Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Evaluation Question #4 - Izzy

Friday, 9 December 2011

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

The most fundamental technology used during the entire process of creating and evaluating our video would be blogger. This is the website we used to present all of our work, right from research and planning to when we finish our evaluations. It has proved extremely useful as it is easy to use and me and Lydia can clearly see who has done what post and what needs to be done. My personal opinion is that it is simple yet effective to use when creating a portfolio of the process of our work.
To present our mood board of ideas we used animoto. Having previously used it for my magazine pitch in AS I knew how to make it look effective using minimal words. My personal opinion on animoto is that it makes the images and music look 'slick'.
Another technology we used was scribd. This was very helpful when drafting work and making it readable without looking boring. When presenting work I think that presentation is extremely important.
To communicate with each other we used our iPhones, we used iMessage to communicate when arranging times to film and to contact the band. We also used Skype to send images and links to videos of what inspired us. The main technology we used for our ancillary was photoshop. This allowed us to edit images and create our digipacks to the best of our ability. When creating our video we used adobe premier elements which was the most frustrating piece of technology to use with. It took about four times as long to produce anything as the programme refused to load or froze and crashed thus saving none of our work. This was extremely frustrating as this wasn't our fault.
To take images for my ancillary text I used a sony lumix camera. It is a very high mega-pixel camera so it allowed me to take high quality images for my advert and digipack
I have yet to finalise my decisions on how to present my final evaluations.


I will elaborate this further for my final evaluation.

Thursday, 8 December 2011

Izzy Q1 Evaluation draft

In our music video we definatley used and challenged forms and conventions from real media products. The first scene opens with a midshot of a roundabout spinning really fast, we were strongly inspired by Bombay Bicycle Clubs 'Always Like This'. We felt it was an intriguing opening to the video and would give an enigma code (Barthes) to encourage them to carry on watching the video. We also chose to use the sped up clip not only because it was on Bombay Bicycle Club's video but we felt that in order for the video to match the song, we would have to speed the clips up as it is such a fast song. The second clip of Jake then Harry then Sam sat on the roundabout was inspired by our first video draft, in which we attempted to do stop start animation which was unsuccesful. We also used inspiration from stop start videos such as Strawberry Swing - Coldplay and End Love - OK GO. By using a fast cutting rate we could increase the pace of the  video to match the song, we also thought that by doing each of the band members one at a time it could introduce them.
When deciding on how to dress our band we adopted the current conventions of having them all wearing similar clothes which matched the style of the band and their target audience. We had the lads dress in normal clothes as we didn't want to alienate the viewer, we also didn't have them wearing matching clothes like Vampire Weekend do in A-Punk, we wanted them wearing different clothes that matched with the 'indie' genre, much like Two Door Cinema Club or the Arctic Monkeys. We also decided to do this as we wanted to stick to our research and planning as much as possible, and as they were a small band releasing their debut single we didnt think it would be right for them to have all of the elements of a succesful band with 3 albums. We dressed them in t-shirts, shirts, jumpers, jeans and trainers - everything that you would expect from a new formed indie band. We also dressed them like this because the style they had wouldn't be dissimilar from the expected target audience.
As the song was so fast paced we had to make the decision of whether to make it serious, or make if fun. We chose to make it fun as it would be extremely difficult to make a serious video with such a short, fast paced fun. We took some inspiration from Vampire Weekend's A-Punk, in which they are al singing yet are having fun. It would have been extremely aspirational to create a video like theirs purely on the basis that we didn't have a large space with a white wall behind it.
Our three main locations in our video are the park, the underpass and the garage doors. However after deciding to do a disjunctive style we thought that our video would be quite frankly, boring. So we decided to look for inspiration for short shots elsewhere. Again, in Bombay Bicycle Clubs Always Like This there was a clip where a dog runs across the shot, we thought this could look good if filmed in the correct place such as a large field. We chose to do these main locations as they are easily identifiable by the audience and would make the band seem more 'on their level' as oppose to artists who perform in videos that wouldn't relate as much to their target audience.
Having three main locations gives us three paralell 'storylines' so to speak, as they are all in the same outfits in each, this gives continuity and almost familiarises the audience with each location as it is played more than once. We also tied up each location with an ending shot from each - Putting down the instruments and walking off on the garage shots, Hugging in the underpass and Jake jumping off the swing in the park. We thought that by giving these locations individual endings it finished off our video nicely and looked more professional, rather than just leaving locations 'hanging'. This challenges conventions used in generic videos
The 'Walk Don't Walk' man and the traffic light idea stemmed from Daft Punk is Playing in My House - LCD Soundsystem, where they have a few shots of traffic lights. We thought this looked good so we decided to take inspiration from this idea.
The garage door's again, was taken from Bombay Bicycle Club's - Always Like this, as I lived not far from a location where there was a row of garages similar to ones in the video - however the ones we had weren't particularly nice colours, but then again this was something we couldn't change. We wanted some shots of the band performing so we decided to to have them perform in front of the garages.
As our video was so short and very fast paced we found it hard to get in an actual storyline, so there aren't any action codes as such as it wasn't necesary.
In the clips of the band in the underpass we chose to do stop start there as-well as we wanted to keep a running theme of that technique. We decided it would be an aesthetically pleasing technique as we have seen several music videos on the internet and it fits the genre of 'indie' as they don't use expensive techniques as seen in Pop or R&B videos.
In our research and planning we stated that we would like to use a lot of colour in our videos, so we tried to incoroporate this into our video as much as possible. We also decided that we wanted to use lights in our video as well as we liked the effect it had and made it more visually stimulating.
The roundabout on the park was vividly coloured so this set the tone for the mise en scene in the video.
We took inspiration from the lights in the background on the opening of MGMT's  Kid's as we thought this was a generic convention used by music videos and thought that this reminded us of streetlights. So when shooting the trolly clip we made sure the streetlights were in the background as we liked the 'glow' look they have when they are not in focus. This led us on to thinking that car lights would look as equally effective. We filmed around 5 minuets of traffic on a dark road, then sped it up when we came to editing it as it would be extremely random just to have slow cars going past in our video. We chose to do it on a dark road as it emphasised the lights going past and it gave that 'glow' effect that we desired.
Another element with lights we decided to shoot was the 'Walk Don't Walk' man and the traffic lights, we liked how the shots looked when sped up in LCD Soundsystem's video of Daft Punk is Playing in my House. We decided just to do the close up of the lights as it was more practical for us and it had the effect that we wanted.
Overall our video takes conventions from Bombay Bicycle Clubs - Always like this, as it was video that we could acheive without being unrealistic. We took elements from that and others that we were slightly inspirred by to make our overall video work together. We were extremely aware that nothing is original so we bared that in mind whilst storyboarding our video. We watched a large amount of videos so we could essentially cherrypick the ideas that we liked and put them into our video.
However my digipack was strongly influenced by Vampire Weekends Contra. I took and used the convention of the single girl on the cover of the album as I enjoyed the minimalistic and the simplicity of it. I liked the orange/purple tint on the cover, and also enjoyed the layout so I thought I would attempt to create a different copy of this. I have a friend who suits the genre and has a dress sense to one I would want on my cover. I took over one hundred photos which isn't as many as they would take for a professional album cover but I was sure that I would have as many photos that I would need to pick one succesful one for the cover. After taking a variety of different shots I found three that I wanted to use for my cover, my back cover and the inside panels. I edited the colours to make it look  similar to Contra as I really liked that effect. I also edited the colours on the whole of the digipack as I wanted it to have a running theme throughout my digipack. I didn't take inspiration from the back pannel as closely to the Vampire Weekend back cover, however I think my digipack worked. I also took inspiration from Coldplay's Mylo Xylto's 'commendations' as I was unsure on how to lay mine out to make it look professional. I also used a panoramic view for the inside of my digipack as I thought that it kept the running theme which is something that would have been used in generic album covers.

Evaluation

I have decided to write my draft evaluations as essays, then my plans on how to be creative with it underneath. I thought that this would be a better way of ensuring I finished my work as I didn't want to have only finished one and then doing the creative stuff and not finished the other.
The questions I am doing are;
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Editing difficulties - again

We just attempted to show Mr. Ford our video and the computer froze. We will continue to stress our frustration of these computers until we have finished our music video to a standard we are happy with.

More editing difficulties

Once again we have been sat here waiting for the computers to load for a substancial part of the lesson. We have also been coming in in our free's to basically sit around and wait for the computers to load. We have had a lot of technical help yet it still doesn't have seem to solve the issue of the painfully slow computers. This has definatley been a restriction to our progress as we literally cannot do anything until premier elements decides it wants to work.
An example of this would be we have been in this lesson since 12:25 and it is 12:51 and premier elements has only just began to work. This is putting unnecisary stress on us considering the deadline is tomorrow. It is unfair as there is nothing we can do as we have done all of our filming and have the time to edit which is just being used up by waiting for the computers to load.

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

Editing Difficulties.

Yet again, reminiscing on our draft, the computer seems determined not to let us start. So far Adobe Premiere has frozen and shut down five times- everytime we go to save progress. However, we are trying to save it elsewhere which does seem to be helping for the time being.

Also the computer keeps hiding folders when we click on them, and they move up and down flickering meaning it is near impossible to select anything. We have only managed to get eight clips loaded onto our project so far and this has been throughout a combination of three lessons.

We hope to overcome these issues soon with some IT support.

Monday, 21 November 2011

Editing Progress

After spending two hours trying to do so I finally got the footage onto the computers at school. It was an extremely lengthy process due to the school computers being ridiculously difficult to work if you aren't given any assistance. An issue we will have to overcome with the editing is that the computers uploaded the shots in a random order so we will have to watch them all and label them all before uploading them to preimer elements.
When the clips were finally uploaded to the computer I watched them all to check we weren't missing any. I was impressed by the quality and we only need to edit the lighting on a few clips. Otherwise I was impressed and don't think we will have any problems with the quality.

Wreckin Bar Animatic



This is our final animatic video. This was completed just before editing began so it gave us a pretty good insight to the timings of our music video which weren't completely accurate on our storyboard.

Saturday, 19 November 2011

New Storyboard

Here is the new storyboard that we created to help us make our new video. It was more thorough than our last attempt as I had previously gone listened to the song getting the timings for each line meaning that the storyboard covers all of the song and doesn't miss any out like our last attempt did in a few places.


Below are the ideas we put down before hand so that we could complete a better storyboard:





Friday, 18 November 2011

Equipment

This was the same model of camera that we used to film all of our shots. It was particularly good quality so we are optimistic that our video will look as good as we possible can make it.

We used a tripod to make our shots stable to maximise our shots looking more proffessional. We also found it helpful when avoiding the camera looking handheld.


We used our iPhones to communicate with each other when organising meeting up for filmings. We also took pictures of each other when filming using our iphones.

Filming Conclusion

After filming the rest of our shots last night we feel very pleased with the progress we have made. We scheduled it in a way that would save as much time as possible yet give us enough time to film the shots to a standard that we are satisfied with. We also filmed extra shots in case the shots we did film something that didn't work; we had backup. As most of the shots had to be sped up it was important that we filmed them for three/four times longer as we didnt want to have filmed them then for the shot to have ran out.
Another problem we had to overcome was to make sure the camera didn't move between shots as that could effect continuity and make it look over all more proffesional, we also had  to make the lads stand in the same place between the shots as te shots wouldnt have looked as smooth as we'd anticipated.
We also focussed on lip syncing as that would be a major flaw if it wasn't done correctly. We put the music on our phone, but as that wasn't loud enough me and lydia decided to sing the previous lines so that they coudl hear and knew when to come in.
We also would need to do a better risk assesment as Sam was hurt whilst filming on the park, although this wasn't our fault we feel that we would have to have included this in our risk assesment.
Overall I think that the shoot was succesful and everyone co-operated well as we were  very organised.

Final Filming.

Last night we (thankfully) found space where we could film in daylight. Everyone had a last free period (except me who talked to my teacher to arrange taking it off) so we were able to leave school at the beginning of lunch allowing us to get all our filming complete. As we managed to film the daylight scenes all in line with a tight schedule we were able to complete the dark scenes as well meaning we were completed by about 17:15. This meant Harry who was due for a birthday meal with his family to be able to film with us and go out. It all worked rather well after an initial panic.

The lighting was a lot better than expected for an autumn day, I was expecting to have to use car headlights to add to the light but generally speaking the sun was shining and light was in good supply. The weather was as good as we could of asked for allowing for a smooth run.

We completed the following scenes/locations:
  • roundabout on park
  • swings on park
  • field shots
  • shop shots
  • car park/trolley shot
  • bus stop shots (which we omitted for a shelter giving the same effect)
  • garage shots
  • underpass shots
Although we basically forgot to take any shots of us filming Harry and Jake each took a few whilst they were waiting to be shot so here's a few quick images of yesterdays filming:






Although we actually missed out a few shots we took alternative ones to fill the space that we thought would be more effective. Hopefully when editing it should come together nicely.

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

When to Film.

As I keep discussing in my posts it is becoming really difficult to find times to film as day light is in short supply at the moment, by 4 o'clock the lighting just isn't good enough. I only arrive home at 3:45, and Izzy even later than this meaning daylight shots are becoming increasingly difficult. There is actually no day apart from this Thursday and the next Thursday that everyone is free and this Thursday it's Harry's birthday and next it is the day before the deadline. Even so we'd only get about 15 minutes worth of shots which is hardly worth it anyway. We really need to film at the weekend but Jake (in the band) and Izzy both work almost all of Saturday and Sam and Jake both also are working on Sunday. The only solution I foresee is filming early Saturday morning, although I need to check this is ok with everyone as I am unsure when they actually begin work. Hopefully there is going to be a gap open up for us to film! We did contemplate getting new band members before the new shoot however as this didn't happen and we have already started to film. I really do think we need to reconsider this though as I personally see no other way around it and I don't want to get to the deadline and find it's too late. Obviously I need to discuss this with Izzy.

Saturday, 12 November 2011

Filming Update

We did some more filming on Thursday evening with the band members, however we did not get nearly as many shots as we would like to. This is because it is becoming increasingly difficult to get us, me and Izzy, as well as the three band members together at one time. This is for a variety of reasons but mainly is due to people having part time jobs after school meaning it is limited when we can film. Izzy also works Saturdays and Sundays so we are unable to film at the weekend. Again more reasons include our band members featuring in other music videos for other groups meaning we have to compromise when we can film and also our band members have school work they also need to fit in. Basically we are limited to Thursday's in respect to when we can film. But since the Thursday just passed we could only do about an hour worth of filming (because Sam had to leave) it has meant we have more to do for the coming Thursday (which is already having to be cut short because it will be Harry's birthday) and the only Thursday left before the deadline therefore is the day before it is due in which is no good in terms of editing. We are really struggling for time in that respect but are continuing to do the best we can.

Shots we did complete on Thursday were night shots and we had to use car lights on full beam to light the scene. It worked alright although when watching the clips back the lighting is compromised and hopefully we will be able to edit them to correct this if not we will have to refilm ASAP.

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Filming Today

Today we did the first shots for our final video. I feel it went quite well as we took more time over doing them meaning that they weren't just 'good enough' but they were actually satisfactory. It took a lot longer than anticipated though, for several reasons including:

  • Driving to get around places ended up being quite time consuming as we went between Whetstone, Enderby, Blaby, Croft and Fosse Park. I also accidentally took a wrong turn meaning we also were headed to Desford at one point which, when in rush hour, was far from ideal. 
  • When filming the sky going dark about 10 minutes into the shot the wind blew the tripod & camera over. This meant we had to restart the shot. Luckily the sky hadn't darkened too much by this point and the remaining 30 minutes we did capture does show a change in lighting. 
  • Getting the dog to do what we wanted was only an issue in that we had to tire him out to prevent him doing whatever he pleased. Therefore we had to run around with him and let him play for about 10 minutes before we could actually take the shot. However, he did actually cooperate quite well and we managed to get the shot we wanted by the third take. 
As a whole though the filming went well and we achieved everything we wanted to. 

Pictures of Izzy filming facing Croft Hill (this was a change in location to where we originally had planned the sky to go dark):

Here is the new location for the sky going dark. The camera faces Croft Hill. 


Izzy filming. On top of a picnic table to gain extra height.


Location and Izzy filming. 


Music Video improvements mindmap

After receiving basically poor feeback for our video we decided to make a mindmap identifying all of the issues we previously had and how we can improve them. This was helpful because we could pinpoint what we were going wrong on.




Photoshoot

These are all of the images that I took for my digipack and advert. I decided to have my model (Lorna) dressed in the way she is as its suits the genre of our band and the 'look' I was trying to acheive for my digipack/advert. I wanted her smoking and drinking as again, it most represents my genre and completes the look of my model. My favourite ones were the ones I used in my digipack eventually - however it helped me to have a wide choice of pictures to chose from as I wasn't stuck for ideas.