Editing/Showcase - 31st March 2011

Today, with regards to the feedback from our showcase yesterday, we filmed our narrative characters walking down some stairs to the gig as our teacher mentioned it is somewhat confusing towards the end (of our rough cut of the music video) as the characters from the narrative are not seen a lot in the gig at the end. We did originally film Bradley walking down the stairs in the actual venue, however there was a non-continuity error as he was wearing a hoody that i wear throughout the video. Also at the time of the gig, the other people who act as the narrative characters were not yet established as their roles at the time of the gig and were therefore not with us. We filmed in our drama studio in the dark staircase as we felt this created an appropriate setting and fitted in with what the gig venue could look like. This highlighted the fact that we were in fact in the gig.

Yesterday our group showed the class a rough version of our music video. This allowed us to attain feedback and see things from a fresh perspective so that we could realise the things that may be good or bad about the video such as non-continuity features and narrative errors. Here is the feedback we attained from our teacher...

Our teacher suggested that we include more footage of us ending up at the gig. We did have some shots of this but we thought we may have needed to film in our drama studio and imitate the lights to make sure that this is clear to the audience, however due to a lack of time and paticular members not having free lessons or time after school to do so we have had to make do with the shots we had. We have however edited these successfully and believe that they look effective.

Here are evaluation sheets from other members of the class...

It was clear from these evaluations that our music video seemed to confuse some as the narrative was not finished. As well as this, the sound of this video was incredibly bad quality and so some people may have marked us down on this aspect. Also there were some clips in the gig where I (Louise) could be seen to have been filming but we have edited that out now.

Shot List

For our narrative filming we also created a shot list which allowed us to drag and drop clips into final cut easily and find, to the exact second, the shot we wanted to u

Editing - 30th March 2011

Today I edited more narrative into the music video, mainly involving Bradley (the character having a bad day) From the filming we attained last week i created a sequence where this character receives a text telling him he is dumped. I made this fall exactly on the beat to the lyric 'He told me ten, ten, ten, ten, ten time.' and believed this was effective. I also incorporated two other shots of Bradley looking upset which effectively cut up a large chunk of gig footage which seemed to last too long.

Today we had our showcase and gained feedback from our teacher and others about how to improve our video.


This is a description of how we edit on Final cut express:

Editing - 29th March 2011

Today I stayed after school to edit. I had not edited by myself before and this helped a lot as i became much quicker and more confident with the programme. I added large parts to the video such as establishing shots of camden. As well as this i edited other parts of already existing footage in order to make them fall on the beat and ensure shots did not carry on for too long and bore the audience. 

Update on editing

We are currently editing our music video and are incorporating many conventional features of this genre.


For example...


Camera shots
We've incorporated:

• Long shots
• Establishing shots
• Medium shots
• Medium close-ups
• Close-ups

• Low angle shots

• High angle shots

• Static/motionless shots
• Tracking shots
• Shaky camera shots (often used in gig/characters waking up at beginning- effective - forces the audience to concentrate)
• Out of focus shots

And we hope to achieve more Extreme close-ups when we re-film some parts of our narrative this Saturday.

We will re-film in order to fill some empty spaces on the timeline of our editing. At the moment we have a method of editing in which we have lined up all of the gig footage so that the audio fits in with the band playing the song and so when we incorporate more narrative footage we can easily revert back to the gig. This also gives us more ideas of what shots of the gig we really want to keep and which shots can be replaced by narrative.  

In terms of editing we are using many conventional features of music video (and especially so of the British Ska genre) such as jump cuts, speed alterations, editing on the beat, short crisp cuts and soon we will colour correct our video in order to highlight different atmospheres and create connotations about the two different categories of characters in the music video and also the messages we aim to convey.

In order to help us edit the gig we created a shot list so that we could refer back to this whenever we needed a certain shot (almost like a glossary) and now we will do this for our narrative filming. 

My Final Album cover - The Skints

CODES

· The use of the money falling from the human body trouser pocket and out onto the floor through the skeleton = Overall money is fleeting. You get it, you spend it. Not a constant factor.

· Use of skeleton = Money can change you for the worse. Scary connotations = Remove you from reality, dehumanising, makes you powerful and at the same time makes people fear you. Can’t take it with you when you’re dead and thus people should enjoy their lives – not ‘work themselves into an early grave’

· Skeleton stands alone = Loneliness. Money does not necessarily equal company/good company.

· Industrial/urban background & smoke = Not particularly pleasant. Money doesn’t equal happiness. Money’s creating these buildings and ruining the environment. Making things look dull/bleak and depressing. Money = sinister.

· Colours: Green = X-ray, MONEY, environment

· Black = Death, ruining of the environment. Draining of colour and life due to obsession with money. Colours within the skeleton/body symbolises unhealthy lifestyle or how obsession with money = unhealthy as red = danger/blood and purple = hazy and unclear.

· Inverted X-ray machine (i.e. body = X-ray) = Holding up a mirror to the fact that money is ephemeral. Body = surface/face value/ glamorous lifestyle - what others see of people that have money. Skeleton & background = reality of money. Sinister, loneliness etc.

· Hat/suit on skeleton = suggest material things that money buys. Connotes perhaps ‘gangster’ lifestyle. Suggesting how money can be acquired unlawfully. Ominous.

· Brick Wall = Self-referential to their single ‘Up against the wall’

· Title – ‘Ephemeral style’ = Barcode again referencing money. Alludes to ‘Gorillaz’ ‘Feel good inc.’ This band could be seen to be quite alternative/edgy and with this reference audiences may realise this and link the two together and therefore think that ‘The Skints’ may have a similar style or attitude. Also Ephemeral by definition means: Lasting for a markedly brief time. Which can, again be linked back to money.

· Graffiti of the words ‘The Skints’ – Suggests ‘The Skints’ are the pole opposite to the everything connoted in the album cover. Juxtaposition. Depiction of East London (where 

'The Skints’ are from)

Conventions:

• Barcode
• Band Name
• Album title
• Image 
• Song names/length (on the back)
• Small print/record name (i.e. us michael, louise, bradley = mlb)
• Spine

Who would this album cover appeal to?

• The Skints fans may understand that the skeleton is synonymous with other Skints album covers and so may be attracted to this album cover.
• Teenagers may also be attracted due to the use of cartoon imagery and colour. The album cover itself appears to seem quite 'grungey' and therefore this demographic may be interested due to this.

Where would this album/album cover be distributed?

• Due to the nature of the band (i.e. not overly famous but have a loyal fan base/gathering and being closer to audience) this album could be sold at gigs, on itunes, individual record stores and perhaps in HMV as they are still quite well known. This band are likely to promote themselves through free merchandise etc. and therefore could sell their single 'up against the wall' for free. The album art will therefore be downloaded automatically as well.

Back Cover

Back/front

Update/Album art

Unfortunately yesterday, when we had planned to film, a member of the group and a friend who played a character in the narrative both could not make the filming day and so we could not get any more footage. We hope to re-arrange for another day but until then we will carry on editing as hopefully this will give us a greater insight into what shots we need to attain. We will also watch more music video's in lessons to give us more idea's. In the meantime i have been creating my album cover. 


__________________________________________________________________________________

I have been familiarising myself with photoshop as i have previously used photoimpression5 (a less advanced programme) In order to create my album cover i have altered many other images and attained a photo of Bradley (other group member)...

Originally i made the skeleton (from my idea) look like this...

The skeleton/skull is a combination of two different images. Originally the skull had a black background and was not inverted. I inverted this as well as the body but they were still not the same colour and so i edited the hue/saturation and brightness/contrast in order to make them appear to fit together. However this image seemed to be bare and i felt the body/head still did not fit together. 

I then inverted the image once more as this appeared to make the skeleton look more realistic. I cropped the skeletons arm and pasted it into word and rotated it/pasted back to MS paint so that it fitted in with the image of Bradley (who is supposedly in the xray machine)...

I inserted the image then and altered the size of the skeleton so that it'd fit in with Bradley's body. I don't think this worked very well...

I then tried to fit in some other idea's i had had such as a hat to insinuate wealth, as well as the falling money. I also experimented with the filter effect of clouds on photoshop (on the left) none of these appeared to look professional or effective...

I experimented with many features on photoshop such as the artistic-neon glow option in order to create the effect on the skeleton. I done the same with the hat. At the moment i have rough idea's for the final album cover. I have downloaded some fonts and hope to make these glow by altering the blending options on photoshop. So far i have also been experimenting with different brushes on photoshop which also give me more idea's for the content of the album cover...

I altered Bradley's body shape constantly and used tools such as rubber/magic rubber to remove backgrounds. I have also created this on many different layers in order to be able to move objects around and get more idea's. I edited Bradley's body by posterising it/increasing the hue/saturation and brightness/contrast so that it stood out when i reduced the opacity, and made it so that people could still see the bones of the skeleton. In order to ensure the arms were in the right position i once again rotated them on word and pasted them back to paint. I made the background of these pasted images transparent in order to be able to reposition them against the skeleton body once more. I am slightly disappointed with the positioning of the photo against the body due to the skeleton seemingly being too long but i hope to correct this in the future somehow. I selected money from images using the quick selection tool and edited the hue/saturation and brightness/contrast in order to make them stand out. 

These two covers are just an experiment with different brushes. I have watched tutorials on many things to do with photoshop that i previously could not do such as radial gradient backgrounds and making my own glowing shape using the pen tool. I hope to further my knowledge and improve/add to my album cover whilst still maintaining what i believe 'The skints' is about.

Filming - Mise en scene & update

In order to establish our characters as reflecting the 'east london ska' genre we used mise en scene greatly in order to highlight the lifestyle of the characters in our narrative. At the beginning of our music video, when all characters are waking up, we decided that mise en scene should be a key feature to allow the audience to understand and recognise this stereotype.





In this clip (filmed in my brothers bedroom) i have incorporated objects which i feel can represent the 'rebellious' and 'youthful' lifestyle that we wished to create. For example, rebellion is highlighted through the condoms, alcohol and 'sheesha' smoking pipe. I also believe that the 'virginia' roll up cigarettes and 'own brand' cider defines these teenagers as being more laid back or typical 'broke' students who are not too concerned about material things and only have the money for inexpensive cigarettes and alcohol anyway. Messy and cluttered mise en scene has been created in order to highlight the 'rebellious' characters devil-may care attitude. This also fits in with the storyline of the narrative, as the rebellious characters 'bunk' school to have a fun day out and do what they want to do, yet the good character follows rules and does what people want him to do and yet has a very bad day because he isn't pleasing himself, but everybody else. 


In terms of incorporating this into the music video, we have currently sped up this footage in order to fit in with the fast pace of the song and the introduction however when doing this the footage has become noticeably more shaky. We are undecided as to whether to keep this speed or not, as although it allows for less time and more footage at the beginning it may not look as effective. A possible suggestion would be to cut this clip in between others during the introduction but this may also not look as effective. We will try this tomorrow and decide. 


Update


We are re-filming in Camden on Saturday in order to get some better quality shots. I believe we should use the tripod a lot more often and we will need to direct better and be more tough. Originally we did not wish to tell people how to act on camera constantly as we thought this would create a less naturalistic atmosphere e.g. if we told people to laugh and be jolly it would be noticeable in the video that they were uncomfortable or being false. However the right mix of direction and naturalism should work best. Another thing that we definitely need to do is to review all footage that we record immediately after and not let one person take singular responsibility.  


At the moment we are editing and have one minute of rough footage put together which we will gradually add to and improve. We have decided to include lots of jump cuts which fall on the beat of the music and sped up footage which will make the audience aware of the production process. We feel any graphic features or fonts in the music video will not fit into the genre very effectively as although we wish to make it post-modern we still want to create realism.

Update

Our group are having a great deal of problems with regards to technology. Our footage has been converted but appears to be lagging, perhaps meaning we need to convert it to higher definition. As well as this there was administrative errors on the mac that we edit on so that we could not delete or upload anything. This was sorted out but lost us a quarter of our lesson. Everything is going very slowly and at the same time i am still carrying on with my album art and forming idea's about the magazine advertisement for the digipak by brainstorming and doing rough graphology sketches.

Update

At the moment our group are in the long process of converting our footage in order to edit. We aim to film the main part of the narrative with the 'good character' this coming wednesday the 9th (today is the 7th) In the meantime we are working on our album art etc. 

Links

LINK TO MAIN BLOG:
http://yr13musicvideo.blogspot.com/


LINK TO OUR GROUP BLOG:
www.mlbvideo.blogspot.com

Star Image - Florence & The Machine

Florence Welch i.e. Florence & The Machine is a singer songwriter. She is a passionate and soulful folk singer. There are mystical themes incorporated into her songs which translates greatly into her dramatic image. She is very unique and is constantly astounding people with her powerful voice. She uses her image as a factor with which to establish herself. Clearly her less common fiery red mane separates her from other artists and her dramatic wardrobe depicts her nature.

Changes in the music industry

Technology is ever changing and proliferating. It eases communication and makes information available to a large amount of people across the globe. People can access a number of different media forms through the means of technology, causing media convergence whereby media genres and styles combine to form a whole new media form. For example, music video is a combination of both the music media format and a short film like sequence, yet this media form establishes itself through slight differences such as using lighting, mise en scene, editing and camera work to shock the audience or make them aware of the fact that this is a music video and that they are the viewer.


Technology is a used largely as a platform for music artists in particular today in order to establish themselves and directly target their demographic or viewer, thereby disposing of/reducing the part of the middle man (i.e. the record company/label) This is now a vital part of any artists marketing strategy.


An artist may do this through the means of:


Social networking sites: 

• Facebook:- an artist can create a 'fan group' that people can join and listen to music/find out information about gigs/tours look at photos and read a brief bio of the artist/band.
• Myspace:- an artist can create a page featuring their music/gig/tour info, post pictures and brief bio which can be attained by a fan by 'adding' the artist/band to their friends list.
• Twitter:- an artist or band can create a personal account where they can post a brief bit of information such as their thoughts/feelings or just commercial information such as about gig dates/launches of albums etc. This can help this artist build a larger fan base as people may be able to relate to them more.

Other websites:

• Magazine/newspaper websites:- Artists/Bands could be interviewed and read about by fans and heard about through the means of official articles.
• Official artist/band website:- A fan can gain information directly from the band/bands manager/record label.
• Last fm:- A fan can listen to a range of acts signed/unsigned on an online playlist and read info about them/look at photo's etc.
• Spotify:- A band/artist can allow fans/people to listen to their music on a music programme/playlist which cannot be downloaded but just listened to through a computer/laptop/phone etc.
• Youtube:- Anyone from the public can create an account and post video's. Artists/bands can post original/cover songs and can build a strong fan base sometimes leading to bigger things.
• Itunes:- Fans can download signed/unsigned artists/bands songs for a small amount of money per single. Can establish a fan base. People can be promoted and allow free downloads of their songs (e.g. radiohead)

Other forms:

• Music Channels:- Such as MTV, TMF etc. used to display an artist/bands music video.
• Music shows:- E.G. Top of the pops, freshly squeezed and competitions such as x-factor/orange rock corps. where potential but unsigned bands/artists receive the opportunity to build their own fan base via national tv, often with the result of winning a recording deal/contract.
• Radio:- Music played directly to the public of mainly signed bands. Often organise events such as gigs/festivals etc.

Technology in the production process:-

Autotune (a genre): Creation of music to enhance the sound of the voice.

Digital Recording (music programmes such as fruit loops)

Many other changes have occured in the music industry, not just in technological terms

The causes of all of these features have bought about a big change in the importance of image. At the same time changes in the music industry have made things progressively easier for a band or artist to establishing themselves without relying totally on a manager/record label etc.