13P1-04 Directors Commentary

32) Analysis of old student Digipak/s

When creating our Digipak we thought it would be in our best interest to research previous students efforts in an attempt to recognise any potential things to avoid or develop to create a better end product.

Above is the first DigiPak we looked at; although it contains all of the typical conventions of a digipak they have opted for a minimalist black and white colour scheme which although challenges typical covers with regards to colour and composition we felt it may not be in their best interest to choose something with such little appeal, for instance when a shopper is looking in a store for an album they may not have typically listened to before, a colorful cover is much more likely to catch their eye and encourage impulse buys.

This is the second DigiPak which chose to look at, its look although colorful and eye catching is very basic and messy, the images of the band members are edited well, as part of a composition they seem like  they've been placed anywhere, in addition to this the use of text was not executed with very much detail, on the 5th track for instance it overlaps onto the black background.


In conclusion by looking at both of these Digipak's we learnt in order to have a successful digipak design it would need to Colorful to catch the consumers eye, it would need to contain all the typical iconography such as "Parental advisory", Barcode, Format logo and finally we learnt that we need to take time to ensure that all aspects work together properly and set aside time where we can go over the whole thing fixing small mistakes and generally cleaning it up ready for consumption by the public.

Script For Commentary

Overview;  
We wish to present our direcotrs commentary in a way we feel will not only look proffesional but will also be thouroughly engaging to the audience, the way we feel this can be achieved is through the use of a green screen with myself and the rest of our group in front of it whilst our music video is played behind, this gives us the ability to stop it , and easily convey our feelings through clearly shown examples.

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


Dom: In order to answer this question successfully we first need to establish the genre of music of which we feel our song falls ino which after much reseach we believe to be 'pop rock' reasons for why can be seen in depth on our blog, a  band of which that plays similar music to our 'band'  is a band called 'McFly'.

Ben: This song, '5 colours in her hair' shows all the conventions that should be used in a music video of 'pop rock' genre. These are: Performance Footage, Bright Colours, extensive editing and Story-line, In some ways our video does use the convention of performance footage in our video as we have a lot of lip syncing. However, we also challenge this convention as we have no use of instruments in our video.

James: In a lot of McFly's videos there is extensive use of bright colours, coming in many different forms, the clothing is all very bright, so is the general style of editing. We feel our video challenges this conventions as we adopt a dark style of editing and as you can see behind me such as  the saturation effect and de-saturation effect. But there is also editing techniques that change the size of the video and make it appear in different areas of the screen. This is used in both our video and McFly's video. As seen behind us, this therefore is a further way in which we follow the conventions of th 'punk-rock' genre.

Joe: Storyline/ narrative is a further convention of this genre shown In both McFly' video and our video, there is a storyline and performance footage, therefore showing that we are using this convention, a convention that I believed we used successfully.













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

Ben: This is our final album cover ( shown on the screen ) which we feel is very effective as the contrasting colours of the pink and grey merge well together and seeing as the band is called 'The Pink Spiders', the pink obviously goes in relation to the name of the band. it also follows many of the other conventions of the music poster genre

James:However our music video doesn't have pink in it because we wanted to have contrapuntal feel to the video where the music is a lot more up beat and lively than the performance seen on screen which we wanted to be similar the Architects - 'Heartburn'

Dom: We as a band wanted the mood on screen to be quite like the video behind ,with the slow walking down a street and walking through fields and woods.conveying the somber and contreversial subject, ie. underage drinking.

What have you learnt from audience feedback? -+

Joe: When we created our final product it was given to a test audience, all of whom produced feedback on what they thought about it and possible changes to make which they felt it required to be successful.

James: They felt we followed the conventions of our genre effectively they also we're impressed by the editing and did not make any bad comments, however some felt the lip syncing was not 100% accurate in places which overall we agree with.

Dom: Our peers also felt the jump cuts and words we're timed well with the beat of the song and matched the on screen actions, we were told it was slightly abstract and harder to read at times, however this was intentional to keep the audience interested and on their toes.


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

James: Throughout the production of our Music product we have used various  types of new media technology, such as the obvious; blogger of which has helped us publish our project in a professional manner shown through the incorporation of both images and videos which have the ability for us to easily convey our desired effect and explain/ analyse easily, professionally and efficiently. Also the ease of use such as the ability to edit, add and access from any browser in the world.  

Dom: Finalcut has been a superb tool in both planning and research as well as the completion of our final video, and the directors cut version also, firstly final cut was taken advantage of in the initial research for the blog post on fillers, as well as lip-syncing with both the words to the music as well as the actual lip movement, this maximised our confidence for the editing for our final cut which we feel is also successful, as it enabled us to successfully convey the desired effect, shown through the use of fillers, fades and emphasis on certain sections portrayed through the on screen lyrics.  

Ben: Google Streetview was in fact also a help shown in the blog post for our location recce, the way in which this helped was it enabled us to show our ideas and scout for ideal locations a lot quicker and efficiently opposed to manually doing, especially when the weather was against us.  

Joe: Photoshop was a further form of digital technology that we took advantage of shown with our digipack and magazine advert which allowed us to take seemingly plain and simple images and manipulate them in such a way which successfully conveyed the desired and professional image.

Individual Evaluation - Dom

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

To answer this question, I first needed to identify what genre of music our song choice would be classed as. This will help me in order to choose a similar song of the same genre and pinpoint the individual conventions used in that video and the conventions used in our video.
The genre I believe our song could be categorised into is the 'pop rock' genre. I feel our song is too soft to be classed as a full on rock song however it uses many instruments and is therefore not entirely poppy. A band that plays a similar sort of music to ours I would say is a band called 'McFly'. After extensive research through many of McFly's music videos I was able to identify some conventions and a video that portrays all of these conventions. (Shown Below)

This song, '5 colours in her hair' shows all the conventions that should be used in a music video of 'pop rock' genre. These are: Performance Footage, Bright Colours, extensive editing and Story-line. 

Performance Footage

In this video, there is a lot of performance footage showing the band members, this includes instruments and lip syncing. In some ways our video does use this convention as we have a lot of lip syncing. However, we also challenge this convention as we have no use of instruments in our video. This is not done intentionally. Originally we set out to use many instruments such as a piano for the music intro at the start of the video but a lack of planning meant we couldn't find anyone that could play the piano. Below are screen grabs of the use of performance in McFly's video and ours as well. 

Bright Colours

In a lot of McFly's videos there is extensive use of bright colours, coming in many different forms. The clothing is all very bright, so is the general style of editing. Our video challenges this conventions as we adopt a dark style of editing and as you can see in the pictures above, there is a huge difference in clothing we are wearing. I believe we adopted this style as our song, in contrast to many of McFly's, has quite a dark meaning and story behind it whereas McFly's lyrics and stories are quite upbeat and happy. 

Extensive Editing

Editing is a very broad subject there are two aspects of editing that I need to focus on in order to analyse editing. There are filters and effects applied to our video that make it look dark such as the saturation effect and de-saturation effect. But there is also editing techniques that change the size of the video and make it appear in different areas of the screen. This is used in both our video and McFly's video. Examples are shown below. 

Storyline

In both McFly' video and our video, there is a storyline and performance footage, therefore showing that we are using this convention, a convention that I believed we used quite well.

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

After researching many videos and ancillary products (eg DigiPaks) I approached the ultimate conclusion that the most successful DigiPaks were ones that included reminders that can be seen in the particular video. So we decided this would be a convention that we would try and incorporate in our digipak. Obviously, the pink in the DigiPak reminds the audience of 'The Pink Spiders'

Final Digipak

This is our final digipak.

Desaturation

In technical terms, saturdation means the amount of colour that an image has. So, to desaturate a clip means to take the colour away from the clip. This is easy to do and creates the idea of a dream or flashback, by creating a sense of something not being real as there is no colour this is especially effective when it is combined with a speed change which is quite common in Birchall's work. The image below shows an example of a video by 'Architects' where the desaturation effect is used.

The part of our video where this effect will be useful is where we see the footage of 'Emily'. It will create a surreal atmosphere, almost showing that everything is not how it should be, it is unconventional. Which is exactly what this part of our video is. This in turn will make the viewer show emotion toward the girl and the video will remain engaging.
The contrast between this effect and a normal saturated clip may seem sloppy and unproffessional, however a completely desaturated video will become boring and could lose the viewers attention. Therefore we feel that we need to find a level medium between the two. while watching another 'Architects' video, we found that the desaturation tool is again used, however it is not used completely. Seen below.

We decided that this would look good in our video and will be something that we do our best to implement.

Filters And Effects

In our auteur study we talked about how we would like to make our video similar to those directed and produced by 'Stuart Birchall' without copying them. A lot of his videos look the way they do and create the feel they create through the extensive use of filters and special effects. The main effects and/or filters we can identify in many of Birchall's videos are. Desaturation, Brightness and Contrast, Speed Changes and Defocus effects. In turn we will analyse these effects and determine whether they look like something we could use in our video.

Feedback For P1-05

Below is a screen grab of an analysis we conducted for group P1-05 on their rough cut footage:

Problems With Schedule

Problems with trasnport meant that we were unable to film on the proposed day. There were also other problems such as the lead actress becoming ill, leaving us unable to film again. Therefore we had to suggest an evening after the rough cut deadline in order to fill missing gaps in the video.

Planned Filming Schedule

This was our proposed filming schedule.

11:00 Arrive In Wicken
12:00 Finish filming in Wicken
12:30 Arrive in Burwell
1:00 Finish Filming In Burwell
1:30 Arrive In Ely
3:00 Finish Filming For The Day

Research Into Music Adverts

 Here are two music advertisments for both Tinchy Stryder (left) as well as Girls Aloud (below)  on first glance they appear to widely differ however on closser analysis they are both trying to achieve a similar goal in a similar 'genre' of music and thereby follow typical conventions of which associated with it. I feel both successfully complete their aim and advertise there product in question although I feel Tinchy Stryders goes better in 'selling' it as it were whilst the Girls Aloud advert I feel would be more at home as a CD front cover.

Going Viral

After looking into various stages of music video production in detail, it felt only right to pursue it until distribution, so that it's there by how I came across the following article entitled 'top 10 tips on how to make your music vdieo go viral', it includes top tips from the likes of Cee Lo Green & Gregg Breinberg. I feel this is just what we were looking for as it provides great help for espiring artists and producers;

1. Make The Video Its Own Entity

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Yes, the point of having a video is to promote your song, but that doesn’t mean the vid should take backseat in the artistic realm. “The goal is to create a video that enhances the song and can stand on its own, a video that people are not only going to want to watch again, but want to show someone else,” says Kina Grannis, a YouTube phenomenon who has garnered her share of fame via web video.
Having a video that stands on its own, as Grannis says, can bring you new fans — you know, people who might not otherwise be into klezmer, but really dig the way those ribbon dancers you hired move.

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2. Try a Cover Song

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We know you have your own sound that’s, like, 50 times better than any of the garbage out there, but no one’s going to listen if they don’t know who you are. One way to cut through the cacophony of voices on the web is to pay homage to a known entity by covering one of their jams. Bands like Pomplamoose have seen great success with this tactic, as have PS22, a chorus of kids from New York. “As far as how the group has reached a worldwide audience, the majority of credit goes to Tori Amos and gossip blogger Perez Hilton,” says Gregg Breinberg, the director of the kids’ chorus. “After posting a plethora of Tori Amos covers, her management contacted me back in 2007 to arrange a meeting. The kids sang for her, then with her, and after we posted the videos of the collaboration, Perez Hilton posted the performance on his blog. Ever since, he’s kept up with the kids, and continues to post their performances regularly.”

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3. Be Patient

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“Things did not happen for PS22 overnight,” says Breinberg. “Over the course of five years, the kids continue to gain new fans and a wider audience. PS22 brings a consistent offering of music/videos that appeal to a wide demographic. That helps too.”Translation: Just as you’re not going to get a record deal after one gig, your first video may not blow up. Hey, if a bunch of kids can be patient, so can you.

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4. Rehearse — A Lot

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“This may not be true for everyone, but we’ve found that most of our ideas, at minimum, take a week and often times months of rehearsal before we feel like we’ve got something good,” says OK Go‘s Tim Nordwind. “After we come up with a simple concept, the four of us (and often times our collaborators) get together and start playing around with ideas until the concept starts coming to life, changing, and getting better than we ever could have imagined. Some of our videos, like the Rube Goldberg machine for ‘This Too Shall Pass,’ took six weeks of planning and building.”

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5. Remember Fun? Have It

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“When thinking about making videos, we ask ourselves, what would be fun to do for a few weeks?” says Nordwind. “That’s where our ideas stem from; dancing with dogs, making a Rube Goldberg machine, a dance with time, performing with a marching band, they all just seemed like fun things to try to create.”Generally, if you’re having fun, people will have fun watching you. Unless you have wholly different ideas of recreation than the rest of the population.

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6. Be Frugal

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If  people can get famous off of lo-fi home recordings, you bet your bass the same is true of videos. “Make sure your budget is $0, so you don’t mind when your video doesn’t go viral,” advises Andrew Gregory, of Auto-Tune the News fame.

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7. Create Something Relatable

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 Empathy is an integral component of shareability. “We don’t all have an outlet to express ourselves, but chances are we’ve all had that experience. That experience of loss in relationships overall,” says Cee-Lo Green, whose song “F**k You” went hugely viral this summer and fall. “I think that’s why that song works…. It can be shocking to address a significant issue, but the sense of humor is smiling in the face of diversity.”

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8. Know Your Audience

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As we stated in the introduction, the Internet has made the musical realm much more democratic. While Green’s jam was censored on the radio, it could be played in all its glory online. “I believe that the Internet is people’s radio — to where we have a sense of ownership and control and direct involvement. In that way, the song worked with people,” Green says.

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9. Remember, Your Song Has to Be Good

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While you’re out there Fellini-ing it up, remember that a good video won’t save a bad song. “Quality is my first concern,” Green says. “You have to be honest and you have to be considerate and compassionate. There has to be an underlying desire to be related to. Not just seen, heard — embraced. Needing and wanting that love to be reciprocated. If you don’t have that love, chances are you won’t succeed.”

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10. And Then There’s Always Cats

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The Internet loves cats. If you’ve got ‘em, flaunt ‘em. That’s part of the reason why Holy F**k‘s song, “Red Lights,” spread around the web so quickly. Still, it’s not like the band set out to cash in on kitties. “If we would’ve known how trendy cats would’ve become online, we probably wouldn’t have made the video. [But] I’m glad we went ahead with the video,” says Holy F**k’s Brian Borcherdt, who directed the video as well.

Problems With Storyboard

Although our storyboard gave us a general idea of the feel we would like to give our music video, it was definitely not detailed enough. It was useful for the pitches, but we realised that it wouldn't be able to help us draw up a complete, detailed shot list that would help us when it came to filming.

Shot List

The list below shows the shots featured in order on our storyboard:

Close Up

Establishing Shot

Long Shot

Mid Shot

Close Up

Mid Shot

Mid Shot

Close Up

Close Up

Long Shot

Mid Shot

Mid Shot

Mid Shot

Close Up

Long Shot

Close Up

Mid Shot

Summary Of Planning So Far

After scanning through our blog we can see that nearly all of the blogs from the blog checklist up until this point are complete. We believe that our blogs are of sufficient length and are clearly presented. We believe our blog is well presented and easy to use, this could be because of the extensive use of numbered labels with titles seen on the checklist. Making each point on the cheklist easy to view. To improve our blog, we feel we should use more screen grabs, to make the blog a little less lenghty and boring.

Transition Types

After discussing as a group, we came to the conclusion that we weren't going to try or do anything particularly special with transitions in our video. We thought that some transition types other than a simple fade can be overpowering and could possibly take the viewer's attention away from the actual video. Therefore we decided that a simple fade would be sufficient. However, we decided we could, in parts, expand on a simple fade and develop it into a long fade out as used at the end of our video to match the music, or a cross fade where to clips are on screen at one time but both are just visible.

Blog Assessment Of Another Group

Below is an image of an assessment that we did for group P1-05. It is important to get feedback other than just your own to improve variety of points that could help you to get more marks.

Stuart Birchall - Director Reel

Below is a link to a clip made by Stuart Birchall summarising all of his music video work into one, short clip.

Stuart Birchall - Director Reel

Auteur Study

As mentioned in previous blog posts, we, as a group decided that after researching, we would like our video to adopt a similar style/feel as a video by a band called 'Architects' with the song 'Heartburn'. Although, the band's music wouldn't neccessarily fall into the same genre as ours. The feel of this video we thought was correct as we felt it had the correct blend of both performance and narrative. After researching more of the bands videos we decided that all of the videos created the same feel. Especially a song called 'Day In Day Out'. Therefore we began to think that the director of these videos should be one that research.

After extensive research we found the director that directed the videos, his name is 'Stuart Birchall'. He is also famous for directing videos for other similar bands but also commercials such as a perfume commercial for 'Diesel'. His work is all fairly similar adopting a dark nature that combines performance with story.

Analysis (Using Goodwin) of 2 Student Music Videos (2)

The second video we analysed was group 13P1-01 covering Butch Walker - Too famous to get dressed.

Firstly, the lyrics and visuals are very amplified with many examples where the lryics portray something that is on screen. For example there is a lyric in the song where something is mentioned about a table and a picture of a table that is later used in the film flashes in the bottom corner. Lyrics are also written on pieces of paper held up by random people. This works very well.

The music and visuals are also very amplified with shots cut in time to the beat of the music, appearing in different corners of the screen. This is very well executed through precise editing and definite cuts. The footage also fits the music very well as the song is very 'fast-paced' so is the video, using qucik cuts to enforce this message.

The genre of this music is rock, the characteristics of rock genre videos are usually to use performance footage. Although it is not a full performance, the video matches this characteristic as there is performance seen throughout the video.

There are many shots of the artist throughout the video because not only is he the lead in the performance, but he is also the main character is story that runs alongside the performance.

The only references to voyeurism that i can take from this video come at the beginning and at the end of the video. They are both seens where the main character is being watched doing something but not directly addressing the camera.

There are no intertextual references in this video that I can make out, although the lead singers performance may resemble an attitude that could've been adopted from other artists perfromance.