Music video - rough cut

This is our rough cut music video, the first attempt of us putting all the shots together and putting our editing into practise.

There are many good points to this video. The stabiliser effect on the shots that were sometimes hard to keep still worked very well because it helped these shots look very smooth. An example is this is the last high angle shot that slowly moves to the sky, then back down to Ally. We had to balance the tripod on our chin so it was very hard to keep the camera as steady as we would have liked it, but the stabiliser effect overcame this problem. Another good point to this video is that the lyrics matched the visuals. For example, when the lyrics say 'I guess the time of my life' there is a shot of him and Shannon very close walking together. Then the lyrics say 'is running late' and this is when a solo shot of Ally is shown in black and white. 

Another good point about this music video is that it uses a variety of shots, mid-shots, close-ups, extreme close-ups, high-angle shots, low-angle shots long-shots, tracking shots etc.. We used all these shots for different effects. For example extreme close-ups were suitable to use with solo shots of Ally to show his emotions and extreme long-shots were suitable when Ally was walking by the pond by himself because this showed the audience that he is returning to places where him and Shannon have previously been. 

The mise-en-scene that we created through editing techniques worked very well with the song lyrics. Ally, the protagonist is wearing typical male clothes that would be seen in 'Alternative Rock' music videos. For example, it is similar to what the band members of 'The Script' wear. They were everyday clothes, (jeans, jackets) so this created realism. 

We edited his scenes of being alone with a black and white effect so it is clear that he is upset and lonely. This worked very well because it made his feelings very clear to the audience so the video made sense. Also, the scenes of Ally with Shannon in the same settings that we filmed the clips of him alone worked very well too. Not only using the same settings made it clear that he misses her but also we used bright lighting in these scenes so it is clear that these were happy times for him. The scenes in the darkness with the projector placed behind Ally, with shots of him and Shannon showing were very successful for many reasons. We got this idea from 'The Script - Breakeven' music video because the mise-en-scene of him being alone, in the dark shows the mood of Ally being unhappy and lonely which is the message we were aiming to convey. Also, the shots showing behind him of him and Shannon having a good time shows that he is missing her. 

Some of our editing in this rough cut is what let it down the most. The syncing at the beginning when Ally is playing his guitar on his bed was not completely in time and this is what people picked up on straight away when we got some feedback from people in our sixth form. Also, parts of the music video when Ally is singing in the projector scenes were often out of time. For example at 3.19 the lip syncing is wrong. 

From our audience feedback, it was a strong view to take out the scenes of Ally and Shannon at the park. It was felt that it was too childish and didn't seem realistic enough that two people of that age would be at a park. 

Also, we are going to add more shot transitions between our scenes. It will show that we can use many different aspects of 'iMovie' and it will also show our audience the space of time between the different clips. 

Finally, it was a mutual feeling that this music video doesn't show enough rejection from Shannon's character. To overcome this we will show her rejecting a phone call from him after it is shown him trying to call her, we think this will make it obvious that he is getting rejected by a girl that he loves. We are alos going to add more shots of Ally and Shannon together looking close, this will emphasise the point that they were once a couple.

Evaluation

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

Our music video uses many different forms and conventions of real media products. The 'General Theory' explains music videos in a certain way. It proposes that the lyrics establish a feeling and a sense of subject rather than a meaning. The tempo of the music often drives the editing. The slow and steady tempo to our song encouraged us to use editing that matched this. The use of shot transitions fading from one to another distinguished time either passing, or going backwards to view the flashbacks. This fits well with conventions of real media products because it followed the slow pace of our song. 

In terms of camera work we followed the conventions of real media products because we used a variety of different shots. We used as many shots as we could as long as they were appropriate. The camera angles we used varied from close-ups to establish emotions of the characters and long-shots to make it clear of the settings to portray the mood of the music video.

This is an example of a close-up of Ally's face in the room by himself. This is to show his lonely, upset emotions. 

This is an example of a long-shot of Ally. We have used this particular shot to show the audience the romantic setting and to allow them to establish this is where him and Shannon have previously been. This emphasises his loneliness without her. 

The lip syncing we used develops real media product conventions because we filmed one particular scene where Ally is lip syncing at all times and we used parts of this scene throughout the whole music video. We spent a large amount of time editing the visuals with the song so the lip syncing was in perfect timing. The scene in which the lip syncing was used was when Ally is sat in a dark room by himself, behind him flashbacks of him and Shannon were shown. This creates a feeling of loneliness and rejection because it looks like he is singing out about his heartbreak but nobody is around to listen or care. Lip syncing is very common and used nearly in every music video around at this present time. For example, when we did research into proffessional music videos (e.g. music videos from 'The Script' and 'You Me At Six') we found it was used in almost all of them.

We followed the genre conventions very carefully throughout our music video. To establish our genre conventions I watched and analysed current 'Alternative Rock' videos by artists such as 'The Fray', 'The Script' and so on. From this, I established certain conventions that were common in these music videos. The costumes that Ally wore included jeans and jackets. This is similar clothing to what the band members were wearing in their music videos. The use of the guitar at the beginning links with 'Alternative Rock' videos because I noticed that performance scenes with emphasis on instruments were often used. We also followed genre conventions because of the message of the song that we have linked with the visuals in the music video. The central messages are heartbreak, sadness and loneliness. This is often used in 'Alternative Rock' songs and music videos. We have made these messages clear through Ally's solo scenes in black-and-white, Ally and Shannon's scenes of them being together using bright lighting (in the same locations as Ally's scenes), Shannon's scene where she clearly rejects a phone call from Ally and the scenes of Ally singing alone with flashbacks of him and Shannon together. The contrast in the lighting of Ally's solo scenes and Ally's scenes with Shannon allows the audience to distinguish the difference in feeling since the time is passed where their relationship has ended. 

This is an example of us using an 'Alternative Rock' genre convention at the beginning of our music video. We organised this shot so the guitar was central so this is what the viewers would concentrate on most, and Ally is above so the audience are introduced to him as a character.

This is an example of a shot of a flashback when Ally and Shannon were together. This shows the bright lighting we have used, to indicate these were happy times for Ally. 

This shows Ally alone, in the same place as the previous shot. The fact that he is alone and it is black-and-white clearly shows the audience his is missing her and feeling rejected.

Our music video challenges real media products through the use of narrative structuring. Many media products follow five main stages: exposition (introduces character and setting), development (storyline is developed and more characters are introduced), complication (an event occurs which will affect characters in the video), climax (tension is at a high, a character will make a decision that will effect the outcome of the story) and resolution (the situation is resolved).  The complication comes into the music video at a very early stage, at the same point as the development. This is when we see Shannon reject Ally's phone call because this is when a new character is introduced and causes trouble for the protagonist character. This also creates a complication for the viewer. We did not include a resolution towards the end of the music video. The main reason for us doing this was to follow the lyrics. The song ends on saying 'When will I be loved?' so this indicates to the viewer that he has still not found happiness. To follow this, so the visuals match the lyrics, Ally was walking away from the camera into the distance from a high-angle shot. This emphasises that he is still lonely and down, so there has been no clear 'resolution'.

In terms of an ancillary tasks, we use conventions of real media products in many ways. For our digipack, the same mise-en-scene of black and white editing is used on every page because this shows the same lonely, isolating feeling throughout. Ally is also wearing the same clothes in every shot on the Digipack, this creates realism for the audience and indicates he is a normal person so the audience can relate to him. The writing all over the Digipack is black. This looked most professional because it was clear and bold, also because the dark writing shows his emotions of rejection and loneliness. 

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

As well as our music video, we also created a Digipack and a poster. For them all to work effectively together, we needed them all to follow the same conventions and characteristics. We also had to make sure they all fit into the same genre to create realism for an audience. According to the hypodermic-syringe theory, an audience will prefer to view our product if it all relates to each other and looks similar. In the Digipack and poster, we have used black-and-white editing throughout. This is to emphasise the mise-en-scene of sadness and rejection.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We gained most of our audience feedback from our questionnaire that we created and from showing people our rough cut. We also gained some feedback on our ancillary tasks from using 'Facebook', a social networking site. Our feedback was based on what we did well and what needed improving. The people that were giving us our feedback were our friends and family. We learnt many things from our feedback such as the out of time lip snycing was very obvious, there was not an obvious feeling of rejection and the writing was not as clear as it should be on the lyrics page of the Digipack. However we also learnt that everything in media is open to an audience's interpretation.

One of the first things that our viewers noticed after showing them our rough cut was that some of the syncing was out of time. This included the lip syncing in the scene where our protagonist character is sat alone in a dark room singing out. This did not look as professional as our music video should look. Another negative feeling about our music video was little concept of rejection. From this we added the phone scene and we filmed more of Ally and Shannon together looking like a couple. The feedback that I received after having a first try at the lyrics page of the Digipack, is that the lyrics were not clear enough on the brick wall. Also, that the red writing didn't fit well with my other products. The red writing may be suggesting something other than sadness and loneliness, it gave the idea of blood and danger. To overcome this I made the writing a larger font and I also made the lyrics black. This way everyone could see the lyrics with no trouble and it was not conveying the wrong type of message to the viewer. A positive I got about the lyrics page on the Digipack was the picture of Ally leaning across the wall linked very well with the music video because his facial expression suggested sadness and the brick wall added an urban feel which worked well in terms of genre conventions.

This is showing the scene where Ally tried to phone Shannon but she threw her phone down. This clearly shows that she does not want to talk to him, so this adds to the theme of rejection.

This is a shot from the scene of Ally alone singing out. We spent a lot of time editing this scene so the lip syncing was perfect.

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

Before we started our music video, we needed to do a wide range of research. We found our song that we used for our music video on the Internet, specifically on the website http://www.unsigned.com/. Once we had picked our song, it was made extremely easy for us to find out the genre also through using digital technology. We used http://www.google.com/ to search our artist, from this we found out what the genre is (Alternative rock) and we found out some background information about our artist 'Erick Baker'. We used http://www.youtube.com/ to search for music videos of the same genre as Erick Baker's music. We did this to establish the genre conventions. This was very important because it is vital that the audience understands the genre for themselves. I analysed music videos by 'You Me At Six' and 'The Script'. From this I established that typically the genre conventions include performance scenes, emphasis on music instruments and men wearing clothes such as jeans and jackets. Through the use of http://www.youtube.com/ I also analysed the music video 'How To Save A Life - The Fray (another alternative rock band) and this gave me many ideas about mise-en-scene in music videos, e.g. dark colours and close-ups of  characters faces to portray emotion. 

After our research was done we were able to start planning our music video. We used 'Microsoft Publisher' to make our storyboard. We made this creative decision because this way we were able to include still images from a digital camera of our locations we were planning to use. This painted a clearer picture in our heads than if we just drew the pictures, it also shows that we could use a range of digital technology. We also used 'Microsoft Publisher' to create all parts of our Digipack and poster. It was made easy for us to insert images from the Internet and our own images. It was also easy to include text and move it around wherever we wanted it to go through the use of text boxes. 

We used the social networking site http://www.facebook.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/ to gain feedback on our rough cut of our music video from our friends and family. This was very useful because we were able to edit our video in terms of what our target audience want. We also used our Questionnaire to get even more feedback from different people so we had a wide range of comments. This helped our final video fit to what our audience wanted the most.

When we had filmed our footage, 'iMovie' helped us in many different ways. It helped us stabilise our shots that we couldn't always hold completely still (e.g the high-angle shots where we balanced the tripod on our chin) and it helped us with shot transitions such as fading from one shot to another. We also added the black and white effect on Ally's solo scenes to create a feeling of sadness and loneliness, as well as added bright lights on the flashback's of him and Shannon to show he was happy in those times. 'iMovie' also allowed us to move clips around easily so we could make the lip sinking as good as possible. This made our editing as effective as it could be.

This is our high angle shot of Ally walking into the distance at the end of the song. We stabilised this shot, so now it is very steady and we can concentrate on his emotions. 

Digipack photo's

This is my first draft of the lyrics page. I tried the lyrics in red at first to see if it added to the theme of rejection and loneliness. I liked this picture of Ally against the wall because it creates an urban image which links well with the genre of 'Alternative Rock'. I used the font 'Tahoma' because it was clear, with no particular detail. I decided this worked best because it is easy to read when you are reading the whole lyrics page with a lot of writing. 

This is the final lyrics page of the Digipack. I changed the lyrics to black because red was difficult to see and black also fits better with the mise-en-scene of our products. I also made the writing in a bigger font to make it clearer to the viewers. However I kept the font in the same style, 'Tahoma'. I kept the picture as it was because it got lots of positive audience feedback. It links well with our music video because of many different reasons. Black-and-white editing links with our music video because it is what we used on Ally's solo shots to convey a feeling of sadness and loneliness. 

Many other bands use images of them against a wall, I have got an example below. It is made to look very effective because not only does this setting create realism, but means the viewers concentrate mainly on the image of the band. This is useful to sell their music because it is focusses on their looks so it is easier for a viewer to remember them.

Final video

Filming our music video

We filmed our music video throughout a period of weeks. We started by filming outside Ally's house and down his street. We filmed him coming out of his door several times from different angles so we could later decide which shots to use that looked most effective. We filmed him walking down the street from behind him, so we couldn't see his face. We made this creative decision because it shows that he is moving on, but he is by himself. He kept his head low throughout this part, this is because even though we cannot see his face, we know that he is feeling down and alone. He ended up at a bus stop, this makes it clear that he is going to be travelling somewhere. After we finished and we looked through the footage, we noticed that some of the shots were too wide and we all decided it did not look right. So we later went back and filmed some of the shots again at a closer angle. We thought this would be a better idea because this would show the audience what he looks like so he is introduced to the viewers. We were able to refer back to our original storyboard because we already had these ideas set out before filming.

We then went to a park in Kidlington and filmed Ally with Shannon (the girl that he is in love with). We did this because we thought that we would play this footage behind Ally in the lecture theatre scenes which were later to be filmed, to emphasise the feeling of loneliness and the fact that he misses her now. We only had to spend one day filming this part because we went there knowing exactly what shots to use (long shots, two-shots) and exactly what they were going to do (be on the swings). We chose them to be on the swings because it reflects happiness and having fun, which indicates that they had a good relationship.

In the next part of our filming, we decided to film the lecture theatre scenes. We filmed after school on a few occasions. We had the projector with the filmed flashbacks uploaded onto the laptop we were using. We decided that the majority of shots we were going to use were going to be close-ups. This is because this way the viewers could capture his emotions. We used zoom on the digital camera to show that we can film many different ways. After looking at the footage, we decided we needed to go back and film some more because some of the shots were zoomed too close to his face and this did not look professional. This idea was also on our storyboard so we knew exactly what we were doing.

After the lecture theatre scenes, we started to film Ally's solo scenes to continue with the themes rejection and loneliness. We went to the park with the pond next to it. We went on an autumn day, we thought the colour of the leaves on the tree's portrayed a very romantic setting. We filmed him sat on a bench by himself, looking down on the floor. We filmed from both sides and from the front, so we had as much footage as possible to choose from. Throughout a number of days, we filmed him walking by the tree's alone, this makes it clear to the viewers that he is lonely. We used a tracking shot so we could see his facial expressions through out the shot. We filmed him walking by the pond from a high-angle shot, walking away from the camera. We thought we could use this as the last shot because by him walking away from the camera, it is a connotation for him walking away from the situation and moving on. We added this particular setting that wasn't on our storyboard at first. The reason for this is because we thought it was the perfect place to emphasise how he still loves the girl.

Once we had completed all of Ally's solo shots, we went back to the same locations and filmed him with Shannon. We were going to use this footage as flashbacks, this shows that he is thinking about happy times of when they were together. By using the same locations, this emphasises that it is her he is missing. We also added this that wasn't on our storyboard. We did this because our first plan did not create enough lonliness without Shannon.

Once we had completed all the filming of the scenes by the ponds, we thought our music video needed another element of rejection. So we decided to go back to the bus stop and film him ringing Shannon. We then introduced Shannon to the music video by using a high-angle shot of her sat in her house (realistic setting) receiving his phone call and rejecting it. We could see her rejecting the phone call through a close-up of just the phone. By using mobile phones in our music video, it does not only just create realism, but it also shows us using an inter-textual reference which is proven to be important in new music videos (Goodwin's Theory of Analysis).

Lastly, we needed to film an opening scene for our music video. We filmed Ally in his house (creates realism as this scene will follow him coming out of his house) playing a guitar. We chose to make him play a guitar because this is a genre convention of Alternative Rock so it does emphasise the genre of the song and music video. We used close-ups of the guitar to show we can get the visuals in perfect time with the audio track.

Editing our music video

Throughout our editing process of our music video we have used the digital technology called 'iMovie'. We found this an extremely useful device because it helped us use many different effects on our music video.

When we had filmed all of our footage, we uploaded it onto 'iMovie' straight away. We then added our audio clip over the visuals. We thought it was important to do this first because we could concentrate on sinking our song and the visuals together. This was easy for us to do as we could move sections of our footage around simply.

We soon added transitions between slides such as fading. This helped emphasise our mise-en-scene because it portrayed time moving slowly and the protagonist character is still shown to be lost and alone. We also added special effects to the lighting of the scenes as the main way to set the mood of the characters. For example, black and white editing was added on through 'iMovie' on the scenes of the protagonist character alone, going back to the places where him and the girl went together. Bright lighting was added on through 'iMovie' also, on the flashback scenes of when he was with the girl.

'iMovie' helped us change some of our footage into slow motion. This made the viewer’s concentrate on a specific part of our music video. Slow motion emphasised the protagonist character's feeling of rejection over time which links well with the lyrics, so this shows the viewers the story of our music video.

Lastly, we used 'iMovie' to stabilise some of our footage that wasn't completely still. This was because in order to get some of our high angle shots (so we had a wide variety of camera angles) we had to balance the tripod on our chin, so throughout the shot it was not all still. The stabiliser effect helped us overcome this, this way our shots looked more professional than they would otherwise.

Target Audience Research

To gather information about our target audience, we decided to play the song to as many people as possible, from all different age groups. We then asked them to fill out our own questionnaire, because this way the information we would collect would be relevent to us because we thought of the questions. We would gain quantative data that is easy to organise. This was the questionnaire we created:

Age:               10-20             20-30             30-40             40-50             50-60

Favourite genera of music:

Hip-Hop / R&B                         -

Alternative Rock / Folk            -

Rock / Metal                             -

Jazz / Classical                        -

Dub step / Electro                   -

Pop / Dance                            -

Other…                                    -

Do you like Erick Baker’s song?

Yes                  No

Would you like to listen to more of his music?

Yes                  No

What age do you think the main audience of the song is? (tick as many as you like)

10-20             20-30             30-40             40-50             50-60             60+

What gender do you think the song is aimed at most?
Male              Female            Both male and female