The Final Results

Our Final Products

Our final music video:

Digipak design:

clockwise from top left: cover front, cover back,  spine, CD and behind CD
Below: CD insert

Advert design:

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of 

real media products?

When creating our media products, we kept an awareness of the forms and conventions of media products, especially in relation to the indie genre. Through this, we have made informed decisions regarding the look and content of our products.

In terms of our music video, we used several conventions of the indie genre. In terms of colour, we mostly used sepia and blue tones, which are often seen in indie music videos, such as Lana Del Rey's 'Born To Die' and Melanie Martinez's 'Cry Baby'. We used these colours throughout our video to make it subscribe more to the indie genre. For example, sepia is used when they are inside with their friends, and blue is used at the beginning when coral and I are in the field. By following these colour conventions, we showed that our video is part of the indie genre.

In our video, we also used the iconic symbol of the acoustic guitar, which is often seen in indie videos. We used this again to show our video as being indie, as this symbol relates it to other videos in the genre, such as Milky Chance's 'Stolen Dance'.

We also used conventions of the indie genre through our content and narrative. One feature of indie music videos is experimentation in terms of content, leading to more explorative narratives and interesting visuals. This can be in terms of artistic content (like 'Little Talks' by Of Monsters And Men) or content with an engaging narrative (like 'Wings' by Birdy). Our video belongs in this second category, as our video has a strong storyline and experiments with different ways of portraying feelings, eg with the projections and reverse montage at the end. In this way, we have used the indie convention of creative videos to make an engaging and interesting piece.

One way that we have developed the conventions of the indie genre, and those of the music video industry as a whole, is by basing our piece around a homosexual relationship, which isn't commonly seen in the industry. Although homosexuality is becoming more common in both the industry and music videos, such as with Sam Smith's 'Lay Me Down', these cases are still quite rare. Most indie videos including a relationship show a heterosexual one, such as Kodaline's 'High Hopes' and The Lumineers' 'Sleep On The Floor'. Homosexuality is rare in the music video industry, so therefore by showing it our video is developing the conventions of music videos.

Our video does not really challenge any forms or conventions of indie music videos, instead either using or developing them. We used several conventions in terms of style & visuals and while our narrative may be challenging in other genres (such as the rap genre), within the indie context, which thrives on creativity, our video is not especially challenging.

Our ancillary tasks (the digipak and advert) also use conventions of the indie genre. We looked at real indie products when making this and based them off that. Indie digipaks and adverts often tend to be quite artistic, reflecting the genre, so we followed this trend when making ours.

Evaluation

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

Construction:

See some of the lighting breakdowns below:

The editing process was finally completed on 16th March 2017, over 3 months after the start of filming. The editing was a long, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately rewarding experience. The timeline below looks relatively simple and light, which reflects the simplicity of the video: unlike a short film, there was no audio to worry about, besides the music, which made editing much easier.

The narrative is also straight forward, and there are no complex scenes which required easy access to a lot of footage during the edit - that would have made the timeline look busier with a lot more layers. Because all the scenes are really brief, the video has a very quick pace. This also made the video easier to edit.

Sam took the most control during the editing because he was the most confident with Final Cut Pro X and had the most editing experience. He "personally dislikes using Final Cut Pro X, as I find the interface difficult to do precise edits in, and I am still not used to the magnetic timeline feature".
However, it was still a very collaborative experience because every week we would watch the whole video through as a group and make comments about things we wanted to change. These changes were generally minor, such as reordering some of the shots earlier in the film to clarify the order of events.


Another change we made was speeding up the footage of the silhouetted hand turning the pocket watch. We did this because the pacing was too slow, and it detracted from the flow of the video. Thankfully, it is not very noticeable.
The more substantial changes were to do with visual effects. He used Triune Digital's Fire Assets inside Final Cut Pro X to enhance the live action fire. Below is a VFX breakdown on some of the shots Sam added CG fire elements to (although only 3 shots are in the video below, he added some form of CG fire to 90% of the fire shots, mostly digital embers).

We uploaded the final video on 22nd March, and promoted it on our own social media pages.



Research:
We used google to research other indie bands to widen our knowledge and broaden our horizons. YouTube was instrumental in helping us discover our tone and direction. Blogger was utilized so we could keep a record of our processes and consolidate out progress.
We used a camera (Canon 600D) and editing software (Sony Vegas) to create lens tests where Sam and his brother (Peter - also featured in our video) tested a combination of lenses and filters so we could really nail the visual style of the video. 
See the video below:

Planning:
To ensure that we kept lines of communication open, we created a Facebook messenger chat, an Instagram chat, a WhatsApp chat, and exchanged phone numbers so we were all able to contact each other in many different ways. We would upload draft versions of edits or digipak designs to group chats, and we were able to instantly feedback and discuss.


Evaluation:
In our evaluation, we used a wide range of media technologies. We used two videos, one was a group commentary on the final video, and one was the evaluation of all the equipment used in filming (at the top if this post). We also put everything on blogger.

Evaluation

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

Evaluation

What did you learn from your audience feedback?

The audience hold great power over media therefore, producers have to consider the audiences response to ensure their product is received well and they gain higher profit. We conducted audience feedback by distributing questionnaires to understand what kinds of things will appeal to our audience better.

We gathered audience feedback about the design of our Digipak and some of our audience suggested that the colours are too saturated and almost childish like. We were able to resolve this to fit better with the audiences expectations by reducing the colours, so that they're not too bright and will be able to appeal better.

Before conducting feedback, we had to ensure that the product we make is suitable to our target audience, however we needed to keep in mind that we're creating for an audience who may be critical of our product. Therefore we took in to consideration of what people would want to watch and how they could engage with what we create. Our music video will be uploaded to Youtube, therefore we can gather further feedback by seeing the number of people who view our video and who likes and dislikes it.

Having posted our music video on Youtube we we able to see how many views it got. Additionally, we got 7 Likes (thumbs up) which is good for us as the producers to see because we know that our music video was enjoyed and liked. Here are a few of the comments we received:

Through the use of questionnaires, we were able to get diverse and well rounded feedback from different kinds of people. For example, we initially started of by giving the questionnaire to our family members. I come from a Bangladeshi Ethnic background therefore I was able to get views from my parents. My parents felt a bit confused by seeing girls holding hands in our music video. This could be due to the fact that when they were our age, being gay was stigmatised and perceived negatively. Additionally, religion could play a factor in them not enjoying the music video as they don't believe in gay couples. However, when I showed my younger siblings, they were more accepting of it as now in contemporary society it isn't as scrutinised.

Furthermore, by having audience feedback we were able to understanding peoples thoughts and feelings to specific elements of our Digipak and Advert designs. Below is a screen shot of the question we included:

 Here are the results...

Our Final Video

The Final Music Video

Video Commentary

A commentary on our music video

Our Final Designs for the Ancillary Task

Final Ancillary Designs

We've finished our editing and have completed the music video so we feel we can go back to the ancillary tasks. This started of very hesitantly as we hadn't previously hadn't finished off our video and weren't too sure of what we were after.

We decided to go for a digipak and an advert. We wanted them to correspond with each other rather than with the video. Based on the above design above we wanted to focus certain elements of these onto our advert below:

We eventually decided we preferred the (right hand of image above) design as our digipak cover and decided we'd like it to be very plain on the back to provide space for other songs featured on the album.For the advert we wanted a plain design due to the digipak being very complex and we thought this would be best as our digipack could become our main focus (even on the little things such as song titles and requirements of buying the album).

Rough and Final digipak design:

A Few Final Additions

Final Touches

Although the majority of the filming was done and the editing had started we had a few things we wanted to add to neaten things out.

Our first priority was to have Hannah read the (spare spare) letter as Jenny and have it voice recorded. This only took a couple of attempts and overall was swift. Sam went back to the editing added the voice-overand embellished it with a delay effect in order to make it sound more dreamy (which was effective with the music fade we added).

Imaged below is the process of recording:

Another requirement was filming the projector room scene with myself acting as Olivia-Mae to manipulate and reflect on her events with Ruth which was filming on the 2nd of February. This took around 2-2 1/2 hours. It was very difficult to find an occasion where the room was actually available for us due to exams but we eventually managed. A few interruptions occurred delaying our filming (such as a laptop not working and a teaching singing in the hallway - noticeable in our behind the scenes video below:).

The final thing we needed to film were the shots of Hannah and Coral saying goodbye. We had initially planned to film these on the same day as the fire, but as Hannah was busy that day we couldn't. So, after a lot of re-scheduling because of weather, Hannah, Coral, Sam and I (Anica was busy) finally managed to get the shots filmed. At first, we thought we would only need one shot of them saying goodbye, but when filming I mentioned the idea of my character looking back to say goodbye, so we extended our shoot to add that and a few more shots. After these last few things were filmed, we could finally complete the editing and finish our music video.

Day 3 Filming

Filming for Day 3

We arrived on time, and very coldly. Unfortunately it had previously rained and we 

forgot to store some wood so starting the fire with essentials such as paper and matches. 

After about 3 hours, the fire had gotten to the point of being relatively substantial. We decided 

to go ahead and shoot, so we threw newspaper on the fire just before each shot to increase

its brightness.

Then came the flaming guitar sequence. The worked very well. The original idea was

more complex, but we were  unable to convince the more safety-concious adults to Sam's idea, 

so instead of dropping the burning guitar, we would simply place the fire on the fire.

Nevertheless, we got a really cool visual of the guitar on fire which Sam enhanced in post 

with CG fire.

At the end of the day, we had got most of the coverage, although possibly because Hannah and 

Anica were unable to come and help, we forgot to film some aspects of our plan (for example, 

footage of Coral and Crystal filming each other on the camcorder by the side of the fire).

However, in the edit, Sam found that there would probably not be the time in the final cut

anyway to include much more material. There was also a roasted giant marshmellow that I

bought along and we decided to film some of it.

Day 3 PLAN

Filming Plan for Day 3

On January 2nd (tomorrow) we plan on shooting the third section for our music video. We will be filming the bonfire scene in Coral's Nan's (Valda) garden and aim to shoot between 3pm-7pm (to keep  to our timeline and lighting elements within our video). As we're using fire we will need to make a firm risk assessment and be as mature as possible (which hopefully shouldn't be too hard for us).