Evaluation questions

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Final Magazine Advert

This is our final magazine advert to promote our band's new album. We have tried to incorporate the graffiti urban theme into our advert to produce a common theme between the digipak and our final music video. This also relates to our band's overall genre and theme, and this will be relevant for other singles and songs that we may produce.

Digipak

Final Cut Feedback

Final cut feedback

1. Use of Conventions
-Good conventions of a girl band 
-Uses conventions such as showing all group members
- Costumes work with the girl band aspect

- Good use of the close ups

- The changes in costume looked like a typical girl band

- Stereotypical style of a girl band

- Stereotypical costumes for the genre of music

- Urban locations go with the theme

- Girl band theme comes across well

- Voyeuristic

- The presentation is good

2. Presentation of artist/performance
- Some areas of performance is really good
- Well based on artist

- Well presented

- Obvious lead singers

3. Quality of lip synching
- Good lip synching, dead on time.
- Good
- Perfect lip synching
-Very clear

- Good quality

- Very accurate throughout

- In time

4. Use of camerawork/editing/mise en scene
-Ideas are good, split screen etc. Favourite bit at the end slow paced throwing bean bags.
- Good
- Great use of effects, slow motion, layering, mirroring. Use of mise en scene, background sets the 
  music.
- Good use of editing - changes at the right times

- Good editing

- Good range of camera angles

- Camerawork is effective

- Editing is very effective and holds interest of the viewer

- Good use of setting for the genre

- Cuts make the video very dynamic

- Stays in time

- Costume makes the girl band all look believable

- Different shots work

- Good ghosting effect

5. Overall effectiveness - to what extent will the target viewer be engaged?
- Great video. Effort has clearly been put into this. 

- Very effective

- Very well presented, could easily be found on MTV

Ideas for branding

We need to create a digipak and magazine advert to be packaged with our music video. To make this effectively we will need to create a specific brand to thread our 3 items together.

Our genre research suggests bright colours are synonymous with pop music. Our video uses bright colours with the graffiti background so we'll probably use bright colour with our advert and digipak as well.

Pop music usually centers around the artists as the main selling point - this means everything is filled with close ups of the artists' faces. Our video features a lot of close ups and I think the digipak and advert should also use pictures of the artists.

Final Music Video

This is the youtube export of our finished music video.

Final cut Evaluation

I'm reasonably happy with how our music video turned out, despite the minor difficulties we faced when making it. We lost our original filming location for the studio which meant our filming schedule was delayed by a week. The next biggest problem we faced was missing footage. At some point, some of our footage went missing and we were unable to recover it - meaning we didn't have as many clips as we had planned for and had to repeat some during the video.

I would have liked more time to edit our video because there are still some parts that could be improved upon with overlays and more effects, but I'm still happy with the level we got it to. We could have done with having more clips as we were stuck for what to do in some parts.

In terms of what needs to be done, we still need to make a digipak and magazine advert.

Evaluation of Editing Techniques and Success

Editing our final music video has taken a long time but we are very happy with the results. We have used a wide range of editing techniques and learnt lots of new skills through this process.


Some examples of editing techniques that we used in final cut express which we were already familiar with are:

- Cutting clips with the razor blade tool
- Cropping and zooming in on clips using the motion tab on individual clips
- Using transitions to make the cuts to different clips smoother; such as the dissolve in and out tool
- Placing two clips together at the same time and turning down the opacity on both to create a doubling           and ghosting quality
- Using the modify > speed tool to slow down or speed up clips
- Syncing the clips with the music by pausing both where we wanted to sync them and using the letter M to mark the points, so that our lip syncing looked professional
- Making still images flash by cropping lots of small clips and placing them right next to each other
- Getting rid of distracting things around our clips such as a line at the bottom of the wall, by selecting the clip and then dragging it downwards or upwards on the sequence 1 screen
- Rendering our video


Some examples of final cut techniques that we were not familiar with before making this video; but we learnt and used this time:

- Fading clips in/out by marking two points on the lines of the clips with the pen tool and then dragging them downwards or upwards
- Editing the colours, the brightness/contrast and the saturation of our clips to make them look more professional by selecting a clip and then using the effects > video filters > colour correction > colour corrector tools
- Flipping an image completely around so that it is like a mirror image of the original, by selecting a clip and then using the effects > video filters > perspective > flop tool
- Mirroring one clip on itself so that there is a reflection one side of the clip that moves along with the original, by selecting a clip and using the effects > video filters > perspective tool
- Making an image pulse inwards and outwards on the beat, by cutting the clip into a few smaller clips, and cropping some of the clips so that they are zoomed in on and leaving the other clips zoomed out
- Creating a split screen effect from one clip to another by cropping both clips to the right or the left so that they are exactly at the point we need (e.g. cropped so that our hands are at the edge of the screen ready to push forwards) and using an edge wipe transition between the clips so that one wipes over the next

Similar music video - Kat Graham

Kat Graham - Put Your Graffiti On Me

This video we have chosen is similar to our music video at the moment as our music video contains clips switching from graffiti areas to an empty studio where we are performing. Similarly, this video includes clips of her with graffiti background switching to her performing in an empty lit space. Also, some of the transitions used in this video is what we have used in our music video, such as the fading of one clip on top of another clip to create a good effect.

Unlike our video at the moment, this video has effective lighting and filters used. Also, this video compared to our video has got a lot of dancing involved. The camera movement in this video is more dynamic than ours - where we just use a tripod, there's quite a lot of motion in this.

We'll try to improve our own music video by adding filters similar to the one in these, and fixing some of the colour and lighting.

What We Need To Do To Complete Our Music Video

In order for our music video to be complete, we need to finish editing the rest of the song and add a differentiation of effects, filters and transitions to most of the clips.We need to add filters so that our video will look more professional. By adding more transitions in our video, it helps to link the clips together so that the story-line is clear while making it interesting to watch so that the audience do not get bored. For example when we wanted to introduce the studio setting in our video after the graffiti setting, we put a transition in so that it it followed on smoothly rather than it looking random, and we need to continue to do so throughout the rest of the song. We also need to crop parts of clips so that we can create specific effects such as the ghost effect that reflects the song so that our music video makes sense to the audience, is interesting to watch and follows a chronological order. We are still unsure about which clips we are going to use in parts of the song and need to decide to complete our video.

Other than the editing that needs to be completed, we need to create a digi pack and a magazine advert for our music video to make it appealing and so that it would potentially sell to the public and catch their eye.

Test Footage

These short videos of test footage enabled us to practice specific camera angles, shots and frames at all different heights and distances. We are planning to do a variety of practice shots showing close ups, long shots, 360 degree shots, high angled shots, low angles shots and tracking shots.

In this video of test footage we have simply shown the basic camera shots that we may use in our music video.

The shots used are:

- Close up practice shot
- Long Shots
- 360 degree shots
- high angles shots
- Low angles shots
- Tracking shots

Story Board and Call Sheet - Rita Ora

Story Board

Call  Sheet

Sunday 7th Oct. -  We will be shooting all the studio parts of the video on this day and try to shoot all of the graffiti parts on this day as well, but we might need another day to do this as well.

Monday 8th Oct - We will be shooting in the drama studios - White room

Tuesday 9th Oct - We will be finishing of shooting all the footage in the drama studios - Black room

Contacting the artist - Rita Ora

Here is our email we sent to Rita Ora's Management team to receive conformation for using her song for our A2 Media Coursework. We did this to protect ourselves from copyright laws. 

We found the contact email address on Rita Ora's fan page. We did receive an automatic reply from the management team to tell us that our email may not be replied to due to the high volume of emails that get sent to Rita Ora's team. However, they did give us more email addresses to use to contact different departments to do with her fan base, concerts and autograph signing.

Rita Ora's fan page ^

Email Reply ^

Mood Boards

These are the finished mood boards that we made in photoshop, featuring images that relate to our ideas for our music video. We have included photos of Rita Ora's recognisable style that we hope to recreate, photos of graffiti-ed walls like the ones that we will try to film in front of, and photos of city-scape alleyways like the ones we will try to film by.

Conventions of Pop videos

All pop music videos use similar conventions. Some common conventions of pop music videos are:

• A narrative – a lot of videos tell a story to do with the song, usually about a relationship, although not for the whole video. The narrative is usually spilt up with shots of the artists performing.


• Close-ups of artists – all pop videos feature the artists of the song. Most videos use a lot of close-ups of the artists because they’re the main selling point of the video, although other people may feature, especially if there is a narrative.


• Artist performance – Although the artist of the song is shown performing at some point during the video, it’s not necessary for the artist to be shown as part of a band or playing an instrument. Usually the artist will just be lipsyncing to the song and possibly performing a dance routine.



• Matching outfits – if the video features a group of artists, it’s likely they will be wearing similar outfits (i.e. the same coloured cloths).


• Women are typically shown as being strong and independent in videos by female artists. In contrast women are objectified to some degree in videos by male pop artists, although not always.


• Men feature in almost all pop videos in some way – usually in the form of “the bad boyfriend”.

Editing Techniques

We are planning to use a split screen in our music video. We feel this editing technique would highlight the contrast between the two scenes that we are planning to use; the urban street and the white studio. We are going to create this effect in Final Cut by having one main image and then cropping and overlaying part of it above the main image to create the split effect to match the two images up. To make the split more obvious we would probably use a thick black line down the two images allowing the bright bold colours in the outfits to stand out and represent the artist and the video.


This video by Guv'nor presents a different type of split screening where they have filmed two shots of the same thing and cut them in half and put them together to create the mirror image effect in the video. However, we want to create the effect where we want to make the two screen more obvious and have it as a feature where the main character in the video looks as though, at some points in the video, that they are pushing the screen away from them. Relating to the aggressive lyrics, fighting against her emotions.






This video by Diptych presents more of a simple split screen effect where they have used a simple black line between the images to split the screen up. This idea looks good as you can use relating images all in the same shot. We would like to use this form of split screen in our music video at certain points as we could use it to split the contrasting locations and also make a divide between the chorus part of the song and the rapping deep lyrical part. We could also play about with this effect and edit it so it looks, on some parts, like the main character is pushing the screen away. This effect also helps to show what is going on in the song and the story behind the lyrics. Enabling the audience to get a good idea about what the lyrics mean.



Even though this is an amateur video created by students; it presents the editing effect of screen splitting that we want to use and so is a good inspiration to see how other students have created this technique. We would probably use just a half split screen on our music video though rather than splitting it into four or more screens, as we want to clearly highlight the contrast in settings and emotions.

Lyrics Analysis

Lyrics to Love & War - Rita Ora ft J.Cole:

"It's something 'bout you I can’t explain
You give me love and take it away
I see you like this game that we play
And yo this fighting sh-t is getting too old
And you gon' find yourself left out in the cold
It’s time to straighten up or you can move on on on on yeah

Yeah, something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can't we just make love and not war

Baby there’s something about you
You go that good sh-t I don’t wanna give up
It’s too good to give it away
Yeah I’m feeling we’re just coming too close
Who’s wrong or right this is outta control
I’m not perfect but I’m tired of this bullshit
Let's move on

Yeah, there's something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can't we just make love and not war

White flag (ahhh), white flag (ahhh)
White flag, (ahh), white flag

Anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore
I don't wanna fight anymore
Anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore
And I don't wanna fight anymore

Yeah, there's something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can we just make love and not war

Yeah, there's something crazy about the way we love to hate each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
Every day we fighting like the navy baby
Maybe we could save each other
I don't wanna fight anymore
You go off, I go off
And you mad over nothing
I don't wanna fight anymore
Can we just make love and not war"

From these lyrics, we can see that this song overall has a quite strong mood and sense of anger and heartbreak to it, maybe the artist wrote the song as revenge from a real experience of a past relationship like this; or maybe it was just written as a catchy song that would be easy to memorise and would hopefully make it into the charts. The representation of Rita Ora as an artist from these lyrics is that she is quite a strong woman and will stand up for herself. The lyrics include strong representational images such as simile 'the navy' which represents the 'war' that is happening in this relationship. There are also sexual connotations such as 'make love' which shows that the lyrics are written describing a relationship in which the couple might love and hate each other at the same time. These lyrics could be quite relatable to the young target audience that the song is aimed at, as young couples in relationships could relate to the message that the song is based around. The second artist that features in this song, J.Cole, is also represented as somebody who could be quite relatable to a target audience; he could be relatable to male fans and Rita Ora could be relatable to female fans. Although, he isn't represented as a very strong masculine figure like he is in his own music, as he sings phrases such as 'white flag' which show he is surrendering to problems in the 'relationship'. Overall, the mood to this song is quite argumentative and shows Rita Ora as a strong female figure.

Ideas for interesting use of cinematography, editing - S1-13 and mise en scene

The main focus for making the video will be the editing. The video will be made up of lots of overlaid clips which will be edited with different effects and filters. Some visual effects may also be added in After Effects (if we're allowed to use it), or animated bits made in flash. We will use a range of transitions between clips, including different flashes, blurs and cuts (but no star wipes). Clips will be filmed using a handheld camera some of the time and a tripod the rest of the time - this is to give us a range of clips that will fit different parts of the song (e.g. a slow, quiet part of the song will be need still clips). Different objects will be filmed from different angles - this will allow me to made shots of single objects more dynamic and break them up by cutting between different views. The mise en scene will be slightly odd and surreal. All of the clips will be filmed outside (most in some kind of wooded area, avoiding urban landscapes). Clips will include trees, shots of leaves and other outside things, old and broken things (e.g. all machinery) and anything odd or out of place.

Notes on who your target audience will be and their expectations - S1-13

The song 'Plain Sight' by My Great ghost was released in january 2012 for free download through Bandcamp. Our target audience is likely to be people aged 15-24 because the song is electronic and very contemporary and this is the age range that is most likely to find the song online. Our target audience for the video will likely be the same demographic.

Since the song 'Plain Sight' is an electronic song, the audience may be expecting surrealism as portrayed in videos such as 'Cars' by Gary Numan and productions by 'The Prodigy'. Some examples of such videos would be 'Firestarter' and 'Breathe' which both use abnormal circumstances in very normal locations.

Examples of real videos that have influenced you - S1-13

This is an unofficial video for the song "The Moment" by Goldhouse. It influenced by ideas stylistically.