Thursday, 31 March 2011
account of editing week 4
Now that I have finished cutting the shots together, we are beginning to add the after-effects. Because we shot the band onto green screen we are going to use the technique of chroma-keying in order input in the wallpaper and the floor. This is done by first masking out the band members, and making the green “invisible”. This keying was done using the software “key light” which is part of after-effects. I then changed the saturation of this layer in order to make the band appear as if they are in black and white. Then I added in the floor and wallpaper to the shot as a different layer, the wallpaper was found by searching on an online home-wear store and then copying a screen shot of some wallpapers and then seeing which one worked best. The wallpaper screen shot was then made into a tile format in order for it to look more realistic. The floor tiles where found and made in the same way, expect this time when they where keyed into the shot they had to put at a specific angle in order to make sure that it looked like the band was standing on them. To also make the room look more realistic I added an omnilight to the middle of the shot in order to light the wallpaper and flooring layer. The next step was to add the layer of coloured rain in front of the shot. The rain was shot at night so the background is black with the rain being lit by coloured gel’s over lighting. To make the colours better and brighter I changed the hue. In order to place the rain over the shot I used the blending tool linier doge so that the black would become transparent. This sequence had to be repeated for every shot. The effect when wanted to use was to have colours start coming back into the shot at the end promo, this meant having to another two layers. I got the rain water splatter effect from the animation library called “riot gear”. I then placed this over the shot and used a blending tool to make the white in the middle of the splatter transparent showing the band in colour underneath, I then used another blending tool in order to make the black around the splatter transparent this time however revealing the black and grey layer.
account of editing week 3
Now I am cutting in-between the shots in order to create an interesting visual experience for the audience. This is done by using a mixture of concept and performance shots. As “Now is everyone” is a new relatively unknown band, we have made sure to use a large number of performance shots. This is because we want the audience to begin to recognise the members and what their role is in the band. I put extreme close up shots of them playing the instruments next to either a mid-shot or close-up of the This week I am tightening up the shots, making the cuts tighter and quicker and add in some extra shots in order to make it visually more interesting. On one of the days we where editing we logged into final cut pro only to find that the music and the video had all un-sycned its self. This took a while to sort of it meant marking and remarking the music and the shots again so that we could make sure they were all perfectly re-synced.
account of editing week 2
The next step we are doing is to sync up long performance shots so that we could intercut between these to get a rough idea. This was done by listing to the shot and placing a marker on a specific bit, we when put another marker on the music on the time line at the same part of the song, we then dragged the shot onto the time line and levelled up the markers. I also then have to remove the sound element of the shot so that it does not affect the sound quality of the promo. This is simply done by separating the video from the sound and then deleting the sound bar. I did this with 5 of the clips that went from the beginning of the song to the end. The next thing I’m doing now is placing markers on the song at specific beats in the tune; this is so that when we cut it has an ecstatically pleasing rhythm and cutting pace.
account of editing week 1
We are using the program final cut pro in order to edit our prop promo. I used this programme before in the editing of my thriller title sequence. We filmed the promo on Mpeg 2 NX5 Cameras which have a hard disk so that every time that I paused the camera it would save as a different shot, this also meant that the raw film uploaded much faster onto the computer then with our thriller title sequence. This is because we filmed onto celluloid film for the thriller, which downloads in “real time” so that if we took 10 hours worth of film it would take down hours to upload to the computer this is not the case when using a hard disk. Once all the film had been uploaded I have set about sorting the shots into bins so that it would be easier to find the right shots we wanted later on. Some of the bin titles included: Head shots, wide shots of performance, puddle shots, concept shots...etc. The next thing we did we did was to place the sound track onto the time line. We are having a slight problem with it as the version of the song we had was not compatible with final cut pro, so we are going to take the track and convert it to a WAP file in order for it to work.
Task 4 How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
My group and I are going to describe the technical aspects of our pop promo and digi pack, focusing on the 3 production stages; pre-production, construction and post-production. We will go into detail in each stage explaining the different elements that we used and why.
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Pre-production
We saw clips of ‘Now is Everyone’ on their Myspace page and decided to contact them through Facebook. We then schedulable a meeting with the band to discuss ideas for the promo. I know people are really negative about myspace these days, but what an absolute gold mine of visual stimuli it turned out to be! When researching initial ideas for the promo, we searched the internet, using sites like YouTube. We listened to the song repeatedly and wrote down the images and ideas that came to mind. The coloured rain came from an idea to have some of the elements in colour and some in black and white because we thought this was a way of introducing their star quality metaphor, which is “from the gutter to the stars”. Various different types of puddles and rain effects were mocked up on Photoshop, as part of our preliminary planning. They were eventually filtered out due to the lack of time and technological ability. The creative anamtic enabled us to have an idea of how long each shot would need to be and where we would cut it.
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Construction
During the shoot day we took digital stills with a SLR camera. We used them in the construction of the digi pack. It consists of a front and back cover and two inlays. The inlays are made up of a montage of stills from the shoot day, the promo and their private life, giving the audience a voyeuristic view of the band. This reinforces their organic nature. For the front cover we made the title bold to draw the audience in and scaled the band members larger than life to emphasise their importance. The colour reflects both the mood of the song and band, tying it altogether. The poster creates certain enigma codes. The most obvious being the positioning of the lead singer. He is positioned in the background but is the only one giving direct address, just like in the promo, showing he is present but out of reach which relates to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image and reinforces that they are, as a band, different to the audience. When shooting the band in the studio we painted the walls green in order to use the technique of chromo-keying. To make sure it was as effective as possible we used specific lighting in order to eliminate shadows but also to light the band.
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Post-production
We used an Mpeg 2 SD NXCAM which has a hard disk, to shoot the promo, this made editing easier because each take is captured on a separate file. Editing time was reduced, bins easier to manage and extended footage easier to handle. We were able to edit the footage to an effective cutting rhythm for the promo, by listening to the audio we used markers to mark the significant beats to make the cuts clean and sharp. The wide of the band was shot using a green screen and the wall paper and floor were pictures from google images. When editing we placed an omni light into the composition in order to make the room look more realistic. We then keyed in the band by using key light to eliminate the green so the wall paper and floor were visible. The rain was a separate layer, which was filmed on black. In order to place the rain over the footage we used the blending tool ‘liner dodge’, which makes the black go invisible. This then left the coloured rain. For the splat effects we repeated the same process, however we had to construct a separate composition which used an animated splat effect from ‘riot gear’. We used another blending mode, darken, which turned the white see through, then placed this composition into the original and proceeded to edit it in the same way and do another set of keying to remove the black around the splats.
Finally we used the internet to promote the video and gain audience feedback by uploading the video to youtube and using a site called ‘surveymonkey’. By using this particular site it allowed us to create a questionnaire, which we then got people who had seen the video to fill out, giving us our audience feedback. And that concludes our pop promo commentary.
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Pre-production
We saw clips of ‘Now is Everyone’ on their Myspace page and decided to contact them through Facebook. We then schedulable a meeting with the band to discuss ideas for the promo. I know people are really negative about myspace these days, but what an absolute gold mine of visual stimuli it turned out to be! When researching initial ideas for the promo, we searched the internet, using sites like YouTube. We listened to the song repeatedly and wrote down the images and ideas that came to mind. The coloured rain came from an idea to have some of the elements in colour and some in black and white because we thought this was a way of introducing their star quality metaphor, which is “from the gutter to the stars”. Various different types of puddles and rain effects were mocked up on Photoshop, as part of our preliminary planning. They were eventually filtered out due to the lack of time and technological ability. The creative anamtic enabled us to have an idea of how long each shot would need to be and where we would cut it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Construction
During the shoot day we took digital stills with a SLR camera. We used them in the construction of the digi pack. It consists of a front and back cover and two inlays. The inlays are made up of a montage of stills from the shoot day, the promo and their private life, giving the audience a voyeuristic view of the band. This reinforces their organic nature. For the front cover we made the title bold to draw the audience in and scaled the band members larger than life to emphasise their importance. The colour reflects both the mood of the song and band, tying it altogether. The poster creates certain enigma codes. The most obvious being the positioning of the lead singer. He is positioned in the background but is the only one giving direct address, just like in the promo, showing he is present but out of reach which relates to Richard Dyer’s theory of star image and reinforces that they are, as a band, different to the audience. When shooting the band in the studio we painted the walls green in order to use the technique of chromo-keying. To make sure it was as effective as possible we used specific lighting in order to eliminate shadows but also to light the band.
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Post-production
We used an Mpeg 2 SD NXCAM which has a hard disk, to shoot the promo, this made editing easier because each take is captured on a separate file. Editing time was reduced, bins easier to manage and extended footage easier to handle. We were able to edit the footage to an effective cutting rhythm for the promo, by listening to the audio we used markers to mark the significant beats to make the cuts clean and sharp. The wide of the band was shot using a green screen and the wall paper and floor were pictures from google images. When editing we placed an omni light into the composition in order to make the room look more realistic. We then keyed in the band by using key light to eliminate the green so the wall paper and floor were visible. The rain was a separate layer, which was filmed on black. In order to place the rain over the footage we used the blending tool ‘liner dodge’, which makes the black go invisible. This then left the coloured rain. For the splat effects we repeated the same process, however we had to construct a separate composition which used an animated splat effect from ‘riot gear’. We used another blending mode, darken, which turned the white see through, then placed this composition into the original and proceeded to edit it in the same way and do another set of keying to remove the black around the splats.
Finally we used the internet to promote the video and gain audience feedback by uploading the video to youtube and using a site called ‘surveymonkey’. By using this particular site it allowed us to create a questionnaire, which we then got people who had seen the video to fill out, giving us our audience feedback. And that concludes our pop promo commentary.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Task 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I wanted to have some audience feedback on our Music video and the star image, so we created a questionnaire using the website "survey monkey", this was then posted with the video on the networking sites facebook and myspace, as these would be be network sites which the target audience would use. We also created a focus group that watched our video then answered the questions on the survey.
Audience expections-Part 1:
b) There hair
d) The locations
e) All the above
6.From this picture who do you think is the lead singer and why?
Reactions from target audience- Part 2:
5. Can you identify yourself with either the lyrics or the band?
6. Anything else you want to add
After we had gathered all the information which we got from the surveys it shows that according to theorist Stuart Hall we had a preferred reading. This means that we successfully portrayed the star image of the band to correct target audience. This was shown in the first section of the questionnaire by a majority of people answered that they where either already into the Indie rock, in a band themselves and then correctly answered what type of genre “Now is everyone” is from. The majority of people also answered that Elliot was the lead singer, because he was standing in the front, middle of the group and wearing a brighter coloured top. Most females anwserd that they would like to be in a relationship or in the social group, where as the males anserd they would like to be in the band.
All the females who answered the questionnaire said that they found the lead singer attractive. This is important for the record label to know as it shows that the girls will be likely to become fans of the band because of Elliot’s looks. The majority answered that they thought the band was talented. This shows that they have respect for the bands ability and reinforces the fact that they are a talented young organic band which is one of the major selling points. All answered that they would download “Now is everyone’s” music and a majority said that they would pay to see the band live. This shows that band to become as profitable as possible would need to make most of there money touring, over people legally buying the album. Most people also said that the song and video made them feel reflective and empowered. The most common reason given for this was that they felt like the band was speaking for them and that the images coming from black and white to colour made them feel better about life as a teen or young adult. The video also managed to hold the target audience’s attention throughout, this shows that they found it both interesting and entertaining. These are two important things to note as if the audience find it interesting they are likely to show it to friends and re post the video on sites like face-book. The more the video gets published though new media means the more recognised the band will become within the target audience and to a wider audience.
Many of the males who answered the question said that they also found the band inspirational, as they where almost the same age as them but had been able to manage so much (have a following, perform at a music festival, have a music video and many professionally recorded songs), most of these also anwserd earlyer on in the questionare that they where themselves in a band. Being inspirational and succeeded against the odds if also one of the major selling points of this band.
The reason that we this questionnaire was so important was that we needed to make sure that the decisions we made in the construction and planning of the band where correct. It would also allow us to check that that we have read our target audience correctly and that they are the ones, who will most likely buy into, understand and most enjoy the band’s star image and their music.
Below is the questionnaire: Audience expections-Part 1:
- What kind of music do you like?
- Do you play in a band?
- Do you want to be in a band?
- Looking at this product what type of music do you expect this to be?
- What things in this picture helped you make your choice?
b) There hair
d) The locations
e) All the above
6.From this picture who do you think is the lead singer and why?
Reactions from target audience- Part 2:
- Do you find the lead singer attractive?
- Do you think they are musically talented for there age?
- Would you download there music?
- Would you pay to see this band live?
- What type of relationship would you like to have with the band?
a) a relationship
b) part of their social group
c) Part of the band
d) Not botherd
- Do you find the video entertaining?
- Did the video hold your attention throughout?
- Did you feel any emotions during watching this video?
- If yes which ones and why? (write answer in space below)
5. Can you identify yourself with either the lyrics or the band?
6. Anything else you want to add
After we had gathered all the information which we got from the surveys it shows that according to theorist Stuart Hall we had a preferred reading. This means that we successfully portrayed the star image of the band to correct target audience. This was shown in the first section of the questionnaire by a majority of people answered that they where either already into the Indie rock, in a band themselves and then correctly answered what type of genre “Now is everyone” is from. The majority of people also answered that Elliot was the lead singer, because he was standing in the front, middle of the group and wearing a brighter coloured top. Most females anwserd that they would like to be in a relationship or in the social group, where as the males anserd they would like to be in the band.
All the females who answered the questionnaire said that they found the lead singer attractive. This is important for the record label to know as it shows that the girls will be likely to become fans of the band because of Elliot’s looks. The majority answered that they thought the band was talented. This shows that they have respect for the bands ability and reinforces the fact that they are a talented young organic band which is one of the major selling points. All answered that they would download “Now is everyone’s” music and a majority said that they would pay to see the band live. This shows that band to become as profitable as possible would need to make most of there money touring, over people legally buying the album. Most people also said that the song and video made them feel reflective and empowered. The most common reason given for this was that they felt like the band was speaking for them and that the images coming from black and white to colour made them feel better about life as a teen or young adult. The video also managed to hold the target audience’s attention throughout, this shows that they found it both interesting and entertaining. These are two important things to note as if the audience find it interesting they are likely to show it to friends and re post the video on sites like face-book. The more the video gets published though new media means the more recognised the band will become within the target audience and to a wider audience.
Many of the males who answered the question said that they also found the band inspirational, as they where almost the same age as them but had been able to manage so much (have a following, perform at a music festival, have a music video and many professionally recorded songs), most of these also anwserd earlyer on in the questionare that they where themselves in a band. Being inspirational and succeeded against the odds if also one of the major selling points of this band.
Task 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The theorist Richard Dyer says a star is an image not a real person that is constructed out of a range of materials. The raw materials which I have used to build my Band “Now is everyone” include a pop promo, a digi pack and a poster.
Organic- One of the main points that make now is everyone so appealing is the fact that they are a “real” organic band. They put themselves together when they met in school and not by a record company. They write about things that are real to them and do not have someone writing there lyrics for them. To make them look organic in the promo we have them walking around the area which they are from, which was made famous by other organic bands such as The Smiths in Manchester and the Arctic Monkeys in Sheffield. In the digi pack to show there organic nature in the inlays we have used a montage of images from both the shoot day and there private life. This was to show that although they are a band they are real people to. This gives the audience a voyeuristic feeling as they can look into the lives of the band and feel as if they know the band better, but there is still separation as they know the band knows nothing about them. In the poster there is no gloss, it’s very honest and down to earth. The band has been shot in an alleyway which is somewhat like a gutter which was to reinforce there saying that they will go from the gutter to the stars.
Craftsman- One of the major strong points of “Now is everyone” is that they are all talented artists in there own right. I have tried to emphasize this by using lots of close up shots of the band playing their instruments, which are clearly worn and slightly battered and not brand new. This is to show that they have been grafting on these instruments and these are the instruments that have toured with them. This is also shown in the digi pack as in the montage of pictures there are images of them playing there instruments at gigs, parties’ and in the studio.
Youthful- This band although young they have already managed to reach a level of stardom. This has enabled them to be very inspirational to many other young upcoming Indie rock bands. We have shown that they are youthful throughout the products by the way they are styled, with there hair and clothing strongly representing the young Indie rock genre. This enables there target audience (who are likely dressed very similarly to them) to feel more connect to the band as they feel they are the same as them.
Sexual magnetism- The members of “Now is everyone” are quite appealing to there target audience, this will be another reason why girls will become fans of the band. To make the most of this in the promo we have made the band (bar the lead singer) seem quite distant form the audience as there is nothing people want more then what they can’t have. This was done by them not making eye contact with the camera for long periods of time and also when they walk up to the camera it jump cuts before they get really close. In the poster we have the band all leaning up against the wall in an almost rebellious manner, according to Richard Dyer’s star image theory rebellion is one of the things which create a “star”.
Success against the odds- “Now is everyone” is a band in one of the most competitive genres of music for young artists. They have been able to get a name for themselves, won many music competitions and have even performed at a music festival. To portray the fact that they are succeeding against the odds in the promo we used the special effect of having the band in black and white and then having them come into colour. In the digi pack we have a mix of pictures of them performing and them just hanging out. This shows that they are just a teenage rock group and that although they are “normal” teens, they are succeeded against the odds.
The theorist Richard Dyer says a star is an image not a real person that is constructed out of a range of materials. The raw materials which I have used to build my Band “Now is everyone” include a pop promo, a digi pack and a poster.
Organic- One of the main points that make now is everyone so appealing is the fact that they are a “real” organic band. They put themselves together when they met in school and not by a record company. They write about things that are real to them and do not have someone writing there lyrics for them. To make them look organic in the promo we have them walking around the area which they are from, which was made famous by other organic bands such as The Smiths in Manchester and the Arctic Monkeys in Sheffield. In the digi pack to show there organic nature in the inlays we have used a montage of images from both the shoot day and there private life. This was to show that although they are a band they are real people to. This gives the audience a voyeuristic feeling as they can look into the lives of the band and feel as if they know the band better, but there is still separation as they know the band knows nothing about them. In the poster there is no gloss, it’s very honest and down to earth. The band has been shot in an alleyway which is somewhat like a gutter which was to reinforce there saying that they will go from the gutter to the stars.
Craftsman- One of the major strong points of “Now is everyone” is that they are all talented artists in there own right. I have tried to emphasize this by using lots of close up shots of the band playing their instruments, which are clearly worn and slightly battered and not brand new. This is to show that they have been grafting on these instruments and these are the instruments that have toured with them. This is also shown in the digi pack as in the montage of pictures there are images of them playing there instruments at gigs, parties’ and in the studio.
Youthful- This band although young they have already managed to reach a level of stardom. This has enabled them to be very inspirational to many other young upcoming Indie rock bands. We have shown that they are youthful throughout the products by the way they are styled, with there hair and clothing strongly representing the young Indie rock genre. This enables there target audience (who are likely dressed very similarly to them) to feel more connect to the band as they feel they are the same as them.
Sexual magnetism- The members of “Now is everyone” are quite appealing to there target audience, this will be another reason why girls will become fans of the band. To make the most of this in the promo we have made the band (bar the lead singer) seem quite distant form the audience as there is nothing people want more then what they can’t have. This was done by them not making eye contact with the camera for long periods of time and also when they walk up to the camera it jump cuts before they get really close. In the poster we have the band all leaning up against the wall in an almost rebellious manner, according to Richard Dyer’s star image theory rebellion is one of the things which create a “star”.
Success against the odds- “Now is everyone” is a band in one of the most competitive genres of music for young artists. They have been able to get a name for themselves, won many music competitions and have even performed at a music festival. To portray the fact that they are succeeding against the odds in the promo we used the special effect of having the band in black and white and then having them come into colour. In the digi pack we have a mix of pictures of them performing and them just hanging out. This shows that they are just a teenage rock group and that although they are “normal” teens, they are succeeded against the odds.
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