Music Video Pre-Lip Sync Improvements

Effectiveness of Black & White

Due to our first draft video being in colour we found that it didn't quite look right and also it was harder to convey the genre. Because the genre is usually conveyed as quite dark and 'gritty' we needed to change the colouring of the entire video when editing it for our final version.

Looking back and comparing both the draft and our final versions of the music video, it is clear that the back and white look seemed to be more effective and really compelled the way out editing was put together.

Moving on, we also looked at many videos and examples of existing conventions and took ideas from each one then combined them all. We did this not only in the way that we edited the video but in the way that we filmed the video.

Editing

We began editing our video this morning, we are very happy with the progress it has made from our draft as all the shots are much better and make the video more professional. We just need to continue this good quality and complete the video to the best of our ability

Editing Progress

We are currently in the process of editing our final music video, during editing we are discussing what shots should go next to make the best video out of our footage.

The filming process took a good hour and a half and within that we got approximately 29 minutes of footage, this should be enough to create a high standard video and therefore gives us choice of many different shots that we included during filming.

We mainly used hand held shots to create much more of a hectic atmosphere and with quick paced editing it will create the energy needed for the genre of our music video.

Filming Complete

We filmed our video yesterday and this time it went very well, the filming process was smooth and no problems were encountered along the way. We got many shots that werent static to create the energetic feel our video needed and our draft lacked. The room was also very small so the shots are tight and claustrophobic, another aspect that we think we go in our favour. We are very pleased with how filming went and we looked at some of the footage striaght after our session and we were impressed and pleased with what we had captured. We will start editing the footage today.

Filming Our Final Video

Tonight we are filming our final video again at stayfree studios but after feedback given from teachers and fellow pupils after filming we decided to film in a room that wasn't as white before, because the lighting didn't fit the style of the video well, so we decided to film in the red room, which is much smaller and darker, and therefore we hope it gives a darker better more rocky feel to the whole video. As well as this we are going to get much more handheld shots than last time, to add energy to the video as the whole of the draft video was static, and therefore the energy was scarce. As well as this we are going to record more footage hopefully, as we ended up repeating shots over and over in the draft video.

Black and White

We have decided that we can make our music video much miore proffessional by applying a black and white filter to it. We belive that this makes it look less amatuer and will make our video more appealing. However, we have not yet decided if we are going to keep the entire video in black and white. We may, when it comes to editing, decide to add splashes of colour, this would make it more entertaining and will make the video visually interesting.

Filming Delays and Re-Organisation

After some serious delays we couldnt film our video on the arranged days, so we have finally came together and arranged to film our video tonight, and then upload and edit the footage tonight and over the next few days. This has been a problem as we could have spent the time editing but due to unfortunate circumstances we could not fiom, so we are going to have to work around this problem and complete the task with the best of our ability.  

Evaluation of Peers - Jack M

Peers Assessment

Today.

Today was spent evaluating our peers' draft digipak and poster. This task has allowed me to both understand the mark scheme and learn how my own coursework will be assessed. But also it has allowed me to view other people's work, allowing me to learn ideas and methods from them.

More changes...

We have tried to book the room for tonight but the room we want is full, we could have chosen a different room and done the filming tonight but we decided as a group to leave it and stick with the Black room but film on a different day. We are now looking at the weekend, perhaps Saturday evening for filming time. This however will only give us a week to edit as the deadline for our video is the 30th of November.

Location Changes

After the feedback we recieved from our teachers for the Draft music video, we decided to relocate our music video to a darker room, we have decided to stick with the same business, Stayfree Rehearsal Rooms, but have chosen to film in the 'black room' this time. As oppose to our draft which we filmed in the 'white room', we hope this will make our video look more real and represent our genre and style more. We may also need to consider props in our video, maybe a flag or poster of some sort in the backdrop, plus we are going to use some tape to create a giant 'M' on the bass drum, representing our band name Mothership. We feel that this is a common aspect to rock bands as they regularly have their band name displayed on the drum kit, or even a message of some sort, mostly using tape, but the more established bands often have their own custom graphics on their drum kit. Here are some examples of these bands:

Here is a photo of the room we will be using when we re-film our our final music video:

As you can see the rooms are a lot darker and will hopefully help us get a better overall look from our music video, as we want it too seem more raw, and not like we are just in a rehearsal room. The stayfree logo at the back will be removed when we film.

Changes to Filming

We struggled to get the group together on Saturday so we are trying to re-organise it for a day early next week, most likely on Tuesday.

Re-Filming our music video

Final Digipak & advertisement

Digipak & Poster Graphic clarification

Now I am making the final versions of my Digipak & Poster it is clear that I need to include something to some of the panels as they seem to look fairly boring and simple. As you can see from the two photos shown I have designed some extra graphic to fill in the spaces. Once I have polished these up and put them onto photoshop they will then be ready to go onto my final versions of my Digipak & Poster. With this in mind I think they will make a good addition to both my Digipak and Poster as they will be able to convey our chosen genre.

Development of my final Digipak and Poster

This is a photo I took while at a bonfire evening, I chose to do this as i wanted to make the front cover more visually interesting and compelling, so I thought a good way to do this and to stick with the connotations and style of my genre would be to use fire.

I then tried to incorporate the image into the background of my front cover. I believe this instantly makes it more interesting and bold. I am happy with this turn out but I now want to develop the wording and font size of the cover, maybe shrinking the titles down will make the cover better,

First i tested the image as the background of the front cover. I think this looks very effective as it contrasts very well against the purple crystal, this was something i wanted to improve on as it was picked up frequently in the feedback from my classmates and teachers that the front cover was too bland and didn't stand out from the page. This, I believe, is a strong improvement already. 

I then experimented with the font size and positioning, this is because i thought I could further develop my front cover and make it look more professional, as at its current state i believe it still looks as if it is amateur. I came up with this design, it has shrunk down the font and the crystal itself and positioned them in a way that is familiar with many other existing products. I really like this album cover and think it is again a further improvement on the previous design. I still think that it could be slightly improved, i have also noticed that within the photo there is a mobile phone screen (bright blue), i will use Photoshop to correct this image and remove the phone screen, this will make the photo more professional. I may also experiment with the brightness and contrast of the image to see if I can make it stand out more and look more aesthetically pleasing.

I then began to develop my album poster. I think that the only improvements i can make on this (as it currently got 9/10), was to insert the image into the background. Again I am very pleased with the outcome as I believe it makes it look a lot more professional and it makes the writing and the crystal stand out from the background. I used this picture in the poster as well as the album digipak to create a sense of continuity throughout my work, this makes for a more convincing final product. 

Improving our Music Video

After we handed in our draft music video, we got feedback from our teachers, we got a low level 3 for the video. We were relatively happy with this mark as it is in the higher half on the levels just for our draft, but we know we can definitely improve it and push it up to a level 4. Here is the feedback we got back from our teachers:




We have learnt from this feedback that we need to speed up the shot timings, this will make it slightly more energetic. Plus we need to be a bit more convincing with our instruments  as this will create a sense of realism and be more appealing to the eye of the viewer. One of the main points we have agreed upon is creating more interesting shot types, instead of the static shots we commonly used in our draft, we would like to create a lot more moving shots, these can include hand-held shots, pan shots, zoom, tilt etc. We believe that this would make our video a lot more effective. We need to also contemplate the mise en scene within our video, as our teachers think we should make the background (the room) more interesting. We aren't yet sure how to do this, when we re-film our video we may choose to film in a different room, potentially one with darker walls, as this will go with the connotations of our genre and give it a more realistic feel. 

First Draft Digipak & Poster Teacher Feedback

Level 3 – 8/10

WWW

Like the black and white and casual feel of band on cover. Panels look ok.

Has the feel of small independent band, image conveys some sense of attitude etc

EBI

Consider same font for mothership on back and spine as front cover, otherwise too many fonts, likewise the M must be the same as the LARGE iconic M on back panel is different.

You’ve missed out the name of the record label in your legal spiel.

Poster Level 2 6/10

WWW

Overall, good feel to this in black and white and good continuity across the products.

Range of conventions followed with release, review etc

EBI

Too busy; shrink down size of review to bottom third of page. Lose the heading at the top in the arrow style symbol. Keep picture of cd and other bits.

Layout of bottom third is wrong, try and lay these out in a more symmetrical fashion.

Likewise reduce size of font for websites, they are currently too large (and too different)

Could a think white line go above the album sleeve image?

Looking at my feedback given a fair amount of corrections need to be made during the process of making my final Digipak & Poster, it is important that I carry out this feedback to get the best possible marks that are available.

Feedback from Teachers - Digipak & Poster

My teachers assessed my fraft digipak and poster after I had printed them out and handed them in on time. These were the comments and grades i was given.

WWW = What went well

EBI = Even Better If

'Digipak  level 3   7 / 10

WWW

Nice overall feel and colour scheme. Fits idea of the band and their genre.

The runes/language used on other panels works well

EBI

The digi pac feels a little flat, it doesn’t pop off the page like your group mates

Why does poster have a green element to it and not the digipak? It looks nice, so could be on both to show continuity between products.

Legal jargon needed on back panel, little c not enough

Track 3 font is not aligned properly

Not convinced by the wood effect background

Poster level 4  9/10

WWW

Much better, this pops off the page thanks to the contrast between, black green and purple.

We’ll check with other teachers but we’re happy with this poster.

'
I am pleased with the results i got back from my teachers, especially for the poster,as I scored 9 out of a possible 10. I feel that my actual digipak needs improving a lot as I know I can get better than 7 marks, i would like to push it up to 9 or even 10 marks. I am also definately going to try and improve my marks for the poster as I think I can push that up to full marks aswell.

The following weeks work.

During the next week, we will all begin developing our digipaks and posters. We will take the feedback we got from our teachers and use this to improve our work to try and get a higher mark and therefore a better grade. This, at the end of the week will  mean we will upload our final digipaks and posters. 

Our Draft Video

Shots Included In Our Video

During the filming of our Draft music video we included a varied amount of different camera angles and shots. We had to make the video fast paced so it could match the energy that the song conveyed, by doing this we used some medium shots in which some were sped up so that it zoomed into our singers face and gave the video seem like it had more of an energetic feel. Because our music video was purely a performance based video we had to included many close up shots of the instruments which we were playing. We also included a high angle shot to capture our singer singing, I think we might include more of these during the filming of our final video because they fit in with our song. Long shots were used so that the audience could see the whole band performing. Looking back on our video I think we need to include more hand held camera shots so we have a bit more energy within our shots. We could also make the editing slighty quicker so that it shows how much energy is in our video as well as the song.

Editing.

Today we have started to edit our draft music video, we are using iMovie, on my own personal mac, allowing us to do work at home. To get the footage from the camera onto my mac, we used an SD card, which was simple, and then imported all the footage onto imovie, giving us a selection of footage to chop and choose from to go into our music video. To add the song into imovie, we simply had to drag it in to the programme from itunes. The video is starting to look good for a draft, however, the brightness made the video look relatively amateur, and therefore we did some editing of exposure, brightness, saturation and contrast, the settings we chose can be seen below. This makes the video look better, and perhaps like it has been filmed on a higher quality camera, or with different lighting around the room, as we had little to help out our lighting, and had to put up with the lighting we were provided with in the room. One thing I have learnt from making this draft is that you definitely need to film as much footage as possible, and don't be shy to film for longer than you may think is needed, and more shots than you had planned, as we, for the draft, have only 9 minutes of footage, and therefore there will be some recycled shots, so for the final video, we will make sure too film much more footage than we did for this draft.