Music Video :)

I know its slightly later than planned, but this is the link to our music video on youtube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK9djQRQiwI

A2 Media Project Evaluation Question 4

How Did You Use new Media Technologies In The Construction and Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Research;

During the research stage, the predominant technology we used was the internet. This mainly included websites such as colonelblimp, as this was the main place i found the music videos I analysed, along with youtube. Also, the website Jamendo was where we found our artist, but to find a better song we had to visit the 'Brad Sucks' website. It was here we discovered that Brad Sucks was in fact a one-man-band, and thought we could portray this in our music video in some way. Also we saw the actual CD cover for the "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" album, and this helped us think up ideas in terms of colour and layout etc. Throughout the whole of this stage, we continually uploaded research onto Blogger.com, which made it our most visited website. We also used the Google image search to find the images of the posters and digipaks of our chosen artists to analyse.

Planning;

We used the Corel software, particularly the Corel Draw program throughout the whole production process, but in this stage was when we were most using it, as we were constantly re-doing drafts of our digipaks and posters to try to reach a more professional standard for our work, and obviously we had to use trial and error to see which effects would look best for the ancillary products. To get the ancillary drafts and final designs onto our blog, the format saved by Corel software wouldn't upload onto Blogger, so we had to open the files through the Paint software and then re-save them into JPEG formats so we were able to get them onto our blogs. This again shows the importance of using the internet to aid our production. For storyboarding, no real media technology was required, because the storyboards themself were enough for us to plan out our narrative and performance elements of the video. We could decide what was going to happen and when we wanted it to happen, and then scan the finalised storyboards through onto the blogs, again using the internet. Admittedly, to capture the background photos for our digipak (all tiles) required a bit of opportunistic filming. We took the digital camera out onto our college field to get some photos of the boxes at a higher angle so that you could see the shadows on the grass, but fortunately for us it turned out to be one of the sunniest days of the year so far, and luckily we were able to get a shot of a blue sky. We chose the lower angle to emphasise the blue and white which would not contrast with the boxes as much as the green colour of the grass, and offer synergy with the poster design we had done.

Construction;

The main technology we used in this stage was the Digital Video cameras to capture all our shots, including the use of the dolly and tripod when we needed to. For our sad face, we used the tripod and camera to create stationary shots to represent the expression with no camera movement at all. We then made use of the shaky, hand-held camera work to portray the emotion anger. We felt that if we were to use this technique here then our audience would possibly be able to notice, especially as we utilised both the dolly and tripod simultaneously for our happy shots, particularly the dancing sequence on the instrumental. The fluid movement by the camera in this part of the video we thought could represent the feel of the music, which was again reflected by the introduction of the full band playing the song after the instrumental. After our filming was completed, and even during filming when we felt we could do something, we made use of the Apple Imacs and the program imovie 09 to edit the project altogether. We took risks to achieve certain shots during the editing process, and the most difficult one we attempted was a split screen edit. As i mentioned earlier, Brad Sucks is a one man band, and in this type of shot we were trying to place the same person on the drums on one side of the screen and playing bass on the other. To achieve this, we had to revert to using the Final Cut Pro software. After we used the internet to see how to actually compose the shot, we had to save the file as a quicktime file then transfer it into imovie program, however the quality of the shot decreased somewhat, as it became blurry once we had opened it in imovie. We also reverted back to the Corel Draw software in this stage, as we created the final draft of our digipak and poster on there, following on from the drafts we had previously done. After completing the video, we uploaded it to youtube, which allowed us to gather feedback from a larger community rather than just simply uploading it onto blogger and potentially getting a lot less feedback.

Evaluation;

For the final stage, the main technology I used was the Apple Imac, particularly the built in iSight for the imovie 09 program. This was the easiest way to film the shorter questions for the evaluation. One advantage of this was that the film would be directly put into the program, rather than borrowing a Digital Video (DV) camera from the college then taking time to upload the footage into the program. I used the imovie software to edit the footage i got and also to insert 'divider' slides, namely the title transitions where the questions appeared. The internet has been used extensively throughout all 4 stages, and again it is important to use in this stage, as i could upload the video i got onto blogger, and also i could post the final question in a blog entry. Youtube is also possibly an option for the evaluation, but as feedback is not particularly required for the evaluation stage i thought that just putting all my evaluation on blogger was the most suitable course of action.

Brad Sucks - Digipak =D

This is our final digipak design for the artist Brad Sucks' album "I Don't Know What I'm Doing".

As you can see, the box pile we have used is the main recurring theme in each of our products including the music video. This use of iconography within our ancillary products and our actual production enables us to make a link between the products for our target audience.

As you can see the background of the blue sky is the same on each tile, which gives a less significant contrast between each, and also makes it look a bit more professional. The font is not difficult to read and understand, and if you notice, the title banners are the same font as the poster title, again allowing an easily establishment of a link between the two products. The use of the boxes on the front tile which everyone will see makes it extremely easy, again, to link the poster with the CD, the poster with the video and also the CD with the video.

Finished Poster Design

This is our final poster design for the video "Making Me Nervous" by Brad Sucks. For our poster, the colour scheme of blue and white was chosen in conjunction with the blue sky with white puffy cloud background we will be using for our digipak. We felt the colours reflected the vibrant and bouncy mood of the song, as it is generally a good mood song. Most people we asked chose blue as the colour they would expect to represent a good mood, followed in second by the colour green (which coincidentally was our second choice of colour scheme). We used audience feedback again to give us another idea about the colour scheme of the boxes at the base, and whether they would look better in brown or in a light blue. The feedback we got indicated that the light blue but with white tint would look better than just blue or the brown, as there would be less contrast than the brown and also less plain than just blue. Although we have coloured the expressions in because the colours are soft and gentle, such as light pink and white. We recieved feedback in relation to our initial poster ideas, and decided that there was too much going on around the boxes, so we spread the writing out and made the font size a lot smaller. We used "Freestyle Script" for the banner because it was the roundest but not sharpest font we could find, and we thought it would best reflect the mood of the song and the whole album in general.

Screen Grabs - Editing Process

As you can see from the pictures above, we have already begun the editing process for our music video, with most of our shots already uploaded onto the imac. We took the screen grabs from the title screen and our establishing shot for the performance aspect of the video, with the bassist and the drummer sitting in a practice room. You will notice that we have used a split screen edit to achieve putting the same person onto either instrument at the same time by using the final cut pro software and then eventually transferring it into a format so that it could be opened and used in the programme imovie hd. These pictures just show the sort of progress we have been making in the editing process, and the time we have taken to ensure that concepts such as continuity and editing on the beat are integrated into our music video.

Brad Sucks Album Poster Drafts + Annotation

This is one of our main draft posters for the album "I Don't Know What I'm Doing" by Brad Sucks. We went with the plain black fading to white background because of the simplicity of the two colours, and also because it is quite an effective fade from one end of the spectrum to the other. There is a very high contrast between them, and ebcause of this emphasis of colours it makes the poster stand out, in particular the box figures standing on the boxes and the white writing across the black banner at the top. Because there is very little detail on the poster itself, this makes the title immediately grab your attention so you know who is being advertised, along with part of the cover art at the base of the poster. This use of media synergy and convergence allows easy identification of the album being advertidsed, making it easier for our target audience to find the album.











This is our alternative first draft of the poster advertising the debut Brad Sucks album, although this time we opted for a colour change of the background. This is in the form of a less dull colour but still offered significant contrast with the writing, so we avoided colours like yellow, grey etc. The light blue we have used still makes the writing stand out, however i feel it reflects the gentle mood and general feel of the song we are producing the video for. This is helpful to our target audience as, again, they will be able to recognise the artist if they heard the song and saw this poster. A great example of using colour to identify genre would be most popular metal bands, such as Machine Head or Slipknot who use a lot of dull colours which offer less contrast, such as black and a dull red. This represents that they are a heavier band, compared to a pop artist such as Britney Spears who uses colours such as pink and blue to represent pop music. Also, unlike the black poster, we have included some artificial 'star-ratings' to see if this has any effect on the layout of the cover art and the title, as well as a caption underneath the title banner. We felt that after looking at a variety of album posters we should include these details to make it look more realistic.

Target Audience

With a target audience for any artist/band, the key thing needed is to establish a connection with them, especially in terms of using any feedback they might give you so that any product you create will be directly related to them. I asked a sample of 16-24 year olds (the main age range for our target audience) what they would like to see in the video we would be producing, and the responses varied from a dancing scene, to a food fight scene. We took the results in and decided that the main features we would use would be a roughly even split between narrative and performance, along with possibly a disco scene with any main characters dancing in the middle of a larger group. These sort of ideas are quite commonly seen with mainstream music, such as the video for the Fallout Boy song "Dance Dance" and Run DMC and Jason Nevins' "Its Like That". We felt that we could apply these different concepts to the target audience as successfully as any mainstream artist with thousands of pounds/dollars of funding.

'Full Circle' Creed CD Covers Analysis

This is the front cover for the "Full Circle" album by Creed. This album features the song "Overcome", which i analysed the video for. As you will probably notice, most of the artwork is mainly situated in the middle third of the cover, which is seen as the main band logo. The band name banner stands out above the picture, not simply because of the unique style, but because it is a brighter colour than the logo. The light parts at the top of the tile also draws your attention away from the bottom towards the band, rather than focus on the album title below the picture. The goblet-style picture is shot from an angle to show the circular shape at the top, which can be seen as subtle symbolism for the title of the album. The combination of the band name and the picture, being the two largest objects , enables you to link the cover to any videos, or other ancillary products such as posters, as most people memorise pictures over writing. In the video for "Overcome" which i analysed, the band title banner features above the stage, which i immediately felt allowed me, and other audience members, to relate to this product.

'Overcome' Creed Music Video Analysis

In the music video for the song "Overcome" by metal band Creed, there is a lot of fast paced camera work, which is based around some of their past live stage shows. During the first verse all the shots of the band are in grey and black, which reflects the calm nature of this particular part of the song. The shot timings are relatively slower paced, which is also reflective of the tempo and general mood of the verse. As the chorus comes in with the line "I'm entitled to overcome..." the shots start to utilise a wider variety, in that more shots are used in the sequence where the chorus comes in. At this point in the song, the music switches from electro-acoustic picking and calm singing to full-on electric riffs and power chords accompanied by shout/rock and roll style singing. The mood of the song has now shifted, and this is emphasised by the colour of the shots. The fact that the shots are now in colour and that an audience is there watching them, and also the presence of various pyrotechnic stage effects relates to their target audience. Younger people, particularly between the ages of 16 to 25, and possibly 30's onwards, would be more likely to listen to this style of music. You can clearly see that most of the audience are within this category. This allows the audience to make a link between themselves and the video, meaning it is of interest to them and thus they will watch it. During the course of the song, the rest of the shots remain in colour, as most of it now, with exception to the 2nd verse, is played in an electric guitar tone. The video has great shot variety, from longer panning shots to quick low angle shots, which keeps the audience interested.

'Boxhead' Designs

These are the initial two 'boxhead' character designs we did. The sad face will be used nearer to the beginning of the narrative in the video, gradually the mood of the boxhead will improve up to angry, and the costumes worn will all be slightly different to help represent the mood. We will possible integrate another expression in between these two just to give the narrative a better flow so our audience doesn't get confused.

Poster Analysis; Marmaduke Duke

The poster advertising the release of Marmaduke Duke's 'Duke Pandemonium' album, aims to use the concept of synergy to promote the album in several ways, such as..

• The use of a similar colour scheme to the album, e.g. black with various different colours around it
• The font used for the band name banner is also the same as what has been used on the album, and it is the same size in relation to the rest of the page. This allows the audience to make the connection between the two.

Both of these concepts work hand in hand to help make the album the poster is promoted easy to identify, even though the album name is neither on the album cover or the poster. The unique font style which is rarely found for any other artist or band is the main element for the poster as well, because it is the biggest object on each product.

Poster Analysis; Slipknot

The poster promoting the self titled 1999 'Slipknot' album release features all the band together in the centre of the picture in their trademark orange jumpsuits. The band name banner is central in the picture as well, which clearly tells us the artist of the album. In conjunction with the album, the writing is in the same font and similar size in proportion with the rest of the poster and the digipak. The synergy from this lets their target audience know that both items are from the same artist and the poster is advertising the album. The picture used underneath the writing is identical to the cd front tile, which adds further synergy, however the information about the album and its release date do not feature on the CD. This is the only real way for the album to be properly advertised, as it is presented practically in its most simple form, enabling easy communication with their target audience and possibly a wider audience who may want to listen to the band.