Evaluation

Throughout the media course we have been working towards this one big task, over the last two years we have learnt all the things we need to know to create a music video and, as an ancillary task design a digipack and advertising album poster to accompany it. As you will be able to see further down my blog, I have had to put plenty of research into these areas also, in order to effectively produce the project to a good standard while sticking to the codes and conventions of my genre which in this case was indie. I used a various amount of equipment and worked in and out of school to complete this, here is what I did. My music video project is of famous indie band Bombay Bicycle Club using a track off their first album called Cancel On Me. After being a listener of this band and song before this project I felt I could understand and enjoy the lyrics and also the production task of actually making the video. I decided to stay fairly standard in terms of the convention and style making the decision that a mixture of narrative and performance footage would be the most effective for this style of genre and seemed the most realistic option, with the other style of music video conevention the art clip being much harder to create. After a few weeks of research and planning I organised four of my friends to partake in the shooting of the performance part of my video at one of the friends houses. On arrival I set up the camera and immediately decided it was not suitable and wanted to shoot the footage outside, to stick with the folk indie style of the band I was created the video for. However at that time it was snowing outside so I arranged it again for another day. When we met for the second time to shoot the performance I arranged it for a sunday morning where I could manage to get everyone their away from work etc. I filming my four friends perform to the track in the back ground with instruments from myself and the participating members of the video. I shot it in a grown up and unkept area for a rural look which I wanted to create, I feel the filming in general went well and I got all the footage and I needed for my videos performance parts while sticking to the conventions of an indie music video. After uploading this footage onto Final Cut Pro on the Apple Macs in our media room, I loaded the backing track a song I copied off the album and went to work planning and arranging for my narrative section of my video. After listening to it over and over, I had come to the conlusion that the best way to go about making a plot for this track would be to use the lyrics. Deciding that 'cancel on me again' would fit effectively with a plan of a couple being happy and in equilbrium at the start of the video, then falling out and the girl turning to another man, then the pair of them being seen and confronted my the original boy. I felt as well as the lyrics their is an instrumental towards the end of the song that is built up and fast tempo and I felt would be very effective for a fight/confrontation scene in the video. I arranged narrative shoot again on another morning but this time it was in the holidays so it was easier to organise than the first time, I decided to shoot the footage on and around the local park in my village. I felt this would fit as I thought I could actively portray a more youthful style of young love at the start and it would fit with the genre that thesedays tends to be the weirder place the better. On the day of the shoot it was a bit overcast and raining slightly, however I made the decision to go ahead with the shooting and in my opinion got some fairly good shots and felt like I had captured the style and effect that I had planned. I used the over shoulder shot effectively in this shoot as I knew it was effective as a voyeur shot and fitted the video perfectly. After finishing my narrative footage, I then uploaded that also to Final Cut Pro and started the editing process of the task. I was initially suprised at how time consuming editing a video was and at times I found it had to sync the lips of the singer in my footage to the actual track. As well as this after one lesson my computer crashed and wiped almost half of what I had done that lesson. Despite all this though I eventually managed to edit and finish my video to a standard that I thought was effective and at the same time the storyline was clear and enjoyable. After showing it to friends including people whom participated in the video everyone seemed to like what I had done and outlined numerous sections which they said they enjoyed. I was happy with this feedback, as it has made me confident and quite proud of what I have created. The ancillary part of the task was to create and design a digipack and a poster to relate to and would be effective to use with my video in a real life situation. This part of the task I quite enjoyed as the girl I used in my video is also a photography student and so for each of these tasks I was able to use her camera, with the added advantage of having a fish eye lense at my disposal. I once again arranged for everyone I needed to be in the same place for this shoot and again I feel they went well and came out pretty much how I had wanted and planned for them to be. As the digipack and poster is important for the marketing of any band, I particually made sure items that represented the indie genre where included for example, cigarettes, skinny jeans and the singer wore a trilby hat, typical of the indie scene. I edited these pictures on Photoshop and arranged them into the poster and digipack you can see below. I think each of effective and striking and I believe the use of the fish eye lense espcially on the front cover of the digipack was vital on tying in again with the genre. I asked for feedback from my friends from each of the tasks, and in general they seemed to be able to link in the music video with the digipack and the poster which I was happy about. Throughout I tried to make a air of sadness around the lead singer due to events in the video and due to comments from friends and family I am confident that I achieved this. All in all I think I have done a good job on each of the tasks and throughly enjoyed the duration.