look at it and add improvements or changes if needed.
Research was made easier by internet access via the blog and meant we could upload videos and screen shots to add to our research. This picture shows some research we did on exsisting album covers for the fray.
The weaknesses of the blog was uploading items could sometimes be slow which caused a few problems and sometimes we could not upload items which meant we had to find another way to include certain information. Also if we had problems with the computers it meant we could not continue our blog work which again could slow the process down. For our coursework this year we used new computer systems (Apple Mac) although the editing process was made easier by these computer and we all believed we had a better finished product at the end we did experience difficult accessing the blogs on these computers which caused problems and slowed us down, but over all we were happy with the benefits’ the Apple Macs bought.

Monday, 19 April 2010

Kirsty's Second Draft Evaluation



The piece I created is a music video for the song Heartless by the band The Fray. This challenges some conventions of the music video genre, one of which is that the main character is male. This is in itself is often seen in music videos; however, songs that portray heartbreak are typically from a female perspective. My video shows a male moping around his room and reacting in a stereotypically female manner. This opposition is shown in the Taylor Swift video You Belong With Me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw) which follows this convention and shows heartache from a female perspective. Although this video does not represent heartbreak specifically, it is a good comparison because it shows the female character acting similarly to the main male character in my video.

However, not all aspects of my video challenge convention. I decided to use continuity editing in the beginning scene of my video. This is typical of story-telling music videos. This is illustrated in the video Stylo by Gorillaz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vAOzYz-Qs). On the other hand, this is not used for the entirety of my film. During the flashback scenes, I chose to use cross fade transitions to move from one shot to another, this is because the shots do not follow a typical sequence, for example, they do not appear in chronological order. Also, each shot is a specific memory and, although they add to the plot of the overall film, they are totally unique and stand alone in their positioning, allowing much more freedom and creativity. The use of transitions in music videos is a typical feature, an example of this is the song Quiet Times by Dido (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDQkrhTrQKg)

A further feature of my video is the use of green-screen. This is commonly used within the music video genre, however, where I used it appears to be unique. Many videos use green-screen as the main background, with shapes and colours super imposed behind the artist. An extreme example of this is Rhianna’s video Rude Boy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82VE8UtW8A). In this video bright colours and backgrounds have been used in the style of many 1980’s/1990’s videos. In my video I have used green-screen in photo frames, in which the images move, portraying more than simply a photograph. This has worked well in setting a mood and showing more background information than a traditional photo would. It also acts as a catalyst aiding the action in moving the bedroom scene to the flashback and memories.


To further exaggerate the transition between present day and the past, I have used muted colours in the present day and brighter colours in the flashbacks. Using colour to show this difference is a typical convention in film, however, it is usually used in opposition. For example, the past tends to be in muted colours and the present in full colour. I chose to challenge this convention to represent and exaggerate the depression and mind state of the male character; it shows that the past was a happier time.


I chose to do the magazine advert and digi-pak for my ancillary tasks. I feel that the advert successfully targets the same audience as the band does in its colourings and layout. The dark background and bright purples typically draw a similarly aged male audience. By featuring the cover of the digi-pak in the advert, I have given the audience an image to look for and recognise on the shelf.

I feel the digi-pak emulates the video in its construction. The image on the front cover clearly represents the male’s heartbreak and the scribbles show his frustration. Furthermore, the hand-written, doodle-style of the image shows the age of the characters and so target an audience of a similar age. Doodles are typically associated with school and college, the characters are about 18 or 19 years old and so are within these boundaries. This age range is also the younger limit of the target audience for both the band and the video. In addition, the inner pages include images of the broken couple, furthering the theme of love and heartbreak. It also links the video into the digi-pak on a literal level.


I also made a bold decision to put a blurb-style summary of the video in the digi-pak. This decision was made to encourage people to buy the physical CD as apposed to downloading it. Digi-paks have to be unique and stand out from the competitors. Institutions attempt this by including such details and free gifts such as posters. Overall, I feel the digi-pak is successful in representing the style of music and the video.

All three products are combined and create a brand identity. The video and the digi-pak have similarities in that the two characters of the video are largely featured in the digi-pak. This makes it obvious that the two are linked, creating a specific identity of the song and the band. Furthermore, the advert is successfully linked to the digi-pak because the front cover of the digi-pak is the main feature of the advert. Because all three feature elements of the other two products the image of the band and the song are more widely known and recognised creating a strong brand.

Once completed, I showed my video to other people in my class. I chose this group as they would watch the video with a critical eye and spot technical issues that a non-specialist audience would not. Furthermore, they are of the correct age and social status that I aimed to target, therefore if they liked it, so would the public. Most of the feedback was positive, with comments including how they liked the technical issues such as the green-screen and colourings. They also appreciated the characters and acting, they related to both characters, especially the male. This was most pleasing as this was my main aim when creating my film. A questionnaire result, that proves this point stated that “as an audience member I feel the music video fulfills many of my audience needs.”Furthermore, many comments were on the subtleness of the mise-en-scene how it is successful in creating the semiotics of emotion and location.

However, some constructive criticism was given on the limited locations and how they would have liked to see more varied flashback scenes such as restaurant scenes. Looking back I feel this would have been a good idea, I also think that a shot of the couple in the room shown at the beginning of the video would have solidified the reality of the memories. Overall, the feedback was mainly positive making the video successful in its purpose.



Many technologies were used in the research, creation and evaluation of my piece. Some are obvious for example the use of the internet to find research on the band and music video theory. I also used the internet and specifically YouTube to watch and analyse existing music videos. This also helped me to study The Fray’s usual style of video. Additionally, I used digital cameras to record the footage and the software Final Cut Express to edit the video on an Apple MaccBook. Within Final Cut I used its functions to delete the specific green colour of the card in the photo frames and changed the size and angle of the footage, which I then moved to position in the gap created when deleting the green colour.

I have also made use of links and screen shots in this evaluation, only made possible by the blog format. And by using a blog it makes it easier for teachers to mark the work and means it is accessible to other groups in the class for feedback and to gain further ideas.

The use of digital technologies has helped to make all of my products more successful and of industry standard. For example, the use of green-screen would not have been possible without the up-to-date software and the ability to research how to complete the task. Before beginning this task I did have the know-how to do remove the green colour from the scene and replace it with other footage.

Also, the use of HDD cameras allowed me to film more footage and upload them onto the computer quicker than if it had been recorded on mini DV cameras. This meant I could spend more time editing and re-editing the footage.

Furthermore, I feel the ancillary tasks are enhanced by the use of the professional program Publisher. Without this software the images and text would not have been aligned, as I would have liked. It also allowed me to edited the images and distort them to my desired effect.

In conclusion, I am very pleased with the piece, however I feel there are some minor points that could have been improved, but I have learnt many new skills and picked up on some poorer points that can be changed in further projects.

Digi Pak


Heartless Advert

Story Boards (bottom to top)











Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Kirsty's Evaluation

The piece I created is a music video for the song Heartless by the band The Fray. This challenges some conventions of the music video genre, one of which is that the main character is male. This is in itself is often seen in music videos; however, those songs that portray heartbreak are typically from a female perspective. My video shows a male moping around his room and reacting in a stereotypically female manner. This opposition is shown in the Taylor Swift video You Belong With Me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNIsY6JdUw) which shows heartache from a female point of view. Although this video does not represent heartbreak, it is a good comparison because it shows similar emotion and proves that my video challenges this convention.

Not all aspects of my video challenge convention. I decided to use continuity editing in the beginning scene of my video. This is typical of music videos that tell a story. This exemplified in the video Stylo by Gorillaz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vAOzYz-Qs). On the other hand, this is not used for the entire film. During the flashback scenes, I chose to use cross fade transitions to move from one shot to another. I made this decision because the shots do not follow a typical sequence, for example, they do not appear in chronological order. This is because they are specific memories that do not need any further information and the background knowledge is already given in the initial scenes and the lyrics of the song. The use of transitions in music videos is a typical feature, an example of this is the song Quiet Times by Dido (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDQkrhTrQKg)

A further feature of my video is the use of green-screen. This is commonly used within the music video genre, however, where I used it ap pears to be unique. Many videos use green-screen as the main background, with shapes and colours super imposed behind the artist. An extreme example of this is Rhianna’s video Rude Boy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e82VE8UtW8A). In this video bright colours and backgrounds have been used in the style of many 1980’s/1990’s videos. In my video I have used green-screen in photo frames, in which the images move, portraying more than simply a photograph. This has worked well in setting a mood and showing more background information than a traditional photo would. It also acts as a good way of moving the action from the bedroom scene to the flashback and memories.

To further exaggerate the transition between present day and the past, I have used muted colourings in the present day and brighter colours in the flashbacks. Using colour to show this difference is a typical convention in film, however, it is usually used in opposition. For example, the past tends to be in muted colours and the present in full colour. I chose to use it in the way previously stated to represent the depression and mind state of the male character, it shows that the past was a happier time.

I chose to do the magazine advert and digi-pak for my ancillary tasks. I feel that the advert successfully targets the same audience as the band does in its colourings and layout. The image also exemplifies the music video I have created. Similarly the digi-pak emulates the video in its construction. The image on the front cover clearly represents the male’s heartbreak and the scribbles show his emotions. Furthermore, the hand-written, doodle-style of the image shows the age of the characters and also the target audience. Doodles are typically associated with school and college, the characters are about 18 or 19 years old and so are within these boundaries. This age range is also the younger limit of the target audience for both the band and the video. This makes the cover successful. In addition, the inner pages include images of the broken couple, furthering the theme of love and heartbreak. It also links the video into the digi-pak on a literal level.

I also made a bold decision to put a blurb-style summary of the video in the digi-pak. This decision was made to encourage people to buy the physical CD as apposed to downloading it. Digi-paks have to have a sense of being unique and include such details as an incentive to buy this CD above the others on the shelf. Overall, I feel the digi-pak is successful in representing the style of music and the video.

Once completed, I showed my video to other people in my class. I shoes this group as they would watch the video with a critical eye and spot technical issues a non-specialist audience would not. Furthermore, they are of the age and social status I aimed to target and so if they liked it, so would the public. Most of the feedback was positive, with comments including how they liked the technical issues such as the green-screen and colourings. They also appreciated the characters and acting, they related to both characters, especially the male. This was most pleasing as this was my main aim when creating my film. Furthermore, many comments were on the subtleness of the mise-en-scene how it is successful in creating the semiotics of emotion and location.

However, some constructive criticism was given on the limited locations and how they would have liked to see more varied flashback scenes such as restaurant scenes. Looking back I feel this would have been a good idea, I also feel that a shot of the couple in the room shown at the beginning of the video would have solidified the reality of the memories. Overall, the feedback was mainly positive making the video successful in its purpose.

Many technologies were used in the research, creation and evaluation of my piece. Some are obvious for example the use of the internet to find research on the band and music video theory. I also used the internet and specifically YouTube to watch and analyse existing music videos. This also helped me to study The Fray’s usual style of video. Additionally, I used digital cameras to record the footage and the software Final Cut Express to edit the video. Within Final Cut I used its functions to delete the specific green colour of the card in the photo frames and changed the size and angle of the footage, which I then moved to position in the gap created when deleting the green colour.

I have also made use of links, screen shots and images in this evaluation, only made possible by the blog format. A blog also makes it easier for teachers to mark the work and means it is accessible to other groups in the class.

In conclusion, I am very pleased with the piece however; I feel there are some minor points which could have been improved. I could have spent more time working on the ancillary tasks and making them more audience focussed.

Final shot list

1. Long shot of women walking away into distance. Fades out to white to show memory.
2. Exteme close up of eye as it opens, looking around.
3. H sits up, head in hands, medium close up.
4. Close up of icture frame, surrounded by bottles and cans. picture not moving.
5. Medium shot of guy on edge of bed. Picture frame in shot, he then bends down.
6. Close up of his hand grasping a can on the floor and lifts it out of shot.
7. He drinks it, shakes it, hes drunk it all so he throws it away - away from the camera.
8. The can flies into shot,landing next to picture frame The first glimpse of the oving picture as the picture in the frame starts to move - close up.
9. He stands up, walkin towards camera, medium shot.
10. Close up of his hand reaching for an empty beer can.
11. Medium shot of him tipping the can, not a drop is left.
12. He places the can back down and walks off close up.
13. A flash back, hazy lensed camera, medium close up of kissing between main character and girlfriend.
14. Close up of him walking away.
15. Medium shot of him sitting on chair, head in his hands and looks at photo frame.
16. Medium shot of photo frame between screen - past when they were together.
17. Back to him and he looks at the photo frame again.
18. Close up of photo frame, green screen of them kissing.
19. Medium shot from behind him as he reaches for the photo frame and sits on the bed.
20.Over the shoulder shot of him looking at the photo frame. Green screen of the two kissing in the frame.
21. Cross fade into larger shot of the two kissing.
22. Then goes into the flash back through the frame.
23. Medium shot to a long shot of them walking away.
24. Establishing shot third line, the couple hugging in front of a lake.
25. Long shot of the man on thebridge, walks off.
26. Medium shot of the couple walking to a bench and sitting down.
27. Exstreme close up of hearts hanging from a marriage tree.
28. Long shot of them together looking at the stars.
29. Close up of photo frame. Green screen of moving picture, the two characters are kissing.
30. Medium shot of man looking away and putting head in his hands.
31. Close up of man, sat on the bed, head in his hands.
32. Medium shot of man sitting on the bed looking at the photo frame, throws it to one side and lies down.
33. Exstreme close up of girl walking away in the photo frame, fades out.

Helen's Evaluation

Coursework Evaluation:

Use of Conventions:
In our music video we used many conventions of media. Firstly the most obvious was the use of romantic setting. We followed the conventions of a love song and created a romantic setting in order to follow this. Although we also go against the conventions of media forms due to the twist within the use of the footage, we had a song about a man who's heart has been broken and used the romantic footage to pose as a flashback therefore giving the footage a sad tone. This creates a juxtaposition within the footage and the lyrics of the song. This screen shot is a good example of this juxterposistion.

Our use of costume and props within the flash back contrast with the sad lyrics of the song we used. For example summer cloths and tranquil landscapes clashed with the sense of heartbreak within the music. In contrast with this the scenes representing the present day linked with the lyrics. For example muted colours within the scenes and baggy dark cloths fitted with the idea of hurt and depression coursed due to a breakup. This screen shot of one of the present scenes is a perfect example of the changes between the past and present and the change in tone and colour.
Our aim with our video was to portray a breakup by presenting the happier times this was achieved by our use of flash backs and green screen.

Combination of Main Task and Ancillary Products:
Within our product package there is continuality as we have tried to stick to a similar colour scheme to fit the mood of the song, we have generally used muted colours. We have used images of the two actors within our CD covers and posters in order to keep the theme continuous. As a group because the idea is heartbreak we have tried to use a theme of a heart cut in half (broken) throughout most of our package ideas. This has created a sort of symbol for the target audience to recognise our product. This is an example of one of our adveretisment ideas, the heart symbolises the heartbreak within the video.
Our product would need to be advertised on TV and the internet for example YouTube, also posters that could be put up for example on billboards. Also advertisement on online magazine and shelf bought magazine especially music magazine would target our idea audience.

Audience Feedback:
Our target audience is 17-24 I believe we catered for our target audience by the package we produced. When we presented our video to our class they all responded well and said they believed it targeted their age group. They thought the use of green screen was inventive and interesting therefore making the video better. This also made the use of flashback more effective due to our use of using green screen through the photo frame to take us back to the past. In this screen shot it shows an example of our use of green screen and the effectivness of this within the video.
The group commented on the effectiveness of our editing technique, they said they liked the way our shots of past and present linked and faded into one another making the piece more interesting. They believed as a music video it went together well and fitted the genre of romance and heart break. We were concerned the video would become repetitive but with the many different shots our audience said that it flowed well.
Our weakness maybe that we could have made the music video longer and if we had more footage the audience believed we could have continued the story on.

Use Of Media Technologies:
I believe the use of a blog to document the development of our work was very useful it was also easier to get feedback from other class members, and teachers about our work via this and enabled us to make necessary improvements and changes. I believe this also meant the group kept a better order of work by using the blog rather than the group having to be responsible of a folder.
Internet access and research was also made easier by the use of the blog as we could upload information and include research such as online videos. The weaknesses of the blog was that it was not always simple to uploads videos and pictures which slowed us down occasionally. Also if we had problems with the computers it meant we could not continue our blog work which again could slow the process down. As a class we experienced some problems with accessing the blogger site via Apple Mac computers which took up time.
The new editing software on the Apple Macs was very effective and easy to use the effects were also very useful for our video.

Thursday, 4 March 2010

Layout for the Fray “Heartless” advertisement

• The advertisement needs to be colourful
• Bold and interesting font
• Creative layout
• Colours to represent the mood of the piece so reds, blacks and greys to symbolise a depressing mood.
• Snap shots from the video and pictures to give the audience some context.
• All this is important in an advertisement as it draws attention to the music and the artist and makes the product accessible to the audience.


Some samples of colours that would be good to use in the advertisement are:

Monday, 22 February 2010

Music Adverts




I really like the Chris Brown Graffiti album cover because it is bold and colourful; the masculine figure at the forefront of the cover makes a bold statement. In contrast to this the actual context of the cover is very simple and I believe this is what makes it even more effective.
The Nickelback album cover is interesting because it is looking forward and the cover gives the impression that the object is moving. The contrast of colors from the top to the bottom also make the cover stand out, the orange colour of the sunset compared with the dark sweeping effect of the road.
I don’t like the Destiny’s Child album cover because I think the colour are too similar and so it makes the cover boring and everything fades together. Although the use of all the singers’ faces close together is effect I think it is a boring and too simple album cover.

Music Adverts






All these music advertisements are very colourful and creative and so give great examples of how advertisers can draw buyers into there product by creating appealing advertisements and in music magazines such as NME the advertisers are targeting there ideal audience. These advertisements range from advertising music gigs to advertising individual artists. The design and appearance of the advert is crucial to the success of the product, as it must make the consumer interested in the product, the bright colours and loud fonts draw the attention of the audience making it successful in its purpose.

The Main Uses Of Music Advertisement

Music can fulfill several tasks when it is used in advertisements. David Huron therefore chooses six categories in which “music can serve the overall promotional goals in one or more of several capacities.” Mostly the use of music is not only intended by one of the following attributes but they are interdependent and interrelated to each other. The categories he claims are described as follows.


Entertainment

The entertainment aspect of music helps making an advertisement more appealing to the viewer by simply making it more attractive respectively more aesthetic. By this increase in attractiveness an advertisement is able to engage more attention. From this point of view “music need not necessarily manifest any special affinity with a particular product or service in order to play an effective and useful function.” The music functions more as bridge between viewer and advertisement in this case.

Structure and Continuity
Another basic attribute of music is to support an advertisements structure and continuity. Therefore “music is used to mediate between disjoint images” Also it can emphasize dramatic moments within the advertisement. Accompanying i.e. a TV commercial music structures the told narrative, can tell a narrative itself or function as anchor, which completes the overall meaning. It can i.e. create antagonist and protagonist within this narrative by giving them typical musical figures, harmonies or melodies.


Memorability

It is far more likely to memorize a piece of music than spoken language or images because “music tends to linger in the listeners mind.” “Early advertising music also had different aims. Music then was primarily used as a mnemonic device. Rhyme and reception were enlisted to keep a brand name in mind. ‘Singing commercials’ or jingles made up a self-contained genre.” Huron adds that it is “the most common musical technique for aiding memorability and hence product recall.”[7] Companies use these for example to make the customers remember their phone number, webpage, their company name or at least a catchy slogan linked to the brand. But also non-jingle music can perform this task and stick in the customers mind.

Lyrical Language

In contemporary adverts the advertisers must overcome the viewer’s skepticism, which developed over years through desensitization. This can become a pretty hard task. But since advertisers favor mostly poetic, emotional appeals over logical, informational appeals due to the shift from modern to postmodern advertisement music turned out to be a perfect tool to reach this goal. Music can provide a message without the customer consciously noticing it. For providing rational facts in the same time “mixtures of speech and song provide advertisers with opportunities for both logical, factual appeals [through spoken and written language] and emotive, poetic appeals [through music].”


Targeting and Authority Establishment

Different types of music can be attributed to certain kind of groups or life styles which makes it possible to appeal to these groups over using certain kinds of musical genres. Music can therefore function as a “nonverbal identifier” for certain groups with different musical taste because it is “arguably the greatest tool advertisers have for portraying and distinguishing various styles.”


Looking at these contributions of music towards advertisement it becomes obvious that these attributes work together in inseparable ways. Of course there could be added other categories. There is for example a difference between diegetic (the source of the music is visible) and non-diegetic (the source of the music is not visible) use of music, which can have totally different effects in result depending on the adverts context. The overall task of advertisers nowadays should be to develop a “considerable practical experience in joining images and music to social and psychological motivation” and by this process create meaning, which appeals to the target group and helps the advertisement to succeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_advertising

Friday, 12 February 2010

Green Screen! The Avatar Way of Thinking!

Pictures tell a lifetime of stories, they give us a view of the past and strengthen the memories we may have lost or forgotten. Many pictures allow us to reach back into our minds and relive those moments. This is exactly what we have tried to illustrate, by showing several shots of moving photos dotted around the room where we filmed. These photos showing our main character with the stories lost love, using several shots we filmed in the summer, they portray how vibrant and full of life his past was. Bathed in the dull glow of his ragged and untidy bedroom, depicting our main character as depressed, showing him remembering his past as a relief from the life he lives. So we aimed to attack the veiwer with subtle and cleverly placed shots of memories, i used this by filming these shots with the piocture frames coated with green card. This created the well known 'Green Screen' effect, where i could edit the film on Final Cut Pro and render a small movie within the confines of the picture frame. I used this many times throughout the film as i tried to fully portray the extent of his mourning for a past love

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Initial Shot List

This is a very rough first idea of the ordering of shots. Many of our shots were spontaneous as we came up with a lot of ideas for shots when we were on location, therefore, this list states types of shots and when they will be used. 

The names Dan and Helen represent the male and female characters in the film.
L shot - Long shot
M shot - Medium shot
ECU - Extreme Close Up
CU - Close Up
OSS - Over Shoulder Shot

The shots of the couple together will be colourful and possibly slowed down to show passage of time. The colours represent a happy time, and good, positive memories. 

Shots in Dan's bedroom will have slightly muted colouring to show his depression and gloomy mood.  

We will complete a more detailed shot list once we have all of the filming uploaded and we know exactly which shots are useful and which do not make sense to the plot and theme.


1 L shot Helen walking down a path, into darkness provided by trees, slightly slowed down to create a memory like effect
2 Cuts to a M shot of Dan's bedroom, him asleep, slight pan
3 ECU of Dan's eyes opening, and him waking up
4 Several shots of Dan moving around his bedroom, moping, sad, looking to see if beer cans are empty, green screen photo frame in background, slightly slowed down,
5 CU of can being thrown, lands next to photo frame, image moving inside the frame 
6 M shot of Dan sat on a chair, rubs eyes and sees the moving image in frame, double takes and leans over to frame
7 L shot of Dan picking up frame
8 OSS of frame in Dan's hand, slow zoom into frame and moving image within it
9 Cross fade into the moving image as full screen
10 Shot changes several times to show many different comforting moments of the couple, very much in love
11 Cuts back to OSS of the photo frame, frozen image, not moving
12 Dan puts the frame back on the side and lies down, looking nostalgic and hurt

Monday, 1 February 2010

Production Diary

Date

Location

Scenes

Equipment

Actors

Props

Mise-en-scene

5/09/09

Will’s Garden

Zip line

 

At the pond

 

On the grass

 

Walking through paths

2 cameras

 

2 tripods

 

Zip-line invention

 

Camera Chargers

Dan and Helen

Bench

 

2 Mobile Phones

 

 

Statue

 

Flowers

 

Summer Clothes, Sunglasses

 

6/09/09

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

Consall Gardens

Old Pyramid

 

Under Wedding Tree

 

Walking Down Several Paths

 

On the Bridge

2 cameras

 

2 tripods

 

Bottled Water

 

 

Dan and Helen

2 Mobile Phones

Flowers

 

Summer Clothes, Sunglasses

 

 

1/12/09

Shopping for robots and instruments, Festival Park, S-O-T and Leek town centre

19/12/09

Will’s Bedroom

Robot walking around bedroom

 

Girl in bedroom

 

Green-screen

1 Stills Camera

 

Tripod

 

Green-screen

 

Kirsty

Robot

 

High heels

 

Fishnet tights

 

lipstick

Typical teenage boys room, modern furniture, tidy with some clutter

5/01/10-8/01/10

Editing and post-production

9/01/10

Dan’s Bedroom

Dan moping around bedroom

 

Green-screen in photo frame

1 charged camera

 

Camera Charger

 

1 Tripod

 

Green Card

Dan

Empty beer cans

 

Photo frame

 

Laptop

 

Magazines

 

Pizza Box

Messy teenagers bedroom, bed unmade, rubbish on the floor, magazines scattered

 

Dark room

11/01/10 onwards

Editing and post-production, research and creation of ancillary tasks, scripting and producing presentation for analysis