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

Music Video Evaluation-Marianne

Media Evaluation

In 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.

Music Video Evaluation-Sian

Music Video Evaluation Commentary-

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

The song we chose for this project was ‘The Hill, The View and The Lights’. We first spent time researching the band and listening to their music, as it was important that we understood their genre, which was Indie. We used Goodwin’s Theory in order to keep in theme with this genre; Goodwin identified several key features that help differentiate music videos. One of these is that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals and that by using visuals you can help illustrate what the lyrics are trying to show. Nearly all the lyrics in our video relate to the visuals, the key lyrics we chose to visualise in our music video were, ‘gritty, city shadow’ and ‘The Hill, The View and The Lights’ which is also the title of the song. We felt these lyrics were really important and needed to be portrayed in our video. We used a number of scenic shots in order to emphasise a city view, in particular when Josh is on the top of Castle Hill and you can see the city background. Our final shot goes from a close up into a low angle shot of the sky, reflecting the first line of the song ‘high up in the sky’ which is actually how the song starts not ends. The Indie genre often relates the visuals to the lyrics, often having a narrative, so we wanted to make sure we kept this in mind and showed this in our video.
The song’s theme is love and romance and has not only a female, but a male singer as well. It tells a story from both their viewpoints, with a female vocal first and then a male. At the end they sing together as though they are finally together and the ‘light has reappeared’. Hence at the beginning of our video you see Marianne and Josh at similar places but never at the same time, until the end when the music changes and you see them in the same shot.
Goodwin also said there is a relationship between music and visuals. The beginning of the song we chose is slow to start with but, just over half way there is an instrumental, it is quicker than the rest of the song with a faster beat and more unusual in comparison to the rest of the song. To reflect this difference in the song we sped up some of our visuals and made them more unusual to fit the music we also edited shots to make them slower or in reverse. When the instrumental has finished the music returns to a slower melody like before and the visuals are longer and slower to fit this. Each time there is a new verse we changed the scene to a different location and usually changed the costume as well. The video includes both close ups and long shots, with both Marianne and Josh singing into the camera. This is typical of music videos as the artist is typically young and attractive and the viewers want to see them up close. This is an example of voyeurism. Record labels often want their artist to display a strong visual style in there videos, occasionally being iconic and memorable. I think in our video it was Marianne pink prom styled dress with her converse as the two wouldn’t normally wouldn’t be seen together. Intertextuality was another of Goodwin's conventions and through research we felt we had a good idea of what is a typical of an Indie video. This is why we had a strong narrative and made sure the lyrics related to the visuals, to make this clear. We also took time on the costumes to make sure they fitted this style, hence why Josh was dressed in skinny jean a typical indie style and Marianne wore converse. The costume is an important part of the video, as the audience want to be able to relate to the style, which is usually similar to what they will wear. Our main audience was teenagers and young adults so we needed to make sure this was reflected in the costumes as converse are not typically seen on an older generation.
Generally I think our video followed the conventions of Goodwin’s theory and kept in theme with an Indie genre. However I think we added more effects than may have normally been seen in an indie video, as they tend to concentrate more on the narrative. I think when we sped up the people around Marianne in Cambridge that worked particularly well, as well as the slow motion. The only thing I think our music video didn’t have that is quite typical in an indie video was a band or artist playing a musical instrument. I don’t know if this would have worked as well in our video though, so this is why we decided to leave it out, we also weren’t sure if we could get hold of any musical instruments.

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

We knew that we wanted to have a strong visual link between our music video and our ancillary products, so whenever the audience saw the Digipak or the Magazine advert they would immediately relate it back to the video. We thought about what this could be and came up with the idea of using the multi-coloured umbrella featured in our video. It has been one of the key aspects in our video and directs straight back to it, letting the audience connect the two together. The umbrella also represents The Cajun Dance Party, with its bright colours and being slightly unusual, which is what I think the band like to do, i.e. differentiate themselves from other groups, through the use of bright colours and quirkiness.
We decided to put the umbrella on the back of our Digipak as although it is a main feature, linking the Digipak to the video, we thought it was important that the artists should be on the front, with the umbrella being more of a trademark for The Cajun Dance Party. The umbrella is open on the Digipak, as it is at the end of the video, because this is when the song changes and Marianne and Josh have ‘finally met’. The melody is more cheerful as they sing together. We showed this by having shots of the umbrella open, whereas at the beginning the umbrella is closed as they haven’t met and the lyrics are more sorrowful. So we felt is should be open to illustrate the happy end to the song.
As the umbrella is the main feature of the back of the Digipak we decided to write the songs over it, in white writing as we didn’t want to take away from the colours on the umbrella. Other than the ‘The Hill, The View and The Lights’ we made up the rest of the song names. We made these fun and creative having titles such as ‘Teabags’ or ‘Worms on Fire’ again as we felt this showed the style and personality of The Cajun Dance Party. The writing is also in an creative and handwritten style to fit with this, but we kept the background a more pastel colour to add a contrast and show the more serene side of the song. Originally the background was black but it was too harsh with the image of the umbrella and the image on the front and didn’t fit the style of the band as well as the pastel colours, which we also used for the titles.
The front cover of our Digipak is of Marianne. Our initial idea was to have the photo on the top of castle hill, with the city background and at night time for a slightly different effect. However we found some problems with this, such as it would be hard to make out Marianne, we weren’t sure if you would be able to see the city background and finally would it look professional. As we weren’t sure on all of these things we opted for a scenic background to fit with our video. We chose a slightly wooded area and on the day there was really good sunlight, which worked well and made the picture look more professional.
Once we uploaded the photo into Photoshop, we thought we should edit the image to make it more interesting, we added different effects and in the end chose an artistic feel to represent the video and The Cajun Dance Party. However it was still missing something, so we decided to take the image but triple it adding a different effect to each but still keeping in theme with the artistic feel. I think this reflected the Indie genre in the video as we tried to make sure everything we did kept within this style and overall I am very pleased with the outcome. I think it looks professional and represents The Cajun Dance party.
Our Magazine Advert had a simpler style and instead we opted for a more edgy style by just having a brick wall as the background and Marianne leaning against it. This reflected the more ‘urban’ area of the video. We changed the picture into black and white as we thought this fitted with the style of the picture. We then had ‘The Cajun Dance Party’ and the song title, ‘The Hill, The View and The Lights’ in white and the information underneath in red.
We did incur quite a few problems with the Magazine Advert, more so than the Digipak. The first one was that we had planned to have both Marianne and Josh in the Advert, but had a problem with josh making the photo shoot. We also wanted to add an image onto the wall, either the umbrella again or a sunflower to add a contrast of colour, but we couldn’t find the right image or get hold of a photo. I do feel this would have made the advert more interest as the video had so many colours, it would have related better to it. Therefore I am quite disappointed with the Magazine Advert and do felt it could have been more representative of the band and our video.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The feedback we received helped us to improve and develop our video. It meant we had an opinion from others, most of whom were seventeen to eighteen and were the targeted audience of the genre of video we were making. It was really useful to see other people’s viewpoints that maybe we had missed. We received feedback on our rough cut, so we could make changes before our Final cut and on our pitch and blog, which were our first initial ideas on the video.
The feedback we received from our pitch and blog was that it is good and there are clear links in our initial developmental stage between our music promo video and our ancillary products, also the contrast between locations and costumes, for example the pink ball gown. The criticism we received from this was that we were lacking visual representations of our influences. From this we added more images to our costume list, to give an exact idea of what style the Marianne and Josh should have. We also did more research on bands and music that had influenced our ideas for our video. This was really helpful, as not only could we analyse in more detail the influences we had, but we also gained further ideas. We got a lot of inspiration from The Cajun Dance Party themselves, as we learnt that they liked to use bright colours, scenic settings and in one of their videos- ‘Amylase’, used a animated, cartoon style in the second half of the video. We were originally going to use animations in our music video, so this was really useful to watch and see how they did this. The setting of this video was again useful, because the beginning is in a field. We knew from the beginning we wanted to have some of our shots in a field and then a contrast to more urban areas, to fit the second half of the song. So we saw how we could make this look effective and more interesting, as the female vocalist has a prop; flowers, this is how we can across the idea to use the multi-coloured umbrella.
Our feedback from our Rough cut was also good and this was probably the most constructive feedback. We knew we had a lot of areas that needed work and there were quite a few gaps we still had to fill, but weren’t sure what they needed. From the feedback we learnt that we needed more close up shots of Marianne and Josh, more effects to enhance our footage and to correction some of the synching.
After this feedback we added more close ups of Marianne, which also helped to fill our gaps. Unfortunately we couldn’t any more of Josh as he was unavailable for the time we had. We then worked on adding effects such as, putting shots in reverse, fades and slowing shots down and speeding them up. Finally we sorting the synching out at as best we could, however we did face some problems as some areas we couldn’t correct due to how the lyrics were sung.
This feedback definitely helped us to improve our video, in that it proved that the overall concept had worked successfully, but identified one or two techniques and visuals that we could to refine the overall production. This brought a higher quality finish to our video and a better representation of what a music video should be like.

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

The main technologies we used were Final cut, Photoshop and our blog. All of these helped us to create a professional and creative music video.
Final cut was the most important technology we used, as it helped us to edit and modify our video. We used it to correct the synching in our video, add effects and condense our footage down to our final three minutes. It meant we could make our shots lighter to match others and cut and paste shots, as we did at the beginning of our video, with the swing and the umbrella. I think the most effective edit we used was to reverse certain shots, such as Marianne jumping off the swing and her picking the petals of a flower. The shots were average before, but when reversed fitted better with the music and made the video more interesting. We used the blog to add all our research from the internet, to write down our planning stages and any ideas we had. This helped a lot as it meant we could use research from other sites, such as Google or YouTube and then import the information on to the blog. It also meant we had a really precise planning schedule, which made shooting on the day so much easier as we knew what we had to do. I think this is why we were able to get all the footage we wanted and extra. This meant we had a variety of different shots and were able to cut,edit and replace shots to improve our video.
We added images and videos to our blog to emphasise key points and features of our video and to make it more interesting to read.
We didn't use Photoshop as much as the others, however it was still an important technology as it helped us to create our Magazine Advert and Digipak, as we could import pictures and edit them to create the look of professional ancillary products. These may not have been as important as the video, but in real life help to promote a new song, so need to be effective in order to do this. What I particularly like about Photoshop was all the effects that were available. We used a various numbers of effects in our video and wanted to do the same with our ancillary products. There were many to choose from so I felt we could get the look we wanted. I also did the initial idea for our Digipak in Photoshop, were I edited an original image from The Cajun Dance party. I added a neon-glow effect which I think worked well and gave the image a totally different effect. I am not sure after producing the video that this was the right image for the Digipak; however it showed how you can edited images to get the desired effect you want.
I think due to all of these technolgies we were able to further our Music video, we used them for our AS Media, however now that we are also able to use them to a higher standard we can continue to develop our product and our ideas.

Overall I am really pleased with our music video, there our areas that if we did it again; for example our Magazine Advert and my commentary I think could have been to a higher standard, However I think we have improved a lot since AS level and we have shown this in our work.

Music Video Evaluation Commentary Final- Naomi

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

Once we had chosen our track for the project, "the hill, the view and the lights" it was important that we understood both the track and the bands genre, which in this case was Indie. To help us understand the Indie genre with confidence we used the Goodwin's theory to guide us. Goodwin's theory included the five main conventions in which a music video is made by.

The first convention is Notions of looking (such as using an direct gaze in our music video), which leads into looking at the generic conventions. To help us to be familiar with generic conventions in Indie music videos we researched a variety on you tube. Our results led us to recognizing that most commonly in Indie music videos young people (students, both male and female) are either apart of the band or are used to represent both the song and the band, this helped us to have a clear idea of the kind of person we would like to represent the song in our music video : a teenage girl. This also allowed us to look into costume (here introducing mise en scene), we noticed a trend in which was a quite contrasted fashion sense such as formal wear contrasting with "converses" keeping the style aesthetically appealing but still keeping a young, casual vibe. Leading us to get an image of having a female singer in a bright pink prom dress with very contrasting converses. Also, we looked carefully into obvious and repetitive locations used in Indie music videos, these normally are landscapes such as : fields, forests and busy cities (note that we noticed these trends in the Cajun Dance Party music videos). So using this knowledge we decided to use an open field, a forest and a shot in the city, and of course we also included a hill in some of our shots as this represented the song title well. I feel we researched well into looking at the expected mise en scene in previous Indie music videos, using the internet for websites such as you tube, the cajun dance parties myspace and google images; so we were able to portray our music video being in the Indie genre well. We also reflected the Indie type locations and costumes in our Ancillary products, by having one image of the main singer in the woods, and another in front of a calm, relaxed brick wall.

Intertextuality is another of Goodwin's conventions. Here we looked at trends and styles in established Indie music video, we also looked at female vocalist videos such as Beyonce, to have an idea of different appealing affects and ideas of location and contrast. We noticed that a lot of Indie music videos include a narrative, that is very obvious to the audience, they seem very natural and are the lyrics and the shots are very open to the audience - allowing the audience to be able to see and feel the emotions in which the band is trying to portray. Supporting this statement is that the person used in the music video is mostly always singing directly at the audience to the camera, drawing them in and making them feel apart of the situation that is presented in the music video. This almost makes the music video seem like a miniature film. Looking into colors and other themes myself and the group have noticed that bright colors are used a lot in front of a quite calm, relaxed background with very pastel, light colors - allowing the singers to stand out well. Again this supports my idea of Indie music videos being very contrasting, which may also be portrayed as being quite random and confusing which may perhaps reflect a teenagers life or thoughts. We have reflected this convention well in our own music video and ancillary products, having our singer in a bright prom dress in quite calm landscapes. We also included a lot of shot's in our music video that the singer was directly singing to the camera, again in our DVD cover the main image the singer is looking directly at the camera - creating an obvious link between all our products and other Indie media products.

Finally, lyrics and visuals/music and visuals is another of Goodwin's conventions that we had used to help us produce our music video. Looking at different Indie music videos we noticed a trend that a they most normally always had a strong narrative that linked well to the lyrics in the song. To help us to make sure we had strong links between the lyrics and the visuals we went through the actual lyrics of the song and highlighted all of the key words that we would use to visualize in our video, (a strong example of this is the multiple shot's of a hill and a variety of view shots, which was a effective link between lyrics and visuals as the song title is : "The Hill the View and the Lights). If we were to make our lyrics and visuals more an obvious link I feel having more sky shots would be appropriate and maybe even different types of skies e.g. sun, rain and clouds.

We also thought carefully about the Music and Video links in our music video. The majority of the music video is quite a slow, calm beat so we wanted to have quite long shot's with quite slow action, for example when the female vocalist is walking under the tree with the umbrella. We felt it would be quite random to have fast shots that seemed to busy. So we kept the majority of the shots really calm and relaxed, but made sure we had a variety of different locations and shot types to maintain the audiences attention. However about half way through the song, the music starts to become quite upbeat and sounds almost a little out of control. In this case we felt it was necessary to add some footage of our vocalists seeming a bit more "crazy" and having a lot more fun. So we added a lot shorter clips that we also had speeded up to emphasis the up beat tempo of the song. We had a lot of shots of the female vocalist running around in the leafs; creating the sense of the both the music video and the song becoming slightly out of control. As we choose a song in the Indie genre, we tried to give the impression to our audience that they are young, and do have fun and get a little out of control at times.

We looked carefully at costume and what age Indie is aimed at. We decided that the Indie genre is most targeted at a teenage audience, as many Indie bands are young adults themselves. What also helped us to realise this is the costume, as for example the Cajun Dance Party all wear quite preppy clothes such as; converses. They also wear "prom" clothes, but to keep it appealing to their audience they have contrasted ball dresses and suits well with accessories such as; converses. So we took on this idea, and also thought carefully about using bright colors, which appealing to our teenage audience.

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

In order to make sure that both our music video and the ancillary products linked together well as a whole we thought carefully about what we could use as a strong identification in each of the products, so that our audience would recognise them to be either made by the same production team or are used to represent the same band; The Cajun Dance Party. To achieve this we thought a prop would be quite an effective and easily recognizable technique, in the end we decided to use a large multi-coloured umbrella - which we got the idea from a current Cajun Dance Party photograph.

In the music video we made sure that we had enough shots of the umbrella (which we decided to use as our visual motif) throughout the timeline. So that the umbrella didn’t become the main attraction to the music video (as this would be quite unsatisfying) we decided that through about 2/3's of the video we would have only shots of the umbrella closed; then once the vocalist had finally met, we would show a majority of shots of the umbrella open. In a sense we used the umbrella to as a metaphor indicate and help guide the narrative; when the two vocalists were "looking for their love" the umbrella would be closed - giving a sense of closure and loneliness. Then once the two had finally met (the scene on top of the hill) we would suddenly use a variety of shots of the umbrella open - giving a much happier vibe.

After the audience had seen the music video they would automatically acknowledge that the umbrella is almost a trademark of the Cajun Dance Party products. So when it came to thinking about how we will make sure our two ancillary products would coincide well with the music video we decided that it would be so recognizable to the audience if we included somewhere an umbrella. On the DVD cover we decided to put a large colourful umbrella (the same as the one used in the music video) on the back, where all of the track list would be listed and other information. We used Photoshop to help us enhance the colours on the umbrella, making it even more outstanding and immediately grabbing the audiences attention. We also used an "paint" effect, making it seem more hand-drawn reflecting the teenage style; a little more messy and unorganized. We also thought carefully about font style, again we went for a "hand written" style (for the same reasons). We put the text in quite bright colours, which were all the same as the ones of the umbrella, keeping it quite organized so it didn't look too unprofessional. We also thought carefully about location, so we decided to shoot the photographic image in a forest, as we use Unfortunately, due to the course being quite time consuming we wasn’t able to spend a lot of time on our magazine cover. So I am not very pleased with our final. I feel it needs a lot more information, more bright colors and most importantly needs a image of an umbrella, as this is what we were using to link all our products together. Our final magazine cover in my opinion doesn’t really represent our production teams work or the band, so it wouldn’t be very recognizable to the audience. The only aspects that do link to our other ancillary product is the font style and having the same vocalist on the front. We also used an "urban" background, which relates to the city shots in the music video.

Overall I believe we did link our products well together, and our work would be easily recognizable by our audience. I also feel that we thought carefully about all our aspects in each of the products and represented the Indie style appropriately. I feel the only disadvantage to use is the magazine cover, as this doesn’t link together with our other two products, and I also feel it looks unprofessional. I feel we really represented our artist well and made sure they both aesthetically suited in the indie genre, such as having young vocalists helps our relate to our audience (as our target market is young adults) and also by costume, as a lot of young adults are seen wearing similar clothes today. These elements all help our audience to connect and interact more with our artists.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In my opinion feedback is what helped us to keep making improvements in our work and make our three products much more awarding than they were before we took on advice. We received feedback for both our pitch and our rough-cut music video.
Getting the feedback for our pitch helped us to address any problems we may have and think of alternative ideas if needed. The majority of our feedback was positive we were given comments such as ; "We showed good ideas for links between the music video and the ancillary products","The idea of contrasting colors and outfits seems like an interesting and effective idea", finally "we presented a clear understanding of what we wanted to achieve". This was really encouraging feedback to receive as it made us feel positive about our ideas and felt that if we worked hard we could come out with a high quality, appealing music video. However we did receive some advice in order to help organize our project better - resulting in a more professional music video; "We should think about writing shot lists", and also "props and costumes list to make sure that we can create this contrasting style we are visualizing". So we took on this advice and thought about what types of costume we would like to use in our music video, we also thought very carefully about props and if they were available to us. This feedback in conclusion helped us to be more organized, so that on the day of shooting we were able to have a more pleasant time, feeling in control and making sure that we would come out with the music video we had once planned.

Once we had made our rough cut, it was important that we got a variety of different feedback, both negative and positive to allow us to be able to adapt our ideas, improve areas and overall make a more successful music video. We got feedback from both our teacher and our class mates. Some of the feedback from our teacher included; The selection of your mise-en-scene in terms of the costume work well to create a strong star image - particularly for the female vocalist, more close-ups are necessary in order to "sell" our artist, I loved the high angled shot, it is a shame that there isn’t any more - maybe this would be something to think about including, The syncing is still slightly delayed which is quite distracting, Experimenting with filters will help to make the male vocalist shots more brighter - as the female vocalist is quite bright and outstanding in contrast. I feel the feedback was most helpful from our teacher, as she allowed us to outline our weaknesses so that we could address them. We decided that we did need more close ups, as it is important that we were able to sell the artist to our audience, so we managed to successfully get a few more close up shot's of the female vocalist - unfortunately we couldn’t shoot anymore of the male vocalist due to contact. I feel this helped us to provide a variety of different shots, so the product didn’t consist of only long shots, which was be quite bland. Unfortunately our syncing still isn’t perfect, this was due to bad organization - as we wasn’t able to have the track with us on the day of shooting, meaning that our vocalists had to mime by memory (resulting in parts of our music video being out of sync). We did however edit a lot more to get it to an reasonable standard, we felt the majority of the music video that was most out of sync was the male vocalist parts, so unfortunately we had to remove some of these shot's and replace them with some female vocalist shots without any miming included. It was quite disappointing that we couldnt re-shoot the male vocalist parts (this was due to time consumption). For the same reasons, we also couldnt shoot anymore high angled shots, as we was not able to get to our previous location.

Finally, we got a variety of different types of feedback from a sample group of a possible audience. Some of the positive feedback we received was; The music video portrays that of a typical Indie music video with key aspects such as younger actors being used, The clothing that they have choose represents Indie and the Indie genre, it follows the characteristics that Indie music videos generally show a narrative, The lyrics fit the visuals well for example when they are saying high up in the sky it is a high angle shot taken, the shots where the lead singer is dancing freely around the countryside and in a field reflects the timbre of the music and finally the use of long shots exaggerates the 'floaty' and playful elements of the song. I was particularly pleased with all the positive feedback we received, as we felt we had achieved what we had planned to do. I’m happy that people felt we represented the Indie genre well, as this was a key skill to had included in our project. Also because we spent a lot of time making sure the -costumes were exactly how we wanted them to be portrayed, so it was quite rewarding to encouraging feedback. Fortunately, The only negative feedback we received from the students was; Have more visuals associated with flying as the lyric about flying is repeated constantly through the song. We felt this was quite a true statement, but we was unable to think of how we could portray flying, as we cant physically make our vocalists fly - so unfortunately we could not address this problem.

I’m exceptionally happy with this feedback, as it shows we took on the advice and feedback once before given for the pitch, and managed to please everyone aesthetically with the final cut of our music video product.

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

New media technologies played an significant role in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages. As without it, our project wouldn’t be possible and our products would not be at their best.

The key new media technology to the research and planning sections of the project was the internet. We used a “blog” on the internet to present all our ideas and plans, using other websites such as You tube, Google and Wikipedia to do any type of research; from images to emailing the Cajun dance party through my space. Having the internet allowed us to be able to visit different websites to find out all the different types of information we needed to know, we used You tube quite frequently so we could look at different Indie artists music videos to help us get inspiration. We also used Google images to help us find examples of different artists DVD covers and magazine covers, so we had an idea of what people would expect from them, making sure we included all of the key elements such as; title, release date, track list and band name.

Final cut express was one of the most important new media technologies that we used to produce our music video. We used Final cut express mainly edit our footage. As without doing this our music video would be very basic including; bad syncing, cut jumps, bad lighting and with no transactions or effects. Final cut express allowed us to be able to add filters to the shots of the male vocalist, as we decided that he was too dull in comparison to the shots with the female vocalist. We also added a lot of fading transactions making the whole sequence seem a lot more smoother and professional. We also speeded up certain clips wear the tempo of the music became a slot more faster, we even had some shots that we had reversed when the female vocalist is walking in the trees and picking the flower petals off - which we felt looked quite interesting. Photoshop was what we used to construct both our magazine and DVD cover. We decided to use an “paintbrush” effect on the photographic images, to give it a feel of casualness (reflecting the teenage style), we also thought carefully about colours, using quite bright ones which all were taken from the colours of the umbrella. Photoshop allowed us to be able to play around with different effects, styles and colours, giving us an more professional aesthetic. For the evaluation I looked at examples of different established directors commentarys for their music videos, to get inspiration for our own.

In conclusion I am happy with how our music video has progressed, I feel we used final cut well with editing, making it look at a proffesional standard. I feel what made our music video so sucsessful was by included a variety of different shot types and locations. If I were to do it again, i would of suggested we had been more organized about the most obvious factors i.e having the track on the day. I also would of been more time wary and spent more time on the ancillary products, especially the magazine cover. If i was able to of spent my own time on the magazine cover (as i was not able to attend this lesson) I would of added more affects, color, made sure there was an umbrella image and had a lot of more information.

Final Magazine Cover

Unfortunately, we wern't able to spend a lot of time on the magazine cover. This resulted with having a quite blande design, including not enough information and lack of effects. We still feel though that this links in with our other products and has the 'urban' background, which links to the second part of the song, whereas the Digipak links more to the first half.

Final Digipak

We are really happy with how our final Digipak cover has turned out. We feel we linked this product well with the music video, allowing us to have obvious visual representation to both our band, the production team and our audience.

Cajun Dance Party

This is the Cajun Dance Party's MySpace- www.myspace.com/cajundanceparty and on it there is information about the band, current songs and upcoming tours etc.
There record label is XL recordings and there type of label is indie. We used this for communication with them, of which we emailed them to present our different ideas to get some feedback. Unfortunately they have not replied to us yet. It would be really interesting and benefital to get feedback from them and to get some advice.

Influences for magazine ad and digipak

Our influences for this video have been mainly from the Cajun dance party as in some of their photos they used an umbrella, so we felt we should keep in context with their style. They shot one of their videos in a field which is where we got our initial idea to shoot some shots for the video in a field.
In their Magazine Adverts and photo shoots they always wear bright clothes and have an indie style which fits with their music, so we will keep the same style for the album and magazine advert.
Similar to this image which also has a city/street backround.

Digipak Planning and Magazine AD

Image Ideas

As the digipak image will be promoting the song, it is important that the main image relates well to the song, and even better song title. In our case the song title is "The Hill, The View & The Lights", so we will be using this to help us design a suitable image. Our initial first idea was to have both the male and female character on top of a hill (which is the same one used in the music video) with the city view behind them. To make this slightly different to the shoot in the music video we are hopefully going to do the images at night, which would look quite attractive with the city lights glowing in the background. We are thinking that the artists will wear the same costumes as in the video, however we are thinking to maybe have the male vocal in a more brighter outfit, as the female is quite dominating.
On the inside we were thinking of just having an image of an umbrella because that is the main feature of our video and will link well.

Costume: Marianne will be wearing the pink dress from the video and black converse, josh will wear something bright and quite formal as well.

Props: Umbrella, light.

Actors: Marianne and Josh.


Our idea for the Magazine AD

we think it should be in an backstreet alley in Cambridge in 'the gritty city' down an alleyway again with the umbrella, but Marianne and josh will be quite light with a darker background. Also a sunflower or flower like in the video.

Costume: Marianne will be wearing another indie styled dress, not as bright as the pink on in the video and accessories that will go with the outfit. Josh will be wearing a similar style with skinny jeans and a shirt.

Props: flower, light, umbrella.

Models/Actors: Josh and Marianne.

Analysis of Magazine AD

Front of Magazine advert: At the top there is the name of the band in bold silver which is 'Spindal Top', underneath is a picture of the band with guitars and what looks like them playing live. At the side is amplifiers and one says limited edition Marshall amp. Underneath it shows two 'Spinal Top' DVDs that are available, what the box set includes and when it will be released and where you can get it from. The back round is also an amplifier and it is all in keeping with the rock theme.

Filming and Editing Evaluation (Two)

Overall i feel the filming went well, we planned out locations and time concluding in a well organized shoot. I feel our video turned out at a good standard, as we were able to use a variety of different locations and costumes, making it more appealing and maintaing the audiences attention. We managed to keep our locations in a near by area, so we wouldn't waste time traveling to different sets, this meant that we completed our filming in a very relaxed manor. I think the weather was quite decent as well, as we had a lot of shots near or under trees it was beneficial to have the autumn leaves fallen on the grass, this allowed us to have very colorful shots with unique colors.

However, no filming goes perfectly to plan. As we spent a lot of time focusing on planning costumes, props and locations we forgot about the basic plans that needed to be thought out leading to forgetting to have the actual music playing with us. This made the filming harder as we wasn't too sure of the paste of which the lyrics were being sung, resulting us with some out of sync scenes. If i had time to shoot some more shot's i wad reshoot the male scenes, and maybe have some more "energetic" ones.

Editing went quite well, we worked at a good paste allowing us time to make our music video as professional as possible. I'm happy with how we used transactions effectively, hiding any jump's, and making the music video overall seem much more smoother and connected. I feel using slow motion and reverse techniques allowed use to show of our final cut skills, along with changing the contrast/brightness of appropriate shots. I feel without our skills in final cut our music video would not be at a high enough standard and would not be acceptable, as we are trying to create an professional music video.

Naomi Erskine

Analysis of CD

Front: has an artistic themed front cover which is in a imaginative way, with images of boats and bridges, however it is all slightly out of proportion and the colour is quite old fashioned. The name of the band Delays is also on the front at the left hand side and the album name Faded Seaside glamour is underneath, so the back round fits with the album name.

Inside: On the left is half a picture similar to the front and has been torn almost in half and in the right hand side where the rest of the picture should be in the album songs on the CD. On the right hand side on the CD with again the name of the Artist and the album name, it is plain silver and the writing in white, it then fold out to another CD/DVD that is white with silver writing and in the middle is a plain orange back round with a list of what is on the DVD, such as a promo video and songs that were live.

Back: Is again an orange back round and then a pencil sketch of a boat with pencil writing on as well. The tracks on the album are then listed again in white writing and in the bottom right hand is a bar code, a website, the record label.

Ancillary Product Conventions

Magazine AD

The conventions that must be expected of on a magazine AD are :

To include the function, which is to promote the artist and the song, leading to sales.

The visual conventions are to have an eye catching image, most commonly of the artist/band or a visual image that links to something specific in the music video. The magazine must include the artist's name, the song title, release date, where the song is available and the record label. Magazines come in different varieties if styles, some may include websites (the artists myspace or official website) and reviews.

Digipak

Digi paks were designed to attract the consumer to buying the CD rather than downloading. Conventions such as : being limited addition, posters, bonus tracks, live recorded footage of live performances, B sides, covers, rare songs and screen shoots of actual footage from music video all help to attract the audience. Digi paks must include track listings and ratings, also if the song includes explicit lyrics this must be stated by the logo. Having all these conventions make it obvious to the consumer the benefits to buying a digipak over just downloading the song.

Analysis of Digipak

Madonna Digipak-
Front: Picture of the artist-Madonna in a cowboy themed which links to the them of one of her songs.
Her name and the record label which is Maverick/Warner bros and it stands out as it is also still in a western style.
Then it has a parental advisory at the bottom left hand corner and it states that it is a DVD single.

Spine: Artists name and DVD single again.

Inside the digipak: picture of a guitar with a back of straw and the word music with 5 stars. Then on the right hand side a CD with an M written on and a horse shoe and clover, so still in keeping with the western them all the way through behind the CD the picture is of a pink cowboy hat on the same backdrop of straw.

The back cover: is the same with the pink hat and straw, then it says who the DVD is produced and directed by and the icon which is the official Madonna fan club. Logos which is the Warner brothers and Warner music. On the left hand side at the bottom the bar code various information about the DVD such as the picture format, disc formation ,the duration and the language of the DVD.

A leaflet: this is inside the digipak and is advertising other artists and their digipaks.

Magazine Image Ideas

A shot which I would consider using for our magazine cover would be right at the end where Josh and I are sitting on the punt. You can see a low angle shot of us where we are holding the umbrella open over us then it moves up to a high angle shot towards the sky. This would be effective because we are both in the picture and and shows the umbrella which is a key feature. Its quite meaningful because we are both looking up towards the sky, which relates to the lyrics 'high up in the sky', and they are finally together. The colours of the umbrella are good because it fits in with the theme of what The Cajun Dance party use.

Marianne Oliver

The shot I think would be good for a magazine cover is when Marianne and Josh are on the steps of the hill, with the umbrella. This is because it shows the hill, which is referred to in the song and the the umbrella which is a key feature in our video. They are also walking down the hill together symbolising they have finally met, also shown by the umbrella being open. This is a significant moment in the video as they have finally met. This shot would show the theme and genre of our video, which is indie and the bright colours of the umbrella would contrast with the hill and 'the view'. If this was edited I think it could make quite an eye catching shot, that would engage the audience and attract them to buy the single/album.

Sian Watkins

Final Cut (Low Quality Version)

Overall we feel that our final cut is a high standard and we have put in a lot of time and effort in to this project. After editing, adding transitions, reversing scenes and having slow motion scenes we feel that it has helped to show our potential in media studies. I think our project looks more professional due to editing in final cut and good visuals.

Both the locations and the costumes represent our genre well following the indie style. As our song overall has a slow pace we made sure that we had a variety of different shot types, locations and costumes, which resulted in a more interesting music video.

However, if we were to have more time on the project we would of re-shot some of the male vocals as some of these are out of sync. We have tried to edit this out as much as possible, but unfortunately we didn't want to remove all of the shots out of Josh, as their is quite a lot of male vocals in the song and we wanted to have him singing in most of them.

Filming and Editing Evaluation

The filming went well, we took the camera out on a Saturday and managed to complete all the filming apart from a few little bits, which we may need to use the camera for again, but timing wasn’t a problem. The locations that we decided on were all quite close together so it wasn’t hard to reach them. The props and outfits that we had decided on fitted perfectly with our genre of music video. The problems that we had were that we didn’t have the song with us on either a phone or ipod, as none of us were able to find it or download it, so I printed out the lyrics but as we were miming in most parts in our video we just had to remember how the song went, but it turned out ok in the end. The footage that we ended up with we were all pleased with.

We had all realised that the editing is going to be hard with the song that we have chosen and the way we want our video to look, some videos don’t have any miming in but in our video this is the main occurrence, so editing will be quite hard with the cutting and putting the miming in the exact right places and time, it may be an issue but our last couple lessons have gone ok, we will just have to work very hard.

Marianne Oliver

Feedback Evaluation

After reading through both the students and our teachers feedback as a group we are quite happy with out response and have taken some good advice. Some of the advice we have mainly taken on board is to have a few more shots relating to "flying" as this is one of the main words in the lyrics. We are also going to consider doing more high angle shots as this seems to be the preferred shot type. As some of our shots are out of sync with the music we will re shoot a few different shoots that could replace the current shots. As we have discovered a lot of the out of sync shoots are from the male parts we may have to consider just filming random shots as it may not be possible to re shoot these, we are thinking to maybe include some instruments.

We will make sure that we take out the audio when we submit our final cut. We are going to re shoot next week as well as a lot of editing to help improve our music video.

Teacher Rough Cut Feedback

Representation of Artist Feedback:

The selection of your mise-en-scene in terms of the costume work well to create a strong star image, particularly for the female vocalist.

There are some lovely shots of your female singer but more close-ups are definitely necessary, of both the male and female singers, in order to 'sell' your artist.

General Feedback:
I loved the high angle shot, it's a shame there weren't more of them.
You must take your production sound out ASAP as it is extremely distracting.
Also your synching is slightly out in places, this needs work.
You might also want to experiment with some filters to enhance your footage, think about colour changes and also speed changes and possibly reversing some sections...

This has the potential to be great, it just needs a bit more work. Keep going.

Feedback From Peers

Genre Characteristics

Q1-07:

The music video portrays that of a typical Indie music video with key aspects such as younger actors being used. The Indie genre is generally referred to as something that is linked to youth and the lives of the under 25 individual. Also the clothing that they have chosen is of the indie style and as the indie genre has become more popular, you see more younger adults wearing these clothes in real life. Another good point to their work is that it follows the characteristics that indie music videos generally show a narrative or footage of the members of the band and they have clearly chosen the first option and it works well.

Lyrics and Visuals

Q1-10:

Lyrics and Visuals compliment especially at the beginning of the song - 'high up in the sky'. There is also a created image that could be carried on to promote the artists, i.e the pink dress and umbrella which is well done. Reminds us of the costume style of Lilly Allen

Lyrics and visuals

Q1-11:

- The lyrics fit the visuals well for example when they are saying high up in the sky it is a high angle shot taken from a tree down on to the singer. Also there are the lyrics about climbing up a hill and they literally do this at castle hill in Cambridge.

Improvements:
Have more visuals associated with flying as the lyric about flying is repeated constantly through the song.

Music and visuals

Q1-12:

the shots where the lead singer is dancing freely around the countryside and in a field reflects the timbre of the music.
- the use of long shots exaggerates the 'floaty' and playful elements of the song.

Filming and Editing Evaluation- Sian

Our filming and editing over went well, however we did have some problems on the day of shooting. One was that it was cloudy, where as we had hope it would be sunnier with more of a blue sky. We also had the lyrics to the song but we didn't have the music, meaning it was harder to remember how the song went so we have now had more problems editing and trying to make the singing in sync with the music.

We tried to stick to our storyboard and a lot of the locations are the same however we did have to change somethings such as the alleyway as we didn't have as much time as we thought but we still managed to use a small path under a bridge, which created a similar effect and we noticed this was quite dark anyways so it may have been hard to see the artist let alone see what he was singing, which is also why we used this shot but not when the male was singing as you couldn't see.

We managed to get a tall multi-coloured umbrella which was good as it is a key feature in our video and we used it in most of the scenes, which i think helps to link the female and male singing together which is what we wanted as well as the same locations, but at different times. The costumes also worked well, especially the pink prom dress with the black converse it was a good contrast and seemed to fit the song well and what josh was wearing worked also worked with the style of the video.

The editing has taken longer than we originally thought, just to make sure everything is still in the right place and in sync and there are still quite a few gaps in the video, which we think may mean we have may to re-shoot some other scenes, maybe at a different location just to give some more variety as we still have a lot of missing gaps and time in the video.

We still have a lot of editing to do as we haven't even started on the effects yet, which is also a main feature in our video and there are somethings that may need to be changed, but we have a lot of footage which has been good and it means there are lots of different scenes which is what we wanted.

We have to sort out the gaps in our video, which may mean re-shooting some shots espicially where the miming is out of sync with the music, the effects still need to be done and we need to take the audio out of our video for when we do final cut.

Rough cut

Last years music videos

We looked at some of last years music videos to compare on what our ideas are and what we are planning to film.

The music video below has a lot of nature involved, like in the forest and down by the river, which our video is going to have. The genre is similar with the indie/rock theme.

http://www.youtube.com/longroadmediastudies#p%2Fc%2F898D7908F104924A%2F36%2FDxdrJ_ZYj2g

The video below here is one of the best we looked at, they used a variety of shots, and different locations which we also want to achieve:

http://www.youtube.com/longroadmediastudies#p/c/898D7908F104924A/27/HJSL2wmS9To

Props and Costumes list

-Prom Dress

-Black Converse

-Red Rose

-Indie outfit

-Multicolored Umbrella

-Suit Jacket

-High tops

-Sunglasses

-Wellies

-Casual outfit

Mood Board

It is always an effective way to design a mood board when trying to visualize ideas. It also helps to present to others general ideas in a more simplier way. Our mood board shows most of the things we want to include in our video such as the props: a multi-coloured umbrella and a rose, The location: a field, an a alleyway, a woods, a park and a punt. The costumes: An indie male artist and a female artist dressed in an alternative indie prom dress with black converse. Finally a heart which represents what the song as it is about romance and love.