Music Video - 1st Upload

This is the upload of my completely-finished production; Autumn Leaves by Ed Sheeran.

NOTE TO THE EXAMINER:  If the annotations appear, once playing, click on the settings button in the bottom right corner of the video window to turn them off, and remember to watch in the highest HD quality available.


For the first showing of my music video to my class, I asked to receive feedback from three people:

 

Conclusively, from the feedback I have learnt that this edit of my video conforms to it's genre conventions. In terms of the genre of production - music video - the imagery fit nicely with the music, matching the rhythm and pace, whilst it also fit the genre of the music - indie/acoustic - as the use of black and white editing added emotion and a deeper sense of meaning. I also combined a nice mixture of narrative, performance and even conceptual to meet the genre of a music video. 

People said that they really liked the use of black and white editing - whilst they initially felt it was quite unusual to have the whole edit in black and white - they said it worked quite surprisingly and really added to the theme of the narrative. They also liked that I used a wide variety of different locations throughout the edit which made it more interesting. The editing worked well and they especially liked the dissolve transitions to show the passing of time.

In terms of improving my video, they suggested that if I can maybe input more scenes which would add clarity to the storyline. However, my thought on my video was that I wanted it to be unclear to add ambiguity and an Enigma Code - in order to hook the audience and keep them wondering about the storyline past the point of watching it. They also noticed that there were some synching issues with the singing, which I had also identified, but I must say that these issues weren't as clear on Premiere Pro so perhaps this is more down to it being uploaded to YouTube, so I will now work to adjust this. There were also suggestions about the colour, in the sense that whilst they liked the black and white editing, I could perhaps try uploading the video in a de-saturated colour and in a sepia tone to find out what the audience prefers as it may change the way the audience decodes the performance. Also in some cases, some of the transitions may need to be faster as this may make the audience bored, and some of the filming was slightly shaky. At times, the filming was purposely shaky as it was supposed to be from the protagonist's point of view, thus it was supposedly hand-filmed. Perhaps I didn't make some of the footage shaky enough to emphasise this idea, so to fix this, I will either work on reducing the pace of the clip to make it look less shaky, or apply some sort of a filter which will emphasise this more.

Official Feedback:

Once I had completed all of my coursework, Paul gave us some feedback and marking for the entire unit. With my video especially, I have several things I need to change, which I will work on to create the final edit of my video. I need to focus on re-shooting my 'singing' sequences to make sure they sync with the music better. I also need to re-shoot the sequence where the character is walking along the grass as an iPod wire keeps falling into the shot. I may also re-shoot the 'eye' shot to make it clearer and neater, which may require slightly better lighting than last time. 

Adobe After Effects PRACTICE!!!!

Digipak Mock Up

31.01.14:

Today I finished my mock-up for my Digipak. It is essentially exactly how I want my final product to look, except that I have used mock-up images from the Internet to indicate the types of image I want to use for the finished product. This helped me to visualise the look of my ancillary product as well as setting up the layout for all of the text on each panel. Once completed, I cut out a smaller version of the Digipak to test that I had all of the folds and cuts in the right place so that I know what I do/don't need to change for the real thing. Luckily, everything was correct as I used a template and I like the layout of what I have produced. What I now need to do is to adjust the document so that it is of the correct size (I may want to print the document off on A2 paper to see what it would look like in real-life) and to add in an extra panel in the middle to act as the pouch which will hold the booklet. Obviously, I will then add in my original images and adjust the text accordingly if they don't work out as well with my own images. Below is a collection of images of my Digipak that I made up today: 

    

  

 

  

    

Music Videos and Titles/Texts (Credits)

These are two examples of short videos that I created using LiveType to practice creating titles for my coursework piece. Because I am creating a music video, I am unlikely to want to include titles in my music video as the vast majority of them do not include them, so I want to be able to stick to conventions. However, there is a small percentage of music videos which may include minor titles such as the Song Title and the musician's name at the very start of the footage, or the record label's name presented at the very end of the footage. Titles don't take very long to create for a video, so to be able to show off my skill in creating titles (if I do not include them within my music video), there is a set of rules followed by MTV for music videos which are titles simply added on to the start of the actual footage, so I may create a 'second video' if you like, specifically for MTV.

With the first Text Trial Video, I experimented with the positioning of the text most of all. This is a very similar text-layout to how MTV show videos, with the title of the song and the artist in the bottom left corner, and then the record company in the centre of the screen after the footage has finished playing. The backgrounds I used aren't really relevant as this wouldn't ordinarily be shown in the video, it would either be a black screen or the music video footage itself, but just to show as an example, I used an orange background as this is a colour which acts as a representative or a trait of my chosen artist.

With the second video, I experimented with font styles more. I wouldn't realistically use anything but a standard font such as Arial, but I just wanted to play with other, more interesting fonts which might relate to the topic of my video. I like the font that I used as it relates to the theme of the song 'Autumn Leaves' but it just doesn't look professional for the titles of my music video, so I definitely won't be using it. However, this is potentially I type of font I could look at using within my ancillary products.

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There are few music videos on the market which include titles/text, but I am choosing not to include them in mine because I feel that are not appropriate for my genre. The music videos I have seen which do include text/titles all tend to be either pop, dance or urban genres, and are used to highlight specific words in the lyrics to allow viewers to learn the words.

The first video is by David Guetta featuring Rihanna. The song complies to the dance/urban genre and includes titles throughout as the video has been directed in a feature-film style, including the production company and 'actors' names at the start of the video. The titles work because they match in with the music which is fast paced. The style of the text is quite fun and bold, and easily suits the sci-fi theme which has been applied to the video's content. It gives the video a fun characteristic which would attract the target audience here of about 16 - 24 year olds, particularly the older segment who go to parties, clubs etc. Arguably, the text may also be used because in some scenarios, listeners may find it difficult to hear certain words sung by Rihanna due to the mixing of the audio - thus, these titles will allow viewers to learn more of the correct lyrics. This is an extremely rare setup for a music video, as most don't even identify the production company, let alone produce a fully-animated logo for the opening sequence. However, it does work for this music video because of the themes within the footage and the genre of the music, and it also allows it to stand out from others, making it unique. Like stated before, with my music video which will have very soft, calm tones and themes, titles like these would not be suitable for the target audience. If I were to include text like within this video, I would perhaps have the production company listed in the credits at the end of the video, rather than the start, as for me, this is not an important feature of the video, and so should ideally be seen last after the actual music content. 

Another example I found was actually by the same artist. This video is for Rihanna's song 'Rude Boy,' which is another example of the pop/urban/dance mixed-genre of music. The music video itself is a hybrid of narrative, with Rihanna seen playing the drums, and conceptual, with Rihanna again acting out various scenes which make very little sense whatsoever, or more so that they do not conform to a typical Todorov narrative structure. Unlike in the first video where the titles where edited on after production, in this video the text is actually incorporated into the physical filming of the footage, with the words often appearing in big, bold and colourful fonts behind the singer as she 'acts'. This works with this video because the overall theme for this video is an over-the-top style cartoon, with lots of random animations and block colours. Only specific words are shown as titles/texts, as the requirement here is to emphasise those specific words to the audience, these include phrases such as 'BOOM', 'BOY' and 'WANT.' Again this style of text would not work with my music video, as much as I want the meaning of the lyrics to be the focus of the video. The animation and style of the fonts are just too loud and over-the-top for my chosen genre of music, whereas I would need something quite plain and simple. There are very few, if any, examples of music videos of my genre of acoustic/indie/folk with text or titles applied to them, which is why I am going to conform to this and not include any within mine.

I did, however, find an example of an indie/folk music video, which contained some text. Mumford and Son's 'The Cave' contains an example of some titles. At the very start of the video, before the music kicks in, is a scene where the artists act out a little scene. They are riding on motorbikes when they come across some natives to the island. One of the musicians then comes forward and talks to the natives in their home language. For the purpose of the viewers needing to understand what he says, they use subtitles as text. Although this may not be specific to the genre, they are essential for this particular music video for viewers to understand the general plot of the narrative within the video, However, the text does conform to that of the genre by using a simply white Sans Serif font, which complies to the simplicity of the music itself. What is becoming increasingly more common in all genres of music video is a credits screen at the very end, simply showing the year of publication and the record label's name, which is something I will probably include in my video.

Filming a Conversation - the better edit w/ text and music

I think you can definitely see a difference between the quality of this video and others that I have shot so far this year, and I have certainly learnt a lot about the way a basic conversation should be filmed. It was also interesting using Final Cut Pro properly for the first time, as it exposed me to brand new editing techniques and methods which were different to those on iMovie.

From filming this conversation, I learnt a variety of things that I should consider when I conduct my coursework, whether it be a music video or a film trailer:

• Film more than you need - in Final Cut Pro, you can view all of the clips individually before you insert them into the final cut, and then you can also add labels to each one. This is useful as it signaled to me which ones I didn't want to use, the potential clips, and the clips that I thought had to go in because they were the best quality. There is nothing wrong with filming too much, it's if you film too little that becomes the problem as if you don't have sufficient quality footage, then you are going to have to take more time out to set-up your scene again, and even then, it might not completely match up with what you already have.
• Definitely script dialogue for your actors, and ask them to take small breaks in between sentences. This doesn't matter so much with this example because we weren't focusing on the actors, just the filming technique, and we also muted the speech and placed music over the top. However, when it comes to filming my coursework piece, the dialogue will have to make sense, which is why it should be scripted so that no matter what the cuts are like, the speech will make complete sense. I also learnt from this example that if your actors talk too quickly, it makes the job of the editor so much harder as it becomes virtually impossible to make a clean cut and reduce the shot timing/increase speed.
• Today I also learnt about inputting a freeze frame and slow motion footage. A freeze frame image is important in a film clip as it can pause the image but allow for additional narration over the top. Putting slow motion into a clip also reduces pace but allows the viewer to focus on that specific aspect of the clip for longer. It also makes a clip look much more dramatic. 

Overall I am really happy with the outcome of this video, especially the editing-together of the clips. What I would do to improve this of course is provide a script for the actors, unless I am going to apply music like I have today. I also don't like having two different people filming for the same sequence, as the different angles don't match-up as much as I would like them to if I was filming it individually.

Filming a Conversation - Editing Using Final Cut Pro

Shooting List

Using the proper cameras, on tripods, filming a conversation. This is the order that it must run in:

• shot-reverse-shot
• master shot
• shot-reverse-shot 
• shot-reverse-shot
• shot-reverse-shot
• shot-reverse-shot
• master shot
• 1 person getting up, exiting and leaving through a door
• add in a freeze frame and some slow motion 

Filming Door Sequences

For the first task of the day we went out to film based on what we learnt from filming conversations during transition week, but instead we practised filming someone walking through doors. This is an important technique to learn because you have to think about the continuity of the cut when you get to editing the clip. As easy as I thought this task was going to be, it proved a lot harder when it came to editing the clips together. The actual filming of the sequence was really easy, as it just involves you filming the same event from two different angles: one behind the door and one on the other side. To edit the clips together however, we used new software called Final Cut Pro which I have never used before, which proved to be difficult as the controls are very different to that on iMovie. It's very difficult to shorten the clips so that they match up to each other once you place them into one sequence, as it is important that you show continuity. 

The IMPROVED Conversation

This is the NEW and IMPROVED video of a conversation following my slightly unsuccessful try last lesson. I feel that this video is definitely better than the first as I made sure that rather than filming the video in a few long shots, I created a lot of shorter frames, which made editing and putting the sequence together easier. It also means that their is less movement of the camera and therefore makes the overall film look much more professional. Changing the camera angles and shots with short quick frames from long shots makes the pace quicker and the video overall runs a lot better than it did before.

 

Improving the Conversation

Today I am going to be working on the film I shot last lesson, focussing on how I can re-shoot it to make it even better. I know that when I shoot today, I need to remember several things which should make my video look more professional:

• Do not zoom in or out whilst filming as the results aren't smooth enough
• Hold the camera still and film many shorter clips rather than longer clips as this will make editing easier. The edited version will then be a lot more consistent and the shots will vary a lot more making the video more interesting. Jumping from a clip to a similar frame or shot is not an effective method.
• Film more than I need!
• Consider the rule of thirds when shooting the footage to ensure that the subjects are framed correctly.
• Use a wider variety of shots from different angles such as:
• Over the shoulder shots - for each person in the film, with the shoulder only using a third of the space, leaving the rest for whoever else is present in the frame
• Establishing shots and mid-shots to show the subjects in their environment
• Close-ups to show reaction - but not too many!
• Shot-reverse-shot techniques to follow the conversation between the two people
• Also use a variety of different angles and to 'mix up' the sequencing of clips in the editing process so that no two frames next to each other look similar.

Filming a Conversation

This is the developed video I created after constructing my storyboard. I found the process a lot easier due to creating the storyboard beforehand. Overall, I initially liked what I had filmed but I don't think I made the editing easy for myself as I shot a few shots merging into each other, rather than each individual shot. I did this as I felt it would help with the continuity, but instead it has prolonged the pace of the film whereas many shots put together quickly would have increased the pace and the drama added into it.

Filming a Conversation - Storyboard

Evaluation:
This film was a good opportunity for me to practice with new shot types such as over-the-shoulder shots and practicing the 180degree rule. I found this task useful as it will be helpful when I create the final film as I will know what shots will work well together in keeping the sequence logical for the viewers. I will also use the final video for practicing different editing techniques to make the video more visually interesting.
I think making this storyboard was successful in the end, but I found initially shooting it difficult as I had to ensure I had enough shots to make the conversation flow properly.

Developing the Storyboard - Film 2

Evaluation:

I definitely feel that this video was a lot more successful than my first - I now know the importance and usefulness of storyboards as it has allowed me to put together my ideas more fluently. Personally, I am quite happy with this video because I have further developed my iMovie skills to incorporate more transitions and better technique. I did however struggle with adding sound to this movie as it was difficult to choose sounds that were suited to the genre of the movie.

Creating a Storyboard

Practicing Shot Types - My Film Debut!

Evaluation:

Creating my first video for A2 Media was interesting and has introduced me to what I will be working on throughout the unit. Personally, I feel like this would have gone better if I had planned for the shoot more, i.e. creating a more realistic storyboard to follow in order to make the actual film more interesting to watch. However, it was useful in introducing me to filming the different shot types. Also, I feel like with more practice, my filming quality will become a lot better and clearer as my film looks quite wobbly and not as smooth as it could be in parts. I should also edit the film more as I need to edit out some of the audio as the 'actors' in my film sometimes talk whilst I am filming them. I also feel that I could spend more time editing the film to improve the quality as the music/sounds aren't consistent and some of the titles do not appear as fluently as they should do. Overall, I feel that with more planning and editing I could make this film a lot better by being more imaginative and creative - both with the actual filming and my editing.