Final Cut:Music Video

Anicliarry task one: Digipak

Album Cover

Inside Front

Inside back

CD design

Back Cover

Ancillary Task two: Magazine advert.

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

We decided to use forms and conventions of existing metal music videos when creating our own so that the audience can instantly recognise it as such. We used mainly a performance based narrative as this fits with the artist being focused on the music, and the fact that they actually play their own instruments.

We used the conventions of setting our music video in a wood as this is quite common in metal music videos such as Miss May I-Masses of a Dying Breed

We also used strobe lights as a way of using conventions, another video that does this is Bullet for my Valentine-Riot. This reflects the aggressive nature of the music and makes the video appear faster paced.

We dressed our actors mainly in black and they wore t-shirts and jumpers with other bands logos on them as we found this was a common convention used in music videos of the heavy metal genre. This can be seen in Papa Roach- Where did the Angles go

Goodwins theories:

A particular music genre may have their own music video style and iconography (such as a live stage performance in heavy rock)

We applied this by having a largely performance based video, however we set it in a car park which had harsh florescent lights as we thought this went with the ‘end of the world’ theme.

There is a demand on the part of the record company for lots of close-ups of the main artist.

We did use this, such as for the close up on the vocalists face but we also used close ups of the instruments such as the hand as they play guitar as this means that although we are marketing them we are also focused on the music and not their appearance. 

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

Prezi answering question 2

Evaluation:What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

To conduct audience feedback we used the website Survey Monkey to create a survey for people to answer after they've watched our music video and we also filmed people watching our video and talking through what they did and didn't like.  

             

From our research we have found that a majority of people who listen to music like Rock/Punk/Metal understood our video and generally they liked it, giving it an average rating of four. Whilst people who prefer pop/indie/chart music said they didn't really ‘get’ the video and gave it an average rating of 3.5. I think this shows that we have produced an effective video as our target market seem to like it and although pop listeners may not have thought so highly of the video I think this is to be expected.

Our video was watched by a vast range of different people and we collected data from people aged 16-53. Although we had targeted our video at teenagers we were not overly specific and we hoped that people of all ages would enjoy it. I think this is definitely reflected in our feedback as nobody has said it was too mature/immature for them. Metal music is obviously listened to by people of all ages and we wanted to make sure that we recognized this in our video, whilst making sure that it appealed to teenagers.

We've also learnt that a majority of our own thoughts and feelings about the video are reflected in our audience feedback. People have said that they enjoyed how our video circled back by using the same opening and closing shot, that they liked the fast paced editing and the strobe lighting whilst raising issues about our blocking of the band and the lack of a story narrative. However we learnt that people really liked the scenes shot in the wood which was something I had not thought would be a favourite bit.

Overall people rated our video as 3.8 which is very good and I am pleased with this.

Audience feedback-1

Audience Feedback-2

Audience Feedback-3

Screen shots from the replies to our survey.

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

Social Media

This video shows how we used democratic, web 2.0, social media during all stages of production to help us. We found the artist through Facebook and then went on to contact them and acquire copyright for the song.  In the evaluation stages we used Facebook as a platform to advertise our product and to try and gain some audience feedback.

For our audience feedback we used Survey Monkey to create a survey with relevant questions, this was a lot easier than it would have been in the past because there was no need to print out many copies of the survey and physically hand them to people for them to complete. As we were able to post this link online it meant we could access a wider demographic of people. This was good as we wanted to get as much feedback from as many different types of people as possible.

Coming back to Facebook we were also able to access their band profile on Reverbnation through their page and so we could listen to all their songs and decide which we should make a video for.

We used YouTube in the research and planning stages to look up similar bands and watch their music videos to try and gain an understanding of codes and conventions. We also then used it to upload our finished product so that it was easily found by our audience.  We again used YouTube in our evaluation to upload the various videos we had created.

As well as this we used Blogger throughout the whole process to keep a documented account of all the work we were doing and as a place to share our products. This was good as Blogger allows the user to post a range of multimedia such as images, video and hyperlinks which kept our blog interesting and expanded upon our writing to give a visual element. It also meant that we could receive feedback via comments from anyone who had accessed our blog through google or other means.

When filming we used a Cannon legria HV40 video camera. This records high quality images which was essential for some of our shots. We used the focus button a lot during filming so that the foreground was in focus whilst blurring the background as we thought this made it look a lot more dramatic as the detail was clean and clear. We recorded all our footage onto a tape which we could then import later using a firewire.

We used an Apple Mac equipped with the industry standard editing software Final Cut Pro to do our editing. This meant we were able to make our video look as professional as possible by using effects such as colour enhancements, strobe lighting and transitions like dip to colour dissolve for the montage at the start of the song. We were also able to add the bands details at the start and end of the song as well as the Scuzz logo to the top left corner which made it look professional.

In reference to audio we bought and downloaded the song of iTunes and we were then able to import this into Final Cut pro. We used audio software Audacity to cut the end of the song as we just felt that the instrumental went on for a bit long and that our video would be more dramatic if we didn’t draw it out to much.

For the Digipak and magazine advert we used photoshop to edit the drawn pictures and to add text over the top. Although, as it was hand drawn, we did not use it an overt amount.

For the evaluation we also used online presentation device Prezi to make an interesting and interactive presentation that answers question two.