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: 

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

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.

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 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

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 :)