Music Video

https://youtu.be/7xfSwqgpHQw

Poster (print)

EVALUATION

1. In what ways does your music video use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music videos?

 

In my music video, I used a lot of general conventions of Performance music videos. Most conventional music videos are currently a mixture of Narrative and Performance, Abstract videos are a lot less common. In all of the videos I analysed, the artist is featured performing the song throughout, my video features this quite heavily. A well-known convention is to edit the video at the same pace as the song, whether it is fast or slow. My song is on the verge between fast and slow, but features very prominent beats that I found were easier to take as my cues to edit than the lyrics themselves. To do this, I used a lot of cross dissolves so that the new clip would come into focus on the beat, therefore giving a relationship between the content and the song.

The original video for ‘Castle’ opens with a long shot of Halsey from the back, she is in a glittery dress and a crown, so you immediately know that she is representing some form of royalty. I wanted to establish this same acknowledgement at the beginning of my music video by featuring my artist in a crown from a similar angle.

This particular shot makes the audience focus on the artist and watch their progress throughout the video. As my video continues, you begin to see the confidence that my character grows and the empowerment she feels towards the end of the video, this creates a Linear narrative.

However, the original video is the version created for The Huntsman Winter’s War, so the video features clips from the film. I managed to use and challenge this as I was not advertising a film, so I featured my dancers and my artists in place of the clips. I used similar shots to those from the film as they did not feature any lip syncing and were mostly static shots, I created similar effects by decreasing the speed of some clips.

Unlike most videos, ‘Castle’ does not feature content the directly related to the lyrics, I thought it could be interesting to see if I could do this by creating an overall theme. In my video, it appears that the artist does not want to be in such a position and is overwhelmed by it, so I featured her twisting the crown around in her hands on the words “There’s no use crying about it” to create the effect that there’s no use crying about the crown, about being in that power. I also featured long shots of her walking towards the castle on the words “I’m heading straight for the castle” as a literal connotation.

One convention I did not get to think about whilst casting was the age, gender and ethnicity of my characters. All of my performers are white girls in their late teens, showing no diversity throughout the video. However, the message implied in my video is about female empowerment, so the all-female casting helps boost this message. The gender and ethnicity of my artist matches the original artist, I felt that this would be a fairly important convention to stick to as it gives the feeling that the audio and video are meant to be together.

 

 

1. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

When planning my digipack, I knew that I wanted to have the crown from the artist on the main cover. I took a few photographs of the crown on its own with a gold highlighting light reflecting onto it, however I was not too keen on these photos. I was still unsure of how I wanted to present this crown until I found an old, broken skull prop in the Art department, then I realised that this linked to my music video really well. In the song, there is a part in the lyrics that goes “There’s an old man sitting on the throne that’s saying that I probably shouldn’t be so mean”. The skull was in place to represent this old man on the throne and to represent the old ways of ruling. My artist did not agree with these rules and did not want to conform to them. The cover presents the death of old rulers and the passing over of the crown, this links directly to my music video because it is the same crown featured in the video so it is recognisable.

To create my album cover, I used a combination of Photoshop and Canva. I edited my photos heavily on Photoshop and uploaded them to Canva to ensure that they were the correct dimensions at they fit together right.

When editing my pictures I looked at the original BADLANDS cover and other artefacts such as Vinyls. The colour scheming for these covers were pink, white and a pale blue colour. I figured that even if I am not taking my inspiration for the content from these covers, I could at least use the colour scheme due to the fantasy-like colouring. To do this, I kept a Powerpoint file open with a colour referencing sheet, so that I could ensure I was using the same colours every time.
In all of the photos for my prints, I featured a bold lightning strike effect by overlaying it on my photos. This creates an uneasy feeling for the audience as it makes it seem as if something is going wrong, this links back to the death of the old rulers and the change the new rulers are going to bring in.

The font I used for my digipack and poster is exactly the same and is only in black or white apart from the song titles on the back of my album. This creates fluidity and consistency between my print artefacts.

I located the album and artist name in the centre of my album cover in between two large squares creating a diamond. This centralised my front cover and brought all the attention there. The album name is in capitals and the artists is in lower case, however they are spread out evenly, this draws attention to neither title because they are both as important as each other.

To ensure that my album was realistic, the back cover featured the original artist’s record label, licencing underneath and also a barcode, this also ensured my representation of the original artist.

For my inside panels, I knew that I did not want to edit them too much because people do not tend to look at the inside panels as much. I featured my artist on the back and the inside cover because that way it identifies the album as her own, rather than just odd photographs.

 

 

 

 

 

1. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When presenting my pitch to the class, I gave out a small questionnaire about my album cover design. I asked my peers to choose between 4 photographs and write why they preferred the one they chose. My peers mostly chose the 2^nd and 4^th photograph, one of the crown photos and the one I ended up using for my design. They preferred the one of the crown because it was central and focused solely on the crown, but they preferred the one of the skull because the other skull photograph looked disjointed and too unrealistic.

 

After the front cover of my digipack was set out, I presented two designs to my peers and asked them which they preferred. They preferred the version with the writing framed in the centre rather than the version with the writing around the edges.

 

“The first version centres the image and draws the attention straight to the skull.”

 

“The writing in the first version is smaller and all in one place, whereas in the second one it is in two separate places and is very sharp.”

 

“The lightning is more subtle on the first version and the deeper purple contributes to the atmosphere”

 

In response to my feedback, I used Photoshop to overlay the lightning instead of changing the opacity, this made the purple and pink contrast darker and therefore gloomier. Once I had finished, I presented this too my peers and they agreed that it looked better than the original and that it would be the final version.

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

To construct my video, I used Adobe Premiere Pro, which I had used previously in Year 12. I was able to develop my skill further as the year began and use skills I had used last year. This year, I had more time to do these things and research other effects I could use.

All of our research and planning for this project was uploaded to Google’s “Blogger” site. After overcoming uploading issues with my blog, the software was very easy to use. Blogger has been perfect in terms of research and planning as it allowed me to access my analysis, research and creative ideas on any device that has an internet connection. This meant that I could continue work that was started at the Sixth Form whilst I was at home without the need for backing up files of a USB device, however we kept things backed up on the Sixth Form’s facilities, whether that was the Hard Drives in the editing suite or our user areas, even though space is limited on there. Another useful feature of Blogger is that you can upload and embed images and videos in posts. This helped when I was able to scan in files of my original ideas, I was able to embed them onto the file and write in between them.

Using Canva proved very useful in terms of creating my digipack. It helped me gather the dimensions I needed for the Photoshop files and ensured they were all the same.

 

I found myself using Photoshop a lot more this year than last. This is because of me developing skills in my A-Level Photography and being confident to experiment with new features. I was able to overlay, crop and resize images to create just one outcome, I also used shadow and drop shadow effects on the text in order to contrast them with my backgrounds.

To edit my A2 Music Video, I used Adobe Premiere Pro, which I used in my AS work to create the opening of my Horror film ‘PLAY’. I decided to use this again as I am familiar with the software and will be able to explore it further than I did previously.

 

I also chose to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit instead of any other software because I was able to access Adobe Premiere Pro from home, meaning that I could avoid problems such as time limits and storage limits that I had previously encountered when using the Sixth Form computers.

 

The first thing that I needed to do when editing was to upload the footage from the SD card to my computer. I then had to import this footage to Adobe Premiere Pro. I did this by dragging the video files from the folder they had been saved to on the computer into the import space on Adobe Premiere.

 

The most important aspect is the song itself, I saved an mp4 version of the song and then dragged that into the import space, then I had to drag that onto the editing timeline. As there is a quiet gap at the beginning of the song, I had to cut down some of the beginning and choose where I wanted the song to start. As the mp4 file also contained video, I had to lock the audio track in place on the Audio 1 line on the timeline and then select the video and delete it, then unlock the audio line.

 

In order to be more creative in my editing compared to last year, I researched how to use certain effects and experimented with settings I hadn’t used before. A prime example of this is the shot of my main character walking towards the castle, there is an RGB effect flicking around her as she walks, this required me to create multiple layers and change corresponding channel colours.

 

I also experimented with a glitch effect, this was because of key moments at the start of the song that sound like static noises. This also required several layers and moving the different layers to alternative sides.

 

Like last year, I used the ‘Fast Colour Corrector’ feature. Last year, I was rather unsuccessful using this feature as my outcome came out far too blue, so this time I was more careful with the colours I chose and the intensity of these colours. As my video was quite fairy-tale like, I decided to go for a faint pink on the corrector, and as it was sunny when I filmed, the colours reflected nicely and the colouring was a lot more subtle.

 

Part of the way through editing, I noticed a lot of my shots were middle or long shots, so to give a range of shots, I zoomed in on some of the clips. Even though the outcome was slightly grainy, I felt that it would be best to include this variation and the grain was not the worst it could have been.

RESEARCH INTO EXISTING CD COVERS 1

The first album cover I looked at was "American Beauty/American Psycho" by Fall Out Boy.

This cover is simple but effective. There is not a lot going on with the composition but the main focus is central and the background is out of focus, which makes it stand out. The implied effect is the American flag on the one half of the boys face, highlighting the title "American Beauty/American Psycho". The music video for the title song links to the cover and ties it all together. Filmed with a gritty, shaky cinematography, the ballerina in the video represents the "American Beauty" but is really the "American Psycho" and the boy represents the "Psycho" but is really the "Beauty".

The album name and band name are in small print at the top of the cover. Personally, I believe this is so that the text does not draw away from the photograph. After advertisement and circulation, this photograph became very well known and people have began to automatically attach it to this specific album. It is noticeable that the text is written in a very small and thin font, however it is written in all capitals. This is most likely due to the fact that it is less important, however it is still as important as it is written in all capitals.

There is a very earthy and neutral colour scheme in the photograph, meaning that nothing is too bold and distracting attention.

The back cover is also simplistic, it features the four band members facing back to the camera on a deserted road

RESEARCH INTO EXISTING MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENTS

A typical magazine advert should be eye catching and persuade the reader to buy the album. The conventions of a typical album cover include:

• Artists name and logo if they have one.

• The album title - this should be written in a large font particularly as artists may have a number of different albums released. 

• The release date. 

• Purchasing methods - this is could be through iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and in stores.

A magazine advert for a CD usually contains an image of the actual album cover as it helps the consumers when they go to purchase the CD. This is because it links the two together which is why the album cover should be attractive, appealing and eye catching.

The first advert I looked at was Green Day's advertisement for "21st Century Breakdown".

The advertisement is snappy and straight to the point, there is a clear fire like colour scheme to it and it is all written in capitals to captivate the audience. This particular advertisement would not go up in any magazines other than music magazines like Kerrang! due to the audience it captures. It would mainly go up in these sorts of magazines because it attempts to target an audience that either already know the band or are interested in similar music. 

The advertisement works well because it is all in a similar style, The font and colouring is all the same and nothing looks odd, which makes it easy to read and the words flow into one another. The main picture is also the album cover, this makes it easy for the audience to connect the two together if they were to actively search for the album. 

The release date is also clearly highlighted on the advertisement by being in larger font than the text around it, this means it can be taken in by the audience rather than skipped over.

RESEARCH INTO EXISTING CD COVERS 3

The third and final cover I looked at was "The Click" by AJR. This was created by John Loren.

I chose this album cover because it is quite different to most as it is illustrated rather than a taken photograph. This was AJR's second full album, the title being taken from the phrase "Should I go for more clicks this year, or should I follow the click in my ear?". A clicking metronome sound is heard frequently throughout the album, linking the music and the album name together.

The most noticeable feature of the artwork is the piano path which runs centrally the whole way through the cover. This is to represent the long winding path they had to walk through to get to where they are now and that they are not the whole way there. The three characters represent the three brothers in the band, they look as if they have just discovered something, this could be them discovering a new sound (as they are known for frequently changing their style and sound) or them taking in what life has to offer them. The setting is also in the clouds and in space, with fantasy like colours. This could connote that the band feel like they are walking on Cloud Nine and that this whole musical journey has felt like a dream to them.

The band name is located above the album name, which is just above the characters heads. The band name is slightly larger than the album name, I believe that this was within the period that they were trying to create a proper name for themselves and get their name out there, which is why it is larger than the album name due to the latter being less important to the band at the time.

I also chose to analyse this cover because it is abstract and it stands out from the rest. It was bold of AJR to choose an artist instead of going with a photographer.

RESEARCH INTO EXISTING CD COVERS 2

The second CD cover I looked at was "TRXYE" by Troye Sivan.

Like the Fall Out Boy cover, the TRXYE cover is very simplistic, however effective. The colours contrast against one another, making both stand out depending on which way you look at it. The white text really contrasts all of these colours, making it the focal point of the picture.

There are several frames in this photo, one around the edges to highlight the photo and one around the text to highlight the album name. This centralises the whole cover and gives an overall visually pleasing atmosphere.

This cover is quite simplistic, which will draw the audiences attention to the music more than the print work. This was Troye's 4th EP and his previous EP 'WILD' had similar imagery and simplistic colour scheming as well as this one.

The portrait photo presents natural imagery which gives the audience the impression that the albums theme and songs were written from a personal perspective and and from personal experience.

Unlike most CD covers, this cover does not feature an 'album name' and 'artist name' separately. This is because the X replaces the O in Troye's name and the background picture is of him. It is not difficult to assume the letter switch and this associates the name with the face, therefore identifying the album and the artist with one set of text.



Print 1

FILMING PROCESS 31/10/17

FILMING PROGRESS 31/10/17

This morning I was free to go and film the shots I needed of the castle for the opening of my music video. The weather was slightly gloomy but not too dark and not too bright, which is what I was hoping for. This was to give the opening a tense atmosphere and set the scene.

 

I used my Canon 100D to film, I took my 28-55mm lens and my 75-300mm lens, tripod and my own detachable track, I took the track so that I could get slow panning shots of the castle and ensure that they were steady.

 

The only problem that I encountered was that the gates to the castle were not open due to preparing for an occasional event, but this meant I was able to get shots utilising the gates at the foot of the castle to give a sense on entrapment.

 

I am yet to record both performance aspects of my video, the dancers need one more session to finish and recap choreography.

I intend to film with my main character as soon as possible as she is due for an operation on her ankle in the coming month.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

 

Before creating my digipack, I asked my peers which of the photographs I should use for my front cover. The responses were a mix between the second and third photograph. After reading the reasons, I picked the second photograph (the skull) as I preferred the composition of it.

 

“I like the second picture because the skull is centred and it will be easier to write around”

 

“The crown falling off the skull is effective as it gives an uneasy feeling”

 

It was picked up on that my casting was all female which lacks diversity however after relaying my message of female empowerment, it began to make sense to them.

 

After mentioning I will feature the dancers, I was asked how I am going to make it obvious that they link to the storyline, this is when I decided that they would wear the tiaras to link them to the royal figure.

 

After creating my initial digipack cover:

 

After the front cover of my digipack was set out, I presented two designs to my peers and asked them which they preferred. They preferred the version with the writing framed in the centre rather than the version with the writing around the edges.

 

“The first version centres the image and draws the attention straight to the skull.”

“The writing in the first version is smaller and all in one place, whereas in the second one it is in two separate places and is very sharp.”

“The lightning is more subtle on the first version and the deeper purple contributes to the atmosphere”

In response to my feedback, I used Photoshop to overlay the lightning instead of changing the opacity, this made the purple and pink contrast darker and therefore gloomier.

 

After seeing my final cover design:

 

Whilst experimenting on Photoshop, I tested out the shadow effects and found a grain effect. I changed the width of it to match the shape and it looked like one thick box, so I changed the shadow to white which made it look like two boxes instead. I preferred this because it made the shape stand out, so I did the same to the second shape.

To contribute to this, I tried changing the text to black and give it a white shadow. It only worked with the one, however I changed the alternate text to white and gave it a black shadow. The alternating colours created a pattern and it looked really effective.

 

My peers agreed that this was a lot better than my original two designs and somebody suggested spacing out the letters in the writing. In the end, my peers agreed that my final outcome looked very effective and linked together well.

 

 

MUSIC VIDEO INITIAL IDEAS AND SONGS

MUSIC VIDEO INITIAL IDEAS & SONGS

I have two main ideas for my A2 Music Video. It is between Emma Blackery’s “Don’t Come Home” and Halsey’s “Castle”. I have quite a few ideas for both of these songs and wrote them out to see which would be most successful.


The initial idea I had for "Don't Come Home" was two teenagers in the middle of an argument. One of the friends storms out of the room and the singer is left alone, the video consists of flashbacks throughout their friendship and what was going wrong.

I found that Halsey’s “Castle” had more realistic ideas and things I was capable to do rather than “Don’t Come Home”. The latter would have required a large cast, several days of filming and organising and various location settings. The message I came up with for “Castle” inspired me more and I was more creative with coming up with those ideas, rather than going directly by the lyrics.



EDITING PROCESS

EDITING PROCESS

 

To Edit my A2 Music Video, I used Adobe Premiere Pro, which I used in my AS work to create the opening of my Horror film ‘PLAY’. I decided to use this again as I am familiar with the software and will be able to explore it further than I did previously.
I also chose to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit instead of any other software because I was able to access Adobe Premiere Pro from home, meaning that I could avoid problems such as time limits and storage limits that I had previously encountered when using the Sixth Form computers.

 

The first thing that I needed to do when editing was to upload the footage from the SD card to my computer. I then had to import this footage to Adobe Premiere Pro. I did this by dragging the video files from the folder they had been saved to on the computer into the import space on Adobe Premiere.

 

The most important aspect is the song itself, I saved an mp4 version of the song and then dragged that into the import space, then I had to drag that onto the editing timeline. As there is a quiet gap at the beginning of the song, I had to cut down some of the beginning and choose where I wanted the song to start. As the mp4 file also contained video, I had to lock the audio track in place on the Audio 1 line on the timeline and then select the video and delete it, then unlock the audio line.

 

In order to be more creative in my editing compared to last year, I researched how to use certain effects and experimented with settings I hadn’t used before. A prime example of this is the shot of my main character walking towards the castle, there is an RGB effect flicking around her as she walks, this required me to create multiple layers and change corresponding channel colours.

 

I also experimented with a glitch effect, this was because of key moments at the start of the song that sound like static noises. This also required several layers and moving the different layers to alternative sides.

 

Like last year, I used the ‘Fast Colour Corrector’ feature. Last year, I was rather unsuccessful using this feature as my outcome came out far too blue, so this time I was more careful with the colours I chose and the intensity of these colours. As my video was quite fairy-tale like, I decided to go for a faint pink on the corrector, and as it was sunny when I filmed, the colours reflected nicely and the colouring was a lot more subtle.

 

Part of the way through editing, I noticed a lot of my shots were middle or long shots, so to give a range of shots, I zoomed in on some of the clips. Even though the outcome was slightly grainy, I felt that it would be best to include this variation and the grain was not the worst it could have been.

 

 

FILMING PROCESS 29/11/17

FILMING PROCESS 29/11/17

During the morning I was able to film with my main character. We went early in the morning so I was able to film as the sun began to rise, I intentionally did this due to the colours in the sky adding to the fairy-tale like effect.

 

We spent a few hours out by the castle and fortunately the gates were open this time, so we were able to go right up to the doors and the viewing area. The inside of the castle itself was not open to the public, however we did not intend to go inside as it is paid entry and I did not require any indoor shots.

 

The plan is to edit what I have of my main character into the timeline to ensure that we have enough choreography to cover the rest of the track. If not, I need to meet with the dancers again to fill in the gaps. Until then, I will continue to work on my print artefacts.

 

 

COSTUME PLAN

COSTUME PLAN

Dancers:

 

• Plain black leggings
• Plain black leotard or tank top
• White button up shirt (undone)
• White trainers
• Hair half up and half down
• Silver tiaras

 

This plan is suitable for my dancers because if it is cold, they are fairly covered up and they will not overheat if it happens to be a warm day. This costume links to my video idea because it represents the two as royal figures but in casual clothing. This is to connote that they are normal people who want to lead normal lives and not be trapped by the controlling ways within the royal circle.

 

• Burgundy dress (skirt I flows to knee length)
• Jazz shoes
• Hair half up half down
• Tiaras

 

This plan will only be suitable if the weather is nice, otherwise the dancers will be too cold and could potentially pull a muscle whilst dancing. I want the dancers to wear jazz shoes because I do not want them having bare feet because we are definitely filming outside so there are large risks of them cutting up their feet.

 

Main Character:

 

• I want my main character to be wearing casual clothes
• Black jeans
• Black cape
• Black shoes
• Gold crown
• Light coloured jumper

 

This costume will be suitable for my main character no matter what the weather is like, she will not be too warm or too cold. She could potentially catch the cape on sharp corners or get it dirty, however I will check before each shot that it is not wrecked.

RISK ASSESSMENT

RISK ASSESSMENT

• Tripping risk.
  In case any of us were to trip or fall, we would be on concrete floor or grass. To ensure this does not happen, all bags and items will be left at least 3 metres behind the tripod and all crew will be aware of it. Uneven floors and stones cannot be avoided, however all performers will wear appropriate footwear and filming will occur in full daylight so vision is clear.
  
  
• Cuts/Minor Injuries.
  All crew will be made aware of sharp objects and equipment being used before filming. Filming location will be checked as well to make sure the crew are aware of sharp edges and land.
  
  
• Choreography will be tailored to suit the area if needs be. If they are dancing on concrete and are going to the floor, it will either be changed completely or adapted to move down safely.
  
  
• There is no risk of fire as we are not using anything that requires an open flame or equipment that can cause a fire.
  
  
• None of my cast have hay fever so it is okay for them to be outside and around the grass and flowers.
  
  
• Pulling muscles.
  No matter what the weather but especially if the weather is too cold and the dancers do not warm up beforehand, there is risk of muscles pulling and possibly tearing. To ensure this doesn’t happen, the dancers will limber up when we arrive on location and we will not begin filming until they are.