Comparing My Products

When creating media products that represent a band or singer it is important to make sure the products link together well so that you create an aesthetically pleasing products that the viewer knows are from a certain source.

In my products I used the balloon as the connector, in the music video it is a key part of the narrative and symbolizes the couples love, because of this I decided to use an image of the couple and the balloon as my poster image. The digipak also uses images of the band as well, this is more typical of an album which features the band more than a specific music video, however I do reference the video with the balloon and the bath bomb background. Within the digipak I also referenced the promotional poster by using the same image but I edited it slightly differently than the other image.

By referencing other products in my work it causes a link within them and helps the audience identify the band quicker and it should not confuse them.

Final Music Video

Here is our final music video product:

We have been working on it for over 6 months now, from the beginning where we were figuring out our plot and discussing the inspirations for the video - to now where we have finished the video and I couldn't be more prouder of Imogen and myself.

Music Video - Audience Feedback

On the 19th April 2017 I gathered our target audience and they watched our music video product so that I could collect some more feedback on how to improve. However when asked they couldn't think of anything to improve on but they liked the warmth of the colours and the editing on the beat. One of the audience members said that they understood the narrative of the video now due to me editing the gaussian blur onto the flashback clips whereas before it confused them.

Music Video - Audience Feedback

To gain some more audience feedback I asked an audience member who wasn't in our target audience range to view the product to see if there needed to be any changes so that a wider audience can view it and understand. It is good to know that our target audience can understand the video but as creators we need to make our products more available to the wider audience so that it can be promoted more and therefore gain more revenue.

For negative points she said that the frontman looks like he is conscious at parts and that I needed to try and edit them out because it causes the video to look unprofessional. She also said that she wasn't sure about the bath bomb sections; when I explained to her about the water links and the bright punchy colours that are conventional in pop music videos she understood and then agreed with the shot choices. This has caused me to put more water links in the video and to make it more obvious for the viewer.

She really liked the progression of the video and how it told a story because it kept her interested, the band shots were also a nice touch, she said, because it added fun to the video. She enjoyed the parts where the frontman was 'pratting around' because it showed that he is now happy and has a more boisterous side.

When I asked her about our original idea to slowly make the video fade to black to show the frontman's unhappiness, she disagreed. She said that to do that "takes away" from the band's happy shots and makes it more confusing, she then suggested to make the argument sections darker instead so that it just shows that they are the unhappy points in his life.

I asked her if there was anything else I could include (at this point we had ran out of time to film however by asking this it meant that if we did get an extended deadline we could do this) she suggested to get footage of the couple on the beach to tie it in with the sea shots as well as the water theme.

By asking someone who isn't in our target audience and complying to most of their needs that we think are suitable it causes the video to be more accessible to others which is very important in the entertainment industry because if you catered to one specific audience you would be limiting your product.

Music Video Screenshot

In the video I have edited the footage to have a 'Gaussian Blur' over it, this is to portray to the audience that the footage we are showing is a flashback. I decided to have a warm tone to the footage because that is stereotypically the tone for old footage. I learnt how to use the gaussian blur effect off of Youtube and then applied it to my own footage.

In the photo above you can see the effects I applied to the footage, with gaussian blur you take the footage you want to change and then duplicate it, you then put the duplicated copy over the original in track 2. Then you get the gaussian blur effect and drag it to the copy, after you go into effects controls and change the amount of blur. For my footage I chose 30 and had it on a blur dimension of horizontal. I changed the opacity of this to 80% and changed the blend mode to soft light so that the audience could see the footage easily. 

After this I then created a title and changed the colour of it, I wanted my video to have a warm effect to it so I put the title on track 3 and changed the opacity to 60% and the blend mode to soft light. This meant that it gave a warm tone which suggested a flashback without being too overpowering for the audience.

This screenshot demonstrates the changes the gaussian blur effect makes along with the coloured title overlayed over it, the new footage looks a lot more dreamlike and less realistic.

Music Video - Titles

In a conventional music video, it contains titles which say the artist/band and the name of the song. In our media product we will be following this convention. For the product we decided to have the text be translucent and have the footage from our bath bomb shine through, because of this we need the text to be thick and bold so that the viewer can see the footage. 

The style of the font is also very important because we want it to follow the conventions of an indie-pop video as well. I tried multiple styles however I narrowed it down to four and asked for audience feedback.

I asked our main target audience (teenage girl and boy) for feedback.

Bell Gothic was the first I showed, they both said that whilst they liked the boldness however it was too plain and boring for an indie-pop video since it looks like a documentary title font.

This font is called Fake Smiths, whilst the audience did enjoy the look of it they said it was too 'funky' and that it didn't suit the indie-pop style, it was more the style of a rap genre video.

This third font is called Grind Zero, the audience said that they liked it and it embodied the genre of indie-pop. They were concerned with the placement however I reassured them that the title would be centred if I used it.

I like this font called Yuanti C, I feel that it is fun and suits the genre of indie-pop. However my target audience said that it was too boring again since they felt that it wasn't fun enough and you wouldn't be able to see the footage behind the title enough. 

Overall I have decided to go for the Grind Zero font because whilst it is fun, it isn't wacky and it fits the indie-pop genre nicely. It is also very bold and thick so the audience will be able to see the footage behind it.

Music Video - Narrative & Themes

Narrative

With the music video we had several ideas for the narrative but we decided to follow the couple and during the storyline show flash-fowards of an argument that they will have, at the same time show flash-backs of a happier time.

These changed as we were filming, originally we didn't have the flash-forwards or backs and had a chronological storyline of the relationship falling apart. However when I was editing the footage that we filmed first, we realised that we didn't have enough of it and decided to go out and film more. This is when we filmed the flash-back sequence, it was originally going to be part of the chronological storyline however we thought that by putting snapshots of it within the original footage it would keep the audience interested for longer. We also put the flash-forwards in the video for this reason as well.

Themes

Water
A key theme in our video is water, we tried to include it in most footage because it was representing a fresh start which is what the couple get when they break up. It was supposed to abstractly foreshadow the break up for the viewer. The multiple bathbomb shots, the water speakers and the sea interjecting the couple footage breaks up the long, boring footage and interests the reader. It also follows the conventions of a indie-pop video which has quick cutaways and bright colours (bathbomb shots).

Love
With the editing it was key to show the love between the couple deteriorating, we showed this through the flash-backs which have a very warm filter to them as well as the gaussian blur. We chose a warm tone because it represents the 'cozy' and happy part of their relationship. To show the time change from the past to the present we changed the filter from very warm to neutral with slight warm undertones, so that the graphics colour match with each other. When the couple are arguing the filter changes from a neutral tone with an underlying warmth to a blue cold filter. This represents the relationship breaking down and getting colder. I feel that by using the colour tones to portray the relationship it adds another level to the video and interests the audiences.

Music Video - BTS

Here are some photos of us heading to the location for the flashback shots and whilst we were having the photo shoot:

Music Video Screenshot

This showcases the differences before and after I've edited the footage, for this particular shot I zoomed in and warmed the shot so the white isn't so harsh.

Music Video Screenshot

Again here is another image of me editing the footage so that it fits the conventions of our music video. I particularly like this shot because of the colours featured. 

Music Video Screenshot

Here is a screenshot showing how I am editing the footage I have gotten to an area where I am happy to begin to edit the look of the footage. 

With this particular shot I have rotated the image so it is straight, I have also added a orange tint to the footage so that it colour matches with the band shots which have warm lighting. The saturation has been turned up to showcase the contrast between the reds and blacks. I have also zoomed in slightly to focus more on the vinyl record player's hand. 

Music Video So Far

Here is mine and Imogen Millard's video, it is still a work in progress and there are parts of it which are blank or aren't correctly synced up to the music however I have uploaded it because we wanted to gain audience feedback.



Music Video: THE SOUND (rough cut)

Music Video - BTS

Here are a series of photos showing behind the scenes when we were filming the band shots, I have also included some photos of the lighting box so the mise-en-scene is shown.

Please click on photo to take you to the album:

Music Video - Mise-En-Scene

All shots we filmed we thought about the mise-en-scene however the shot that involved the most thought put into mise-en-scene that we used whilst filming was in the band shoot, because we were filming a black space and needed objects to 'dress it up'.

The light settings

Before we had the shoot I set up the lighting, which was quite difficult. I had never properly worked with lighting before, apart from a brief workshop I did in AS a year ago, so the process of setting it up was very tricky since I didn't really know what I was doing. But I set up two free standing white lights that I angled into the set so it would light the band members up nicely by showing their faces.

I had wanted the lighting to be coloured as red and blue with a gobo effect but we didn't have the equipment for that. I also set up the fixed lighting, we had four lights fixed in a box position, you can see to the right the brightness I had the lights on. The levels on the left didn't control any lights so they were off, but the centre ones controlled the lights in front of the band, I had them on quite high because we wanted the band's faces to be visible to the audience, I had the centre left on higher because it had a yellow bulb so it gave a warmer tone, and we didn't want the footage to be extremely warm. This is why we had the white lights as well because otherwise the footage would be too warm and I would have to edit it to be colder which could lower the quality.

We had the band back lit because we wanted to create a enigmatic space where the audience couldn't see the set behind the band since the glare from the lights would stop the anything from being seen apart from the band and the obvious props.

You can see below some more of the light set up:

BTS - We were playing around with having a 'The Who'
inspired shot.

The lighting created this effect on the band, I really like the lighting because it makes the shot look a lot more aesthetically pleasing, the band being backlit also creates a glow around Isaac (the frontman) which adds to his status as being the actor in the rest of the video.

The shot above also shows the mise-en-scene of the set with the props we included. We had two amps set up; since one is massively bigger than the other we put fairy lights on the smaller one to compensate. We had two guitars in the band because the shot would be unequal if we a drum set, because we were filming Jack (red guitar) in a close up shot we had him wearing a strap holding the guitar. However because we only had one strap Tom (black guitar) had to hold his up but because it is black and his shirt is as well the audience can not see it as much. Isaac is holding a microphone since we thought it would add more realness to the footage. 

Music Video - Band Costumes

For the band we wanted them to look as part of a group, as a band is, however we wanted our band members to show their personality through their costume; so we gave them the brief of "dark clothing but still have some bright colours". 

The result of this is shown above, me and Imogen had brought along clothing incase they didn't follow our briefs but they had. We wanted dark clothing because it suited the band members better and we thought bright clothing would be too cliche for the video considering that the rest of the video is very bright.

For costumes, other than the brief we didn't control them too much, however we did add the 'The 1975' logo necklace to Tom's costume. We did this to create an 'Easter Egg' to the video where only fans of the band would be able to recognize the logo.

Music Video - Couple Costumes

When we had planned the scenes we originally wanted the actors to wear the same costumes because we wanted the footage to look like it was filmed at the same time, however Ingrid forgot which dungaree dress she was wearing and wore another. This caused us to have two costumes for her which stopped us from placing the shots in the same time frame, this caused us to have a flashback because of continuity errors.  

I feel that the product does look slightly weird because Isaac is wearing the same clothes and Ingrid is wearing the same top however I feel that with the Gaussian Blur effect it is less recognisable.

The two actors both wearing green and blue plaid outfits was completely unintentional, and I feel that we should have brought some other outfits so that they didn't match each other - we were unorganised in this aspect. However we wanted them to wear causal clothing because they were representing average teenagers and wanted their teenage audience to relate to them, I feel that we did this well. We asked Ingrid to wear something with red in to match her lipstick, which she uses to kiss Isaac, this was to match the colours and create a more in-sync outfit.

With Isaac we asked for him to wear something that was brighter than his band costume mainly to show the contrast between them, however we didn't want him to wear an outfit that was outrageous so we suggested a light blue which he has worn in his top.

We actually suggested to both of them to try and wear blue, which is where we came into the matching outfit problem, because a theme in our piece is water and we wanted to represent that in their costumes.

Risk Assessment - Tipton St. John

The risk assessment for the Bowd hike path, Tipton St. John. Risk Assessment's are useful because they highlight the risks we may face when filming.

Music Video Screenshot

Here is a screenshot of the project so far, all I am doing now is lining the shots up so the order of the video is correct. As you can see I have not altered the footage or position of it so the horizon is slanted and the colours are too dark and white. When I have finished most of the line up I will begin to edit the look of the footage.

Risk Assessment - Ottery St. Mary

The risk assessment for Canaan Park, Ottery St. Mary. The risk assessment helps us determine the possible risk factors when filming.

Filming Test BB2

This is our second bathbomb test which Imogen filmed, after reviewing the footage we have decided that it would be best to film the bathbomb in a smaller container so it is more pigmented. Also to have a tripod to get steady and non-shaky footage. When editing I will also turn the saturation up higher to colour with the rest of the video.