Our media product develops various forms and conventions of other media products from the same genre. We initially looked into similar products to our initial ideas so that we had a good understanding and basis of the forms and conventions of that genre. The genre of our song is soft rock, so we went and investigated other artists of this genre. We looked at Elton John and specifically the music video for ‘Circle of life’ and ‘Can you feel the love tonight’ as these featured a typical soft rock song that involved Romance and Everyday life. The two music videos did however feature some animation from the Walt Disney film ‘The Lion King’. We felt that the combination of animation and real performance of the artist worked really well, and was extremely effective in portraying an emotional atmosphere. This was something that we wanted to incorporate into our music video, as our song is very emotional. The idea of the animation and performance was something that we felt worked really effectively and would be quite easy for us to create the desired effect. We also looked at music videos for other songs from our artist. Again a similar style had been used in ‘The Riddle’ were it featured a mixture of real and animation style footage, although it was at the same time. After researching into this we felt that it was important to have our music video use and develop the forms and conventions of the genre so that it conveyed the right message and atmosphere to the audience. Once we had decided that we were going to develop conventions for the genre we started to develop our ideas so that they matched the conventions of the genre.
The Circle of Life:
Can you feel the love tonight:
The Riddle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrIGAidJEWM
The way in which we did this was to look at Andrew Goodwin’s points on ‘How to analyse a music video’ as this shows the conventions of most music videos which can be tailored to any genre.
The first point is that ‘Music videos should demonstrate Genre Characteristics’. We found that most music videos of the genre feature the artist playing the particular primary instrument in the song. For our artist this was a piano so we decided to develop our performance parts to be centred around the artist playing the piano with a large variety of shot types showing this. We also found that in terms of the mise-en-scene of the video the majority of performance related videos used the artist in a single room on there own, maybe with a few objects around, but mainly empty. This was something that we wanted to conform to, so we used a single spotlight to light up the piano and the artist in an otherwise black room. This would also allow us to focus on representing the emotion of the song easily as the focus of the audience is drawn towards the artist. This is very important when considering the idea of keeping the audience interested and wanting to watch the music video again, as Genre Characteristics are seen as a tried and tested method of attracting your audience.
Elton John - Your Song
Five for fighting - The Riddle
Our Music Video
The second point is that ‘There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals’. We incorporated this by illustrating the lyrics in the mini-narrative animation pieces that we included in certain points of the song. In the first narrative animation piece we developed the idea around the lyric ‘And I love her more than I can tell’. The idea that we came up with was a Romeo and Juliet style balcony scene as the Romeo and Juliet play is very romance oriented so suited our music video perfectly. For the line ‘Seems she’s found to find me just as well’ we used a running in the woods shot of the artist and ‘Jainy’. This again brings together an illustrative emotional scene of an emotional song. The third narrative animation part was based on the lines
‘Jainy stares at stars every night
Morning takes her eyes every time’ where we had the artist and ‘Jainy’ sitting side by side on a log style bench looking up at the sky. The original plan was to have the couple looking at stars in the sky but due to problems when creating the animation we decided to make the scene look more like morning, as the next line said about how morning takes her eyes every time. This makes the song stick in the target audiences mind, which allows us to grab the audiences attention and make them want to watch the video again and again.
Animation Narrative 1
Animation Narrative 2
Animation Narrative 3The third point is that ‘There is a relationship between music and visuals’. In our song this mainly included the artist playing the piano as the song is a mainly piano based song. But just looking at someone playing the piano would appear quite boring so we developed this to incorporate actual pieces of our actor playing the piano with a close up of his hands and a combination of further away shots. This conforms to many music videos in this genre as they all feature the main artist playing the piano. This relationship means that we have a variety of different shots in our music video which also keeps the target audience interested.
Clips of Elton John, Five for Fighting and our music video all with people playing
The forth point is that ‘The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work’. To make sure that our video was conventional we used many close-ups of the artist in our video, along with tracking shots that started out as long shots and then moved in to form close-ups. This is a conventional style that has featured in many videos of the same genre, such as Elton John and Five for Fighting. The idea of developing motifs that features in all of an artists work, is a similar idea to the Auteur Theory that a director imprints a unique feature of his work on all videos that he has produced. The particular animation style that we used is a similar effect in the way that its construction and style is truly unique for a music video but uses features that were based in other music videos. This allows for us to create motifs that could feature in all of the artists work. This would then allow for the audience to instantly identify that this style of video is related to our artist which is a huge benefit for the mass marketing that the record labels demand.
A Selection of Close Ups in our Video
The fifth point is that ‘There is frequently reference to notion of looking’. This was by far the most difficult of all of the points to incorporate into our music video so that it would match the forms and conventions of the genre. We decided that to do this would incorporate the animation narratives into a pencil style that matched the effect of drawn sketches in a notepad. This then referred to the idea that we were looking into the artists memories as opposed to it just being an animation piece added into the video. We tied this notion together at the end of the music video by having the final animation piece fade into the real footage. This unusual style of music video with the animation, makes the audience want to watch the music video again and again as it is quite memorable in terms of unique style.
The ending sequence fading from animation to real
The sixth and final point is that ‘There is often intertextual reference’. We added intertextuality in many ways. We based the style of the video on ‘Circle of Life’ and ‘Can you feel the love tonight’ by Elton John and ‘The Riddle’ by Five for Fighting, with the use of animation and performance. We got inspiration of the styling of the performance part of video from Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ as it features many different tracking and still shots of the artist and the piano. The animation style was a combination of intertextuality from A-Ha ‘Take on me’, which was an original idea of our animation with the use of rotoscoping with using animation and performance, ‘Fell in love with a girl’ by White Stripes, as this features a complete lego style animation, and Nizlopi’s JCB Song, which features a 2D animation in a school boy’s notebook. This makes the target audience want to watch the music video again and again, as it is in the style of many familiar videos which is shown to be a great hit with the viewers of the music video.
The songs which we took our inspiration from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrIGAidJEWM - Five for Fighting 'The Riddle'
Our artist is represented in our music video as quite a mysterious character who is never seen totally even with the shots from the front in the performance parts. This is seen in some similar songs to our genre, for instance the Circle of Life by Elton John features a darker room with the artist in and he is quite mysterious in the shots of performance. This is important because it helps the target audience instantly recognise the genre of the music video.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I believe that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is extremely effective. This is due to the fact that we used a consistent style throughout all of the pieces and made sure that they met the conventions of the genre. The hardest part of the texts was to incorporate continuity throughout the pieces. Once we had finalised our video we then began to look at dvd covers, cd covers and magazine adverts for artists of the same genre. We also tried to incorporate some of our own ideas to try and create continuity throughout the pieces. When we looked at cd covers of Elton John and Jack Johnson a well as other artists we found that they incorporated a shot of the artist sitting down, either near their signature instrument, playing it or on their own. This led us to create some mock ups of our DVD cover incorporating our findings. We also developed an idea of the notebook for our DVD cover and then a library featuring the notebook in the magazine advert. We created a mock up of this, but decided that because the piano in the music video was the wrong sort for us to zoom into the book, we hadn’t made it clear that the animation parts were from a notebook, so this notebook dvd cover didn’t have continuity with the rest of it. We then went back to the idea of featuring the artist in the products as this also met the demands of the record label. We then decided to feature a mixture of the pencil animation and real performance just as in the music video. To do this we used Adobe Illustrator CS4 to create a single image for the magazine cover that featured a gradient transition through opacity masks to go between animated background and real artist to real background and animated artist playing the piano. This featured continuity between the style of the music video and the magazine advert. We also did a similar effect on the dvd cover where we feature a real image on the back cover and an animated image on the front cover. We used the same image on the front of the DVD cover to incorporate continuity between all of the products. The back of the dvd cover featured a piano which was a continued theme of our products with all of them featuring a piano. Then to tie the white animated front cover and the dark piano image on the back cover we placed piano keys on the spine of the DVD cover. These things enabled us to maintain continuity between the three products as we featured similar styles and images between them. We then incorporated the rule of thirds into the design of both the magazine advert and dvd cover. This meant that we incorporated the demands of the record label into the layout of the products just as we did with the music video. The rule of thirds states that the eyes move in a Z fashion over a product so we placed the content in this arrangement rather that outside of this so that the eyes were naturally drawn over the whole product. Also it states that logos, non-related text and age ratings appear in the terminal area at the bottom of the page rather than anywhere on the page. This again helped us to maintain continuity between the products which added to the effectiveness of the products on the audience. This allowed the audience to instantly recognise that the products were connected and from the same artist. Also the idea of continuity between the products is great in allowing identification of the ancillary tasks relating to the artist, which is important when trying to get the target audience to watch the video again and get it on DVD. This helps with the mass production that is demanded by the record label. Another way this is done is by having the artists website, interviews with the artists, etc. on the DVD cover and Magazine cover. This again helps promote the artist on an extremely large scale as the on every DVD cover is the artists website as well on adverts in magazines which are bought.
The music video shot used in the DigiPack
The DVD Cover
The Poster
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience/peer feedback has really been important when developing our music video and digipack. The reason this has been so important is due to the fact that we used 17-18 year olds as our test audience as they are the age group that tend to watch the majority of music video, supplying them with the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t in terms of music videos. But also, because our video was aimed at a large Target Audience spanning many age brackets, it allowed us to test the music video on one of the more difficult to impress age brackets. We incorporated this feedback into almost every part of the development of our products from initial planning to final products and this has had a large effect on how our products have turned out. To start with once we had discussed our initial ideas as a group, we then created a pith with some mock up images, storyboard, time line and shot list to present to our peers so that we could get some feedback on the basic ideas. From this initial pitch that we made, our peers came up with the main concern of time. Because the video and additional products had to be created within a set time limit we then set about researching into reducing the time. The main worry came as we were planning on drawing around each frame of the animation, similar to the style of A-Ha ‘Take on Me’ Another key piece of feedback that we were given was that we had to find people who were willing to do the drawing and sketching for us as none of us in the group were able to draw all that well. This led us to go and look into our concept and see if it was able to be created in the time limit that we had. We went and tested out the animation style and found that for each frame it was going to take around 30 minutes for each frame. So because of this we decided to look into other ways of doing the animation effect. Once we had progressed further and looked into some possible ways of doing the animation as well as taking some test shots for the video we got our peers to look at our blog, and evaluate how they thought we were progressing. The general feedback that we got was that they were pleased with the decisions we had made so far but would have liked to have seen more images to illustrate the fresh ideas that we had come up with. Also they said that they would like to know some possible locations that we might use for our filming, specifically with regards to our Romeo and Juliet style balcony shot. From this we then incorporated many changes to our blog like some test footage of one of our locations, and test shots of the balcony scene. We then continued to progress and get to a stage where we had a rough cut of our product so that we could involve our peers into the feedback session of our rough cut. From the rough cut the general opinion was that the animation parts were a little hard to see, and that the shots of the artist were a bit boring as there were chunks of him playing from one angle. From this we decided to edit the effect for the animation by using different filters and overlays. We decided on two techniques that we thought were rather effective and could be replacements for the animation. One was by using a parchment overlay to make it look like the animation was on an old piece of paper and the other was using a charcoal filter instead of the pencil style. We found however that the parchment was a bit odd as it looked like it was one image that was moving rather than a series of images in a notebook, which was the original idea, and the charcoal effect looked a bit to dark, even on its lightest setting. We then tweaked around the conversions and found that the quality of the converted rough cut was very low which made it hard to see the pencil effect, and with upping the quality the pencil effect looked fantastic. For the performance we decided to film some additional shots of the artist so that we could have a variety of shots so that the music video wasn’t boring. Once we had implemented all of the changes and had finalised our video we then got our peers to view the video and give us their opinions about it. The overall opinion was that they liked the video but there were a few little parts that could have been improved like making the animation and performance link in better rather than waiting until the end to tie them in together. We also got some feedback on our final ancillary products. The main view of these were that they liked the continuity between the different pieces and felt that it matched the style achieved by the video. They also liked the contrast between real and animation, but feel the transition on the magazine cover could have been a little smoother.
The animation: normal, parchment and charcoal
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the process of our coursework we used a great variety of new media technologies. One of the biggest assets for this coursework was the internet. We found that the internet helped us greatly when it came to each section: research, planning, construction and evaluation. During the research section, certain websites such as wikipedia, youtube, etc enabled us to look, in great detail, into our genre, artists of that genre, existing music videos and how these music videos were made. This was an important starting point as we needed a basis of which we could work on to then begin to plan our ideas for our video. During the planning stage, the internet helped us in the way that we were able to look at new ways of doing things such as the animation effect. During the construction part we were able to use the internet, through searching google and watching tutorials on youtube, to expand our abilities in Photoshop, Final Cut and Illustrator to create a better effect rather than having to compromise. This include things like opacity masks for the digipack to remotely controlling the music on a laptop so that we don’t have to worry about someone being in the shot. And for the evaluation part the internet proved vital as we can use videos and images to illustrate our points a lot easier than if we had to just explain everything in text.
During the planning we also found that the use of the stills camera and video camera enabled us to capture some location ideas and test footage and then report back to the group with this. This allowed the group to split up, with some staying and working on additional parts of the planning stage while others go out and find the locations to report back with. Also the use of a projector that I had helped us to begin our planning and development of the animation idea, as I was able to trace round an image of myself to see if the time it took was realistic for our project. With regards to animation we also found that Adobe Photoshop 7, CS3 and CS4 were indispensable with Rob trying out an idea for the animation and then allowing me to edit the idea and improve it with the new algorithms in the newer version of photoshop that I had. This led us to believe that with a little tweaking we could create the whole animation in a realistic amount of time. The blog was another resource that benefitted us greatly when it came to planning, because it allowed a centralised storage of any ideas that the group might have, allowing others in our group to keep up to date at all times.
During construction the new media technologies that I found beneficial were: MacBook Pro, HD Video Camera, Final Cut Express and Adobe Master Collection CS4. Personally I found that using my MacBook gave us as a group greater flexibility as I kept a backup of everything from the college iMac on it so that should we need to look at something outside of lessons, we could easily get it. Also I was easily able to set up remote control so that we didn’t need someone near the piano pressing the play button during filming which eliminated the chance of having someone suddenly appear in the shot while trying to get away. My Panasonic HDC-SD9 High Definition video camera that we used was great as it allowed us more freedom when filming as the footage was stored on cards as opposed to tape, which meant that there was no risk of losing the footage as it was backed up with the college iMac, and no files can be overwritten. This meant that we didn’t have to worry if a clip got accidentally got deleted, as we still had a backup of it. Final Cut express is also a fantastic piece of software that we wouldn’t have been able to produce such a high quality output without it. It allows almost total freedom with the clips and we used it to create all of the images for the animation, synchronising the music and the music clips and editing the shots. Lastly Adobe Master Collection CS4 was a vital tool when it came to developing the animation as I made an action, containing the step by step instructions of making the animation, in Photoshop that allowed the pencil effect to be applied instantly, and by using Batch Automated Process we were able to set Photoshop applying the effect to every frame of the animation, which in total there was more than 800 frames. We also found that Illustrator CS4 was a great tool when it came to the design of the magazine advert as it enabled us to use opacity masks and blend 4 images together to create a transition between real artist and animated background to animated artist and real background. To make the animation itself we took the base image, duplicated the layer, turned it negative, grayscaled it, applied a gaussian blur at about 3%, change the layer style to colour dodge and then applied the curves image adjustment to remove some shades of grey. Other aspects that we used include spotlights in the drama studio which were controlled by the technicians booth, making it easier for us to put on the correct filter, such as the purple and white spotlight. A dolly was used to create some of the smooth tracking shots which added the variety of shots that we needed.
We also was able to have time to film a preliminary task for our music video. This preliminary task involved us creating a short music video just to see how we would get on and get some general ideas on how to make a music video. We found that our preliminary task was quite jumpy because we filmed each section individually. So when it came to filming our main product we used a single background shot and then layered our other clips over top of this. This made it so that we didn’t have any gaps in the video, leaving a smooth video with fades between the base layer and the intercut shots.
However with all of this new media technology that we used, we didn’t go without our fair share of problems. With regards to the animation, if there wasn’t enough lighting then we ended up with a mass of white where a nearly completely black image gets converted to negative it turns white. Also with one piece of animation narrative we tried to replace the background with stars but we couldn’t get them to look realistic enough. We also had problems with the lighting in the performance filming session, as we couldn’t get the light on without it interfering with where the camera was positioned at some points, so we ended up with a no go zone for the camera to avoid any problems with lighting creating purple lines on the footage.
All in all I believe that as a group we worked really well together and used our knowledge and got the most out of the technology to create a professional music video, DVD cover and Magazine Advert.
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