Evaluation

The music video I made was designed to meet conventions and styles to suit my target audience. The video itself follows a narrative of a troubled love story, in which the main character wrestles with his emotions. This conforms to conventions set out by real media products, as many songs and videos are about love and romance; it is a key selling point in the market. Coming up with this idea took longer then expected. At first my group consisted of myself, Jimmi Cottam, Matt Jackson and Adam Birtwistle, as three of us could drive and had access to cars we decided to film a mock race to win a girls heart, drawing on the success of films like The Fast and the Furious. Unfortunately during the early stages of planning I lost the use of my car, but the race situation was still viable. Then Adam left Sixth Form and we were left with only one driver, so with some quick thinking we turned the race for love into a lovers' quarrel and it seemed to work very well; Adam did return on a couple of shoots to help out when he was free as he is a good friend and a quality camera man. Personally I feel these incidents were actually a blessing as it allowed us to get the filming done much faster than with having to film three different cars. We chose to feature cars within our video because we had only just passed our tests and were very excited to be driving, but also we thought that no one else would have them feature prominently within their videos, and within our class we were right. The idea of the emotional journey taken by the lead character works well with most of the video taking place in a car as the journey works on both the metaphorical level and the literal sense.

In our project we used a lot of media orientated technology to help create the final music video. Predominantly we used Final Cut Pro on the Macs, this was key to our editing. Opening up Final Cut, we then imported the track, so we knew how long the video was going to be, most the sound caught on film was muted, except for the opening scenes as we thought that the natural sounds added to the atmosphere of the suburban surroundings. Next we uploaded the video footage from the camera and tapes we used. Then we dragged the file to an open window in which the raw footage is kept in order to cycle through it and be able to cut bits out and edit them specifically. We started, as you do, from the beginning and took footage we wished to use in the opening scenes of the video. We did this by watching through the raw footage then leaving a marker at the start of the clip we wanted then making another maker at the end, then clicked and dragged the clip to the video reel and positioned it at the start. It was difficult swapping from PCs to Macs as some of the keyboard short cuts were different, such as print screen, and the lack of right click was frustrating, but after a while it became more natural.

When a fade was necessary, we clicked on the footage being used in the final video and selected insert from the top menu to insert a transition effect and then selected an appropriate fade, we used fades to show a transition of time, conforming to current media conventions. The opening scenes were edited with some fast cuts as we thought that this helped get a feel for the surroundings and the emotions between the characters. The track starts with feedback; it was decided to keep the feedback and have it start as the female leaves the car, the guitars start playing as soon as Matt turns the radio on, this made it look as though the music was diegetic, even though it is in fact non-diegetic. This conforms to contemporary media conventions as many music videos have the song playing from a radio or stereo within the video at the beginning of the video. The next shot involved a zooming out pan of the female walking down the alley, I felt that this would work well as it helped emphasize that she is leaving him.

The next edit involved layering several shots on top of each other to show that they've happened in quick succession without having to cut to each individual shot. The shot of the car moving off was done by mistake, as I had kept filming from a previous take off Matt pulling up. We decided to use it as it helped explain how Matt got from the cul-de-sac to the A road, and thus helped the flow of the narrative better, the shot of him leaving Nero Way fades to black and thus shows a long transition of time from him in Nero Way to coming onto the A46. We used the A46 as it is a long road and so there was plenty of room to film the characters journey. Furthermore there's a path that runs alongside the road which made it convenient to film a pan of the car as it drove by, also there are several overpasses which were perfect for getting a birds' eye view of the car as it made its journey, helping to keep the video interesting.

The next succession of cuts serves to show that Matt is travelling far and thinking a lot on his journey. The close up of the interior mirror in which Matt breaks the fourth wall was filmed in order to allow the audience to connect with the driver in an attempt to relate to his issues. This then fades to a shot of the female, this was designed to show that there has been some troubles between them and this is why Matt is driving off. This is then reinforced by the shot of Matt holding the picture of them being happy and a stereotypical couple, and then casting it aside in anger. There are a lot of cuts as the camera follows the car and the driver on their journey, this was to keep the audience interested in the journey itself and to show that there has been a substantial length of time passed in which the driver is wrestled with his emotions and troubled thoughts; this comes through with the shots of him moving up to top gear and the scene in which the chorus plays. This scene has a series of fast cuts, showing a close up of his foot on the accelerator as he presses it to speed up as the vocals kick in which was used to add dramatic effect. The use of the revometer being layered over the shot of the car as it speeds ahead helped to emphasize the speed the driver was travelling at and shows that he is dealing with his emotions through speed. This is the same shot of the revometer used in the Nero Way scene, so to make it slightly different we used the speed tool and slowed that shot down by 50%, this added further drama to the scene.

Throughout the journey the footage cuts back to the female as she is in tears over the problems she has had within the relationship, this was done to remind the audience of the narrative. The footage shot of the female was set in a dark room to mimic her feelings, however this did not work as well as we'd hoped because it turned out the room was too dark for the camera, but it was the only camera we could work with so we had to make do. This issue came through in the audience feedback from the group we showed it to and the comments from users of new media sites such as YouTube and Facebook. Within the next section of the song we encountered problems, as much as I had tried my best to learn from my mistakes from the previous media project, creating a website for a charity, we had not planned thoroughly enough and did not have enough footage to fully complete the video, so we had to reuse footage and edit it to try to make it look fresh with varying degrees of success, for example the use of the revometer twice worked well, however using the close up of the interior mirror did not have such a positive impact. Also to help get around this problem the song was edited to make it shorter, in the original track there were some lengthy solos. These were removed to help us fit the song on the amount of footage correctly.

The next scene was shot just outside the gates of RAF Swinderby, we used this area as we felt it would be quiet and secluded, it also had plenty of room for the car to drive in and space for different camera angles. It had everything we needed a concrete section for the car and grass in the background which, in the story, would lead to the lake. We spent a little longer filming this section then I thought, but we had a lot of space and time to play with when we recorded it. This comes through in the final edit as we a different array of shots and angles. This was easier to edit as we had more footage and practice on earlier scenes had helped. I wanted to make a still image zoom into his eyes, I took a screen grab but couldn't find the specific effect. The idea was to have a continuous zoom which would then fade out, as is typical in contemporary media. However Final Cut Pro did not meet these requirements and so I played with the editing tools; I copied and pasted the same still shot of Matt, breaking the fourth wall whilst leaning on his car, about five or six times. These were then placed on the timeline a second behind each other and placed on a higher part above the first shot.. Each one was zoomed in closer than the last and the clips were then faded down. A fade in then fade out was added to the shots which worked quite well, and received positive feedback from the audience. More layering was used to create a ghost effect of the driver walking to the lake with his "shadow" close behind a prelude to what may be.



These next sequences included more footage of the lead female character attempting to call her lover, with no success. We shot close ups and large close ups in order to convey her emotions more clearly to the audience. The reuse of the shot of Matt throwing the picture aside was added to emphasize to the audience that the relationship was over; to avoid confusion we made it black and white to show that it was a flash back and not occurring in the present. The next shots were of Matt looking out across the lake on an embankment; this shot is one of the longer ones and really hammers home the contemplattiveness of the character. This shot then fade to ripples within the lake, suggesting that the character may have committed suicide over the troubles he's had. We all agreed that this was in a similar vein to the final scene in the last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, where the poignant scene is slowed down to the tempo of the music and the characters fates are left to the audiences imagination. We used a final pan across the lake with factories in the background as it showed that life goes on and it also helps keep the mystery of the characters fate.



The next stage was to input the opening texts and credits. The software Livetype, the font was a simple Ariel as there was no need for outlandish styles. We included the band name and song title within the video itself as that is the norm within music videos played on music channels. We also included the name of our production company; ShamRock Productions, as this has been the alias we've used throughout all our projects for media. We added the roman numerals of the year of completion as many television programmes do. A final rendering of the entire video and audio was done, then the project was saved repeatedly on separate drives and portable disks to make sure it was safe, and then we converted the video to a Quick Time Movie file type, so it can be played on most media players.



I feel we could have made the video better if we had used a better quality camera. If the school had access to better quality cameras we would have been able to produce a video of greater quality and clarity. This is particularly apparent in the darker scenes of our music video. Also if we had a steadicam or dolly we would have been able to get a better pan in the scenes focusing on the lead female. If I had taken greater head of the previous media project and planned even more then I had done then we would have had much more footage to play with. However several days of filming were lost because of the snow, which would ruin the continuity if we had filmed in it. Another issue was the lack of actors, if we had more willing participants then we would have been able to use Matt behind the camera and work in more characters within the narrative.



Using new media such as Youtube, Facebook and Blogger were very useful as it gave chance to get easy and usable feedback direct from our target audience. Furthermore the ease and freedom Blogger gave to write up my project was a great help; this combined with my laptop and dongle I could work on the project anywhere I could get a signal. Using Final Cut Pro was an obvious choice as it is far superior to other software like Windows Movie Maker which would have been far too basic for our needs. Live Type worked well in conjunction with Final Cut Pro, both were designed to play predominantly on Quick Time.

The comdination of the Poster and Digipak worked well with the music video; each product mirrors the emotions within the music video. The tones of the black and white included within each product relate to the two sides of the argument within the video. The screen grabs taken from the video and used within the digipak help link the two products, and will help boost the bands popularity, as if they recognise one element of the poduct they will relate it to another, is within contemporary media.

The previous project, done during AS, aside from helping to put more thought and effort into my planning it also gave me a stable working knowledge of programmes such as Photoshop. Last year I used Photoshop to edit and enhance pictures for use on my charity's website. So when it came to using Photoshop this time I already knew how to turn the image black and white, for example, using the image tool on the right hand side. Last years project also opened my mind to the use of We Media in order to present my coursework, I felt that it worked very well previously and so decided to use it again for this project. Furthermore the AS task made me realise the importance of audience feedback from my target audience, allowing me to greatly improve the project ro suit the target audience's desires. I had learned from the last project that Windows Movie Maker was not a high quality video editing piece of software, my experience editing a short charitable video for AS opened my eyes to the fact that I would need to rely more on the Macs Final Cut Pro as it is more technically advanced. Although I had past experience completing a website, I decided to do the Digipak for my ancillery task as I felt that creating a decent website would take too long and I would run out of time. Furthemore the concept of creating a digipak was a new and interesting prospect, which meant I had to put in some research into CD case designs.