evaluation 4 video

evaluation video 3

evaluation question 2

the Evaluation

digi-pack and advert

DIGI-PACK TEMPLATE

The digi-pack had 4 panels, just as we had found in our research. The front panel links to our advert, and matches the rest of the digi-packs aesthetic, whilst the rest is strongly genre orientated.

DISK

The Disk will appear to slot into a person�s hand when it is placed on top of the image shown in the Digi-pack template.

ADVERT

Our research showed us that we should link our advert to the Digi-pack front cover, so we did, whilst making it eye-catching and individual to attract an audience.

Further designs

We have decided on our Digipack and advert designs after much deliberation. The final draft has two less panels than our original, and the pictures have been changed considerably, but our Ideas have developed from those shown before, and will now be produced on Photoshop.

The front cover will now be a collage of various different eyes hands and other body parts, with the double faced head (that appeared in the original designs) in front of it. We will also be using the text that we decided on earlier in our project for the band name.

I was able to convince the group to change our album name as well. I believed that it should like to our design more, as well as be ambiguously intimate as is the convention for our genre. The album is now called ‘Colourless faces’.

The inside pains will now be a hand holding a band photo, and a hand holding our CD. This is again ambiguously intimate, and links to our cover.

The back now links more to the front cover than before, because it now includes the double faced head from the front cover, but inverted.

The advert has also changed. We continued to have the same design for the front cover of our album, and our advert, as our genre conventions dictate, but we altered it slightly. The advert is now a large version of the collage we used for the album cover, with an opaque sunset overlaying it.

22/11/2011

Today we have began our first steps to producing our rough designs on Photoshop. I have begun work on the album’s spine, back cover, disk, and publishing logo. Katie and Laura have started audience research on what we should use as and album name.

Music Video: Final Cut

Diary Entry: 16th, 17th November

Wednesday 16^th  November

I have been again focusing on blog by making sure we have everything we need and started organising. I have also been watching how the video is coming together. Looking forward to tomorrow night!

Thursday 17^th November

Deadline day! Our video is coming along and we’re nearly finished! All that’s left to do is check and double check all the work and video to make sure there are no mistakes!

Locations

For our locations, we wanted an industrial landscape with an edge to bring more of an ‘indie’ edge into the video.

We decided for the running scenes we would use urban areas and film in back alleys mixed with local scenic roots, such as the sea front. We wanted the skies to be bright blue to create the idea of something bright, colourful and intriguing coming towards the characters’ lives, but we’d still have the dull, uninteresting landscape they are currently trying to escape from. Here we tried to incorporate the idea of escapism, as the characters are trying to break free from their current surroundings.

For the band performance, we mostly concentrated on the motif of the sun setting. Our original idea for the performance was to go to the Baltic at the viewing point and to let the performance have the back drop of the Newcastle nightlight as the sun went down. We had to chance our idea because the Baltic had the Turner Prize on around the same time that we wanted to film, and it also became very difficult to get permission. We then considered filming in a field as the sun went down, but again it was difficult to get permission and thought we would have a very limited amount of time to film.

As we had decided that we would all like to make the sunset a stronger motif in the video, we decided that we could bring into the performance of the band. We had then all finally settled on the idea of projecting the sunset and looked at how and where we could do it. We decided we needed a black room to make it most affective, so we used the drama hall at our school, where we put up a white sheet and projected the sunset from behind. We then put all the band and instruments and added leaves, which has become a theme through our running scenes.

The tea party was also filmed in an industrial landscape. Luckily, Iona had noticed an area where a building had been knocked down so it had rubble and was very imperfect. This was essential for our video, as we tried to incorporate Claude Levi-Strauss’ idea of binary opposites. We also thought it could be a metaphor from their perfectly normal lives, the normal buildings, to their wanted lives where they destroy the things that define them most, relating to the rumble around the site.




Another location we used was the shoe tree in Jesmond. We thought it would be a fantastic idea for the homeless man to collect his shoes from there, and looking at the footage, I think it looks very good!

Advert designs

These two images are our drafts for adverts. They both link to our digi pack, and repeat an image from it, just as our audience research and existing product research dictates. The one on the left is a repeat of our design for a front cover, making it very easy for the viewer to link the two products, whereas the design on the right is a reapeat of an inside panel, yet look more artistic and eye-catching. Both designs include a web address, but we are still debating over the inclusion of a quote, or any extra text like the design on the left has. Much deliberation will go into producing the final advert, and hopefully we can compromise and create an attractive advert.

Digi-pack designs

As well as the massive amount of editing we have done this past week we have also began to discuss our digi-pack and advert designs. We have had these in mind all the way though the project, but these are our initial drafts, and beginning ideas. Over thing we will develop these designs, and then produce them neatly on Photoshop.

This image is of the front of the digi-pack as well as the back, the spine, and one of the inside panels. Our audience research has helped us a lot with this part of the project, we have followed what people said they would prefer in a digi- pack, such as including artwork as appose to photographs of the band. Using artwork also fits into our genre research, as most of the digi-packs we looked at did not use photographs, and chose to look more artistic and creative instead.

The front panel includes a double faced head, one half light, one half dark, to link partly to our video, but also to the digi-packs theme of ‘Transitions’. The different shaded parts of the cover are meant to be different types of crumpled paper layered onto each other. The different pieces of paper are supposed to show two conflicting elements in a creative way.

The back is supposed to be plain white paper that has been slightly crumpled, with plain black text on it, along with all of the bands information. This fits the template for the ideal back to a digi-pack that we discovered whilst doing our existing products research, that is; keep the back simplistic so it does not distract from the cover.

The inside panel continues the theme of using different coloured paper to make it look creative and artistic. Behind the paper is an image of the moon, and the night sky, this links to the idea of contrasts and transitions, not to mention the theme of our song.




This image has an inside panel on either side of the disk.

The first inside panel is the inverse of the inside panel from the other Digi-pack image. It is a picture of the sky during the day, with a layer of white paper around it. Once the digi-pack is produced this panel will appear on the back of the picture of the night sky, to emphasise their contrast.

The disk is a simplistic design, much like the examples that we studied in our existing products research task. It fades from dark to light in the same way that the image on the front cover does, to keep a constant theme of changing. The text being on different parts of the text, and being different colours also shows the conflict of this theme of transitions.

The final image continues the sky motif in the previous two inside panels, but is a half-way house in between the two images. It is the sun setting, so it is just as the sky begins to change from one of our pictures to the other. We also chose to remove the paper from this picture so that is would not be grouped with either of the previous images, and would remain neutral.

Diary Entry: Tuesday 15th November

Today I did some editing of our final video, it took me a long time to find appropriate footage for what I needed but finally got there in the end. I’m becoming better acquainted with the software and feel as though I’m beginning to pick up the pace with it. For the rest of the day I have again spent my time working on blog and have begun looking at other things that may be interesting to put on the blog. So far, I have decided to do an analysis of motifs we have used throughout our video and communications our group have used.  

Communication In The Group

As we are working as a group, communication is a key element to success.  As we only have a collective five hours a week together in lessons to discuss important elements of our video, we decided to put multiple things in place to make sure we can all stay in contact if and when necessary. 

We first all exchanged mobile numbers for means of contact, but found it was too hard for group contact with this.

Media group on Facebook

 Katie created a media group on the social media site, ‘Facebook’, so we could all keep in touch with major events. We added our actors and band members, so they could also interact and see what we had done. We found this was best for more official bits and pieces. The only problem with this is that if we post something, everyone can see it.

Facebook Messaging

We have also created a message on Facebook that only our group can see, so we can discuss things whenever needs be if one of us were ill on a day. This has become our most used out of all ways of communication.

When organising our time, we found that everyone in our group all had round about the same frees as each other so we would organise time to meet and discuss media issues. Through the planning stages we found that this was a blessing, but as we became ready to edit we realised that we has less time that other groups who’s frees were spread apart. Luckily we have managed to decipher time between us.   

Diary Entry: Tuesday 15th November

Today I have been going over exactly what we need on this blog and checking the order of which certain posts appear as well as proof reading and improving the text. This means our work will be in a chronological and organized format which will be easier to follow. I am about to re-write my piece on the history of music videos to make it more in depth and have also decided to include an introduction to each member of the group.

Diary Entry: Monday 14th November

Today I came into media before school to get the Audience Research video completed and then exported ready to upload to the Blog that night. When working on the editing (which was done prieviously but due to some technological missunderstanding vanished) I decided to break the long video of music video and Digipak research up into two mini films. I decided this would make it easier to add to the write up of the Questionnaire which I have already written up as detailed analysis.  This extended into first lesson which wasn't my intention so Me and Laura edited the final music video for the remainder of the lesson.

At the end of Break me and Iona went to film the final section of the narrative which we had ran out of daylight to film on Saturday. We filmed our final running shots as well as the short sharp snappy footage as we are going to the tea party when we find our Jewallry, put on our make up and  sort out our hair. We found the conditions difficult as it was freezing cold but we managed to get all of the footage that we needed. The locations which we used this morning were all in local proximaty to school, the majority by the sea, because of the vastly changing landscapes and houses in the area giving the look of very different locations for each shot.
After School I stayed to edit the music video and I also added to the Blog by uploading the Rough cut video from onto YouTube and then accross to the Blog. Tomorrow I plan to re-film the Sunset in the evening, edit in the afternoon. Whilst in the lessons and at home I will be working on the blog going over the posts to make sure that were not missing anything and that it is all in the right order.

Costumes

Each character has two costumes one to be bland and regimented, symbolising their boring everyday lives. The second costume is vibrant, quirky and individual symbolising their extravagant double life when the sun goes down. As a group of characters we have stuck to our original plan of using a quirky vintage style for our double life costumes because it gives the video an extra twist and quirky edge.

The Homeless Man character wears a large old bland jacket in brown with old cords. These items of clothes add to the broken, excluded, isolated and a sense of a homeless person. The old chunky, outdated brown shoes which have seen better days alluding to a long time with no money or care for it. 

Then when he starts to run towards his double life he changes into a conventional suit with a difference as the shirt and tie are contrasting; the tie is greeny-blue where as the shirt is a bright shade of fuchsia which stands out from the mart dark suit. The bowler hat gives the normally isolated and unseen character a quirky individual edge, making him easily identifiable to the audience.

The Business women character wears dark and sharp clothes which reflect her profession in the world of business. In order to convey this she wears a fitted black jacket, with a dark blue checkerboard blouse underneath and to top it all off plain black smart trousers, with plain black pumps and black socks. The checkerboard blouse underneath the black jacket shows to the audience that there is a little bit of fun inside her that she seems to lose when doing her job. 

Her Tea Party outfit is completely contrasting because the main colour is white and the outfit is a dress allowing her to unleash her fun side, minimizing the darkness in her life. The bare legs along with the large gold butterfly earrings, the bright blue belt, the chunky bold bracelets and necklaces build that fun and quirky side which she is almost forced to hide on a daily basis.

The Librarian character wears basic boring smart but comfortable clothes to establish how she is always on her feet doing something in her profession. In the form of black linen trousers, a black vest top and a subtly faded red cardigan, along with a brown belt and brown brogues. Her outfit shows that there was once a love for colour art and literature but the stereotypical everyday on her feet scanning and sorting books has made her forget what she loved in the first place.

Her Tea Party outfit is a lot more vibrant almost as if she re-finds her love for colour by wearing: a multicoloured floral maxi dress, red shoes, multiple multi coloured beaded bracelets. The busy outfit transforms the characters business of work into an array of artistic approval therefore creating a quirky edge to a character that has only just truly been revealed as who she wants to be.



The Tea Party Hosts also keep the quirky extravagant vintage theme in their costumes wearing bright bold colours and impressive patterns. The Female Party Host, Charlotte, wears a remarkable patterned dress which has a lot of volume to it, adding to the chaotic nature of the video itself. The Male Party Host (George) wears an odd suit the jacket in dark grey and the trousers a light grey, with a bowtie which heavily contrasts the pink shirt.

Dairy Entry: Monday 14th November

As this is the last filming week, I had suggested everyone doing their own diary entries as we will all be doing very different things at different times.

Today, I watched the audience research footage that I had collected which Katie has edited into a wonderful mini-video.  I also have been working on blog posts; in particular I have working on my detailed analysis of the Locations we used during filming, and why we chose them whilst sieving through the appropriate photos to add alongside to my analysis. I have also been looking to improve on my director’s research, which I have found very interesting. If I have chance to do more today, I would like to proof read my work to make sure I have made no more mistakes.

Director Analysis: The Malloy Brothers

The Malloy's are two Brothers from LA who have made an impact in the music video director circuit. They have worked with Artists such as The White Stripes, Vampire Weekend, Wolf Mother, Foo Fighters and Blink 182. 

In the words of one of the brothers themselves on how they became who they are today.

For every video the Brothers create and Direct they make it portray part or all of the artist’s ethos, as well as linking directly to the sound of the song. For example the song 'my doorbell' by the well known band The White Stripes' video was created purely because of the "unique vintage sound". 

  

Diary Entry: Monday 14th November

Today we are filming the very last part of our narrative. Katie and Iona's characters (the teacher, and the librarian) preparing for the tea party, will not take long to film, and then we are done filming. The editing is progressing, and we will be able to devote almost all of our time to it, once the filming today is done. The audience research is now being finalised. I am making small edits to blog posts, and will be editing once my group mates are done using the hard-drive for audience research.

Props

 

Here is a scanned image of a prop list I wrote and crossed off for the tea party filming. There is frequent inclusion of watches to symbolize the idea of rushing against the clock but largely as a motif for life changing 'when the sun goes down and the colours are replaced'. I thought a disco ball would be appropriate in highlighting the contrast between the characters 2 lives, re infusing the flamboyant fun atmosphere of the life the characters desire. Union Jack bunting and tea cups relate to the conventions of a quintessential British theme which we have present in our tea party, being proud of where your from could relate to the song we are using as The Futureheads are known for their ties with the local community of Sunderand and Newcastle. Various random objects such as flamingo fairy lights have also been included into the prop set up to again represent the unusual and extraordinary feel of the party and allow our video to become that bit more memorable and impacting, similar to the alternative style of our genre. (photos taken by Katie)

Diary Entry: Saturday 12th Novemebr

Laura had a brilliant idea of filming the homeless character finding his tea party shoes from the famous shoe tree in Armstrong Park in Heaton, a wonderfully interesting location that we considered filming in previously. This Saturday we were able to film those shoe scenes as well as scenes of the business woman and the librarian running from work and finding their costumes. We were careful of filming in a variety of locations around the park and in the streets nearby so as not to repeat similar shots. We have very nearly re shot all the footage needed to make our video as good as we can and are again pleased with the results.

Diary Entry: Friday 11th November

Something beneficial about our group having the same free's is being able to film in them. For example today, Alfie filmed me as the Librarian in our school library and we both agreed that the cluttered claustrophobic feel of this library helped to convey the theme of being trapped in a mundane life a lot more effectively than the Library used in our rough cut video. We are pleased with the footage we collected and our teachers agree that the new costume is more appropriate than that I wore in the rough cut. As we were filming, Katie and Laura watched through our new edited footage, tweaking and tidying certain parts and adding their own new editing. Once our proper lesson started I and Alfie continued working on editing the footage of our band performance that I began in my free earlier on. It was successful as the singing is in time with the song and looks very convincing and professional, especially in comparison to our original performance. Filming from many different angles has really been beneficial. Whilst doing this, Katie and Laura were discussing exactly what needed to be improved and added to this blog with our teacher. Laura wrote a list which we are all currently working through in our free time and after school Katie stayed to finish work on our audience research videos.

Current Video Director Research

Chris Milk

Screen shot from 'Touch The Sky'- Kayne West

Chris Milk is a media specialist from America who has worked on TV commercials, political videos, music videos and short movies. He has directed videos for the likes of Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Audioslave, Kanye West, The Chemical Brothers, Natasha Bedingfield, Jet, Courtney Love, U2, Gnarls Barkley and Green Day. Milk also directed the second unit on "A Mother's Promise", the Barack Obama bio film that played before his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Screen shot from 'The Wilderness Downtown'

Milk’s latest pieces of work have been Arcade Fires ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ and ‘The Johnny Cash Project’ which are both fantastic and are well worth a viewing. 

Opening page for 'The Wilderness Downtown'

‘The Johnny Cash Project’ is a global art project which is a testament to Johnny Cash. Over 561046 people from 194 countries have taken part Cash’s last video by drawing still images to create his very last music video to the song ‘Ain’t No Grave’. Cash’s last album dealt heavily with the themes of mortality and everlasting life, so in extension so does the video and although it is a poignant piece it is still a fantastic tribute.

“The Johnny Cash Project is a visual testament to how the Man in Black lives on – not just through his vast musical legacy, but in the hearts and minds of all of us around the world he has touched with his talent, his passion, and his indomitable spirit. It is this spirit that is the lifeblood of The Johnny Cash Project. Thank you for helping Johnny’s spirit soar once more. God bless.”- Chris Milk

All if Chris Milks work is visually dynamic, edgy and artistic, I would like to take inspiration from his work to create something as equally visually dynamic, by perhaps using different types of media like photography and artwork in our music video.

Samuel Bennetts

Samuel Bennetts is an Australian director who attempts to use a range of different techniques and styles to better his work and evolve his own talent. Samuel Bennetts mainly works with the band ‘Bluejuice’; an indie band with their own set style of an abstract almost ludicrous view of reality which Samuel Bennetts has been able to exhibit in all of the projects that they have collaborated on.


The director often stylises his work to the genre he is working with, (even though it is mainly indie) such as in the ‘Fur patrol’ video ‘Get along’. This video was far darker than his usual style, and adapted to fit into the bands genre. This ability to ignore his natural style, and to be so adaptable in an alien directing environment, is why I have chosen to study Samuel Bennetts in further detail. I plan to emulate his techniques and base my all of my ideas on the conventions and templates of our genre.

Samuel Bennetts often uses his style to mix morally questionable situations, and odd, almost surreal happenings to convey exactly what he means, but in an interesting and engaging way. An example of this would be the ‘Bluejuice’ video ‘Act yr age’. The song ‘Act yr age’ is obviously supposed to convey the message that age should not be a limitation on your life, and that you should be able to do what you want no matter what other people say, but Samuel Bennetts chose to show this is an extremely odd way. The video flips the idea that is expected, (and is hinted to at the beginning) on its head by changing it from people thinking the lead singer is immature, to people thinking he should act younger. I also hope to imitate this factor of his directing style: mixing the surreal and, the almost dull by comparison, real life to make our video as interesting to the viewer as possible without sacrificing narrative.


Motifs and metaphors have been a large part of Samuel Bennetts work, such as the constant Pinocchio metaphor in the video ‘Ain’t telling the truth’. We will also be using a similar technique within our video, by having a constant motif of clock, and looking at looks. Our song is largely based around time, as it repeats the lyrics ‘Sun goes down and the double life begins’.

Samuel Bennetts also likes to make a sceptical in his videos. Almost all of Samuel Bennetts videos contain a very memorable scene that people look upon in awe, which has been one of the reasons he has rose to prominence, because these scenes are eye catching and memorable spectacal’s. my group and I fully intend to include a memorable and unexpected yet not unfitting scene in our video, and make it as surreal and expertly done as a Samuel Bennetts spectacle.

Research of current directors

MICHEL GONDRY is a French Academy Award winning film maker noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scene. His skills transcend across screen writing, music video/ film directing and advertising. Gondry is the grandson of an inventor and his son is an artist. Within Gondry’s work there is emphasis on emotion and from 1988 till present he has made videos for numerous artists including Beck, Paul McCartney, The White Stripes, Kylie, Kanye West, Lenny Kravitz, Daft Punk, Inspiral Carpets, Massive Attack, The Rolling Stones, Sinead O’conner, Nenah Cherry, The Chemical Brothers, Radiohead and Bjork. (most more than once)

 

In my opinion, one of his most noted videos was for The White Stripes; Fell in Love with a Girl. It is a concept video of the band performing as Lego characters. I appreciate the time and effort dedicated into stock motion and feel it’s a very inventive method of filming a performance. The unusual style of video relates to our unique narrative of a flamboyant tea party. The mise en scene in this particular video includes a lot of simplistic block colour which I think highlights the Lego characters more as various tones could drown their silhouettes. Within our own video we could take inspiration in terms of colour to enhance the themes of double lives, for example dull saturation of the characters at work to contrast with the lively colours of the tea party  

Diary Entry: Wednesday 9th November

Today we are beginning to edit our video. Today I have attempted to add the homeless man’s narrative into our work, but I have been hindered by the editing program not functioning properly, I do plan to see the IT department about the problem. Katie and I have also been filming today. We filmed the business woman’s introduction from a variety of angles, and plan to edit it as soon as possible. We do not have a lesson on Wednesdays, so I have not been able to talk through what we plan to do in the final week , but we will finalise our plans in tomorrow’s lesson.

Diary Entry: Tuesday 8th November

Today is the day of our performance re-shoot because as highlighted in the rough cut we didn't have enough angles and we didn't make our performance look different enough to other groups. This time we have borrowed a projector which we are using to project the sunset footage, which Me and Laura made stronger this morning by altering the brightness and the contrast, behind the band on a white sheet.

Throughout the afternoon Me and Alfie completed and then exported the sunset footage which we will be using to project whilst Laura gathered leaves and all four of us gathered props and equipment for tonight. I made sure that the new band who don't all go to our school were still ok to film tonight, had remembered their guitars and where wearing the right thing. During period 5 I went home to pick up my laptop from my house to use with the projector. As I was leaving my house to head back to school we got a message through from our second guitarist saying that he could no longer make tonight so I rang our backup guitarist, Matthew Fairrie, to check that he was still up for stepping in. When I got into School I consulted the rest of the group with the problem and we decided on ringing other band members, Drummer Matt Harris and Basist Sam Taylor, if they could bring in an extra top so that we could make Fairrie look more Indie. Matt Harris replied saying he would bring a shirt for Fairrie to wear and The Guitar problem was sorted by my sister bringing her electric in for Fairrie to use in whilst filming. 

We got the Drama Hall at 5 o'clock and everyone was there on time we used the help of two lighting experts in the form of Dan Shaw and David J. Robinson as well as our Media technician Mr Convrey helping us set up.  We filmed using multiple angles including various close ups of Jonny singing, the whole band and individual close ups of each band members instrument.  When filming we had three cameras so we could film multiple angles at the same time, therefore three of us were stationed at a camera each time and the person who wasnt was then in charge of starting the sunset projection. After each take we swapped around to make sure that everyone had an input into the actual filming. Me and Laura also used a trolley thing which was in the drama hall to use like the dolly to get smooth movement shots of the whole band.
As a whole I think that everything went well today because of the band members knowing what they were doing, all looking the part and fitting in with the indie/alternative genre. The most obvious improvements that we have made this time are having the lead singer singing the right words at the right time and having an increased amount of angles, as well as making it tie in with the narrative by using the leaves.

Our video and narrative theory

Todorov once claimed that a compelling story should fit this template;

Our video is the correct formula for a Todorov style narrative. We begin with an equilibrium of our three main characters being bored with their lives, this is shown through their pose, and facial expressions. The video then includes a disruption; the characters believe they are late, and then rush off. The chain of events that are caused by this are our characters picking up their clothes on their way to the tea party. Our characters reach their goal, and arrive at the party in time, they then proceed to enjoy the tea party to the full. The video does end ambiguously, without making it clear what kind of equilibrium has been established, but this was a deliberate decision to let the viewer decide the characters fates for themselves, and it was fortunate, but it was also a production decision as well because, the songs rhythm would have made it very difficult to restore a boring theme.

Narrative theory- Daniel Floyd

Many people have tried to decipher the perfect story; one of these people is Daniel Floyd.
Daniel Floyd is an highly regarded animator who believes that there is no perfect template for events in a story, but that any story, no matter what happens in it should follow this graph that charts time, and how engaged the viewers is.


This theory states that a story must slowly become more engaging, drawing the audience in, until they are emotionally invested, then have a climactic point that everything led up to, and lastly have a final scene to allow the calm down. The dips in the graph are rest points for the audience, these allow the viewers to become gradually more engaged, but not over whelmed by the story.

This theory of a story map is questionable, but never the less our video’s narrative does follow this guide line. We begin and become more interesting by use of colours and a faster editing pace, until we have our climax, and then have a slower calmer scene to finish, just as the graph recommends.

Diary Entry: Thursday 3rd November

We now have new footage of our narrative. We have re-filmed the travelling part for the homeless man; it now looks far more colourful, and is from more interesting angles. The editing speed has increased, through different angles of the same shot being interwoven together. A faster editing pace was one of the improvements that we wanted from our rough cut video. Whilst Iona and I edit, Katie and Laura are planning future filming and finishing the audience research. We took into acount all of the points that were suggested to us after our orignal rough cut of the video, and hopefully will not make the same mistakes in filming this time around.

Narrative Theory

The second theorist we have been introduced to is Claude Levi-Strauss.

Strauss thought that to create a successful film or music video, you would have to have narrative that shows binary opposites such as good and evil, human and alien, and life and death.

We have looked at multiple videos, and a lot of them do follow the ideas of binary opposites and luckily this transferred over to our own music video as we have quite a few binary opposites as motifs. For example, we have sunrise and sunset, dark and light, time manipulation, locations, rich and poor, and work and play. We hope to expand more on these in our video to make them clearer.

Diary Entry: Wednesday 2nd November

Today we don't have any lessons so we used one of our frees that we have together, period 4, to get on top of filming. We filmed the running shots of the Homeless man in full Tea Party costume aswell as well as him finding his hat and tighing his shoe laces. For each scene we shot we used a variety of angles and ways of doing it so we would have enough footage to use for the final music video's fast pace editing. The location choices this time were more in fitting with our music video and the specific character as we chose a small field close by to school because of it's golden fallen leaves, and the wagonways pathway/backtrack due to its link to roughness and nature linking to the character. Both locations add to the video's unique and quirky vintage vibe of the video which act as like a build up to the extravagent tea party at the end of the narrative.   

At the end of the day I returned the camera but not before I retreived the footage from the camera and put it onto our hardrive.

Diary Entry: Monday 31st October

We have returned from half term and are adapting our video. We plan to re-shoot most of the video to improve it as much as possible. We intend to make the performance more intereseting, and link to the lyrics more by adding a sun set video being projected into the background. we also intend to create a faster editing pace through re-taking full scene's from different angles then merging this footage to make one scene seem faster paced. Framing the shots is something that we also inted to focus on through out all of the work we intend to do.

Rough Cut Feedback

In our media class, we all watched each other’s video and gave back feedback on what was liked and what they thought needed to be changed. This has been very beneficial to our group to see what other people like and whether our idea and actual video was liked and enjoyed.

When we got our feedback from the rough cut, people said they liked the narrative involving finding the clothes and the tea party which they thought was unique and interesting. We were very pleased about this as we had spent a while considering what other people would think and whether they’d understand the narrative. The only thing they said would improve the video would be to define who the characters were and what they do as a job; we agreed and thought we needed better footage.

The photographs towards the end of the video were split with our piers liking and disliking it. We took this into consideration and have decided that we would still like to do this to show the madness at the tea party but we would put it into a smaller part.

The location of our tea party and running scenes were thought to be great but our band performance location was dreadful. All members of the group agreed and we knew that we would have to reshoot and film somewhere more adhereing to the conventions of an indie band.

We were told that we had good angles, but perhaps needed a few more to vary to make it more interesting. This also linked with the pace. We were told that we should perhaps make the speed of editing faster to fit in with the pace of the music and adding angles would help this.

We also had a problem with continuity in the tea party. One minute Charlotte, one of the tea party guests, would be wearing a hat and then the next she wasn’t. This was a silly mistake by us, and we agreed to make sure that it would not happen again. Another issue with the tea party was that we didn’t have and tea and just had water, again a silly mistake by us. Also there was an issue with the how tame the tea party, and how it didn’t really fit in with the music. We have decided to remedy this by getting more excitable people to be in the tea party.

We want to completely reshoot the band performance as there were multiple issues. We had a acoustic guitarist and you could see the lyrics on the floor. We hope to improve this a lot by getting organised with musicians and a properly thought out location.

Framing was another thing we were asked to work on. By adding a variety of shots, especially in performance we will be creating a better piece of work. We were also told that we needed more emphasis on the motif of the sunset time-lapse. We are currently considering featuring it in our band performance.

In conclusion, we have all agreed to reshoot everything we have done to get the best out of it and have taken on these criticism and hope to remedy them with the final shoot.

 

Time plan for after Rough cut

Rough cut video

We have gotten extensive feedback from this video, which will hopefully allow us to improve our project from start to finish. These helpful insights came from our peers as well as the teachers, so we will consider each comment, and select the best ones then adapt them so that they can all fit together.

Diary Entry: Monday 17th October

Over the course of today I have edited the Performance and included it within our video, and it has complimented the narrative very well. We have had some trouble securing a band to play for us, as we wanted to use musicians who could actually play the song rather than rely on camera trickery and some miming. The only musicians we could find who would fit the part, and were available turned out to be unreliable. This was our fourth attempt to film the band, and we have finally succeeded. I believe that we have created a very good performance video within the confines we had. Unfortunately I am the only group member who was able to work for the next two weeks, as the rest of my group are away on an English trip, but they left me very little to do, simply finish editing the performance section.

Audience Research: The Questionnaire

Diary Entry: Friday 14th October

for the past week we have been editing the footage of the narrative, and finaly we are done. all scene's leading up to the teaparty, and the teaparty itself are filmed and have been cut down to the appropriate lengths. The performance and sun setting time lapse shot have yet to be filmed, but by monday this footage will be ready for editing.

Diary Entry: Thursday 13th October

The editing is almost finished for our narrative portion of video. Laura, and Katie have begun audiance research into adverts, and posters. We are attempting to gather a band for our performance section, but are haveing trouble working around our performers. In future we shall arrange to film with more reliable people.

Diary Entry: Wednesday 12th October

I have attempted to edit today, but I have found it difficult, because of the new editing software that has been installed. The program seems to reject most of our footage, meaning that work is impossible on my computer, but I have managed to find a way around this problem. The main media technician computer is able to interpret the footage, and put it onto the new program, meaning that I can continue working on the video. Iona has uploaded some new narrative footage into our project folder that will be added today, along with the remainder of Sunday footage. Katie has continued to diligently work on the audience research for our Digi-pack and advert designs, which will help us to create the items to the best of our abilities.

Diary Entry: Tuesday 11th October

We have all continued with our work from yesterday. in editing we have decided to load our footage into the animatic production file. Since we have stuck to our plan heavily we can replace the pictures with footage straight into the project.
In the evening Katie and Iona went to Dudley Library after closing to film the Librarian's establishing shots when no customers would be around. This was to avoid conflict with the public but also to keep in the theme of the library after closing time.

My favourite music videos

Here are my top 10 favourite music videos, there are a lot of others that I really like such as Lullaby, Friday I'm In Love, Let's Go To Bed and Close To Me by The Cure, Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix, In Bloom by Nirvana and numerous Pulp, Radiohead and Moby videos but instead of focusing on bands I like, I chose to include a variety of different video styles, here are the selected...