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.