Group Post: Magazine Advert: Draft 1.

This is our first draft for our magazine advertisement. Even though our music video is black and white we have decided to go with the idea of keeping the advertisement in colour; we think that it will be a lot more eye catching and we can use the green as synergy for our CD. 

Music video 2.

This is our updated music video. We have only edited a few shots but these minor adjustments have reduced the shot lengths as you can see the actors standing about waiting for us to say 'action.' By reducing these shot lengths our music video looks a lot more professional.

How did the target audience feedback help?

The TA feedback helped massively as it made it clear we have created a video that would be consumed and be popular by the exact audience we wanted. The very positive feedback was helpful as it meant we didn't have many adjustments to make. Although there was some criticisms verbally we have soon changed the shots criticised to make it even more enjoyable for the target audience. I think we have finally finished our music video altogether and I am going to show a few more people the finished video so they can give anymore feedback whether it be critical or positive and that means we still have time to make more tweaks if need be before it's too late.

Tools used on Final Cut Pro-X.

We used many tools and techniques on Final Cut to produce a music video that looked professional. The tools we used were: 

Blade - This tool was very useful for cutting shots short and making sure the jump cuts where on the beat and the right length.

Import - This was obviously used a lot as we had hundreds of clips we needed to import onto our timeline and without this tool we would not have been able to make our video.

Detach Audio - This was also a crucial tool we needed to use a lot. This tool took off the audio from the clips we filmed so there was no background noise over the song.

Disable clip - This was a handy tool as it meant if we didn't know what clip we wanted to use in a certain space we could put one clip over another and disable one and see which one looked better.

Under and Over cranking - There are a few clips of Charmaine where this came in handy. Under-cranking the shots gave it more of an effective emotive feel in my opinion and it was used in the correct places where if the song was slow then thats when we would use the slowing down tool. We also used over cranking to create  a time lapse looking shot, this was also used effectively as it went really well with the instrumental part of the song. (shown below)

Gaps and Markers - We didn't use these two tools a great deal but when we did they were very helpful. We used markers when we needed to mark where the beat was so we knew thats where one clip needed to be cut to another so it was on beat and looked good. Gaps where also good when we came to nearly finishing but still had a few shots to go we used gaps to mark out where the shots needed to be exactly. This was very helpful as we knew exactly how long the shots needed to be and we could just drop them right in. Using gaps also meant no other clips would come out of sync so we could work on the rest of the video while waiting to re film.

Lift from storyline - Lifting a clip from the storyline was very useful as it meant we could play around with the lifted clip all we wanted and because it wasn't on the storyline it meant it wouldn't mess up anything else or put anything out of sync. Below is a screenshot of how the lift form story line tool being used on our music video.

Show video animation - This was a useful tool as when we was experimenting with different colour effects it was easy to see what we had on the clip already so if we didn't like it then they where easy to get rid of and disable.

Opacity - We used this tool quite a bit when we was doing shots over each other or when Charmaine's face was faded in. It was very effective as it meant shots could be easily faded in nicely instead of all at once all of a sudden

Target Audience Feedback - Use of social media.

Criticisms from this feedback?
There where a few criticisms which where that in some parts of the video you could tell they where waiting about for us to say 'action.' We have acted on this criticism and shortened the shots where it was clear they where waiting around.

Digipak Draft 2.

This is our digipak draft 3. We have added the lyrics to the song that is featured in our music video as this is the song that will be released as a single before the album, this should mean it is most popular therefore we included the lyrics as this may attract people to buying the album.

Dave from Blueprint visit.

Having Dave from Blueprint Film in Lincoln was a very beneficial as he is a professional and this meant he could also make our video look more professional. He didn't have many major criticisms but he did help us with a few little things such as shortening shots so they don't look like they're waiting around.  He also made sure all our shots where cutting on the beat like we wanted them too.

Overall I enjoyed Dave's visit very much as he gave us some great pointers which we followed through with and made our music video look more clean cut and professional.

Music Video.

Use of colour in some shots.

 We decided to put in colour in just these two shots as it emphasises that Ethan's world is pretty dark and then Charmaine comes along and brightens it up. It adds to the story and I think the colour goes well and makes it easier for the audience to understand the relationship between the two and Ethan's feelings towards her. I think that having just these two shots of Charmaine overlapping other shots makes the colour work even better as it is a subtle change from black and white whereas if it was just a cut shot to Charmaine on her own in colour it wouldn't be as effective and would look less professional.

Why did we choose to have our video in black and white?

We chose to have our video in black and white as the band who's song it is have most of their videos in black and white. Even though there were some nice colouring from the trees in some shots, overall the video looked better with the black and white effect. The effect adds to the negative narrative of how Charmaine keeps rejecting Ethan. We had the idea to change the end of the video to colour when they started to get close and Charmaine was warming to Ethan but we decided overall it looked more professional all in black and white instead of swapping.

Digipak Draft 1.

These are our first drafts of our Digipak. We are going with the idea of having all of it in black and white except the back cover where there is a shot of them both together. We thought this would show the contrast and maybe make the narrative of our video clear to the audience that he is madly in love with her.I think the shot shows that anyway but emphasises it more by having it in colour.

Research: Target Audience research digipak and advert photo ideas.

Planning: Final shots, Story boards.

I have made a gap filler storyboard for the shots we need to fill up the instrumentals and also some more shots we thought would look better for the ending as we used our original shots at the beginning. Although there is quite a few shots needed we know exactly what we want so filming should be quick and efficient. I have organised with the actors we are going to film the very final shots on Monday 23rd of November in the morning. There are a lot of shots on this story board, however I have learnt from editing that this song is very slow and if we didn't get a lot of shots then the ASL would be very long and people would get bored easily. 

Problems filming for final shots.

When we came to put in the final shots we had filmed onto Final CutPro-X we came to the realisation that as a result of the song being full on instrumentals it meant we didn't have enough shots to fill these instrumentals up. We also had used some shots we wanted to use at the end and put them at the beginning of the song so we needed to replace these shots.

This meant we needed a lot more shots than we thought we did. I arranged to re-film with our actors but unfortunately, only one showed up. It was very inconvenient but I made the most of having one actor as I did not want to waste Ethan's time. I filmed some extra shots with him and went to buy some flowers as a prop for him to use as I thought that would be a good shot to have in the video.

Further Research: Analysis Of A Newly Released Music Video.

Adele - Hello.

This music video includes a variety of amazing extreme emotive close ups. Watching this video has given me the inspiration to include some extreme close ups of our star image, Ethan B. When we re-film the shots we need I am going to film a performance shot of Ethan singing 'A soft sound' he is going to be centre frame and smiling to himself. This contrasts with Adele's emotions in her close ups but the video, however the principle will still be the same as they close ups will show the true emotion of the actors.

The top row in my opinion are close ups of her showing next to no emotion and just singing the lyrics, I think this is still inspiring to me in a way as it shows she is maybe sick of what is going on and has no emotion or feeling towards it anymore. Following on from that, the second row are very emotive and this is the type of close up shots I want in my music video when the shots are performance. These close ups really put across to the audience her emotion about her relationship and how angry and upset she is. The bottom row is more extreme close ups, she looks very powerful in the middle one and I feel like this is a modern representation as women are becoming increasingly more recognised as powerful and inspiring to younger girls. That shot is from the end of the video so it is clearly showing the concept that she is getting over her heartbreak and moving on. The other two on the bottom row show her being more upset, this can be linked with Blumler and Katz theory as her target audience may watch this video if they have experience the same thing of a personal relationship breakdown. I do think this video is very relatable and has been made even more relatable by the colour (sepia), extreme close ups of her facial expressions when she is singing and the amazing set design. 

The two long shots on the left and right make her come across as more alone. The two locations are very secluded and isolated which again is reflecting on how she is feeling. It emphasises the lyrics and how she is very alone at that time. I think there is a shot of the phone box to link with the 'Hello its me' lyric as she will obviously be saying that to someone on the phone. The abandoned over-grown phone box can also be representing how her relationship was over a while ago yet she is still trying to communicate and apologise to her ex-partner. We watched Adele's video while filming and decided to include some similar extreme close ups like the ones featured in her video.

Group Post Further Research: what we found from attending The 1975 concert.

On the 12th of November 2015, myself and Charlotte were fortunate enough to go and visit The 1975 in concert. Above is a video of them performing their song 'Settle down', which is our chosen song for our music video. Watching it performed live gave us different ideas of the colours to use within our music video (synergy), as we have been quite indecisive about whether to keep the colour in our video or to use black & white. During this performance, the main colours that were used were green, pink and blue. Green is a colour that is very dominant colour in our music video, so the use of colour in this performance has made us more confident in keeping the colour in our video.

Something else that we took from watching this live is the body language of the lead singer (Matthew Healy). It gave us more on an insight into how to instruct our star image to act on camera during performance shots, so it works well and suits the song.

The 1975 have just come back from a year break; before this break numerous of their music videos were edited black and white, and previous occasions I have seen them perform live, their stage design was black and white as well. However during this concert there was no black and white, and instead various different colours were used, this could be to signify they're returning with a new image. This could link to the idea that we found in our target audience research; at the beginning of our music video it could be black and white, and as the relationship in the video starts to blossom, we could revert to colour. 

Planning: Storyboard For Final Shots.

This is a story board for our final shots. This is going to be very helpful as it will make the filming efficient and as short as possible. I put our final shot list into a story board as it is simple to follow and the simple drawings gives us a rough idea as to what shot and angle we need so we can get to it straight away.

Planning: Final film schedule.

Planning for final shots.

While editing we saw we needed just a few more shots of both Ethan and Charmaine together. As they both go to different colleges and it's quite difficult to organise a film shoot when they both have free periods, we created this simple written shot list so we knew exactly what we needed to finalise our video.

Further Research: Target Audience Feedback,

We conducted a small focus group of people with the same age as our target audience, we showed them our first rough cut of our video and asked them if it would look better all in black and white or just a few clips in black and white. This focus group helped us a lot as one of the points made were that we could have the shots of where they're both together in black and white to emphasise how negative their relationship is at the beginning. We also got some feedback (which was said before we started recorded) which was that Charmaine was quite voyeuristic and that was exactly what we was going for when we decided on what type of clothes she was going to wear as we wanted her to relate to Laura Mulvey's theory of a male gaze.

Planning: Star Name.

We have chosen 'Ethan B.' as our star name for our actor. We have chosen this because we think it's short, simple and can be quite eye catching if used in our digipak and advert creatively. We have a few shots of Ethan B. lined up that we think we are going to use for his digipak and magazine advert. We also have a few photos of both Ethan and Charmaine together which we are considering using as they look very good together and I think the photos would look good for an advert.

Re-Filming.

Unfortunately some of the shots we had from previous filming shoots were not good enough to use in the music video as they were cut off too soon or the actor wasn't singing in time to the music. We solved this problem by going through our shot list and making sure we knew exactly what shots we had and did not have. This enabled us to be efficient and not waste anyones time as we knew exactly what we needed and where we wanted it to be filmed.

Group Post - Re filming schedule