Amy's Ghost - Victim of the Mind
Hazel-Jane's A2 Media Blog
Tuesday 26 February 2013
Monday 25 February 2013
Sunday 24 February 2013
Friday 22 February 2013
Thursday 21 February 2013
Question 3: Media Evaulation
What have
you learned from your audience feedback?
When we first started the process of
making a music video for a new artist, we had to consider the factor of
reaching out and connecting to our audience. As
our artist, Amy’s Ghost, has its own identity of their genre
of music; a mixture of alternative, singer/songwriter and a mellow
gothic sound, we wanted to try and capture the essence
of this across in our music video, connecting audio with visuals. This hopefully would be positive in our audience feedback.
Positive Audience Feedback:
“The concept of the
white and dark showing the different emotions coming together, is really
powerful”
“The lip-syncing is in
time for the majority of the music video”
“The fast-paced shots
of the actor in black is effective, it shows the thoughts in her mind which
links with the title of the song”
“I love the backwards
slow motion of the waterfall, that’s really good!”
“When the actor in
black slowly walks up the forest hill is one of my favourite shots. It’s really
effective, showing her being mesmerised by this vision in white”
Negative Audience Feedback:
“The moving waterfall image is
good, but would have been better if the frame didn't cut into black, before
moving onto the next frame”
We agree with this statement. In the filming
process we wanted to find different forms of transitions
for the music videos. Filming
the waterfall footage was one of my ideas. Once
uploading the footage on the Macs to Final Cut Pro, the footage
visually was really effective, creating a
mysterious atmosphere which links well with our artist.
Originally we were going to leave the waterfall footage as it was originally filmed.
However, after making our first draft cut, our
teachers thought the idea of positioning the waterfall
image into a photo frame would be effective. We
decided to take on their advice, positioning the
footage onto the photo frame, which is shown at
the beginning of the music video. We looked on Youtube
to see how the capture a moving image into a still frame,
which benefited us as a skill in this editing process. After
positioning the waterfall footage into the
correct place and lining up the other transitions
that we used (dissolve, cross-fade),
we formatted the footage
into video, too see the outcome.
Waterfall Image:
What we thought the outcome would be, turned out to be a
problem, as it created a black frame around the dissolve transition that we used. We looked onto Youtube to find a solution to possibly change this,
however there was no information to video tutorial
to show us. We decided to leave the problem as it was, using fast-paced shots and multiple transitions
to hide the black frame. If we were to go back and change our music video, I
know we would leave the waterfall image as it were, as it still created a great effective on our music video.
“There isn’t a lot of shots of the artist singing, which kind of takes
away the aspect of the music video, and turns it into a film”
We disagree with this statement. We understood that the convention of a music video
includes close up shots of the artist singing; however we wanted to take a different
approach.
In music videos, artists often have some narrative
based storyline in their music video,
whilst others’ decide to include a narrative based
storyline throughout the majority of
their music videos; showing some to minimal shots
of the artist singing. Our artist, Amy Ghosts, let me and my partner Rebecca to have the freedom to be creative
in coming up with a narrative for the music video, as the single ‘Victim of the Mind’ hadn’t been released
yet from their new album. Although we had the freedom this narrative based music video, lead singer Amy, wanted
the plot line to involve a person being carried out
from her depression. Having an artist give us this amount of freedom to use the narrative to create the
artist plotline was thrilling, as we had many
ideas and ways of interpreting this.
In our storyboarding we
decided to include some footage of our artist singing, however not throughout, as we wanted
to portray our narrative based storyline. When filming, we took the time in filming good angles, close ups and
other variety of shots of Amy, which would not
only portray our bands identity through Amy’s eye make-up, but their style
of genre. For example, quick flashes of Amy herself in the woodland, to
show the mysterious concept of the song.
We feel with the few but effective
close ups of our artist, it still classes
as a music video without the visuals of the artist. From our research and planning into music
videos, we found out that narrative based music
videos are becoming quite common. For
example, Justin Timberlake’s recent single ‘Mirrors’
is mainly narrative, and only at the end of the
music video does it feature him.
The main concept was to show a meaningful
storyline throughout a music video. We
don’t believe that a music
video has to always include the artist/band to make a good music
video, that audiences enjoy watching.
“The lighting was inconsistent”
This is a fair point. The lighting
used when we filmed the footage
in the house was inconsistent throughout, as we
used candles and some artificial
lighting to create an eerily atmosphere.
Similarly,
some of the end footage due to the bright sunlight made the footage
look as if we had Photo-shopped, even though we
hadn’t. This reflects on our protagonist Amy, dressed in white, the visuals
were too bright. We tried to turn some of the footage brightness up, in order to try and neutralise this in the film
however we couldn’t. Apart from this, the lighting in the woodland footage was perfect, as the lighting didn’t reflect brightly when uploaded to the Macs.
Overall, we are pleased with the feedback
received from our audience, as the majority of
the comments were positive.
The negative comments received were obvious pointers that we could see ourselves when submitting the final cut
of our music video, for example inconsistent lighting and the black
framing of around the moving waterfall image.
However, the comment of not a lot of close ups
of our artist we feel is unjust, but we have
justified our reasons behind this. Apart from this, we feel the actual core of the music video
was well made and a good success.
From receiving feedback on my music video I have learned a lot on the codes and conventions of music videos, for example close up of artists singing.
The main thing that I have learned is good research and
planning and good time keeping. I know
myself and my partner Rebecca went into great detail
for our research and planning, discovering articles of brand identity,
iconography, font style
researches and finding the means of what fonts connote, also researching into similar
artists, for example Lady Hawke, Fleet Foxes.
By going into great detail for our research,
it deepened our understanding
of our music video, helping us transform
our storyboard to visuals
on the screen. As we filmed our music video in
the beginning of September we could import the footage onto the Macs,
before deciding whether to re-film. Allowing
ourselves a lot of time to film, gave us the time to carefully select certain footage for our music video.
A good example would be the fast-pace
edits at the beginning of our music video,
showing our protagonist Jenny, who has depression. The fast-pace
edits shows Jenny’s thought process
around her, which links extremely well with the title of the song ‘Victim of the Mind’.
Wednesday 20 February 2013
Question 4: Media Evaulation
How did you use new Media Technologies in the Construction, Research and Planning, and Evaluation stages?
http://prezi.com/tuhzfcacst0j/untitled-prezi/
Thursday 14 February 2013
Ancillary: Finalising the Magazine Advert
After realising that our initial ideas would not meet the conventions of what we were creating we began to change our ideas starting with including the album design directly in to the advert. We then used an image from the video shoot and then added critic reviews, and tour dates however we thought that the woodland image would not be appropriate to the concept so we added the background that had been used in the album design and Digipak which we found to be far more appropriate as well as eye catching and so took as the final design.
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