Final album cover and poster ad

The Final Edit

This is the final edit of our pop promo for 10 years. Enjoy

Pop Promo Commentary Chris & Suzi

Music Video Critique Sheet

Initial Impressions: Strong Areas:

- The choppy and fast moving shots worked well with the pop promo and genre of music as long as you understand the viewpoint we are coming from

- The relaxed atmosphere shots represented the band well as friends, not always being a band

- The Relaxed shots used were good and suited well

- Underground stylistics and look made the video suit the genre of music

- Pop Promo cut to the beat

- The band were lively and played upto the expectations of a hardcore band with the movement

- Although the camera shots were not framed well (Intentionally) they fitted well within the pop promo

Initial Impressions: Weak Areas:

- Lead singer may have been used too much in the video

- Other band members were difficult to distinguish

- Needed more Drums

- Ending could have been more exciting

Use of Cinematography:

- Overhead shot of lead singer was well used

- Nice CU's of lead singer

- Camera shots suited genre

- Very good variety of shots

- Hand held camera made parts of the pop promo feel like you were there

- Shots using the crane were professional

- Following the band around makes the audience get to know them

Use of mise-en-scene:

- Postman pat jumper was abnormal but yet suited the randomisation of the genre

- Clothes were well suited to the genre

- Back lighting looked good with the "Halo" effect around lead singer

Use of Editing:

- Fast cuts of guitar

- Nice build up half way through to let the audience know something is going to happen

- (Downside) Little tweaks to ending & the involvement of other band members.

Suitability of Visuals to the Music & Lyrics:

- Yes, all agree

Response to Brief:

- Yes, all agree

Production Values and Technical Ability:

- Very high

- (Downside) Small Glitches

Suitability to the Genre of Music:

- Yes, all agree

Suitability of Creating a Bands/Artist Image (Representation):

-Understanding of how the leadsinger performed really helped
-The band co-operated well

Suitability For Target Audience:

- Yes, all agree

Video Editing

In the video Chris managed to play with the brightness and contrast to create a grainy, dark and underground feel to the video as this kind of feel suits the genre very well. We didn't edit the video to much as we thought with the natural footage we would ruin the authenticity.

Here is a small video we composed showing you the difference:

Evaluation

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

In the media product that we have finished with the forms and conventions of it rely mainly on it's given genre, which is hardcore. With given research I have come to find what characterstics lie in these main music videos of the hardcore variety and I believe that my pop promo consists of all of these. A lot of the footage was mainly based on the lead singer of the band, which I also found when looking at other examples. We had to lip sync this part of him in the studio to get the right effect and perfect timing.

The video may have a certain appearance about it, rough and almost trashy, but there is no stereotypical video, each one is very different , your perspective and how others may perceive it. Usually as I said, they are rough, there is no real budget, or none which you can tell of in many videos we used to help us. It is generally the band performing, meaning there would be no narrative. So when it comes to editing it all relies upon that. You have to be able to give the video some movement without having a real 'storyline' as such.
With our band, and others alike, they want you to portray their passion, for music, for their band, and for that particular song, which means all focus is on them, particularly with ours. They want to be represented however they wish, no matter how that is, to be distinct.

Then comes the technical part of these pop conventions, the camera shots are usually different, choppy and a bit messy. The movement of the camera is varied, with the use age of still tripod shots and overhead crane shots to establishing shots as well as pans to emphasize the energy that the band have as a whole. All these shots have been edited to each second, to capture the perfect moment, in our eyes that we have seen a thousand times before, but it almost keeps the audience hanging, meaning they would make the effort to watch the video again for clips they may have missed out on first time round.

When first introduced to this project, I instantly found a video I thought would be a brilliant example, one of which I have included earlier in my blog. Their lyrics aggressive as well as the image as a whole. Now this is how they wanted to be portrayed, and it's been done very well. The shots used are what seem to be some really rough footage, some of which is live, and some performed, just as ours was. They are all together as a group, without the intimidation, I like to think this is how Ten Years are, a tight friendship group. But are not afraid to show their aggression. The video for terror is also in a dull sepia tone, with the band just hanging out, traveling and even some shots of them playing. The camera again focuses mainly on the lead singer with many close ups of his face. Each cut is fast paced and the video is edgy, fast, and always one you would remember. The energy shown is how we tried to project Ten Years.

We have included all these conventions mentioned in our video. Lip-syncing was used for both verses in the song so that the lead singer was pracitcally always in full view. It was easier getting him in the TV studio at college, also it's almost vital, so your viewing audience understand the layout of the band. Although you can't always see the leadsinger, even his sillohette can represent his presence.


We didn’t want to use the lead singer throughout the whole pop promo as this would be tedious, and the actual instrumentals are just as if not more important than the vocals. A constant variety of shots were used throughout, especially when the camera was focused on the lead singer, we had shots consisting of close-ups, extreme close-ups, mid shots, overhead shots and hand held shots whilst moving.

***

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Personally i think that our ancillary texts along with our main product has been a sucess and is as effective, if not more than we had thuoght. We produced a front and back cover for our CD along with the 2 parts inside, and the spines - with this we also created a magazine advert.
All of these media texts are interlined intentionally so the audience can easily realate on to another without the use of words.

We used the same typefact for the album covers and the magazine advert, it helps convey to the audience that they are all within realation of each other, almost a subliminal message, so they realise one links to the other, without raelly having to concentrate. We used the same image on the album cover and advert, but changed the coloured effect.
We concenrated on our target market when it came to including quotes from magazines such as 'Kerrang!'.



What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The feedback we got from our target audience about our pop promo was very good, we asked about their thoughts on the pop promo: good, bad or neutral. The most common response that we received was about the pace of the editing and the variety of camera shots and that they especially like how the pace was sped up more and more the closer the tension built up in the song for the second verse. The only real downside that a few people mentioned was the fact that there was a lack of other band members within the pop promo and that it would have been nice if they were more involved. The overall feedback was very positive and all I learnt that if there is more than one person in a band or in a group then it is better and more appealing if the whole band are shown often and introduced to the audience in that way.

I also learned from my targeted age group what kinds of stylistics and conventions they like to see in a pop promo for them to be attracted to it and influenced on watching it. So my first question that I asked that regarded to the pop promo was what appeals more to them in a music pop promo, either mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing or special effects, it turns out that almost a third of the people questioned claimed that the editing of the pop promo was the most important as it judges the pace and transitions; what you see. Secondly I wanted to know how my target audience managed to watch music videos, just over half watch them via YouTube and the rest use either TV music channels, Gaming console, Online Music Channel or an MP4 Player. It also turns out after asking my third question on how often does my target audience watch music videos, and the response was quite outstanding, just over 90% watch music videos daily, and under 10% each watch music videos either weekly, monthly or not at all.

***

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Before we could start with using the Apple Mac’s to do anything, we first needed footage of the band, this meant visiting one of the band members premises and also having to take cameras out to be able to film a live gig.and filming on site using DV camera; unfortunately there wasn’t enough light within the premises to get decent footage for the pop promo, so we were lucky that we had taken special high wattage studio lights with us so that we could light to our preferences.

Once the footage was all on 6 or 7 tapes we had to capture all of the footage onto the Macs using a FireWire which connected from the DV camera to the Mac tower. We captured all footage to the storage of the Mac tower onto a program called FinalCutPro, this was the software used to edit our pop promo. After filming and capturing our footage we concentrated our main efforts on learning how to use the new Final Cut Pro video editing software in the Apple iMac Editing Suite.
The program was fairly easy to use, we had a time line where we would place our captured footage on, and cut, crop and change the footage around until we were happy with it, this also gave us the opportunity to use special effects on our footage to create different effects and irregular views for which we were comfortable with.


The photos used in the ancillary texts were taken with a digital camera of which we transferred to the Apple Mac and used Photoshop to edit them. Photoshop is an image editor where we could take photos or take still frames from the pop promo and edit them in Photoshop. This also gave us the opportunity to place effects onto the images to create different effects and designs.

Research Planning:
The Blog served as a source not only to record progress but also as a daily journal, where I recorded events that happened that were relevant to the project, such as disasters with weather conditions, which couldn’t have been helped. It was also my main source for uploading any pictures, videos, a lot of my research.
When first introduced to the project, we needed the internet, something we use everyday. We had to rummage around and find videos, images, just general research, anything we could get our hands on that would help us in the beggininng middle and end. As for everything, Google, YouTube and Facebook/Myspace were all a huge help in collecting our information. Youtube for the videos and music tracks, google for images, and links to possibly every site in the whole entire world, specifically down to what we were hunting for.

Facebook was used for the feedback, showing the video to the band, and getting thier opinion, along with everyone elses!!

Editing the footage

We are now coming to a close with the final project, I have been working on the digi-pack while Chris has been editing.
We've realised as the deadline draws closer that we have a lot of footage, but not good enough to put in the video, we have had problems with the Mac's at college, meaning it's very hard to edit at the moment, and seeing as we have to be finished soon, we're all quite stressed out. The frames keep 'dropping' meaning the footage isn't smooth and when you play it back there are pauses, and breaks, giving you an overall shoddy piece of work. Chris had done a lot of work in one lesson, but unfortunately the Mac failed to save what he had done, so we were back to where we were, Chris was able to re-do it all to the best of his ability, and I still think it looks great. Chris is doing a great job, as there is only him and I left of our group I think we've done considerately well. Luckily he can edit, I can't to save my life.

A lot of the footage we had shot was at the wrong angle, so predominately the footage we have used is of Jamie in the studio as we had the time, lighting, and no real hurry or distractions. Chris has synced up the footage to the music and it works so well.
All of the footage is raw, rough choppy but all in a good way, it really presents the song well, the Guitars are playing the introduction of the song, then band getting hyped for the performance this includes footage that we got from their Norwich gig when they are setting up and the trip we took there, and parts of band practice, as it's all short clips we need a lot of it to make it flow decently, and the finale which is again more of Jamie in the studio, which is also used throughout the beginning of the video.

It's lucky we filmed when we had because currently the band aren't getting on so well at the moment!!

Friday 22nd- Filming in the studio

Today we had the plan for the past week of getting the leader singer from Ten Years, Jamie, to come to the studio so we could film him solo. We had practiced the camera and lighting with Charlie from the group earlier on in the term, and we were set on creating that again and decided it looked professional, it was time we did this with the lead singer. It was too hard to get the whole band in, and being able to move around them is too risky with all the lights, cameras and tripods. So jamie being the lead of the band, just because he's the vocalist, it made sense to have him in the studio.

The plan was he was against the black curtains, but we didn't want to be able to see them, we wanted the appearance of a solid black background with hi9s face well lit up, weather it looks eerie, or glowing.

We played the song "Death" on a CD player, and he would have to mime the words. Thinking it was quite hard, he was immaculate with his lip syncing, and although he messed up a few times, all we were doing was editing the footage and more than half of it was perfectly just what we wanted.

2nd day of filming- Jacks house

We filmed at Jacks today, we got there at 6pm with everything being set up by 7pm we began. We were told they had to finish up at 8pm or around then so we needed, almost, to rush.
They had a new guitar player to our surprise, and the guitarist had brought his younger brother who wanted to do some promo shots of the band. So this room being fairly small had 5 members of the band, a photographer, and Charlie and I filming. Overall 8 of us in this tiny room.

Chris helped bring the equipment over, and then later went before we began filming.
With 2 lights in the room too, they were awfully hot and we had to really pay attention to health and safety as we wanted to be moving them around. There were plenty of wires dragged around the floor. Being a band that jumps around and moves about, most definitely fast paced, we had to be wary of them tripping over, breaking themselves, or equipment.

We decided that getting the new guitarist in wasn't too important as he hasn't been mentioned anywhere else, although we still we be putting him in the video, yet there won't be any information about him, and the past promo shots have been without him, the professionally ones.

We got all the footage we needed to edit, and it turns out we'll take about 5 shots from those two 25 minute videos because they didn't have time to sync the physical playing to the actual song, we so had to do this at a later date. The shots were good but rare, and we got the odd one which we thought would really help symbolise the genre.
We now have a plan for our next filming date in which we have too place the band ourselves, in a particular position so we can easily film them, and get particular shots of them without being too messy, and altogether we'll get twelve sturdy shots of the band.

Location to film, Jacks house

Location Finders Checklist

Production Title: Death of a Devil
Shoot Dates: 18th December - 22nd January
Location address-
Location contact: 0786374112
Location contact mobile number and Email: 0786374112
Location telephone: 07957480142

Directions from college to location:

Is the location right for the script: N/A right for our shooting purposes

How noisy is the location? Will recording sync sound be a problem:
Yes it would be, but in this case we're not syncing sound we film and put the track on afterwards

Is the location light enough?: We will need extra lighting

Is there a power supply at the location: Yes

Is the location heated: Yes

How long does it take to get to the location: 45 minutes

How will you get to the location?: Bus or car

How much will it cost to get to the location: £1.30

Is the location big enough to accomodate the cast and crew? : 4 band members, 3 crew, yes, just.

Where are the nearest toilets? : In the house

Notes: Filming in more than one room,and in the street.

Suffolk New College Rope Walk Ipswich, IP4 01473 255 885

1.	Head east on Rope Walk toward Regent St	59 ft
2.	Turn left at Regent St	184 ft
3.	Turn left at B1075/St Helen's St Continue to follow St Helen's St	0.3 mi
4.	Continue onto A1156/St Margaret's St Continue to follow A1156 Go through 1 roundabout	0.8 mi
5.	Slight left at B1067	2.0 mi
6.	Turn right at Paper Mill Ln	1.9 mi
7.	At the roundabout, take the 3rd exit	0.3 mi
8.	Continue straight onto Old Ipswich Rd	0.1 mi
9.	Continue onto Norwich Rd Destination will be on the left	0.2 mi

East Of England Co-op 53 Norwich Road Barham, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP6 0DH

Graph results of music genre question

From the chart above, it shows the genre of music on the left, of which there are twelve, and along the bottom are the number of people that chose each genre, altogether we gave the questionnaire to 25 people.
General pop, and pop punk seem to be the most popular amongst the few people we asked. We would decipher pop as the mainstream chart music, whereas pop punk music are bands such as Sum 41 and New Found Glory, which are interestingly fairly old bands.

On the graph those of which don't have a bar at all meant that 0 people preferred that genre. Each person was only allowed one vote, but now we think maybe 2 would have given us a more varied bar graph.
Our pop promo is being based on a hardcore band, now we did purposely stray away from people we assumed would like this genre, hence the result on the graph only being one. So we aren't sceptical about our video being popular, we know people that enjoy this genre. We though including this question although vague may give us a good idea of what the possible audience like. Considering pop punk was joint top I think this gives us an advantage.

One of the questions in the questionnaire was- what does the hardcore genre mean too you?
A lot of people we asked came up with the sensible answers we were praying for. Ideally at this day and age, hardcore is a completely different thing too people of an older generation, but sometimes not even that, people in their twenties and upwards have adapted to what hardcore is at this time. Hardcore as I've mentioned before has been popular during the time of facist yet as time went on the Hardcore used to be a genre of dance music, the kind of music that would be played when you went 'clubbing'. Many albums are still and have been released which is for example called a 'hardcore compilation' which is composed of all the mainstream DJ's and artist to do with dance/techno/trance, in a hardcore way.

I came up with the idea of going onto google, and typing 'Hardcore music' into the search engine, funnily enough the first link was a wikepedia link describing the genre.

• Hardcore, also known as hardcore punk, a sub-genre of punk rock music
• Hardcore techno, a style of electronic music

Another one of the questions featured in the questionnaire was:
Do you prefer a pop promo with narrative (more of a storyline) OR A performance (i.e. dance routine)

For this question, the people were split into two. The answer of 'a performance' had one more vote than the other. So generally they were liked as much as each other. Our video contains a bit of both, maybe not so much a dance routine, but a live performance, it gave us hope that not every video needs to be neat with a continuous story throughout.
We asked why one might prefer a video with performance, their answers were that it shows that artist/band for who they really are. Shows that the band/artist have real energy. They liked the fact that the whole video isn't acted and scripted, as if the band got to really choose what they wanted in the video rather than going by standard strict guidelines.

As for having a promo with a narrative people referred to sad videos mostly, which made us think that when there is a storyline within most videos it is a majority of the time quite sad, as it may be easier to portray a sad story through a video. Also if it were a more en lighting video they would probably include more of a performance. The people we asked enjoyed having a storyline in the video because they felt it could be something they can relate too.

Target audience- Questionnaire