Final Video

My completed video with all the parts combined together to make the final version, this for me was more about challenging my technical skills with the editing as much as anything else.

Final Poster

This is my final edited version of the poster after many hours tweaking on photoshop trying to make the symbol of tia caqsella look like grafiti on the wall to using picnik to find the right font. I did start off trying to use the window however the text was not large enough for people to read therefore i decided to have it on the wall but the text itself wasn't enough. This was when i had come up with the idea of putting the symbol for my artist that i created on adobe illustrator onto the big white space in the middle which gave it my finishing touch and linked it with my digipack, finally it's finished.

Final Digi Pack

This is my final digi pack finished, i started trying to create it on adobe illustrator but the program proved to be to basic in editing photos that i could not even crop my photos, so instead of me using the pen tools and fillers to create the whole front pannel of my digipack i then switched to photoshop. This was much easier to use for all my photos as i had the benefit of using raw photos therefore i then found some photoshop tuttorials to help me create my first drafts of my fron digipack pannel which then led me to creating the final front pannel. By following generic conventions i came up nwith the ideas for my other pannels of the digi pack to stick with live performance and electro pop, with the jack cable as the cd cover to the speaker refering to live performances and the modern electr pop feeling with my protaganist leg just in show. Again another theme was that you couldn't see my protaganist's face as you can already see her in my poster and i though it would be good to challenge conventions by not showing her face like most artists of my genre.

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation 2

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

There are certain motifs that stand out in all of my products for example within the music video I kept to the colour scheme of black red and white this was to really try and get across three different emotional versions of my singer so that it could appeal to three different types of audience members, as I was always trying to sell her in the way of voyeurism to my audience therefore I thought I should go down the same route when it came to my ancillary task. This meant that when it came to my poster I knew there was at one point during the filming a perfect shot which showed my singer looking very seductive but slightly vulnerable and innocent, also the way she was framed was perfect for putting the rest of the information needed to go on my poster therefore I felt that the poster was really selling just as much as what the video had to offer. There is one difference though that when it came to my digipack I really wanted to remind people that my genre was electro pop but at the same time I wanted to give the feel that my performer was a really good live performer as well so to incorporate that into the selling of my singer I thought I should aptly name the album, Stage Presence, which fitted with how she looks on camera and acts yet at the same time insinuates she loves the stage including live arena’s therefore making the link with live performances. I don’t think I showed this much in my video or hinted it in my poster however the main construction of my digipack did really revolve around that idea hence the cover underneath the cd was made of the jack leads put together to again emphasise the feeling that she is a performer and is just as good on tour, yet sticking to the typical conventions of electro pop by showing the speaker and the microphone in the case as well.

 

However in the midst of creating the digipack and the poster at the same time I really wanted to have something that linked them because I had already shown my lead singer in the poster so I thought it would be best to challenge the conventions of my genre electro pop and not have my singer all over the cover of my digipack as I think it entices listeners and viewers to want to look her up and watch her whether it would be her live videos or her performance ones either way it was all about enticing the audience in. So to link my two ancillary tasks together I came up with the idea of having a brand logo (The TC that you see in both of them) so that this way you could always identify the brand of Tia casella and link it to anything without having to see my performers face over everything and I think that subtlety works when coming to sell an album to an audience.

The links between my digipack and main product aren’t as strong as the poster however I have tried to incorporate aspects from the music video into the digipack, things such as sticking to the colour scheme to give you three different aspects of my digipack, which would be the live performance, video performance and the tour performance, along with the microphone panel with the red electrical energy flowing from her to show how new and exciting her character is, jut like the feel when you are chucked straight in with the music videos choppy start so it captures your attention and alerts you to something quick and enticing.

Evaluation 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From the start of conception I wanted to have my music video as a narrative, I took the lyrics far too literally and started to try to create a relationship between a man and women from what I took from the lyrics and in the end it was becoming very far-fetched ideas because instead of trying to come up with original ideas of my own, with a different meaning I was trying to suit ideas to the song which I very quickly realized wasn’t working as when I gave my ideas to the class the feedback I got was that it would be very simple and cheesy to watch, along with the fact that this kind of storyline wouldn’t really suit the genre of my music track which at the time I wasn’t 100%on. So from my first feedback session I realized I had a basic knowledge of music genres and what performances suit which so I started to research into different bands videos such as muse to get the synth feel that I have in my song as well.

I then went into my video with a completely new concept focusing on really trying to sell my singer with a simplistic concept that would attract the audience straight away, and after getting a good response from the class about this idea I went ahead to start filming so that I could really show people what I wanted to make. As I couldn’t explain a few of the shots I wanted to use in my video I decided to compile a little clip from Florence and the machines and a mix of the shot that I wanted that I found on YouTube of an alleyway, and edited them together with some of my music track so I show people a bit of my idea before it was finished and the fact that people were saying they could really see the music suiting the dancing from Florence and the mix of low angle medium shots of an alleyway suited the feel of the music track, so from then on I knew what I was going to be filming.

Whilst editing the white part from my music video that I had filmed I kept in mind the comments from my fellow students that the edit I had done of Florence fitted the music track, so I made the decision to make my edits to the beats of the music as from what I gathered that would bring people into the feel of the genre more and wanting to watch my singer as snappy quick edits requires them to focus more and shouldn’t really give them time to get to bored. Once I finished a part of the white section I exported it and put it onto YouTube so that I could get feedback from other teachers to offer advice at what level I was heading at with what I had done so far. Fortunately I had some really good comments saying I was working towards a level 4 and that the edits on the beat of the music worked really well, however there were some warnings not to keep going with the same repetitive pattern otherwise it could get quite boring to watch. With that in mind I set about moving onto to film the black section of my video.

Once I finished the editing of the black section I then put it next to the white section to get the contrast I wanted and put that on YouTube to see if I was still going in the right direction and it still fitted with the voyeuristic style of selling my singer to the audience. The feedback I then got was from some colleagues and teachers that my teach new and this was very helpful as they give very constructive comments which are quite hard to get from friends who only tend to say they like it or that it looks nice, anyway they thought that the black section was much more interesting to watch as the editing style was more about finding the right music beats and seemed much tighter, this was because the time between editing the two my skills in editing had improved so with this information in hand I then went about changing the  start of the white section with a few inserts of the black clips so it would introduce the next section.

After completing my music video with the red sections included, all put together and finalised I posted my video onto the social networking site Facebook so that I could get the audience feedback from friend s to see if what I had created suited the genre and also to get an idea of whether or not my music video was suited for the age range of my friends. The feedback I got from them was quite useful, such as comments about how the editing worked really well contrasted to some people suggesting that maybe there should have been a narrative as it was quite samey just seeing the singer dancing in a similar way throughout the whole piece. Overall the constructive comments made me look back on my music video as more as a project that developed my skills in the editing suite and hopefully will help me to create better projects.

Evaluation Question 4

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

Audience Feedback

From the edited parts i already had done, which were the black part (30 seconds) and the white part (30 seconds) Mr wallis sent them to some of his collegues who gave some very useful feedback, here are some of the emails that and comments he got back.

These comments were really usefull as people liked both parts of the music video the white and the black when i was afraid that the majority would prefer the black as that was where i found that my editing was most strong as i had had more time on the computer after editing the white sequence. It's constructive comments about the nightclub was quite usefull as one of my conception ideas was to film in a nightclub but in the end i couldn't do it as i wouldn't have been aloud to film everyone in a nightclub and also get my uinderage lead singer in one aswell. However overall it is really a confidence boost to see that people are saying i am going in the right direction and after the majority prefering the black part i shal probably look at re editing some of the white part as i now feel my skills have developed further with editing on adobe Premier pro.

Filming shoot 2

For my second shoot I wanted to get the black background so I decided to film in the drama studio of our school which is really useful as within the drama studio it has its own lighting rig with theatre lights if I wanted to use them. It turns out I didn’t need them as the problem was that the light they gave off was to warm and didn’t define Effie enough when she was moving so I used the lights from media which were photographic bulbs so they were much brighter, however that was where I encountered a problem. Out of the three lights that we have two of the bulbs had broken so I ended up with just one light left, and this took up a lot of time as I had to then test to see if the actual lights were broken rather than the bulbs which ended up digging into the little time I had with Effie. With one light, I then had to start filming the shots I needed with only side lighting however this added a really great effect as it made it feel as though she was enticing you in as you want to see more of her face and body when she dances into the light.

 Another problem I encountered was that even though the drama studio was black there were still a lot of scratches on the wall where the paint had come off and also the ceiling was not painted black at all so this limited the amount of low angle shots I could get as it meant you would see the white ceiling in the background, and this would be even more noticeable when it came to editing as the contrast would be put up to keep in likeness with the white section. So I really had to think about where I could move with the camera to get the best shots yet still not get any plug sockets or shafts of light from the fire exit coming into shot. However one thing did occur to me was that if I got just a little of the ceiling in view it won’t matter as when it came to editing I could just scale the size of the shot up so I would still have the angle of the shot but cut out the ceiling as it would have zoomed in slightly.

In this shoot Effie is wearing the white dress as I really wanted to give a strong contrast from her tight restricted movements in the photography and the tight black dress, compared to the freedom of movement she has in her white dress but still with the element of the black trapping her like the black dress restricted her movement in the white area the black space restricts the area in which she can move around but with what space she has got she can move much more freely as if she is trying to break out. The reason for having this feel to it is because I find it suits the electro pop genre of music and again those types of dance movements and acting vulnerable really play to capturing an audience which obviously would be a main point to focus when creating my music video.

The cage idea was slightly influenced by the music video Atari teenage riots song blood in my eyes as a cage is featured in that along with some grimy scenes, it inspired me to really go for the vulnerable girl theme whilst at the same time being very seductive and having the cage allowed me to express that by giving Effie the direction to reach out of the cage towards the camera so it would feel as if she was reaching out to you as an audience member to help her yet at the same time I would have some high angle shots to then bring out the feeling of the audience in power which would then emphasise Effie’s seductive facial expressions. The aim was that at no point would the audience loose interest or stop looking at her and hopefully wanting her as it Is proven to be successful by appearing to the male gaze theory as that is half your audience covered along with the fact that some women could watch and be influenced to be like her, therefore covering both sexes of my audience.

Editing the white part

So after having shot all the white footage in the photography studio and importing it into Adobe premiere pro I started to sort through my footage and play about with the contrasting and the and the effects. Straight away I changed all the pieces of footage (which turned out to be 12 minutes) to black and white and changed the contrast levels to get the optimum shades of black and white without compromising her facial expressions and her body being to blocky and sharp with the colours. As you can see in the picture here the whites and blacks are definitely more defined but the main reason for this was that you would then focus on the performer much more and therefore sticking to the voyeurism of Goodwin’s theory getting more attention for the artist.

Some complications that have arisen so far from editing the white part is that it is tricky with some of my lower angle shots to keep her in the frame when I scale the size down, the reason I had to scale the size down was because when getting the low angle shots I needed the ceiling comes into shot and it is in a bit of a state so to overcome that I scaled up the shots which also gave me a range of more close up shots. This was useful as it gave the white sequence a more diverse feel as there was now a larger variety of shots to keep the audience interested.

After having this first draft done I think I might change the editing slightly as to me it seems very similar in the fact that between each of the lines of song the sharp editing is the same pace and it seems as though it goes on a bit too long, and I am worried the audience might feel that as well and seeming that this is the opening I don’t want people to get bored straight away so I might play around with the shots and add in some longer connecting shots.

My first shoot

So the first shoot for my music video was shooting with my singer/dancer Effie in the photography studio, I have chosen this location because I need the contrast of the white background and Effie’s black dress again to showcase Effie as that is really the main aim of my performance video. The studio I filmed in is actually rather small and because of that I encountered a few problems whilst filming.

The first problems I noticed were that there wasn’t much space and when I set the camera up even with it fully zoomed out so when I framed Effie in the middle of the room she was only just within the middle of the frame and when she extended her arms she nearly touched the lights on either side of her and her arms went out of view of the camera. So if I moved the camera any farther back I would end up having the lights in shot so to compromise I had to direct Effie with her dancing to try and do it without moving out of a certain amount of space. The next problem I had was with the laptop as it decided not to want to play my track as it did not recognize the file, so luckily I had VLC player on my memory stick so I copied it onto my friends laptop, plugged in the speakers and the track started to play thank goodness as it made Effie’s job of lip syncing much easier and for my sake it would be much more accurate.

However with the small amount of space available I did manage to get a variety of different angles and also some movement with the camera but at the same time I have managed to get the ceiling and the lights in the camera shot which at the moment doesn’t look very well but I’m sure I will be able to fiddle around with the shots when it comes to the editing.

Influences

Looking through music videos I realized that quite a famous band has the same sort of colour scheme and contrast that I have going on with the black white and red idea. The White Stripes also use the same concept throughout their videos and this works especially well with the fact that they have a female drummer as it makes her stand out. However the main reason that this works for them is because by using just the three colours the contrasts between the colours are used to make the band stand out much more for us to see. An example of this is below in their video of seven nation army. As you can see in the picture the colours of the clothes they are wearing tend to blend with or contrast the colour of the moving background, and by doing this immediately draws your attention to the artists themselves which is where I got my inspiration to do the same for my artist in my music video as I think that selling the artist works well in a performance based video especially when you are using voyeuristic traits when filming my female singer.