Website Complete - evaluation

The website is now complete, below are a few screenshots of the completed webpage for Jonny Hants. The website was too large to fit onto one screen shot so top and bottom of the site are included.

Final Digi-Pak - evaluation

After many hours of discussion as well as playing around with effects we came to the decision that these four images would be our final images for the cover.
The images above are all representive of our artist. The top left image is the front cover; it is a council estate shot in black and white with the black enhanced slightly more than the white to get a better contrast with light and dark. We layered the dog over onto the image as we had to represent the character somewhere onto the cover. Our aim was to do this subtily rather than make it the focus point on the image. The artist's name is at the bottom of the cover in small white writing, again we decided to not go with fancy writing but we preferred a simple font as we felt it makes more of a point.

The two bottom images are the inside covers, they are of equal black and white ratio rather than the top images. The reason for this was when the CD cover is opened up, we wanted it to be bright and stand out. Both images are of natural settings and are interesting places. We were attracted to the image of the bench as it showed a link with our music video which was filmed in a natural park. It was also a well established image and we did not feel the need to place the dog onto the image as it was good enough. The writing was well positioned on the image and placed on the bottom where its black on white and stands out well.

Post-Production Storyboards - research/planning

Editing - planning/evaluation

Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

Adobe Premiere is a video editing software package suitable for both amateur enthusiasts and professionals. It can be purchased and used alone, or alongside other applications such as Adobe Photoshop & After Effects. Premiere has been around for a long time and enjoys a very stable user base. It is a solid, professional-level application which will be more than adequate for most editing situations.

Logging and Capturing the Video

Before being able to start the editing you must first batch capture the video footage, to do this you first need to place the mini-DV tape in the camera and connect it up to the camera before turning on premiere pro. There are a few settings which you need to change before starting the capturing for instance the files locations, the reason for doing this is the fact that you want all your files to be appropriately placed.To begin playing your tape, you can use the Play, Stop, Pause, Fast Forward and Rewind buttons below the Viewer window.

To capture the footage it is a simple process of setting in and outputs on the tape, which is done by is to first go through your tape and log the clips you want to capture by creating in and out points.Then when you're done selecting all the clips you want, you can do a Batch capture to capture them all at once. On the keyboard there are a selcetion of shortcuts to help create the project easier. Such as the i key which will create an in point to begin logging the clip,when the clip has reached the point where you want to stop capturing it, on your keyboard click on the o key, which will create an out point to stop logging the clip.Then click on the button for Log In/Out and then create a name for the file. Once this is completed throughout the video click the bacth capture record button and all the clips will be put in order and downloaded from the tape to the computer.

Types of editing:

Video Transitions

A transition is the way one shot changes to the next. By default, if two clips are placed next to each other in the timeline, the transition is a cut.To make more interesting transitions such as dissolves, wipes and effects, use the transitions available in the Effects window.

Pictured to the left is the effects menu that is on Adobe Premiere Pro for when you decide to make a video transition. With the menu you click on an effect you wish to utilise and simply drag it on-top of the video cut in the timeline which you wish to use.

The effects that we mainly used when creating video transitions are dip-to-black and the utilisation of the cross dissolve effect.

The effect which is shown above is the fade to black video transition. From the two images, left to right is where the dip-to-black occurs and then moves onto the next scene in the timeline. The whole process of dip-to-black occurs in a matter of 1-2 second from the first shot to the next shot whilst fading out.

The other video transition which we also exercised was a cross dissolve, the "Cross Dissolve" transition fades out clip A while fading in clip B.To make sure that the overlapped clips match the duration of the transition, make sure the clip in Video 1A ends at the end of the Cross Dissolve, and that the clip in Video 1B starts at the beginning of the Cross Dissolve.

The image to the left is how we utilised the cross dissolve effect, the effect of overlapping two images at once. What we had done was overlap a long shot with a close-up but at different angles. This helps to give the viewer a good idea of what is going, what we found good about the effect was that it was not only a second long whereas it last about three seconds so giving the viewer enough time to consume the images placed on the screen




With the programme you can also make straight cuts, for that fast and sharp effect which we were looking for, for instance creating cuts between the music. The best way for fast cuts was to pause as the beat was about to change and use the razor tool to chop the clip in two too make that fast cut.

Whilst editing we decided to experiment on certain shots, it was simple to experiment as every effect which was placed onto a clip can easily be removed. The reason for experimenting was that we wanted too see a lot of different effects and see which ones suited our video best. Some of the effects that we played around with were ghosting, Motion blur which creates action lines of image, leaving a blurry image which changes from brightness and then contrasts and we played around with the Speed and duration of the video clip which increases as well as decreases the speed of the shot.


Creating Titles in Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

There are two ways in which to create titles in Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 :

Premiere's built-in title designer . This the simplest method — the title designer is quick and easy to access, and has helpful features like the ability to see video frames underneath the title as you create it. The disadvantage is that the title designer is relatively limited — it's perfect for most common requirements but in some situations you'll need to use the second option.

The second option is that ou can create titles in another program such as Photoshop and import them into Premiere. The advantage of using this rather than the Title Designer on Adobe Premiere is that you have a wider range of abilites to create different titles and fonts to choose from.

Post Production Analysis - evaluation

This work was done with Oliver.

On 11th March we screened our A2 music video, to some students and there was a turn out of 23 people aged from 16-18. The analysis of what we found out will be shown below; I haven't specifically analysed all 7 questions but only 5 of the most interesting outcomes. The questions were mainly closed with only one open question with room for people to explain themselves.

Seeing as our school has a sixth form it was a case of only having a range of 16-18 year olds to view our product, question 1 asks what is your sex and of the 23, it was 11 boys and 12 girls. This helped us to get an equal amount of boys and girls, we did little advertising and the majority of students that came, came with an open-mind as they were unsure of what genre of music vidwo we were showing.


For our second question which Ifelt was most telling as we were often asked what was the significance of the dog in the video and people were confused by its presence. The dog character was placed in our music video as part of our narrative which was a pastiche as well as parody. The dog had been lost by his owner. The number of students who understood the narrative as well as the significance of the dog was 15 and 8 said they did not understand the significance of the dog We knew not everyone would understand its significance as it was vague in the video of its significance. These statistics gave us feedback on how we can learn to make a stronger meaning to the video.

The third question asks if you have ever heard the song, Seeing as our artist Jonny Hants was found on My-space and not a mainstream artist it would be hard to find people who had heard his music before. However, out of the 23 students we asked there was one person who had heard some of his music and we were intrigued to find out where this person had heard the music before. He told us that he had viewed his profile on You-Tube and listened to a few of his tracks. It was interesting to find someone who had heard his music before as we had found that some of Jonny Hants' lyrics were depressive and upsetting and not the sort of music that many of us would listen to, ao we were not expecting anyone to have heard his music before seeing as he is a little known artist.

In question four we decided to ask the audience, "As a result of watching the music video, would you consider buying this song?". This question was useful as our main aim was to market the song by making the music video, CD Cover and website. All of these were to make an impact on the consumer and to make them want to purchase the music. The results that we obtained were interesting as there were 18 people who would buy the music and 5 people who were not interested in purchasing the music. We also helped people to hear less mainstream music than the usual music which people would normally listen to.

The fifth question we asked was, "Do you think that only showing the pianist in black and white worked". This question was useful as it helped us to see if one of our major artistic decisions had worked. The result were fairly comprehensively in favour as 20 people said yes to the monochrome and only 3 people said it did not work for them. We were happy with these results as we spent a fair amount of time fluctuating between colour and black and white. The main advantage to using black and white was to iron out some impurities and make them look less noticeable.


Our sixth question was, "Do you like the use of effects such as dip-to-black?" The video transitions that we had put in were for added effect and smoother movement from the first shot to the next one without having a pure straight cut. The results were 18 people said yes to having dip-to-black and 5 people who disagreed with it. We asked those who did not agreed to it to advise why. Only 2 out of the 5 responded to that section and one quote from it was "I prefer fast cuts rather than slow transitions between shots". We took this criticism on board and could see where people were coming from as other music videos are very fast with more than 100's of different shots interlinking.


The seventh question was most vital to our production as it asked the question which was key to the success of our video, "Do you think a music video is capable of persuading you to purchase a song?". The results were equal as 12 people said yes and 11 people said no. Many people cannot be easily persuaded by a music video and have a certain taste in music and the video just comes with the music, there are some very well known music videos and iconic ones which people remember, that helps to keep the music strong with a well made music video.

Video screening completed - evaluation

After the intense amount of work and effort which was put into our music video, it was now time to show it. The video was to be shown to an audience consisting of students and hopefully some teachers; it was up to us to organise the viewing, deciding on times and dates. The ways in which we organised this was by creating posters and also by word of mouth. We had decided that the best time for the screening would be at lunch time when the majority of people would hopefully be free to come and view our work. We devised a set of questions which we felt would help best to get an all round view of what people thought. One slight problem was the age range that we had for the student audience was 16-18. Whilst this was not a major set back, it would have been interesting to find out what an older range of people thought.



These are the questions that we asked the audience whilst they viewed our production:



1. Are you male or female?

2. Have you understood the significance of the dog?

3. Have you heard this song before?

4. As a result of watching the music video, would you consider buying this song?

5. Did you like the use of effects such as dip to black in the music video?

6. Do you think it is possible for a music video to persuade you to purchase a song?

7. Do you think having a pianist in black and white works?

Theoretical Approaches - research

Avant Garde Cinema

Avant-garde films are often iconoclastic, mocking conventional morality and traditional values; the filmmaker's intense interest in eccentricities and extremes may shock for the viewers.

Avant-garde film makers want to trial with original ideas, forms, techniques, and expressions--and are frequently said to be "ahead of their times." Avant-garde films are branded by an elevated degree of experimentation--whether it is in manipulation in narrative resources, in highly stylized optical representation, or in fundamental departures from the norms or conventions present at the time, avant-garde film is forever a means of expression for the filmmaker’s expression. We as a group took this on board and decided to subvert the original idea of a real narrative but instead change common values and use a dog costume instead of a real dog.

Early Soviet Cinema

Feature-length agitation films in 1918-21 were important in the development of the film industry. Innovation in Russian filmmaking was expressed particularly in the work of Eisenstein. The "Battleship Potemkin" was noteworthy for its innovative montage and metaphorical quality of its film language. We decided not use this in the music video production as when experimenting with a montage effect we felt it did not suit it correctly, due to it looking to mixed up.

Surrealism

"Un Chien andalou begins with a title card reading "Once upon a time …" followed by a shot of a man (played by Buñuel) sharpening a razor blade. After briefly looking at the moon, he then slices a woman's eyeball with the razor."

Surrealist filmmakers explored new techniques to create their dreamlike films. These techniques included:

Dream narratives: in which the film’s script is not bound by reason. Juxtaposition: placing images next to each other that do not go together. Montage: a film segment using rapid visual editing (underarm hair becomes a sea urchin in Un Chien Andalou). Jump cuts: a cut in film editing where the middle section of a continuous shot is removed, and the beginning and end of the shot are then joined together, breaking continuity. Distortion: alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a familiar visual image (as produced by fish-eye lenses).

German Expressionism

Many of the features which tend to often be included a dark shading and large contrast between light, unconventional gaunt set designs, dream like lack of clarity and peculiar characters. Examples of German Expressionism can be seen in such films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Metropolis by Fritz Lang. We liked the idea of using big contrasts between light and dark as we felt it helped to add a dream like effect to the character it self.

Risk Assessment - planning

A risk assessment chart is used to assess potential risks which could occur whilst filming, as well as looking at ways in which to prevent them.

The risk levels are low, medium and high depending on the level of danger they potentially could cause.

This is our risk assessment chart shown below.

Music Video Complete - evaluation

On 3rd March we completed our task of making a music video which contained a range of angles and different styles, for instance German expressionism. The video took up a lot of time as it needed a lot of attention to detail and at times whilst we were editing we found ourselves constantly changing certain scenes, which took us many hours. Below is the finished article:

Testing camera angles - planning/ research

For research purposes, as a group we decided to spend a few hours filming short clips of different angles. For our music video we wanted to explore the different range of angles which we could possibly use, for our final production.



This clip above shows a high angle close up shot. We want to use high shots looking down on our character to try and make him look insignificant, this will add to the idea of him being alone in the city.



In the test shot we followed the characters footsteps, this will help add more shot types and make our video more interesting. these will also be used to signify the importance of the bear in the video.



The shot above was a medium long shot where the character would walk into the camera. From this shot we wished to establish a slow movement from the character with the charcters head looking at the floor.