Thursday 10 December 2009

Video Commentry Transcipt

Part 1-
Naomi : Hi Im Naomi

Marianne: Im Marianne

Naomi: And we are the production tram of high up in the sky by the cajun dance party.

Marianne: A Valley Girls Production

Naomi: Before we started filming and planning we had to do a lot of research of the genre of which the video was from, which was actually indie. So we looked at a lot of their videos and got a feel for them. Where we thought about costume, props and locations so we thought about a lot of fields and urban kind of areas - which were used in our video.

Marianne: yeah we because it was cajun dance party who we choose the song from and a lot of their videos were in fields or running around. So we wanted to do something like that.

Naomi: So we looked at the femal vocalist, who always wears a ball gawn - keeping it quite casual and quite young so we teamed the dress up with converses - which was quite contrasted.

Marianne: Yer we thought it would look quite good, that kind of look.

Naomi: And for the male we had him wear quite a smart outfit - but still keeping it looking quite young. We presented a lot of our research on our blog which shows how a lot of our ideas came together.

Marianne: and we showed a lot of our general first ideas.

Naomi: It showed how much our ideas changed due to like problems.

Marianne: Our first ones wernt that good - so we just had to take that, change it and build it up to better ideas and come to a conclusion.

Naomi: And of course new media technologies made it such a better music video than what it could be - because we used a lot of fades and because our syncing was a little bit out it took us alot of editing and time to get it to as good as we could get it.

Marianne: That was because of a problem we had when we was filming as we didnt have the song with us so I just had to remember what it was and try and sing it to the beat. So we had to be precise.

Naomi: So we had to speed things up and slow parts down - we even had parts where no one was singing.

Marianne: We had to cut bits out.

Naomi: which led us to not have a lot of shots of the male vocalist; so its a lot about the girl really as it was easy to refilm if we needed to.

Marianne: We wanted to like use a plot that would be a quite big representation in our video, so we decided to use an multi-coloured umbrella. Which we used a lot either holding it up or just walking along with it - but it was always there - as our main prop.

Naomi: It was something we could link the three products together with, so you could immeditaly tell that it was a Cajun Dance Party theme - like it was apart of them. So we got this idea from a previous picture that was taken on them which was in an urban city and had this big umbrella and we immeditaly thought that was something we would like to use to link our products together.

Marianne: Final cut obviously we used to edit our video, but we also used photoshop so that we could (because we had to make an magazine cover) so we used that to change - because at first we took photos and once we had them on the computer we changed the colors , brightness of it.

Naomi: We gave it effects as if it had been drawn . Unfortuently we didnt have time to finish our poster because it was quite a rushed course and we just run out of time and had some absceneses of the group and we just spent quite a lot of time on the DVD cover.

Marianne: Yeah we was more pleased with the DVD cover. As we had more time to think about what looked good - at first we had one picture of me on the front but then we thought it looked a little too different from the back, because we liked the back quite a lot with the umbrella, so we made the front better; so we had three photos of me but they were all differently edited; so one was darker then we other and then it got lighter.

Part 2-
Naomi: What made our music video come together was obviously the Darwin conventions. One of them of which was notions of looking where we looked at genre conventions - basically when we looked at all the videos we looked at what was expected of and it was with young people and were always wearing what young people would wear today (quite preppy) and its all just quite innocent and young and upbeat.

Marianne: I think thats what we wanted to get across , like a lot of indie videos have the band and a lot of close ups of them singing but we thought that the song wasnt a rock type it was more about telling a story - so we just had a lot like focusing on the person singing and trying to tell a story.

Naomi: Also, a lot of indie videos the vocalist is directly singing at the camera so we wanted to make sure that the audience felt they had a conncetion with the song and felt invloed with - so we had a lot of shots where the singer was singing straight to the camera (making it quite direct and personal) - as it is about love which is something that a lot of people experience. Interxtuality is what are the genre conventions, and here we focused on making sure there was a strong narrative - so we had to make sure we linked the music video well with the lyrics; which was about finding love. We also made sure we had a lot of shots direct with the camera because this was quite common in indie music videos and its quite personal and natural - its not staged, it seems like its true life. The indie music genre had quite a lot of bright colors, big ball gawns, suits like quite a lot of formal wear but still looked quite young/casual. So we made sure we came up with an outfit that was quite obvious to indie audiences. So that they would know that it was an indie music video.

Naomi: In a lot of The Cajun Dance Party’s music videos a lot of nature locations and open fields are used, so we made sure we used places like this. We wanted to make sure we had a lot of different shots, to make it effective and keeps it appealing to our audience. Otherwise you would get quite bored after a couple of minutes of it. We made sure we went out to lot of different locations and got enough shots.

Marianne: Thirdly another convention of Goodwin is Music and visuals. We wanted to relate to the lyrics in the song so we wanted a location to fit ‘walking up the hill’, so we went to castle hill, which I thought would be a good place to shoot. We wanted to get a lot of different shots of the sky because that is one of the main things said in the song, ‘High up in the sky’. I think one of our strongest shot was the end shot when me and josh were sitting on a punt and then the camera zooms up into the sky. It was a good closing shot.

Sian: Hi, I’m Sian and I will be doing the voice over. ‘Walking up the hill’ is a frequently used lyric in the song, so we felt it was a key element to have a variety of shots of our vocalists walking up the hill. We also thought about the location, relating the surrounding to the lyrics. For example the ‘city, gritty, shadow’, so we had backgrounds of cities to relate to this. We then had Marianne and josh walking up the hill together.

Part 3-
Naomi: we had some shots in such open environments, and then we would be in a city in the middle of busy people.

Marianne: they both went well together though, having the town and then shots of the country.
Naomi: to make it more interesting, when the beat gets faster we wanted something that was also faster and more exciting.

Marianne: we used different tempos, so we sped up the bits where it was faster. When we were standing in the city, with people rushing by, we sped this up. Also running, we had a shot of just the feet and sped this up, so it look faster

Naomi: we also though carefully about colours. We used the colours of the umbrella, to be used on our DVD cover and though carefully about font. We had it quite messy and teenage.

Marianne: In quite a stylish way.

Naomi: so it wasn’t rough but at the same time it matched the outfits they wore. It was formal, but at the same time casual.

Marianne: the feedback we got from our rough cut

Naomi: was quite positive, but we still got enough to work with to make it a better music video. A lot of people said that we represented the indie genre well, just by costume and location. People noticed that this is what you expect to see in a professional Indie music video.
People also said how we had good visual lyric links. This is probably because we had the hill and we had a lot of shots of views. We were told that maybe we need more sky shots, so then we went out again and got a few more shots were you would see the sky in the background. We didn’t just get plain shots of the sky as this wouldn’t be appealing to the audience, but we tried to do it in a way that it still link well, but wasn’t to obvious.

Marianne: They also said we needed a few more close-ups of either singing or a face for the close up because we only had a few at the beginning but we did manage to go out again and film some more.

Naomi: Which was also good because a lot of indie music videos do have direct links with their audience, so looks as if the vocalist is singing to you, like talking to you about the issue.

Marianne: We were down on midsummer common and thought it would be good to have a birds eye view of me standing underneath the bridge, so we went on the bridge and had the camera literally looking down and actually quite a lot of people recognized this and thought it was really good shot.

Naomi: I think also a good shot as well was a close up of the converses which is showing it is an indie video and representing indie outfits and a lot of people were impressed by it and we were told to do some more but because of timing issues we couldn't really go back to the set and do that shot again.

Sian: The umbrella was a key feature in our video and this is seen in our ancillary products.

Marianne: We did have to improve our synching because at first it kept going out of place and we would have to change it again but i think it did work in the end, but it was a problem that we had, probably more than other group's as ours had a lot of singing to the camera so had to make it work.

Naomi: A lot of the male vocalist we had to we had to just remove as we would have lost more marks having it there, than having it out of sink, so taking it out and putting in a completely different shot, we had to do that in quite a lot of situations but where it is now it's still not 100% perfect but its much better than what it was before.

Marianne: In a lot of shots i looked a lot brighter, as i had a bright pink dress on so in Josh's scenes he looked a bit dark, so we wanted to just change that so we used filters to make that brighter in quite a lot of shots.

Naomi: We also made the umbrella a lot brighter than what it was before because this is like our key element and was a link to all our products together so had to make sure it properly stood out, because our shots were under trees and was quite a gloomy day so had to make sure we used filters, this was a part of our feedback from our teacher who said it would be a good thing to do.

Marianne: In our pitch we said we quite liked that song and wanted to get across we could make quite a good music video, so we came up with quite a lot of good ideas, where we set it, who would be in it, straight away we were thinking about these things.

Naomi: It became quite natural, we got loads of ideas straight away and were told we had a good idea for the contrasting outfits and locations and making it more interesting really and were told to make a list of props and costumes to make sure we can finalise and have everything there.

Marianne: Straight away people saw we did have quite good ideas for what we wanted to do which was pleasing.

Naomi: We were also told that in our pitch we made it obvious we had a good link to all our products and to be obvious to our audience that they were all in one product together.

Marianne: Hopefully you found this useful, that we actually did quite a lot to produce this video.

Naomi: To get it to the standard that we have, and had a lot of problems, like where to do the filming, did effect a lot of things but i think we pulled out well.

Marianne: I actually had quite a good time filming it.

Naomi: Editing is what made it what it is so just hopefully you enjoy it and you enjoyed this as well.

Marianne: Cheers, bye.

Video Commentary - Part Three of Three

Video Commentary - Part Two of Three

Video Commentary - Part One of Three

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Music Video Evaluation-Marianne

Media Evaluation

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

Our Music video is indie based so we decided to watch a lot of videos in this style. The Cajun Dance party was the band whose song we chose and there are quite a few factors we used from the way they presented and the settings they used. A lot were set in fields and green areas so a lot of our scenes we used were in a park, field and used a hill. We got the influence of using a flower and picking off its petals in Beyonce’s video, Broken Hearted Girl, we thought this was quite a significant moment in her video and thought it would go well as a prop in ours. The song we chose tells a story about a boy and girl meeting so we wanted to build up this story.

We looked at Goodwin’s theories to help `us, which were notion of looking, lyrics and visuals and Intertextuality. The helped to guide us into how we wanted our video to turn out. Mise-En Scene is a part of notion of looking and was important in our video, as we wanted to make sure it looked indie. Our costumes were also significant to show the indie style, Lily Allen wears a lot of big colourful dresses with trainers and thought it would look good in our video, the converse shoes how it was and indie based style. We used the umbrella as quite an important prop in our video, it is used a lot, I hold it underneath the tree and open, the male actor holds it when he is waling up the hill and it is in the last scene. Some scenes were darker than others, like underneath the tree so we filtered it to make it brighter and this also brought out the colours of the umbrella more so it stood out. The colours in our video were thought about quite a lot as it was quite a gloomy day we wanted contrasts. The multi-coloured umbrella and bright pink dress brought colour and were significant visuals so when these were used we wanted our backgrounds to seem more dull with quite plain colours. As it was autumn when we filmed it we wanted to have some scenes set with the colours from the trees, orange and reds which came out well with the lighting, we had to make sure the costumes were not as bright in these scenes so the colours wouldn’t clash.

We looked at a lot of indie videos and noticed that a lot had a band in them but there were also others that told a story and this was what we wanted to do as with the lyrics we had was easy to do. We had a lot of scenes where the actor is facing the camera and syncing to the lyrics. Also the setting was very indie themed set in fields and on hills. The only scene which you notice a change of setting was when the song speeds up, here we thought it would work well to have an urban feel on a street in a city, this worked well as we quickened the pace of the filming to go with the tempo of the song.

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

We wanted our video to relate to our ancillary texts and show what we thought would create and represent our band whose song we chose to do, The Cajun Dance Party. We went out and decided to use real life photos for both the digipak and magazine cover. We looked where we could take a photo that would either have been a set which had been in the video or related.

As the multi-coloured umbrella had become a main feature in our product we thought we should have it shown somewhere on either the digipak or magazine cover, we tried a few different ways and thought it would go well on the back of the DVD cover. We found an umbrella on the internet which looked very similar to the one we used in the actual video so placed that on the back, we edited it into place with the help of using Photoshop and made the colours more enhanced. We initially were going to use a black background for the back but after some thought realised it would look to dark for our cover and as the song isn’t dark wouldn’t have looked right. Instead we took one of the purples from the umbrella and filled the background, we also did this with the writing, took one of the colours for the different pieces of text on the back and front.

The front of the DVD cover is a picture of me and we thought about where would be a good place to take the picture and thought under the trees would be good where we had also filmed some of the video. At first we just had one of the photo on the front which we edited to look like it had been drawn, after some feedback and realisation we wanted it to not look just like we had placed a photo on so cut the photo and copied it three times. We then edited and filtered each photo to all look different and be individual. By doing this our DVD cover became more interesting to look at with still having the similarity and design to what our video looks like, as we wanted to keep that connection.

Our magazine cover is a bit more naturalistic than how our digipak turned out. Again we went out and found a wall with some graffiti on which looked like it could relate to our urbanised scene in our product so took a few pictures to see whether we could edit it and make it work. The picture was in colour at first but after trying out some effects decided on a chalk styled black and white colour. The font style was the same as the font we used on our DVD cover. We thought it looked right and using similar things like font makes it more recognisable to viewers and audiences that it is the same band and company. Although the magazine cover did not represent our video as much as the DVD cover has it still have some similarities as having a similar picture of me on the front.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback, which we received, helped us too see how we have been getting things right and what improvements and changes we still needed to make. Our first ideas for our magazine pitch were for the characters in the video to be standing holding the multi-colored umbrella in an urban environment; we got this initial idea from one of The Cajun Dance Party’s photographs that we liked. We played around with some effects that we thought we could have used. The feedback we received said we had some good ideas for the use of colours, props and costumes we were thinking of using but needed to look at more work from other artists to get even more ideas.

For our rough cut we had the vision of how we wanted it to be produced but still had a lot of gaps missing, which people did realize. Feedback from our peers was good to receive as our video is an indie genre but also the fact that our audience would mainly have been teenagers and to get feedback from them is very important as they would be the ones who enjoy it most.
Our genre characteristics; people thought it was very typically portrayed in an indie style by having young actors, the clothing is typical and promoting artists who where similar clothes, that the narrative and footage is shown well. The feedback back from Lyrics and Visuals; the shot where there’s a birds eye view looking down on me represents the lyrics ‘high up in the sky’ well, also the lyrics ‘climbing up the hill’ are good because we literally are doing this and the use of long shots where I am dancing slowly represents the music and lyrics being slow. These good comments showed how far we have come and the ideas, which have worked. We also received feedback on which improvements we still needed to make; more close ups, the lyrics where there is the word ‘flying’ some people thought we should have more visuals of. Having these comments we then went out and filmed a few more scenes of close up and scenes where there were a few more ‘floaty’ images.
The feedback we received from our teacher for our rough cut was similar; use of mis-en scene worked well to create an image and some good high-angle shots. The feedback that helped us a lot was that we needed a few more close-ups to sell our artist, to experiment with filters and to sort our synching out as a lot was out of place.
By receiving this feedback we knew how other people saw our video and what they thought would make it better.
I do believe from our rough cut to our final cut there is a noticeably good difference. We added new scenes, cut out parts where we couldn’t have anyone singing as the synching was quite a challenge which we had to sort out, used different effects to brighten or darken parts and used a lot of fades so the video flowed well.

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

By being able to use new media technologies we were able to create our video and blog. Our blog has become very important to help show the progress we have made, our initial ideas and have they have changed to become final and set ideas we believe are good. We used ideas and got visions to help form our video and ancillary tasks from the Internet, using Internet sights such as google to search and look up information and youtube so we could watch other artists videos to see how we could create ours. We used google images to get photos of The Cajun Dance Party and multi-coloured umbrellas, which we had on our digipak. Without these resources it would have been a lot harder.

We used the application Final Cut to make our video. All the footage we had filmed on camera was placed on and using Final Cut we edited everything. Cutting so the synching could be exactly in place with the visual was important, creating fades so different scenes flowed into one another and made it easier to watch. We used effects like changing colour to black and white, filters to enhance colours or darken places. We also used it to reverse a scene, at the start where one scene was repeated, we thought it would look more interesting to have a reverse and create a contrast. We also used it to change speed. We fastened the speed where the song gets faster to create a more tense and dramatic scene and also slowed one scene where it changes back to a slower beat and lyrics.

We used Photoshop to create our ancillary tasks. On the DVD cover we fitted everything into a small space, we were able to edit the size of the photos and umbrella. We were able to have writing wherever we thought looked best on the page or overlapping something. We could filter and add effects to the photos to make them seem less real. We used the Internet to get the small images on the back like the barcode and DVD sign. We also used Photoshop for the magazine cover and changing the filter for the photo on that. Without Photoshop we wouldn’t have been able to create such a colorful DVD cover or a different and interesting magazine cover.
 
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