Question 3

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In order for the highest quality production we needed to know what the audience thought was good about the production and what needed to be improved, the result being an improved final piece.  We created a focus group of seven people who viewed our preliminary production. After we asked a series of questions based on what they saw from our preliminary.

·         The first part of feedback we received said “they really liked the lip syncing we did with the first section of the video, it fitted the soundtrack well and wasn't out of time” This was vital in our progression because this is an aspect of editing we want to keep in our main production.

·        The next piece of feedback we received said “we really kept close to the narrative in the actual video of ‘if I were a boy’ and presented it nearly exactly the same with very similar locations.”

·         The next piece of feedback we received  said “although we kept very similar locations in our preliminary to the actual video , we only used our school for the locations and when it comes to our actual we really needed to reach further afield to get a wide variety of different locations.”

·         The next piece of feedback said “the quality of the video and how the start and end of the video had good quality but the middle contained parts where the quality was poor. “ This was down to the use of a phone to film the preliminary and not a proper camera –.we really wanted to improve on the equipment we used when we began filming for our main production.  We decided to use a DSLR camera to film along with a tripod ensuring better quality footage making it look more professional.

·         The last piece of feedback said “really liked the actors we chose in the preliminary .Kelsey and Kuziva really fitted the roles well and gave emotion in their pieces. From this feedback we saw that Kuziva was very popular with the audience and that he puts quite a lot of emotion and emphasis into his performance, this gave us the idea to use him in our main production to get the same emotional effect and emphasis seen in the prelim

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Question 3 by Domperignon7

Esasay

Question 3) what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout our research, planning and production we have utilised many research methods such as; focus groups, social media sites, Vox Pops and online questionnaires to obtain audience feedback on the our planning and productions. We received feedback on our preliminary tasks; research on the music genre; our initial ideas on the music video; layouts of ancillaries, raw footage; rough edit, final ancillaries and final production. The audience feedback we obtained on these sections was vital to the success of our productions because they told us what was good about the productions, what the best layout to use for the ancillaries were, what to improve on which would make our production better and what needed to be improved upon on the various production pieces .The audience feedback we received was for the preliminary task. For the preliminary task we had to recreate the first 40 seconds of a known artist/band’s music promo. We decided to recreate Beyoncé’s ‘If I were a boy’.

In order for the highest quality production we needed to know what the audience thought was good about the production and what needed to be improved, the result being an improved final piece.  We created a focus group of seven people who viewed our preliminary production. After we asked a series of questions based on what they saw from our preliminary.

·         The first part of feedback we received said “they really liked the lip syncing we did with the first section of the video, it fitted the soundtrack well and wasn’t out of time” This was vital in our progression because this is an aspect of editing we want to keep in our main production.

·         The next piece of feedback we received said “we really kept close to the narrative in the actual video of ‘if I were a boy’ and presented it nearly exactly the same with very similar locations.”

·         The next piece of feedback we received  said “although we kept very similar locations in our preliminary to the actual video , we only used our school for the locations and when it comes to our actual we really needed to reach further afield to get a wide variety of different locations.”

·         The next piece of feedback said “the quality of the video and how the start and end of the video had good quality but the middle contained parts where the quality was poor. “ This was down to the use of a phone to film the preliminary and not a proper camera –.we really wanted to improve on the equipment we used when we began filming for our main production.  We decided to use a DSLR camera to film along with a tripod ensuring better quality footage making it look more professional.

·         The last piece of feedback said “really liked the actors we chose in the preliminary .Kelsey and Kuziva really fitted the roles well and gave emotion in their pieces. From this feedback we saw that Kuziva was very popular with the audience and that he puts quite a lot of emotion and emphasis into his performance, this gave us the idea to use him in our main production to get the same emotional effect and emphasis seen in the prelim

We also received feedback for our research about the genre of the band we had chosen.  We devised a few questions we would ask people, varying in gender and age.  We staged a Vox Pop which is a video that shows the public answering questions on a topic, this is filmed in public to give the notion that the questionnaire is random giving us the most unbiased responses.  

The rules of vox pops:

The person that is being interviewed needs to be on the right side of the screen and needs to be looking towards the interviewer who is on their left. Each time an interviewee is first mentioned their name, age and occupation should appear at the bottom of the screen. Lastly they should be filmed in a busy place for a sense of realism.

We interviewed 10 people; 5 boys 5 girls to get a good variety of people and therefore unbiased answers. The questions we were proposing to the interviewees were open ended question about music videos. They were open so we could get their developed opinions and not only closed yes or no’ answers.

The questions asked, the people’s responses and an analysis of their answers:

First question:

What is favourite genre of music video?

Kuziva: R&B

Georgia Allman: Pop

Aaron Bailey: Funk-Rock

Becky Boyfield: Indie/Alternative

Eve Hilliam-Cooke: Pop

Mrs Kaur: Indie, Rock and alternative

Sam Hargrave: Hip Hop

Chelsey Hibbins: Pop

Abi Brown: Indie

Tom Branch: Rock

From these answers we can see that the majority of the people questioned favoured the pop genre or the indie genre, this was useful when it came to produce our main production because although even though we were producing a funk rock video we could also use some pop and indie genre conventions in the video to get a wider target audience and exhibit a wider range of media skills 

Second Question:

What do you like to see in music videos?

Kuziva Mutisi: Nice performance and something that's memorable

Georgia Allman: Something that's eye-catching and has a nice performance

Aaron Bailey: Something that's eye-catching, nothing all the same as that's a bit boring

Becky Boyfield: A good story line and a good performance by the artist

Eve Hilliam- Cooke: Eye-catching

Mrs Kaur: Something abstract so it has a bit of nature and a bit of performance, seeing the artists so that I can feel like I can get to know them

Sam Hargrave: A few editing techniques

Chelsey Hibbins: A lot of dancing

Abi Brown: Stories being told

Tom Branch: I like to see all band members and their instruments

From these answers it is clear that one of the main elements the audience look for in a music videos is a video with good actors, good performance and very eye catching. This was extremely good information because once we began planning and producing our final video we were able to figure out who our strongest actor was in our group to get the ‘good actor’ and ‘good performance’ section of feedback. We were able to work on making our video very interesting to watch and grab the attention of anyone which led us to the discover the split screen editing

Question 3

What style of music videos do you like? Narrative or performance?

Kuziva Mutisi: Performance

Georgia Allman: Something that's colourful and bold and performance

Aaron Bailey: Performance

Becky Boyfield: Illustration and narrative

Eve Hilliam- Cooke: Narrative

Mrs Kaur: Bit of both but instead of narrative something more abstract

Sam Hargrave: Fast pace with a bit of narrative

Chelsey Hibbins: Narrative

Abi Brown: Narrative

Tom Branch: Fast paced with lots of noise, quite loud and performance

From these results we can clearly see that there is a mixed bag of opinions between performance and narrative – this was good feedback as when it came to producing our main video we made sure to keep elements of both with the main actor (Kuziva) doing performance in the form of miming the lyrics and also him showing narrative as he walks through many locations – this making sure we get a mixture of both – appealing to all the people questioned.

Question 4

Where do you watch music videos?

Kuziva Mutisi: YouTube and TV

Georgia Allman: Spotify or YouTube

Aaron Bailey: YouTube or Sound cloud

Becky Boyfield: YouTube

Eve Hilliam- Cooke: YouTube

Mrs Kaur: YouTube

Sam Hargrave: YouTube

Chelsey Hibbins: YouTube

Abi Brown: YouTube

Tom Branch: YouTube

The results gave us excellent feedback to see what kind of platform the audience use to watch music videos. This information is helpful because we should use it in our final production.

Question 5

What pace should a music video be? Fast, medium or slow paced?

Kuziva Mutisi: Like all three

Georgia Allman: Any depending on the song

Aaron Bailey: Medium pace

Becky Boyfield: Medium pace

Eve Hilliam- Cooke: Medium pace

Mrs Kaur: Depends on the song, so if it’s a slow song a variety of edits but slow paced edits, and if it’s a fast paced song then fast paced editing

Sam Hargrave: Fast pace

Chelsey Hibbins: Fast pace

                                                     Abi Brown: Fast pace         

Tom Branch: Fast pace and it’s got to have a good beat

These results were very beneficial for our production; we can see that there is a mixture of answers.  The answers are mainly between fast paced and medium paced videos which helps us  in our production.

Question 6

What do you think are the most important conventions for your favourite genre?

 Kuziva Mutisi: A good vocal performance

Georgia Allman: Something that's eye-catching and memorable

Aaron Bailey: Something that eye-catching and gets your attention all the way through

Becky Boyfield: For it to be down to earth and for it to have a good acoustic guitar

Eve Hilliam- Cooke: Memorable

Mrs Kaur: Cutting to the beat so ensuring that it’s edited well, having a mixture of performance and abstract narrative, seeing the artist and having some sort of fun element to it

Sam Hargrave: Bit of narrative

Chelsey Hibbins: Some illustration

Abi Brown: Illustration

Tom Branch: A good performance

The main result we got from this question is that people want something that is extremely memorable and eye catching for the audience. This means the audience will be entertained throughout the music videos. Good actors and instruments were also highlighted in the answers to make the music video more realistic while also containing a good narrative.

The next place where we got audience feedback is when we first voiced our idea for narrative and performance in our video – this was done in our pitch video that can be seen below:

We were able to turn our pitch into a focus group to get the class’ opinion on our initial ideas of our music video and ancillary tasks. After the pitch we asked what the group though of the ideas.

Responses

·         The first piece of feedback that we received was they liked our idea of having a mix between performance and narrative and how that would give the audience the best viewing experience especially in the genre we chose. They also liked the idea of  the music video being narrative based compared to  the typical Funk Rock performance music video because they thought the narrative we came up with (Having a journey of Kuziva being shown and how he turns from ‘depressed’/’sad’ persona to his ‘superstar’) . The audience especially liked our idea of continuous walking throughout the video to fully emphasise the narrative. The walking parts in different locations were influenced by; Coldplay’s ‘Scientist’ and the verve ‘bittersweet symphony’.

·         They also liked our idea of slowing the pace of editing because it aided the narrative.  This would allow the narrative to develop instead of fast paced editing styles. Although the song is a funk-rock song and is supposed to be quite fast paced however upon listening to the song it seemed the band actually subverted the typical fasted paced sound of the genre and created a much slower paced song.

·         The audience also liked the idea of having Kuziva being shown in multiple locations and the idea of having graphic matches used as transitions between locations however the audience raised concerns that we wouldn’t get a wide enough range of locations. They also raised concerns of whether we would be able to successfully execute the graphic matches. With this feedback we made sure that we were going to get a wide range of locations by travelling to multiple places when location scouting. We scouted several locations from cities (Peterborough), to towns (Bourne) and then to much more rural areas like fields.

·         The audience liked our idea to use Kuziva as the main artist in the video as they felt he was the strongest performer in the group and thought he was the person who would give the best emotional performance to link the transition between sad and happy narrative.

We also got audience feedback on our ancillary planning which were sketches on different designs and layout for the posters. For both the ancillaries we used a programme called ‘poll everywhere’ which is an online questionnaire system what allows people to text in to vote on a set of pictures or even comment on a set of pictures.  For our ancillary tasks we did two different polls, one for the poster designs we made and another for the CD Digi pack designed, both asking for what design they liked more.  ‘Poll Everywhere’ allowed us to see what designs were most popular so we could then use those designs to actually make our ancillaries

The first design on the poll was a close up shot of Kuziva but to have the picture split into two different sections but still in a graphic match; one on the right having Kuziva in the ‘depressed’, ‘sad’ persona in his scruffy clothes and on the left having him as the stylish, superstar persona in his smart superstar clothing.  This creates synergy with our music promo because it is showing both personas. And then to have the title of the band at the top of the poster and the song near to the bottom. After the poll it this initial design had the lowest votes, which wasn’t a surprise because most posters of this genre had a full body picture and other things such as star ratings and logos of well-known music distributes such as ITunes and Amazon .  We came up with the second idea  which is a full body shot having the same split in two theme to continue the synergetic link with the actual promo and leave extra space for aspects such as the main band name and the title of the song. Having star ratings towards the bottom and having logos of different music distributers as part of the design gave the poster a more realistic look because it contains more of the conventions seen in music promo posters .However this design didn’t obtain the most votes this is because although it contains a much more professional design it didn’t have a the funk-rock style posters should have and only didn’t have a synergetic link. So we then came up with the third and most voted design, this design contains all the conventions of music promo posters seen in the second design giving it the professional look but .This theme is a newspaper theme, this idea for the newspaper theme was inspired from this gig poster

It really sets out all the music promo poster conventions really well in a cool funky style, just what we wanted and it also linked in well with our newspaper transitions used in our main promo video- this adding more synergy to the ancillaries rather than just having the split picture (there is a more in depth justification on why we used this in an earlier question) this theme really excited us, so I drew up the design in the third picture and the audience loved it with a massive 12 votes. After experimenting with the newspaper theme the final ancillary I came up with was this:

Then we had another pol for our other ancillary; the six panel digi pack and for this Digi pack we created two different designs and put them into the pol everywhere system so that the audience could vote on which they preferred (just like the poster) and the pol can be seen below:

The first design was our first initial idea of what we wanted to include in our six panel digi pack, this had the same idea of having the split picture on the main panel (bottom right) but that is all the synergy that we had in it – the other panels were just based on CD Digi pack conventions so didn’t really have a theme, we already knew before putting into the pol that this wasn’t our strongest design as there really needed to be more synergy between it, the poster and the music promo itself (this is the main feedback we got for this first ancillary design and as you can see that was reflected in the votes). The second design did much, much better; with having the feedback on the first design being that it was quite poor and needed more synergy we set on designing a much more synergetic design and we had a great idea just to use the same newspaper design that was seen in the promo, then in the poster design we did – So on the first main panel we had the same newspaper front page design that is similar to the poster but this time we had a much closer up shot of Kuziva split into the two personas (having that section of synergy too) and then for the rest of the panels we made the design look like sub-articles in a newspaper with fake article interlocked into CD Digi pack conventions such as ‘about the band’ and ‘lyrics’ sections made out to look like articles so it kept the newspaper themes running through- this idea was extremely successful with the audience as it got 15 votes and the feedback we got on it said it created that funky theme synergy of the newspaper with the other two productions – something that the first design didn’t really have. After getting this feedback we knew this was the design we wanted to go for, so I set to work editing it up on Photoshop and this was the result:

After the layout for ancillaries’ feedback, the next section we got feedback on was some of our actual production (promo video) and on our raw footage: For our main production we were given two days to film our whole/the majority of it and then the3 next time we came into school the first thing we had to do was show our raw footage to our media teachers to find out their feedback on it and their opinion on the footage; what was good and what maybe wasn’t so good. So below will be a list of the different feedback we got:

·         The first piece of feedback we got for our raw footage is that it was good we got A LOT of footage, not only just of the main lip syncing but we got a varied amount of different shots in many different locations (the one thing the audience were worried about most when we did the initial pitch). They liked how we got multiple angles on all the different main shots so that we could change up the angle in the editing process to give the video more interesting shots and not only a singular shot.

·         They liked how we not only got video footage for our main music promo but we also got multiple location camera shot for our ancillaries – this being good organisation as they are ready for the production of our ancillaries.

·         Another piece of feedback we got was that although we got quite a lot of shots (what was good) there were a few shots that seemed very blurry and shaky, this may stop the professional look in our final piece – we thought we would put them in our rough edit just so that we could get a feel for what the video would look like finished and also try and correct the blurriness and shakiness by sharpening the quality and stabilizing the videos – although this helped out a little bit it still looked a bit weird so we then made the decision to re-film certain bits of the footage, remembering to use the tripod to keep it steady and to make sure we kept the camera on auto focus to get sharper looking footage.

Moreover, the next pieces of feedback we got was on our rough first edit and for this we did another Vox pop and also we got some written feedback from our media teacher what both can be seen bellow. But firstly we have the Vox pops we did:

For this Vox pop we got a group of four to watch our first edit and asked them a series of questions and these where: What do you like about our music video? What do you think could be improved? Do you think the graphic match is effective? Do you think the start of the video is too boring? And do you like the split screen?

Here is an analysis of their responses:

Question one) the first piece of feedback we got was from Becky, she said that she really like the style of editing we were going for (mainly the split screen) as it makes the video very interesting – she also liked the choice of costume we used for Kuziva as it match up with our narrative. The next piece of feedback was from Ross and he also commented on the split screen editing we did, he said it was really good and effective. Kyle then went on to say that he liked the walking animations with the horizontal split screens. Calum then went on to say that he like the cutting to the beat sections and how they went well with the song, and he liked the pace of editing.

Question two) the first piece of improvement feedback we got was from Becky, and this was to firstly make sure that everything cut to the beat properly and that the black spaces/gaps should be filled up with footage (this was actually due to us losing footage – so when we came to editing our actual video we made sure we had all the correct footage to go in the right places), the next piece of feedback was from ross and he said we needed to work on our lip syncing a bit more as some parts were a little out of sync (this something we strived to do in our main production so that it looked professional). The next piece of improvement feedback we got was from Kyle and he commented on the quality of the actual footage and how it was particularly the best (this something we defiantly noticed in our rough edit – this came down to the fact on some recordings we forgot to change the camera back to auto-focus after manually focusing for some ancillary photo shoots – this making the quality of footage go down quite a bit – so much so from the rough edit we decided to re-film certain bits of the production too get a much higher quality of footage).

Question three) All in all for this question we got a very good positive feedback on the graphic matches used I the rough edit and especially the one where Kuziva jumps over the railing to the land into a field location – this was good feedback as the graphic matches were one of the main issues people thought we were going to struggle with – so it was good to know we were using them effectively.

Question four) for this question the main response was that yes it was a little boring; especially the start of the song and not so much the middle of the song. It was said that it needed to be more interesting as the shots at the start they couldn’t really see the point of them, they were just random shots of locations with nothing happening in them and they also said that they needed to cut to the beat a bit more and the pace needed to be increased. (This something we definitely wanted to change for when it came to our main productions as when we watched it back it did seem very boring – this was pretty major as we wanted to keep audiences attentions but at the moment we wasn’t so as we had to re-film some things anyway we thought it would be a good opportunity to re-film the start to make it more interesting and for it to contain something to do with the narrative so we filmed shots of Kuziva getting dressed into his scruffy clothing and also filmed him putting on his boots and start to walk –all these done in split screens to make it more enjoyable to watch as it gave the audience something to watch all of the time with multiple focus points (and it had already been recognised that split screens were really good.

Question five) for this question there was a huge positive response on the split screens- they though it was a really good addition to the editing style as it gave the fun/qwerty style to the video that a funk-rock song should have and it makes the video way more interesting as there is more things going on for the audience to engage in and enjoy.

Below this we can see a picture of what our media teachers thought about our rough edit:

Within this picture and writing the same kind of positives were talked about such as: they really like the split screen idea, they like the costume choice between the two personas of Kuziva as it shows the narrative and links to the narrative very well, they liked the choice of actor as Kuziva gave a lot of passion and enthusiasm to the role and was really good at lip syncing also, they loved the graphic match and wanted more (in which we did add more when we implement the newspaper transition idea influenced by the snatch opening – having a newspaper as a main object that can be used as a graphic match from one location to the other – the newspaper a great idea as it links with the narrative and it gave us excellent ideas for our ancillaries). But they also picked up on the same kind of negative that the people in the Vox pops pointed out too; how the lip syncing was a little off (in which we corrected in the main production), how the start of the whole video was quite boring and didn’t really have any point of being there and that we should re-film this (in which we did to a much better opening that actually related to the narrative and had more of a split screen idea), they also picked up on the quality of the actual footage and hinted to us that it was probably because of the camera being on manual focus when it should have been on auto-focus and they also said to re-film to get a much more professional looking video – in which we actually did a lot of re-filming to get much better shots and quality – this resulted in a better video we definitely though had improved and we were much happier with.

And lastly we have the final pieces of production that we got audience feedback on and this was the finished ancillaries and finished main video production. The first one I’m going to look at is the feedback from the finished ancillaries and to obtain this audience feedback we decided to use a social network called Facebook; I uploaded pictures of both the magazine poster and CD Digi-pack and asked if anyone would kindly give us feedback and an image of this can be seen below:

Already from just posting this on Facebook, hundreds of people were able to look at and critique our two ancillary productions; Facebook allows its users to ‘like’, ‘comment on’ and ‘share’ the post – this excellent for finding out if the ancillaries where liked and to see what peoples opinion of them were in the comment section. Straight away we got a big response of people ‘liking’ the post – this meaning they liked them and thought they were good – so this was already an indication that our ancillaries were pretty good as it got sixteen likes (has got more now as this was a little while ago). After seeing that it got quite a few like I then noticed that a few comments were coming through with feedback and this can be seen below:

From these comments we were able to find out people’s opinions on the actual ancillaries as they posted them in the comments section below the pictures. All in all we got an excellent response as they were practically all positive. We had people commenting on it looking very professional, people loving the newspaper idea and how it really works to create a band image and the synergy between all the ancillaries was really good and worked well synergising with the promo. They liked how we kept conventions of posters and digi-packs but also commented on how setting them in a newspaper theme was a really good idea as it looks very professional and eye-catching. There weren’t really any bad points so we took this as really good compliments and we felt very proud of what we had produced.

And lastly, we have our final piece of feedback and this was collected on the website ‘YouTube’, what was the platform in which we wanted to exhibit our final production as we had found out in our earlier research vox pops this is where most the target audience would be able to see it and would prefer to see it. 

Once we finished our music video we received a comment on our video on YouTube. we decided to place on a public site in order to receive feedback from the general public.  We got some positive feedback shown in the first sentence when it says they really liked our video. They then go on to say how they enjoyed the cutting to the beat and that it worked out really well. They went on to say that our costume choices were good and that they thought that our editing was good. They then finished with saying our lip syncing was good, which suggests that we chose the right actor to be in our music video. This feedback was very important because it gave us a clear indication of how the public felt about our music video and if it rivaled that of an actual music video. overall the feedback is essential in making our overall judgment of the success of the music video. 

Question 4

For the thriller production we used editing software called IMovie which worked well to create a thriller. However, music promos are more technical in all areas of camerawork and editing while the themes are more technical.  IMovie doesn’t really have the specialist features to cater for music video which then affects the quality of the music video. To make sure we could make a professional looking music promo we then decided to use editing software called premiere pro, this being new editing software we needed to learn how to actually edit and all the different features which would help the music video. There were many new features that weren't on Imovie; this would help extend our creativity because there was more we place in our promo. One feature we came across was the cropping tool, when we experimented with the cropping tool we were intrigued by how we could utilise the tool in our promo.  Using premiere pro we were able to use a feature that allows multiple videos on at the same. This meant we were able to crop two videos on at the same time and play at the same time they’re both on the screen, which would create a split screen effect with both videos playing at the same time but in different places on the screen, this feature we found extremely useful and added another dimension to our promo. This also demonstrated our skill development and creativity. It also helped with the narrative of the promo because we were able to show the main artist traveling throughout the promo in different locations.  

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Completing the ancillery tasks

We also had the task of producing two ancillary tasks which is a promotional poster and a CD Digi-pack.  To achieve this we used the editing software Photoshop. I’ve had some experience using Photoshop as I had to produce sections of a magazine for my production; this came extremely useful when producing our A2 ancillary tasks as we came up with the idea of presenting our poster and CD Digi-pack in a newspaper form which is similar to a magazine so I kind of had the knowhow on how to approach making the ancillaries. Although I had experience with Photoshop it had been quite a long time since I had used it so I had to re-learn and develop my skills with it again. One of the main things I had to relearn again was getting rid of block colours (mainly white) from images and typography, especially when it comes to creating newspaper style ancillaries I used a font website called DaFont.com to find a font that would work well in a newspaper style, once I typed in what text I wanted I had to screen shot it, save the screenshot of the text and take it into the Photoshop software, but then I was stuck with text with a white background on it when I wanted the background to be transparent with the black text, I tried using the magic wand tool to highlight the white background but I came up with an error that said ‘you cannot edit this item, it is not a smart object’ what did stump me for a little while but then I found the magic rubber tool, upon clicking on the white background a message came up saying ‘turn object into smart object?’ clicking yes will then allow us to highlight the white background and delete it making the background transparent, this allowing me to put it onto the poster or CD Digi-pack and it to fit In well with the newspaper style.

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

Our first task when producing a media promotion package was we needed to find a band that we could contact to allow us to use their song however the artist needed to be unsigned in order for us to evade running into any copyright infringement problems that could prove very problematic. After searching we came across a band called '3rd Rock Revolution' and decided to choose  their song 'Put On Ya' Boots'; a song we instantly liked and thought we could definitely use and instantly liked the song and we thought the song had potential of having a good music video. We also believed we could get a good narrative out of the lyrics and potential to use a good range of techniques. After finding them we contacted them via email and Facebook and asked them for permission to use their song.

In order for us to produce and complete the research, planning, evaluation and production we needed to use a more organised programme/technology to exhibit our work. The programme we found was blogger. The programme enables us to write any work on the actual blogger however, blogger enables us to bring in other technologies such as Prezie, Padlet and video technologies such as YouTube and Moovly by having an embed feature. The use of different technologies is extremely useful because as media students we want to demonstrate the understanding of different media technologies, this also provides us with different ways of presenting our work helping us fully embrace being a media student. Blogger gives us easy access to all of our work and keeps it organized through the use of tabs that allow us to sort the work into Preliminary, Research, Planning, Production and evaluation.

YouTube has been one of the most vital technologies we have used throughout our media work. Youtube was especially helpful during the early stages of our research helping us research the different music genres and the conventions they have in their music video.  This understanding of the typical conventions of a particular music genre was essential in the production of our preliminary and final tasks. The existing music videos that we researched gave us inspiration when producing our own work. We specifically looked at the conventions of a funk rock music video because the song we chose was of the funk rock genre. We took inspiration from music videos such as Cold Play ‘The scientist’ and The Verve ‘Bitter sweet symphony. We took inspiration from Cold Play ‘The Scientist’ for our main production; we took the idea of the main artist/singer on a journey throughout the music video and shown in several different environments as the narrative unfolds. We took inspiration from The Verve ‘bitter sweet symphony’ video in which it contains a similar style to Coldplay’s ‘scientist’. YouTube helped find inspiration for our production and helped us with our research by helping us find more about our chosen band ‘3^rd Rock Revolution’ , we were able to find a couple of their videos although the majority of the video s were from live performances it still helped us create a look for the band.

We used a variety of presentation technologies throughout the production of our final piece.  One of the technologies we used was an online programme called padlet which is useful presentation software because it gave us the ability to present our working in a well-organized way. The programme also demonstrated our ability to use different technologies. Padlet allowed us to incorporate pictures and videos easily and effectively especially when presenting the different conventions of the funk rock genre which is the genre of our chosen song. We used this technology mainly when producing our job roles document and when showing the different conventions of the funk rock genre, this because it gives us a simple way of showing information. We also used presentation software called Prezi, similarly to padlet it was a new way of presenting our work. It was extremely effective in showing clearly what we wanted to achieve from the genre we chose and how we would incorporate the typical conventions of the genre. We used Prezi primarily to present the research and planning work, we also used it to pitch the ideas we had for our music video.  

Furthermore blogger was also essential when presenting explained in depth work. Blogger can be useful with the embed feature which allows us to show videos and helps us link different technologies or example Prezi and Padlet.  Another technology was Scribd, this allowed us to upload full documents such as Microsoft PowerPoint instead of the essay from, this would help demonstrate our ability to use different technologies. Another technology we used was online search engines. We used ‘Google’ which proved essential in our efforts of our research and planning as we found all the technologies through Google. We were able to find different presentation software’s and any information, especially when researching our band and their biography, and any other information we could collect about them.

Throughout  the planning of our main production  we used  different technologies to find a band on the website Unsigned.com, after searching we found a band we liked called  ‘3^rd Rock Revolution’ and their song ‘Put On Ya Boots’  we contacted the band through email for their permission to use the song to make a promo. We tried finding more about the band such as their background and if they had any previous albums. We achieved this through multiple methods but Facebook and Unsigned.com were the two most effective methods although we tried to contact them to get more information however this was unsuccessful.  Unsigned.com provided us with a small biography about the band but it wasn’t enough so we tried their Facebook page where a link sent us to their person page in which we were able to gain all the information we needed to complete our research post, which we would use in our CD Digi-pack. We realised that using Facebook and YouTube would be a brilliant way to exhibit any of our production work such as our final music promo and the 2 promotional pieces the poster and CD Digi-pack. This because we needed some sort of audience feedback to see whether there is anything that we needed to change or anything they liked and wanted us to keep.  This feedback IS very important because it gives us an accurate picture of how our products are received.

Furthermore YouTube is an excellent source for finding out what existing professional music promo contain and is extremely good for finding out the conventions of camerawork, editing and mise-ene-scene throughout the music video , specific to each genre of music. YouTube is also good because it gave us the opportunity to watch and research a vast amount of music videos that contain narrative, disjuncture and performance. YouTube is also genre specific which helped us when trying to find the different conventions of each genre. We were able to find the conventions of the Funk Rock genre as well as other genres for ideas of camera shots, editing and mise en scene. We found two songs which are now our main influences. Coldplay’s ‘scientist’ and The verve ‘Bitter sweet symphony’. Both contain a similar theme in that the main actor is portrayed alone in urban and rural locations throughout their music videos and sing while walking through different locations. The narrative is evident throughout as he walks, this is something we decided to incorporate in our music video.  We wanted the main actor to sing while walking through different locations and make the narrative evident as music promo continues. Due to the Funk Rock genre we thought that it would not work if we kept going through the same location because it would get tedious while the Funk Rock genre is more upbeat and exciting. We decided to have the main singer changing location frequently at random times throughout the music promo with interesting transitions.  This shows the disjuncture we wanted to include in our music video. We took this idea form watching the ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘can’t stop’ music promo. The music promo itself is very disjunctive and contains random interesting transitions between scenes that we wanted and thought would be interesting in our music promo.

During the filming process the group have learnt new skills and developed on some of the skills we learnt from the thriller project. For example, the first shooting and editing skills we have developed was performing graphic matches to be used as a transition from one location to another and getting the right camera shots to make the whole section look correct and edit them together so they flow seamlessly.  One section in our rough cut and final production in particular was where the main actor is in an urban city environment, walking up to a railing and vault over the railing. The transitions of jumping over another railing but into a rural field; we needed to get a longshot/mid shot of the main actor walking towards the left side of the railing in the city, then a much closer shot of the main actor going to vault over the railing . Once this scene was done we went to the field location and filmed a close up shot of the main actor vaulting over the railing and then another shot of the main actor walking off. Once filmed we placed the sections of film together and edit them by taking away portions of the video so that the timing was made to look like the main actor was vaulting into a different location. The next shooting skill that we developed was how we utilised the tripod to make it more effective, When we produced a thriller the preliminary we tried to use the camera free hand however when we looked back at the footage we didn’t like the way it looked and made it look unprofessional. This is something we definitely wanted to change to make sure we got the final production to look as good and professional as we could.  We decided that we would use the tripod in literally all the shots unless it wasn’t necessary. Doing this vastly improved the quality of the production and reduced shake on our footage making our final product look more professional and up to a good standard.

Another skill we have developed is the use of a new camera. Looking at the footage from the thriller production and the music video preliminary there is a clear improvement in quality between the thriller footage and the music video footage.  We used a camcorder for the thriller footage whereas for the music video we decided to use a DSLR camera. This meant learning how to use the DSLR properly to try and get the best out it. We had to learn it how to film, how to take pictures in various modes and how to focus the actual camera, this proved very beneficial for our end product because the quality was better than that of the thriller production.  This made our product look more like an actual music video which we lacked from the thriller production. These new skills helped us out immensely when it came to producing our ancillary poster and CD Digi-pack.  We also borrowed the photoshoot equipment, this proved to work very well with the new skills we obtained when we were filming and taking photos. The equipment helped us create more professional looking pictures which could have been included in our Digi pack or CD cover. The photoshoot equipment included giving two industry lights, a black and white backdrop screen in which we also had to learn how set up the screen and the lights properly so that the lights, lit up the backdrop screen enough to make the subject look clearer in the picture.

For the thriller production we used editing software called IMovie which worked well to create a thriller. However, music promos are more technical in all areas of camerawork and editing while the themes are more technical.  IMovie doesn’t really have the specialist features to cater for music video which then affects the quality of the music video. To make sure we could make a professional looking music promo we then decided to use editing software called premiere pro, this being new editing software we needed to learn how to actually edit and all the different features which would help the music video. There were many new features that weren’t on Imovie; this would help extend our creativity because there was more we place in our promo. One feature we came across was the cropping tool, when we experimented with the cropping tool we were intrigued by how we could utilise the tool in our promo.  Using premiere pro we were able to use a feature that allows multiple videos on at the same. This meant we were able to crop two videos on at the same time and play at the same time they’re both on the screen, which would create a split screen effect with both videos playing at the same time but in different places on the screen, this feature we found extremely useful and added another dimension to our promo. This also demonstrated our skill development and creativity. It also helped with the narrative of the promo because we were able to show the main artist travelling throughout the promo in different locations. 

We also had the task of producing two ancillary tasks which is a promotional poster and a CD Digi-pack.  To achieve this we used the editing software Photoshop. I’ve had some experience using Photoshop as I had to produce sections of a magazine for my production; this came extremely useful when producing our A2 ancillary tasks as we came up with the idea of presenting our poster and CD Digi-pack in a newspaper form which is similar to a magazine so I kind of had the knowhow on how to approach making the ancillaries. Although I had experience with Photoshop it had been quite a long time since I had used it so I had to re-learn and develop my skills with it again. One of the main things I had to relearn again was getting rid of block colours (mainly white) from images and typography, especially when it comes to creating newspaper style ancillaries I used a font website called DaFont.com to find a font that would work well in a newspaper style, once I typed in what text I wanted I had to screen shot it, save the screenshot of the text and take it into the Photoshop software, but then I was stuck with text with a white background on it when I wanted the background to be transparent with the black text, I tried using the magic wand tool to highlight the white background but I came up with an error that said ‘you cannot edit this item, it is not a smart object’ what did stump me for a little while but then I found the magic rubber tool, upon clicking on the white background a message came up saying ‘turn object into smart object?’ clicking yes will then allow us to highlight the white background and delete it making the background transparent, this allowing me to put it onto the poster or CD Digi-pack and it to fit In well with the newspaper style.

When filming and editing there were times where we ran into difficulty.  Firstly when we started recording it was our first time using the DSLR which meant it took tome to figure out how to use the basic functions. There were many complicated functions especially when taking pictures. There were different modes when taking photos and when recording , figuring how to use these functions took time however proved useful when we used them in our work. Another problem we ran into was the camera is at times we forgot to use the auto focus function on the camera, which meant some of our first footage was not of a good quality which led to the re-filming of certain parts of the promo to make sure we got the right quality. Another filming problem we had to tackle was the tri-pod we used on the main shooting day when fully assembled did not work the way we wanted, for example in some parts we used the tripod it looked slanted which made making our footage quite shaky and wobbly at times.

There were some problems we faced when editing our production, for example learning the new editing software and all the different complex features. However after experimenting with the software and using Google tutorials we were able to rectify this problem.  Another problem that we came across in editing our production was when cutting and cropping footage. We wanted to have different videos playing at different times while on the screen at the same time however when we tried to cut the sound form the footage and use the actual song the actual song would get mixed up and changed.  To fix this we had to delete the song entirely from computer we were using and re upload the song every time we did this which proved time consuming. Furthermore, we ran into a problem with the premiere pro editing software, in which even though making sure we saved our production after every piece of editing, we kept losing files and editing footage, this disrupted our editing schedule but we did manage to fully edit our production.

Question 1 conventions analysis

Conventions of the Funk Rock genre

 

 

Conventions of funk rock genre
https://www.moovly.com/en/project/view/b03ea104-4b10-bac1


The cinematography, Funk Rock typically adheres to the conventions of most music promos however at times subverts the typical conventions by producing music videos that have no relevance to the lyrical content. This is a familiar appearance in the Funk Rock genre mostly shown by bands such as the red hot chilli peppers, this is because one of the conventions of the Funk Rock genre is the artists are usually eccentric in the way they dress which is regularly. Long shots are used to dramatize the scene by adding eye pleasing shots of the scenery these scenes usually show shot with very pleasing backgrounds . Also a lot of close ups are used of the main vocalist, which is one of the main conventions of a music video. This follows Andre Goodwin’s theory of music videos demonstrating genre characteristics and fulfilling of record label demands. Because the funk rock genre is a mixture of Funk and rock music, funk rock demonstrates characteristics of these genres one of which is rock this means the decision to place the main singers in the view of the audience constantly throughout the music video suggests the audience want to idolize them to loyal fans. Indie pop however focuses equally on performance and narrative dependant on the artist. , this may be done through the use of long shots and close ups to shots to engage the audience further and demonstrate the band the interesting elements in the music video. For example, the red hot chilli peppers song ‘Californacation’.

 

Editing like in all music promos is determined by the tempo of the song. The Funk Rock genre however is made abstract through the use establishing shots that show the location of the band, to make the music promo more creative but also to make it more slow paced and interesting because it shows the narrative of the music video whether the music video is disjuncture or illustration. In the funk rock genre Editing is not excessive would most promos that are involved with this genre like to stick to realism as shown in the lyrical content, portraying their life experiences; they are usually telling a story of their experiences. An example of a music video that doesn’t use excessive editing is D’angelo’s ‘How does it feel’. The song has elements of the funk rock genre and the song ‘Can’t stop’ by the red hot chilli peppers, where you can see by the screenshot on the right, there is an established shot that shows the location and scenery.

Within Mise en scene, settings vary with the song’s theme and sub-genre. Funk Rock splits between Funk and rock and so there is usually a mixture of locations in different music promos. Some Funk Rock promos may be seen in interesting places where they are emphasized more such as in the red hot chilli song ‘Can’t stop’, where the promo is based in a white area that shows an interesting place. Whereas others may be set in a city area that is quiet and focuses more on the narrative such as the verve  ‘bittersweet symphony’, in which there is only one person present from the band walking through a city centre. The majority of times, Funk rock tries to follow an unrealistic approach this is mainly because the narrative is usually disjuncture, therefore the props used are usually random. Costume is usually the same and highly emphasized, especially on the vocalist/band, where they promote their style of fashion which is usually different and unconventional for an example the main singer from the red hot chilli peppers  and sly and the family stone. Both bands show very different dress sense which is usually unconventional, which could influence fans to wear.