Evaluation of another groups directors commentary

T2-42

We feel that their directors commentary could have appeared more professional by using more cuts to edit out mistakes made in the speech, and perhaps use more special effects.

We think it was good that they used clips of their video in their commentary however we think that they could have used more and maybe explained them in more detail.

We think that it's good that they covered all the questions however they could have answered in more detail and maybe made the product longer.

Q1-08 

We think that this is a really good, professional directors commentary, we think this because they have spoken in detail about their products.  They have also included lots of their work as examples, and other images to back up their ideas.  We also like how they used black white whilst talking, this made the commentary easier to understand and therefore the images stood out more.   

However, we thought that the commentary was a bit too long, and viewers might loose interest towards the end, but they did include many effects and visuals which would keep the audience interested. 

What we did today 08/12/11

Today we finished our directors commentary and uploaded it to the blog.

We also analysed two other groups music videos from the long road music video youtube account and wrote them up on the blog.

We checked through all out blog posts to check that everything was up to date, posted and that each post was tagged correctly.

Directors Commentary - Blog Version

This is our final director's commentary which will go on our digi-pack. 

Analysis of another group's video

Music Video Analysis: R1-16 


When we were watching this music video we thought that the locations they used were really good and we really liked the London shots, this shows good effort.  There was also a good variety of shots which made the music video more interesting.  Their costume changes were good and fitted well with the genre.


However, we think that the lip-syncing could have been better and also there wasn't much of a narrative and what there was didn't really make sense.  Some shot durations were too long which could to the audience getting uninterested.  


Overall we feel that they made good effort but the narrative and editing could have been a bit better.  

Analysis of another group's music videos

Music video for

KEKE J FINAL CUT R115

Watching this music video, we saw a good range of techniques that fitted the genre really well.

As part of the mise-en-scene the costume was stereo-typical of that genre, as was the location and lighting.  There was a lot of good shot variation which made the music video more interesting to watch.  Also the shots between the narrative and the lip syncing was well balanced and told a good story relevant to the genre.  

As part of Goodwin's Points, the video fitted the lyrics and the music because of the editing techniques they used such as fades and dissolves which really fit with the lyrics.  They also related to goodwin's points by using intertextuality with the mobile phone because this was quite a big part to the narrative.  

We also thought that the continuity was very good and it was obvious that they spent a good amount of time on filming and editing the music video, and thought it through well so it fitted the genre well.

    

Things we could have improved on

We realised that there are certain aspects of our group work that could have been done better:

• We didn't stick to our storyboard whilst creating the music video this was because we had a lack of willing participants to be in our music video, we also had many time constraints due to some group members being absent. 
• We didn't stick to our shot list whilst creating the music video although we did manage to get the majority of the shots some were left out due to the lack of willing participants to act.
• We didn't communicate very well as a group this could show in some of our work as it didn't come out as well as we would have liked.
• The script for our directors commentary did not give everyone equal standing in how they portrayed their own evaluation and how much each person was given to say.
• Because of time given to record, we couldn't include the acting scenes as we didn't have enough footage and the actors were not always available in our filming time due to other commitments.

What we did on 01/12/11

On thursday we filmed our directors commentary. It went okay and out timing was good and we managed to get it all done in our time slot with time to spare.
We also uploaded the footage on this day.

What we did today 07/12/11

Today we finished the editing of our directors commentary. We didn't get as much done as we'd hoped because of time issues, and also because on Monday's lesson the editing didn't go to plan. Also, because there was only three group members it was harder to get as many ideas and make it better.

Sam Brown's Evaluation

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

Our media product's are all for the song "Strange" by JLS. The first product is our music video for the song, the second is a Digipack cover and the last being a magazine advertisement. We kept all of our products consistent and kept them conventional to the pop music genre.

Our first product, the music video, definately conforms to the conventions of real media products. We made thisconform to conventions because we wanted it to be aimed at the target audiece of the product which is young female's between the ages of 12-18. The video conforms to conventions by using a rane of shot types, such as Close-ups, long shots, pans and zooms, as well as more, to allow the audience to see the band both individually and all together as a group. This also conforms to the record label's needs as they want the audience to be able to recognise each individual member of the band. The music video also uses locations that would be traditionally found in a pop/boy band song, such as the hall and field locations that we used. We kept both of the locations in throughout the video in order to keep a nice variety throughout and to not allow the audience to get bored of any one location. We also used conventional costumes by simply wearing hoodies and all wearing distinct different colours. This way each band member wold have their own distinct look whilst still confroming to the conventions of the genre. We also used editing techniques similar to those in the genre, such as using black and white filters and using cross fades.

Our Digipack Cover, conformed to conventions also. This has been done by making it similar to our music video. To make it similar to our video we used the same location for the cover as we did in the video, namely the forest location. We also wore the exact same costumes for the cover photo as we did in the video. We used a graident to change from colour on the front to black and white on the back, with the transition being on the spine. We thought that since we used black and white in our video it would be appropriate to use it hear as well. We took screen shots of our music video and put them in a column on the back cover of the digipack, this was partly done to show a clear relation of the video to the digipack, since the main cover picture was not taken from the video. We tried to make the text as plain as possible so that it was easy for the user to read and as this also conformed to conventions. With the exception of the word "Strange" which was done in a different font in order to make it stand out on the cover. Although this also matched conventions as we had seen iot done before. All in all we tried to make the digipack cover look as conventional as possible and I think that we succeeded in doing so.

I think that our magazine advert did not conform to the conventions of pop and boy band style music videos. I think this mainly because the whole poster is in black and white, whereas they are usually portrayed with nice vibrant colours, to make it stand out on the page. The advert also used text that I don't think would usually be found on a pop advert aimed at female teens. Such as the line "With exclusive content from the lads." I don't think that this line would be found on a conventional advertisement as it does not relate to how young teenage females would communicate with eachother and so alienates them. The bordering used on the image does not match anything we used in our video and so does not relate very well there either. however I do think that the quote and rating do match conventions and that they along with the price and Amazon labels were done well.

Overall I think that we did well to match the conventions of the pop and boy band genres with the only exception being our magazine advertisement.

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

I think that the combination of our ancillary texts and main products was done very well.

The combination of the music video and the digipack cover was done well, I think this because we used simialar effects in both. They both used combinations of black and white filters with colour. On the digipack cover this was done with a gradient spreading across the front and back cover. On the video this was done by overlapping both black and white and colour clips. They both also use the same locations and costumes for the boy band. The digipack cover also uses screen shots directly from the video as images on the back cover. I think that the digipack cover depicts the video well.

I think that the combination of the music video and the magazine advert was decent but could have been better. The use of a screenshot of the end of our music video was a good idea and worked well in relating the two articles. The two items could have been better related although this could be partly because of the choice to leave the image as the primary focus of the image instead of adding in lotes of little details around it.
For example there is not much text on the advertisement. I think that keeping the magazine advert plain when the digipack cover was full of information was a poor choice and I would change it if I were to do this task again. Overall I think that the magazine advert could have related a lot better to the music video but that given the time we had to create it a good job was done in making all three items relate to each other as well as still relating to the pop genre.

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

the audience did not give much negative feedback. The audience commented that our lip synching was the definately done well. I did, however, learn that we should have used more locations. I think that the use of two locations was good to inspire a use of a variety of locations but i agree that one more location would have worked in our video, and was originally planned. However due to time constraints we could not get all of the locations and shots that we wanted. The audience also said that we all acted as a boy band very well. The audience did state that our costumes were not "boy band" enough which is partly true. It would have been better if we had all worn similar brnaded clothing as this would have conformed to conventions better. The audience did state that we did not show the use of a narrative well enough. This comment is pointless however as we did not use a narrative in our video.

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

Media technologies were used in all of our products via:

• photoshop: This was used to create our ancillary tasks. The use of photshop was vital in order to create both of these products as we used tools that only an IMP of that stature can supply such as gradients and selection tools as well as layering and masking our products.
• Final Cut: This was definately needed in order to edit our music video. The tools of this software are very good and without them our music video would not have looked half as good. The use of the filters, transitions, cuts, audio and video manipulation, as well as others, all together led to the creation of our product.
• Handheld HD digital camera/ Tripod: These were needed in order to get still high quality shots for our video. Without them our video would not have been as high of a quality or as well shot and executed.
• Handheld still shots cameras: These were needed in order to take the pictures for our ancillary tasks.

In our research and planning stages we took into account the use of all of these technologies and how we could implement them to the best of our abilities to create a high quality product. We knew that we would be using photoshop and final cut so we all made sure that we had experience in using those programs to edit beforehand.

What We Did Today - 1/12/2011

Today we practiced for, and filmed our directors commentary in the media studio. We also uploaded our footage onto final cut.

Presentation Script

Question 1

SP: For our meida products we decided to choose a stereotypical view of a boyband. Our media product, a music video for JLS song "Strange" along with the ancillary tasks which were the Digi-pack cover and magazine advert are consistent and conventional to the pop music genre. 

G: our group thought it would be a good idea to use some of the things that are done by JLS e.g. costume, cheesy acting, air grabs etc. The video contained a typical boyband image in the way we filmed our video. For instance we showed a lot of close-ups portraying emotion from the singers, which is something you are likely to see in a real media products.

H: Before we started planning the media product, we had to do some research, because our genre was R&B/Pop, and was a typical boyband song, we looked at a variety of different artists such as JLS (themselves) and how they present themselves, Take That and Westlife. 

SB: Relating to Goodwin's points our video is well edited to the music and features lots of close up shots of the band and of the individuals which is meeting the demands of the record label. This is consistent to the digi-pack and magazine where the band as a whole and individual shots are included. 

J: Our music video also challenges in the way that it only features the members of the boy band, rather than also having a story line with actors like many music videos of the same genre.Though our video contains these typical features our video does slightly challenge this by adding a less serious note to the video where we included some shots of the boys playing around during the filming. This develops our video into something more exciting and less conventional with the aim of keeping the viewers interested.

Question 2

SP: Our media products all work well as a promotional package for a number of reasons. Firstly they all have similar effects e.g. black and white, and the cover and magazine both contain either camera shots from the music video or a still camera shot taken in a location from the video, while wearing the same costumes that are seen in the video. This shows good continuity. 

G: the media product has good Housestyle and when people see one of the ancillary tasks, they will automatically think of our music video and JLS as a boyband.  The image that we have tried to encorporate is that they are a sterotypical boyband, with the longing looks on their faces and them looking into the distance.  

J: The ancillary tasks and video I feel radiate a cool, modern and fun image of the artist as well as being a tight friendly unit. This bodes well for the artists sales and will also please the record label. The friendly, modern, cool image is something that is typical of modern day boybands such as One Direction and The Wanted and even JLS. 

SB: Our products are successful at attracting the target audeince, which is most likely going to teenage girls or fans of JLS. The reasons it is successful is because it shows off the image of the boyband and constantly shows the artists, which is what the audience want to see. Things such as featuring a gallery on our DVD means that the audience can look at pictures of the band, together and individually.

Question 3

H: We learnt a lot from the feedback we were given. Firstly from our initial pitch we realised that in order to make our music video a success, we had to go all out and make it as cheesy as possible. By doing this we hoped that instead of the video looking embarrassing, it would look cheesy, but in a good way, as though it was actually something you would see in real life. 

G: Our feedback from our initial pitch wasn't as good as we had planned, mainly because our group found it hard to come up with suitable, sensible ideas.  We decided we either did a really 'cheesy pop boyband video' or a 'spoof video', and obviuously we went for the cheesy pop video.

SB:  When we presented our initial pitch to the class, they wanted to know if we had any intertextual references, where our locations would be and how we were going to make it conventional.  

J: Feedback from our rough cut was most useful as this opened our eyes to what our peers thought of our music video which at this stage was not fantastic so we were told.  The feedback that we received was vital to the success of our final video. Changes to our video needed were more shot variation, more effects and a change of locations. It was at this stage that it was highlighted that what we had of a storyline was irrelevant. Although it wasn't all negative, we were commended for our acting and lip syncing which is now the strongest, most effective part of our video along with the edit being extremely effective.

 

SP: We had a lot of compliments for our final cut. For instance many said that we showed good lip-synching, acting and emotive singing. They also said it was good how we looked like a proper boyband, and how we used effects such as black and white, split-screens etc. to make our video successful.

G: I think that the music video came out much better than we had all expected. 

Question 4

SP:  New media technologies were used in the whole process and each stage of making out music video. In the research, we used previous music videos from the same genre, and the internet, to analyse and find out what sort of things we wanted and needed to put into our own product. This was also part of the planning. 

H: The most important hardware we used was the HD video cameras. The video cameras (combined with a tripod) enabled us to shoot clear effective footage from various angles such as high/low, tracking shots, pans and close/medium/long shots

SB: Final cut was essential in making our music video look professional and successful. We included a large amount of editing techniques to amke it look better e.g. black and white, fades, cross-dissolves, split-screens etc. Although it took a lot of time to find out how to do some things, in the end, I believe our product looked very professional. 

 J: Photoshop is a programme that we had all used before but most of us were unconfident in using it so i took it upon myself to create the magazine advert whilst the others concentrated on the digi-pack and i volunteered ideas where i could. Photoshop is a very technical programme however it provided the key features such as blurring, cropping, smudging, text, cropping and re-sizing that allowed us to create an effective digi-pack cover and magazine advert. 

G: we used a digital images to get the images for the whole cover. Other pictures of the cover were still taken from the final music video as these worked efficiently with creating continuity for all our products. On photoshop we were also able to match the colour schemes and font for all out products so that there were no continuity errors.