Final commentary

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

Tom's Final Evaluation

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




We looked throught songs we knew on the internet to get inspiration for our piece, one music video that we used was Booty Call by Midnight Beast. It was inspiring to us because of the different ways in which it presents some of the lyrics. There were a few shots we also liked from the video and it looked low budgeted which was something we had to take into consideration when making our music video. All the band members are dressed in random clothes and all the props where easy, they were just household items, just like in ours where the random costume of a cow and the easy props of just phones and photos. Our video relates to there's because they are both funky and have a fun vibe.

One of Goodwin's points was the link between visuals and lyrics, for this we used some props which related to what lyrics where being sung at the time. The strongest example of this is when it says 'Never got enough attention as a child' and whilst this line is being sung one of the band members shows a picture of her as a child. Also midway through our piece the lyrics come up on the screen as the words are being sung and we use a variety of fonts.  This is another strong link between lyrics and visuals. Our inspiration for using this technique comes from the video 'All of the lights' by Kayne West and Rhianna.

The genre of our product was a 80's retro, electric fuck vibe, we showed this by the use of bright colours that we used throughout the piece and from the costumes used.

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

All the items in our promotional package fit together well, in all of them at least one of the band members feature in it and the colours used throughout are bright vibrant ones. Through our promotional package we try to give the impression that Chromeo are a small band and that are trying to get bigger. We did this by putting a list of tour dates on the inside of our CD cover, we also put the links for Facebook and Twitter on the front of the case, hoping to improve the amount of fans.

The promotional package creates the image of the band as funky electro, this impression is given out through all the bright colours used in the costumes and the editing techniques used throughout the trio. The concepts we used in our promotional package would be successful at attracting our target audience of 16-30 because of the link in technology we used, we used things like Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the fans, these kind of technologies are generally used by people in the age range of 14 to 35 almost perfectly fitting our target audience.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback? 


The most important feedback was that given to us about our rough cut, feedback we got from it was generally postive about our quick paced editing and a good quality of different editing techniques used to make clips look better. But we only had around 50 seconds of our rough cut to hand in and therefore a lot of the feedback contained people writing should be longer. All the negative feedback we got from the video we tried to improve the bit that people didn't like or we replaced it with a new clip, all the positives we tried to leave in our video.

Feedback on our final piece was a lot different, there was a lot of positives about how we kept to Goodwin's points well. One example of our feedback was that the music and visuals were clearly linked and very effective in the quick editing of our video, and the timing between some of the cuts and the beat of the song we perfectly timed.
The camera work was positively reviewed and the only negative was about the footage being blurry at one point, but that effect was meant to be given because of the darkness in the room and the lights it was meant to give across the feel of the audience being there at the 'party'. The one piece of feedback which is very important to us is the some of the lip sync in the footage was slightly out of time but seeing as not everyone noticed it shouldn't be to much of a problem

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


We used many new technical programs on the computer to design all of our products, the most important one was final cut express which allowed us to import all of our footage and then cut it down to this bits we wanted. It allowed us to lay out all of our footage in a timeline so we can easily see where each of the clips are when we come to edit them. We used some of the editing techniques available on final cut like the ability to adapt the speed of the piece and the use of colour corrector so we could edit the colours to make it more appealing, we also were able to change the green screen into the colour background of our choice which is a huge part of our video.  We used Photoshop when it came to our CD case and magazine ad because its the easiest to use to edit items and has the widest variety of editing tools. This variety came in handy when it came to the colours for our CD case and the effects on the front tittle font.

We used the internet loads to get inspirations, first of all we looked at music videos that we know about to get some ideas, when then researched all about Chromeo so that we knew what kind of music genre they are. The main site we used on the internet was Blogger, this was really helpful because we could blog all our work so when we are at home we can see what has been done and what hasn't. We can also use it as a way of communication in the group because if someone posts what props we need for filming then we can all access it from home so we can come prepared.

We used HD cameras which gave a good quality to our video so that the audience get the best possible view of the band, at one point in the dark room when the lights go on and off the camera shot is slightly blurred which is the feel we wanted to get across because its meant to feel like the audience are in the club with them. We used the tripod for the camera so that all of our shots were still and not ruined by hand movement, the tripod allowed us to get good steady shots from a range of angles, distances and heights.

Editing used in our Final Music video

In our final video we used many different editing techniques to make the footage keep in theme with our colourful 80's feel, we got loads of inspiration from videos of artists who use the same genre if editing to sell their music piece. We used some of Chromeo's videos to see what colours they used and what props they used because we wanted to portray our music video in the same style that they do. One of the effects we used throughout the video is colour corrector, as many of our shots were filmed in the green room we were able to change the colours and effects of this background making similar or even the same shot look different. Giving the audience a variety of images ensuring they do not lose attention. We also used the technique of adding text, in sync with the lyrics.

We used loads of different colours in our piece to make it more appealing to the target audience we did this by using the colour corrector tall on Final cut express, this allowed us to change the colour of all the clips used in our video.

We used the colour corrector in the piece add a nice colourful effect on the stereo to make the clip look more appealing then just the plain old colours which it was before.

From using the green screen we could change the colour of the background to make it fit with our funky and fun attitude to making the final piece, we could play around with the colours to make the artist stand out as much as we could.





We also used a mirror effect on one piece of out final video


*unfinished*

Digi pack

This is the inside cover for our album.

This is the front cover for our album.

This is our magazine advert.

Feedback On Final Music Video

Goodwins Theory:
Genre characteristics = fits genre well, nice and upbeat, colourful and dancing present.
Lyrics and Visuals = clear link between lyrics and the visuals of the song. For example 'call me up' with the telephone and also the picture of the childhood photo when the lyrics are 'never got enough attention as a child'
Music and Visuals = Pace of video fits the pace of the song.
Demands of record label = lots of shots of artist, works well to suit the pop genre.

Editing:
alot of jump cuts works well as it is an up beat song.
transitions on the phone at the beginning looks unique and good.
Green screen used - allows the focus to be on the people within the video, lots of different colours used with this fits the 80s pop theme.
Use of text works well again due to the vibrant colours.

Camera work:
Variety of shots from long shots to close ups.
Nice shots but bit blurred at times.
Frame positioning is good
Only downside is the shots are some time slightly blurred but not sure if its the quality of video on blogger.

Mise-en-scene:
Nice variety of props
Costumes fits song style and theme
Locations - not a wide variety but then this genre doesnt really need alot focus on dancing and colours.

Creativity and Performance:
Storyline bit vagure but the focus is put on the performance.
Creative idea present.
Lip syncing - bit out of sync out of times so this could have been improved.

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.

Visual theme ideas for our magazine advert

Our ideas for the visual themes come from many of the concepts from our music video. For instance we have projected many strong images throughout the video which reflect an 80's theme. We reflect this theme through the use of bright colours and clothes and materials which relate to that era. Our continuous repetition usage of these images ensures the audience is definitely aware of the theme our music track portrays. Therefore we will continue to use this 80's theme with the use of bright colours in our magazine advert.

One of our ideas for our magazine advert is to capture an image from our music video which is repeated throughout the music video several times. One of the images we think could represent our theme well, is an image of all four of the characters featured within the video standing next to each other in the same stance/position. We thought this would be a good image to use as it portrays a clear representation of who will be featuring in our music video. In addition to this , the way the characters are all laid out on the scream creates a distinct image as we are all looking straight ahead at the camera, therefore it would feel to the audience as though we were looking at them ( grabbing their attention). Also our clothes we were wearing within the screen shot are still reflecting our 80's theme. We would aim to brighten up the image if we were to use that screen shot. This is because it would make a clear distinction from our original image and the one we will want to use in our magazine advert, the use of bright colour would also grab the reader's attention more.

Another one of our ideas for the magazine advert is to take a photo shoot of our characters featured within the group, still dressed in their 80's clothing, and to sit them on a giant speaker. This would create a bold image as it would portray to the reader of the magazine that our sound track is one which you will want to be listening to on a big speaker. In addition to this the big speaker would reflect the size of speakers that would have been used in the 80's. We would have our characters sitting on/ posing with the speaker to portray attitude and style which would make the image appealing to the reader. The background would be in the green room as this allows us to replace the background with an original image, which we could take ourselves or get off of Google. This would make our magazine image more original and interesting.

Our third idea for our magazine advert is to have the image of the girl holding the phone, relating the the lyrics in the song as if she's waiting for it to ring. The use of the phone is repeated throughout the video, therefore this image is recognisable to our video. This mirror image of the girl relates to the funky 80's style theme of our video. For our advert we would exaggerate this by using a bolder colour scheme, to make the image more lively attracting the audience more powerfully. We would have the name of the artist, album and release date etc on the bottom of the image in the gap shown, this would mean the attention is still on the image yet the main conventions of a magazine advert are still shown, and are clearly visible.

Final Music Video

Roughtcut

Practise Research - R & B Moodboard

These were R & B artists which were inspiring for our R & B genre, for our original research of our promotional cover. However we decided not to follow this genre in the end.

Some of the artists captured on our mood board are extremely well known names and would appeal to the target audience we aim to attract. Therefore we took ideas from the outfits they are featured  wearing to inspire us with our mise en scene ideas for our music video, with 'Call me Up' by Chromeo. The genre of R & B follows specific conventions in order to attract both a female and male audience. In the more stylised male R & B music, money is a popular theme featured throughout the videos. There are many references to wealth and money. The majority of artists are wealthy and successful and it tends to be rappers that have strong reference to money in their videos. This is a way of showing the audience their power and wealth, often communicated through the mise en scene i.e. their jewllery. Women in R & B videos are represented as voyeurs. They're used to add appeal to the video. This is mainly conveyed through their lack of clothing and provoking dance routines. They mainly feature in male videos, this is because the target audience will have a heavy response. R & B music videos usually have more of a narrative perspective which is more likely to be a story told throughout the video which strongly links to the lyrics of the song. An example of this is the video Like a Boy by Beyonce. The emphasis in this video is the heartache women go through by men. The song expresses how a men takes advantage of a woman and how women treat men with more respect. The video conveys this story through Beyonce acting out a day to day life of her partner.

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.

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.

Practice promotional image in the genre of R n B

This image reflects the genre of R n B because it displays the urban background, which is a stereotypical representation of an R n B location. We chose to dress the artist in clothes which contrast with the background to make her seem the main focus of the cover. In addition to this the artist's top stands out in the image because of the unique pattern. The artists stance represents a very layed back persona which is a common convention of RnB. We chose to have the artist looking off in the background in order to create a more naturalistic image.

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.

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.

This is the album cover for Chromeo's first album 'She's in control'.

Shot Angles

This is the list of camera angle shots that we have decided we would like to include in our video

• Wide shot
• Mid close up
• Mid shot
• Close up
• Long shot

We feel that these shots will make our video eye catching and in using a vast variety of these shots which will appear throughout the video will create more of an appeal and make our audience more stimulated to watch the video.

These are some of the techniques in editing we will use are:

• Cut
• Fast cut
• Jump cut
• Split screen

These editing techniques will keep the flow of our video and make it more visually appealing. The jump cuts will allow a sudden change from one shot to another which will keep the audience more interested.

UNFINISHED

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.