Final commentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pnk4WqQx1kk&feature=youtu.be

Chloe's evaluation

1) What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The genre of our product is retro/80's with lots of colour and excitment. We looked at music videos such 'Midnight beast- Booty call' this consists of colourful themes, textual lyrics and a impressive performance from the artists. They also used mise en scene such as telephones and props to fit the lyrics. Although the genre of music was differant compared to our 'Chromeo- Call me up' we still wanted our video to look visually similar. We also looked at bands such as Alphabeat who have a very consistand mood and theme across all their products. Things like tapes and record players and even balloons to acheive a happy and cheerful approuch to music. Another product we were inspired by was 'Little commits- One night in October' where their lyricss are shown on a blackboard with chalk while the artist lip syncs, we liked this effect as it made it more intresting. When it came to editing our music video we used certain effects to make our product more exciting. By mirroring some of our images, adding filters and effects to some clips to add colour and cutting up our clips so they can be repeated to match with the beat of our song. We noticed that various famous arists have used these features in their videos like Beyonce, they turn a potentually boring clip into something more entertaining and intresting to watch as an audience.

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

When producing our magazine advert and digipack we wanted both of them to match the theme of our video and track. For the magazine we used a screen shot from the video (image of us four girls) and edited it to make it funky and fresh with vibrant pinks and yellows. The title on the magazine was in the same font as the CD cover (a bit) we wanted to keep things consistant and noticable to our audience by using things like luminious colours, bold writing and vibrant images. Our digipack consists of a pop art theme (Maralin monroe/Madonna) front cover of Ella holding a retro plastic phone while winking to add a little cheese to things. We kept the back cover simple of just a speaker with the track names down the side. The inside covers were also simple with a colourful image and tour dated in bold writing.

3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I have learnt that a little more planning would go a long way. And to be realistic when it comes to ideas. As we had a limited time and budget we should of originally stuck with college phacilities like the green and dark room and shouldnt of spent a whole evening shooting pointless footage. We also should of learnt the song more as the lip syncing wasnt perfect. Our rough cut feedback was relitivly negative as we didnt have all our footage on final cut however our final feedback was alot more positive as they liked the jump cuts, costumes, props, performance and the use of colours as they all fit with the theme and genre of our music.

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

While using programmes such as final cut exspress and photoshop I learnt many tricks and tips such as changing the colour of the background on the green screen, changing the effect and filters on photoshop and how to mirror an image. The blogger was also useful because it kept us organised and helped us when looking back on our posts for inspiration when we needed it. The HD cameras were brilliant when it came to shooting, they were high quality and easy to use. By using a tripod this helped us film footage without worrying about shacking and unproffesional footage. For our music video filming we used a battery powered speaker system which produced a load and clear audio for us to film, this also helped to motivate the performers to make them get stuck into it instead of a standard performance. One evening we did want to film outside infront of a wall of grafiti on Newmarket road however the conditions were dark and cold by 4.00pm and our only source of lighting was only available with a plug. Things like weather and lighting did limit our filming times and locations and so we stuck to inside venues so we could rely heavily on editing skills. Overall I beleive our end product was sucessful considering the time and budget and I do beleive we kept a consistant theme and mood throughout our video and digipack.

Digi pack

This is the inside cover for our album.

This is the front cover for our album.

This is our magazine advert.

Chromeo Artist research

Chromeo is composed of P-Thugg (real name Patrick Gemayel, born in Lebanon) on keyboards, synthesizers, and talk box, and Dave 1 (real name David Macklovitch) on guitar and lead vocals. The two childhood friends jokingly describe themselves as "the only successful Arab/Jewish partnership since the dawn of human culture. The duo met in the mid-1990s, The debut album, She's in Control, released in 2004, defined Chromeo and started their music career. It was pretty much a failure at all levels. But we had “Needy Girl,” and “Needy Girl” was like a musical passport. That song went all around the world and DJs played it everywhere. he album took them on a two-year world tour performing in festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds in the UK, Fujirock in Japan, Iceland Airwaves in Iceland, Pemberton Music Festival in Canada and Coachella, Bonnaroo, Rothbury Festival and Lollapalooza in the US.

Influences for our Digipack

Whilst beginning to produce our digipack, we were infuenced by 50s British and American pop art prints created by Andy Warhol. This is a famous print of Marilyn Monroe, in which we have used as inspiration for the front of our digipack. We really liked the funky and quirky style of the image and we thought that an image similar would reflect the funkiness of our music video. We thought of incorparating an image from our video which features a character holding a phone. This reflects the whole message of our song 'Call me up'. We used photoshop to create various contrasting colour techniques.

Final Music Video

Roughtcut

Things We Liked.

We really liked these images of 80's themed things. The images all use bright and bold colors and are very funky. This is the idea that we want to convey in our music video.

Inspiration and Ideas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpILkfDYIs

Little commets- One night in october

We found a lot of inspiration for our own music video from this video. We liked the unique, quirkey style throughout the video and we wanted to incorparate some of the ideas current in our own music video. The main idea which we fell in love with was the staggered writing on the chalk board seen in the image below. As the artists sing the lyrics to the song, each word is written on the chalk board as the lyrics are sung. This technique would be time consuming as we would have to write each word seperately and keep stopping and starting the camera but it is something that we would want to use in our video. We were thinking of writing the lyrics for the chorus, which features the words 'You can call me up, day and night, when you need someone to talk to.' We have gathered some ideas as to where we would write the lyrics. We were thinking of writing them on a brick wall or a plain black drop set in bright colours written in chalk.

Inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8awKpyqSQc

Booty call- Midnight Beast

We were inspired by the differant ways to present the lyrics in the song, for example the writing on the hands. We also liked the shots of the phones and the settings of the video. It looks very low budget and easy to do. We liked the quirky style throughout the music video and thought that it would work well within our video. The video in a way presents itself as a mickey take as it is very low budget, all in a house, the band members are dressed in random clothes and the props used are simple. But we beleive that this all works very well as a whole because it creates a fun vibe and relates to the song.

Test shots- Point of view shot

 These were our original shots, with no editing.

 These were our shots after editing them with colour corrector and matte effect to display the image with enhanced shadows. We made the saturation higher to create this unique colour.

Mise-en-scene

This is some of the mise-en-scene we are planning to use in our promotional video. The boom box is a main focus that we have in mind to use in our video. It could be a motif that features throughout the video in various places. The retro phone is something that we want to incorparate into our video as our song is all about phones 'Call me up' and the style we want to convey is an old electro pop style. The rest of the images are images that we are considering using but our ideas are constantly developing and changing throughout this process.

Planning

The first picture is of our planner that we made so that we can see what days we have lessons and what dates and then we can see how these relate to our deadlines, it also helps us plan out what timing we have for example how many lessons we have to do all of our shooting.

This image is of our 'bubbles' of which contain the list of props each individual needs to bring in order for filming to take place.

This last one is just a summary of all of the props, ideas, locations and shot angles that we have decided to use in our video, these are the least we will need and things will be added.

Initial Ideas

We listened to a playlist of 12 different songs, many of which were different genres of music, ranging from R n B to country western. We noted down a list of initial thoughts that we gathered from listening to each track. Out of the 12 tracks we chose our three favourites. These were Chromeo- Call me up, Say Yeah feat Lupe Fiasco and Sky Surfing and Florence and the Machine.

Our initial emotions of the song Chromeo- Call Me Up were upbeat feelings. When we heard the song, we visualised lots of bright and bold colours such as blue, oranges, yellows and reds; mainly 80's derived colours. The lyrics are heavily based on a phone call, so for this reason we thought the objects used could be a phone, a turn table, big speakers and a keyboard.