Evaluation

Before we started to produce our music video we each did research on the genre and type of video we were starting to think about. Through this research I feel we have integrated several of the conventions that we found into our own final product. For example, by watching previous videos by our chosen artist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVP0b8qvZg8,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDQ2trtbSKA&feature=channel,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AViBFyyBSG0,
As well as more general artists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GAgm8sZ5mo,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64wOKm1FCfk
We were able to see the recurring convention of including both performance footage and narrative footage in the same video. These videos helped me to familiarise myself with the conventions of this type of music video, like having narrative intercut with performance, having the singer have a role in the narrative, having the narrative include a couple in some kind of trouble etc. These conventions are especially apparent in the videos that I watched from Jimmy Eat World, they all seem to follow a very similar structure. They each have performance and narrative footage inter-cut, and more often than not the lead singer is also one of the characters in the story. This band also includes a small bit of footage before and sometimes after the video possibly to give the viewer/audience some of the context to the narrative that is included.
After researching music videos a brief treatment was written, this treatment helped us to order any specific events that we wanted in either the performance or the narrative side of the video. It also helped to highlight any major problems within the preliminary outline and allow us time to correct and change these issues before shooting. The main issue that the treatment highlighted was the amount of performance and narrative footage would work best for the track, eventually after re-drafting the treatment we arrived at having much less narrative intercut with the performance, but also including small introductory and ending shots that linked to the narrative.
When creating the CD ‘Digi-pak’ cover and Magazine advert for the Artist’s ‘Album’ again we researched these in order to highlight any similarities that were shown throughout the different examples.
http://www.tripledisc.com/assets/4-Panel-digipak-cd-audio.gif,
http://www.distorture.co.nz/images/distorture-revere_digipak.jpg,
http://www.mediaheaven.co.uk/digipak.htm
By looking through different examples of Digi-paks and finding information about them we found that each seemed to show a degree of a theme. They showed that colour schemes, images or logos were used on both the packaging and the CD itself, therefore we decided that we should follow this convention for our CD Cover and Magazine Advert. This led us onto trying different images, and themes for the Cover and then linking this into an Advert to show that they themselves are linked and one is promoting the other. We also used a focus group to gain audience feedback regarding the ideas that we had come up with, this audience feedback was very helpful regarding the simplicity that they thought these products should have. They helped us to realise that the Advert had to be eye-catching and interesting without confusing the reader about what it is actually about. This obviously led us onto the final arrow designs for both CD cover and Advert as we felt that they were interesting and eye-catching yet simple.

Final Advert and CD Cover

Both the CD Cover and the Magazine advert were made using Adobe Illustrator, and I chose to keep the lines fairly loose rather than having very clean cut line's as I felt that this overall look suited the Bands style and Music much more. I inverted the colour for the CD Cover in order to distinguish between the Advert and the Cover, however they are still linked through the use of the Coloured arrows and the illustrations of the Band.

Final Video

Can't Upload it!

Editing 1

We have been editing the footage now for a good two weeks so forgive e for the lateness of this and the last post as we have been keeping busy :P. The editing is going very well, with a few minor problems, such as a few dropped frames here and there which, so far have not had any major problems related to them. Myself and Steve have both taken responsibility for the editing and are doing an even amount each, mainly with the other one of us supervising and influencing. We have not kept entirely to the animatic as this posed very difficult witht the footage we collected, although it was all good, it was not exactly what we were looking for so a certain amount of improvisationhas been nessesary.

Shooting

Overall the filming of the music video went very well, we got the majority of the work done across the two days mentioned in the last post and the footage is overall good. We had to shoot the band a hell of a lot of times so we can cut between the band members and create more pace and a more dynamic look. However there are a couple of other minor problems with it, the first being some of the footage that we filmed indoors did not have the best of lighting, so it was not the best quality i.e. it is quite grainy. Another problem we encountered was not having enough space in the office for the councilor part of the video, the office was quite cramped and fitting the jib in was a bit of a struggle, we also have a bit of a continuity error with this footage due to the way we filmed it, one minute the councilor is being looked at from one direction and looking back, next minute he is looking away from the others. to fix this problem we are re-shooting this entire section, hopefully within this week.

Shooting

It is coming close to the days we have chosen to shoot the footage. All shooting needed will hopefully be completed across two days, Wednesday and Thursday (1st and 2nd October). We have broken the shooting up into two sections, Narrative and Performance, the narrative shooting will take place on the Wednesday and the performance footage will be taken on the Thursday.
The brief schedule for Wednesday is: The shots of the counselling and counsellor first, House shots and the argument shots second, The street argument shots will be taken last and then if there is any time left after this any other shots that have presented themselves through the shooting will be taken.
The brief schedule for Thursday is: 1st run through of the song concentrate on the tight close ups of the instruments and band members, 2nd run through Close ups again with some mid-shots, 3rd run through will be the transition shots that we need and the longer shots and the final run through again will include a combination of the shots angles etc. any time left at the end will have more experimental angles and shots.

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