Cinematography techniques

One of the techniques that we used in our music video came from this music video. The technique was using 3 iPhones to film 3 friends meeting in one spot. Each phone is filming one direction. As the actors move…

Digipak front and back cover

Most effective and Least effective of the edited stills

There are different types of genre in s music video. They are: performance, narrative and image.  The stills from the video, I have chosen what the most effective video effect that can be used in a certain genre.

Most Effective

Performance

For performance, I have used split effect so that it can show different musicians playing at the same time. In the still, we can see the person on the top right is playing the piano and the person on the left is singing. Audience can see clearly that they are performing and show their individual talent.

Narrative

I have chosen this still be the most effective for a narrative genre. The still shows a close up of three teenagers having there tea break and I have used a title to identify what they are doing and what it is going to be about “tea time ft. Vince’s lip.” In a music video a title would show the name of the song which may help the audience what the music video is going to be about.

Image

I have chosen to use a close up on the face which shows the person facial features and the eye line match of the person is looking straight to the camera which connotes that he is looking at you and also you can see the facial features of the person. I used a black and white filter to focus on his face, the hair colour is dark so his face will stand out. I think this is an effective effect for this genre because his black hair contrasts with his face so it stands out.

Least Effective

Performance

The least effective effect for a performance genre is this still. This is because the effect on the person which is called dazzle is too much and takes over the picture. Also the brightness on the white is too high and makes the desaturation effect even worse. We can't see the person very clearly because of the dazzle effect and it puts away the focus on the artist.

Narrative

The least effective effect for a narrative genre is from this still. The desaturation effect can be used for narrative purposes which will present the past. This means that this effect can be only used if the narrative is about the past and can't be used in the present as it can confuse the audience.

Image

The least effective effect for a image genre is from this still. The writing doesn't have  a good effect because it distracts the audience attention.

Ideas for music video

From these these screenshots, we used the editing technique layering in our music video to show delay on the footage.






From this video, we used the IPhone idea where two people were on one phone and then the other person moved to other phone. We used this idea because we wanted something new and interesting in our video.

Lucy- we used the phone idea in the end from our research and planning and it is still in our video to date. The idea was extremely successful as a technical code and as well as this is links to the aka genre because it is original and different 

Research into Similar Digipacks

This is The Specials front and back album cover.

This is the inside cover of their album

This is a close up on the disk

The design of all the covers matched together which makes it look good.














The Specials is a famous ska band which was formed in 1977.  thy use black and white colour scheme on digipak and their theme follows throughout the CD. The colour scheme and the image of the man wearing a suit implies that it is old. The name of the band are all in bold capitals to make it stand out as well as having the white outline contrasting with the black background.

Magazine advert plan

This is my plan of what I imagined our magazine advert to be like. As you can see, I have included aspects that I have learned from previous successful adverts, such as a big title, the date of release and a feature of the album cover itself, of which we found in our research.

I have looked at using the rule of thirds on the band because it is an effective way of pulling focus onto the main singer (Ben). Not only will this establish him as the main singer of the band but it would also include the rest of the trio, this way the audience would be fully aware of the members of the group.

Although I have not yet used colours on my plan, there is a clear way the members have been represented. The fact that they are laying on a brick wall, maybe smoking, plus their outfits, shows that they feel like they can do anything – that they are free. This creates a representation that they maybe a little troublesome.

The use of this also creates a representation on the genre of Ska. It would create an image of Ska music as being a little rebellious and a chilling music of the younger generation. This would encourage the younger generation to buy the album or start listening to the band’s music because they would think that this is what is relevant for them because the advert targets them.

Ben Magazine

Having done research into Ska magazine adverts, I have annotated this A3 piece of paper to show codes and conventions. I have used these as well as looking at other magazine adverts to create my own magazine advert cover.

This magazine cover is a focus on the album 'We're All Mad Here' with more focus on one of the songs featured 'Fast Feet'. The other half of the focus is on the band, but mostly the main singer Ben (myself). This reflects the genre of Ska as it shows all the different instruments being played behind the singer, including a trumpet, guitar, drum, as well as the microphone in front. Having analysed the codes and conventions of the other magazine advert, it had come to attention that many of the magazine adverts included the main singer being dressed up in a suit. Because of this I have drawn all members to be in a shirt/suit, however to give more focus onto the main singer he has a tie. To also focus more on the singer, he is in the foreground, and despite having his face blurred out like the other band members, he is wearing sunglasses. The sunglasses with the suit is another code which shows that they are serious yet still having fun and not taking anything seriously. This is backed up with the colourful balloons in the background which are random. What went well is I put good focus on the main singer to show he is the protagonist, however to make it even better I could make it more obvious that the album name is 'We're All Mad Here' by making it bigger, as too much focus is on the single song 'Fast Feet'.

Music Advertisement

 This is my Music Advertisement drawing which i have drawn down an idea by using the codes and conventions. It includes a picture of the main singer, Ben, which will be manipulated in a way which i have researched and found from the disclosure album. The effect i was trying to draw is on the image to the right. it will also include a preview of the album cover in the corner and it also has a label saying how it features our number 1 hit single 'fast feet'. The back ground is going to be black as the other Ads we looked into are all black and white, but then i am going to contrast it with the colour of his face with the white outline and then the checks along the border are going to be; red and yellow so we have the bright vibrant colours as well. The titles are also going to be bold and colourful with the 'We're all Mad Here' the biggest font so it stands out. I also included the company logo.
I have reflected the artist to be strange and whacky because its all meant to be a bit 'mad' and fun, and the more strange he looks the more it will attract the audience. I think what went well is that i hav used he conventions of colour and strange to match the album name as well and it includes all aspects of an advertisement. What would be better is to include the date released as well.

Ska Music Magazine Ad

Magazine Advert

This is an idea that I have made for the magazine ad. The main title will be in a large font and it will be bold so it will stand out which I have learnt by looking at other magazine and the titles are always big and bold. I have reflected the artist in this magazine ad by featuring the lead singer of the band. also I have to included the footprints at the side to symbolize on of the song in the album.

It would have been better if I feature the entire band in magazine. I haven't added any colours but 

I am planning to use red, black and white colours for this magazine advert. I showed the front cover of the album to sell the album.

Research into Similar Digipacks of the Same Genre

This is the front cover of a 'madness' CD which shows how they have all the band on the front cover in a cartoon form. I reckon this would be effective on ours as it would suit the comedy aspect of our genre. As well they have used a colour scheme throughout of mainly red, white and black but also the union jack colours. Having a set colour throughout I believe looks more professional so I personally prefer that. the back cover has the same theme from the front with the bus. This continuing theme matches throughout which I feel makes it more appealing to the eye which is why I would like that on my own digipack. On the inside they have chosen to say a few thank you's which has made he inside extremely simple, which I would change and maybe choose to put an instrument so that there is more conventions of the genre included.

Design for CD front cover

When playing on Photoshop I found it difficult to come up with something as it was a new software and therefore couldn't get use to the tools. But the design I finally came up with is a bright background using colours which would reflect the liveliness of our music video, and as well as this the colours reflected the reggae vibes of the music's tone as well. I think bright colours would work well on our final product because it goes well with our music video and will reflect our genre well.
I used a picture of Ben as the main focus of the CD cover as he was the main singer. I started to overlay the image in the background but more opaque so there was more of him and I found this effective as it filled the cover and made it clear he was the main singer, however I don't think this will be effective for our final cover. I think this because after looking at other Ska bands music covers they usually have the whole band of them on the front altogether. so when I produce the final CD cover I will take into consideration that the band is a convention of the genre that needs to be included.

Wordle (theme for digipak)

Research into Editing Techniques

This music video is another video where we got some inspiration for the editing with in ours. We noticed that in most of it in the forest they have used overlapping sequences to cause the effect of shadowing. We used this on the iconic frame of the dancing feet and this was an effective way of making it stand out and therefore this technique has been used in our video.


I found his effective because it makes an original frame stand out more and its more interesting to watch. It also looks complex and a technique which would be hard to do, when in fact its easy to add onto a frame but it makes the frame stand out to an audience more than an original frame.

Ideas For Music Video

At 2:43 in the video near then end of the video we have taken the idea of the phone concept and added it into our video. We were stuck for ideas on what we could do for one part of the music video and we were just watching some of the most recent and updated music videos to see their ideas, and this idea seemed extremely clever to us. So e adapted it to fit our words and genre and it worked out really well in the end.

Music Album Covers recreated

To prepare for our digipak that we will be making, both Darwin and myself (Ben) have found 3 different album covers and have re-created them using different images found on the internet. This has helped us to develop our creativity and give us ideas of what images we will produce for our digipak.

This first album I (Ben) re-created was Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. The re-created album cover uses similar features, including the sandpaper background and the red lines to emphasise the feet. I decided to change the hands into feet when re-craeting the album cover due to it being more relevant, as our music video is named 'Fast Feet'.  

The second album I (Ben) re-created was The Warning. As the Ska music genre involves lots of fun and freedom, this album cover was appealing. All the different shaped cubes looked unique, and the array of colours gave some attention to the black circle which contained the artist and album name. Re-creating this, I used the same idea of cubes, however implemented instruments more relevant to the Ska music genre, such as the trumpet. However, I would preferably do this in RGB if I were to do it for the digipak, not in black & white as the colours are important, and would also include the name of the artist/album. 

Rough cut

Raw footage

In this video is a few raw scenes we have filmed compiled into one video. No editing has been implemented to any of these scenes in this video;

 

To analyse without confusion I have taken a still of each scene from the video:

This still shows all band members performing. This is linked to the genre as it shows the lip-synching during the chorus and instruments being played. This is relevant as it shows the genre of the music video is 'performance', which is something you would typically find in a Ska music video from prior research we had done. Because the cinematography shows all members, it is easy to recognise the singer is sitting in the middle and is the focus of attention.

During this scene, as shown in the still above all members are looking away. In this still a couple seconds later through the scene, the singer faces the camera. This symbolises and reinforces that the singer is the focus of attention, which is something we want to make obvious and display in our music video.

This close-up of Ben as the main singer is effective as it shows the lip-syncing to the song to be accurate and more convincing to the audience.

This still refers to the part in the video where the lyrics in the song say 'See your mate with a burger'. This direct relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, which is relevant to Andrew Goodwin's theory.

As the name of our song is named 'Fast Feet' we thought it would be relevant to have footage of feet dancing quickly. However, we found the footage to be slightly boring by itself and have decided to film two others dancing so that we can edit it to be a 3-way split-screen.

This is not directly linked to the genre being performance, but to add some diversity to the music video we have added this scene to give a narrative concept to the music video so it is not dominantly performance. As our music video is trying to give off the idea of having fun, this scene as well as others in the future final cut (e.g. the paint scene) helps to tell the audience this through visual references.

Alterations made along the Way

Alterations made along the way

During the shooting of our music video, we have decided to make big and small alterations to our storyboard to make our video editing and mise-en-scene more relevant to the song.

In our editing, we realised that the song is much quicker than we first expected now that we have our footage to play alongside with, this means that we were forced to cut our footage much shorter as we were in danger of making our video too slow for the song. This meant that there are random gaps in our video where we would have to fill in. Therefore we ran a little over filming schedule for the extra footage that we needed.

The Green screen proved to be too difficult film outside due to the fact that in our favoured locations, it was too hard to differentiate ourselves from the background which caused parts to disappear. This meant that we had to film in the green screen room so that this doesn’t happen.

Furthermore, due to that fact that the weather had been terribly cold and wet during our filming, we were forced to alter our costume slightly. I originally planned on wearing shorts with a baggy t-shirt but that proved to be impossible. We were forced to wear more layers with a coat which is not what we originally planned. However, our costume still fits into the genre of SKA as it was still baggy, we still looked trendy and hipster.

 

 

Animatics

Audio note

Rough Cut feedback

During the process of creating our rough cut, towards reaching the end of the rough cut we had shown our music video to our class to gather some feedback on WWW (What Went Well) and EBI (Even Better If). We have used this information to further improve our music video considering all of the points from each and everyone.

One of the points made which went well that had cropped up numerous times is there was a variety of shots. This is good feedback as it is something we were aiming for the audience to see, as we had filmed in a variety of different locations and also had used different shots. However, something that we could improve on is to ensure the lip synching is in time.

Another point which was good for us was we had excellent mise-en-scene. This is something we were glad to see as we had done research into what costumes, hair, make-up we were going to use, and although some of the make-up was not used as we ended up changing the storyboard, it showed the mise-en-scene still proved to be good. The use of lighting in the chorus as one of our locations is also something we were hoping for the audience to notice with the use of different colours on the stage. However, another point which we could improve on is to ad more green screen footage. At the time of showing the rough cut we had stop-motion images of both myself (Ben) and Darwin, however we have since then added more and are continuing to do so, with the use of various images using the green screen.

Test/Raw footage

Displayed above is a video showing raw footage from videos that had been taken during the construction of our music video.

Video Diary- Work In Progress

In depth analysis of other music videos

This music video was effective as it used a combination of both narrative and performance aspects, with lip-syncing involved as well as costumes and other mise-en-scene features being emphasised on (as the outfits by the two shown).


The use of editing through making it look cartoon-like with slide transitions also gave the music video a comic book feel, and with the use of a location such as London it means a larger target audience is able to identify where it was filmed.

Finally the text editing in spelling out the lyrics gave a direct relationship between the visuals and the lyrics. This makes it easier for the target audience to understand the lyrics which was a unique way of presenting the lyrics, in a way which wasn't traditional lip syncing.

This music video was again a combination of narrative and performance, dominantly narrative. The cinematography shot throughout the music video was very well done, with a range of shot types.

The use of makeup and props for the mise-en-scene was very well done through the music video and looked very real. The use of boxing equipment in the second photo with the punching bag shows to the audience that the range of props in the shot shows he is training for something, which goes in line with the music when it becomes more up beat and fast paced.

 As for the performance part, the lighting onto the singer with the dark blue background draws attention to the singer and makes him seem important and the centre of attention. This is effective as it means all focus is put onto the singer, and as shown by his expressions is trying to perform at his best.

The final music video is a performance video, with the genre being pop.

 What was effective about this music video is that the lip syncing was done in a clever way, using shadows over colours to mimic the lip syncing. The colours as well as the hat and costumes in the music video symbolise a stereotypical pop music video, so it is easy for the target audience to identify what genre it is.

The use of this tunnel in East London which changes colours is also very eye-catching, and with the use of balloons and a dance it gave a very upbeat feel to the music video. This is the most effective music video as it really shows what the genre is for, which is dancing and being happy, which the colours, dancing and costumes show.

Logo and Record label

This is our logo for our record label. The record label is Urban Beats Company which is shortened down to UBC. This is because one of our location is a skip which has the letters UBC on so we have made it relevant to our location so it links and has continuity. The slogan is 'Fast Beats, Fast Feet' because our genre of music is very quick paced and the editing is going to be cut to the pace of the beats meaning it is going to be fast, and our name of our song is called 'fast feet' and therefore s catchy and relevant. the picture and colours link because a lot of our video is going to be set around areas round our town and one shot is going to be the sun setting down over the city/town. The colour also shows a bright colour which is going to be used throughout our video.