LF: Evaluation

Here is a slide rocket for questions 1 and 2



question 4

Throughout the production process we used http://www.blogger.com/ to present our ideas in many media formats, it allowed us to view each others ideas and comment upon them, I felt it was extremely useful throughout the production process

However other media applications such as slide rocket, prezzi and short video recording really allowed us to expand on our creative ideas, especially the short video recording. Towards the beginning of the production process we also used mood boards to gain a clear understanding of each others ideas and what we were looking to achieve.

Advantages of blog

• · Working collaboratively on the blog allowed us to share ideas.
• · Commenting on each other’s posts allowed constructive criticism on how to improve.
• · Could gain ideas of other group members through video posts off youtube etc.
• · Multimedia way of producing work increasing creativity.
• · Allowed us to discuss shots after technically deconstructing videos.
• · Quick and easy way to access power points and clips.
• · Attractive way of presenting our work.
• · Organizing our work became easier due to date and time etc.

Challenges

• · Thinking of new original ways of producing our work.
• · Organizing the visuals of posts was often difficult.

ot  Other ways of packaging our ideas included mood boards in which we could lay out our entire findings from our research. We also used personal comment on our group member’s work to express other ideas not only personal posts.

In my opinion the animatic was extremely significant in the creative process and the editing process. First of all it allowed us to gain some sort of original structure to what we wanted to achieve on each of our shoots and gain a basic understanding of our cutting rate and how much footage we would need to capture.

We determined what shots we still had to film and in what locations suited each shot the most. Furthermore once we captured some footage we were able to edit the footage against the animatic, which allowed us to envisage what we still had to film.

Survey monkey was useful to gather audience feedback; we also use web 2.0 applications such as YouTube to research other artist’s videos to gain some inspiration. Furthermore we could also use social networking sites such as facebook to gain an instant reaction to our video, I felt it was brilliant in showing our product to our target audience aswell as most of the people who viewed the video would have been between the ages of 13-20.

After deconstructing many print texts of a boy band culture I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to create for my tour poster, however Photshop was not my strongest area however as the course went on I became more familiar with the tools you can use to edit the images.

Once I had taken the still images of each member of the boy band my aim was to position them according to the rule of thirds covering the bottom two thirds of the poster, therefore in order to align them correctly I had to erase the background leaving behind the faces. Originally I tried to select the faces using the magic wand tool however that proved to be unsuccessful because I took the images in black and white it could not pick up the contrast in colours, as a result I used the eraser and carefully shaded round the outside of the faces in order to delete the background.

After I had completed this process on all 3 images I had to align them correctly by duplicating the layers. Although the poster looked effective with a black background I wanted to cover half of the face almost in a film noir fashion. Therefore I placed a cut out filter on the image and increased the contrast and brightness to cover the right hand side of the face. I felt it linked together brilliantly with the other ancillary texts and created a very modern urban feel.

• Once we had captured all our footage we realized our editing had to be excellent to create a realistic boy band videa. Thus one of the original ideas was that we needed to fade every cut in and out in order to allow the video to flow and have a softer touch. Once we positioned the footage in order by right clicking and selecting fade out video it allowed you to choose how quickly you could fade the footage in or out.
• Secondly because we were having two lines of action half the footage had to be edited in to black and white, as you can see from the images on the right you can click and drag the black and white effect on to the footage, which allowed us to differentiate the two lines of action.
• Finally we felt that some of our filler shots were two long and we always wanted the girl to have some sort of connection with the boy band. Therefore by overlaying the footage and decreasing the opacity it allowed us to run two shots over the top of each other.

Problems faced with editing

• · Night footage appeared grainy.
• · Some of our cuts did not fit the beat.
• · Lip sinking became difficult to see.
• · We were not able to fade some footage in or out.

Solutions

• · Increased the contrast on the night footage
• · Use the time expansion tool to make the footage seem longer and cut it on the next beat.
• · Overlay two types of footage so lip sinking did not become the main priority.
• · Increase the cutting rate and include more studio shots.

The main problem we experienced with the hd camera was setting the white balance and having enough light to shoot at night. At certain location we wished to film at the camera could not pick up enough light in order to film a decent shot, thus when we used torches there was two much light and it distorted the face.

Through this blog post my slide rocket presentation and my video post it is clear how I have used a wide range of media forms to communicate my ideas. I have included lots of still images accompanied with numerous video posts creating a multimedia evaluation. I have made my work visually attractive by using arrows to point out certain aspects of still images aswell as including video clips from youtube.

JI: Evaluation

Audience Research Video

Once we completed our final piece, we tested our final product to a varied audience from our friends, family to other piers.

Collectively we gathered detailed feedback from 16 people about our production, which we were able to evaluate and conclude the results which we could apply to our video, and allow us to learn from anything we didn’t perhaps apply or conform to in relation to the genre.

The questions we asked the audiences were;

What do you think the genre is?
For a boy band video like ours we found this question pretty straight forward and answered with a sense of collectiveness from our audience, being able to clearly identify our genre. This supports our previous research into boy bands of a similar genre and shows we conformed to the characteristics needed for this style of video which ultimately is what is vital through the production of a music video, attracting the target audience.

What was the best thing about the video in your opinion?
From this question we got a range of answers, evidently being a personal opinion from the target audience point of view, however a main point which was highlighted was the use of fades and effects through our video to create a sense of continuity and add the to the boy band image. We found from results the use of the girl involved with the band also in the image with the sense of her being transparent from the group now to give it a sense of distant memory from the love emotion being portrayed in the song.

What emotion do you feel at the end of the track?
The results this showed were all similar and everyone identified the feeling of a love lost which created a sense of sadness amongst the audience. Being a pop genre boy band song this was vital for our video to portray this emotion as a strong target audience is fundamentally females who are much more engaged with their emotions than males, so to connect with them a sense of love and deep emotion had to be prevailed.

Did you see a link between the lyrics and video?
With the girl being involved we found this question received positive responses, with the audience being able to identify the girl along with the lyrics acting a love relationship which had once been. At the beginning we weren’t too sure whether to include the girl in our production, however through feedback after our unfinished preview the audience said a girl would transform our video into what that genre needed to be, so this shows how research the whole way through the production is vital to adapt and better your production.

Would you enjoy watching this video again on scales of 1-5? (1 being No – 5 being definitely)
All of our candidates responded with either a 4 or 5 which shows positive feedback from our video, and suggests they enjoyed our video and felt it stood up to repeatability which is vital for a music video. Music videos are consumed on a mass wide scale for focused viewers being the stars’ fans to ambient viewing where people flick through the music channels. However it is viewed, the audiences have to be interested by the video, and feel they have gained a relationship with the artist otherwise they will lose interest in not only the video, but the artist.

Do you think there is anything missing?
No one commented on this question, whether this being due to the audience not being critical experts on music videos and the production process involved, however this praises our production of the music video we have produced, identifying we have conformed to what is needed for a video of this genre.

Any further feedback?
This question allowed our audience to be critical of our video production and suggest any bits that could have been improved. One comment which we received was about the lighting of the footage we captured outside the Gherkin in London, which they felt was a bit too dark and didn’t give the audience a full view of the group’s faces. We knew that filming at night time in London was going to be a difficult task anyway, however we felt it would create that dreamy boy band type feel to separate the artist from the audience. We tried to edit the footage on Premiere using the ‘Colour and Balance’ tools and editing the ‘Contrast and Brightness’ and we did alter it to the best we could, however didn’t result in as good quality footage as some of the other footage.

Evaluation Slide Rockets for Questions 1,2 and 4-TB

This is the first slide rocket for my evaluation.

Group:Music Video JLT

As we conclude deadline day, we have finally finished our production! Here it is, our music video, JLT - Close To You.

JI: Finished Printwork

For my printwork I had to design a 6 pane digipak to fit our music video, and the genre connected. It also had to coincide with Luca and Timo's style to keep continuity within our group.

Here is my sleeve design.



This is the front and back cover I designed which I created on Photoshop by imported a photo we took on our recce which I edited using a filter, and added a style of font.



This is the second and third pane to the digipak, also designed on Photoshop with the same effects.

LF: Print Work Editing Process

Today I have spent the lesson editing my pictures that I captured in yesterdays shoot. I started by erasing the brick wall behind all of the images to get a clear outline of all the band members.

I then created a simple black background and positioned the members of the boy band close to each other so they were the centre focus of the image. I decided to use a cut out filter to coincide with the rest of the groups print work and increase the contrast on the images to cover the right hand side of the face. For the tile I used a font names Beast Machines to create a bold JLT.

TB: Final Media Print Work

This is my final print work, I am proud of my work and feel it is coherant with all other print work sumbitted from our group.

Even though my final print work significantly differs from my rough piece, I have interegreted some aspects into my final piece. The first is that I have learned from my initial rough photo and have carefully chosen the background (backdrop of London), rather than not considering the other objects in frame.

Another aspect I have used from the learning experience of my rough print work is further using font to convey meaning and connotation. The font and colour used in my final print work is closely matched to that of JLS, with the colour being the exact same.

LF: Print Work Shoot

Today we completed a photo shoot that we hope to include throughout our print work. We used a simple brick wall and captured the images in black and white using a quick shutter speed, i am looking to place all three images on a simple black background with a silver graphic running across the back ground. All three members will be situated according to the rule of thirds.

JI: Printwork update

I have also been working on my print work today for our JLT digipak idea. Here are a couple of screen shots from my plans.

Group

With only one day left until the deadline, today we have been ruthlessly editing our footage, chopping and cutting clips to perfect our video. Here is a cut of our video with one day to go.



Tomorrow we will just go through the footage making any last alterations we feel our needed.

LF: 2 Days to Go!!

Today in the lesson I:

• Filmed some filler shots with James using numerous apparatus such as a dolly and a track.
• Helped James with editing the footage.
• Uploaded pictures of our night shoot onto Photo shop.
• Created a rough print work poster.
• Found the location to capture our pictures for the print work.

JI: 29/11/11

Today myself and Luca shot some more filler shots in an outside location within school up against a plain brick wall, to still gain a urban feel. We used the dolly and track to gain some smooth movement with the camera. Once we had shot this we uploaded the footage on to Premiere and turned the footage to black and white and time stretched some shots to fit in to some gaps as filler shots.

I also edited the footage of the girl Luca took last night. Although he had some trouble with the external location and the lighting, so he had to change the location to inside his house, which restricted movement and angles he could shoot, however we managed to cut a few shots out of the footage which was useable and fits well in to our concept.

LF:28/11/2011

Today I finished the editing of our question on how our band is represented throughout the promotional activity by cutting out the takes that were not successful. Furthermore I over looked James throughout editing the footage and came up with numerous suggestions such as; I felt in order to make the shots of the feet appearing in sync, we should fade out the second shot of my feet, in order to smooth out the cut to Blake’s feet as I thought it was too sudden and disrupted the rhythm of the video.

I also attempted to film some footage of a girl that we could have included in our video, however I planned to use certain external locations such as a plain brick wall and a large tree will yellow and brown leaves at the base. However due to the weather it was too dark to film in these locations at 4:10pm as a result I had to film inside, and did not complete all the filming. Nonetheless I am looking to capture the rest of the footage on Wednesday during the day.

TB:Update 28/11/2011

In today's lesson I printed out the rough copy of my print work and further analysed it so I could add detail to my slide rocket tonight. I also helped Luca upload the footage of his video entry question. Furthermore, I discussed with James what needed to be done tonight in terms of work and also discussed Blog format with Luca.

JI: 28/11/2011

Today I carried on with the editing process of our production. Getting in to the last week we now have to analyse our current footage with great detail, perfecting every aspect of the video to ensure our work is of the highest quality. I found some of the footage I had previously imported from another Premiere file had had some quality problems, and we saw a slight blur to the shots, so I had to re-export them and import them back on to our timeline. This meant I had to then re-edit the footage to match the previous clips which had to be replaced.

The rest of the week will consist of editing the footage of the girl which Luca captured tonight then getting some extra filler shots in either the studio or an outside location. Once this is complete we can touch up all of our footage to conclude our music video production.

Slide Rocket for Questions

Group: How have you represented your group across your promotional activity?

JI: Editing Studio Footage

On Wednesday we had a trip to the drama studio, and I am just now editing the footage on Premiere to see the good clips we can add in. Once we imported the footage into Premiere we decided the lighting wasn't the effect we wanted so I had to alter the 'Brightness and Contrast' and play around with the colours in the footage to gain the effect we wanted.





I also wanted to try some new effects so I used the 'Ghosting' effect to add some different looking shots in to our footage.

Group: Rough Cut Final

This is our final rough cut of our production 'JLT - Close To You'.



This is a stepping stone for our final piece which our deadline for is 2nd December.

JI: Editing Footage

After our shoot in London on Saturday I have been editing all the current footage along with our new night footage all onto a master edit. By importing our other files we have now got a whole 'rough' cut of our song, which will need to continue to fine tune this week.



The only footage we now need to capture is with a female which we are going to complete this week, to add the narative of a journey through a relationship including the good and the bad.

LF: Targets for the rest of the week

• Provide a rough cut of the print work and the video.
• Answer questions on how our band is represented throughout the promotion.
• Take still images for the printwork.
• Film shots including a female and extra close ups in the studio.

LF: London Night Footage Reflection

On Saturday we decided to complete another shoot to try and capture some night footage in London. We faced a few limitations whilst in London especially at St Thomas’ hospital as there was not a sufficient amount of light to capture a clear image of the subject. Therefore we tried to overcome the problem by using two strong torches and trying to reflect the light of a large piece of white card, however it still was not good enough for our liking.

 As a result we moved to a location which had more potential street lighting which we could use but still capture the same image when it came to framing. We tried to capture filler shots with iconic London sites in the frame such as the London eye, Tower Bridge, The houses of Parliament and the Gherkin.

A location that we felt will look extremely effective is at the base of the Gherkin building. The surrounding scenery was traditional however the modern twist of the glass Gherkin acted as a good contrast. We chose to use the area because there were circular lights coming from the ground as well as bright white lights situated on a nearby wall. We filmed some shots of an iconic boy band member sitting down on the floor under the white light.

After we decided there was not enough lighting at St Thomas’ Hospital we filmed on a very busy bridge which gave us a clearer image of the boy band and the houses of parliament.

London Night Footage Recce

Yesterday, all of us went up to London to film some night time footage for our video. We planned to shoot a bit of extra footage that was of a very high standard, while also getting some very scenic fillers to use throughout our video.

Overall the trip was a success, however, it did not start out that way as we encountered our first problem of the recce. We went back to the location we used in our last shoot, near south bank. When we turned the camera on, we realised that we couldn't actually see ourselves on the screen because it was too dark. Despite our best efforts, attempting to use the torches and reflector, we could not generate enough light to make the shot work. We decided to change location and moved to a more well lit area, right on the rivers age. We obtained a few filler shots and were getting into the swing of filming at night, however we still hadn't captured the excellent footage we were aiming to get. After this short stint of filming, we walked onto the London Westminster bridge. It was here that our recce really began to take off.

The lighting was much better and the houses of parliament provided an excellent backdrop to the shot, an iconic landmark that really lit up the frame. We also filmed a few filler shots because the lighting was so good and the atmosphere was very ''stereotypical London''.

After this filming we decided to film some footage at the base of the Gherkin. There were small lights placed around the building and there was also some blue lit lines that were on the walls surrounding it, giving the whole area a luminous blue effect. We are hoping the footage will be as good as it promised to be when we shot it.

Overall the recce was very successful and we think the night shots will accompany the other footage very well.

LF: Targets for the rest of the week

• Thursday: Film the studio footage, possible still images for print work.
• Friday: Editing studio shots during lesson or free periods, capturing footage of girl for the video.
• Saturday: Capturing night footage in London; Southbank, O2 Arena, St Thomas’ hospital

Audience Feedback

The following points were made after our class had watched the rough cut of our footage:

• Audience thinks that there should be some sort of reference in the footage to a girl. We like this idea and will be looking to intergrate a slight narative of a female presence into our video.


• Overall they thought there were some very effective shots and there was good camera movement throughout. We are pleased with this as we did pay particular attention to how we should use movement effectively in our piece.


• Another piece of feedback we recieved was that although our framing was good, we should try and stay within the frame more often.


• We are pleased with this feedback but even though it was very encouraging it is still early days and our editing is very rough. With more time for editing we hope to make our video extremely good.

LF: Rough Idea Print Work

Here is a rough hand drawn draft of my tour poster. Ideas I have tried to include are;

• Film noir theme of having half the face in darkness.
• I’m considering 3 types of background; Low depth of field of an iconic building in London, a brick wall leading to using a high contrast as scene in the take that tour poster, or simple use a completely black background, with the shots being taken in Photoshop.
• Although the three members of JLT are different height I would edit the photograph in Photoshop making them appear the same height.
• I am thinking of overlapping the images so only the left hand side of the face is in full view.
• The font will appear in the lower third of the poster. JLT will sit slightly above the name of the tour, ‘Close To You’. I feel this is the best place to locate the name of the band because I want the original focus of the poster to be the original black and white image.
• In relation to costume, I feel we should wear different clothing to that in the video, nonetheless I feel we should stick with the black and white film.
• I have chosen to reveal the left hand side of the face because I feel and iconic aspect of boy band culture is an earring, therefore by revealing the left hand side of the face I am trying to conform to the conventions of the genre.

LF: One Direction - Gotta Be You

One direction have recently released there new video which includes certain effects and shots that we feel we can use throughout our work.

• The use of filler shots.
• More filler shots with a canted angle.
• Having different members of the boy band on screen, even when they are not singing.
• The use of props ie Bags
• Include more shots of the entire band together.
• Include a vehicle in the video.
• Faster cutting rate.

LF: Print Work- Expansion on Tour Advert

Above are two mainstream magazines that JLS have marketed their band image in. Young girls seem to be the main target audience of the boy band however I feel I would also consider publishing my tour advert in Sunday Supplement newspapers try  and target the parents of the young girl. Parents of younger fans will be able to afford to buy the tickets for their children.

Furthermore I may be inclined to have samples on national television. I believe a great time to show the advert would be before of after X Factor results show. Seen as JLS came through the X Factor it would be a great way of branching out to the younger audience.

I really like the simple but effective photography JLS use in the picture. Clearly they have take four individual still shots and photo shopped them together, I like the tone of black and white, however I would include a simple background with my image and use a low depth of field to focus in on the band.

Again this is similar to the JLS album cover of using a simple black and white image. I like the way they have changed the colours of the fonts, however when I create my tour advert I will include more sponsors and fonts at the bottom of the advert.

Rough Print Work - Basic Idea

Here is my initial photograph of what I plan to take for my Q magazine advertisement. This is, in practice, my idea in terms of positioning, lighting and posture. However it is excluding Blake as the third member and also they are not in own clothes.

JI: Export Footage

During this lesson we are going to be presenting our footage we have captured so far to the rest of the class. Today I have been working on exporting the footage from premiere on to the external hardrive for us to share.



Here is a screen shot of premiere of how I exported the file into the shared file.



As we have edited our footage on seperate files I then put the files into one premiere and selected it with the track, so it gives us an idea of our video as a whole.

JI: JLS Behind the scenes

Here's a video of JLS' new song behind the scenes. This gives us an idea of their lighting they have used, and ideas about framing which is useful.

CF Feedback - planning

Well done Timo, James, Luca

This is evidence of L4- planning and research. You all contribute some excellent video and print analysis, using critical theory to underpin your observations. Technical analysis were outstanding and there is a real intellectual engagement with the commercial role of the video, using Dyer to inform your work.

Your shoots are clearly well organised, but risk assessments and call sheets for the London shoot need to be there.

Use of ICT is also an assessment criteria; you need to design your blog, change menu layout so I can read it(!) and also consider layout of all blog posts; where possible use image, embedded clips,highlight key words, bullet points. In other words, consider the form of your planning - web - and design accordingly.

In term of production, I can see the process being documented, however at A2 you need more detailed reflection; exactly what shots did you set up on shoots, technical issues, how is this informing work, linking to planning. At times 2 lines are appropriate, but for a big shoot, I would expect you to all post and comment and clearly state what your own role was in the filming. For editing, you will need to document clearly and use screenshots to show process - what approach are you taking? what problems encountered?

The following is missing - vital for L4

Luca/James - advert analysis

mock-ups of all print work

Audience resarch post needs detailed analysis of results

Pitch?

Brighton footage embedded and analysed

storyboarding process documented, image evidence, animatic, reflection on process

To sec

JI: JLS - Take a Chance On Me

Here's JLS' new music video 'Take a Chance On Me'. I feel this is a great video, similar to our production and the feel we want to create. The London setting works great which gives us an image of what ours could look like the right footage. The idea we've had of shooting at night is the same to this, which I feel looks great, so we can take some ideas from this to our next shoot in London! We may struggle getting the lighting as good as this, however this will be a challenge we will need to overcome either with external lighting such as lamp posts or by bringing some sort of lighting with us.

LF: 11/11/11 - Update

Today I have edited some of the footage we captured at Somerset House for the second verse of the song, I have tried to include a faster cutting rate with each shot fading in and out, a technique I decided I was going to use after analysing other JLS videos. However later in the editing process I hope to include some other shots such as some night footage and some studio shots, as we feel the framing of Somerset House is not exactly what we wanted. Below is a still image of what the background to the framing looks like.

LF: JLT Tour Advert Ideas

 

After analysing numerous boy band posters the emphasis mainly lies on the quality of the image rather than the glamorous effects. For instance as shown above the Take That tour poster is a simple black and white image with a bland background. The font they use is also very simple however the stand out part of the poster is the font in gold. This visual technique connotes a sense of glamour as the rich gold colour contrasts with the rest of the image. I feel we can create a similar effect with our poster however I would make a couple of changes to my poster. Furthermore I would try to reduce the depth of field by using a low aperture and taking a close up image of the subject to try and blur out the background allowing the subject to stand out.

Furthermore I would use a high shutter speed to allow the image to be contrasting and with my skills that I have developed in Photoshop I could produce a brilliant image. Furthermore we are thinking of having a black and white filmed photograph therefore with the contrast the colours would really stand out. I am thinking of using a bold font that captures the attention of the viewer but I am not quite decided on the colour of the font.

Toward the bottom of the poster I will include all the tour venues and dates that the band will be performing at such as the O2 arena, due to there mainstream pop status. In addition as you can see for the Take That tour poster they have included the main sponsor of the event of the poster a theme that I can include in my work.

LF:10/11/11 - Update

Today I spent the lesson editing the footage from our original shoot in London. We had a huge amount of footage so I had to sieve through it to find the best angles and shots and integrate it into premier along with the track. I found syncing the movement of our lips with the lyrics particularly difficult however it is all beginning to piece it self together. We also decided on a day to go and capture more footage at night.

Print Work - Poster Print Work

For my print work I plan to do a magazine advertisement for our album. I will choose a photo out of the photos we took in London and the photo's we plan to take in the drama studio. Once I have picked a photo (most likely a photo from the studi0) I will use photoshop to edit it and to start creating my advertisement.
The album above is ''Hot Fuss'' by The Killers. I have placed a picture above because I want to do a similar effect with the font. I want to place ''JLT'' at the top and have the song name below the band name. Obviously I will use different style font to suit out genre more and I will also use different colours to suit the location.
The above single is JLS' first single release ''Beat Again''. The element that I like in this image is the use of the ''In Stores 14th July''. This is accurate information being given to potential customers to directly tell them when the album is available. Aswell as this writting I will also inclue reviews from other magazines, website for more information, and perhaps inclusive singles within the album. I will most deffinitely be using Q magazine for my advertisement. The magazine is a mini-book packed full of album reviews, music-related movies, DVDS, download lists, key events in pop and up and coming bands (which we would be). Due to this detail of information inside the magazine, it is important to maintain the same characterisitcs of the magazine within the advertisement.

It is a combination of the above factors that make a successful album advertisement. This research is neccessary to reach our desireable audience.