media evaluatoin question four

4. how did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages.
In the planning stage of our music video we wrote two story boards and the went and took picture of primary location and ideas of shots seen in the post made by James “research our own making.”
Then from this we went on to film at our decide locations using cannon hand held video cameras, after the filming was complete we used final cut pro to construct our video. Building up our time line using different method of editing such as parallel editing and quick cut editing as seen in the screen grab below.

In this screen grab you can see the cuts in the editing on the time line also the effect we used to help bring fluency toward the transition between the different shots in the lip sync the main effect used in this part of the video is a additive dissolve which merges from one shot to the other.

This is another effect used to help our lip sync this is a dither dissolve this transition gave us time to fill space in the song where the lyrics had paused for a slight second, also aloud us to match the lip sync more accurately.
This is another shot from our music video in this shot we had the long shot of Kieran sat on a bench with a dazzle effect on the lights in the shot, and we used layers which aloud us to put a medium shot of Kieran over this using opacity which allows you to change the transparency of a clips the idea of this was to allow us to do the lip sync over apart of the video we had already finished.
Here we used Motion which is a 3d after-effect programe whinch enabled us to create an artificial light on the shot as it was a good shot of him looking down then looking up but it looked abit bland and needed something to light it up a bit,

We also used Photoshop to create our CD covers and magazine article which is evaluated by James in another post of this question.

In our evaluation we used the camera and final cut pro to create short a few two to three minute clips of feed back on question we asked an audience who had watch our music video then editing these on a timeline of there own then upload these on to our blog.

CD Panels - Photoshop - paint.net

This is the front cover of the CD.

By using a prgram called paint.net at home i increased the contrast of the clock work image to maxium, creating a very dense feel to the image. Then using a softner tool, i were able to soften up the background layer also giving the image a warmth metallic gold feel to it, making the clock seem like its reflecting light. I also wanted to go for this sandy colour so that the image becomes equivalent to the sands of time representing insomnia as an endless feeling. Another image of a clock has also been added using the opaque tool so that the image fades into the background layer. The image is also based around endless insomnia with the clock pouring away as sand in the persons hand almost as if time itself is melting away. The text "Insomnia" has been created using the softner tool to achieve that warmth sandy look and i've also used a glow to highlight the text making it stand out. To finsh of the text i used the liquify tool to get this bendy effect within the text.

Left inside cover

This graphical image has been created in photoshop. What i've done here is using a photographic image we'd taken of a clock in manchester i've over lapped it over the top of the front cover making the image slightly opaque. Then using the magic wand tool i selected the metal rims of the clock i increase the contrast and levels of them to give it a more metallic gold look, relating towards the front cover itself. I then darkend the balck features within the image making it more bold. Using the text tool i created the title "Insomnia" once again and added to the bottom left corner using the liquify tool to make the text more mesmerizing.

Right inside Cover

Relating towards the original Faithless insomnia CD cover, i've taken a section from the left inside cover and enlarged it. This being the bottom left cover of the image, so that the text "Insomnia" still appears.

Back Cover

I created this image using photoshop. Using an image of a clock i increased the contrast to maxium and adjusted levels. i aslo used the front cover decreasing the transparency of the front so that it seeps through the back giving the Cd back cover a golden burnt effect. Using a text format i created the title and song titles. Then using the effect mosaic titles to give the text more of a bold outlook, making it almost look like stone. After this i then scanned the internet for a bar code and added an additional website down the right hand side of the case.

shot list

Shot list


Establishing shot zooms out from clock
Long shot of kieran lying down
Medium shot of kieran sitting up
Long shot/ tracking shot of kieran walking diffrent colour flashing
Medium close up of kieran sitting at a bench
Long shot / two shot of kieran and wheel chair man
Medium shot of kieran trying to drift off to sleep
Medium shot / two shot of kieran taking a cigarette from starnger
Long shot kieran being restless on the bench
Medium close up of kieran sat with artifical light on him
Medium long shot low angle of kieran lips syncing
Over the shoulder shot / low angle of kieran looking at the big wheel
Establishing shot of clock
Close up / tracking shot of crip walk movents
Medium panning shot of kieran walking during the day
Long shot kieran walking off
Medium shot kieran sat down lip syncing
Close up of lip sync sat down uner carpark
Extreme close up of lip sync
Close up / low angle shot of kieran lip sync
Medium shot of lip sync at the red doors
Low angle / medium shot lips sync at the red doors
Long shot / fast forward shot kieran stood in arnedale people walking past speeded up
Close up / full video rewind end of video show kierans exhausted and the music video over 5this rewind and at 6000% speed

OUR VIDEO AND OTHERS PT 2
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video faithless was inspired by other music video in the similar genre such as “a consolation of prodigy videos, aphex twins-come to daddy” the video conform to convention of this genre using grimy sub-urban locations and a single persona. A lot of inspiration for us came from the idea of the acid house rave scene in Manchester which it was notorious for in the eighties and nineties like the now closed hacienda which carries an image of drugs and partying.
However we kept the video original and unique by using a lip-sync which many video in this convention don’t have by doing this it gave us the opportunity to challenge the idea of what could be done with genre opening doors for idea against the stats quo such as long walking shots and lying down shots also. another aspect we missed out on was a demon or monster which appears quiet frequently in songs similar to this instead we let the monster be the title of the song “insomnia” which would makes sense to do a illustrative video to this letting the monster be inside the persona head , which would relate to ideas again of the acid rave period by having a persona seem paranoid, tired and exhausted after with no real recollection of what was happening prior to this.

our video and other video's

The song faithless is an old school dance classic so we wanted not to copy but to create that kind of image. The way we did this is by going against the standard conventions of music video's today, which have mainly fast pased editing and many short clips. Rather than sticking to this we decided to mix this idea up and created something that i believe is quite unique, we chose to use a mixture of long clips and short clips which helped to create a unique style as the video's we watched previously did not use this technique. Our video was mostly inspired by video's from the time the song insomnia was released which was in the acid house era.

final interviews eval 3

Once we had come to the agreement that the video was finished we gathered the audience we had previously used to come and watch our final piece. The reason behind this was because we wanted to see whether our improvements had satisfied our audience and also to see whether they would enjoy the final piece.

Once we had finished showing the video to the audience we asked them generally did they like the video. The feedback that we gathered from them was pretty positive and nobody had left bad comments about the video. Also they seemed happy about the improvements we had made to the video. The last question we decided to ask was "How well does our video conform to standard conventions of an old school dance video?" this is the response they gave:

Research towards our own making

Editing

We've now started to add transitions and effects to our music video towards the beat of the soundtrack. We've started to use effects such as change in contrast & colour balance, light rays, invert, edge etc...
We've also modified speed at a varitey of different motions, such as fast, slow and reverse. To try and get the best outcome we can get towards the making of our project.

reaserch

during the editing stage we came across the real faithless vidieo which in some ways similar to our idea so we took a look a some music videos like insomina such as the verves bittersweetsyphany which allowed us to change our idea to adapt it without changing all the footage we had already

editing

we have all of our footage and for the past two week we have been get our last few shots needed which we noticed we needed whilst we have been in the editing suite.
the editing is coming along quite well all our shots flow well with each other giving good continuity.
we have a nice array of shots from diffrent angles which all blend well.

video, poster and cd cover

The main theme for our production is time and throughout the video there our images of clocks which link to the whole idea of insomnia. we decided to keep this clock theme running throughout our project. Our cd cover is liturally the inside of a clock with all the sprockets etc. Our magazine advert includes the image of a clock too which reinforces the feel of insomnia. The way in which the magazine advert and the cd cover could help to sell our video is because we chose to take screengrabs of different images from the video which can help to interest the audience and possibly make them want to see the whole video. Therefore this means that this could lead to sales of our production. Also the use of urban locations throughout our video could also have the possibility to attract many audiences from within these urban areas or even people from outside these area's that are interested in how we have used these different locations.

filming

today we went to the renaissance car park in manchester city centre where we found a nice location. We decided that this was the best place to film the lip sync. We gathered shots from many different areas of the car park in attempt to mix it up and create different background images

footage

after we had changed our song this ment any priour footage was no longer usefull howerver on the 20 of october we went out filming in manchester city centre between 12 mindnight and four thirty am we filmed at these time as at this time the city centre had the right mis en scene which was a quiet desserted feeling and quite alineated and today we are going to film our day time footage.

insomnia - Music video

As the first part of our project, we had to come up with a song for the music video.
We went through a variety of different idea's for different songs such as "Super Mario" "Turn Down the lights" "Beautiful" and then finally come to a decision that we were going to to "Insomnia", which is a song by Faithless. Later after this we then went onto to taking photographic images of locations around Manchester that would be suitable for film footage, and for a clear idea of what we are going to do.

before final piece eval 3

Before establishing that our music video was finished we decided to make a video interview. This interview consisted of letting a randomly selected audience and giving them a chance to watch our video and give us some feedback about the aspects of the video in which they think should be changed or improved. We interviewed each person individually and asked them "Is there anything you didn't like about the video?". Once each person had finished commenting we took their critisism's and changed certain aspects to suit our audience. There were two things in particular that we decided to change. We changed the dancing image of feet and cut it down so it didn't last as long and also we improved the lip sync to the best we could get it. To improve the lip sync we had to go out to different locations and film over and over until we had it all as good as it could get. Another way in which we decided to gather audience feedback was to post our video on youtube. This allowed us to gather feedback through comments and messages from liturally anybody around the world who watches our music video. we have also sent links to many people we know through social networking websites like facebook and myspace.

filming4

today we went out to gather some footage of the city centre when it was pretty empty and also to film the main protagonist in this setting which will help our video create the image of the protagonist being unable to sleep and just walking the streets to pass the time away. It will also create a dark lonely feel to the video which most video's in this genre do not usually do.

filming

Today we went out to get some footage in the day time around the same area as the night time shots to help establish a contrast between night and day. This footage will also heighten the feel of insomnia which we are trying to create.

storyboards

once we came to our decision on using the song 'insomnia' by Faithless we decided to create a storyboard of multiple camera shots and different editing transitions to create a rough outline or basis of the image we wanted to create. Me James and Jordan took it in turns to throw ideas together and place them in a conveniant order to layer our music video together.