Progress..

Throughout the week we have been making changes to our music video and our evaluation in order to get it done by the deadline. We have now completed our digi-pack, music video and our website. When we had completed the music video we received even more audience feedback by asking people to come and watch it. They mentioned that they liked the way all of the shots were mixed up and not put in a set order. They also liked that all of the shots were fun and it linked in with the song. When we were receiving our audience feedback people tended to mention that they liked the way it was a concept idea instead of having a storyling/narrative throughout it and they thought that this was effective. We were happy with this because it linked in with our original idea of having a concept idea.

We are now completing our evaluation.. we have filmed all of the things we need for it and are now editing it togethe to make sure every shot that goes with the audio is there. For example, we have included print screens from our website when we were speaking about our website in the evaluation and we have also put in audience feedback when the question about the audience was being answered. We will have this finished by the end of the day to meet the deadline!

Website!

Today I will be putting the final touches to our website.
I will make sure the theme that runs through our music video and our digi pack also goes into our website, such as the happiness that we incorporated in to all of these.
I am also in the process of putting together a little video of outtakes which I will put up on the website next to the finished music video and also the lyrics of the song. This will include shots that we thought didn't fit in with our music video so people can see where our first ideas came from and why we wanted to change it. I will put this small video up onto the blog with reasons why we changed our ideas.

After this I will film my question for the evaluation so this helps us to finish our evaluation soon.

Digi pack!

We have finished the digi pack!!!

Ella and i spent the first lesson concentrating on the digi pack in order to get it finished. I firstly looked into previous digi packs and albums and what they included. This research allowed us to think about how we were going to link these tasks together so that all three of our products became a combination. After researching previous examples and albums it became clear that the digi pack did not always link in with the nature of the song and video but in more cases concentrated solely on the artist. We believed that this was important for sales of the album as the audience would be able to easily detect which album was the artists. For this reason we decided to involve ourselves, as the performers within the digi pack.

Ella and i went through our music video to see what still shots we could take from there (as we shot in HD so would be good quality) in order to make a direct link to the video. We also took into account our target audience as they had said that they really liked some of the shots, for example they really liked our starting shot of the sun peering through the clouds. As a result of this we decided this would be perfect for our back cover of the digi pack. This image would also be good as it would allow us to insert text on top of the image to be clearly read. We then placed this within the frame on Photoshop.

After altering and arranging this image we began choosing the other three images, we wanted the front image to link with this image but to include us. We wanted to follow the way in which our research suggested that the artist was more important than the nature of the song. The front image seemed to give our digi pack more of a calm sense being an image surrounded by trees and in a field, however this was chosen on purpose after research of popular albums such as bruno mars' album in which consists of a stencil of bruno mars' on a mustardy yellow background, this does not link to his songs but instead himself, the artist. This image was also chosen due to the sun gaping through the trees which provides a theme with the back image. I decided that we needed to alter this image so that it combined with the back image, therefore we applied a sepia effect to the picture aswell as playing with the brightness, contrast etc. This meant that these two images then linked in together.

The inside right and left images are ones we took from the snow scenes which include us jumping or messing around. These images include all three of us again but allow the audience to see the up beat side to the music video. We applied an effect to these on final cut before we inserted them to the digipack and again added the sepia tone.

The sepia tonne blended all four images together which then gave us a stronger digipack as it looked professional. The sepia tone also allowed us to have a common white writing on the front and back covers, which turned out to be easy to read and very effective. The inside covers used black writing to give the audience an insight to the people who were included within the video.


Will try get the pictures before the editing and then the whole digi pack up soon!

Evaluation

Our evaluation is well underway with all of the questions scripted. Today during lunch and my free, i have been finalising the scripts to make sure that they have all the detail in which we want to include. This will also help us when it comes to filming the rest of the questions as we will have set answers to work from rather than wasting time rewording or adding to our script. 

Ella and i have also filmed the first answer to our evaluation and have today began to edit it together. We are picking shots from our music video and from the internet to explain what we are saying and give a visual part to the evaluation so it is easier to understand. For example when we are talking about the link between lyrics and visuals we have included a shot in which we used in our music video which demonstrates this. 

Quick update!

Recently we have been making sure all of the things we need to do have been done..
For example, we have been making sure our answers for the evaluation were detailed enough and had all the information that we needed in them. I finished off writing question four and I will be recording my voice tomorrow with me saying the answer. Sophie and Ella have already recorded their voices for the other questions so all we need to do is get all of the recordings together and make sure our evaluation is edited to how we would like it.

Also, the digi-pack is coming along well, with Ella choosing the pictures that we think would best suit the theme of our music video and the ancillary tasks. The main theme is using the sun within our products, which portrays happiness and people having fun. This is why we have involved this in our digi-pack, our music video and also on our website.

Sophie added pictures onto our website to show different shots from our music video, which allows the people who visit the website to understand what we were doing when we were out shooting for the music video. She chose shots that showed us having fun, which ties in with our theme for the music video. I then added information onto our website, such as tour dates, a video with the lyrics from the song and also the date when the single is available to buy. All of these are typical of an artist's website and is the reason why I decided to add these to ours.

Hopefully we will get all of our project up on the blog soon!

The Website!

So.. whilst we've been sorting out the evaluation we have also been creating the website! I have added a few pictures on there, information about release dates and tour dates, and also a video with the lyrics of the song! Also, I have put the song on so it can be played whilst looking at the website. Two clips have to be put onto the website still, such as the music video, but I can only add that on when I'm at school so that should be up soon, but for now, here's the website.. :)

http://www.wix.com/sophiedallas/ellasophchar  !

Audience Feedback

This is one of our audience feedback videos we filmed whilst Tom was watching our music video. Throughout he made comments of what he liked and what he disliked, then at the end I asked what we could change in the editing, and how we can end it in which he made discussed on camera.

Update on editing...

Today in my two frees I managed to get a lot of editing done to fill the little gaps we have. As we've said our music video is very abstract and very much a concept video where by we have to keep this consistent theme going with the little glimpses of shots ranging from 1 second to 4 seconds. That shows how our length of clips are all very short as we wanted the music video to be very very quick and 'fun' plus we wanted to show the amount of footage we have managed to film in different angles and locations.

I also added split screen in the video on a rather plain shot to make it look much more effective and exciting especially as the lyrics include 'party' so the visuals are matching as it shows the busy fast editing that is happening with different events constantly happening.

I also played around with the colour and effects to make the shots seem colourful and different as we didnt want the same realistic approach to all the shots. I mostly done this by 'trial and error' as obviously I am not a expert on each effect and transition and how shots will look if I do a certain thing so what i mostly did was adjust some of the filter and motion features so I am able to get different looks.

I created the opening shot with a hint of sepia to create more of a bright/sunlight approach as the shot as its an image panning round of the sun shinging through in and out of the trees/bridge.

I also added more of a dark rusty colour/effect to the skatepark shots to create more of a urban feel as gangs of people 'hanging out' at the skte park can be associated with more of the more urban/graffati effect, which we have also incorporated into our music video

Other shots which I have included effects on have been again to create a different feel which is associated with that particular shot. For example, in our shots when we have been playing on the dance matts/other arcade games - I have focused more on the bright lights to get more of a clubby/dance effect to the shots. I have also attempted to focus in and out of the lights aswell to get a continuos flow in our music video instead of changing straight to a shot without of 'introducing' it.

Audience Feedback

Whilst I was editing our music video today, I managed to get a couple of people to watch it and give me their feedback and opinions on what they like and what they dont like.

People have said that they overall love what we have done so far and how it puts them in a happy mood as the music video is just a montage of us having fun and 'feeling free' with the camera. They have also said how they like how the editing and shots are very fast paced and how you get a real glimpse of everything as we filmed a lot of footage yet only put little snippets of each in it. People also like how we have involved a lot of lip syncing and how we have matched it up very accurately even when changing the shots, we were still able to get the lyrics matched up. Other shots people like are the way that our song/music matches up with the visuals so when there are fast paced lyrics such as the bit where it repeats "yeah yeah" we managed to change angles/shots/positions of us so it looks like it links in with the song.

However, people didnt like how some of it didnt flow as continuously as some of the other shots. And how we should include more effects such as split screen or how we could add little transitions to fill the little gaps between the shots. People have also said how although they like the hand held camera when in the car etc, they feel that there are one too many shots of it being hand held so it becomes very wobbly so it doesnt look like very good camera work or control.

In todays media lesson....

This media lesson we managed to get a lot of exciting and interesting filming done ready to edit. We went out to bury and managed to set up the tripod and camera facing towards a few steps where we positined ourselves outside the corn exchange.

The reason we did this was from some influences from other music videos where we have seen mostly bands doing it, positioning themselves on different steps and then stop and start the camera (cut the camera) so we all change places and carry on doing this so we can a variety of different positions on the steps so once we get round to editing it we can speed it up so it becomes flowing shots of all swapping places.

We also went to bury bowl where they have those different arcade games such as the dance matts and driving games, boxing and basketball games which we all had a go on. We managed to get various different angles such as close ups, over the shoulder shots, wide shots, feet shots when we were on the dance matts, then hopefully when we get down to editing it, we will reverse the shot of the sophie boxing to give it a little more affect. We will add all of these shots in more urbam colours such as yellowy or maybe tinting of pinks, blue and bright colours to show the club effect as thats what we may do at the weekend.

Previous media lesson....

So far we have just been putting our music video together, editing all the footage we have. As our music video is a montage of random and abstract shots, we have decided to just set out our video into small parts of footage all added together as a whole so its a very quick, busy and fun music video of how we live our lives to match the lyrics of the song being about the weekend.

As it is random we have a lot of different locations and props to show what we involve in our lives so we have gone out of school to collect more of our footage, such as singing to the camera, skatepark, fields, or in the car to get a handheld camera affect and as it was snowing a few days ago, we went out and did a lot of throwing of snow, lip syncing with the music and managed to roll a big snow ball which we will eventually change once editing to speed it up etc.

The music video is coming along, we just have a few more gaps where we still need to film but we have thought of different ideas such as split screening of us all singing the words, and tinting of the shots to show more of a dance/club genre feel to it. We also are planning to film people in our sixth form dancing in the social forum where we will get a high angle shot from the window where we are able to film them so show the urban feel in our school, yet just a fun way to get other people involved in our music video, to show how school and friends are a big part of our lives

In last weeks lessons, we managed to get some more filming done. We went to the skate park where we fortunately found two bikers who were already there who let us film them, where they were able to show us some of their skills and tricks that they can do. We only managaed to get some footage of the car weaving in and out of the bins on the school field so now we have put that on final cut express, we have increased the speed so it becomes more quicker and effective.

We have also filmed outside of school, so we could get a variety of shots at night time as it was very dark at this point. We went to the skate park again as we could show the street lamp lighting elaborating the more urban effect, especially due to the setting and the graffiti.

More filming...

So far we have managed to as a group put the start of our music video together,  Ella and I spent a lesson matching up the lip sync to correct position so that we could see where we had specific clips for, this left us with gaps in which we could fill in with other shots in which would then link the video together.  Charlotte and Ella then took the time to fill in the games at the beginning of the song, ordering some shots so that the beginning flowed. Today when we looked at the footage we realized that we needed a few more shots for the next part of the music video. Therefore we spent the lesson completing some filming. We stayed within school and chose some specific actors/actresses so that we could ensure that they would be committed and would be able to do as they are told. Our idea was based on the scene from 'High School Musical' where people are all within a social environment and end up breaking into a dance. We took this idea and remade it into our own. the setting in which we chose was the school social forum as we felt that this would allow people to sit casually and act normal, this worked well as people were spread out but not too far apart. Whilst there we took individual close ups of each person so that we could see the connection between them before they began dancing. After this we set up an angle in which we could see everyone and had Harriet initiate the dancing, she began and the others followed resulting in the group dancing. This worked really well and the actors were very enthusiastic. We decided repeat this so that we had more footage to choose from. In addition we used different angles to show variety and to add specific effects. After we had completed this we chose to film some more lip sync with Harriet as she was keen to do so, this allowed us to have further footage.

Review of previous lessons..

In the last three lessons our group have been getting on with filming but we have not been able to do loads in each lesson. The reason for this is that one of our main locations is in Bury St. Edmunds which we have to drive to and from when filming, which means this lessens the time we have for filming every lesson. However, we are usually able to get everything done that we have planned for each lesson. For example, in the first week we had an idea of using the skatepark for one of our locations. By filming here it meant that we could use various different angles in our shots. When we arrived there Ella had an idea that in one of our shots we should be walking up to the people in the skatepark and then take their bikes or skateboards after them so it shows that we are being different and having fun in order to get ready for the weekend. Unfortunately, we did not get this bit of our idea filmed but we got some good shots of people on their bikes going up and down the ramps. We will go back there and definitely get this idea done.

When we got back to school we thought that this was a good location and that maybe it would work better if we went their at night and used the lights in the skatepark for our source of light when filming at night. Because we thought this would look better we went back to the skatepark one night where we were able to  film more people on their bikes because there was more people there at night than in the day. Whilst filming we also found out the use of night mode of the camera which helped us a lot when filming. Also, this night we were able to go and get some shots of lights and we were able to play around with the focus on the camera so the lights go out of focus.

During the lessons we have either been filming or we have been putting our shots onto the computer so we can find out what pieces we have done from our storyboards and what we have not. From seeing what he have not done, this gives us an idea of what we have to do and allows us to come up with a few new ideas to piece our music video together.

Here is a quick clip on how we think our music video will begin but we are not totally sure whether we want this clip or another one so that will also be something that we will all discuss in our next lesson..

Unfortunately the quality of this clip isn't as good as it is on final cut express but it should be clear as to what it is and which part of the song it goes with.. Another idea that we could use for the first part of this song is that we could get loads of people together with our red american style cups to hide the drink, and we all put our cups up together and say "cheers". I have an idea that we could do which is go to a beach and all say cheers with together with our drinks together and then we run off towards the sea. Or.. this could be situated at a party or near a bonfire so them shots can link into the next shot. The only problem with this shot is that it looks as if it should carry on round the roundabout to go in time with song, but I think that this shot is effective as it is and it suits the mood that we want our video to be about. For example, the sun represents being bright, which can be linked to us having fun. Whereas, if we had a shot of it raining then this would feel like the music video would be a sad song.

Next Media Lesson.....

Thinking ahead, during our next media lesson we were thinking of trying to get a bit more filming done. As our music video is a concept, we have a very diverse set of shots which we hope to add in to again add the aspect of what we feel is 'fun' and 'free.'

For example we have the silly shots of us putting cones on our head just to show we dont care about what we are doing or who is watching us..... this will be easy for us to get the chance to film this as there seem to be several cones lying about at school so we can use them for parts of our video. Another random shot that we hope to include is hopefully trying to find a bunch of pidgeons on the ground which we can all just go and run into yet by doing this, it will be another good way of including a mroe variety of shots such as a 'worms point of view' shot where we could leave camera on floor so we are able to watch the pidgeons fly away. Yet we could edit the footage to make the it into slow motion to portray that sort of superior we have over them, however its another way to show our facial expressions having a good time just messing about with friends.

We have two other shots which we could also film tomorrow which purposely relate to Goodwins theory of matching the visuals to the lyrics. For exmample Rihanna sings "got my Ray Bans on and im feeling hella cool tonight" which we would include one of us having a close up shot of  our ray ban sunglasses on, however we were hoping to a shot of the sunset in the evening so its between the time of afternoon and evening to show we are still outside yet we are getting ready for 'tonight.'

The other shot is the other match with lyrics "got a drink on my mind and my mind on my money" where by we have bought fake money that's actually cerviettes which we will cut up and throw about and direct address it to the camera as if we are throwing the money on it, to show we are free because we have all this money. However, we were also thinking of when it comes to the editing process that we add a mind bubble into the persons head showing the money therefore literally showing that money is on her mind.

Hopefully we are able to get the majority of it all done what we have planned for tomorrow :)

Last Media Lesson

In our last media lesson we thought we should go out and do some more filming, therefore we drove to a field where Sophie keeps her house which we were hoping we could film some more of our shots that just show the random concept of our music video. However, we were planning on running round the field so the horses could chase us, as we just wanted to add a few crazy footage to show us having all a fun time. We did eventually get a few shots of the horses running about however we did give up on the idea so instead, we placed the camera on the tripod in the set position we wanted it so we could all be in the shot. Once we got that set up,  we went running away from the camera onto the rest of the field doing the random skipping/jumping/running around trees etc as we wanted to portray the element of being free and having a good time as its the weekend....to match the lyrics of the song.

Once we got back to school, we went round our sixth form, and placed the camera infront of people so we could get footage and lip syncing of different people saying the continuous verse in song which is "yeah yeah." We thought this would be a good idea as first of our we could show how we have the different elements such as lip syncing yet we filmed the different people from various angles, such as from down below, long distance shot, close up, over shoulder shot, and other random positions such as facing backwards and looking towards the camera and looking to and back from the camera.

We managaed to get it all on the mac ready for us to continue filming on our cameras, then eventually once we have enough footage, we are able to start editing.

We feel we are keeping on top of things, and being organised as to when we are going to film and what we are going to film so we are able to know how much time we have left and how long we think it will take us to film the rest of our music video.....