Research; 3rd evaluation analysis

As I had looked at a previous evaluation that was made on Prezi, I really liked the idea of the website and how it made the presentation look. Ruby and I have planned to use Prezi in our evaluation, but to get some practise on how it works and the kinds of things it can do I've decided to create this evaluation analysis on Prezi, I think this will give me some tips and ideas prior to our evaluation!

Researchl; past evaluation analysis

As Ruby and I will soon be creating our evaluation, I am going to be looking at and analysing 3 past student's evaluations!

Here's the first evaluation I will be looking at;



Good points:

click here for good points pt.1!
(all my points wouldn't fit on one cute koala so I've had to make two!)
click here for good points pt.2!

Bad points:

click here for bad points pt.1

click here for bad points pt.2

Overall this is a really good evaluation - it kept my attention the whole time and the use of technology was shown well!

Update; ancillary tasks!

For the last 2 days I have been working on the CD sleeve! 

I've changed the layout of the sleeve now and will now be going with a slightly simpler one due to time restrictions and also Ruby and I agreed we can make it more interesting with this layout.

On photoshop I have edited the four photos of both Amber and Max that we want to use and they are looking really good! The only problem I have is that the four photos look very similar in terms of editing, I think I'm going to overcome this by trying out different techniques as the ones i've tried so far don't make it look much better! Black and white doesn't make it look that nice as it's bland and doesn't go with the theme of the sleeve. 

I've also made a small very brief prototype to work from, obviously this is a very brief post as I plan to do an entire post on the editing of my photos this weekend. Then I will create a post on the process of my CD sleeve. 

Planning; cd sleeve

So we're back from the christmas holidays and ready to finish both our video and ancillary tasks! 

Ok so I need to create the CD sleeve which I've already done a post on and also I've already posted about my research into existing CD sleeves. 

So I had done a draft sleeve on my laptop but unfortunately a lot of my documents have been wiped recently including that. I'm not too fussed as I think I can probably recreate it quite easily but I will be doing all photoshop stuff on the school computers from now on as I'm scared incase it happens again...


Here's my little to do list for the CD sleeve;

• Upload photo shoot photos onto school computers 
• Recreate basic CD sleeve on school computers
• Edit photo's ready to insert into the CD sleeve
• Add photos and logos/barcodes into CD sleeve
• Print off, put together
• Redo any bits that didn't look good.
• Make final!

Lesson update; continued editing!

Continued to edit today - aaaannnndddd luckily we actually finished putting all of our available footage in the right places! This is a big step for us as we've found the editing has been taking longer than we thought it would - although we haven't added any effects onto the footage, all the footage we have is in the right place.

I have to admit we're not too happy with our music video and feel due to being rushed because of various situations our footage is nowhere near as good as it could be. This is a shame but of course a learning curve!

Now we will go through each clip and add any effects or distort/change the clip as much as we need too. Apart from that we just need to continue with ancillary tasks!

I will put up our first draft of the music video ASAP!

Lesson update!

Today my update is in the form of a wonderful powerpoint!

Lesson update; editing

click here!

We've started editing!

At last we've been able to start editing!
Today Ruby and I decided that we wanted to just start putting all the clips in order and making them the correct lengths instead of editing colours and adding effects etc.
I've made a little comic strip for you to look at instead of reading it off the page, unfortunately it wont link straight into the page so i've had to link it :(

my comic strip!

I'm so happy with what we did today and we can carry on with editing every lesson from now on, when we learn some more final cut techniques I think we will be able to work a lot faster and so get through the editing stage a lot quicker!!

Lesson update; filming!

I've been really unwell for the last few days, however I still attended filming yaaaay!

So we didn't get off to a brilliant start, but once we got started we were up and running!

Ruby has already done a group post on our filming however I thought i'd just add one of my own to add anything.

Working with extras and numerous cast is always difficult as you have to organize them however trying to organize our extras today was very difficult and we had a lot less extras than we initially wanted too. This wasn't a massive problem as we were able to reuse extras for shots due to the fact that the extras aren't certain characters.

Also it was slightly aggravating that both the extras and main didn't wear the agreed costume which is every so slightly annoying but these are things that aren't crucial to the end product. 

We also didn't get as much filming done as we initially wanted - we thought we would be able to get everything that we needed filmed however we only got half done. Unfortunately this means that we'll have to film on another day on which we cannot guarantee that the weather will be the same. This is obviously really aggravating for us but at the end of the day theres nothing we can do!

We're filming again on Thursday and so hopefully we will be able to finish all filming.

Planning; ancillary task - CD sleeve

Obviously I need to do some planning for the CD sleeve before I can design it, I won't be planning any of the wording because thats what Ruby is going to be doing!! 

For the inside I think I'll use a base colour using a brush on photoshop then perhaps use a variety of different downloaded brushes to create a tree and vines coming down from it - I then have the idea of taking silhouette photographs of both Amber and Max and having them either side of the tree. The bottom most foldout will be the roots of the tree which I think will look really interesting. On this fold Ruby is going to create a band biography which we can add on top of the design!

For the outside folds of the CD sleeve Ruby and I thought for the 'front' cover it would be interesting to have trees and leaves around the outside and then in the middle it would be a cream background with the band and song name in font that connotes vines and leaves. I'm really keen on this idea so will probably do this with brushes again. For 3 of the folds we are going to have photos of Amber and Max against a tree and leaf background  -  I've actually already taken these photos and will upload them when I'm on my laptop. They look really good and I think they will go with the rest of the CD package. 

I really want to get onto photoshop and start designing now - I'm going to continuously update blogger on how it's going with some screen grabs and i'll talk through exactly what I'm doing!

Planning; photographic storyboard

I have created a photographic storyboard as of last weekend, however I've been having multiple problems with exporting it from windows movie maker; if I attempt to export it into the correct type of file it will look as if it's exporting however when it's finished I will open the file and it will only be the music with a blank black screen. I've tried doing this about four times now into different types of file.
I talked to my teacher about this and she said perhaps if I can find no other way then I should record the video on my phone and then upload it to blogger which is obviously extremely annoying as the quality wont be anywhere near as good after I spent such a long time creating the video!
However I still really want the photographic storyboard up on here, so I've done just that.. of course we didn't have our extras with us today so Ruby, Ryan and I stepped in for them but it gives a good idea of what we've planned for our video!

Research; ancillary tasks - CD cover

Finally we are back from America!! We're straight back into work, but unfortunately although we had planned to film yesterday - we hadn't really thought out how completely shattered we would be from our trip and our journey home and so there was no possible way we would have been able to film and direct 10 people!!!

However I'm now going to start looking at the ancillary tasks and so hopefully will have these both completely finished by the end of next week. 

Firstly I'm going to research, design and create the CD cover before moving onto the magazine advert. 

To begin this design and creating process I firstly want to look at some existing CD covers to get an idea of some designs and also some techniques used to target certain audiences.

I thought it would be a good idea, and quite interesting to look at a CD cover of 'The Hush Sound' which is the band's song that we are using for our music video, although I have actually already created a few designs which I will put up on blogger later, it was really interesting to see that their album cover had quite a few similar ideas to me for our cover!

I've then decided to look at a CD cover from a band from the same genre as 'The Hush Sound' perhaps with a slightly younger audience but still a similar audience.

Lastly I decided to look at a 'Mumm-ra' album cover, again this is from a similar genre, but again perhaps a slightly older target audience. 

So I've taken some really good ideas from each of these album covers, and really just want to get on with designing and creating my album cover now!!

Lesson update!

So in todays lesson I made a really good to do list for us, it consists of;

This isn't a list of every single thing we still need to do, this is a list of immediate things we need to get on with in order for filming to run smoothly etc. 

Also I decided to begin designing our ancillary tasks in this lesson. I talked to Ruby and told her some of my idea's and so began to draw out some (very) rough drawings of the sort of thing I had in mind. We had already decided the layout of the sleeve that we wanted to use so I didn't have to practise different sleeves which was useful. I've chosen the idea I want to go with and sketched it really quickly, so here it is! 

As you can see this is really rough, in tomorrows lesson I would like to continue designing this!

Lesson update, planning; facebook group for actors.

As I said in my last post I planned to create a facebook group in order to stay in contact with all the actors that we'd like to have in our music video - I think this is definitely the best way to keep in contact with them!

Here's a screen shot of the group I made and the introduction paragraph I posted just to let them know what we roughly plan to do!!

Planning; costume for extras

I'm not going to plan every single extra's costume, however there is a theme I want them to stick too, so the sooner I let them know the sort of thing I'd like them to wear, the more ready we can be!
We've yet to sit down with all the extras and ask them to be in our music video so I think a really useful thing we can do is to create a private facebook group where we can ask them all at once and let them know the dates they are needed and what they will be doing - we can also keep them updated to when they are needed. I think this is possibly the best way of keeping in direct contact with them all and being organised as a group - I think I'll OK this with Ruby then create it over the weekend.

So for the costume I think it would be a really good idea to stick with a certain theme or style. 
After looking at our main characters costume and what I gained from costume research and audience research I would like the extras to wear fashionable quirky outfits - more so the girls than the boys. Also to fit with the season we are filming in I would like the outfits to revolve around white, orange, and red for the girls, and for the boys dark colours - perhaps more green and blues. I don't mind too much if they don't stick to the colours however I feel it's better to have a vague style then to tell them to wear whatever they want. 

I'll create a facebook page and tell them all the information this weekend and post a few screen shots of the outcome!!

Research; past student work analysis

I'll start with the video, this is a music video from past students of my school - it was a few years ago now so it's nice to compare this with the technology they had then and what we have now.




I'm going to look at the good and bad points of this music video instead of analysing in depth each aspect, I think will help me overcome any bad points we're anticipating in videoing and editing our music video, and also it can help us be aware of anything that may not run smoothly in filming and editing.

Good points:

• Fantastic location; It looks like they thought really hard about where they wanted to set their music video, and I think it's actually filmed at Ickworth house which is quite local to us. They would probably have had to ask permission to film their but obviously picked a time and day and enquired first. Also I think the forest is a really nice location that fits in with the prior location. Although the fireplace setting doesn't fit quite as well with the forest and Ickworth house, it still fits with the weather and the mood of the video as it seems quite cold and winter like, so the fireplace contrasts with this.
• Camerawork; There are a huge range of different types of shots and angles throughout this video which makes it really interesting to watch - on the girl there are a lot of mid shots, close ups, and long shots. But also on the wildlife and location shots there are a variety of high angles, low angles, close ups and tilts! Put together it makes a really interesting video making the viewer feel like they've walked around the location and we really get a feel for what it's like. Also I thought the shots of the piano were really varied which was fantastic, especially in the split screen as it gave four different views of her playing piano which was interesting to watch.
• Lighting; I really love the use of natural lighting in this video - which I have especially noted as we are using natural lighting throughout our video so I can take some ideas from this! Although it's a really foggy wet day in the video, I think they may have edited it to use the fog and natural look and made it look really bright and fresh which I think is a fantastic look for the video! As we are filming at the same time of year I think even though we want it to be a clear day when we film - if it's not a clear day it will still look really good if we take some tips from this and make it look bright and fresh!
• Editing; This links slightly with the lighting as one thing I really like in this video is the use of colour and black and white shots. I think it gives a varied look on the video as simply only using one of the two techniques would have made it slightly dull, however having the contrast in black and white and colour in the outdoor shots and indoor shots gave the indoor shots a completely different feel which is interesting for the viewer. I also love the jump cuts between all the shots - as there are noticeable different beats throughout the song, the jump cuts between shots are really interesting and cause the viewer to listen for these beats.

Points to improve;

• Lip syncing; This was one really noticeable thing throughout the entirety of the video which did put me off it slightly. It's really important that the actors can lip sync to create a more believable video for the audience. If the lip syncing is not believable or out of time it makes the viewer notice it and focus solely on the lips, therefore taking them away from the rest of the video which isn't good at all.
• Characterisation; I feel that the actress either didn't take on a certain character or the director perhaps didn't explain to her what her character was meant to be like, therefore leaving her seemingly slightly bland and unbelievable. This means she doesn't really look like she's enjoying the song or is performing the song or acting with emotion and feeling - this becomes apparent to the audience and so they may not become as enthralled with the video as much as they could. 
• Costume; I think that even though her costume is really cute and quirky which will portray their target audience, they could have dressed her in a costume that fits more with the location. This is because the location is obviously vintage and grande, and the grounds where it's being filmed is extremely grande also, they could have made an effort to dress her in something vintage also as this would fit in with the location and so just tie the music video together slightly more. 

I've actually found it really useful to analyse the music video in this way as I haven't really solely looked at what I think is good and bad in a music video yet, and so pointing out the bad points especially has helped me think of a few things we could improve in our music video and planning!

Research; narrative, concept, performance

As we've been looking at performance, narrative and concept video's I thought I should do a post solely on the three types of music video.

Narrative:

A narrative music video is a video that tells a certain story to the audience throughout the music video. 
It has to be done in a way that makes the story easy to grasp for the audience and not too fast or too large a story to fit into the music video.
Although the story isn't always shown chronologically, it's often shown in a way which is clear for the audience to understand whats going on.

Narrative music video's don't always follow the narrative theories of some theorists;

Todorov; some music video's do follow Todorovs theory that a story should follow the lines of 'Equilibrium, disequilibrium, recognition, reparation, new equilibrium' however some music video's don't - this is because there isn't much time throughout the time of a music video to fit all these aspects of an entire story into it so sometimes certain aspects are left out.

Propp; There are often still stereotypical characters in music video's, which fits in with Propp's character theories which is interesting. In fact often in music video's the characters are over exaggerated as the audience need to be able to identify who they are and what their character is like in a period of a few seconds to understand the narrative throughout the music video.

Levi Strauss; Again some music videos strongly follow Levi's idea of binary oppositions creating a story, especially narrative music videos as there's often a story being told of romance with a protagonist and antagonist. 

Here's a pretty good example, it's '18 and life' by 'skid row', although it's not only narrative as it has performance too - it's a clear narration and easy to follow.




Concept:

A concept video is a video that has no specific storyline that it's telling to it's audience, but more like an idea that it follows or picks up on in different ways throughout the video. 
Concept video's can be mixed with performance and narrative but are often just simply concept. 

As I've been watching concept videos there doesn't seem to be a particular genre uses concept in it's video, there are a wide range of music genres that use concept in a variety of different ways.

A lot of concept videos seem to be of an unusual an obscure concept, seemingly abstract for the audience to be drawn in and want to watch the video fully without taking their eyes off the screen as it's not predictable and they want to see what will come on the screen next. 

Here's my example; 'genesis - land of confusion'... A really creepy video, but a concept video nonetheless! 





Performance:

A performance music video is a video where, not necessarily the band, but anyone is performing the song. 
It can be the band performing the song on a stage - or the characters lip syncing the song, or even a number of different people in the narrative performing it. There are a huge number of ways performance can be added into a music video. 
Quite often performance is mixed with concept or narrative - but it can also be a solely performance music video. 
Performance of the band in a music video is helpful for the band as their audience will relate to them due to knowing what they look like. If you never see a band or artist in their video's it may not be as easy to become a devoted fan. 

So my example is 'one voice - Barbra Streisand' - i've never listened to Barbra Streisand purposely before, and I thought this was such an amazing music video/ short video. Not only a music video but a promotional video for a great cause!

Planning; male costume

Now I'm going to look at the male costumes and figure out which one to choose for our music video!
Again I will look at each photo and note on how they will go with our style of song and music video and how they will fit for how we wanted to portray the male character.



This outfits really good, I think it's what we're looking for as it's casual yet trendy, and I think it's what our target audience can relate too and will like!

Again I think this is a really good outfit for our music video - it's casual still, and this one is slightly brighter than the first one so thats a good point for this outfit.

I think perhaps this outfit is slightly too casual for our video, mostly because he will be freezing as we're filming in November in an outside location! I also think the top would be more appropriate for a different target audience than the audience we're looking for.

This is a really smart/casual outfit which I think is also quite quirky, so definitely a good choice for our music video - however I don't know if it will go with a coat, which we will need him to wear in the cold weather.

I think this outfits slightly too dark for the way we'd like to portray our male character as it's mostly black and white - and we'd like to portray our male character as a more bright and quirky character!



Again I'm stuck between two choices; the first and second outfits are both really casual but quirky and so I think I'll ask Ruby's advice again to decide which outfit we'll choose!

Research; past students work analysis

As well as researching and analyzing music videos that are already out there in the music industry, it would be really helpful to also look at some past students work, as we'll be able to relate to this easily and so take notes of what did and didn't work!
I've chosen a video by students not from my school, to the song 'Mr.Brightside - the killers'.




So when the video started I didn't think it was going to be great - but it was actually one of the best student music video's i've seen! It was well planned, fantastic editing and a good storyline!

Strengths:

* The storyline was easy to follow, it was something a lot of people can relate to and it was set out well.
* The actors were actually believable! I see a lot of terrible acting in student films, but these guys were really good and I was pretty drawn into what was happening throughout the music video!
* I thought the editing was really really good, there was a huge range of long shots, faster shots and some really fast shots which changed about ten times in a few seconds! It was impressive that students were capable of that!
* The band were also believable, again a lot of the time in student made videos the lip syncing is pretty terrible, and you can tell that the band aren't actually playing the songs; however in this video the band all looked pretty good, there were no noticeable mistakes, and the singer looked like he was singing it.
* The mise-en-scene was also really good, they had a number of 'the killers' posters in the room that the band was playing it which I thought was a good idea! Also the locations all worked really well with their ideas, and the costume for both the characters and the band were effective and relatable!
* The actors were our age so I found I could relate to them more easily.

Weaknesses:

* The lighting at times was too dark to see! The shots which used natural lighting were effective and easy to see, however some shots were so dark it was hard to make out what was happening - they perhaps could have figured out some sort of light source to use to make it lighter! 
* The two boys looked similar and so it was difficult to tell which was which at times, this could have been avoided by some more close-ups of the main characters.
* There could have been a slightly larger variety of shot types - although there were a lot, there could have been some establishing shots, extreme close ups and also for extra points maybe some birds eye view shots?

What I'll take away from it:

Like I said it's a really impressive music video, especially for students to make - I didn't cringe at all which often happens at lip syncing and bad acting when I'm watching other students work! The storyline fit in really well with what was going on in the song and music video which is another bonus, the characters were planned well, the costume was relatable as were the actors due to them being our age and the clothing being fashionable and in trend. 
One thing I will definitely try to avoid is the bad lighting shots, as I feel this really did impact the music video and bought it down a few notches. A lot of our shots are using natural lighting however the few that aren't I think I will make sure are well lit so the audience doesn't have to strain to see it. 

It was really helpful looking at this past students work as it was easily relatable as they were under the same time and technology limit that we will be under so it was useful to see what mistakes and how they overcame problems!

Planning; extra actors

We're just planning everything now in order to start shooting our video as soon as we can, so today Ruby and I came together to make a prop list and extra actor list, she's going to put up the props list and so I'm going to write up how many extra actors we need and who we think we can use!
'Amber' and 'Max' are the main girl and boy we've chosen to be in our video.

Of course this isn't a final list as we've yet to ask the people if they are willing and have ample time to be in our video! However we have chosen people that we know have the same free periods as us so hopefully they will have time and we won't be making them miss any lessons. 
The next step for this is to either go round and ask each person if they would like to be in our video and make sure they are free for all the dates, or another way I could do this is to write a short letter to them, as this will have all the information for them to come back to if need be - I think I may do both of these ideas together; go and talk to them and then give them the letter so they can see when and what they will be needed for!