Evaluation Question 1

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

For our A2 media coursework my group decided to go about creating a music video and Digipak. We chose this as we believed it would go well with the strengths of the group in the way of filming and editing. At the beginning of the research stage we looked into other artist music videos such as Eminem’s ‘Stan’ and ‘21 Guns’ by Green Day. After in-depth research into the music video marked we set about deciding upon a song to use each member had their own idea’s to put forward with songs such as ‘Time Is Running Out’, by Muse and Miles Kane’s, ‘Come Closer’ all given consideration however we decided it was important to use one that the entire group believed in and that we could all see a final product with this song. Therefore we decided upon ‘Young Blood’ by The Naked and Famous. This song had the potential to allow us to use the ideas that we had for the narrative. The main theme is that of young life and we wanted to incorporate scenes of people simply enjoying themselves while they are young before the stresses of adult life take over. When looking at the conventions of music videos we were aided by Andrew Goodwin’s ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ which gave us an understanding of the rules when making a music video.

In nearly all music videos it is necessary for several close up shots of the lead singer, especially if there is a performance aspect to the video. This gives the lead singer authority and makes them the focal point of the video for the viewer. In The Kaiser chiefs ‘I Predict a Riot’ and Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire’ there are clear examples of this. Therefore we made sure that our final piece had close up shots of our lead singers (Becky) face throughout the video. We also thought that we could add our own aspect to this and often included fading the features of her face as we started or ended the shot. A good example of this can be seen at the end of the video as the music dies out her features become less clear. You can see in the two examples that it is important that the singers face is in the center of the shot, which again is something that we incorporated into our product.     

By using a mix of performance and narrative we challenged the conventions of many indie rock videos as the majority use one or the other. Kings of Leon shoot their entire film in the same venue which is a complete contrast to the wide variety of locations that we have used. Similar to Miles Kane in his video for ‘Come Closer’, however Kane is present in most of the shots whereas we only have the band members performing in the performance parts. Our Narrative section can be much more closely linked with that of Arcade Fire's 'The Suburbs'. We found many of our ideas from watching this video, although it is entirely narrative it has a theme of (young life) similar to that of the song we had chosen.

We saw that videos such as ‘The suburbs’ and ‘I predict a riot’ had shots of groups of people enjoying themselves in ways such as a pillow fight or BB gun fight. Therefore we decided to include the color powder scene. Color powder is something we had planned to use from the beginning. Similar to Arcade Fire we shot our fight in a empty car park and just asked the group of people we had brought to have fun whilst we filmed and the outcome was successful and shows well the theme of young people having fun. In ‘I Predict a Riot’ there is a shot of the people walking in holding their pillows. This we realized was very important as it is similar to an establishing shot and gives the viewer an idea of what is happening, for this reason we filmed the group walking into the car park clearly holding the powder in their hands.

 

Another scene from the Arcade fire video that we liked was where the boys are riding their bikes through the street. It again shows the theme of (young life) and s a typical activity that the younger generation enjoy. This was the exact situation we wanted to film. Hence we used several shots of bikes and scooters, although we decided to film in a skate park rather than a street as it looked better and more interesting when the rider could perform tricks. The shot of a man on a scooter doing a flip over the ramp is not only extremely effective but also clearly related to the shot from Arcade Fires video. Personally this is my favorite shot of our entire video, as it really captures the skater’s enjoyment, I also believe that it could easily be placed in any professional music video and would not look out of place. We used natural lighting in the same way as Arcade Fire did to give a realistic impression of everyday life, in order to get this impression we dressed the actors in outfits that they would normally wear when out in a skate park. Another shot we took was of Dom (who is a member of the group) in a BMX bike hall, once more we filmed him performing tricks in order to make it more interesting to the viewer.

For the performance aspect the conventions of music videos showed that it was important to show some long shots of the entire band, this can be seen throughout the majority of performance based videos, including Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire’ and The Killers ‘Human’ in which you can clearly see the entire band. In our video we added in some shots of the band with as always the lead singer at the front and the drummer at the back which is what the conventions of music videos show us.  This is important to most music videos but to ours it’s even more so, as the band members do not feature in the narrative which takes up a large amount of the video and therefore could lead them to becoming a side part instead of the main feature. Though with the long shot it gives the feel of a live performance. This gives the audience a feeling of being there and allows them to recognize the band and establish a difference between that and the story of what happens in the narrative. The lead singer is always the focal point of a band however the other members also serve an important role and a few close up shots of them needed to be included, the shot of the drummer, through the drums is very powerful as it seems as if you are part of the kit, the smoke machine and positioning of the lights create a surreal effect.  In the performance most bands seem to have a distinctive look in their videos and in fact throughout all the media they use, the killers have a smart and sophisticated style where as kings of Leon are much more rough and ready. With this in mind we went for a country rock look with the lead singer and guitarist both sporting checked shirt and denim bottoms, and the keyboard player (myself) wearing a denim jacket.

 

The lighting was extremely important so we chose to use flood lights, these were very powerful construction lights for building with halogen bulbs that give off a yellow light which is perfect for what we wanted. It was our plan to use the same approach that Huse Monfaradi took when filming the music video to the Arctic Monkeys 'Brianstrom'. There is a section in our song where the lead guitarist played by Luke has a singing role and the lighting behind him creates a great intensity to a part of the song which is slow but has a lot of meaning “count up all our mistake” this is a line from his vocals which is quite intense and the lighting behind him almost has a religious quality, like he is giving an answer to the viewer. It is very similar to the lighting used in the video for brainstorm as you can see.

One way in which we went against the conventions of music videos is in the inclusion of steel wool photography. I have never seen this type of effect used in any music videos before. Steel wool photography is actually a photo you get from spinning lighted steel wool. Which we were at first planning on using for the Digipak.  However the actual motion of making the picture is intriguing and we decided to film it and add it to the video. It is important that it was dark with low lighting due to this allowing the sparks from the wool to almost look like stars in the sky. We would not have put this in just because it looked good however it has a meaning, showing a young person discovering something new.

 

The most important convention is that of editing with the beat and tempo of the song. As the video starts we see a man in his car turning on the radio and as he finds the right station the music comes on which was detailed editing, again as the main drum beat kicks in we go from a darkened hall with shadowy figures to a bright light stage with the members of the band clearly visible. This editing give a real impact to the viewer as when the beat kicks in the video also comes to life.

Ancillary Task

            With the Ancillary tasks we set about our research by looking at other artists posters and album covers, first we looks at the artist we were using The Naked and Famous. We noticed that they used the same image for the front and back of their album along with the poster. Although we realised that it was very important to have a house style along the media we decided not to use the same picture instead similar or different photos of the same scene.

More extensive research showed that very few artists use photos of the band members for their album Digipaks, instead it is often a scene or an object. What we did find that most used was a band logo, so we found The naked and Famous logo and used that as the base of our Digipak.  At first we believed it necessary to link the Digipak to the Video its self, however once we realized that the album cover and advert represented the entire album not just the single our ideas for the them became far more inventive.

We tested an idea of using food coloring in water which when photographed the vibrancy and contrast of the colors gave a great effect. Henceforth we decided upon using this as a theme for our ancillary task.  You can see the outcome from this and also the clear house style throughout. The picture itself although having a very professional look was simple enough to take it was just the timing that was important.

The magazine advert like many others is the same photo as the album cover; this creates an immediate link between the two. Our research it magazine adverts such as The Stone Roses advert which you can see led us to discover it is important to add where you can purchase the product there for we included the logo for Play.com and Itunes. We also decided to add in the logo for Facebook and Twitter as they both would be popular social networking sites of the age group for our target audience. The final addition was the incorporation of a release date which is found on all music magazine adverts.

Ancillary task research

Ancillary Tasks

Intro By Matt

One thing i wanted to do for our music video was make a small intro animation that we would put before the video from the sponsor as if it was being displayed online or on television. As our target industry was MTV I decided to use their logo and channel as a basis for this intro. Watching some of there channels and looking at their website made me notice that after the adverts on a t.v. program a small intro would appear for the music video. Also small animation would reveal the artist and name of the song behind the music video.

Seeing this made me think that this would be a very cool thing to produce on after effects pushing our video a little further ahead than anyone else's and giving it that "wow factor" with the opening scenes showing both a smooth animation and a shot with the glass effect I produced in after effects before hand.


Therefore I got to work. knowing our target industry was MTV i obtained the MTV logo off the internet and imported into photoshop where I produced many different versions of it each I may or may not use. From white, black, transparent and even glowing images to give me a base of content to experiment with in after effects.


















After this I imported them into after effects along with the opening window shot. I seen on some of the the TV channels an intro where the MTV logo was actually transparent with the upcoming video, programme playing behind the video. I thought this was very cool so thought this would be a brillaint idea to recreate. I saved the transparent logo as a PNG file which keeps the transparency instead of filling it in as white as a JPEG would normally do. I then brought this in to the composition and layered a shot underneath to play but only be visible underneath the MTV logo space. I then added a mask on the "Music Television" caption to the logo to move horizontally in the first few seconds revealing the caption and allowing the footage to play for a bit.




I then wanted the logo and footage to fade and invert so the logo became "filled" and the background would change to the footage. What i did for the is have another version of the logo but black (Later changed to white). I then key-framed the opacity of the first logo to decrease and at the same rate key framed the black logo to increase. This made the made it look as if the logo was filling up and taking shape which I really liked.



Next I wanted the logo to move into the top corner where it would remain for the rest of the video. So at the frame the filled logo was 100% I key-framed it start moving towards the top left corner which was quite simple. I also key-framed the size so the logo shrunk in proportion.



After this I wanted the both the bar to reveal the artists name and the "Rocks" logo to appear as this was going to appear on MTV rocks. Firstly imported a created Rocks identical to the one on their website into after effects. I then scaled it to the right size and proportion where I wanted and then added a linear wipe transition. I changed the angle to O degrees and key framed the percentage over a second so it looked like the rocks slid down from the logo instead of horizontally.



Next I worked on the bar. I originally chose turquoise but quickly changed this to green to match the MTV rocks logo. I created a solid layer and appropriately scaled this to where I wanted it. I then added a card wipe effect on which provides this really cool mexican wave sort of effect as the "introduction". I messed around with the settings so it appeared to power or light up the bar. I then created to two text layers one with "The Naked and Famous" and the other "Young Blood". I transitioned these with venetian blinds which is a plug in that makes the text appear to flip and rotate around onto the screen. This created a small effect which isn't very noticeable but it was these small features that make the difference between professional and amateur videos. I key-framed them and layered them above the solid bar to take it in turn. Once they had disappeared i then used the linear wipe at a 270 degree angle to retreat back into the logo.



Once it had been rendered out i was extremely happy with my final result.


Glass Window Effect

One of the shots we wanted to do opening the music video would be a shot of someone tuning the radio of their car as if the song was being played on a radio station. We got this idea from the Clavin Harris music video "Feel so Close". We shot this particular shot from a number of different angles. However half way through I thought of the idea that what if the camera was to appear to go through the glass window of the passenger side on the car. I didn't exactly know how it would work but decided to have a played around.

If the window was removed in the actual footage it would allow us to have a steadi camera path and then I could then just add this back in post production. Therefore we rolled the window down and manually focused in the final position. Then with my hands just guided the camera slowly and steadily through the window into the camera to bring Doms hand on the radio into focus.











Once we had the original footage I then had the task of editing it. Unfortunately watching it back i realised that all through I was trying my hardest to keep it as steady as possible there was still a reasonable amount of camera shake. Therefore I imported the footage into after effects and brought up the tracking window (images above).

I then selected one part of the frame that stays in the shot throughout the composition (gear stick) to track the movements over time. This shows me the direction of the footage movement and any severe shakes will show in the tracking movements as there wont be a straight line. I then restricted the movement of the footage to allow for a steady flow as if the camera was gliding through the window. This produced the video below, as you can see there is a massive difference between the two shots (below).



Once this i had been done i began the task of adding in the window which I knew would take me a while as I was trialling lots of different techniques to see which worked. The one finally found to work was using a pre composite made up of multiple layers on a mask.



Firstly i started out on the first frame where the window was "biggest" and the most of it could be seen. I then created a solid layer and used the pen tool to draw around where I would want the window to be in the shot.

I then masked out the rest of the shot so only the solid layer was visible in the shape of the window. I then precomposed this shot, which turns the shot into a folder in other words so I would have to deal with lots of layers on the original project file.


The next thing i had to do then was actually texture the video. The first thing I added was a gradient or ramp in after effects. Looking at the small window next to it I could see that the overall tone of the windows was a pale blue and it was slightly darker at the bottom compared to the top. I then added this on a alpha matte paired to the solid layer (pen tooled window) so that gradient filled the solid layers spot. When the opacity was lowered it gave a very nice effect (seen to the below) however it was just not realistic enough.




So i thought what else would a window have, dirt? The most obvious thing that can make a massive difference is the texture to the window not just the shade and positioning. I then imported an image of a dirty texture I got off the image. I colour corrected using curves and the toner to have a more blue base so it would overlay easier. I then added it to the pre-composite and increased the contrast/exposure slightly to make it slightly more visible. I then added a mask to the top as there would usually be only dirt on the bottom side of the window from driving. Then feathered it out to make sure there was a gradual development of dirt and not a cut off line between clean and dirty making it appear more natural.





The image was getting better but there was still something missing to make it complete, a reflection. Windows reflect there background and it was essential to add one to finally finish off the texture of the window. I went on the internet and found a image of a field with trees and a nice sky. As the car windows are slightly pointed up wards i made sure it was essential for a lot of the sky to be able to be seen. I then played around with the curves again to increase the contrast but also decrease the overall tone of the image as reflections aren't known for being the brightest. Finally this created a realistic window i was very happy with.







Now i had my window I had to track it to the actual video. Unfortunately there was no way of me being able to track to whole clip and pin the solid matte to that spot and the most of the matte eventually goes out of the shot, which meant I was going to have to do it manually. I pressed the key frame button on the shape of vector, position and scale and then skipped a head and repositioned all the attributes to fit in the shot again. This took some time but it meant i could personally make sure all the frames were in shot and rightly framed.



However when it got to the point where all of the sides of the window were out of shot, it was hard to guess how much the window would increase and move to throughout the rest of the composition. Therefore I used this graph see the past rate of scale and position and then projected this path throughout the rest of the frames.



I was now into the final stages of the shot. At the end of the shot I know had to create the illusion that the camera was traveling through the glass. I traveled to that point I thought it would in relation to the surroundings of the shot and lowered the opacity using keyframes so it would gradually decrease. I then wanted to create a sort of ripple that would happen across the screen to reinforce the illusion that we were traveling through glass.

Therefore i created another pre-composite of a white strip which I feathered out and animated to move across the screen at the same point we "travel" through the glass. Then created an adjustment layer with a displacement map making sure only the horizontal displacement was applied and parented the source of the map to the animated rectangle. So when we pass through the window the displacement map bends the video across the screen quickly. Finally render is below which I am very happy with.