No Individual - Final music video

Here is our group's final version of our music video. From the 3rd draft changes were made such a colour correction, shot timings etc.

Question 1

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

Music Video

Style: Most indie bands, such as Interpol and Editors, have videos with fast cuts and quick tempo, these videos want to advertise their band and ignore entertaining.
Our song is slow and melancholy which encourages us to concentrate on Mise en Scene and to ignore pace and editing, the shot length can fluctuate as long as the image is powerful. Our slow theme will conform to many conventions in films and documentaries but will subvert from the fast cuts of indie videos like Editors or Interpol.

We also made a Steelomatic to show our influences and inspirations of our product

Genre Conventions: From the research and planning labels you can see that we looked at other videos in our indie genre, we took inspiration from the 1975 videos, with black and white moody performances and conceptual narrative, the creative shots in Cough Cough by Everything Everything inspired our product as we used a number of unusual shots such as the underwater worms eye view. We were able to subvert from modern indie videos into a natural river setting similar to the location of Somewhere Only We Know by Keane. This natural location challenges black and white conventions in the genre and creates our own image. We imagined that our band would have a strange and alternative theme, we used the bath and the blood to promote this idea and give our brand individuality which is difficult in the indie genre as a number of bands try to escape trends in their videos.

Narrative: When researching other videos like Come with me know by KONGOS, narrative generally cuts between performance and narrative, this gives the video a story element but still differentiating the video with the concept themes. We decided to conforms to these conventions as we were able to challenge video themes with camera angles and mise en scene. Therefore our videos is a mixture or performance shots in the river and conceptual scenes in the bath and underwater.




Performance



Concept



DigipakBelow are examples of other real life products, the black and white theme runs consistently and we were inspired b the simple but creative colours. One example is Catfish and the Bottlemen, with a simple stencil which has as powerful and controversial message. These covers, such as the XX is simple but has a strong synergy with their logo, website and advertising campaign.






Below is a YouTube video that shows annotations of our digipak as well as comparing it to other real media products.

Website
This is a Photobucket showing the research into similar bands websites. The popular themes in these websites are the simplicity, most of the front pages have just the album cover and a link to social media outlets, we were able to challenge this convention by creating an interesting sea background that links to the water theme of our video.



This website lay out had ideas i wanted to incorporate into the website i am currently making. The website keeps all navigation around the website at the top of the page above a picture/video of the band. I liked the idea of this website deign as it highlights similar areas in which our band is also trying to get across. The dark background used here could give off dark themes to the band and connects to our concept thought process. We have looked to keep our website simple to add effect to it like you can see in the artic monkeys site below.






Our simple tour page complies with simple page conventions, the idea is that the information is the exciting not the layout.


The gallery page has general conventions as there are only a limited number of ways to display pictures, this suggests our page conforms with gallery page conventions.


It is important that a band website has purchasing opportunities for fans which will make the band money from merchandise such as t-shirts and mugs. Another important element is interactivity such as buttons and links to social media and videos. We have used many conventions in a product as we have concentrated on buttons and simplicity.




In summary we have used conventions with regards to the website and the link between narrative and concept, however we challenged conventions with our mise en scene and the digipak. Black and white theme is common in the digipak which we developed in our products by incorporating colour and different levels of saturation. The video subverts conventions with the shot length and the editing style.

Question 4 - Premiere effects

Premiere effects from BenClifford

Question 3

Question 2

Here is Steve's evaluation question

Final Digipak

Once we created our Digipak we decided that we wanted to make some changes to it by adding a few different images. The font for our song list had also been changed as we felt it was hard to understand. The black and white theme stayed the same as we thought this was an important factor due to us being an Indie band and these colours showing a strong trait of this band. The CD cover was changed by Will using photoshop to create a mist covering the CD making it look more professional and keeping the dark theme of our band.
Lastly we made sure we included a special thanks to everyone that helped us create our music video as this further creates a more professional edge to our media production.

Website analysis

Here i made a brief Slideshare to analyse ALT J's website, this was a band we looked to use for inspiration.

Website analysis from BenClifford

No Individual - Draft 3

Question 4 continued

Here in the picture above me and Will came up with a way to show how each piece of technology is used in each stage: Reseach, planning and construction.
The technology used was infogram.

Programmes
Create your own infographics

Question 4 - How did you use technologies in your planning, research and evaluation stages

  

Ben used a Survey monkey as a technology to gain feedback from our target audience. He displayed results from age groups, gender and how often people listened to Indie music and how popular it was. He also added in the feedback from our video and what people suggested on how we could improve this.

Shooting schedule

First shoot - 7th October 2015

• What we want to achieve - Shots of James and Ben in the bath of blood - Conceptual 
• High shots of James bathing in the blood lasting for 3 seconds
• Mid shots of Ben spitting the water out of the bath over the camera lasting for 2 seconds
• Tracking close up of James holding a beer bottle out of the bath lasting for 3 seconds
• Long shot of James smashing a beer bottle against a lamp lasting for 2 seconds
• Long shot of Ben singing whilst getting bloody water poured over him lasting for 5 seconds
• Mid, high shot of Ben on the floor whilst bloody water is poured over him

Second Shoot - 13th October 2015

• What we want to achieve - Shots of the band performing in the river Wid in Widford - Performance 
• Long shot of the band performing lasting for 5 seconds
• Long, panning high shot of the band performing lasting for 2 seconds
• Long shot of the bands equipment set up in the river lasting for 5 seconds 
• Long shot of the band standing together acting natural lasting for 3 seconds
• Long shot of the band walking through a field, getting closer to the camera lasting for 4 seconds
• Mid shot of the band walking in the river away from the camera lasting for 5 seconds
• Close up of each of the band member performing in the river

Third Shoot - 15th October 2015

• What we want to achieve - Shots of James floating in a swimming pool - Conceptual 
• Low shot of James floating above the camera, lasting for 3 seconds
• Close up of James underwater looking directly into the camera lasting for 2 seconds
• Close up of James screaming under water again looking directly into the camera lasting for 2 seconds
• Mid shot of James singing underwater looking into the camera lasting for 2 second

Fourth Shoot - 19th October 2015

• What we want to achieve - Shots of each band member singing the entire song - Performance
• Close up of James singing the whole song into the camera  
• Close up of Ben singing the whole song into the camera 
• Close up of Steve singing the whole song into the camera 

Fifth Shoot - 30th October 2015

• What we want to achieve - A shot of James walking to the camera whilst a girl stood in front of the camera - Conceptual 
• Long shot of James walking to the camera whilst Aimee stood in front of it, making James look like a stalker, lasting for 4 seconds 

Sixth Shoot - 6th August 2015

• What we want to achieve - A shot of Ben looking into the camera a light moves around his face 
• Close up of Ben looking directly into the camera whilst a light moves around his face making it seem as if his face is changing, creating a sinister look, lasting for 5 seconds

Seventh Shoot - 12th August - 2015

• What we want to achieve - James singing the song whilst lying down in the middle of the road - Performance
• Long shot of James laying down in the middle of the road lasting for 4 seconds

Eight Shoot - 14th August - 2015

• What we want to achieve  - shots of Steve drumming in a field
• Panning, mid shot of Steve drumming lasting for 2 seconds
• Tracking, mid shot of Steve drumming lasting for 3 seconds
• Close to long shot of Steve drumming lasting for 5 seconds 
• Long to close up shot of Steve drumming lasting for 4 seconds

Ninth Shoot - 17th November - 2015

• Various shots of the band in a local park - Narrative and Conceptual
• Low shot of the band walking over the camera lasting for 4 seconds
• Long shot of the band walking past the camera lasting for 4 seconds
• Close up, underwater shot of James stepping into the water, lasting for 3 seconds
• Long, panning shot of the band standing in the middle of the park, lasting for 3 seconds

Tenth Shoot - 18th November - 2015

• Various shots of bottles smashing - Conceptual 
• High shot of bottle dropping and smashing, lasting for 2 seconds
• Close up of bottle smashing in front of the camera lasting for 2 seconds
• Long shot of a rock being thrown and smashing a bottle lasting for 4 seconds

Album cover ideas

When looking for album cover ideas Will came across a video on YouTube which showed him how to have a silhouette on the cover as an image. This was effective for our band as it links into our mysterious side and the concept theme from our video.

Written feedback

Here is a couple of examples of what people thought of our video and what areas they would improve

Audience feedback

We asked a few media students from year 12 to assess our music video 

Evaluation - powtoon

For my evaluation question I decided to use a new format that I haven't used before. I feel this helped show my ability to adapt to new programme and use it effectively.
My choice of software was 'powtoon'. This technology has many choices of animations and text effects that i have used to help engage my audience into the presentation. This software is similar to power point but is more interactive and interesting.

Here is a screenshot of the layout of this presentation software