Directors commentary editing lesson 3

Today we finished Inserting all the clips we had into the commentary. We couldn't put all of the in clips in because some of them disappeared. Also we had to put in our images  of the dolly and the camera in again cos they had been deleted.
We had even more problems with our time to edit because the rendering for it took TOO LONG!
We also made the green screen bits see through and edited the music so the viewer can listen to it during the bits where there is no commentary.
We didn't have time to edit the music in so we just uploaded it without the music.

Directors commentary editing lesson 2

We continued editing our commentary with a few new ideas in mind. One of ideas was to put in some key frames to create moving images and make the commentary more interesting to watch. Also we decided to import some images of our ancillary to remind the audience what it looked like while it is being commented about. Other images we imported into the commentary of the video included: A picture of the HD camera and a camera dolly. TO make the clips of us not look like they appear out of nowhere we made sure they faded in.

While editing we encountered many problems for example all our clips moved around :( This gave us less time to finish our commentary :(. We also lost a couple of clips that we were going to use to comment on the video. Also we spent half the lesson watching our clips render.

Directors commentary editing lesson 1

We started off by copying our final project file and then we imported all the commentary clips into it. Once we had done this we started to overlay the commentary clips onto the music video -as we have the green screen background we have a number of option as to how we position and use our commentary. We could either simply overlay the clips onto the music video without cropping them or re-positioning them and getting rid of the green screen so that the video is playing in the background. Or we could alternatively overlay the commentary clips over the video and resize them, reposition them, and crop them so that they only take up a small proportion of the screen as well as changing the green screen so that it is invisible for the music video to be able to play in the background.

We have decided that we will either get rid of the music video audio completely or just have it quite quiet so that the commentary is the audiences main focus.

As we all only have fairly limited skills in FinalCut so working out the approach we are going to take to create our director's commentary took us a while.

Directors commentary example: Chris Phillips video for Lady Sovereign - A Little Bt of Shh

Director's Commentary: 

Evaluation Questions

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

·         Conventions: cutting on the beat (especially in the rap scene)

·         Fast editing, on the beat for the rap scenes

·         Slow editing, plans, overlays for the Adele scenes

·         Inspiration came from Kanye 'All of the Lights' and Adele 'Someone Like You' as they are both in part or all in black and white

·         These also gave us the idea for the walking whilst singing the song - almost as if the artist is telling the story to the audience

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

·         The combination creates an overall look for the package that is complete, relateable to Adele's previous products and to each other

·         They are simple and easy on the eye

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

·         Our idea was well liked

·         Following Adele's stereotypical conventions

·         We could have used better lighting

·         The acting for the Adele part could have been improved

·         Better costumes could have been used

·         The locations were well chosen

·         We could have had more varied camera angles

·         The actor for Kanye could have done better lip syncing

·         The performance from the Kanye actor was well recieved

4. How did you use new technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

·         Blogger for research and planning

·         Youtube - for uploading videos and to be able to include them on our blog

·         FinalCut - for editing our footage

·         Photoshop - for editing our digipack

·         HD Camera - Gave us good quality footage

Stacey's Evaluation Notes

• Adele's video style - good connection with artist's previous videos
• Lip syncing is good and done promptly, esecially on the first few seconds when the vocals start straight away.
• First split screen could be smoother
• Overlays at the beginning are good and create an interesting effect
• Some editing is slightly off the best and could have been finer so that it is on the beat
• Some of the camera work is shakey where we have cropped the frame and zoomed in on the footage
• Zooming in/ cropping has made some of the footage pixelated in some sections (this can't really be helped by us)
• Black and white is effective and emotive
• Fade on violin section is good
• Slightly shakey footage on last Kanye shot
• Costumes are popular and relateable for the audience
• Black and white creates a mellow atmosphere and uses features from 'Someone like you'
• The split screens and overlays makes the footage more interesting, upto date and modern
• Rappers location is conventional
• Some cutting is on the beat and emphasises the cuts

Today's Lesson [Friday 2nd December]

In our lesson today we will be filming our directors commentary from our script, but we can't read directly from it as it ruins the flow of the footage. We are filming in the green room which gives us the opportunity to edit the music video into the background of our directors commentary, even though we haven't planned to and will be experimental. This is an advantage as the other groups are filming in white and black rooms which doesn't give the opportunity as white and black colours are more common than green.

In our script we divided it up equally between all 3 speakers by going through each one as:
Jake: ...........
Stacey: ............
Ruri: ............

Jake: ............

This allows the audience to not be bored and stay engaged with the directors commentary.

Tuesday's Lesson

During our lesson we worked on our directors commentary and made notes that will help us prepare the final script.

Evaluation questions

1.

• Our media project uses many of the media conventions used by real media products.
• The conventions it uses are common in real music videos of the pop genre.
• Although the conventions in pop music videos are broad they all follow the Goodwin points

1. Intertextuality: Our music video is partly filmed in black and white and this may give references to old films like Casablanca. It is also set in Cambridge and shows some of the famous landmarks there such as in the film Chariots of Fire. Another example of intertextuality is the way the rapper is shown; he's shown the same way he is portrayed in his own music videos in which he wears modern clothes and the editing is experimental with all the split screens and jump cuts.
2. Link between music and visuals: Our music video has strong links between music and visuals as every shot in it is cut to the beat which is done in a lot of pop videos such as Adele's - Rolling in the Deep. Also the stronger notes in the music are complemented in the video with brighter scenes in colour.
3. Lyrics and visuals: Our music video follows these in many ways. Kanye West refers to some lyrics with hand gestures while Adele looks sad when she's singing sad lyrics. There aren't many direct links between our music video and the lyrics. But there still are some subtle links between them; some of these include the setting and effects used in the video. All of these being quite mellow and sad locations and effects (black and white) which suit the lyrics very well. However links between lyrics and the music video aren't that important as it's not something you see in pop music videos very often. It's not one of the main genre conventions  in pop music videos.
4. Genre conventions: Our music video follows some of the pop genre conventions. These bein included in:

• The costumes the artists are wearing which are fashionable popular clothes that are very fitting with pop music videos.
• The editing of the video as it is very heavy on it including lots of shots and angles of the artist.

     5. Demands of the record label: Many pop videos have visible features that are demanded by the           

         record label wether it for advertising a certain brand or giving an image to the artist. Or music video 

         doesn't advertise any particular brands but it does give a certain image of the artists. For example: 

         Adele is shown as an emotional relaxed girl with a powerful voice whereas Kanye is shown as a

         fun upbeat character.

     6. One of the features of pop music videos is voyeurism: This is when music videos show

         controversial things that perhaps the viewer shouldn't see. Or recorded from the point of view of 

         someone or through a camera. Our music video doesn't really show any of these characteristics as

         it is a sad song and controversial content is not something you tend to see in any of the artist's past

        music videos.

Our music video has used many of the conventions of a generic pop video and has not developed or challenges any conventions as we wanted to make it as much like music video as possible.

2.
     Our combination of all our products work very well toguether as a promotional package as they all suit eachother and promote the artist very well.

All the products create the same image of the main artist - Adele. In the music video she is filmed in black and white in a graveyard where she is portrayed as a hurt, sad and emotional person because of her expression and the feelings sung in the lyrics of the song. The digi pack and the advert aren't to different as they both show Adele's face in the same melancoly mood looking away from the camera, in a dark room with a light in the background.The adverts and digipack also included good reviews, bonus features (live performance, interview) and the artists name in bold simple letters to make Adele seem like an artist everyone knows, who doesn't need fancy letters to stand out, who is well respected in the reviews and isn't afraid to share with her fans via interviews. For these reasons the advert, digi pack and video work very well together as a promotional package. And will make the artist successful at attracting the target audience.

3.

     What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback we received throughout the writing, filming and editing of our music video proved to be essential as the music video wouldn't be the same with out it.

We received our first audience feedback after our initial pitch. Although we didn't get a lot of feedback initially it proved to be very useful for the filming of our video. Most of the audience liked our pitch and idea saying that it followed the conventions of a typical pop music video. We also received some constructive criticism regarding who was going to play Adele for which we had no answer for at the time but made us conscious that it was a decision that needed to be made soon enough. Another important part of our feedback was about what lighting we were going to use for the filming of half our music video. This led to us having to buy a powerful torch which we later didn't use because of some delays in our filming.

After filming our music video and making a rough-cut of it we were given another feedback from our peers and teachers. We received a balance of positive and negative feedback. Some of the most common and most important reviews we got included:

• The lip syncing needing some improvements. (We solved this later by tweaking the timing of the clips and matching particular words with particular movements to make the lip syncing look more in sync.
• We were told that the first 60 seconds of our music video dragged on quite a bit. (to stop this from happening we then added some other footage of different locations, put some effects into it such as fading, split screens and ghosting, making the video more interesting to the viewer without losing the style of the music video.
• There were also some small things people pointed out such as the dogs in the background of one of the shots (which we solved by cropping the size of the frame to exclude the dogs from the image)
• We were told that the acting by Adele wasn't very good compared to the performance by Kanye and that the costumes weren't very good. (There wasn't much we could do about this because these were present throughout most of the music video) 

We also received some good feedback such as: Kanye West's performance being outstanding, Good variety of locations and shots, good lighting and effective cuts and transitions.

script for director's commentary

Script for director’s commentary

Introduction:
Jake: Hi, I’m Jake, and my role was editor/camera-man
Ruri: Hi, I’m Ruri, and my role was editor/Producer
Stacey: Hi, I’m Stacey, and my role was editor and Adele.

Ruri: This is our Music Video, Adele – Melt my heart to stone

Jake: First of all you can notice the footage is in black and white for the opening this is as a result of our initial feedback as the footage was originally in colour and wasn’t fitting to the backing track and style of the song and artist. As in her other music videos such as Someone Like You the editor has used a de-saturation effect on the footage.

Stacey: The split screen was fairly difficult to edit, as we hadn’t used this technique before. It uses some of the conventions of real media products, such as soul-pop music videos uses these editing techniques, such as Beyonce music video, ‘Countdown’.

 

Ruri: As you can see the close-ups of the gravestone represent sorrow and a mellow atmosphere towards Adele, this is effective because it combines with our ancillary texts, due to them being dark and relating to death as the font colours are red and the background is black, which represents sad feelings and will relate to our target audience aged 18 to 25years old females, and most have been through tough relationships, therefore it relates.

 

Stacey: By wearing popular clothing it is relatable to our audience as it isn’t out of the ordinary and is accessible to all in the audience, however our feedback from rough cut thought we should of worn more flamboyant clothing as Adele wears dresses in some of her music videos. But as producers we wanted our music video to relate to the audience and connect with them.

 

Jake: The footage in our music video is of very high quality as we used new technology to construct an experimental music video, this is as a result of using the HD camera. However we received feedback from our peers that the footage was too shake but we couldn’t use the new technology such as the dolly to track Adele, because it wouldn’t have worked on the un-even ground.

 

Ruri: In this section we used the new technology from the new software FinalCut of overlays that were in colour, to make the footage more interesting. We did this because our rough cut feedback commented that the footage was “boring”. We are certain that we have fixed this problem, with the overlays we used and the addition of colour.

 

Jake: In this section, you can really notice how we cut on the beat of the music, this emphasises the backing track instead of the vocals, which is important, as this is a convention used in Adele’s music videos. Also it creates a fluid flow and makes its un-messy.

 

Stacey: By using panning it allows us to include a wider shot and a wider angle, this also adds more variety of shots. Also we used the new technology of tripods to create a steady pan. The locations we used for the panning was reflective and a great addition to our music video as they created an ambient feeling.

 

Ruri: We use the amazing new technology of FinalCut which allowed us to cut precisely to the nearest millisecond, to create a powerful transition between the two artists in our music video.

Jake: Due to Kanye West being really enthusiastic and animated we decided to emphasize this through the editing and create several split screens. By doing this we made the video itself more interesting for the audience.

Stacey: The costume for Kanye West was quite stereotypical to what a rapper wears, but at the same time it is something that the audience will wear so it makes the video more relatable to the audience.

Ruri: By using overlays and pans of the city landscape we are able to create an interesting section of the video whilst there are no vocals for the audience to listen to.

Jake: The ending of the music video is visualised by the music, this is because Kanye West ends up walking away on the scene where he raps which gives a signal to the audience that it's the closing of the song or near the end.

Stacey: Also the trend of cutting on the beat happens at the last beat of the music video where it suddenly stops on the loud beat which signals the end of the song.

Ruri: Thats all from us, thank you for watching and listening.

Directors commentary notes:

1. 0 to 9 secs in

• First of all you can see a close up of Adele wearing regular clothes which makes most people relate with her. Q1
• Its filmed in black and white which gives it an old fashioned style which is very fitting with the mood of the song, uses features of someone like you. Q1, Q3 (feedback said it was
• Lip syncing good for quick start.
• Split screen makes footage more interesting and experimental.
• Location makes the scene interesting
• Overlay makes it interesting 
• to colour- sun spot- contrasting, introduces rappers location 
• cutting on the spot

evaluation questions for directors commentary

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

Our media product uses the convention sof real media products, as it uses some of Goodwin's points. The music links in with the visuals, such as the cutting on the beat, and cutting more often on th ebeat during the rap scene. Another link between visuals and music is the fading scenes panning which represnts the mellow scene.
The genre of our song is indie-rock but we had a rap scene which clashes with the rap scene. Howeveer we did follwo the Genre conventions ofr Indie-rock. Scnes with Adele used genre conventions to create the use of mellow settings to represent Adele's feelings and emotions. But we didn't for the rap scenes, except the editing techniques of cutting fast, and on the beat.
When we analysed Ade'es song 'somone like you' we got inspiration for some of the music video, such as the walking and lip-syncing scenes, the black and white (desaturation) filter effect, and also the panning of mellow secenes which all featuered in Adele's music video we analysed, which influenced some of our editing and creation techniques.
But when we analysed one of Kanye West's music videos we didnt get much inspiration as he uses flsahing lights too often in most of his music videos. However Kanye West does cut on the beat while walking and rapping and rap actions fluently. Which we took into consideration in our planning and ended up using in our rap scene.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of the music video, DVD cover and magazine advert createes an effective promotional package, due to the advert and the DVD cover representing Adele in a mellow look, which follows Adele's trend of sadness and simple covers.
The music video works well combined as the song relates to death and broken hearts. Which the red font represents on the cover and the Advert, so the video promotes that with a sad feeling to the music video of mellow scenes etc. Therefore the combination is succesful.
The target audience is young female adults aged around 18 to 30years old, where the song may relate to them and their relationship experience. As the cover and advert represents Adele as heartbroken, which will attract the target audience therefore the combination of ancillary texts and the main product is succesful together, moreover the music represents the visuals in a sad atmosphere and apperance, which is very effective. But Adele is not in black and white on the ancillary texts, which is different to the main product which doesn't portray her as sad as strong in the music video.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?From our audience feedback, on the initial pitched everyone liked our idea as we followed Adele's stereotypicl convetions and her other music videos which are major hits world wide e.g. ' somone like you '. But they gave us some extra ideas to use lightning that are appropiate, and needed to create a succesful music video of our genre. Moreover the feedback on our rough cut was varied. I learnt that the actress who plaid as Adele needed to have more appropiate costumes that represent Adele more succesful then we did. Also the facial expressions and attitude needs to look more enthusiastic as Adele always moving her arms and has alto of facil expressions, which us used to create a succesful music video, even if it's a mellow song.
Also the lip-syncing is vital to create the succesful music video, as there was a contrast of amazing actign by actor, and poor by actress, and some parts had good lip-syncing but some were bad, which affected our music videos overall perofmrance in our rough cut. From our Final Cut adience feedback I learnt that it's vital to have good editing techniques such as our fading to create an effective music video. It's also important to have a variety of acmera angels as it helps promote the artist, whichi  learnt from our audience feedback

4. How did you use new technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The new media technology we used for resaerch and planning was 'blogger'. We used then by creating posts, where we embedded pictures, youtube videos and our own uploaded videos. This helped us progress our ideas for our music video and look back over the ideas with easy navigation to change ideas and keep using them.
Another new technology is FinalCut which allowed us to edit our footage as it has many effects available, which also had easy techniques of editing. This easiness allowed layers to be created and locked, which alloed us to do safe but fast editing and be succesful then other editing program like windows movie maker.  This allowed our product to be succesful at the end of our music video in our 'final cut'. Another tool we used in FinalCut was the fading tool which allowed us to create our effective mellow scenes which panned and faded throughout. We also used FinalCut in our evaluation to edit our clips, it allowed easy editing of sound and video clips, but we didnt use quicktime of the music video we used the layers therefore we didn't have enough time to put the music in which will lose us marks. But it had a easier feature then other editing programs like Adobe, due to us using the 'chromakeyer' which allowed us to get rid of our background.
Moreover a new media technology we used in the construction of our ancillary texts is Adobe Photoschop which is more advanced compared to programs such as 'paint' and 'GIMP', due to being able to use the same font as Adele and alot of editing techniques, filters and tools. As we used the tool ' Refine Edges' which created our ancillary texts image of Adele and made it megre into the light and black background, therefore this media technology allowed us to create a succesful product.
An important new technology we used to construct the whole music video was the HD camera, it allowed us to focus on still objects, as well as keeping focus on moving objects. There was a downside of this camera we used, as you can notice the shakiness more then a non-hd camera during it to be in 1080pixels isntead of 360/480pixels. But we could crop images and zoom into certain parts while editing but keeping a high resolution still, which can be seen in our high quality version of the music video.
Overall the new techologies we used to construct, research/planning and evaluating our music video project, were of very high quality and gave us alot of different opportunities we could experiment with. Which in result created a very high quality music video in return of these great tools of technology.

DIrectors commentary

Directors commentaries are recorded commentaries that are recorded by the director. The commentary is recorded on top of the final cut or an edited version of whatever the director who is commentating has released ( feature film, music video) .  This commentary is usually released along with the DVD or Digipack of the film or music video that has been commentated on. People like to watch directors commentaries because they might be interested in how the film was made and want to hear about the stories backstage. Others may want to watch it for entertainment depending on the directos humour and who he does the commentary with. Most of the time directors commentaries are done with someone else involved with the film, this could be an actor or one of the camera men to give a different insight into the film.
Directors commentaries can be presented in different ways:

• scene-specific: which is done over specific scenes of the film. Usually involves a lot more editing and planing.
• screen-specific. Where the audio recording is done over the full final version of the film, recorded in one take.

directors commentary homework

A director's commentary is a audio commentary by the director on the CD or DVD as a bonus feature. Normally the commentary consists of more than on production member where they watch the watch the film and give a lecture or comment, which sometimes plays in-time with the video/film.
They sometimes add a different type of commentating by being serious or entertaining by nature, however the commentary sometimes gives information that wouldn't be disclosed to the audience. Sometimes during the commentary they commentate certain scenes and show how the scenes were made, this is sometimes done by step-by-step stages which are commentated on.

DVD cover

Digipack

Front cover:
For the front cover we put in picture of Adele we took especially for our digipack. The picture shows a close-up of Adele's face with a dark background  and a bright light behind her. The picture follows artists media conventions as the song in the Digipack is quite a sad song and the picture goes with that mood. It also goes with the mood of the music video and the conventions Adele uses for her album and single covers.
On the front we also included the artist's name in white letters and the title of the digipack in red being 'melt my heart to stone' . We chose to only write these on the front cover to make the digipack a lot more simplistic whit makes it look more prestigious and sophisticated.
The simplicity of the front cover will make shoppers interested and want to know a lot more. 

The spine: On the Spine we wrote the Artists name and the digipack name in the same style as the album cover. We chose to write them the same style in the same bold font to stop it from looking out of place and to make it fit in with the rest of the design.

Back cover:
For the back cover we decided to add a lot more than the front cover.

Magazine Advert

The frame didn't cut out the edges so it looks a bit rough in some places.

digipack examples from previous years

Music Video Promo Package Examples

Some of the slides in this slideshare have really good examples of digipacks such as on slide 14 they managed to create posters/bonus cd's/photographs extra for their digipack which would create bonus points. Moreover from this the dvd cover is really effective the images have been smoothed onto the background so it looks like it just hasn't been placed their and out of place with the use of lighting and shadowing of layers and images.

This adele poster/magazine advert has some of the features in our magazine advert such as the same font style, and the album/single name in different colou, so we have the same font styleaswell as adeles face emerging from the black with a contrast.

22/11/2011 digipack editing/creating

In todays lesson we did 50% of the album/dvd cover, where we had to fix the render edges as the tool was playing up so we applied it to the current layer and copied it onto a new layer to apply the affect which we had to do twice to make the affect show.

Lastly we did the magazine advert and used the same style as the dvd cover but we nearly finished the madgazine advert.

Digipack photoshoot. 21 11 11

In today's lesson we when to the dark room to take some pictures for our digipack cover. Our main Idea was to take some close ups of Adele's face with a dark background. To make our picture more interesting we experimented with some flash lights. The use of flashlights till create an effect such as the imge below

however in our digipack we will have adeles face emerging from the black on the front and kanye west's face emerging from the black on the back of the dvd cover, it'll take quite alot of editing and effects to merge the iamge in but it will create an effect cover and follows Adele's style of covers.

Digipack Analisis

We looked at J to tha L-O the remixes album.

On the front you can see a collection of images of Jennifer Lopez in all her different music videos. All the images go with each other despite the fact that they're all images from different music videos. They go with each other because they all portray Jennifer Lopez in a sexual way through the use of voyeurism. The way they use voyeurism is very clever; All the images have small numbers, letters and a play and pause symbols next to them, which make the images look like they've been taken from a photo reel. The image on the top right of the album cover shows in huge diamond letters Jennifer Lopez's nickname : 'J-LO' This image like all the other images is taken from one of her music videos. There is no Album name on the front cover probably because the album cover is very symmetrical and adding a name on the front would ruin the simplicity of the cover. Also the front doesn't need an album name on the front as it is a greatest hits album and the biggest J-LO fans would be able to recognise this as all you can see is her nickname on the top right and stills from most of her music videos. This implies that this is Jennifer Lopez's life's work all in one and need no title. The front also includes a parental advisory logo because of the explicit content in the album and is there for legal reasons. It also has a small sign on the bottom right that says 'will not play on PC/MAC' this is self explanatory and warns people that it won't work on Pc or MAC.The background behind all the images is black and this background trend continues with the spine and back of the album.

On the spine of the album you can see the title of the album written in a bold simple font: 'J TO THA L-O! THE REMIXES' With black and white font highlighted with some light green in a black background. On the edges of the spine you can see in small white letters the record label 'epic' and CD number.

On the back of the album. you can see the recurring black background tacking over most of the frame. You can also see some still frames of some of Jennifer Lopez's music videos next to each other. Much like the images on the front cover they're all very revealing and use voyeurism. You can also see all the album track names

research/ideas for digipack

After doing some research the 2 magazine adverts Adele have which are shown in this blog, they promote her as a artist and not her songs. This has given us an idea to produce an dvd cover such of the sort which is shown below.

This album cover '21' gave us the idea of using shading and creating the image of Adele and Kanye west with this desaturated effect with their heads merging out from the black.
Another idea for our DVD cover is to have adele on the front of the cover with a black background, and maybe wearing a veil, with the same effect as the single cover below, this is because the black fading into the image looks really effective and amplifies the sadness and would suit our music video. Then on the side we can make it black which will follow onto the back with the same sort of image but with our Kanye West who will look mellow but with a black ground instead of the pink background shown below the adele - set fire to the rain cover.

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What should be included on a magazine advert and our digipack

 J To Tha L-O - album cover

digi pack:
- Dvd-video logo on the front and back of the DVD cover.
- the record company logo on the front or back of DVD cover
- bar code on the back of the dvd cover
- synopsis of the DVD on the back of the DVD cover
- what's included in the dvd on the back of the dvd cover
- where you get the the DVD from e.g. amazon.com or HMV.
- website on the back of the DVD cover
- extra footage
- can include extra photographs/slideshow for the buyers
- maybe a bonus cd
- posters for people who buy the album
- pegi rating on the dvd cover
- same theme and image for the promoting artists throughout the digipack

magazine advert:
- where you can buy the single
- ratings from magazines/newspapers
- possibly price
- record company
- when it's released
- image of artist(s)/same theme to the dvd cover
- same theme and image for the promoting artists throughout the magazine advert

feedback - review

s1-27 feedback review:I thought the feedback given by this group was fairly done, with accurate obersevations e.g. the trousers breaking the continuity. But i do have to disagree to an extent with the camera works as we did many shots, with many different types of shot's but we didn't do any high/low angles which i agree with there.

s1-26 feedback review:
I agree with this groups feedback on the costumes and the relation between them but we didn't have enough time to change the clothes as we had to work around certain times. But i completely disagree with the camera angles i thought that was unfair feedback as we did alot of close-ups which they said we didn't. Also i agree with the promoting artist feature again.

s1-25 feedback review:I think this feedback was fair and wel lthought out except the last part because they're saying that the promotion of artist wasn't done well because the song had a upbeat part and a sad part when we can't change the song. So i thought that was unfair feedback

s1-30 feedback review:
I thought most of this feedback was well done and fair except the part about saying the male actor was too confident and too cocky because we had a media teacher say he was perfect because you rarely get somone who puts out as good as he does. But i thought most of the feedback from this group was fair

s1-28 feedback review:I thought this group's feedback was fair and the criticism was more constructive than the other groups even though they suggested a feature that they used on their music video.

Overall I felt that the music video was succesfull and got good reviews.

Feedback

S1-27
Met genre conventions?
- We thought the video suited the genre of the song and worked well when it comes to contrasting Adele and Kanye.
Did they use good editing techniques?
- we thought that there were some good editing such as when you could see her walking and then on the left there were her feet walking.
But there was a continuity error that the trousers in the walking were different to the trousers she was wearing.
did they have good camera angles?
- there were some good angles in the rapping section but there could have been a wider selection.
did it sell or promote the aritst?
yes  we think that it did through having them seperate sections so we had time to view both artists.


Group 26
Genre conventions- we thought that the female artist didnt meet the conventions of the original artist or the genre through her costume and lack of passion. However the male costume and swagger linked with the genre really well.

Editing techniques- The cross fades worked really well such as the repetitive cross fade of the male artist.

Camera angles- A lot of long and mid shots were used which became a bit of repetitive so we thought more of a range of shot types could have been used such as close ups.

Selling artist- It sells the male artist really well but the female artist could have had more passion to fit with the power of the originals artist's voice.

group 25-

Good acting and enthusiasm, not the best lip syncing though.
Really good transition from dark to light for the first time. Good camera angles and shots, e.g. panning shots.
Original editing idea of having split screens of 2/4 pictures at once.
don't really get the two seperate stories one seems very sad and the other uobeat which doesnt really fit.


30
The roles did not connect at all and this made it seem a bit unprofessional, the footage was shot well but the panning just me me feel a bit ill. The shots were quite varied and the rapper seemed to suit the role well and acted over confident and cocky, which is a missve contrast to the female actor and this made the hole production lose its power as it did not really make sence. It also dragged on a bit to long. not enough vary in shots just pans of location and it needs something to keep the viewers attention.

group 28 comments

• The editing techniques used were very good. For example we thought the split screen worked well.
• The black and white tint editing could have been more consistent throughout the video, it wasn't clear why some parts were black and white and why some parts were in full colour.
• We liked the panning camera effect used and we think this makes the video fit the conventions of the genre well.
• Also, Not much happened in the video apart from the spinning and so we thought that there could have been more of a storyline to the video.
• We think the rapper looked really 'cool' and this would help to promote the rappers reputation. The costume of the female singer didn't look as though it was particularly planned out very well; she could have had a more dramatic look, like a bright red lipstick or a statement coat.

Final version of music video

Our target audience.

Our target audience is quite broad as it is a pop music video and ideally it's targeted at everyone. But its specifically targeted at 13 to 24 year old girls that are fans of Adele and like similar music. This audience can also identify with the music video as the characters in it are around that age. Young boys might like this music video as well as they might be fans of Kanye West who features in the music video.

more music video feedback

We got someone from the media department to look at our music video and give us some feedback. Some of the things he said we needed to improve in included:

• First of all he said that there is a scene near the end of the music video that looks like the end of the music video ( the first scene of the rapper walking away) We fixed this by substituting the scene with a landscape one.
• He then said that Stacey's lip syncing wasn't in time with the editing. So we needed to do this by matching particular words that she exaggerates in the lip syncing with the music.

Apart from these imperfections he said there wasn't anything else in which we needed to improve in and the rest of the feedback we received were complements :)

editing lesson 14/11/11

At the start of this lesson we had finished editing the rap scene and we had the last third of the music video to edit. However this didn't worry us because we knew we didn't have to add a lot to the rough cut by adding extra shots because the tone of the music in this last section slows down a lot and needs simple flowing editing to complement it.
We finished doing this by fading in and out different shots of landscapes and the artists fading between every shot to make it flow and add some continuity. Not all the cuts were fades as some of them were jump cuts to emphasize the dramatic change of music in some sections. Including the end where the song ends all of a sudden.

Use of narrative in our music video

we don't really have a narrative, however our music video is succesful as we follow the conventions of music videos and goodwins analysis.
Our music video is successful even though it don't have a narrative due to the fact it's interesting, it keeps the viewer engaged to the music video, as it includes Adele and Kanye West singing together which would never happen normally.
We don't want to portray a story for the two artists in the Music Video, we wanted to portray the artists through genre conventions, with the use of mise en scene: props/costumes/location/lighting/colour/make-up.
Colour - black and white for Adele scenes

outside edditing 11/11/11

We came in during a free period to edit some of the music video by choosing some scenes to add-in, we also smoothed more transitions and sorted some of the split-screens out and sorted the lip-syncing out, and zooming in. This allowed focusing on the good lip-syncing and we did the opposite with split-screening which allowed the viewer not see the bad lip-syncing, as we couldn't change some of it.

editing lesson 11/11/2011

This lesson we decided to use split screening for the rap part as many rap videos use split screens and different type of editing to play with the eye, we also used a 4 clip split-screen to create a dfiferent effect and keep the user engaged to the music video. Also we zoomed/cropped into existing clips which cut on the beat, which focused on the important rap/hip hop icons e.g. shoe.
Moreover we ghosted part of the clips on the rap scene which looked good and fitted in with the the style of the adele scenes where she was ghosted into scenarios.
Another thing we have done this media lesson is edit some of the Adele scenes by adding some scenery shots which cut on the beat, aswell as making most of the transitions smoother.

Editing Lesson 8/11/2011

We started off by continuing with layering clips and fading them over the Adele section to make it more interesting. We thought that by adding more to the clips it would make them more appealing to watch.

After receiving some feedback, we have decided to add some more clips to break up some of the lip syncing from Adele to make the footage more visually appealing.

Problems we need to resolve this lesson 8/11/2011

Our biggest problem we face at the moment is the footage not being interesting enough.

Another problem that we need to resolve is making the split screens appear more smoothly.

We also need to make the transition between some of the clips smoother.

7/11/11 MORE EDITING

With all are new footage and with all the feedback we received in our last lesson we know very well what we need to do to improve our music video.
First we imported all the new footage that was filmed in the weekend and with this footage we made some split screening in some bits to make the video more interesting. We encountered many problems while using the split screening effects. One of our main problems was that every time we put in two shots into the same clip in a split screen we had to move both clips to the side so they could both fit in the same shot; this meant that the subject in the clip we wanted to show was often off centre or out of the shot.

We also fixed the dogs problem in the shot that had some dogs in it by zooming into the clip so much that you cant see the dogs in it. One of the problems of doing this was that with all the zooming in the camera looks very shaky.

With adding all the split screening effects everything went out of sync :(
Aftr fixing this we added some fading effects. This looked really good and we are planning to continue with these effects next lesson.

6/11/11 EXTRA FOOTAGE

Stacey took out the camera to film some extra footage in the weekend. Some of the footage she filmed included some shots of a church and other areas that will suit our music video. With all these new shots we can do some split-screening and some fading to make our video more interesting to the viewer.

Feedback

feedback:
the film, middle section 110% performance best for a long time, strong music good beat, shots too long, not close-up on face and actions, letting down great performance in the artist, sack and get new person, can crop/split-screen/zoom in, nice beginning Melony in graveyard some shots of gates/flowers/graves. random dog,decide what you want for video (C) video(pass) foundation for an A/B video go and shoot cu-waves, song builds up throughout the song. everything we got, cut into what we got, get close-ups of artist, diff outfit doing same stuff, zoom in cut it in. got adele+k.west can make a single need to create a unity thats not in the song. the black and white to colour creates it - do some more.

We need to find ways to make our music video more interesting and less boring. To achieve this we can put in some fading and split screen sections.

MORE EDITING 4/11/11

After receiving a lot of feedback on how we could improve and which bits were good.
We first started the editing process by improving the lip syncing at the beginning of our music video. We decided to work on this aspect of the video because that is where most people thought we should improve.
We then started working on some fade in/out transitions on the ending of our video to make the final shots go with the music which is more relaxed and smother in that part of the song.
After doing this we decided to work on the Adele part of the song which was the part most of our reviewers thought needed the most improvement and working on. People thought that this part of the video was too boring and needed some sort of effect added to it to be improved. We then decided to make it black and white which was our original idea to see how it will look. We think this is fitting with with the sad music and goes with the Kanye West shots which are filmed in the dark.
 We thought adding the black and white effect looked really good at the beginning of our music video so we then decided to make some of the 5second shots at the end in black and white to add some variety and the fact that some of the scenes were the graveyard, which was part of the Adele scenes so it fit in while adding more emotion effect upon the music video.
We then decided to add a color corrector to the Adele scenes in the music video, due to the music video 'Someone Like You' by Adele using black and white (desaturate) as well as color corrector to make the dark's more effective and more dark. We then decided to use Film Grain, but we couldn't implement this as the only filter that was similar to the Film Grain effect was a Noise filter, but it wasn't as effective as we wanted it to be. So we couldn't use the Film Grain effect as it's a plug-in.

Class Feedback for rough cut

positive:
- Lip syncing is decent
- The rap section is good in the dark
- acting was really good!
- rapper was really good
- good variety of locations and good acting skills
- the actions/swagger from the actor was really good
- you perfectly cut with the beat and lyrics of the song
- good lip syncing
- really good acting from the male
- shot types were good
- good performance and lip syncing
- kanye west was really good
- good lighting and scenes
- good rap scene
- acting on rap scene is really good and well thought
- effective cuts and transitions
- really good imitation of kanye west
- good range of shots, and transition between two artists shows good continuity
- good performance overall
- good shot variety/distances
- i like the location of the male scene on the car park in the dark

People like our music video :)






negative
- the female doesn't look very into it
- lip syncing needs some improving
-  need to cut between different footage as the sections are to long (no it's not each shot is between 2-7 seconds maximum ...)
- maybe sync kanye's vocals better
- lip syncing could be improved
- lip-syncing is a bit out of sync
- opening could be more effective with colour editing
- lip syncing is a bit out of sync
- maybe more variety on the adele part?
- maybe improve adeles lip syncing and outfit
- lip syncing could be improved
- a bit repetitive
- unwanted things in the background .. dogs?
- the start is a bit slow compared to the rapper - possibly lighten her lip syncing and movement
- lip synching by the guy is not quite in time
- could put some colour filters in the graveyard bit?
- might look a little better if adeles character showed a little more emotion.
- costumes aren't very good
- simons lip syncing could be improved


Most of the people that viewed our rough cut thought that our lip syncing wasn't up to standards. We partly agree with this but we can't do much to fix it as we cannot re-film all the lip-syncing bits again. We will try and tweak some of the lip syncing bits by using time effects to make the scenes sync better. Another part of our music video that people didn't like was the opening scene with Stacey (Adele). Her acting wasnt up to scratch and one group wrote that she should "show a little more emotion". We think she did fine because the song is a sad song and she is in a graveyard. Others suggested that we should add some color filters to this scene as it is quite plain. We like this suggestion and we are planning to add some black and white colour filters to this beginning sequence to make the visuals go with the mood of the song.
There are some unwanted things in the background for example dogs. We couldn't do much about this as there were dogs everywhere and it was getting dark.

Rough Cut to Final Cut improvements.

Our Rough cut and our Final Cut will be very different. For our Final cut we need to add:

• Black and white effects for the Adele bit and maybe some color correcting in other scenes to fit the mood of the music.
• Some more fading transitions towards the end of the video to make it fit in with the music and make the music video easier on the eye.
• Tweak some of the lip sinking bit as they aren't completely finished yet.
• Overall make it smoother and better.

rough cut video

Our rough cut video produced

Editing Lesson 3

For this lesson we needed to finish the rough cut of our music video. We didn't think this was going to be too hard as we had been working on editing for the last two lessons and we were familiar with the editing techniques required to edit a music video but we also had to edit the last minute of the video in half a lesson!
During our editing we had to overcome many problems:

• First of all we realised some of our clips were too short compared to how they were supposed to be but we quickly fixed this problem by extending the clips around it and adding some fading effects to make it look smoother and feel more complete.
• We also started experimenting with some fading in and out techniques. But towards the end of the editing process we were running out of time so we had to stop using the fading transition. We are planning to use these after giving in our rough cut.

Once we finished our rough cut we will post it on our blog. 

Editing Lesson 2

Our first problem was that Final Cut said our backing track was offline because last lesson we didn't transfer it on to the Mac - to resolve this we copied it across to the Mac and and recreated the link in Final Cut.

After watching some of our footage we didn't realise that for some of the movement of Adele in one clip she would finish walking on her left leg and start in the next clip on the same leg and the same with the right leg which makes the overall video look slightly out of sync when you really focus on the walking.

Also while we were watching the Kanye sections of the footage back we noticed that the lip syncing wasn't as good as it could be but it still works for our music video, however because of this it has made syncing the Kanye footage to backing track quite difficult.

Editing Lesson 1

This lesson we have spent transferring our footage on to the Mac - Whilst this was happening we watched some of our footage through.

Once the footage had transferred onto the Mac we started editing our footage. The biggest task we have is making sure the lip syncing is right and on time with the backing track.

For shot 6 we have decided to use an alternative shot to what we had originally planned as with the different pieces of footage for this shot the one we have chosen was the best one in terms of framing, camerawork and lip syncing. The only problem with this is that it cuts out 'Adele's' legs where as we had originally planned to have a full body shot.

For some of our shots we have decided to start them and cut them earlier than we had originally intended as it makes the flow of the overall video better as well as fitting to the feel of the backing track more.

Evaluation of Filming

Overall our filming was a success however we did come across several problems. The biggest problem we came across is that Simon (the Kanye West actor) arrived to the filming late this meant we needed to change around the order of filming. As a result of changing the order of the filming we had to film the Adele section first, this resulted in the footage being filmed in day light so we weren't able to use the lighting effects which we had originally planned and can be seen on our storyboard.

We were pleased with the locations we chose for filming however the Cemetary produced the problems of members of the public walking across where we were filming due to the time of day as it was the prime time for dog walkers and people leaving work. The Car Park was really good as when it came to filming there it was completely empty so this will give our footage more of a professional feel as well as making the location fitting to the rap/ hip hop genre.

Our time estimates for filming were pretty much spot on and for some of our estimates on the call sheet the actual time we took was shorter as we didn't have to re-film some of the shot as much as we thought we would need to. Both for the Adele and Kanye West parts we feel that the lip syncing was pretty much spot on, although there is obviously room for improvement.

The weather was great for filming conditions however - for the genre of our music video it would have been better if the Adele section was cloudy rather than having a clear blue sky as it isn't as reflective of the genre, although we are unable to control the weather we could have avoided this problem if we filmed at an alternate time - however as we are using colour filters and turning the Adele section of the footage into black and white.

Evaluation of the filming

On our filming shoot, we encountered a couple of problems, some of which that:
- Our kanye west actor (simon) came late so we couldn't film both scenes during the day so we had to improvise with our filming, so we have to use colour filters.
      - this outcome  may allow us to do more with filters and editing, therefore we can experiment and may produce a better music video than we may of thought of we would of had.
- we got al ot of extra footage which we can include in the digipack, or the music video itself. Allowing us to create more layers and cut on beat al ot more often.
- we also were able to lip sync the music video clips effectively and we didn't have to re-film most of the scenes, except for the beginning as we were getting into it.

- both locations were good as it showed a contrast of a mellow atmosphere, and a urban location which was the car park. However there were large lamp posts on the car park which affected our filming, due to the lamp posts being in the way.
-In a way we were lucky to film the rapper scene at night in a light up area because we later discovered that the torch we were originally going to use for the cemetery scene was no where near bright enough to shot a scene in pitch black conditions.
- We might of had a couple of problems with pedestrians walking their dogs in the cemetery but we managed to work round it effectively thanks to Jakes patience.

animatic of the music video

Similarities between music videos about love and heart break.

Something that we have noticed between music videos for song that are about love and heart break is that it is quite common for some of the footage to be in black and white. This is something we have decided to do so we now know that we are fitting a common convention for this type of song.


Within Beyonce's music video for 'Broken Hearted Girl' she uses a mix of black and white and full colour fottage which is something we hope to do as it is effective and shows the emotion of the song quite effectively.

Problems We may face when filming

When we are filming our music video we may come across a number of problems, these are:

Changes in the weather

We have thought about the fact that we are going to be filming in autumn which means we can't expect the weather to be hot or sunny, but this doesn't matter for our music video as hot sunny weather won't fit our song. If it rains it won't effect filming too much as it

Technical Problems

We may find that the camera doesn't work, the battery runs out or there might not be enough memory on the camera. If this was to happen we would be able to use either Stacey's phone which would mean the quality f the footage isn't very good or Ruri's camera which would limit our time for filming as this would need to be collected.

Casting Problems

As we have decided to use someone from outside our group to be Kanye West they might not actually turn up, if this was to happen then either Ruri or Jake would have to take on the role.

Lesson - 10th OCT: Project so far

So far in this project we have had to decide which song to produce the music video for. We came to a problem when our group was split between two songs. Our decision was reached by going with the song we felt had more scope and would give us the best overall end result.

We have had to create our storyboard - this took longer than we anticipated as we decided to do it quite detailed so that our overall shooting time wouldn't be as long.

Our test filming went to plan - as all of the shots we decided to use are effective and work really well.

The analysis and research we have conducted so far has helped develop our ideas and has given us more ideas and possibilities of what we can do.

Kanye West - Demands of Record Label/ Reoccuring Smilarities

Whilst looking through Kanye West's music videos it has become fairly obvious that one of his traits in his music videos is for some of the footage to be in black and white, because of this we will need to consider editing some of the footage of 'Kanye West' so that it is in keeping with the music videos he has already released. This is important because it means the audience are able to easily connect the video to being one of Kanye West's.

Initial Storyboard Sketches

Previous Student Work Evaluation

This music video is fitting to the genre, as the setting is peaceful which fits the slow beat/rhythm of the song. The editing is really good as all the lip-syncing is spot on or near enough spot on, and cutting is on a beat which makes it feel more smoother. At 1:14 to 1:17 and 2:18 to 2:36 uses good use of editing as they layer the videos and creates a really good image and feeling on the music video, as it is the instrumental. The overall effect and feeling is really good as the location of the filming is prime and looks like a realistic music video. The lyrics are amplified illustratively "heart skipped a beat" and creates a artistic video. The use of lighting is good as it looks like they've used a filter with natural lighting as its dull but not grayscale. However there is no voyeurism in the music video at all and also no inter-textual reference which loses 2 points of the goodwins points. But overall it is a really good music video and really effective.

Influence - Kanye West: All of the Lights Music Video

Kanye West - All of the Lights

From the beginning of this music video to 58 seconds in there is a black and white filter which would either have been added during the editing process or the footage could have been filmed in black and white. In our music video we plan to edit some of our footage to be in black and white during the editing process. This video gives us an idea of what the effect would look like.



This effect is quite effective as it is emotive which is one of the feelings the song gives the listener so would be fitting for the music video to have the same feeling.