www.unsigned.com is the website we were set to use to find an
artist/band that we could use to create a music video, because we made the
choice to create and use our own music. This meant we didn’t have to use this
site, this allowed us to make creative decisions when recording to put in
sections that we could adapt when filming. It also meant that we could get
straight on with thinking about what we wanted in the video as we already had a
skeleton track recorded, we then went back and re-recorded it in a much higher
quality to make the video as professional as possible.
We used Facebook
as a way of researching what people expect in a music video. We produced a
questionnaire and posted it to our friends and also a Hardcore page, this
allowed us to get answers from people who enjoy various genres, giving us a
wider amount of research. We also used Facebook to contact certain people for
quotes on lighting rigs and also to ask if we could use certain locations. We
used this way of contacting them as we felt it was much quicker to get a
response than using e-mail. This technology has also helped us to gain feedback
on our final products, as it was an effective and simple way of exhibiting our
final pieces.
We have used this
technology to present our finalised products, this has helped us to spread it
to a wider audience, Twitter also has a hashtag feature, this has allowed us to
use a # on the post and this places it in a category so that anyone who
searches that hashtag will see it, you can use multiple hashtags, making it
available in the categories we have chosen to use.
We used Photoshop
in the constructing of our digipak. This program allowed us to create the full
design for our album and also allowed us to layer up the shots we had from
filming and also the text we wanted to use for the title in a professional
style. This program helped us to produce a product that we are happy with and
confident that we met the plans we set out to do on it as it gives you enough
freedom when creating a product and allows you to add any creative flair you
have along the way.
Whilst we were in
the stages of research we heavily relied upon YouTube to research our chosen
genre. This helped us with the music, the clothing and also to understand the
conventions of a hardcore genre video. Although we used it to research our
chosen genre, we also used it to look at other genres to see what the general conventions
of a music video were and to also get any influences from them. This technology
has also allowed us to exhibit the final promo, this has also given us the
opportunity to see a range of people’s responses to the video through them
commenting and liking/disliking the video, helping us to decide as to whether
our final product was successful or not.
We chose to make a
video for our own track, we have had to quickly pick up and learn how to use
Logic Pro to record an effective and professional song; we had multiple
sessions in the studio and researched how all the elements of a track such as
this work together. This allowed us to get the right feel for the song as we
wanted it to really hit all conventions of a hardcore track.
When editing our
video, we found that when it came to the ‘breakdown’ of the song, this section
was far too long and the shots would get repetitive, so we decided to go back
into Logic Pro and slice down a section of the breakdown to make the overall
song 4:27 to 3:52.
We have used this
technology to edit our images for our digipak, we used Lightroom for this as it
gives you the ability to offer very detailed alterations in a simple and easy
to do fashion, we were able to increase the contrasts of the shots and also
take down exposure issues. We were planning on using this program for more as
it was very easy to use however it didn’t offer the option to add text on top,
we took the images from here and put them through Photoshop.
We used this
technology in the construction of our music video; we had the choice of using
this editing software or iMovie. We chose to use this as we feel we are much
more suited to this editing software and also we felt that it would give us
more freedom to increase the technicality within our shots and shot editing,
examples of this are our uses of layering clips using opacity and multiple
colour corrections, both features that Final Cut Pro can offer in a much more
detailed, stylistic way.
From this project
I have developed my skills in using the editing software to create a
professional and effective final product. We have used black and white effects
alongside with colour correction on our narrative clips to create a better and
more conventional video. This is a technique I feel I have learnt confidently
and developed since the work I have produced previous.
In terms of
editing I feel I have grown in confidence a lot from our preliminary video to
this music video. This is evident in my editing style, in our prelim I felt I
focused too much on keeping every change to a specific beat in the song as I thought
this was the only way to create a video that had an effective flow, however in
this music video, conventionally the editing is very fast, although we tried to
keep most editing to the beat, we also made some on the offbeat, this allowed
the video to feel a bit edgy and stopped it from becoming too predictable.
I also feel I have
become more independent in my ideas for editing and shot planning. I believe
this is shown in the layered opacity shot, we used an opacity shot in our
prelim, however that was simply to just show the fact we were traveling in the
car. I feel that our use of it in the music video is much more stylistic to the
genre and works really well at showing how we have taken a simple idea and made
it look more professional in the video, this shot also had to be planned very
well as we had to make sure that the camera was completely still and the shot
was composed right to get both actor in without it crossing over as before we
used two completely different shots.
This production has
given me the chance to learn and develop better skills when it comes to
shooting and planning the shots that are needed in the filming process. Once we
had created our storyboard/shot list for the video we then decided we wanted to
alter a section of it, instead of not pre-planning this scene change like I
would have done before, we created another storyboard just for that section. This
helped us a lot when it came to filming and also gave us a chance to add even
more effective shot types in that we did not think of before.
I have also learnt
that you should really think about continuity when filming, an example of the
difference here is in my prelim we have a costume change from one shot to
another, so when filming our video we made sure everyone was wearing the right
clothes for that filming session.
In terms of my
shooting, I feel I have become a lot more confident in knowing how to film in a
certain style, when filming our prelim we kept the camera very still on most
playing shots and kept them very basic. However, in our music video, I feel we
have really taken into account the energy of the song and replicated that in
our shooting method, keeping the camera moving and almost timed the camera
movement with the music, an example of this is when filming drums, we chose to
go from a mid-shot to a close up, instead of using two shots we used camera
movement to change the shot type, I feel this have given us a much better
continuity to the video.
For this project I
feel I have become a lot more confident in using programs such as Final Cut
Pro, Lightroom and Photoshop and have learnt how to bring them up to a higher
professional standard using the Apple MacBook Pro. Final Cut Pro was the
software we used to create our video, this program allowed us to create a very
professional looking promo whilst still being extremely easy to use, this gave
us the confidence to go that bit further to make it a bit more personal to our
taste by adding our own creative flairs. The Apple Macbook Pro, Photoshop and
Lightroom have aided me to creating our digipak and website. I have learnt how
to use Lightroom to edit photographs we have taken to fit a certain style
(hardcore genre) without making them look very unrealistic. As well as
developing my skills on Lightroom I feel I have grown in confidence using
Photoshop, this is evident in our digipak, we wanted to keep our text similar
to our website but was finding it hard to get the right look, we decided to
make the background behind it look like ripped paper, this was a hard technique
however I believe it gave us a stronger image in the outcome. (Top image is the title of the band off the website and the one below is the edited title for the digipak)
We had a couple of
problems that we faced when filming that I feel we overcame very professionally:
We have used
blogger as a way of noting down our research, planning and the final ideas for
our music video. This technology has helped me to be able to keep all my work
in a structured plan, making sure all our research was up to date. This was
useful to us as we could access it very easily and quickly when it came round
to needing it, this also creates one large area where all your planning will
be, thus stopping you from losing it.
We have used
search engines such as Google and Bing to find and source information and
pictures for our planning and research for our music video. We also used search
engines as a mean to understand the conventions of our chosen genre, this
helped us to understand genre a lot more before we started planning and filming
our music video to make it as effective as possible.
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