Evaluation

For my A2 Advanced Portfolio in Media, I have created a music video; which is my main production piece, alongside two relating ancillary texts. For these additional texts I chose to create a digipak sleeve for the CD/DVD release and also a magazine advertisement for the release of this digipak. I am going to evaluate my planning, development and final outcomes critically and analyse the journey I have been on through the creation of this coursework unit. I have chosen to analyse first my digipak then magazine advert, and finally my video so that each product has it’s own individual evaluation.

  The first product I am going to look into is my digipak creation, of which all my planning, development and final products can be found through clicking the inset 'digipak' link. I have included the images of my final digipak below for easier reference;

    Before beginning my ancillary text I looked at existing products by Arctic Monkeys, Bon Iver and the band I made mine for Metronomy. Each of these bands fits within a similiar genre aiming out the a very similiar niche market with them all being quite 'indie' bands and music which has a smaller audience. Because of the fact they are more indie it means there's a lot more freedom and less conventions as I am not looking to appeal to the masses, many indie bands choose to have more 'arty' CD covers and videos, which appeals a lot more to my interests as a student of Art and Photography alongside media. Picking to use a less well known band gives me the chance to create a digipak more to my own liking as it doesn't have to follow conventions which would be found with most chart music which is all practically the same.

   For my initial planning I created a drawn out plan of what the composition of my digipak could look like. Creating these initial hand drawn studies helps me to get a better understanding of the spaces I have to work with and how I could effectively cover the case to look professional and have a nice finish to it. I then created a template to ensure each section of my cover would be the correct size, I later worked ontop of this template when creating my digipak.

  My digipak original images were all taken on set of the filming at the same time as I wanted to have a strong theme running through each of my media texts. I took a wide range of photos for both my digipak and magazine advertisement on this occasion. I purposely used my fisheye lens on my DSLR camera to create a quite 'odd', and warped effect to my pictures. This adds to the surrealism I was aiming for with the large painted head prop, this makes my work a lot more art based and will appeal more to a niche audience as a lot of people who like 'indie' music are also into the arts, such as fine art, photography and other visual arts. The first thing I did with these photos was I began to experiment with cropping down the photos to see which one would make a visually appealing  front cover for my digipak  as this is the first thing the buyer would see and the only thing that people would see who purchase the CD online; example. I chose the one which had the most appealing composition and viewpoint, I then added a 3D cellophane type effect and noise to the photo to make it a little more edgy than a plain boring photograph. I am quite happy with the image I picked and would definitely pick that one again given the choice to change it. I then experimented with different typography ideas for the album name and band name on the front cover. I finally settled with the deep red and green colour scheme as it went alongside the photograph pleasantly and the red connotates angst and passion, which is what the music by 'Metrons' is aiming to portray. I chose to name my band Metrons (Metron$) as a play on the actual band name Metronomy, and I then chose my album name 'Heart Rate Rapid', as a play on one of Metronomy's song titles. After creating my final front cover I moved onto the back cover, which I wanted quite plain, and I think I have achieved the look I was aiming for as I edited an upwards view photograph of trees to be quite flat and dull. The song track text follows most album conventions with it being a small text in the top left hand corner, other album conventions such as website addresses and record labels can also be found on my digipak sleeve.

  For the inside panels of my digipak I wanted to keep them quite plain in my original drawn out drafts, from my initial plans to final outcomes there's been a significant change as I originally wanted to keep my inside panels very plain with mainly just large text on plain backgrounds. However, when taking my photos I really liked the idea of the round fisheye photographs looking up into the trees. I wanted to put these photos to use so used them on two of the inside panels of my digipak sleeve, the circles can also represent where the CD and DVD would be kept inside their cardboard sleeves. I was originally going to use a middle panel which had a list of track names and what is featured on the additional DVD, however this was quite unconventional as this information is on the back of the case. I enevtually chose to use the centre middle panel which just included the rectangular logo art as it kept the case quite simple and didn't detract away from the main feature, circular images on either side.

  Overall, I am quite happy with the final outcome of my digipak ancillary text as the creation shows a journey I have gone on and from my initial plans I have altered and changed my ideas to create a visually attractive piece. There is a strong sense of a theme running through the digipak itself with a limited use of colour and similar photographs. All major conventions, such as copyright information, spine texts, record label information, barcodes and websites are on my cover so it could quite easily work as a professional digipak sleeve.

     I will next look to evaluate my magazine advertisement for the above CD/DVD digipak set, again the link 'magazine advertisement' will take you to my planning and creation post. I have also included an image of my final outcome below;

  Before I began my planning and creation of my magazine advertisement for Metron$ I looked at 3 existing advertisements from; Jay-Z, La Roux and Noah and The Whale. I chose to look at these existing media texts as they are similar genres of music and each have their own unique style which I could learn from. My favourite was the Noah and The Whale magazine advert and I quickly decided I wanted my own to have similar compositional values and I hoped to portray the same kind of simple yet effective look.

  To start off with, as in my digipak planning I decided to start out with a rough hand-drawn sketch of what I initially visualised my magazine advertisement to look like. I added some annotations to help me understand what I was thinking at the time more. From the start I had the firm idea that I wanted my advertisement to be one full photograph image, so I took this into consideration when on set and taking my photographs for this, I decided to use a low angle to give the main figure more dominance and to also get the nice warped effect on the trees behind. I also wanted to try to create some blank, ‘empty’ space towards the top as in the Noah and the Whale advertisement; this would be easier to add text on top of. From the photographs I took, I chose to use the one which offered me these characteristics. I am very happy with the image I chose to use as even on it’s own I think it’s a quite striking image, because of this fact I thought I would keep it quite simple so that text doesn’t overpower the image itself. Also, from having a more simple and visual advertisement it will catch people’s eye more and urge them into researching into the band; however, this also works as existing fans of the band will immediately be able to see the photo and recognise it as being iconic of the band ‘Metron$’.

  After choosing my main image and deciding I wanted to keep it quite simple, I added on the different information, I decided the most important information was the album title so did ‘Heart Rate Rapid’ in a large bold font at the top of the advert, so that it attracts people’s eyes first. I then used a variety of different text to give out the essential information; but still keeping it quite minimalist. I chose to have the band name as a quite large text, in the iconic colours and font of the band; this would be easily recognisable to existing fans and also educate new fans to the band name. The text linking these pieces of information is plain and quite small, however still legible, I chose to do this as the information is not as important. The next large piece of text is the release date, as this is equally as important as people will need to know when they can purchase the album. This is the main bulk of text, which is all kept within the top third of the magazine advertisement, as I didn’t want too much text cluttering up the advert. Along the bottom I just added the band website address so that people could easily find out more information which is not on the advert.
  Both my digipak and magazine advertisements were made using a combination of adobe photoshop and photoscape, both of these programmes are programmes which I regularly use so the creation posed no problems.

  I am reasonably happy with my final outcome of the magazine advertisement; however, given more time I would have liked to have made more drafts of it. Also, looking back I feel like I should’ve added in a magazine ‘star rating’, but this may have made it seem cluttered; however I could have still tried it out as a quick test. As well as this I could have added in a ‘QR’ (quick response) code so that people with smart phones would easily be able to search for the album straight from their phones. This would be relevant as the music is aimed at young people who are very likely to have the kind of technology which can read QR Codes. Aside from these small factors I would keep my magazine advertisement the same and I especially think the image is quite strong alongside the use of different texts. It also follows through strongly with the theme I established on my previous digipak.

     Finally I will look at my main production; my music video and evaluate my planning, preparation, filming and editing. Below is my final video, for easier reference;

  At the beginning of my coursework project unit I wanted to do a song by ‘The Kills’ called ‘Tape Song’, which is why my research and planning all starts off a lot different as I faced a lot of challenges along the way. However, The Kills are also a small indie band so a lot of the principles of the niche audience market and genre research are the same and the videos I researched were still relevant.

  The first thing I did was chose 3 existing music videos which I found inspirational and which fit in with the genre, I chose the 3 songs/videos; ‘The Dead Weather – Die By The Drop’, ‘Animal Collective – Peacebone’ and ‘The Horrors – Still Life’. I did in depth analyses of each of these videos, doing this helped me spot things that I wouldn’t normally see by just watching a music video through. At this point I was doing my planning around the song ‘Tape Song’ by The Kills, I did a mind map to brain storm my ideas down into a visually form so that I could see what would be good to use and what wouldn’t be.
  From the start ‘Animal Collective – Peacebone’, inspired me to create my own ‘large head’ type prop to hide identity, and give the artist their own identity which was unrealistic and strange. I always thought this would be a better idea than having a plain boring person in my video as it gives it edge and a surreal type film, as I’m into art and photography, I put a lot of effort into how things look so wanted to create a visually interesting video. Some of my original ideas included; jerky camera movement, abstract scenery, layered shots and lyrics/text ontop of the film. These different ideas would create a quite ‘trippy’ video which would appeal to the younger ‘indie’ music lover audience which I was aiming for.
  At this point I decided I wanted to create a music video without story or narrative, I wanted to create a video quite unrelated to the song and visually appealing. A music video is aiming to sell a song so I wanted to create a memorable edgy video which would be quite psychedelic and odd. I wanted my music video to create a odd atmosphere and get the audience to be active in thinking about what they are watching.

  As part of my planning I made hand-drawn storyboards and put them together into an animatic film after cropping each frame down in photoshop. This helped me get a better ‘feel’ of my video. This was the point in my project where I started to doubt my song choice as I wasn’t really feeling it was getting the ideas I wanted across. So it was a good job I made these in the early planning stages or I could’ve had a disaster when filming, this shows how important thorough planning is. As well as being unhappy with the visual look of my plans, I was having problems finding ‘actors’ with flexibility which allowed me to film when needed.

  All of these factors together prompted me to change my song and make a new plan of action for creating my music video. I decided on the song ‘The Look (Camo &Crooked Remix) – Metronomy’, this is a song I liked and it didn’t have much scope for needing a narrative story to it’s video. I like the abstract feel of the song and it fit in with the ideas I wanted to create.

  I realised that the theme I wanted me music video to have was a lot more surrealist, which originates from the surrealism art movement started in 1930s by a group of artists including the famous Spanish artist Salvador Dali, who created dream-like images. I hoped my video would be surreal and have no real direct meaning, just for it too look interesting and possibly have some repetition to create a trippy effect of almost being hypnotised.

  After having my song change I thought it appropriate to research into some new videos more relevant to my new song choice and ideas, I looked briefly at; ‘I Couldn’t Love You Anymore – Cursive’ which strongly influenced my location ideas. I also looked at ‘Sick Tonight - Scroobius Pip’ which had a very similar use of the large head design matched up with an edgy song. Finally, I looked at ‘You Could Easily Have Me – Metronomy’, which had the use of two masks and was by the same band my chosen song is by so was very good in helping inspire my idea thoughts.

  I then did some quick planning and idea development based on my audience research polls I had up on my blog and put together a better picture of what I wanted from my music video. Naturally, after this came my pre-filming planning which consist of health and safety considerations, location ideas, prop creation and some edit tests. My prop took a couple of weeks to make as I had to create a paper-mache base to then be painted on to create my character for in my video, so I had to put off filming for a while until this was finished as it was such a major aspect to it. If I was doing a project like this again I would definitely start working earlier on and ensure all of my proper were ready so I could get my filming done quickly and efficiently.

  I did all of my filming on my Canon 500D DSLR camera, however I couldn’t work in full HD mode as I’d discovered in my pre-filming test shot edit film that my computer didn’t seem to like to handle HD video smoothly and caused a lot of crashing. So I had to work in a lower resolution, however this hasn’t really affected the quality of my filming as it is still better quality film than my handheld video camera records.

  When filming my video I planned to go on a day were there was going to be a lot of light due to the fact my location was a forest so could’ve been too dark for filming. I picked a good day so could get all of my filming done on one day, this allowed me to have good continuity of the character as the same clothes were worn and it stopped any other environmental factors incase something meant that I couldn’t go back to this location.

  In total I got about 25 minutes footage from this location so I had quite a lot, however looking back I really wished I’d got more filming in better, different locations to add more variety and interest to my video. If I had more time and transport I would definitely get more footage in different locations.

  When editing my video I did it all in one go as once I into the roll of it I wanted to carry on until it was finished, it took me about 2 hours to fully edit the video using software I have called ULEAD, it was easier for me to use this as I already had it on my own computer and was already familiar with how it works. I chose not to use many transitional effects as they seemed a bit tacky and I didn’t want to cheapen my video. I only used effects on a couple of sections of footage also, I cut most of my filming to the changes in the song to link the visuals to the song.

 
Final Music Video Edit Analaysis;

  At the start of my video I have a 5 second long clip which consists of the camera coming into focus, I think this works quite well as the opening clip as it comes into focus just when the lyrics come into action. This can be easily recognisable as an opening scene and the blur to clear format is quite nice yet quite unprofessional and gives a sense of spontaneity.

  The next clip is also a ‘build up’ type clip which is going alongside the ‘build up’ type style of music at the beginning. I had a clip of the character walking backwards and then reversed the same clip so that once at the back point it comes in again, this adds a bit of variety to the type of shots and editing I am using.

  Then at 0:14 when the main beat of the song comes in, the shot changes to one of the dancing ones, which follow through the whole video in various locations throughout this forest. I did this as I wanted quite a relaxed, laid back song; and it does have a sense of this as well as a ‘summer’ type theme despite it being filmed in March.

  The clip which starts at 0:16 also has the edit on it where it goes forward and then replays again in reverse, this gives some ‘jerky’ unusual movement to the character making it seem less lifelike and more fitting to my surrealist theme.

  At 0:23 I have edited the clip so that the repeated is in time with the repeated lyrics in the song and then pauses as the lyrics do in the song also. This clip is also sped up to fit the song, as is a lot of my footage as some of it was quite slow so needed speeding up to fit better with the upbeat, fast song.

  At 0:26 I have my first piece of edited footage which I have put a ‘ghostly’ type effect on, this gives a more surreal feel that I want as I move the camera 360 degrees around the character who remains in one place facing the same way.

  Then at 0:35 the clip seems to almost move with the song, as the characters actions fit into the lyrics beginning and the noises in the audio.

  I then have various dance clips in a few locations in close up shots and long shots up until the footage which starts at 0:54, this shows 3 different shots from the same place but the character moves along from the left in clip one, to the centre and finally the end in shot 3. I thought this would be a nice edit to do to add a bit of diversity to my music video so all the shots aren’t the same.
  Then at 1:01 I have a piece of footage were I do a zoom from a long shot to a close up shot, in this shot at 1:03 I like the way that the light appears to shine over the top of the character head and create a nice glare effect.

  At 1:07  I have the repeated movement from earlier used again on the same repeated lyrics to create an iconic move for this lyric in the song which is a major one as it’s ‘the look, look’ which is the song title also.

  I then have various dancing footage cut to the changes in the music until 1:45 were I have a shot which I sped up which represents ‘head banging’ in a way, which isn’t really conventional to this type of music but I wanted to break the stereotype of this.

  At 1:46 I have another set of 3 clips which show the camera still in one place but the character position jumping from the left to right and getting further away. These are edited together with fade to black to give a mysterious feel to the illusion of the character moving magically and raising questions as the audience can’t see what’s happening in the change.

  Then at 2:03 is my favourite piece of footage and music from my whole video production, I like the slow motion effect of this clip, edited along to the calmer music. Because of the slow motion of the clip I added on the blur/ghost effect used earlier. Alongside the round 360 degree camerawork these effects work really well and I am extremely pleased with how this piece of editing has worked as it gives a surreal, ghostly feel.

  Then at 2:16 when the music picks back up I used the footage of the character bringing it’s head up, as though getting ready to get back into the song for the final section, as this point is 30 seconds towards the end, so it’s the big finale.

  I then have more miscellaneous dance footage until 2:33 where I have the iconic arm movement now strongly recognisable with the lyrics ‘the look look’, as this is the third time it’s used.

  At 2:37 I have a highly sped up shot to go with the music getting a lot faster, this works well to keep the visual related to the music in some way.

  At 2:43 I have the ‘head banging’ shot again, this time with the ghost effect over it to make it slightly different and to go with the song building up to the last 5 seconds.

  At 2:46 I have used the same clip from the beginning, but played it backwards so that the camera now goes from being in focus to being blurry. This could give connotations of the fact everything is normal before the song, then the song comes on and you have to dance and then at the end you can go back to normal. This gives the idea that anyone could do this and it relates more to the audience and helps to sell the song, which is the main purpose of music videos.

     Overall, I am happy with what I have created in the short time scale I left after having major changes to my original plans regarding song choices and storyboards, but all of this has only taught me how I can do better in the future, as if I did everything perfect I wouldn’t have learnt anything from my time spent doing the project. Given the chance there’s a lot I would change, mainly the fact I would get some more footage in some completely different locations to add some variety to my music video. I would also liked to have worked more with editing my footage more abstractly to create a visual spectacle more in the surreal style I wanted. From my original ideas and plans; the location, character head and genre of music stayed the same but pretty much everything else changed, so in future I would like to do more planning and get on with doing a storyboard more quickly to efficiently detect any issues or problems. However, the fact my initial storyboard for ‘The Kills – Tape Song’, was very detailed and consisted of a lot of different frames depicting the storyline helped me in deciding that I didn’t want to do it, so in a way I’m thankful I spent a lot of my time doing this. In the end I am happy with my chosen song and outcomes, for the resources I had and time scale I’d left myself I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve done. However, to obtain better final products in future I can identify all of the issues I’ve had.

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