Final Music Video

Ancillary Task

Director's commentary

Our final video

Evaluation

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

For our media product we had to create a music video, digi-pack and poster to advertise a new album release. My group picked the genre of heavy metal and chose to work with the song; ‘A Single Moment of Sincerity’ by Asking Alexandria. As a group we had to research our genre and record it on our blogs to ensure we knew the conventions of our genre and understood our genre thoroughly, which would enable us to do the best we could in creating our media product.

When researching music videos we watched a number of music videos from a number of different bands such as; Asking Alexandria, Bring Me The Horizon and Miss May I. We noticed that all of the music videos had some sort of band performance from the artist and we decided that this was an important convention, which we would need to include in our music video. We shot our band performance and used red and blue stage lighting for this in a black room however when editing it in finale cut we found the lighting to not look professional and the band performance to not have enough energy which we found during research to be an important convention of the performance. We decided to re-shoot and have another go at trying to make our band performance fit the conventions of our genre we used white lighting to give it more of a professional look and used an HD camera to give our footage a better quality look. We then made sure that our band performance was very energetic and enthusiastic, it came out a lot better and I think it is a lot more successful of showing our use of conventions from a heavy metal genre. Below is a video I created by putting three different clips of music video performances from three different bands in my genre of heavy metal. I also created another video with three clips from my own music video showing how we used the conventions of our genre to create a successful performance in our music video.

When researching our genre we found that the music videos have a lot of dark or strange imagery, especially in cutaways. We decided to develop this by thinking of some unusual shots we could take, one of our most successful shots is of the lead singer trying to sing but having black tape over his mouth so was unable to do so. This gives quite a violent, aggressive and angry look as he is being restricted; trying to be stopped from saying something he wants. It contrasts with the loud, harsh music of our song choice as when people’s mouths are covered they are being forced to be quiet, it could also represent that the song lyrics are what are going on inside his head and he can’t express his feelings out loud. Below is a video I created by putting clips of different successful imagery and cut away's used in professional heavy metal music videos. I also created a video with clips from our music video with our most successful imagery of using the black tape over the mouth.





Part of our music video challenges typical conventions; there is a bridge in our song where all the harsh instrument playing and scream-o vocals stop and it’s focused on softer singing. For the moving image at this part we decided to use the opposite conventions of our genre in by using slower paced editing and making the performance a lot calmer and relaxed rather than being extremely energetic. Below is a video I created with clips from professional heavy metal music videos that shows typical conventions of an energetic performance. I also created a video with a clip from our music video showing how we went against these conventions during a calmer section in our music video.

For our digi-pack and advert we used typical conventions of having a main band photo, for this we had to ensure they were wearing similar clothes as in the music video so they keep the specific ‘look’ that we researched and planned on our blog. When researching heavy metal bands album artwork we noticed that photos had been edited to give them a dark, rundown or evil look. We took this convention and used it when editing our photos on Photoshop by changing the contrast and exposure to make the photos darker and look more professional and then added a filter over the top that gave our photos a ‘rough’ look which helped it fit the genre.  We developed the idea of our genre by using white text for our band logo by using white coloured text so it would stand out over the dark photos and would be easy for the audience to spot and catch their attention if they are a fan of that bands music. We also took the convention of using dark, angry colours and used red and grey text on our advert as the grey represents the darkness of the genre along with the red which can represent blood, danger and death which are common themes in music videos and album artwork in other bands that we researched. Below is pictures of our digi-pack that we created and the album cover of the Asking Alexandria's album which is a band within our genre.

In conclusion I feel that my group worked hard in researching our genre to ensure we knew a lot about it and thoroughly planned what we wanted to achieve so we were confident when creating our work.  Also I think the fact we re-shot the band performance shows we worked hard to achieve the best we could and made sure our video was as successful as t could be.

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

As a group we worked hard to research the conventions of our genre and to create a band, name and specific ‘look’ to work with when creating our music video and ancillary tasks. When looking at other music videos of bands such as; Asking Alexandria, Bring Me The Horizon and Miss May I we realized that the lighting and effects on the moving image are quite dark to give a sad, depressing, angry and dangerous look, this is also used in photos on their album covers and advertisements. We decided this would be an effective way to represent our genre so we filmed the band section of our music video in a completely black room and used blue and red stage lights however this didn’t create the look that we wanted as it didn’t look professional so we re-shot it and used white lights as stage lighting to show the people up. The contrast of the blacks with colours was good for this as the contrast looked really professional. We also used the idea of using dark effects on our photos for our ancillary task, we edited them on Photoshop by making the exposure lower and the contrast higher which made the blacks in the photo more predominant and gave the photos a darker look. We also added a filter over the top which made the photo look more professional and fit in more with the heavy metal genre. 

We chose three people to be in our band that we thought has a heavy metal ‘look’ about them. When researching we noticed that people in the bands usually have longish hair, tattoos, piercings, and where casual clothes with a lot of dark colours and some big logos. Two of the people in our band had medium swept over hair and one hand fairly long straight hair. When planning we decided that all band members should where trainers or converse, dark coloured jeans or skinny jeans and a top with a gothic-type logo or picture on it, they could also wear a dark hoodie or a leather jacket. We made sure that they kept this look in both the music video and ancillary task to ensure that it was constant throughout our work and that the ancillary task and music video look as though they go together and are for the same band.

Making gif

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When researching I wanted to find out what people felt about different genres and what they expected of them, also about what they expected to see from our genre so I created a survey and asked a number of people of different genders and ages to fill it in so I could get a wide range of information and opinions to use when planning my work. I learnt about the age range of people that enjoy heavy metal so I know the main audience that I am working towards interesting with my music video and ancillary task. I also learnt about the most popular bands to look at for inspiration and research. I learnt about the stereotypes of the genre in the type of imagery used, dress sense of band members and typical instruments used an associated with heavy metal.

When we got class feedback after our first draft a lot of people said we would benefit on reshooting our band performance which we also thought so we took this on bored and planned a reshoot to improve the parts in the performance that weren’t so successful, for example the lighting needed to be changed and we the band members needed to be more energetic and enthusiastic as it is a main convention of our genre. I think our reshoot was very successful as it looks a lot more professional and fits in with out genre more with a better band performance.

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

We used a number of different media technologies during the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages.

• We recorded our research and planning on a blog website (Blogger). We had to insure we used good media terminology when writing up about what we have found out or planned to do and also we had to make our blogs visually interesting by including photos, mood boards, screen captures, gifs and videos.
• When doing our audience research I used google docs to create a questionnaire to find out about what music people listen to, how they listen to it and what they think are main conventions of my chosen genre. I had to write a set of ten questions such as; 'How often do you watch music videos?' and 'What do you expect to see in a heavy metal music video?' I then email it to a number of people to answer of of both male and female and a wide age range of 13 year olds to mid 30's so I got a veriety of differnet view and ideas. I have our results on graphs and charts to make them easier to view and understand. Below is a screen capture of some of the results recorded on my blog.

• When planning to create our music video I created an animatic from our storyboard to show how long each shot needs to last and when it comes in to what part of the song. I did this by drawing out a story board for out music video and then taking a photo of each picture and putting them on Imovie and editing them so they stayed on screen for as long as we planned that shot to go on for and put in the music we chose so we could see what shot comes in at what part of the song.
  
  
• During the construction of our music video we used final cut on apple mac computers to edit our music video. It was a more advanced program than using iMovie like we did duriong our AS foundation portfolio. I found final cut more efficient for editing footage and learnt quickly how to cut shots and add effects to the moving image to make it look more professional.
  

  

  
  
• When creating our ancillary task we used Photoshop to edit pictures to make them look more professional by changing brightness and contrast of the images to make them look darker and adding a filter over the top to give it a rough, grainy look. and used a website called; ‘dafont’ to download different fonts to use in the text on our album covers and posters that are more elaborate and look more creative so they our products look more professional.

teacher draft 2nd analysis - Ad and CD cover

Assessment.

Talent release forms.

These are talent release forms for the people who will be filmed for our music video. We need to ensure we have permission for legal reasons. 

Track permission letter.

Our group went to the record label website and sent them a message from there and gave our email and a number so they could contact us back, this is a print screen of our finished message.

Location permission letters.

This is the email that Daryl sent asking for permission to film in his dads bar.

This is a copy of Daryl's email to the whole group letting us know that he had been contacted and it was ok for us to film there.

Photo shoot schedule.

Photo Shoot Plan-3

We have planned to do our photo shoot on the Saturday 12th November. We will be using the photos for the advert and the album cover, and will hopefully be using Daryl's, Dads bar for a location. We are going to need the whole band for the photo shoots so have informed our actors of when we will need them and what they will need to wear and I will need to bring my camera so we can take the photos.

Shooting Schedule

This is our shooting schedule, we have worked out what shots need to be filmed in what locations and have broken it up into a location for each day. We have also informed the people involved with what days they are needed and what they will need to bring/ wear and have a list of equipment we will need for each day we film a different section.

Advert design.

For our advert design we decided that we wanted a picture of the band large in the centre as they are the people that create the music and are important. As soon as people see a picture of artists they like, they take more notice of it as they recognise them. We have used dark colours as it is stereotypical of heavy metal bands, we also used red for the parts we wanted to stand out such as the release date as it is a vibrant colour and it will stand out against the dark colours. It is also a negative colour as it can represent blood, danger and death, this is affective as negative lyrics and imagery are the main focus of heavy metal bands. We wast the background of the photo to be of a rundown building as it will add to the negative vibe we are trying to get across and will look good. We also want red seaweed to be replacing where their hands are meant to be, this will give it a weird, monstery look which makes it seem adbstract which is common in heavy metal music videos. 

This is a video of me and Freedie discussing Photo ideas for our advert.

For our photo shoots we want it to be similar to our music video in that it's mainly black and white and  has some red in it. This is because it stands out and represents negative things which is what we want to come across as it is what people associate with heavy metal music. I also think that black and white photos for our advert will make it look more professional and I like the gritty affect over this photo as I feel it makes it look worn down and will add to the negative affect we want to create through our music video, album cover and advert.

CD Cover design.

This is our album cover design. We made sure we interesting visual imagery on each side of it so it looks professional and interesting. The front cover is going to be a landscape photo of a beach but we are going to edit it on photo shop to make the sky dark and the sea red so it goes with the heavy metal genre of darkness and negativity. We also want to use posed photo shoots of the band to show who they are, we will edit this to look dark like the rest of the images on the album cover using the main colours of black and red.

This is an example of an album cover that I thought was really affective, we want to take the idea of having an object or something other than the band on the front of our album cover that will create a negative feeling as soon as you look at it and like above we decided to have a landscape picture of an ocean/ beach that looks dark and like a place you just wouldn't want to be. Most photos taken for heavy metal bands have quite a gritty, dark affect to them which you can see looking at the picture above, we want to apply to all of or photos in our photo shoot as we think it looks affective and will help the negativity we want to get through.

Location

This is an image from google maps and images taken of where we are hoping to film our music video, there are a number of warehouses that we can film in or outside of. We want to film in a place like this as it is typical setting for a heavy metal music video (quiet areas that don't usually have a lot of people around.

List of Costume, Make-up, Props and Equipment.

Costume and Make-up:

• Lead singer: Dark clothes; t-shirt and jeans, trainers, sweat bands, rings, piercings, dark eyeliner.
• Guitarist 1: Dark clothes; t-shirt and skinny jeans, converse, dark eyeliner.
• Guitarist 2: Dark clothes; t-shirt and skinny jeans, trainers, dark eyeliner, rings.
• Bass guitarist: Dark clothes; t-shirt and skinny jeans, trainers, dark eyeliner.
• Drummer: Dark clothes; jeans, t-shirt and hoodie, converse, wrist bands, hair in front of face.
• Girl: Dark clothes; skinny jeans and a t-shirt, lots of dark eye make-up, dark hair, piercings.

Props and equipment:

- 2 guitar amps.

- Bass amp.

- Drum kit.

- Bass guitar.

- 2 guitars.

- Mic and stand.

- Camera - More than one at some points during filming.

-Tri-pod.

- Fig rig. 

- Car.

Bellow is a 'Gif' I created showing equipment that Asking Alexandria use and that other heavy metal bands also use in their performances and music videos. Through research and watching heavy metal music videos like this we created the list above of all props and equipment we will need.

GIFSoup

Storyboard

This is a video of my group creating our storyboard. We all had different roles each, one person drew, one person added colour, one person wrote in shot types and camera angles and another person wrote the shot numbers, sound and timing.



Here are pictures of our finished storyboard.

This is our animatic we made of our storyboard, we created it on Imovie and put our song over the top to show what shot is being used at what part of the song.

Concept

This is a video of my group discussing the concepts of our music video and some ideas that we want to include. This video explains things such as; we chose this specific genre of heavy metal as you can do a lot of things with it visually and we chose the song as when reading the lyrics it sounded interesting and very visual. We want to use dark imagery as it is stereotypical for the heavy metal genre and it will look really effective. For our locations we have discussed filming the performance of the band in a bar as it will look more professional or at an industrial estate as a lot of heavy metal music videos are filmed in areas like this or run down warehouses. 

Image Annotation

Our genre is heavy metal, in class we discussed what costumes we will need people to wear. We looked at heavy metal and rock music videos to get an idea of what they generally wear and we came up with this list.

• Black t-shirts with gothic graphics on it
• Skinny jeans, various colours
• Straightened hair, rough/jagged
• Vans (Canvas shoes)
• Tape (accessory) 
• Anti-Christ like jewellery
• Make-up, foundation, eyeliner, painted finger nails
• Tattoo's
• Dark hoodies
• Wooly hats/Tight baseball caps
• Piercings eg. Nose, ears, lips, eyebrows

Bellow are some gifs of heavy metal music videos to show the costume that they wear. As you can see they wear dark coloured clothes, mainly blacks and greys. They have tattoos and piercings, have longish hair, wear skinny jeans and t-shirts, vans or converse. 

GIFSoup


GIFSoup

Lyric Annotation

These are the lyrics of our song choice and we annotated them on Microsoft Word and wrote about ideas that we had for each part of the song and what the lyrics are saying. As a group we had to  unpick each line and find the meaning behind it to be able to understand the song more and have visual moving image that relates to the lyrics, we discussed some really good visual ideas for our music video and now have a better understanding of the meaning behind the song.

Song details

Asking Alexandria - A Single Moment of Sincerity; is the song we chose to create a music video on. We chose to do this genre of music (heavy metal) as the music videos are generally really visually interesting. We picked this song because the lyrics create visual imagery so it will be interesting to work with and we can create lots of different ideas to make the music video visually interesting. This is also a fast pace song which enables us to use lots of fast pace shot changes.

Technical Tutorial - Photoshop

For this tutorial we got taught how to work on Photoshop to create the front and back of our digipack, doing this our group was able to experiment with effects and colours and see what would be successful for our genre of music. We used a black background as it instantly gives it a rock/ heavy metal look as it is a colour which is stereotypically associated with this genre. The black also gives it a negative look this is effective as negative emotions are usually the main focus of rock/ heavy metal genre. The writing is whit so it is bold and stands out against the black, this is also good as when people are looking for it in the shops it is easy to see and stands out well and we chose the specific font because it is bold and interesting. The photos of the people were successful. Even though we didn't have costumes and props we used the chance of taking the photos of trying out different camera angles and poses which would make them look stern and serious as rock/ heavy metal is quite negative and also to make it represent the genre which is really shown in Daryl’s pose as the hand sign is used often within the rock/ heavy metal genre. We used thus specific filter on top of the photo to give it a surreal effect as a lot of rock/ heavy metal muic videos portray the sense of the unknown or really unusual imagery. This is created in our photot as they are unclear as their faces are quite blurred/ distorted and look unusual. Below is a video that I took of a member of our group taking the photos.

Technical tutorial - Final cut.

We created a new lip syncing video which consisted of using a green screen so we could learn how to use it and how to edit the background on final cut. Me, Elenya and Daniel created this video on Jing which allowed us to video what we did on the screen and add a voice over to explain. When doing this we decided to explain how final cut works when you want to edit the background and take the green screen out, we wrote on a piece of paper what to say first and then read out the points over the video.

Roles.

This is a photo of our group. When making a music video there are a number of jobs that need doing to make it go successfully, we are going to share these out between our group so we have all contributed equally.

Me- Filming, Photographer.

Luke- Filming, costume and props organiser.

Daryl- Filming, location manager.
Freddie- Filming, lead singer, technician.

Initial Ideas.

In class my group mind mapped our initial ideas of what we need to include in our rock/ heavy metal music video. For our costume we knew that they had to fit in with the genre of our music choice of rock / heavy metal, for this we noted that the costumes need to be dark colours and quite casual like jeans/ skinny jeans and a t-shirt. For our song choice we were told that it needs to be English and it can't already have a music video to it. We also made a list of artists of our genre so we could listen to songs and watch music videos to get an understanding of what they consist of. For the performance we knew that we would need a lot of instruments and equipment so we created a list of them; bass guitar, guitar x 2, drum kit, keyboard, speakers, mic, amp, jack, leads.

Research Assessment.

Audience Research.

For my audience research I created a questionnaire online. This is a link to it -https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhUMmpzU1pUYTBnYkF0MzEyN3RnUmc6MQ

Results:

For my audience research I created a questionnaire to find out how people listen to and purchase music and also how people feel about music genres and what they expect from their music videos. The most popular genre was rock with pop coming in close second, I think this is because these are the most commercialised genres so more people know and hear about them. I also found that a lot of people now download their music off the internet and watch music videos on television, this shows that the internet and television would be a good place for advertising as they are popular. I asked how people feel when listening to the genre of rock/ heavy metal as this is the genre of music we are going to do our music video of. Most people said that they feel happy and excited but that really depends on what genre you listen to, I think if a lot more people took the questionnaire the responses would even out more. I also as asked what people think are the main conventions of a music video as an open ended question. They gave answer such as electric guitars and other instruments, dark mise en scene and costume etc. which I need to include in my ideas when I think about what to use visually in my music video. 

Assessment 23/09/11 MCU

WWW

- Most posts attempted.
- Some detailed analysis showing good understanding.
- Some creativity with visual material.
- A good attempt to stay on track with all the posts.


EBI

- Your analysis of album covers is too simplistic and I know you can do better. Think about cinematography, mise en scene, colour, typography, layout as well as the conventions. What is the meaning of the adverts?
- Some of your posts need finishing, e.g. not all the videos from your genre have been analysed, adverts, CD covers etc.
- Posts 19 and 20 missing, you must have audience research it is in the mark scheme.
- Post 17 - what artists of  your genre does each label represent? Whay would this be a good choice for your artist?
- There are still posts with no visual material. You must include this and be more creative with it. I know you can do this!

EFFORT - IN

Advertisement research.

This advert is very black and dark which goes with the stereotypical look of the rock genre. It's called the neon bible and has a picture of this in the centre which makes it the main focus, neon signs are usually used at clubs and bars which are places that aren't asociated with religion and being ethical which is what the bibles about so by using this name and image it is giving it a negative image. It says 'featuring' which will give people an insight to what is on the CD. The fact it says limited edition will make people want to buy it more as it seems more special and that it won't be out forever. It has the release date in bigger writing so it stands out and people can esily see it.

The background of this advert is the cover of the CD and the writing has been placed around it, this enables people to know what the cover looks like so when they go to buy it they know what they are looking for.. The release date is clear in large writing and it also says 'includes' which gives people an insight of what is going to be on the CD. The date of release is on the front in large font so it stands out and people know when to buy it.

They have a clear picture of the album cover to the left which enables people to know what they're looking for when they go to buy it. The typography used is bold and clear, the name of the band  is the largest thing on the advert so the attention is automatically drawn to it so you know what the advert will be about. It has the title of the album bellow and then the release date in bold font beneath that, this is important information as then people know when its out and the name of the album for when they're looking for it. Dull colours are used as this is a convention of thee rock and heavy metal genre, they aren't happy, bright and colourful, they are the opposite, dull colours and have negative imagery and emotion in their songs and music videos.