Evaluation

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


My media product was a music video which accompanied the song The Girl by City And Colour. The song is about a man who is singing to his lover, who he seems to constantly take for granted, which is a common theme throughout the history of music.

My music video is a narrative. It presents the story of a boy who is more interested in spending time with his friends then with his girlfriend. This eventually becomes too much for his girlfriend who then decides to finish their relationship. There are some scenes of the boy contemplating his actions and a sense of time passing, and when he eventually comes to collect his things from his girlfriend’s house, he realises how much of a mistake he has made. The story is resolved when the boy calls his girlfriend to apologise, and they make up with a kiss.

This fits in very well with the normal conventions of music videos. There are many narrative examples of stories which are similar to this. For example, Fall For You by Secondhand Serenade (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mb8k8lfkmc).

There is also a lot of close up shots of the singer, and his instrument, which is an extremely common occurrence in music videos. Here is an example where instruments are the focus of the music video – Focker by Late Of The Pier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz5Dei5O3xY).

How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary texts?

My main product is set in a variety of locations, meaning that there are many themes I can link it to. The album cover is a still taken from the actual music video, meaning that the combination of the two effectively creates a matching product. The still also reflects the theme of the album, which is love. The back of the album cover is very vintage – it has a grey, vintage pattern as a background, with a vintage style text with the song titles. This reflects the sound produced by the band – they are typically an indie pop band, with a one off acoustic track. Both genres are suited to the vintage feel, as our target market are trendy young people, who will appreciate the look and feel of this album cover.

The inside of the album is an image of the bands central instrument – The MicroKORG. This product was designed to look and feel vintage, with a modern kick, hence why the side panels are made from wood, and the keyboard itself boasts grey colours, however, there is a kick of vibrant red lights, and fun sized keys which give the product a fresh, modern feel. This was a perfect image to include in the album cover, as it basically sums up our target market – modern people with vintage tastes; and it also congregates with the front and back covers of the album.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

I have screened my music video to two different sets of audience. The first screening was of my rough cut, which helped me develop my rough cut into the final product. The group delivered some constructive feedback, which I was able to include in the final cut.

The main thing which concerned the audience was the length of some of the clips in the beginning – they felt that some were too long. To resolve this issue, I reshot some of the earlier clips and cut up the longer clips, creating a variety of angles in the same clip.

The audience were also concerned with my ending, as there was no resolution to the problems between the couple in the narrative; they simply went their own ways, much to the displeasure of the audience. After a long thought, I came up with a new ending and decided that the couple should rekindle their love, thus giving the video a happy ending.

There was also a concern with the lighting and contrast in a few of the clips – they were either to dark, or too lights, so I decided to take each individual clip and edit it so that there was a smooth consistency throughout the entire video. I then proceeded to add a blue tint to the whole video, giving it a reminiscent feel, in the hope that the audience will feel like it is the character in the videos memories, and he/she is looking back on the past.

The second audience who viewed my final cut thoroughly appreciated the changed I had made to the video – they felt it had a much smoother consistency, and they really got to grips with the narrative of the song without being bored by seemingly endless clips.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
(to be continued)

Final video shoot

Having completed 90% of the music video, I realised that there was no conclusive ending, and therefore decided to shoot something with a narrative to give the video a nice close. The jist of the video is that two lovers had fallen out, and I felt that the video should end with them trying to resolve the issue.
We went back to the original location, which is The Old Courthouse in Dartford, and I decided that it would be effective to have a phonecall between the two (in seperate locations), with Martyn (the lead male character) apologising to myself (the lead female character), and then proceeding to ask to meet up. My character reluctantly agrees; but I decided to allow my character to be forgiving; emphasising the power of love - the meaning behind the song. The video concludes with a kiss-and-makeup. Very cute :)

C.D. cover (digipack)

This is my design for a C.D. cover for my band. The outer face includes an image of the lead singer, with his girlfriend - the image is a still from the bands music video. The back panel gives song titles, lengths, record label and band logo's, and a barcode. When you open the C.D., there is an image of a MicroKORG - the bands central instrument. The C.D. will sit on the right side of the case, and will also have the MicroKORG print on it. The spine of the C.D. case has the band name and the album name: The Red Riot Society - Love And Some Lyrics

Poster

This is the poster for my band's album release. The simplistic design hopefully will reflect the simplicity of the messages within the bands lyrics. I used the same image from the album cover, however, I applied a filter so that it is recognisable to the audience, but it isn't the same generic image. The poster includes in image of the band, the band name, the record label, and the availability of the album.
Click on the image to view full size.

Editing and Final Cut Pro

I thought I'd just blog a little bit about Final Cut Pro... Basically, I edited my entire video using this software, and it is amazing. Having had no editing experience before, I found this software user friendly, easy to navigate, and a lot of fun to use.

Here are some images of things I've done on FCP;

CLICK EACH INDIVIDUAL IMAGE TO VIEW THE WHOLE IMAGE

Adding a sepia filter to a frame ^



Rendering a frame ^



Realising when my timeline needs rendering ^



A variety of effects I could apply to a frame ^



Work in progress :) ^

Where has she been?!

It's been a while since I've had the chance to post anything on here. Basically, I've split with George and I'm not making my own cut of this video. This is utterly unfortunate as I've no experience using any editing software. However, having spent every spare hour God sends, I have made a (rather good) first cut of my video, so I'm really happy about that. I realised upon editing that a few clips need to be reshot, and I aim to have this whole video completed by the end of the week. C'MON! In a weird way, I do feel rather accomplished. I've practically done this whole project by myself (mood board, blogs, story boards, animatics, 2/3rd of the filming, and ALL the editing). Kudos to me :D

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOIt_KBhAo

Brrr!

I don't think I've done this much travelling in all my life! Yesterday, I was travelling from Eltham to Dartford to Chislehurst to Eltham back to Chislehurst and then back to Eltham. Good news is that it was the last film shoot over and done! It was just unfortunate that I had to complete this film shoot by myself (again) as George had other things to do.
Today, we were uploading and editing the footage. All the footage looks great, the HD is perfect. It's just a shame our mac isn't working to it's full potential and keeps crashing. A little bit frustrating. However, I have a lot of free time Wednesday, so I'll just busy myself then.
STRESS doesn't even begin to explain!!!!!

FILM SHOOT!

Was a little bit stressful, as I had to organise pretty much all of it by myself, but when we finally got to Dartford and set everything up, it all ran pretty smoothly. I'm much happier with the new shots, thanks to the extra lighting, they came out clearly. I love HD when it works properly :) so we have now reshot the opening. Sadly, we didn't get as much work as we hoped we would done today, but that's not a problem, as we have another full day of filming ahead tomorrow. Everything seems to be finally coming together. Phew!

This is my favorite picture from the photoshoot. Sitting on a pub table, gawping at Martyn, who is admiring my handsome chins :)

The First Videoshoot.

The first video shoot, which was unfortunately a solo mission as my co-worker George has other organised events to attend,  took place at the Old Corthouse in Dartford. The shots are really lovely, however, due to the poor lighting in this venue, the HD camera did not perform to its usual standard, and the camera often goes blurry and out of focus. This is a shame, however, our original location idea was to be at Bar Mondo at Dartford, so I'm more then happy to re-shoot these.
To give you an idea of what the lighting is like, we took photographs of our work in progress; my digital camera has a flash, my HD camera doesn't - but even with the flash, you can see there's dull areas, and not a lot of lights (well, there's lights that do not work in this case).




 Here is one of the clips we shot, which, believe it or not, was done on a HD camera...

A New Idea.

e've had a re-think about our music video, and came up with the conclusion that we could make the video look really good, or really bad. Due to the possibility of the latter, we have decided to start a-fresh, which includes a new video concept to a different song.
The song we now intend on using is called The Girl by City and Colour (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZqnqH9s1jk). This song is very different to the original song we were going to use, in terms of Genre and vocals. We are aware that the new song does not fit in with the typical associations of our band, but we have come up with a solution to this - many bands of the pop/punk/indie genre do 'one-off' songs that sound a lot different from their usual sound, for example, the band All Time Low wrote an acoustic song called Remembering Sunday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erspkBDsTm0) which sounds completely different from their usual stuff, such as Break Your Little Heart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0b_F-EW2cA) and Dear Maria, Count Me In (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcNiKCmWdYE).
So, our new concept...
The song we aim to perform is about a man who is very much in love with his girlfriend, but never seems to have enough time for her;


"I wish I could do better by you,
Cause its what you deserve.
You sacrifice so much of your life,
In order for this to work.
While I'm off chasing my own dreams,
Sailing around the world,
Please know that I'm yours to keep,
My beautiful girl.
When you cry a piece of my heart dies,
Knowing that I may have been the cause,
If you were to leave, fulfil someone else's dreams,
I think I might totally be lost.
You don't ask for no diamond rings,
No delicate string of pearls,
That's why I wrote this song to sing,
My beautiful girl."

We have decided to try and portray the song's message using a narrative video. It opens with the singer (Martyn Kingsmill) sitting on a stool in a bar, with his acoustic guitar. We want to introduce the idea of him giving a performance to the public. About 20 or so seconds into the song, he gets off of his stool, puts down his guitar and makes his way over to his girlfriend (played by myself) who is seated at the bar, waiting with 2 drinks, for for her and one for him. He takes a sip of his drink and we assume he is going to sit with her, but then his friends come in and call him over, and she 'abandons' her. The rest of the video just shows the idea of a potential breakup, because of his seeming stupidity, but they eventually sort the issue out, and we're going to show this using a variety of different shots, which are left open for audience interpretation.

This is an animatic of our new idea -

We are beginning the shooting of this video on Thursday 10th December.
Here are the storyboards ( CLICK EACH PHOTO INDIVIDUALLY TO VIEW FULL SIZE) -

The Story Boards

A Bit Of An Update...

Basically, we've spent a lot of time collaborating our initial idea and working in into a storyboard.
The idea of the video is to show a group of friends enjoying themselves, partying and playing their instruments - I suppose you could call this a 'house-gig'.
The video begins with one of the band members asleep in her bed; there's a few shots of the surrounding neighbour hood - this is in black and white. Then when the music kicks in, we cut to a shot of her phone ringing on a bed side cabinet; the phone will turn into colour (representing life kicking in), and this will wake up the band member. She realises that the band are behind schedule, and she rushes into the next room to wake up the other band members. In this room, there is a lot of litter (specifically empty alcohol containers) lying around, and band members crashed out on the floor - showing that life is just a bit party scene (hopefully the audience will realise that we are trying to show them that they've just been awoken from a party the previous night). All the band members are then frantically trying to get ready, and pack all of their equipment and instruments into the back of a van. We then show shots of the van travelling to the gig venue; and shots of the passengers inside the van. Before the van arrives, we have shots of people already at the party, displaying generic party banter - showing that they are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the band. Moments later, we show the band arriving and offloading; inbetween this, we have quick cuts to and from generic party banter. Then the band play and we all involve ourselves in the party banter. Finally, as the song draws to a close, everyone passes out on the floor. Setting up for the same thing tomorrow :)

Dayglo Animatic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Ni1d_TkiY
We decided to upload this video to YouTube as it meant quick and easy access; and makes the process of sharing a lot quicker and more efficient.
Hopefully from the video, you can gather an idea of how you'd like our music video to look.

Mood boards..

The intention of this mood board is to give the reader a visual idea of what our band is like. My mood board consists of alot of images to do with friendship; and also contains cartoon figures to act as a visual metaphor for fun and lighthearted-ness.
This is my mood board;

The Single..

DayGlo;


The theme for the video we aim to produce to this song is about friendship, and good times.
The idea;
The idea starts with one of the band members asleep in their bed, with their phone positioned on the bedside cabinet next to them. When the music kicks in, the phone will ring, awakening the band member, who realises they are late. There are alot of quick cuts of band members getting ready and packing instruments and other essentials into a van. We then cut to a house party, where a stage is being set, and there are alot of people - friends - talking, drinking, making out, dancing.. The usual party banter. In the final chorus of the song, we see the band performing the song on their make shift stage. Finally, we see everyone crashed out (sleeping), after such an eventful evening.

The Look..

PHOTO'S ARE COMING SOON.

The Red Riot Society..

Ideology;
We believe that music is a form of expression, whether it be an expression of love, anger, remorse, happiness etc. We strongly oppose narcissistic artists, and the conventions of vanity and image; we believe you should create music for the sake of music, and not for the paparazzi and the 'celebrity lifestyle'. Music has always been the flux that has brought the band members together; it created our friendship, which in turn, created our success. We don't care about the fame, or the money; we just want our messages to reach our fans, and hope they enjoy our music just as much as we enjoyed creating it.

POP ATE MY HEART...freedom of expression.

Creation Of A Music Act..

The Red Riot Society;
We are a contemporary rock band who emerged in the summer of '09. The story began when a group of friends gathered, and suggested we shared our talents in the hope that we could create songs that people will enjoy listening to, and possibly relate to. We began with a MySpace page, which consisted of music we had recorded in our keyboard players 'home studio', along with recordings created in a local record studio. We used our MySpace to promote our music to potential fans all over the world. Once we had 1,500 plays, a independent promoter got in touch with us, and offered us concerts and gigs in local venue's. We began in small underground bars, and clubs, and as word about us spread, we gained more and more interest, and soon enough, we were offered the chance to be a supporting act for some successful mainstream artists, such as Kids In Glass Houses and YouMeAtSix. A few months later, we were approached by Mercury Records, who offered us an irresistable contract, and soon enough we were signed by one of the most recognised labels in the music industry. We are now due to release our latest single; DayGlo.

I thought it would be..

...interesting to look at a..
Recent Independent Label..

Bass Punch Records;
From their MySpace page:
"Bass Punch Records is ran by MarchMelloW & Skrewface. Born out of the need to get out dubs that deserves to be rinsed worldwide, Bass Punch Records will deliver QUALITY over quantity. Bass Punch's aim is to become into a label associated with high quality releases and productions in due time.
Bass Punch genres will stretch from mainly Electronica (Dubstep, Sublow, Grime, House) but also Dancehall, Reggae & Dub.
If it punches you in the face, expect it to be released through this label.
Bass Punch Records owes it to Dylan James (Betamorph/Abducted Dubs) for all the assistance and guidance. For the name 'Bass Punch' we owe it to Twisted for the helpful suggestions."

A few examples of the artists under this label include:
DZ -


RAkoon -


Twisted -

I Might Aswell..

Do some research on Drive-Thru Records.. They sign a large portion of my favorite bands also..

Drive-Thru Records;
Drive-Thru Records, established in 1996, is owned by siblings Richard Reines and Stefanie Reines. The label started in the dining room of their townhouse, eventually moved to the garage with no heat or air conditioning, and the random tarantula coming in for a visit. Fenix Tx were the first band to get airplay for the label, and when they got added to KROQ, the calls came in from major labels looking to make a deal. They decided on MCA records, which turned out to be both great and terrible for the label. 5 years later, Drive-Thru finally reclaimed it's freedom and partnered with Sanctuary for distribution. Sanctuary had it's share of problems and was eventually sold to Universal, and Drive-Thru wound up in the catalog division of UME. Not the best place for a label releasing current bands. In August of 2009, the label started to decide on it's next venture for the future.
Innovators in marketing and promotion, Drive-Thru was the first label to hand out label samplers on the Van's Warped Tour, the first to have their own stage on the Van's Warped Tour, the first to add pop-up pages to a music website, and the first to offer an entire EP including artwork and videos as a free download to fans (Hellogoodbye - The Avocado EP).
Bands that have achieved notable success during their time on the label include Halifax, Allister, New Found Glory, Fenix*TX, Midtown, Finch, The Starting Line, Something Corporate, Dashboard Confessional, The Early November, Senses Fail, and Hellogoodbye. Drive-Thru Records' highest Billboard 200 charting releases include The Early November's The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path (#31) and Hellogoodbye's Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! (#13).









Current Bands (the family);
Allister
An Angle
The Early November
Halifax
Hellogoodbye
Hidden In Plain View
House Of Fools
Houston Calls
I Am The Avalanche
I Can Make A Mess Like Nobody's Business
Dave Melillo
New Found Glory
Say No More
Self Against City
Socratic
Something Corporate
The Starting Line
Steel Train