Final Cut

Finally, we have come to the end of our project, it has been a long, difficult and at times frustrating journey but after all we have come through and finished the work, we would like to thank Mrs D.Mcluckie our ever present and diligent tutor, the guys who worked on the shoot with us Sam Vennard, Matthew Ballard and Jacob Peeling. Also we are grateful to Mr Johnson (Adams father) for providing us with a fantastic location to shoot the video and everyone on the audience feedback, it was truly a pleasure having you guys involved. Here is the final cut for our A-level Media studies coursework AFI's 'End-Transmission' enjoy....

Evaluation Question 1 (Part 1 of 2)

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This question requires analysis of at least 9 key shots from the main task and writing about: generic conventions we have applied or subverted, our use of camera work, lighting, music, mise en scene, intertextuality, shots which show we have seen in similar media texts. Also we would have to Pick key features from our ancillary tasks and do the same.

Our product carries a significant connotation in the convention of music video creation and the presentation of rock as a genre of music. The techniques we used were seen as completely innovative by our peers because they expressed emotion and performance in different ways.It has taken quite a while but as a group we wanted to make sure that we had the best location, equipment and materials to make the best music performance and narrative for the video. I plan on getting into as much details as i can and display the screen shots from the bassist all the way to the vocalist of the group. I am initially going to start with important shot of our bassist.

This is a detailed close up shot of our bassist on the Final cut editing program, with the color overlay effect  added on the shot has a strong gritty feel to it,this is the exact theme we were looking at to express the emotions of the narrative. A similar context can derived from the 'bullet for my valentine' video with the dark theme of the scenery expressed with a close up of the guitar and it's strings.

This is a shot again of the bass Matthew guitar being played from below stance, our director Micheal Burrin chose this shot to add intensity to the video and also to expose some unorthodox techniques.

An over the shoulder shot with a much more over-head feel to it, this shot exposes the guitar being played and also the actions of the person playing it in great detail.

If you look closely at this shot you would see the clothing of the bassist Matthew Ballard is smart but in a way rugged, the shot is also shot from under this individual again to express emotion and detail the action of this person,still the darkness is portrayed by the video editing and it gives it a sharp alter tone. In comparison to the shot from Green day's 'boulevard of broken dreams' music video, the mise en scene is very detailed just a the guitarist is, our video expresses this exactly from a different angle.

















Emotion is clearly detailed here with a semi close up of the bassists face and his response to the pace of the song, with the widescreen effect in place it has a realistic scenery to it but the music is also allowed to be exposed quite well, if you look closely behind him the mise en scene can be seen as blending with the nature of the video. The shots above are detailed positions of where the camera angles we hope to adapt into the finished video itself,at that moment the entire team was pleased that we all were able to reach this location and have the work done, we were mainly satisfied with the way the music mixed with the scenery and also the clothing and make up, this was very important to us because we could create a similarity in the context of our target audience.

Catching various shots of the equipment allowed us to reflect the mise en scene in a kinetic fast paced way, we used low-angle shots for the video to have a dramatic effect. these shots also allowed us to have a much less conventional appeal to the video. The overlay effect created a grainy rough look to the camera work and also dimmed the lighting a bit, we can compare this sort of presentation to bands like the foo fighters and linkin park.

The over head shots were of pivotal importance to us. They were valuable in allowing the audience to see the entire set and a proportion of the band members in explicit detail, Using the wooden floor boards we were able to cover up the flooring and have an intelligent prop added to the mise en scene. The shots in part 2 portrays the lead singer from a personal point of view and also allow us to see the gritty setting we have created for the mise en scene with the floor boards and the electric cables. These four shots are going to be the most seen by the viewer, they are pivotal to getting the best effects and collaborating mixes of sound to reflect the quality of the video.

Evaluation Question 1 (Part 2 of 2)

This post concludes the first question of my evaluation, at the beginning of this project we aimed to create something that had a similar connotation to the music listened to by the majority of the social and teenage demographic, but we also wanted to make sure that the style of the video was made to be very innovative and surreal. Our director Micheal burrin had the idea to make the video have the same mainstream quality existing music videos have but also something different to alter the normal way of seeing rock music as a genre, we decided to have the overlay effect be our best tool in showing the difference the video imposes not only from our fellow students but for music video projects as a whole. I have analyzed some more shots from our rough cut in detail to explain the extent of skill and techniques we implemented to make this project a success. Using the warehouse created a great location and valuable mise en scene and the Sony DCR camera was very well used by Micheal with innovative techniques like 'induced framing' and 'live-shot crop'. We also implemented famous shooting techniques including close-ups, over the shoulder shots, areal shots, overhead shots, camera panning and definitive zooming. These  techniques were executed in the most different of ways because unlike your average music project we used them to shoot more of the scenery than the actual musicians themselves, objects like amps, mikes and snares were quickly and vibrantly shot with clear intention to create an intimate theme for our audience. The initial steps we took to making sure we used the right music track to obtain an optimal level of intertextuality in the project, first as a group we made a list of the songs we personally listen to and made sure we shared them with each other to see if there was any track that received a general consensus from the entire production team,the song that stood out was AFIs track 'end transmission' this was mainly due to the fact that the song had not been released by the band a video single and the tempo/feel of the music as a whole was strong and we all felt we could quite easily replicate that and create something that the real band could see themselves making.

This shot is a close up shot of the lead singer portrayed by Adam Johnson, the attention and detail is pulled directly to the lead singers face and also the mic is shown directly at the base of the shot, this expresses the lighting of the scenery the singer is in as dark and hazy it also clearly displays the overlay effect, this shot was made in reference to videos by groups like Linkin Park and Limpbiscuit whereby the lead singer is subject to extreme and normal close-up to extenuate the scenery around him.

This overhead shot is very famous with rock music videos, the mainstream rock group AFI use this technique in their videos, below is an example screenshot from their recent single 'Medicate' , it also shows the lead singer with an over head view.

We decided to remake a few shots from this music video to show similarities in video style between our work and that of AFI, the video also has several lighting and effects as our video, although we tried to put the elements of AFI in the video we still were abled to clearly let our ideas come through as the dominant factor in the completion of the video shooting.

The purpose of using shots like the one above was to make sure the scenery and the music synchronized very well, the editing evidently was very sharp and quick in several parts of the video this was because we wanted to reflect the pace of the music exactly and according to sequence, to us this make the audience understand that we completely fused the entire video with the track as a whole. Also the loose wiring and the floor boards were placed purposely to create a derelict feel to the set and the lighting mixed with the overlay effect were great addition for a rock genre audience to understand what these props are in place for.

Evaluation Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We have been asked to create a media product that would engage a specific target audience through a variety of platforms. So here I aim to provide background information to our groups products detailing what kind of image we intended to create and our main goals behind creating the campaign. Also making sure to mention: research, narrative, use of colour, text, font, images, sound, mode of address and how they link across our brand. 


The similarities between our two works (Main product and ancillary text) is the creation and presence of the scenery where the video was shot, instruments and tone. For the magazine advert, we intended to let the audience know that the video stood for suicidal with the text and themes we adapted in the digipak.

                                                                                      
We explicitly chose the colour scheme to be black &gold; white so we could allow the leaf patches on the characters stand out. We believed this would show a good lyrical and visual relationship of death and oblivion as the album is called "Crash Love". Our aim was to make the ancillary products appeal from teen to young adult viewers. This is why we decided to edit the couple together with the night sky and willow grass background on the CD cover. The combination of these mise-en-scene devices would allow the audience to believe that there's some narrative involved with integrated themes such as romance,death and fantasy. 

We decided to not present our artists (i.e. the videos characters) as the iconic cast for the both the normal cover and the special edition. To do this we decided to think of which suitable elements  that the characters could be represented with. The song’s lyrics refer to many material but at the same time dreamy romantic themes so we decided that both characters should absence from the cover would clearly reflect the metaphoric nature of our work. This choice of mise-en-scene for the artists would prove to be accessible to an audience of a wider age range.

The back of our digipak also was presented in a similar context to the front CD cover because we aimed to have a scenery of consistency in the design, as you can see also we created a completely different production company to the one the actual band has, we did this to create a sense of originality in our work and also making sure we portrayed evidence of innovative efforts to the audience. We also aimed to reflect the style of many mainstream rock music project by making the CD pack a two disk edition,although AFI's actual album is a one disk version, we clearly intended on making sure there was a sharp difference in our presentation, the same applies for the video which carries the same context with the album cover with its style of shots and mise en scene,the project was shot in an abandoned warehouse with a derelict style portrayed by the make-up of the artists and the run-down style of the set. 

Evaluation Q3-Audience Feedback 1- Aaron Myers (Amateur film director)

Aaron is a friend of mine, he studies filmmaking at Middlesex University, i sent him a rough edit of our video and links to all our blogs, he sent me back a feedback leaflet i sent him via email. Overall he seemed really impressed by our work but he also had a few comments and changes he would like to see made.

Evaluation Q3-Audience Feedback 2- Jordan Saville (Class-mate)

Jordan is a media studies student in the same class as our group, he is also creating a music video for his course-work so i thought his input would come across as very valuable as we get to exchange ideas.

Evaluation Q3-Audience Feedback 3- Shola 'Sho Gant' Williams(Underground rapper)

Shola is another friend of mine, he is currently an underground Hip hop artist who has a lot of music video experience, he has cameoed in some mainstream singles so i believed his input  important.

Evaluation Question 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In order to attain the various outcomes we had, a lot of exploration and development was carried out to substantiate our thoughts for the initial presentation. In general, we had imagined some great pitches of how our products would eventually look. For the body of our investigation we made use of the Internet to search on Youtube for various to tracks and development of our characters.

We also took a few samples album covers from Google to assemble a constructive and relevant mood board in order for us develop our ideas as we moved towards the initial shooting process. 

We had thoroughly looked over the lyrics of our track to sketch out our scenes so we would ascertain lyrical/visual correlation. On the other hand, we also had to make sure the set we picked reflected the style of our project so sites like Microsoft maps came very much in handy. One of the main reaction comments from our peers was to incorporate more variety of shots of the lead singer (Adam Johnson) and to fix the inconsistent timing of the drummer and guitarist. We eventually managed to get round to curing the timing of our instrumentalists via the Final Cut Pro crosscut feature with the guide of our technician/Director (Michael Burrin).We also went back into the archive of shots we had from shooting and added more shots of Adam from different angles and perspectives. To prevent errors like the ones stated above from occurring I think we should have tried to trial with the editing windows in advance so we don't need to rely on feedback support at so many stages. The foremost inspiration for our concepts was previous videos and artists that motivated us. An example is ‘Low Happening’ done by preceding A2 students. We took into close consideration how they edited the order while exploring the lighting and choreography used in each scene. In the end we decided to go in a different direction by not having a narrative and using a performance style for shooting. We also used a program called MPEG Streamclip to convert our edited video from DV file to MP4 so we can upload them to the blogger website. This montage of images animatic production of our video was created on the imovieHD program, this Mac program was much easier to use and access than Finalcut pro, which would have been a waste of time if we tried to do something simple with a complicated system. However, we didn't foresee us running out of scenes to fill up the songs duration. This was due to our us not filming a narrative due to time constraints, we eventually duplicated some good shots from our archive and were able integrate them into the video. Determining how much action should be filmed within a second was also quite a dilemma for us but we used the sketches we had from our storyboard and had a great sequence for the entire duration of the video. We were very worn out after attempting to perfect the color overlay in each shot so we ended up dragging the effect over the entire project and saving it as one file, this took less time and saved a lot of man hours from us as a team. Energizing our technical pre-production resources such as the shot list and time line would definitely stop us from suffering deficient footage with our final cut. Previous to the post-production phase, we decided to experiment with the available filters using tutorials from the Finalcutking Youtube page. We did this to ensure that we could fix the effect overlay in case we encountered any inconsistencies whilst editing. By and large I trust our project has turned out to be flourishing piece of work despite the slight difficulties we had during its occurrence.

Magazine Advert

This is the final finished work of our magazine cover, we decided use the same theme from the digipak to make sure our audience the work of our group very easily, the use of the HMV (all rights reserved) also adds an element of authenticity to the page as they are the largest music retailer in the United Kingdom,also we added the logo of our group def. media cooperation, the advert was designed by our director Micheal Burrin with input from myself and Adam Johnson,we are very pleased with the outcome of this page because it is a clear representation of the music video and CD cover, it also has a completely conventional look and can be compared to already existing work from around the world.
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR FULL VIEW

Rough Cut

This is the initial rough cut for our music video, after much planning and hard work we have created a something that we are quite satisfied with, we are currently running an audience feedback session with our fellow students and random people we know to get feedback, currently a few of my friends and class-mates have seen the video rough cut and i have posted their feedback on the blog, watch out for more feedback interviews in video format! For now please enjoy our much anticipated rough cut of AFIs album track End Transmission...

Sample Video

The similarities our video shoot has to already existing mainstream content is very important because we can bounce off ideas and generally relate to the style and basis at which some of these videos were shot, i have included the closest example in my knowledge to a group that possess similar performance style to the way we presented our video. The video below is from the American Rock band Rise against.

Mood-board

Our mood board carried a lot similarity to boards created by our classmates,because we have a specific target audience it was easy for us to explore the realms of our genre of music (rock/Indie), this board concept clearly reflect the type of theme we wanted to create for our music video. The boards content resembles features of groups like dying fetus, akiakane, bullet for my valentine, guns and roses, linkin park, three days grace, avenge sevenfold, Kanye west, Pink Floyd and a few more. These acts represent the form of music AFI perform and create, therefore we believe that finding a target audience for our music video would not be very difficult because the structure is quite easy to relate to especially among teenagers and young adults.

Digipak ideas and planning

 

 The digipak we aim to create will be as referent to the music video as possibleAdam Johnson will be creating the digipak. Adam plans to use elements from the music video as recources for the digipak at this point perhaps screen shots from the band performance or narrative may be the prefered elements for him. So many ideas have come into light for the digipak, but we havent at this point really picked a defifnitive choice for what we want it to be. As a group we have decided not to create a website home page for the band but rahther create a magazine cover and of course a digipak with the bands material on it. At this point time is a very important factor and we are very aware of the fact that there are just a few weeks left, we are currenlty satisfied with the amount of material we have and hope to be done very soon. We are alos aware that our tutor Mrs Mcluckie has given us a time limit to get the entire project done, we feel very confident of our progress especially after he shooting done on the 27th February.

          

THE ANIMATIC

Using the Imovie mac computer program we were able to create the animatic and put it into a sequence that relates to the video, we also took the stills with quick shot changes and blurry settings to reflect the pace at which the video is shot. We used the five square converter program to convert the file to MP4 for uploading it on to the blogger website, because the video was made in DV format by Imovie i had to make sure it was compatible. Here is the final done animatic of the end transmission AFI track. Enjoy...

Editing Stages

Here are pictures of us editing our rough cut in the media studies class-room, Our director Micheal Burrin is working on the editing while Adam Johnson works on the digipak and the band poster on the photoshop program. I myself will be working on the animatic sequence and intend to post it on the blog in the nearest future,the completion of the project at this stage is really down to the individuals in our group because the faster each of us finish our given specific tasks we will be able to get the finished product ready to demo to our tutor Mrs Mcluckie. At this point also we are very confident in our progress because we have all the tools and instruments we aimed to get or achieve at the beginning of shooting this music video.

Here is a shot of Micheal working on the Final cut program, he is picking out the best shots we need to put into the final edit. He intends to put together an entire video of the band performance and then if we have time or enough material we will insert the narrative shots and scenes.

This is a shot of Adam Johnson working on the magazine poster for the band using the photoshop program, he is also on google looking for relevant material that can help him create the perfect digipak for the band members, he is thinking of using shots form the music video itself as material for his poster and album cover.

This shot involves Micheal putting in the finishing touches needed for the band performance, he is adding further effects like image overlay and induced crop plus transitions like cross-dissolve and quick fades, these are actions he executed to make sure we got the best shots into the frame of the video.

More Narrative planning

we have decided that for a twist in the narrative, when they both go to commit suicide at the end of the song, she should back out. This idea of doubt at the last minute comes back to the lyric "we never can truly know who we are", and it relates by saying that 'in an extreme situation you don't know how you will react at the time', even though they had already made the pact.

Also we have decided that the cause of death so to speak will be the both of them jumping off of the edge of a building as it would create an opportunity where she could stop, whereas if it was suicide with a gun then she does not have control. The same with drugs. The plan is that they will hold hands and run towards the edge when she shall stop and as he jumps his hand will slip from hers, so that you know she has pulled out of the attempt.

storyboards need to be established for the narrative now along with the completion of the performance storyboard.

Locational Recce- Actual Photos

Here are some photos of the actual location instead of a concept gathered for us to work out a transition between the planned shots for the story board and what we will actually be able to shoot. we set up the performance area so that it would be already available to start filming on the day.

Technical Props- Induced Framing

This is an idea our director Micheal Burrin designed to help us to film knowing that afterwards we will convert all the filming to widescreen. as the camera shoots in standard digital (4:3) ratio we will have to work out in our heads how much of the top and bottom will be cut off during filming. 

Using 2 piece of dark tape we have been able to map out onto the camera monitor a widescreen canvas approximate to the 16:9 aspect ratio commonly associated with widescreen films. this means that when we begin shooting we can see clearly defined on screen what we will later cut out. This helps us to control the framing of the band members and get the shots that we need.

Letter of Copyright

Once we had decided on the song. we had to send of a letter asking the copyright holders permissions to use the song. The theory being that if they reply saying yes, or if they simply don't reply then we may use it. However if they reject, then we can't. well it has been left long enough and as we still do not have a reply we are assuming that we will never receive reply. Ideally we would push for a reply, and wait again, but we do not have the time in the project duration to wait. So, with this in mind we are going ahead with the filming. A copy of the letter is as follows:

Dear Copyright Holder,

I am an A level student and I am writing to request your permission to use one track from the latest album by AFI entitled "Crash Love".

The Track I wish to use is "End Transmission" track number 3 on the album.

With your permission, this track would be used in my current A-level Media Studies project which involves creating a music video for a popular music track, as well as producing an album and a magazine advert for the artist.

If I received your permission, this track would ONLY be used in an educational context and be viewed by my media class, My teacher and the OCR exam board moderator. This track would NOT be released to a large audience or uploaded to any public video websites.

The artist and your company would of course be fully recognised throughout pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice, with wording supplied by you can be included in the reords of the project. If this is required, please send full details.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

More Film Props

These are a few of the props that were taken and used during the filming of the music video, to create the look that we were going for. without these the filming project would not be the same or probably possible so it is essential that they are mentioned. Some of which were there, others we had to scramble or put together and take ourselves. they are as follows:
Ladder:

Was used to obtain some of the great high angled shots we had in the music video.






























Gaffer tape:

We used the tape to hold down props and create a wide screen effect with our camera.






















Tripod

The Tripod created a stabilizing structure for most of our shots.