Similarities between our final music video and storyboard

After evaluating our final music video against our original storyboard, we found our music video had a real similarity with our storyboard which means our original plan was sufficient and successful. However, we did have to remove a few scenes such as the cinema scene due to the cinema's rules on copyright issues... As they would not allow us to film inside the cinema. We also had problems with our boat scene, as we didn't expect the scene to come out as we had hoped for, which caused us to find an alternative dinner scene which resulted in a visit to Bella Italia, which we found to be a suitable replacement.

More research into fonts

Looking into other fonts used on the album covers of Neyo, the font is generally in capitals and bold. Usually dark colored, making it look smart, making it connect with the costume, which is normally a suit, with a hat. If the albumn cover includes a name of the song or the albumn, that font is straight underneath and normally a completely different text, like calligraphy style. 

HERES AN EXAMPLE OF CALLIGRAPHY TEXTS

Research into fonts.

HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF THE FONTS USED ON NEYOS OTHER ALBUMN COVERS

Our Director's Commentary

Filming our directors commentary

We went into the black room and started to film our directors commentary we decided to take it it turns with asking the questions and changing us around to answer them. For example Will would ask a question and then Saffy christian and ollie would answer it, then we would swap round.
We found it difficult filming our answers as we would continuously forget certain points, and things that we have included in our video which gave it a usp, we also forgot things like Good-wins theory point so we then had to re-film towards the end and add in things.

Christians final evaluation

Evaluations

1)      In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real like media products?

Our media product used a huge variety of development techniques throughout its creation and was made to best specify a real life media product to ensure that our final music video would be viewed by the audience with similar aspects to a real like media product. We analysed and evaluated a number a number of professionally created music videos, most being produced from our chosen artist ‘ne yo’ , these analysis allowed us to look at the different factors used in any traditional music video in comparison ‘ne yos’ videos.

After looking into the different productions created by our chosen artist ‘ne yo’ we recorded certain factors that were added into our music video such as the main topic of the video being ‘Love’.  One video that gave us great inspiration towards how our feelings of ‘Love’ were going to be represented in our video was from one of ne yos number ones ‘Closer’. After specifying this important factor in our music video we felt we had to be very precise in the way we represented the characters to each other and make sure their feelings of ‘Love’ were clearly represented by the visuals in the production. To produce our music video with emotional aspects of love we interacted the whole video with only two people, one being the main artist (me) and another being his ‘dream girl’ (saffy) we allocated them with specific  areas of romance e.g. having a meal together. Also from our research into our chosen song the lyrics have a change of storey at the end of the song and like many love storeys it includes a demoralising ending. The different emotions by each character throughout the music video are focused on and changed by showing a wide variety of different camera shots which specify the characters emotions e.g. close up to show upset at the end of the video. Lighting is also an important convention used throughout music videos, we used the lighting to our advantage and used different effects throughout e.g. when the flashback is used there is a colour change were a black and white gradient is used to indicate to the audience that is it a flashback and not in the present.

2)      How affective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our main product and ancillary texts communication enables us to pursue the artist and interact with the way he is represented as an R&B artist. All three of the promotional packages use a similar colour scheme, which uses only two different colours which our red and black. This basic colour scheme allows the images that have been allocated onto our promotional packages to be well visualised for our audience and positions the images as the main focus towards the audience. The images used throughout the digipak all include the main artist of our production(me) posing in a variety of different positions, each image on the digipak also include the artist wearing a hat which represents this style and interacts to the audience about the genre of music that is being presented which is R&B. The back of the digipack includes a photo frame around each image which was then rotated to give the images a style of snapshot frames.

Although the artist does not wear a hat throughout our music productions he is still clearly represented as an R&B artist from the clothes he wears and different dancing techniques that our presented. This combination between our main product and ancillary text uses a variety of techniques between the two and use a similar representation to link them together and pursue each other’s ideas and designs.  I feel the visual aspects of our digipak and cover our of a good quality and would appeal well towards a target audience, I feel this appeal has been created from the images based around our promotional produce and also the different design lay outs that have been individually created by us as a group, e.g. the angled text that gives a visualisation of it being written on the wall itself.

3)What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

From our audience feedback we found out that our video demonstrated the R&B genre characteristics well and gave a clear understanding for ‘a typical love song’. The reversing technique at the end of our main product also proved to work well with the audience and gave a clear understanding on what this reversing sequence represented e.g. reality not actually occurring but it all being a vision from the characters imagination. Another beneficial factor that was given in response from the feedback, was the colour scheme used throughout our music video, this colour scheme included different colours that symbolised the time periods of the video e.g. colour was used to represent the present and a black and white affect was used to indicate to the audience that it was a imagination from the main character within the music video.

The feedback given on our rough cut also allowed us to make improvements in our main product, from this feedback given we realised that our shots were too long to signify the video to be a musically based video and also that there were not enough cuts throughout the scene to divide which would also up the pace throughout the video. Along with this it was noticeable that there were not enough variety of different shots, therefore to make improvements for our final video we used another filming day to pursue more shot types and different locations that would be added to the video e.g. walk along the river bank.  

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

Throughout the research, planning and evaluation stages of our final product the software used was a very important factor as our ideas could not have been carried out if we did not have it, as we would not have been able to include all the editing through our music video e.g. slit screens, reverse shots, colour change etc. to start our project we used HD cameras which were very beneficial as they were an upgrade to previous cameras that had been used for projects in the past and included a much higher quality of technology and image control.

When editing our footage the software used was Final Cut, this included a massive amount of technology in order to create edits to the best quality possible. Final cut also gave us the opportunity to include a slit screen to our product and also to increase, decrease and reverse the footage, all of these elements were used in our final product. The reasons for using these specific elements into our product were that we felt it would give the video a greater appeal towards our target audience which was R&B fans. Also different contrasts of colours were added using final cut e.g. black and white for the ‘Fantasy’ during our music video. Onto of this we were able to add an overlay of text using final cut which allowed us to add the title of our song ‘Future in  you’ into the beginning of the video.

When creating and designing our digipak and poster the technology used for this was photoshop which have us the opportunity to add different elements of design patterns such as fonts and colour schemes. Another positive factor for our use of photoshop was that we had previously used the equipment therefore had skills on how to create our music videos with the complicated options of photoshop.

Conclusion:

Overall I feel our final product has been a success, I feel the whole structure of the video has been well presented to its audience on what the genre and subjects of the music video are and also feel that the technology have been used to fulfil the entertainment aspects within the video.  If I were to re-produce this music video I feel I may include a number of new locations and shot type just to mix the different factors of romance up a slight more but overall I feel our final product was well designed.

Analysis of Evaluation

U1-44

Throughout this evaluation, the individual goes into alot of detail in each section to help the readers understand how they went about making their music video and how they came up with their ideas etc. As well as talking about their video, i like how they have spoken about their ancillary texts because they are just as important to this project as the video so it always helps to know how they found making ancillary texts and if they think they were as good or better than the video itself. as well as this, they speak about what inspired them to come up with their ideas and also when they were filming, the different techniques they used which is important to know for a reader. I like the way the also conclude everything in the end paragraph which is good because it shows they understood the whole concept of what a good evaluation is all about.

SCRIPT IDEAS

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

• Discuss what we researched and how this helped us to develop our video - we looked at lots of Neyo's videos and other RnB music videos such as Jason Derulo, Beyonce etc, famous artists, with famous videos with similar narratives.
• What are the codes and conventions of real music products and how did we include them in our product? - we used a romantic narrative, slow pace, singing to the camera, lots of two shots of the couple together in romantic scenes or locations.
• Did we stick to/use any of Good-wins Theory points? Yes we used links between music and visuals and lyrics and visuals, demand of the record label and voyeurism.
• Discuss ways in which we used genre conventions to make our product look more professional, and make the genre obvious - using things like dance moves, close ups of singing towards the camera, and effects and filters are all conventions of RNB genre.

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

• Did all three products work well as an overall package? The ancillary texts linked well due to the idea of the hat, although the music video doesn't link as clearly.
• What concept were we trying to show?  - we was trying to emphasize the fact that the artist was in a day dream of imagining a relationship with someone he saw walking by.
• Do they attract the target audience? our video is targeted to all ages as its a certified PG due to the classification and guidelines of the bbfc, and there fore all our content is acceptable for all ages and our video uses a romantic feel, and narrative therefore attracting any age and any gender.

what have you learnt from your feedback?

• feedback on initial pitch- Our initial pitch didn't seem to attract a lot of positive feedback at first, because the idea we had in mind for the video lacked creativity and originality, so we felt we needed to make a change based on our feedback. We created a whole new pitch which had a real sense of originality to it to respond to the feedback.
• Feedback on rough cut - Our rough cut lacked enough clips and there was not enough pace between the cuts to give it a music video feel, we learnt from this and went out and recorded even more clips to add in for our final cut and also added clips on top of longer clips to allow more cuts.
• Feedback on final cut - After finishing our final product a lot of the feedback which noted the flaws of our product was about how they didn't really understand the quick reverse clips in the middle of the video. If we could improve these clips now, we would add either a clip of a clock running in fast reverse or a text box with the date/time running quick reverse.

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

• What ways did we use these products - We used photoshop to construct our digipak/magazine ad and used Final Cut to edit our music video to a high quality. We used blogger to write up our evidence and keep up-to-date with progress. 
• How did they help you create a successful product -
• What ways did/didn't the technologies help you be creative - 

Ideas for filming the script

We have decided instead of writing out a massive script with blocks of writing, we have written out the four questions we had to answer for our evaluation so that for each of the questions, we can make little notes underneath saying what we need to talk about and that way everyone can get involved and have an opinion so the audience can hear different views we may have. Also it looks  bit more professional expanding on short notes you have made rather than the whole group passing round bits of paper to read from because not only can the audience not see your face and emotion which is key, they also may find it hard to hear you properly if you are hiding behind a camera.  

Evaluation - Ollie

Our media product uses real media product’s forms and conventions in the similar way of how most music videos for a song about love or dreaming love look at a scenario of having many locations where the couple/dream couple are spending time together happy. These music videos inspired us to base our media product on a similar scenario because the song and dream-love image of it fit together almost perfectly, the idea of this lonely man seeing the girl of his dreams and the lyrical relation of “I can see my future in you” is perfect for the scenario because this lonely man loves the girl so much he wants to spend the rest of his days with her. We developed our media product on real media products by adding a new style to the dream-love scenario. We achieved this by adding a scene where the lonely man has to watch in pas the woman actually has a boyfriend who takes her away from the location right in front of his eyes, this then leads on to all the dreams the lonely man having running in quick reverse (another feature which we felt developed on real media products) to give a sense that all those dreams will never happen to the lonely man and he must now forget everything he had hoped for. We found this to be really interesting because this style has rarely been used in this genre of music videos, so it comes across as original which always brings more interest to the product. Finally our media product challenged real media products as it was heavily based on a couple of existing music videos which had more to do with remembering the memories between the couple with black-and-white scenes, which we really liked but we decided we’d perform the opposite action by having the man looking into his hopeful future as he wasn’t actually with the girl in our video. This challenged by adding a new sort of style to the romantic music video genre.


To make our main product effective as well as ancillary texts, we thought it would be best to keep consistency in all three products. We did this by making sure we matched our products in a similar way to those of our actual artist’s media products. To accomplish this, our music video was based on love and couples just like the artist (Ne-Yo)’s videos are commonly. For our other products we tried to match them to similar styles Ne-Yo used for his products. Our magazine ad had a still image in black-and-white with our artist looking away into the distance wearing a hat (Ne-Yo commonly comes across as a hat wearer, which influenced us to do the same), this makes an image of interest because the viewer feels a sense of calmness but also wonder as to what the artist truly is staring at in the distance. Our digipak was of a similar style to the magazine ad as we again had our artist wearing a hat in a big open-spaced area; however this time the artist is looking down. The concept all three products were trying to create is that although our artist is a love-struck man he also comes across as a calm and heavy thinker to the viewers. The image this creates of the artist is they are a hard-worker on their music, with the idea of a heavy thinker given to the audience, but with also an element that our artist is very romantic and likes to get his point out which is emphasised in our music video. We feel these products are successful at attracting the audience because they show to sides of our artist in an emphasised way which shows that the artist wants to deliver obvious notes of his music genre and personality to this audience which helps them realise what kind of artist he really is. The imagery of all three products gives off a predictable element of the artist for the target audience to easily understand.


At first our initial pitch for our video idea received little positive feedback so we decided we would change our pitch to our backup pitch we created in case of the initial pitch being poorly rated. From this we had learnt that our initial pitch was perhaps not so well planned and was far too overused as a video idea, which made it lack intrigue and therefore this perhaps put our audience off. We decided that our back-up pitch had been rarely used as a real media product idea so the originality of our back-up pitch would do a lot more to intrigue our audience than we thought our initial pitch would originally. After creating our rough cut we discovered that perhaps the idea of having the dreams in a hazier, bright picture would give off the wrong effect as these were just dreams, not colourful memories. Our teacher highlighted this and we concluded that perhaps making the dreams black-and-white would make more sense, as these were more what the man was wishing for rather than knowing he experienced them in reality. After making this change we found the black-and-white dreams gave off a much better understanding than the colourful images did. Also, we had peers check our rough cut who noticed we didn’t really have a variety of shots and some shots just lasted too long. In response to this, we went out and recorded more clips to add into our video and also added more clips in between clips we wanted to last long (e.g. walking down countryside and then sitting down clip). After completing our final cut, we received more feedback from peers who noted that the rewind of the dreams section of our video didn’t initially make sense without reading up about the part of the video on our blog, perhaps next time to emphasise that the man is trying to forget about his dreams we could implement a transition and perhaps a time in the corner of our shots going in reverse to make it more clear that the man is trying to forget the dreams he had hoped to become reality.


In order to make our media product stand out more and result how we wanted it to we used new media technologies to develop our product to the best of its ability. One of the main technologies we used is the video editing software called Final Cut Express, this software easily saw the most time spent on it and helped us create the final music video from our raw clips. We prepared ourselves well with this product as most of us already had quite some experience from it and made sure for our rough cut that we got the majority of the shots which we knew we would edit in Final Cut to make them more impressive (e.g. black-and-white slow down clips, colour changer effect applied to certain clips). This technology was indispensible to us and really made our final clip show our real creative talents with video editing as there are so many filters and transitions to work with on the clips. Final Cut Express allowed us to make the most of the raw clips we had. Another technology we used was Photoshop, which was our second most used software on the computer and was the major playing point in making our digipak and magazine ad look really professional. The creative threshold you have with images on Photoshop is almost endless because of the tools available and also the high amount of effects you can apply, whether complex or simple. You can make a photo look like a poster with just 3 or 4 clicks of the mouse and your image already looks that bit more professional. Photoshop enabled us to develop such high creativity levels and we found it a comfortable and easy software package to use, without it we would have failed to reach the creative levels we intended to with our digipak which really stood out. External devices we had to use were the HD cameras and also the still cameras. We used the HD camera to of course record all footage for our music video, and we found them incredibly easy to use. Recording was one simple click and if you wanted to zoom in for a clip you just had to adjust the slider on top of the camera. One flaw with our creativity was the disk space of the camera tended to be very small and if we ran out of space, we’d have to go through the painful experience of tapping each clip we wanted to delete on the touch screen which was a lengthy process and wasted us a lot of time, this was unfortunate because apart from the lack of space and deleting process everything else for the HD camera was perfectly fine. The last external device we used was the still cameras in order to capture the photos for our digipak and music video. This device was incredibly easily to use, with quick speeds and high reactive capture shots which turned out to be high quality images looked very professional. With the zooming feature and burst capture modes, our creative possibilities were endless with the device because it just ticked all the boxes for us. We took all the photos we wanted and they always turned out in high quality and if we had a good idea to inherit the burst photo effect, we could have easily used it, as the photos were never blurred by an object moving which made the camera even better.

In conclusion, we felt our media product was well-made and well-thought out, and had sufficient effort put into it to make it successful. If we had more time on our product, we would probably have added a few more effects to our magazine ad to make it look more professional and also finish off the final part of our music video.

Evaluation

1)     I think our media product is a typical music video, as we have used a lot of the usual conventions throughout such as using lip synching, different locations and also a few different characters to hep portray the story. Our video is a typical RnB video, as it involved a girl somewhere along the line, which I why whenever you see the artist alone, he looks depressed. However, our video does challenge some of the conventions because in most  RnB videos there are a lot of individual shots of the artist whereas in our video there are not many because of the fact he is with the girl.

We tried to make sure that we covered as many of Goodwin’s theories as possible to try to meet as many conventions as possible. For example, we tried hard to link the visual to the lyrics of the song because otherwise the video would make no sense and nothing would link together. We tried to look at some other videos from the past to try to gain an understanding of what made their product so good and how we as a group could aspire to do better. Of course, we focused mainly on videos that were similar to our song which helped us gain ideas of what would work well and how we would achieve their ideas.

2)     In my view the work we did on our ancillary texts was good in some stages but a bit average in others. However, I think that our main product links well with the ancillary texts because we made sure that on the main product and ancillary texts the artist was the main focus so everyone knew who the artist was and what he looked like. On the magazine advert we got a nice photo of the artist, made it the background so that we could work everything else around that. For example, for all three products we tried to make sure that we had a recurring theme which was that the artist was wearing a hat. I think we achieved this well, as having a theme can help to link all the products you have worked on nicely. Saying that, some areas were much stronger than others. Our digipak was really good because not only did we make it look good with different effects and nice fonts, we made sure that the key information was on there and was clear to see.  Although we had good information on the magazine advert, it looked a little boring, as there was not a great deal of variation, which was disappointing because that would have helped to link all the products even better.

  

3)     Audience feedback from classmates and teachers was brilliant because it helped us identify where our weaknesses were in all products but also the strengths. For example, after the rough cut we had a lot of feedback from teachers about how to improve the video. This was great, as it meant we could go away as a group and always be busy improving instead of making no changes and having a shabby final piece. The good thing was that the strengths of the video were expressed – this gave our group a confidence boost and meant that if we worked on making improvements on the stronger bits, the video would look 10 times better.

Without audience feedback as a group it is a bit of a guessing game to see where improvements need to be made, which is why it is always a massive help to have other people’s views and possibly gain more marks, something we all want. Without feedback we would not have known that the video would look better in black and white, as it would help link nicely with the lyrics and pace of the song.

4)     Throughout the whole project we as a group have used a range of different technologies to help produce all three of the products. For example, for the ancillary texts we used up a lot of time on Photoshop, as it helped us gain an idea of what would look good in regards to a variety of themes, fonts and also the layout of the pictures and writing alongside each other. As well as this, without a final cut we would not have been able to produce the video because we could not have added all the great effects. Without effects the video would have been boring and lacked any real punch. Without a final cut issues such as turning our video into black and white or adding fades would not have been possible and that is why it was so important for the whole task.  

Also things such as the cameras we used were crucial because if the pictures were of a poor   quality it would have looked very amateurish and not have portrayed a really professional look.  The HD cameras were brilliant not only for still shots but also handheld also because the image was still so clear. Another key matter was Blogger because that helped us see what we had achieved but also what was still left to do. The great thing was you could also gain ideas from looking at blogs from groups in the past, which was a massive help. Without the use of any of this technology none of the products would have been possible, which shows why modern technology is so important in media.

Will Conlon  

  

     

Evaluation; Saffy.

1) Our media product not only uses but also develops and challenges the typical forms and conventions of real media products. We use the forms and conventions through the use of researching other proffesional media products and putting these ideas into our own media product. For us the main thing we wanted to focus on was to make sure that our video had a clear and understandable narrative, however as a group we found it difficulkt to come up with a narrative for the song as the lyrics were very repetative, and couldnt tell much of a story. After researching into other music videos we quickly came up with a narrative we felt would work and sell a story to the viewers. We tried to ensure that we stuck by Goodwins Theory by using his points to help us make our product look more proffesional, we wanted to make links between music and visuals, we used the pace of the shots, with the pace of the music but then challenged this convention as we reversed the second half of our video, therefore it changed the overall pace of the video which the audience would not be expecting although we had posotive feedback from this effect.
Aswell as this we also tried to stick to other conventions such as demand of the record label, which is why we have used excessive use of closeups of the artist, to show that the artist is the main focus of the video. Also the links between lyrics and visuals, which we found a little tricky, but when the line is ''think about it you and me together'' where we have got the artist daydreaming about the being in a relationship with the female character, he is also singing to the female character in some parts of the video, we've included romantic scenes and locations to emphasize the lyrics and almost exaggerate it when he says, ''loving eachother, you and me together, think about it''. Therefore i think we do use many of the conventions aswell as trying to develop and challenge some of them.

2) When putting together our media product and our anchillary texts, we tried to ensure that there was an obvious link between them. The main combination we have between them all is the main focus of all 3 being the artist. For our magazine ad we have used one large image of the artist standing up, and linked this with the digipak by using similar images of the artist in the same costume, but the main iconic part of the anchillary texts is the hat we have used. We have tried to make it a 'theme' of our anchillary texts, and after researching about our artist we found out that our artist is well known for the amount of hats he owns and the fact he is always seen in one, therefore making it easier and more recognisable to the target audience to know our artist.
Unfortunately in our video we did not use a hat, but we hoped that being an obvious RnB genre music video (aqnd hats being a typical feature) that the costume itself, and the dance moves and other conventions of RnB would show that there is a link between the video and the anchillary texts, even though we didnt use a hat. However we did try and cooperate a less obvious link between our media product and anchillary texts, by using certain colours. In our magazine advert we have used black and white colours, aswell as some redish colours, which have also been used in our digipak, and this links to our video due to the fact alot of our shots we have filmed in black and white and we have tried to use the red to pick out the lighting we have used on certain clips. I think that the combination of the 3 is relatively effective as the audience would be able to recognise it quite quickly.
When thinking about our anchillary texts we had to ensure that it was suitable for our target audience, and as our video was classified a PG it was clear that we also had to use these guidelines throughout our magazine ad and digipak. We did this by ensuring that there was no hint of any sexual references between the two characters, and no promote of drug use, we were careful of wording, and also we thiought about things like colour and layout, as this would also be important when thinking about the suitable ages for our media products.
3) After looking at all our feedbacks it is clear that we have improved hugely since our first pitch. From when we first did our ideas from our pitch, it lacked massively any kind of narrative, or theme, or ideas, and we struggled as a group coming up with anything, so majority of our feedback was to try and come up with something and then repitch another time, so after alot of thinking we came back and repitched and got our first lot of feedback, having the feed back helped us to establish the negatives and posotives and what we needed to improve on. We continued on to producing our roughcut in which our response was overall posotive, we had included many of goodwins theories, and used some good effects, such as a split screen, and reverse shots,also we had used good locations and lighting, really emphasising a relationship, aswell as using a good variety of shots.

Directors commentary; Saffy.

A directors commentary is almost like a voice over or an additional track that is played over the original video/clip, whilst commenting on the events and other things happening in the video such as how the ideas come about. There are lots of different ways of presenting the directors commentary, the main two are Partial or scene specific, which comments on different selected scenes or sections of the video, and the other is feature length or screen specific, which is recorded all in one go. Generally the commentary will include comments from not only the director but also cast members and other members of the group (producers etc).  It is typically used that the director will use this as an almost interview like video, using different kinds of questions, some DVD's also include other commentary's in which film critics are used.
Overall the point of the commentary is to give information about the video that the video can not tell itself, and this information can be displayed in a serious or entertaining way.