Monday, 11 May 2015

Final Post


Hello and thank you for looking at my blog. This post is for ease of use. I will put all of the necessary details as well as all of the final products here.

Candidate Name: Bradley Heath Sanders
Candidate Number: 8643
Centre Number: 55235

Music Video

Digipak
Digipak Page 1
Digipak Pages 2 + 3
Digipak Page 4

Magazine Advert



I hope that you enjoy reading my blog, since I enjoyed making it.

Evaluation Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Below is each piece of feedback that I refer to in my answer.

Feedback 1
"I thought the music video was very interesting. I was taken aback by the detail that was in the story and it had a very powerful an emotive feel to it. I think this video could be very relatable to people in different ways. For example, if times are tough, you can find means to get distracted and in the music's case, it was the guitar and through the means of music. Very effective video!"
Feedback 2
"The actual music used with the video (the guitar especially) fit very well especially with the story.  I felt like something was building up and I felt invested in the story. I wondered what was going to happen and when. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. I loved the video but I personally prefer to see the musicians working at points in videos but that's not to take away from the quality of the music video."

 Feedback 3
"Unfortunately, the music video did not have as much of an effect on me as I thought it would have done. Reason being is that I felt the music did not fit the way in which the music progresses and it left me disappointed at the end. The music video itself was good and high quality but I believe the music is a vital part and it should be considered more than it was done. I am sure there is something else which would of worked more."

Sunday, 10 May 2015

Evaluation Question 1 - In what ways does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media products?

When we began this project I looked at many music videos that I thought to be similar to the ones that we were going to produce in order to get an idea of the conventions that they used and the effects that each individual convention had on the overall video. Very early on in my blog I wrote a lot about how real music videos have budgets, be they huge or small they all had a budget in order to buy props, locations and other things that were necessary. This is one area that we were very different to real media products since we had no budget. We had to cover any costs by ourselves apart from the camera insurance fee which the school took care of for us. 

 A convention that we found was that most music videos had a story to it, this story had the aim of getting viewers invested in it and having it match the tone of the music. This is one example of a convention we used in our music video. Each convention has an effect on the viewer and it is the specific effect that we want to happen that leads us to using or not using a convention in our project. For example, when a character needed to look alone or isolated it was common to have that character be the only thing in a shot. This separated them from anyone else and left them alone. To further this effect we used colour correction in a few of the scenes to further show the tone of the song. For example, the first scene where the boy is walking up his street alone, we added a lot more blue to the colouring in order to give a gloomy atmosphere and to reflect what the boy is feeling on his way home. We did this again later on when he arrives at the ruined castle, by editing the sky so it appeared to be more golden it represents the boys hope and how he feels he has found a safe place.

 The fact that we are able to edit our footage in this way is another similarity to real media products. We used equipment and software of a fairly high quality to get our footage. Adobe Premiere Pro is often used by professionals in real life when producing projects like this. Obviously the camera equipment would be far higher quality as well as leagues more expensive however it still is similar. 

 Due to our lack of budget we could only film in places that we could get free access to. This mean't we didn't have the sets and props of large production studios and we had to be mindful of the public. We had to think outside of the box in order to get around this.

 In conclusion, we use media conventions such as camera techniques to create an effect on the audience. For example, having a character completely alone in a shot causes them to look isolated and alone. This can create empathy and pathos from the audience. A similar effect is causes when we would tweak a scenes colours in editing. We had to challenge real media products by finding ways to get around not having any budget at all. 

Audience Feedback

We showed a small group of peers and adults our final edit of the music video and asked them for feedback afterwards.

 "I thought the music video was very interesting. I was taken aback by the detail that was in the story and it had a very powerful an emotive feel to it. I think this video could be very relatable to people in different ways. For example, if times are tough, you can find means to get distracted and in the musics case, it was the guitar and through the means of music. Very effective video!"

"The actual music used with the video (the guitar especially) fit very well especially with the story.  I felt like something was building up and I felt invested in the story. I wondered what was going to happen and when. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. I loved the video but I personally prefer to see the musicians working at points in videos but that's not to take away from the quality of the music video."

"Unfortunately, the music video did not have as much of an effect on me as I thought it would have done. Reason being is that I felt the music did not fit the way in which the music progresses and it left me disappointed at the end. The music video itself was good and high quality but I believe the music is a vital part and it should be considered more than it was done. I am sure there is something else which would of worked more."

 These are what we felt were the three best pieces of audience feedback about our project. Only one was negative, while it was rather negative we agreed that music is subjective and that we couldn't please everyone. However, we still took their comments on board and considered what we could have done differently. For example, we should have payed more attention to the music literally. Instead of trying to match the tone of the entire song we should have focused on the music being played at each part of the song specifically, making the footage match the tone of the music being played.

Ancillary Products - Magazine Advert

It fell to Jack to create the Magazine poster. We all agreed that it should match the look of the digipak by using the same effects. He took the front cover of the Digipak and used that however he soon found that he had issues making it work for an A4 page. However, Jack found the same image that was used for the night sky and cropped it to fit to the correct size.



For marketing purposes, it was obvious to have the song name and artist on the digipak and this was placed right in the middle of the night sky where it stands out. In addition, Jack decided to mention the game the song was from as this is where it came from and was popular because of it.



Ancillary Products - Digipak 3


The final image that we used was another picture that I took at corfe castle. This time one of our actor looking sideways at the camera. Similarly to the previous images, we editing the Actor and background using the same effects as before.

Ancillary Products - Digipak 2

For the two inside pages Sam decided to use both pages at once by stretching the image we used over the double page spread. He chose to use a picture of corfe castle that I took on location. The framing of the picture was perfect because of how the castle is almost entirely on the right side of the image with the left edge being predominantly sky. We could use this large part of sky to list the songs of the album etc...

 Me and Jack took it in turns to assist Sam with separating the background and the castle using the magic wand tool. I worked on the larger areas and Jack finished the process by checking all of the fine details. Once the sky and castle were on different layers we replaced the sky with one from google images that wasn't copyrighted. We replaced the original sky because of how the clouds would have made the writing hard to read however the new sky image has only blue sky on the left hand side of the picture, meaning all of the text will be clearly visible.

 In order to have continuity throughout the digipak we decided to use the same effect all the way through. To this end we used the Fresco effect for the castle itself and Crystallize for the sky. However, this time we wanted the sky to be more clear than the front cover so we reduced the cell size of the Crystallize effect.

Ancillary Products - Digipak 1



The Digipak is one of the two sub products that we have to produce for the ancillary tasks. The digipak is the small four page booklet that is found inside a CD case. The dimensions are 5.47" x 4.94". Jack and Sam are having a bigger role in the production of the ancillary tasks since I focused a lot more on the filming and editing. 

 The Digipak will have four individual pages, the front and back covers as well as the two inside pages. We quickly agreed to have three images, one on each cover and a larger picture to fill the two inside pages.To start the first page we took an image of the actor sat on a hill overlooking swanage. We chose this because of how we all thought it was our best 'vista' shot. Sam used Adobe Photoshop to edit the images that we used.First he cropped the image slightly so that the actor is still visible before finding an image of the nights sky that was labelled for reuse.

  He put the actor and night sky on separate layers so that they can be edited independently. This made a new background for the image however it didn't look right. It was very clear that the actor was edited in and looked very out of place. We needed an interesting and creative way to blend the two images together.The reasoning for using the night sky is to emphasis on how vast the world is compared to the actor showing his insignificance compared to the world. This links in with the idea behind the music video which shows the lonely struggles the boy goes through.
He used the 'Fresco' filter effect. The Fresco effect makes the layer with the actor stand out quite a bit, showing him to be almost 'unreal' to give the effect of he doesn't feel like he's part of the world. However, even after doing this the background still did not go well with the foreground and as a result, I used the 'crystallize' effect for the background with the stars giving it a shattered and uncertain appearance. his shows how unclear the world is to the boy and the way the sky looks broken shows how the boy feels broken himself. Below is what we decided on being the image that we will use for the first page of the digipak.

Saturday, 9 May 2015

Final Edit

After consolidating our resources me and Sam came together to create a final edit that we will use for the final project. We began by looking at what we had both done and seeing what we both liked and disliked. Sam mentioned that he likes the editing that I had done for some of the scenes like the boy leave the house as well as how I put the ending together. However he didn't like how I had only really used hard cuts. We compromised and included the best parts of each other's work.

 Sam quickly taught me the basics of how to use Sony Vegas Pro before getting started. I found it slightly more easy to use than Premiere. After a quick tutorial we pieced the footage together into the order we wanted before fine tuning the timings and transitions. We felt that it was important to vary the transitions so that they would be interesting visually.

Something that we did a lot more than I expected was use colour correction to get scenes to look exactly how we wanted, for example the first scene of the boy walking up the street is made to be much bluer than it was originally. We did this because we wanted the scene to appear to be a lot gloomier than it was when we filmed. We made sure that we didn't add so much blue that it looked unrealistic. Another big example of how we ended up using colour correction was when it came to editing the night scenes when the boy leaves his home. Since it was very dark outside the camera struggled to get decent footage. To fix this we had to raise the brightness of the scene as well as increase the saturation slightly. We did these two things in order to make objects more visible as well as make the colours pop more since they originally appeared very muted and washed out.

 After the colour editing we polished what we could and tried to find creative ways to change each scene, for example, there is a scene where the boy is approaching the castle ruins. We slowed the scene down to half speed. We did this because without it we thought that the establishing shot passed too quickly.

Wednesday, 6 May 2015

My Edit

Initially I hadn't had any previous editing experience apart from previous media projects. This time I wanted to look into the editing process in more depth by learning how to use more advanced tools such as colour correctors and transistion effects. Before this I had only really used hard cuts and fades, while these are still perfectly usable they aren't interesting to watch over and over again. I used Adobe Premiere Pro.

I began as I usually do by renaming all the clips so they are easy to recognize. I then 'cut the fat' off of all the clips I planned to use by removing bloopers and parts of the footage that I didn't want. 

Once I completed this I started to apply colour correctors and filters to the footage to get it looking how I wanted. For example, above shows how I changed the colours of the shot to contain a lot more blue than it originally did. The reason I did this is because I wanted the weather to seem very gloomy for the boy however I didn't want it to seem dark. I use these ideas at other points in the editing process such as at corfe castle where I add more yellow to the sky to get the desired golden hour effect that we originally wanted. Audience feedback from the questionnaire said that interesting visuals are important in a music video, this is something that I tried to achieve here using colours. 

I really tried to nail down the tone of the song and get it to match the video. To this end I purposefully left the screen black for periods of around 5 seconds. I did this because of how I think it forces the audience to focus on the lyrics making them much more profound. However, my team disagrees with me here, they think that it seems a little boring. I decided that they were right and cut them down, replacing the black spaces with vista footage.

Attempting to do an edit on my own taught me a lot about editing. It really opened my eyes as to how long a project can take to edit as well as how much thought goes into every single cut or transition. I now feel confident editing my own piece of film however i do not think that we will be using this edit for the final film. Instead we will stick to the plan and I will attempt to mix this with Sam's work. 

Ancillary Products

In addition to the editing we have to complete our ancillary products; a digipak and Magazine advert poster. Since everyone felt that I took a forefront role in both filming we agreed that I would step back a little and allow for Jack and Sam to focus on this, giving them something to really create something on their own for this project. While this means I will not be able to speak as in depth about some aspects of the ancillary products I will still have assisted Sam and Jack in making them. 

Editing Plan

Sam has a lot of editing experience from other projects that he did on his own time. This really put him in charge of this aspect of the project however editing is something that i have been wanting to really learn how to do effectively since I wasn't able to do this in previous videos. We agreed to allow me to create my own edit and then compare it to what Sam had done. We would meld them together to product the best editing job either of us could do. 

For my edit I am going to use Adobe Premiere since that is what is available in my school, however, Sam will use Sony Vegas Pro because of how it is what he has installed at home. 

Recording Done!

After two days of getting footage on an expensive camera that I had to protect, we called it a wrap at my house once capturing the last scene of the boy leaving the house into the night. We shared some pizza and spoke about what we had done. 

 The last things that need to be done are the ancillary products and the editing. 

Recording Session 2 - Balston Road

On the 7th January, the team had organised to come back to my house in order to film. We carefully transported the equipment back and began as soon as we got home. Due to the time of year it got dark very quickly so we had to take advantage of what little light we had. We could always darken the footage in post should we need to. If we let it get too dark then the footage wouldn't be visible and trying to fix it via editing would make the footage look unprofessional.

 We first captured the footage on the street, using the tripod for steady, establishing shots. Luckily we didn't have any problems with passers by and the street was very quiet. 

 Once all of the outdoor scenes had been captured, we moved indoors, filming the boy entering my house, being abused by the mother as well as filming the scene where he runs into his room. Overall i feel that we did very well in keeping to time and not missing out on footage that we could have used. I personally tried to film interesting shots that could be thrown into the video such as a focusing shot on a street lamp or a piece of cloth in the wind. 

 Once it was dark outside we quickly got the footage of the boy leaving the house in the dark. This was the hardest part since it was very hard to see exactly what was being filmed in the dim light. However once we were was satisfied we had gotten all the footage we needed we called it a day and settled into to a take away pizza. 

Recording Session 1 - Swanage

On the 2nd January every member of the team organised to got to corfe castle near wareham and to swanage in order to capture the outdoor shots that we wanted. Sam sent off an email asking for permission to film at the castle however there was no reply. Upon arriving at corfe and speaking to the manager we were allowed up free of admission and quickly set up.

 We had arranged to get there at a specific time in order to take advantage of the golden hour. While we got there slightly early the results were still magnificent. The sky was almost unnaturally yellow as the sunset went over the hills. Members of the public politely stayed out of the way since we had a camera which was an odd experience for me personally.

 After getting this footage we moved into swanage to film on some of the hills that overlook the town. This was ideal in showing how the character felt as well as how isolated he is.

Shot List

Since we are due to begin filming soon the team put together a shot list to follow. We did this because we needed to make sure that the footage that we needed. Depending on the time and weather conditions during filming these shots may change slightly. 

 1. Close up on back of boy, surroundings are a gloomy and grew street, only real illumination is street lamps. Hand Held.

2. Hard cut too establishing shot of house, boy walks into frame and enters house. Using tripod so the shot is steady.

3. Match on action to into the house. (Here we have a possible choice of which shot to use, I will present both but label them A or B)

A) Camera is placed on the stairs looking down at the door from inside the house, placed on stairs so shot is steady. High angle shot.
B) Camera is placed on kitchen table looking down the corridor at the front door, shot is steady.
(We could potentially use both shots however I am personally leaning towards B because of how it hides the parent and also allows us to see him run into the back room wide shot.)

4. Match on action as boy runs into back room. Camera is placed on the radiator or table depending on space available. Looking at the boy’s room. Wide shot. Shot lingers as we see shadow of boy packing before he leaves.

5. Hard cut to same shot used in (2). Seeing boy leaving. Hand held to convey his anger and sadness.

6. (I don’t have a lot planned here, I hope to just meld together the footage used from Corfe etc…)

FINAL SHOT. Slow pan down the guitar of older man playing the classical guitar.

Questionnaire Results

After giving out the questionnaire that we made, we collected the results and analysed them. These were our findings.

 Question 1 - How old are you?
The vast majority of the people who took the questionnaire fell into the 13 - 24 bracket. This makes sense since a large amount of our peers would fill out the survey. These young men would be either 17 or 18. We wanted to try and get a stratified sample so we made sure to ask people whom were older as to get a different perspective. As well as this we were rather pleased at this majority group because this is our target audience, we can use these results to try to further understand what our target audience likes and dislikes.

 Question 2 - What is your gender?
Due to a similar circumstance so question 1, most of the people who responded to our questionnaire were male. There were a small number of females because we made sure that we got a good sample.

 Question 3 - What is your favourite music genre?
The reason that I decided to ask this question was to try and find any links or patterns in what people liked in relation to their age, gender etc... This would allow us to market to our target market better. However, the results are so varied that no pattern can be ascertained. It seems that every genre of music is popular with different people. Music taste is very subjective and changes from person to person.

 Question 4 - How often will you watch a song's music video?
Of the people who responded, approx. 70% said that they watch music videos often or sometimes. I found this rather motivating during the production process. Personally, I didn't expect the percentage to be so high, originally thinking that a minority bothered to watch the music video.

 Question 5 - What characteristics should a good music video have?
The next three questions weren't multiple choice, any answer could be written down. Since this is difficult to group I have grouped what seem to be the most popular responses together. For example, one of the most popular answers for question 5 was; a good story and interesting visuals. This feedback is very important because it gives us direction. Since we know that most people value good visuals and a story we will focus on having these two things to a high standard.

 Question 6 - How do you usually hear a new song for the first time?
The two overwhelming responses to this question are via Radio or an online music streaming service like Spotify.  This is important because neither of these are able to show the music video. It is likely that we will launch the video on YouTube since it is free and easy to do so.

 Question 7 - Have you ever heard of Jose Gonzalez before?
This question is meant to see the popularity of the song we have chosen. Generally Jose is unknown, meaning that Far Away will be relatively unknown too. This can be both a blessing and a curse because it means that it will be a fresh perspective on the song for many of our viewers however people may not like the song itself since they have never heard it.
The questionnaire proved to be massively helpful in allowing us to gain an understanding of the people that we are trying to cater to. As well as this it helped us see the general consensus on various topics such as who Jose Gonzalez is. We will use this information during production to try and deliver the best video possible with aspects and ideas that the audience want to see such as a good story and interesting visuals.

Similar Products 3 - 'Broken' by Jake Bugg


'Broken' is a song written and performed by Jake Bugg. It was released as a single on his album in 2012. It reached spot #44 on the UK singles chart.

I wanted to analyse this music video because of the effect it has on the audience. It doesn't bear many similarities to what we plan to make visually, however, I want to recreate the way enchants its viewers by seeing how it accomplished this and how i can translate that to my project.


The plot of the video is simple, its follows Jake as he sings Broken in front of an audience of tough bikers and rednecks at an open-mic night taking place in a seedy bar. The audience start out rowdy however Jake's singing calms them down and soon they start to dance and reminisce. 

The reason that the video works so well to keep an audience engaged in my opinion is that it puts the viewer of the music video (us) into the shoes of one of the audience members in the video. We relate to them. While he is on stage Jake is completely alone, he has no backing singers or musicians. This forces us to focus on him since there is nothing else to really focus on. I think this is a great example of using mise-en-scene to force the audience to focus on what you want them to. I can use this in my project rather effectively in a lot of creative ways such as using lighting to achieve this. 

As the video and song progress the audience in the video begin to pay more attention to Jake as he sings. This mirrors what happens with the real life audience. It is through this method that the video gets the audience to relate to it. I do not think that I will be able to accomplish this is my project since the video that we are making has a rather unusual story and very few if not none will have experienced what the main character is going through. 

Tonally, the video supports the emotions that the song is trying to get across such as loss and regret. It does this in an interesting way from a storytelling perspective. As Jake sings the song we get a sense that this is what he has done and how he regrets it. The audience in the video each come to a realization, such as when a man who is about to be unfaithful to his wife sees what he is doing and stops to call his wife or how a fight is defused between two drunk men. The video separates Jake from the audience by never really showing them in the same shot together. This is something that I have found to be common in music videos. They show loneliness or separation by only having one specific character or object in the shot. This is definitely something that I will use in my project. 

Crew

Not including our two actors, there are three people working on this music video. By the end of the project we would like to each have done a similar amount of work, while at the same time having taken dominant roles in specific areas. 

This naturally leads to each person having a role that they will fulfill in the group. We wanted the selection of these roles to be as organic as possible, allowing each person to choose their task because they wanted. This led to some roles being shared as well as people taking a backseat in some activities and coming to the fore front in others.

For example, I rather quickly fell into the editing position. I think this is because it was my idea that was chosen and I had already thought of a rough plot line that would work well with the song. This developed into me taking a dominant role in the filming portion of the project. With things such as editing and production being taken on by the other two members of the group, Sam and Jack. 

Shared roles would have ideas being bounced around between all three of us, hopefully producing the best work that we could.

Audience Questionnaire

      I  feel that it is important to have understanding of both your target audience as well as the people who don't fall into that demographic. One of the best ways to try and understand these people are by understanding their interests. One of the best ways to do that is by creating a short questionnaire and analyzing the results. The questions that I have chosen were designed to be first get an idea about the individual and which category of people they fall into, whereas the final few questions are meant to provide relevant information for my project, hence why I ask about music videos and Jose Gonzalez.

Personally, I find that most people will not spend a lot of time answering a questionnaire. I thought about this when thinking of what I wanted to ask. I have tried to extract all of the important information that I want in as few questions as possible. 


    1.     How old are you?

a.     13 – 17
b.     18 – 24
c.      24 – 40
d.     40+

    2.     What is your Gender?

a.     Male
b.     Female

    3.     What is your favourite music genre?

a.     Rock n' Roll
b.     Pop
c.     Rn B
d.     Romantic
e.     Country
f.      Punk
g.     Alternative
h.     Metal
i.      Blues
j.      Classical
k.      Dub-step
l.       Musical
m.     Folk
n.      Comedy
o.      Other

    4.     How often will you watch a song's music video?
a.     Often
b.     Sometimes
c.     Not very often
d.     Never

    5.     What characteristics should a good music video have?

    6.     How do you usually hear a new song for the first time?

    7.     Have you ever heard of Jose Gonzalez before?



Saturday, 21 February 2015

Equipment

This is Prezi presentation about the equipment that the group has available.

*The full name of the video camera that we are going to use is the JVC GY-HM150E

Editing Software

We had three main options as to what we were going to use to edit our music video. Adobe Premiere Pro, Windows Movie Maker or Final Cut Express. The major differences between the options are that Premiere is installed on most computers in the school that are running a copy of Windows, whereas Final Cut is only available on the few iMac computers that the school owns. Windows Movie Maker is a free piece of software that I have installed on my laptop at home.

 Either options has advantages and disadvantages. Premiere Pro is installed on far more computers meaning that there will almost always be a free computer to work at, as well as this, Premiere is the editing software that I personally, am more familiar with.Premiere also has a fleshed out suite of tools to enable me to edit the colours of a piece of footage as well as the brightness, contrast, lens flare and many others. This means that I can fine tune the footage to be exactly how I want it to be. However, Premiere can be a resource hog and since the school computers that I would be working on are significantly under-powered Premiere can be unreliable, prone to crashing and can cause work to be lost.

 Final Cut is only installed on the schools iMac's, of which there are only two. This is less than ideal because of how there are three people in our group and if they are taken by other students then we wouldn't be able to edit. As well as this I have no previous experience with both Final Cut or the Mac operating system, meaning that I would have to learn how to use them, which takes time that could be used to edit. The advantage of Final Cut over Premiere is that it is far more reliable. This is because of how Final Cut is designed to be used on a Mac and interacts with the hardware far better, resulting in far less crashes and lost work. Final Cut has a similar amount of features as Premiere, however, I would need to learn how to use them all.

Windows Movie Maker is an interesting option, I have it available at home, however I am not familiar with it. It also lacks features that will prove useful and is very much a 'bare-bones' piece of software since it is free to use. As well as this since I can only work on it at home, I am not able to get advice and feedback on my work from my group.

 Our group has decided to use Premiere Pro as our editing software of choice due to our familiarity with it and the extensive options that it provides us when editing our music video. The instability can be worked around with backups and saving often.

Research into Industry

The music industry is a vast and complex topic to try and analyse, therefore I will focus on music videos since this is what we are going to be producing.

 Generally there are two big divides in the music industry; The famous, mega budget superstars that make millions from each single and the obscure indie groups that work on micro budgets with unique songs that gather a cult following. Which ever generalisation that an artist/group falls into directly affects the type of music video that they would produce, with the main difference being the available budget.

 An artist that falls into the former category would be able to have expensive lighting, equipment and production team which should, in theory, produce a superior video with higher quality overall. However, this isn't the case. Often, having these high production values can cause the video to lack direction and emotion, instead showcasing a male power fantasy.

 Indie groups differ from this due to not having a huge budget to afford every luxury. Instead they have to rely often on a single actor and camera. This forces innovation. Most music in this genre have an overall message or meaning which, due to constraints, are creatively implied via the imagery and emotion in the song/music video.

 This relates to our music video because of how we fall into the latter group. Since we have no budget, and the only equipment available is what is given to us. The locations we have access to are limited by both our ability to travel, if the location is free etc...

 We are forced by these limitations to think outside the box and come up with interesting and creative methods of storytelling. To this end we will focus on aspects such as mise-en-scene, lighting as well as setting to give the viewers a sense of what is happening in the scene as well as the emotions and motivations of the main characters. 

Friday, 20 February 2015

Similar Products 2 - 'Stolen Dance' by Milky Chance

'Stolen Dance' is a song written and performed my a German duo called Milky Chance. The song was released in Germany in 2013. It reached No. 1 in several countries such as Austria, France and Belgium. 

The reasons that I wanted to analyse the music video for this song were that it offered interesting contrasts and similarities with both the previous video that I analysed from Mumford and Sons, as well as what my group plans to do. 


As with Babel, this video features the artist performing the song. This is in contrast to what we would like to do. The interesting thing about this video is where the artist performing the song in the video would usually show emotion or tone, here is the opposite. The performer shows very little emotion while singing, instead opting to use the imagery to portray the tone. 

The method of showing this emotion is where this video links to our idea. Images of what seems to be the performers childhood and fond memories are projected onto the set. These images give the tone of what is being sung. These images are also what portrays emotion in the video. The reason these projections are similar is how instead of using a performer or artist to show emotion, imagery will be used. This is what I take away from this music video.

Another way to interpret using imagery is a sort of 'silent storytelling' where no dialogue is used. Instead the story is told entirely visually, relying on the music for tone.

An example of how the video uses visual methods to portray tone and emotion is through the colour pallet used. In Stolen Dance, a lot of greens and reds are used when the music swells, showing how these are happier times, giving the music some energy. This is contrasted by grays and dark blues during transitions when the tempo slows down. Using this idea, we know that Far Away is a sombre, slow song. To show this visually we would use darker, grey shots. Introducing some colour to show some emotion from the characters. 

Thursday, 29 January 2015

Genre - Indie Folk Music

In music, a genre is a style or category of music. It is used to group together songs so that, for example, should a listener particularly enjoy classical music, they can easily find songs that sound similar that they may also like.

In the case of Far Away, the genre would be known as indie folk. Indie folk is a melding of two genres that has characteristics of both. José Gonzalez is predominantly an indie folk singer. Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from musicians in the indie (independent) rock community influenced by folk and classic country music. Indie folk combines the catchy melodies of indie rock with the acoustical sounds of contemporary folk music.

 Examples of artists in this genre are; Jose Gonzalez (obviously), Mumford and Sons, The Magnetic Zeros, Bon Iver, Noah and the Whale, Of Monsters and Men, Milky Chance and The Dodos.
I will analyse their work to see what I can take from it as well as to look for inspiration that would help with the filming.

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Mise-en-Scene



In film, Mise-en-Scene (MeS) is defined as being everything that appears in front of the camera. This applies to costume, props, lighting, composition etc...

MeS is very important for this project because of how there is no dialogue, the story is completely visual. I have had several ideas on how to to use MeS to give some more information about characters and events. Such as having an empty bottle of wine just peeking in at the side of a shot to show the parents alcoholism or having a guitar and keyboard near the son's room to show he has musical interests.

Here we can see how MeS is used in Toy Story to show that Andy (The child who owns all the toys) has grown up a little, and is now interested in things other than his toys such as sports and monster trucks.

Put simply, MeS is that everything that is on camera tells a story. I need to make sure that everything in shot works with the story and nothing is out of place.

Sound

My project is rather unique in that it is a music video. This means that no dialogue or diegetic sound is needed, all audio in the project will be the song (Far Away). Luckily I have done some similar work to this before, giving me some experience on how to make a piece without any dialogue. 

 The main thing that I have to remember when making a film with no dialogue is to focus on the characters actions instead of their words. The audience has to be able to see how a character is feeling and what they are thinking simply by their expression and how they are behaving. Since we do not have access to world class acting talent the physical side of the characters has to be much more obvious and exaggerated, while also not looking silly. This will be one of the main challenges for us when we are making the music video. 

 Traditionally, music is used in a scene to help dictate the tempo and the mood. I want to try and carry that over to our project, showing a sun kissed vista when the music swells and a damp and dark night when the tempo slows back down. 

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Depth of Field

Depth of Field (DoF) is the which objects in a scene are blurry and which are clearer depending of their distance from the camera. Depending on the DoF which can be changed with the aperture of the camera, we can control which objects appear blurry and which appear sharp.

This is a good effect because it is a very effective way of getting the audience to focus on something in the scene. If I wanted the audience to focus on the main character I could intentionally blur everything apart from him. DoF can also give a very filmic look to a shot.

I am going to try to take advantage of DoF during my filming or in post production of the project.

Camera Shots


The shots are arguably the most important part of all the camera work that I need to consider. There are many different types of shot. Each creates an effect on the viewer and the scene, I can use each type of shot for many reasons, e.g. to establish a setting, show emotion etc... 
These are the most commonly used types of shot:

Extreme Long Shot/Establishing Shot - Shows a lot of the scenery and location, subject is often too far to see or not even in shot. Conveys loneliness or isolation very well, may be slightly difficult to shoot however i think it would be a good type of shot to use in the film.
 
 Long Shot - Slightly closer than an extreme long shot. Still shows scenery however the subject is now visible. Achieves a lot of the same effects as an extreme long shot however can be easier to film due to less space being required. Also gives a lot of the same effects of an extreme long shot. 

Medium Shot - Shows some details about the subject and the scene. If the subject was a human for example, we would see the person from about the waist up.



Medium Close Up - Is around half way between a close up and a medium shot. Showing 1/3 of the subject. This shot is useful when trying to convey the emotions of several people at once when a close up would cut a person out of the frame. 

Close up - Often used to show the whole face of the subject. The subject fills the entire frame, excluding some background, due to the aspect ratio. This kind of shot is very important because of how it highlight one characters emotions and can convey this to an audience better than most other kind of shot. 


 Extreme Close Up - An extremely close view of a specific feature of the subjects face, e.g. the eyes or mouth. This conveys very specific emotions or actions such as pupils dilating or smiling.

 Cutaway - A cutaway shot is an interesting shot that is often a transition from one scene to another.  A cutaway can be any angle or shot type and is often used to help pacing in a film, often seen as a time lapse or something associated with the scene. This is a shot that I have never used before so I am interested in trying to play around with it and seeing what I can produce.

 Birds eye view - This is a simple shot that shows the subject from above, as if a bird was seeing it. This is rather difficult of film due to the camera needing to be high about the scene. 


 Over the Shoulder - Often used in dialogue scenes or movement because the shot gives a slightly of tilt view of what the character is looking at.

Dutch Angles - A very stylistic technique that is not overused. Often creates a sense of power and obscurity. It can create uneasiness in a scene or perhaps tension due to the awkward nature of a tilt

Camera Movement

Learning to control the pace of a scene was something that I felt was rather important. Far Away is a slow song with a steady tempo so a fast paced music video wouldn't match, hence why I need to get the pace right.

An important aspect to consider when thinking about the pace of a scene is the camera movement. There are several different movement techniques that are widely used in film, as shown on the left.

I will have to carefully consider the speed and time of movement that i use when filming and in post production.

Camera Angles

The angles that are used for a shot matter almost as much as what is in the shot itself. The height of the camera can show power and status, whereas the distance can purvey isolation and calmness. 

 When two characters are talking in a scene, to convey who has the power, a common technique is to use higher or lower camera angles. For example, a high camera angle, looking down on a character makes that character seem smaller and powerless. The opposite effect can be achieved with a low camera angle looking up at a character. 

Monday, 12 January 2015

Similar Products 1 - 'Babel' by Mumford and Sons


'Babel' Is a song written and performed by British folk rock band 'Mumford and Sons'. Released as part of their second studio album of the same name. The reason that I have chosen this particular song to study was because it matched the genre of the song that we are making a video for. For this reason it made sense to look at the music video for babel and see what conventions are present and analyse some of the techniques used.

 This is a link to the original music video for Babel

 The video shows the band performing in a derelict train station. The first noticeable thing about this video is that it is shot in black and white. This has a lot of effects on how the video, such as how it makes the whole thing seem colder and darker. The band feel more isolated and somber due to the lack of colour, the video also feels more old fashioned because of this.

 I like main thing that I will take from this video is how colour pallet can really affect the tone and feeling of a video. Darker, more muted tones create a feeling of loneliness and isolation. This is the feeling that we want to achieve so I will definitely use this knowledge during filming and post production.