Question 1

Our genre for our music video was RnB/grime so we took inspiration from RnB music videos. we looked at a lot of Keri Hilson videos and tried to emulate her kind of image for our artist. we tried to conform to the codes and conventions of real music videos, we had a performance scene and a bit of a narrative of the two characters in the video meeting.

 

 

T.I. - Got Your Back ft. Keri Hilson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk2yOxTuLck&feature=channel

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We also got the inspiration for the slowmotion jacket/cape action from the wretch32 video super hero

A2 Media Studies - Evaluation Q3

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

During the whole process of making the music video, we used a lot of different technologies that were provided for us by the college, as well as the sites and other things that are available to us now because of the internet. One of the things we got to use was a brand new state of the art video camera. 

We used this camera to practice how to film music videos, as well as making our actual film. It was really easy to use and we could transfer our footage easily because the storage implement of the camera was a memory card. This allowed us to use our footage straight away after filming.

We also used digital cameras to document what we were doing during the making of our video. we also used digital cameras to make our animatic for our presentation.

another device we were able to take advantage of was the green screen. Green screens are very useful but takes quite an effort when it comes to editing as we needed to learn chroma keying. All in all, using the green screen allowed us have a choice in what background to choose, and not be too reliant on finding awesome locations. We also used this so that the focus is on the artist. Having no mise-en-scene allows the audience to focus on the artist and the artist alone.

The internet was very useful during the research stage. Before planning, we had to look for inspiration and the main website we turned to was Youtube.

Youtube is a video sharing website that allows you to upload your own videos and view others'. During our research, we looked at music videos on youtube from different genres until we settled on RnB. Youtube was also useful for us during our planning stage as it's the website we used to look at videos where we can get inspiration and hopefully apply some aspects to ours.

We also used Google Images a lot to find pictures of digipaks and advertisements.

Throughout the whole research, planning and evaluation stages, we used blogger to document our journey. Blogger allowed us to write about what we've done and also post pictures and videos. It proved to be very vital throughout the whole process.

Aside from the internet, We were also able to use several softwares that made it possible for us to produce our video and our digipaks and advertisements. 

This is Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro is an editing software we used to put together our footage and edit them to suit the song. There are many tools that come with this software and this software enabled us to be creative with our video.

This is one of the effects we implemented in our video.

This is a video filter called chroma keyer, which is used with the green screen

As well as final cut pro, we were also able to use photoshop to create our digipaks and advertisements.

This program allowed me to play about with the pictures and use effects until i got what i wanted. This is  Adobe Photoshop CS5.

Being able to use these different technologies not only helped me with my finish products, but also taught me what to do and what no to. These technologies have also made me more confident for the next time I make a music video, because I have more knowledge on how to do it, than i did before.

A2 Media Studies - Evaluation Q4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

This is the audience feedback we got after the screen on the green:

Generally, people liked our video and thought that our editing fitted with the rhythm of it. Although a lot of people have positive comments, they also did have their criticisms. One of them was that we used the green screen too much in our video and that we should've shot footage from more locations, as we only had three. They feel that this would've made it better.

Listening to the feedback, I realised that we did overuse the green screen. What we could have done also was use more shots and added a bit more story to the video, as the scene with bobby and the artist was a bit  short and it could be said, that it doesn't fit much with the rest of the video.

My digipak and advertisement also received a lot of delightful comments such as:
- photoshop use was good
- excellent layout
- pictures used very effective

One thing people didn't pick up on with regards to my digipak is that for the black background, there are bits of purple left from the original colour of the background of the picture. Now I know to examine my work carefully so that these mistakes can be rectified as soon as they can.

Evaluation question 3

For our music video we used a lot of media technologies  one of the main technologies we used was a brand new state of the art video camera while making, planning, evaluation and researching for our music video. The video cameras where very helpful in the planning stages of our video especially for our animatic. They were also helpful in filming extra things such as our behind the scenes clip. Using these Cameras we were able to zoom in and out to make close ups of the artist and make high quality video clips.

Memory cards and the video drives saved our filmed clips and pictures and transfer our work from the cameras on to the computers.

www.youtube.com helped us choose our final song and get ideas from other music videos for our music video.It also helped for my evaluation i was able to get screen shot images from music videos to be able to compare videos.

Blogger enabled us to write our blogs and upload pictures and videos. Vimeo allowed us to upload our video in a good quality and view other students work.

I used Photoshop for the construction of my ancillary products, my digipak and advertisement. On photoshop i was able to edit the colour of my image, pick a background colour, make a border for my digipak. It also added text to my digipak using photoshop. I also made my advertisement with photoshop. I used 

 I used hue saturation to change the colour of the picture and make me look less orange.

i also used the blur tool for the background of my picture to make the background look smoother.

We edited our video using Final cut pro. We changed the green screen colour to purple using the chroma key. We decided to use purple to make it more feminine. We also used cross dissolves and fades, also we overlapped between scenes. We decided to do this because we wanted our video to be interesting, we also saw it in the original video.

Evaluation question 3

Media technology used during this project.

• JVC cameras
• Blogger-research, planning and evaluation
• Internet for research, google, youtube, myspace, facebook, twitter, channel aka
• Photoshop for creating ancillary products, digipak and advertisement. (tutorial video explaining how to do the comic book effect)
•  
• Final cut for editing the music video. Effects- slow motion, colour corrector, wide time, comic book effect (photoshop), chroma kying with colour corrector, glow effects, soft focus, freeze frame, desaturate ( colour corrector), cross dissolve (fade), additive dissolve, blink, dip to colour dissolve, fade in fade out dissolve earthquake.
•  
• Animatic storyboard in Final cut using digital photographs.

During this project we have used a lot of media technologies.  The  main peice of equipment  we used was a brand new state of the art JVC video camera. We used this to shoot our music video. We also used a Sony handycam digital camcorder to shoot behind the scenes clips and audience feedback.  

As well the cameras we used Final cut pro to edit our music video, on final cut there are a whole range of effects that we made use of

Effects

Slow motion – We used a lot of slow motion effects in our music video, they were used mostly on the narrative part of the video, just to tell the story of Amber Gold meeting her “hero”. The slow motion effect is quite simple to use on final cut, I used the keyboard short cut CMD + J to bring up the dialog box

From then you just type in the percentage of which you want to change the speed of your clip to by typing in the number in the rate box. Less than 100% will slow down the clip and more than 100 will speed it up.

Colour Corrector

I wanted our video to look more like an actual music video so I decided to use the colour corrector tool to change the colour to a more film-like look. Most of the other student videos I watched had no colour correcting which makes the video look like ordinary footage taken from a camcorder. Professional videos have more advanced types of colour correcting using third party plug-ins but I had to do the most I could with what I had. I also used the colour corrector to change the colour of the background in the green screen studio shots.

The colour corrector is also simple to use. I used it to adjust levels (blacks, mids, whites) and I also desaturated the shots to make them look more professional. Now I look back I think I could’ve have colour corrected the clips better maybe by using a combination of this tool and others.

Earthquake

I used the earthquake  effect at the end of the music video to create the shaking screen that blends into the comic effect. This effect is found in effects>video filters>image control> earthquake.

After its selected you  change different aspects of it to determine how you want it to shake.

Photoshop how i did the Comic book effect.

A2 Media Studies - Evaluation Q2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipak and advertisement)?

A successful music video will make a clear visual link with its ancillary products, and I made sure I did this. 

I made sure that I used images that was clear to be linked with our music video for my digipak. For example, I used images where the artist is the main focus. You can see this on the front cover of my digipak. 

Front cover Digipak

scene from the video

As you can see here, the artist is clearly shown in the picture. I also used this picture because the artist is wearing the same outfit as in the video. This aspect would also allow the audience to recognise that both the music video and the digipak are linked together.

As for the advertisement, I used the front cover of my digipak so it is easily regocnised, as well as the digipak with the music video.