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.

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.  

Magazine cover

Digipak Idea

For the back of our DVD case, we will attempt a montage collection of photos in the style of polaroid camera photos. This makes it look like the DVD has had photos attached to it and gives it a stylish feel.

In order to pull off this style we will use the AutoShape tools of Photoshop, we will make white rectangles in the shape of a polaroid photo. We will then put photos on the layers above the white rectangles to give it the look of photo prints on the DVD cover, this will give off a really nice effect we feel as it seems professionalized.

Polaroid print template

Digipak

On the front cover of our Digipak we have a large photo of the artist (Christian) with a 'poster edge' effect on it, and on the front cover we will include things like the name of the artist and the song, as well as the album name we will also include things like the classification. We have also included a basic font that has become very effective for the overall front cover and makes it easy for the audience to read and understand.

On the back of our digipak we will include a number of small images that will be positions around the page to form some sort of appealing pattern. This will bring more attention to the digipak. A number of quotes and song lyrics will also be added in our digipak, these will be positioned beside the different images located around the Digipak.  We have also added some reviews and star ratings, so that the viewers are more likely to be interested in buying as it would have good reliable reviews from reliable sources. From looking at other professional Digipaks, we found that the back generally includes barcodes, classification ages, and also a little about the producers etc, but in very small print at the bottom of the back cover.

22nd November 2011 - Progress

During this lesson we continued to work on our magazine ad, adding the "OUT NOW" banner and other typical features of a magazine ad, such as a review quote along with it's source to encourage the magazine readers to give the artist a listen. We also added the release date for the album and the name of the album below the information for the new single.

To give the artist more recognition we have put a picture of him on the front cover. However, we are looking to change this picture for the next lesson to suit the typical portrait of Ne-Yo (wearing a trilby hat for example).

Next lesson we plan to finish our magazine ad by adding a few small details and having a new picture added.

Digipak ideas

When thinking about our digipak, we thought about the front, the back, and the 3 sections of the inside.
We thought about having the front a long shot of the artist wearing the hat, looking to one side. we then decided to use the inside sections as pictures of the artist putting on the hat in different ways, and the back using either a black background with the shot of a hat, or a similar photo to the one below, however we may use this idea as one of the inside shots.

Feedback from rough cut

After Andrea and Amar looked at our rough cut video, they gave us some feedback.

• They told us that we should change our black and white parts of our video to colour and change the colour parts to black and white so that maybe that would make it look more dream like. 

• We also need to add in some more shots of the artist (Christian) so it also adds as part of Goodwins theory, and also some close ups of the other characters (Saffy) so that it almost introduces them, and shows off expressions more clearly, and emotions between them. 

• We need to add some short clips of the artist singing so it will make it look more like a music video, and more professional. 

• We also need to cut up the existing shots that we have and make them shorter, and also muddle them up a bit so it shows a variety of locations and it doesn't look boring when the shots carry on for too long.

• We need to change the split screen to two separate shots, and then use the split screen at the end, so there's a shot of him texting, then a shot of her texting, then the split screen showing them both texting, 

FEEDBACK FROM ROUGH CUT

Goodwin's theory-
Lyrics and visuals- you and me together- two people together
Music and visuals- nothing really, apart from the speed of the song is quite slow and goes with the visuals.
Voyuerism- shots of the people walking
Genre characteristics- love scenes, girl and boy, dancing, romance.
Intertestuality- nothing


Editing-
Not enough cuts, shots are too long, good use of split screen, the black and white is effective.


Mis en scene- very good locations with romantic feel, lighting in resturant is very good with dark reddish light which looks romantic, good use of props, candles and drinks set a good scene, but cant see what is on the phone.


Camerawork- good variety of shots close ups with phone and split screens lots of mid shots of couples, lots of facial shots to show expressions, steady camera, need more different shots and more shots in general as its too short.

ROUGH CUT

Idea's for our music video

This video is an example of how we want to make our video similar by changing from black and white to high contrast colour, however this video has a lot of changes where as we only want black and white at the beginning and end of our video. 

Neyo-Sexy Love Analysis- Goodwins theory

Following Goodwins thoery, during music videos there is meant to be a clear link between lyrics and visuals, and in the case of this video 'sexy love', Neyo makes it clear the lyrics are about a female, there are constant shots of the actor and the female in intimate situations, which is usually when hes singing the lines 'sexy love' or   'just one touch' and other lines such as 'making love to you' there are lots of links between lyrics and visuals and also links between music and visuals, as the beat of the song gets faster the shot transitions get quicker, and because of the genre of the song being RnB there's also areas of dancing in the video which are also a link with the music and pace/tone of the music. As well as these another point of Goodwin's theory is the voyeurism of a woman's body, and in the video the woman is wearing revealing clothing and with the use of mirrors and other elements it makes it apparent that voyeurism is being used. The demand of the record label comes from the use of close ups of the artist and in the video there are mainly close ups of the artist singing into the camera or singing towards the female, although alot of the shots have the female actress in, its mainly concentrating on him and her body, not as much of her face, in comparison to the amount of close ups of Neyo. When watching the video it was hard to find any obvious intertextual reference. 

Re-filming.

19th October, re-filming.

After uploading our footage on the 18th, we realised we had to re-shoot a lot of our film, so we decided to go back to our locations and re-shoot, unfortunately what we hoped would work in our boat scene was unsuccesful, so we re-visited 'Bella italia' and asked for permission to film in their premises, thankfully they agreed and me managed to film what was needed, although we still have some more to do. We found that it was alot easier to film as there was not as many people in the restaurant, and also the staff gave us a candle and drinks so we could get the 'romantic meal' look we wanted, which we had problems with in the boat on our previous filming day.

We also managed to get a lot more shots of our first location at the 'bar' and we decided to shoot each shot about 3 or 4 times so we had more variety and could make it look as good as possible. We did this because if we were to only take the shots once, they may not come out as we wanted so we did it a number of times to make sure we were happy with how it looked and that it wold fit in well with the final video. 

17th October Filming.

On our first day of filming, we met at Cineworld to start our first few locations, some members of the group were late which lead to incontinence when wanting to film in 'Bella italia' as it started getting busy, however we tried to film quickly, but efficiently, we got the shots we needed and moved onto our next location, but in the rush of it all we forgot a few shots. 

Shots of the boat

When moving onto our next location, we had to go to a nearby park where we had a 'romantic walk' shot, which worked fine as the weather was good and it was quiet. Our next location was a boat in Wicken Fen, which we believed to be a lot bigger then it actually was, therefore we was restricted for space, but we tried to carry on filming. When we went back to college we uploaded our footage and found we was not happy with the outcome, so decided to make another filming day.

Goodwins theory analysis of music video

Because of you - Neyo, analysis.

We think that this video of Neyo is one of the music videos that conforms to most of the conventions of Goodwins theory. Mainly because its location is set in a nightclub/bar, and also uses dance routines, miming towards the camera, and also showing a relationship with neyo and 2 different women. 

Voyeurism plays a big part in this video as its used through mirrors, behind doors, and overlooking intimate situations especially when looking at the female body, for example in the swimming pool. There is an obvious objectification of women. There are a few links between visuals and lyrics,  there is a moment where he is talking about his obsession and in that moment there are lots of fast paced cuts of him and the women in bed, and its obviously trying to show, thats his obsession.

Creative use of technology

Technology

For our video, we will be using a range of different techniques such as using black and white shots, different shots such as over the shoulder, close up and mid shots. Also we will be using split screens for when they are texting, wipes and different effects for when we change from one shot to another.  We are using a range of different ones so that it makes the video look a bit more interesting and that its not boring and does not feel like the video is dragging along. we wanted to make it look good for the audience so that they will sit there and praise the different effects that were used.

Goodwins analysis of real music videos

Analysis of so sick

There is an immediate link between lyrics and visuals as he says 'phone' there is a close up of a phone, and the keys. There are also references to his pervious girlfriend where there are then close ups of her face or pictures of her. There are also lots of long and medium shots of neyo and the girl, out and about, doing things, or arguing, normal relationship stuff. There are a lot of genre characteristics used in the music video, there are lots of shots of him miming towards the camera which is a typical convention, there is also a lot of moments which show the artist and his relationship, and also a few parts where he dances, which is another important convention. Another important link to goodwins theory is voyeurism, there are lots of shots where its looking in on arguments or intimate moments in the bedroom etc. We couldn't think of any obvious inter-textual references however we think is would be something to do with the location.