Editing the last bits.

On Thursday (last day of half term) I went to the media lesson in my free period and continued to edit our music video. The reason I carried on editing was because last lesson Mr Roberts watched our video and he told us that the editing needed to be changed in order to make our music video look great. Before we changed our ending, we had a shot of me (the actress) sitting at the top of the stairs and holding the wooden banister singing the lines 'like raindrops', because this was a full body shot and not a close up Mr Roberts felt that the actress was not interacting with the audience enough and as this would be the last time we hear her singing he wanted a close up of the actress so that it creates more of an impact on the viewer. I understood his comments and decided to delete the stairs shot and I began looking for a close up of me singing 'like raindrops' I could not find any so I thought it might look good if I used a shot a we have previously used (a close up of me laying down on the bed). I dragged this clip in and of course it was not in sync, so I had to make it a lot slower by adjusting the speed tool. Myung was also with me to help me do this. Myung and I became much focused and it took us some time but we managed to tweak the speed enough to get the shot into sync and the end result was brilliant as the new shot we dragged in included lots of impact and dramatic effects. We decided to add a transition in before the close up so that the last two scenes overlap one another in a dramatic way. The transition we included was ‘cross dissolve’ and it worked very well.

Once we had finished editing the last scenes, Myung and I looked over the whole video about 8 times trying to find any faults that we could improve. We came across about 1 fault each time, this was things like the colour of the scene did not match the next clip and they looked a bit jumpy with one another so we decided on a colour to use on both of them that would make them match. Another fault we found were one of the shots still had the original audio on it so we took the audio out and then went on to each clip making sure the audio was on mute for every clip. Once we made all these changes and we were happy with it, we showed it to Mr Roberts again and he was very impressed and satisfied with our final project. We then had to save our video on to a quick time file and once that was complete we saved our project onto the 'Media Archive'. This means that we can not go back and make any changes to our music video as we have given it to our teacher and we have met our deadline.

Mariam Nikpour

More editing (Nearly completed)

Today in our double lesson, we worked in a team trying to get the lip syncing to perfection. Bit by bit we watched the same parts over and over again to try and get the artist to be more believable to the audience. If the lip syncing, which is a significantly important part is not done to an accurate level then the audience is likely to disengage with the artist which is not what we want. What we want, is for the viewer to 'sing-a-long' and merge with the artist.

After the lesson, mariam went to media and tried to sync up the music video for some time. Later on, after mariam left I came back to see how much more needed to be done. And i noticed that the syncing had improved very dramatically, and that there were only one or two spots which needed to be changed.

So i took a few hours plugging my headphone into the mac to get rid of background noise and started trimming the start/end of several clips on the Imovie program. I found for alot of the footage, where it was hard to sync that the problem was that the artist had sung the lyrics slightly differently to the actual song.

The main solution was to split the clip so it was separated from the footage which was synced and to slow down specific parts that weren't so that the audience believe that the artist is actually singing the lyrics. It was important however when slowing down the clip to be precise and not slow it down too much or else, the timing was not right.

Then if this didn't do the trick, trimming the start and end of the next clip was a good idea or go redrag a longer version of the same clip (some edited footage were too short), so that the length can be increased to go with the beat.

There were two main parts, where this was particularly difficult near the end of the song (part where Ellana Rose is by the tree and singing continually onto the spotlight scene). Because it needs to continually engage the audience, with interest. However after an hour or two, it finally worked. I tried to listen to the dramatic cymbal beat in the song carefully and sync the spotlight scene to it, so that this would have more dramatic effect. It finally worked.

It was possible to fix other minor syncing errors too using this slowing down and trimming method. Other alternatives used, include changing the duration of the clip.

Finally i changed the contrast of the swimming pool part because i thought that it was a bit too dark, as when the music video is burnt on a CD/DVD the quality could be effected and the very details and ripples in the water may not show as well as it should.

-Myung-

Camera Work: We filmed a lot of close ups of our artist because it is important that music videos have these due to the desire we had to create a sense of intimacy for the viewer. It also emphasises half of the commodity on sale, meaning not just the song, but the artist and her voice. Because we included many close ups in our music video, it was essential that the lip syncing was perfect as it becomes a lot more noticeable when the viewers attention has been brought to the artists face and lips as they listen to the lyrics.

Our artist gives good eye contact and facial gestures via the close up. Role playing through the narrative and mise-en-scene will present the artist in a number of ways which helps the audience interact on a more personal level.

Editing: We decided to include what is called a ‘fast cut montage’ to our music video, this is when many clips are put together where appropriate to make the scenes so interesting that it is impossible to grasp on first viewing which means the viewer will keep watching the music video over and over again.

Because our character is typical a female solo artist we felt it would be necessary to include slow place scenes and a few gentler transitions in order to establish moods and create a sense of intensity for our audience.

Mariam Nikpour

What is editing?

Research on Editing

I researched into the meaning of editing before taking a role in editing, to gain a better understanding of what i want to achieve.

Editing is the process of manipulating and rearranging video shots to create a new work. Editing is usually seen as part of the post production process. Other post production tasks can include for example: sound mixing and colour correction. Editing is a term which is used to describe all the post production work, this usually occurs in more non-professional situations and amateur film producers.

Although there are many reasons why editing may be done, it really depends on the desired outcome. Before you begin editing, it is important to understand which editing goals you aim to achieve at the end:

Removing unwanted footage- This is the easiest and most common task in editing, as many videos can be dramatically improved just by removing unwanted footage.

Choosing the best footage- It is a good idea to film as much footage as you can, so that you can choose the best footage to use for final editing. There is much more choice, if there is enough footage and often cameramen will shoot the same footage several times to get the best shot.

Creating a flow- Editing is important to making sure that the video serves the purpose of what it wants to achieve, so that the audience understands the message that is aimed to be given across. This is the same even if the video is telling a story or providing information.

Adding effects, music, graphics ect.- By adding extra elements you can improve most videos and give a 'wow' factor to the viewer.

Altering style, pace or mood of the video- Editors who are experienced, will be able to create a specific mood to a video which can influence the audience to react in a particular way.

Angle of the video- Videos can be tailored to support a particular viewpoint, give a message or serve a agenda.

There are also different types of editing:

Film Splicing- A more traditional method, which was the first method developed for editing moving pictures and conceptually forming the basis of all video editing. This process involves cutting sections of the film and rearranging or getting rid of them. It is a very mechanical and straightforward process. In theory a film could be editing with a pair of scissors and tape, although a splicing machine would be the only practical solution. Because it holds the film in place and lined in order, while it is cut and spliced together.

Tape to tape (Linear)- Before editing computers became available in the 1990s, linear editing was the original method of editing electronical video tapes. Although it is a less prefered option for more professional work, it has its place and sometimes is a better option.

In Linear editing, footage is copied from one footage to another. It needs atleast two machines connected together, where one acts as the source and the other as a recorder.

1. Place the video to be edited in the source machine and a blank tape in the recorder.
2. Press play on the source machine and record on the recorder.

The idea of this method is to record parts of the source tape you want to keep. This way the desired footage can be recorded in order from the original tape to the new tape. So that the new tape becomes the edited version.

Digital/ Computer (non-linear)- Recorded footage from a camera is put onto a hard drive on the computer then edited using specialized software such as Finalcut Pro. Once editing is complete, the finished product can be recorded on to a CD, DVD or other forms of media.

An advantage of using this method, is that it is more flexible in terms of time and being able to change parts of the video anytime. However a disadvantage would be setting up the editing system can be a challenge, or losing edited footage because for example the computer froze.

This method is easier to learn than the linear method and after mastering, you can work much faster and efficiently.

Live editing- Multiple cameras and other video sources are routed through a central mixing console and edited in real time. Live television coverage is an example, but this method is more specialist and won't apply to most people.

- Myung -

Filming on the day 'Raindrops'

When we all arrived to Roshi's Godmothers house we began to set up the two cameras and get the rooms ready that we would be filming in. As I was the actress for our music video I had to go and get in to my costume and do my make up as appropriate for the character I would be playing. Myung and Roshi began to film footage and at times Evette took over, but Evette was mainly preparing the next room that I was going to be filmed in. When Roshi and Myung were not filming me I was looking at the story board and creating a checklist of footage that we will need to film by the end of the day and I was ticking off the tasks as we went along. The filming went really well, we managed to film all the footage on time and we had more than enough shots. All in all we had about 6 hours of footage on the two cameras. As I did not have a huge role with filming on the day because I was the actress, I took on the lead role as editor along with the other members of our group, we took it in truns and all gave in our personal in put for each scene. A lot of team work has been involved within our project and I feel that overall we worked really well together.

Mariam Nikpour

Editing 'Raindrops'

We have now finished editing our music video, and we have gone back numerous times to make sure it is perfect. When editing Raindrops we followed our story board that we had previously prepared (we also used this when filming). We uploaded all the footage from the cameras and looked at each shot on the story board and started to drag each shot, we didn't follow the story board entirely as we had some shots that looked best in other places and we had new ideas each time it came to editing. We had many great shots that we wanted to use but I put them on to I movie one by one and started to edit each scene. Everything was running smoothly within the first two weeks and Mr Roberts was happy with what we had achieved, however when we lost all of our work, we had to start from the beginning again and this meant that we were short for time. We then had 2 weeks until our deadline to edit and we found it difficult to make our music video the exact same as before.

We did our best at editing to perfection and added plenty of good transitions where appropriate such as fade to white, fade to black, cross dissolves and we also used the effects on the Mac's to change the colour, contract, exposure, lighting and brightness of each scene. Using these transitions and effects for our music video really made our end result look professional as we knew exactly where to put them and how to make them link to each soon. Furthermore, the effects on the video clips that we used made our music video look a lot more interesting and eye catchy, it also made our main character look more appealing and believable that she is a real artist. The transitions we used made our shots look more interesting and it helps each clip run smoothly when switching from one to another without any jumpy shots.

We found that lip syncing was very difficult but once we got the hang of it, we completed this task very well. I also found that by slowing down or speeding up a clip helps to lip sync and it sometimes makes the clips look more believable other than just leaving the scene as it originally was.

We had a slight problem when listening to the music Raindrops on our music video because each day I would go back on the Mac to edit, the song would not play so I had to delete the music and keep uploading the song again. It is working now so we were able to complete our editing as we listen to the music and edit at the same time so that we can edit to the beat.

Today we showed our final project to Mr Roberts and he gave us suggestions of ways to improve our music video. A few of the clips were out of sync and were quite noticeable, one of the scenes were particularly out of sync as the clip was too fast for the music. Therefore, I tried to slow the clip down and alter the duration of the clip but it still did not look in sync. I ended up deleting the entire clip and dragging in another clip of me (the actress) but singing the same lines. I then made the timing perfect by deleting the unwanted footage from the beginning and end of the clip.

Mr Roberts also told us that two of our shots were positioned in the wrong place because when the singer begins the next verse, we originally had a clip of our character standing against a large window and looking outside, then the clip changed to a close up of me singing the next half of the verse. Mr Roberts explained to us that the clip of me singing should begin as soon as the next verse does as this will give a bigger impact on our audience and make them feel a lot more engaged with the character. To correct this problem I had to drag in another clip of the close up of me singing the beginning of the second verse and I swapped it with the long shot clip of me looking out the window. I then had to listen carefully for the beat and cut off the unwanted footage at the beginning and end of the clip. It was very challenging to do as I had to ensure the lip syncing was correct and i also had to make sure the duration of the clip I added was exactly the same as the clip I had removed otherwise the rest of our music video would all be out of sync and I would have to go back and adjust every single clip.

When I finally made these improvements our music video was looking so much better and Mr Roberts was very impressed with the changes I made. I then went back and forth, watching the music video again finding other ways to improve and again, there were a few minor details where the clips were out of sync. For the last chorus we originally had a long scene of me singing to the camera (sitting on the floor with the hairdryer blowing my hair), in the middle of this scene there was a very obvious part where I didn't quite sing the lyrics 'and the lights go on'. To correct this problem I decided it would be best to split the clip and delete the section where I didn't sing, I then added another clip where I wasn't singing (walking in the corridor scene) and I filled in the space. This change made the whole scene look very professional as all the parts where it was suppose to be in sync were now in sync and it also made a long scene more interesting as there was a cut away in between. I carried on tweaking a few scenes because they were also out of sync or not going along with the beat. I am very happy with our final reuslt and we will be saving it on to a quick time file tomorrow so that Mr Roberts can access it for it to be marked.

Mariam Nikpour

Video analysis - 2NE1 - It hurts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUiMaz4BNKw
I chose this music video 'it hurts' to analyse because I noticed it had a very similar mise en scene to our music video, it also had some very nice shots that I thought we could benefit from using. The mise en scene for this video is very spooky and they also used a large, enchanted house to film in. The shots I felt we could use from the 'it hurts' video was when one of the female lead singers are sitting on the window seal looking out from high up with her legs across the side of the window. I thought this would work well in our music video because the camera framing is very accurate, showing the whole of the artist’s body and this shot is also allowing the camera to track in, making the shot more interesting other than just filming from a distance.

Furthermore, I was intrigued by some of the shots that 'it hurts' had such as, the close up of the female with the red hair singing into the camera. I was inspired by this scene as it is very passionate and it immediately catches the audience’s attention, this made me think it would be a good idea to use this shot for our own music video as I wanted our artist to interact with the audience on a personal level and keep them wanting to watch more of our video. I decided that we would film plenty of these close up shots and when it comes to editing I could make use of this footage throughout but only use it for certain parts of the music video where I want the audience to be really engaged and focused on our artist and the lyrics of which she would be singing.

In the music video 'it hurts' I particularly liked the idea of the fog machines and spooky effects that had been placed, for my own music video I felt that I could get ideas from this by using cob webs when appropriate and bringing that sense of spooky horror to our music video as well. I was also inspired by 'it hurts' because they occasionally use transitions such as 'cross dissolves’; this is when two scenes overlap one another slightly. I thought this really worked well and made their music video a lot more interesting than it would have been if they had not used this transition. When editing I will test out the 'cross dissolve' transition to see whether it works well with our music video too.

Mariam Nikpour

Digipak continued- Album Cover

I took a number of photos for the album cover. We went to a drama hut to find interesting places to shoot. While in there, I planned to take some pictures of Mariam sitting down with a colourful block with lovely swirls as a background. I took photos in different angles to get as many varied shots.




This photo is the one I liked the best. The first ppicture was taken at too low an angle. This lost any eye connection the potential buyer had with the singer. This picture you can clearly see the singer's face. The angle I took the photo in is slightly off as you can see the top of the background and the black curtain behind it.







I carried on with the digipak. I edited most of the pictures on photoshop. Here is the list of changes I made to the picture:

• I cropped the picture to take out the black curtain. I also resized the picture

• I didn't like the make up I had done on Mariam when I took the pictures. So using the clone tool, I managed to undo the swirls on her face. The clone tool copies one part of a picture and paints over the part you want to cover up. So I copied one part of Mariam's face (which was the skin tone) and painted over each swirl. I then used the blur and smudge tool to make the tones blended together.
  

• The background, although colourful, is slightly dull. I turned up the contrast and saturation to make the background much brighter

• The block had some graffti on it and some of the swirls wasn't fully painted. Using the clone tool again fix the picture.
• Using colour variation I made Mariam's lips slightly redder and made her eye shadow darker
  

How our music video relates to the "Andrew Goodwin analysis"

Andrew Goodwin writing in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (Routledge 1992) states that there are 6 points to make a video effective.

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
(E.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band)

The genre of out video is punk; according to wikepedia Punk rock is caturised by the “fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics"

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals
(Illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).

The lyrics of our song are very metaphorical, we believed that every word represented something bigger, for example 'raindrops' which is used numerously in the chorus represents the protagonists feelings of sadness or estrangement for her homely surroundings and her line of 'feels like home', which related to the idea we have of her revisiting her home or place of important and no longer feelings the warmth she used to feel and ends up leaving, the idea of leaving came to us because of her line 'you get to free them' we believed that lyrics was representing her need to be free from her old home so we wonted to visually show her leaving the house.
Also with the many uses of pronouns like 'you' and 'we' used in the lyrics we wonted to demonstrate the she is bringing in the audience into her world as she’s talking directly towards them, to visually link this we added numerous voyeuristic shots to make the audience feel like they are watching her.

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals
(Illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).

The first thing you hear is what we described as almost a futuristic sound of something progressing in movement. The music's begins slower with the beat controlled and smoother with only sounds of the piano being played and piano cords, the middle the music intensity is increased with more instruments and a more 'rock' feel, then towards the end it slows down and it resorts back to the futuristic sound you first heard in the beginning. With the sound that lasts for 8-13 seconds we added interlinking cutaways from the toy house and the actual house, as this sound is quite sci-fi we believed the sound would link to the audience that we are combining the dream/toy/fake world with the 'real' world.
Then there is 4 piano cords that play, in which we added images on the exact cord and for the right interval then we moved on to the next cords in time. Then the last 5th cord its longer almost double the size of the rest so we added a very important scene of a swing moving with no one on it , as its more important than the rest of the images we added it to the long interval as it gives the audience more time to take in the detail. Throughout the music video we have used the decisive beats it aid our changes from one scene to the next or an added transition. We also used this idea to contradict between the music and visuals, as when our artist is in the bed you hear a 'ending' beat which when asked people to watch it and they all expected us to move on to another scene but we added a quick fade to white transition and we carry one the same scene, this makes the audience more aware of the scene and also amplifies it. In out music you hear the same beginning and ending sound and to visually link the visuals to that we made the camera coming into the house for the beginning and coming away for the ending which both concludes and gives the audience a jog in their memory and they remember the sound and the story concludes.

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).

We have added many close-ups, and even extreme close-ups of the face of our artists, so the audience can clearly see what she looks like. As we haven’t added extravagant make up or used a mask of some sort even out of the video you can easily reconnect her. And the motif e think that would recur across her work is her talent in playing the piano, a similar artist Alicia keys, is shown playing her piano curious times in the first videos when she was becoming a rising star then as she became more popular she did not need to play the piano as its already established she has talent in that area. I believe this would be the similar route for this artist as she would have many of her starting out videos of her playing the piano to establing to the audience that doesn’t know her enough, that she is talented.


5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

In out video we use voyeuristic techniques numerously, as the solo singer talks a lot about 'we' and 'you'. We have many shots when the camera is looking at her but she is looking away as if she doesn’t know anyone is there. E.g. on the piano she is playing but she does not one look towards it, only until the middle we allowed her to look at the camera, and there she talking directly towards the camera as if the 'we' and 'you' is the audience. There is a scene when the camera trails over her body when she is laying down on a pool's side, and also there is a scene when her arms are stretched out and the camera followed her arms to her face.

6. There is often interstitial reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos etc).

Our main intertextual referent is from the film 'atonement' where in the beginning scene it shows the house and a toy house which is similar in appearance. Also music videos which we got inspiration from and are an intertextual reference is: marina and the diamond- shrimpain, ne-yo - mad....

We consider out music video as concept rather than a performance video, as it’s based on the story of what is happening rather than the movement on a stage or a dance routine.

By Evette Anderson-Sampah

Storyboards v Animatics

Storyboards are a series of frames with drawings and words from a script. After the storyboard, the next step is producing an animatic. Animatics are animated storyboards.

Purpose = They are used for various purposes.
Animatics are used every day in the advertising industry to test commercials. They're used to preview scenes of live-action films before they are shot. Before full-up production, this means the final level.

History = Up until just a few years ago, animatics were produced by filming or videotaping storyboards. Over the last ten years, animatic production has become much more sophisticated. Animatics are now produced with the aid of computer animation.

For our preliminary task we used a storyboard sheet to draft out our ideas, but on the filming day we realised that some shots did not fit, some didn’t look right etc. So we learnt that for our actual music video piece we needed to use a animatic as well as a storyboard to give us a good idea of the look of the scenes as well as ensuring we are happy with the rough look of our music video.

By Evette Anderson-Sampah

Free web preparation

I have now made the basic layout of the sites, I’ve added the layout design and the pages I’m going to using on there. Next I need to put on a autobiography for out solo singer, as every musician needs to have that on their site, for the benefit of the fans who want to get the know their artist and possible business related people who might want to make deals with a artist they like the sound of.

Here are the things I think its import to add to an biography:

• Artists full name not just including the ‘stage name’

This allows the fans to feel more personal towards the artist, when you first meet someone you find out their name and its similar here, it’s as if it’s the beginning of a relationship with the fan and the artist.

• Hometown

Again fans from the same hometown would feel glad that someone from where they are became successful. Also it could give answers to people who wonder where her accent is from etc. Or where you might see her performing next.

• Rise to fame

This tells the audience how the artist came to be where she is now. And for people who know nothing about her and assume she’s just a random one hit wonder this is in some ways a C.V to show her experience.

• Where her talent to noticed/discovered

• Education

• Label how she met them.

• Success

• Where they are now.

Here is the completed unedited biography:

Ellena Witney Rose at the age of Nine, moved from her hometown in Switzerland to Wales with her mother, where she met her fellow band and manager Mark Jenkins who was her former drama teacher.
She never had professional vocal lessons but was praised on her natural sounding voice having a five-octave vocal range. She was frequently asked to participate in talent shows she never had to audition for. At the age of twelve while still in school, she tried out for a local punk band called Messy Black where she met her now husband Matt Bleu. Matt bleu being the front man for the band made collaborations with Ellena which was a success on her schools radio station regularly reaching number one each week.
Ellena was discovered in 2003 by managers Dave Steinbrink and Richard Williams who later signed the fourteen-year-old to a production deal, which later Ellena’s mother pulled her out of because of accusations of Steinbrink and Williams illegally taking full responsibly of her financial success.
At the age of sixteen she attended Brit School for two years. After leaving Brit school with high grades she took a one year singing course at Tech Music School.
She later moved to London and enrolled on a degree in music at University College London, transferring in her second year of studies to Loughborough University, however later she dropped out. She stated that the reason she didn’t carry on her education was because she “Had no passion to be in university learning about music, I wanted to do music, I felt like I was wasting my time because I could already sing and I learnt that myself.”
Now twenty two Ellena moved in with Matt Bleu and began going to many auditions including the West End musical, The Lion King and BBC’s unsigned festival. She rose to fame after reaching number two on the BBC Sound of 2010 poll list, coming second to Ellie Goulding.

By Evette Anderson-Sampah

Myspace preparation

In order to make our artist believe able we have decided to make her a MySpace, as MySpace is populated everyday with many musicians both sighed and unsigned artists we believe this social network would be where this type of artist would advertise her music. One of the main reasons we decided to make a MySpace because the audience targeted for this site is between the ages from 15-20 which is also the target audience for ‘Ellena Rose’ genre of music.

As a group we debated whether to make a facebook combined with a ‘free’ web, because in the process of making the MySpace I found that it was quite difficult with the introduction of the new MySpace layout 0.2, and because I’m more used to the html based layout before that. Also when adding the song to the MySpace I didn’t realise about the disclaimer of not being allowed to use copyrighted stuff and legally I didn’t own the song, so I tried 2-3 times to add the song and I finally got a timed ban on the account. So after that I thought back to making the facebook and a ‘free’ web and just linking them up together because I believe you can add more things to ‘free’ web as u have more freedom to add what you want on there, Also I’m quite experience with using html codes and I feel it’s more personal and unique and html codes can be used in any design way you want which makes it totally different to anyone else’s site.

Also the population of MySpace is rapidly decreasing with the introduction of facebook and twitter, and there is a chance that Myspace would be shut down because of this. That’s one of the prime reasons Myspace decided to make a newer layout to attract all the users who have abandoned myspace for another social site.

Looking through all the sites claiming that you can make a free professional looking website, I settled on using www.webs.com because I looked at existing sites made and I liked the look of it, also I know many people my age who have a site they linked to their facebook and it looks very professional also I like ccs codes because I like working with them rather than having to choose from bland ready made layouts.

By Evette Anderson-Sampah

Digipak research

While Mariam, Myung and Evette carried on editing the music video, I started on making the digipak. At first I found this to be a slight challenge as I had never owned an album which was a digipak. So in order to create the digipak I had to do some research into existing ones.

Digipaks
I like this digipak as it has the pictures and band information and toour dates. This is whyt most people pay more digipaks


I also looked at album covers by different artists like Norah Jones and Kate Melua.

Norah Jones- Come Away with Me

I used this Norah Jones album cover as inspiration for our cover. I liked the simplicity of it. Most album covers have elaborate artwork and extravagant photoshoots. To have a simple close up of the singers face gives the potential buyer an insight to what kind of musician she is. Norah Jones is a smooth jazz and blues singer, having a blue background is a literal way of showing her genre.






Mika- Life in Cartoon Motion

This a completely different ablum cover. This is cover is album artwork that only features a small picture of the artist. Like most covers the artwork reflects the genre of music. Mika's is glam rock and pop. An album cover should not only reflect the genre of music, but the artist themself. The bright colours reflect Mika's happy-go-lucky nature and hyperactive personality.







Roshi Theva

Auidence feedback

During our Media Studies lesson we were asked to evaluate our classmates music videos, making notes and telling them ways to improve and things that they are doing well. Four different groups watched our music video 'Raindrops' and they made notes for us also.

When my group and I read through the feedback, we could see that we had received mixed views of positive and negative feedback. We were told that our mise-en-scene was very interesting in our music video as the house that we used works well with our music and genre. We were also told that the costume our artist is wearing matches her look and fits the part perfectly. Although our video was enjoyed by many people, we were told that some of the editing scenes were a bit jumpy, noticeable and that we needed to sync the visuals with the music more effectively, as some scenes were out of sync. Another negative comment was that our artist did not seem very confidant which makes her less believable as the singer because she did not have alot of passion whilst singing in some of the scenes .

Thankfully, we were given an extra week to make improvements on our final product. As a group we read through all the comments and listened thoroughly, insuring that we continued to edit, making changes at every scene that was required to be improved.

Mariam Nikpour

I produced a questionnaire before we began creating our music video and asked 10 people to fill it in, below is an example of one of them. The questionnaires were very useful for us as we were able to have an insight of a mixture of different people’s opinions. We listened to the feedback we were given and we put it into practise. For example, 9 out of 10 people we questioned said that they would prefer to see performance over narrative in our music video, so we took this into account and we did not include too much of a story line, we left our audience guessing and we did not reveal what the song is about, however it was not confusing to watch.

As a group we were considering whether to include an instrumental band in our music video or not, we decided not to bring in any other characters other than Eleanor Rose (the singer) because although there are many different instruments being played such as the piano drums and keyboard, we felt that this style of music would not suit a band and the female actress should perform solo. Furthermore, 8 out of 10 people who filled in our questionnaire said that we should not include a band to our music video as it may look out of place and awkward for the audience.


Audience Questionnaire

1. When you hear the song ‘Raindrops’ what genre would you associate it with?
Female artist, romance.

2. Would you expect to see a band/group in the music video for this song?
No.

3. What comes to your mind when you hear this song?
Female artist singing about love, depression, heart ache.

4. What makes you watch a music video interesting to you?
When the artist keeps the audience engaged by looking at the camera whilst singing and performing. Also a good story line to fit the music.

5. Do you think we should include more conceptual, narrative or performance?
Performance.

6. Do you like the idea of using shaky camera work, with quick zooms in and out, at the performance parts of the video?
Not always.

7. Do you think fast pace filming will suit our music video?
Yes when appropriate.

8. Where do you watch music videos?
Internet and television.

9. What genre of music do you like?
Indie and Hip-hop.

10. Are you male or female?
Female.

Mariam Nikpour.

Some videos looked at for raindrops video

Music Video Resource Evaluation

Before we started filming the raindrops video, we had to find some videos

which could be looked at to spark our ideas. Which we could use as a source

of reference now and then too.

Whilst everyone had a different idea of videos to look at, i am going to evaluate a few

videos i was inspired by to help me and my team put together our storyboard and music video.

1. Taeyang (Artist)- Ill be there (Song)

These are different shots from the music video.

This particular shot inspired us to use cobwebs as part of our mise en scene.

As soon as we put together our ideas for the raindrops song, i.e the concept, genre

i immediately thought of this particular music video. Though the artist is from a different cultural background, i thought that the concept would be exactly what we wanted. That someway making a connection between 'raindrops' and 'Ill be there' would work.

There are alot of iconography in Ill be there, suggesting different

meaning to the items used. For example the rose, suggesting something quite beautiful but dangerous. So instead of a traditional red rose, we thought in the video having a black rose would suggest a more dark, dangerous and mysterious idea to the audience. Coming back to the idea that we wanted the audience to be free in interpreting they're own idea of the ending of the video (therefore being mysterious). Whilst the rose represents the artist's name and personality as 'the rose' itself.

Whilst using the same idea of the black rose, alot of shots we used have also been inspired from this video. Such as the close up of our artist 'Ellena Rose's' face where she is lying down on the bed, is one similar of the female actress in 'Ill be there'. Finally the part where the artist falls to the ground, is a part inspired by this video.

Click here to watch the music video

2. Bruno Mars- Just the way you are (Making of video)

This particular clip, sparked my idea that having 'fade to blacks' repeatedly to go with the beat

of music at the start of the music video would go well with the piano keys in the song raindrops, as done in bruno mars'just the way you are'. It would add some dramatic effect to it too.

Click here to watch the music video

3. Mariah Carey- We belong together

This is a very nice establishing shot, at the start of this music video.

Looking at this video, I got alot of ideas we could also use in our own video. The way most of

the footage from the music video is revealing the house and showing a connection between the solo artist and the house (i.e. why she is there, where it is.) Which me and my team attempted to do in our own music video.

Even the colours in the shots from the mise en scene which are mostly black and white, green can also are very similar in our own video. I thought that

these colours show: black- darkness and secretive, mysterious. white- pure, innocence. green- neutral. Putting all these colours together can show some form of confusion and depth for the audience to think about.

Also the part where Mariah carey is sitting down and singing part of the lyrics, with the wind blowing on her hair, is another key concept which contributes to our own video.

Click here to watch the music video

4. Neyo- Mad

This music video uses alot of iconography and detail such as small skeleton figures (meaning death) to guide the audience through the video, and explain what is going on. Also using black and white only, to show that the artist in the video has actually died in the scenario. I think the use of black and white, also shows some element of sadness to the audience watching the video whilst the colours do co-ordinate to the colours of the keys on the piano.

This music video also helped me and my team to pick out the rose and cobwebs to add more meaning to our own music video.

Click here to watch the music video

Other media- Atonement (Working Title Movie).

The opening establishing shot of the british traditional house in atonement was

something which inspired me to film the footage used for the opening scene of 'raindrops'.

Where i thought it would be nice using the doll house to be compared the real house. So by doing this, the audience get a sense of idea that the artist is lost in her own fantasy. Whilst it establishes the location beautifully.

First of all it was just something done as part of experimentation, whilst i had some spare time

whilst Evette were helping out getting Mariam ready with Make up and other, and Roshi was setting up the lighting and second sony HD camera ready. However, whilst editing we found it to come in very nicely as part of the opening sequence.

This is the real house.

This is the doll house in atonement.

- Myung Kwon