Nick veira: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Evaluation 4



I used Myspace to search for a band that would be unsigned so we could get cracking with the music video. Once I looked around, I found a band called 'Derek's Neighbour' who were unsigned. They had a list of songs but one that really stood out was the song 'Not Today'. It was a very strong website, and it suited my needs of looking for an unsigned band. However alot of bands that looked interesting had some of their profiles blocked. This meant that I had to be a member of MySpace to look at some artist's profiles, Luckily Derek's Neighbour was not one of them.  To get the song 'Not Today' by Derek's Neighbour we needed to import it from the band's myspace onto Itunes...



Once it was onto Itunes, we then had to convert the song into an mp3 file or an itunes song file. This made it easier to put onto Final cut express as it would not work if it wasn't mp3 as it would be corrupted file. Taking this from experience after trying to put the song straight onto our timeline on Final cut express.





We used the mac itself to use itunes, final cut express and any internet/safari websites. Overall it was an

exceptionally helpful computer to work with as it had a lot of technical atributes that meant it would work well with the making of the music video. however, sometimes, it would lag, meaning editing our music video was a hard objective to do in a short space of working time.



We then put the song onto final cut express. We used Final cut express to edit our filmed unedited clips from the camera together. It was an extremely good program, with use of effects, transitions, timeline, viewer box, marking in and out (this meant we could take a sample of a specified clip and mark in where we want the clip to start and finish). However, there were a lot of moments where, Final cut express did infuriate me when we were trying to edit our final product together. The reason being was because it would tell us to render every single clip every time we turned on the computer (and we had a lot of clips). So this would sometimes slow our work pattern down.



We used the canon hand held video camera to film our progressive music video. It was a very good camera, with good use of different shots. The battery was also very good as we found ourselves being able to film for hours without it running out of battery. We also used a tripod to hold the camera on. This kept our shots steady and more realistic. It was an easy camera to use and fun to get to know what would fit in the frame and what wouldn't. I learnt that steady shots used on the tripod are more likely to turn out better quality than hand held as it keeps the frame work consistent.

Updating my blog became a very important time whilst filming and editing our music video. this was because it meant we could keep a record of what we had done so far. it is a great website to record your log on. The only problem I had was sticking with it regularly. I often found myself not writing records down for weeks and coming back to it and realizing that was missing certain things out. But, I have grown to enjoy using the website and will probably use it more in my life.

We used Youtube for multiple things. Such as Uploading our Animatic story board of our music video 'Not Today' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lifh1aU1anY. We also uploaded, Question 2 of this analysis as we filmed it instead of writing it.  We used Youtube to search for intertextual bands that were like our chosen band 'Derek's Neighbour'. YouTube was a very useful site and search engine that was easy to use and access.



I used Iphoto to edit and manipulate my pictures to make my final product of Ancillary products. It worked very well and was a great program that was quite versatile. I used different gradients and changed the sharpness of my photos of the band in a  forest for the products of the album 'Into the wild'. The effects, however, were pretty limited and this was hard as i then had to rely on color correction and use what little effect there were. In future I would rather use a program such as Adobe as there is more of a selection of effects and manipulating

Tom Bates - Evaluation Activity 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We initally did a questionnaire to establish the genre of music that we wanted to do for our music video. Our target audience were people of our age. We had a source of 10 people 5 male, 5 female. The majority of votes seemed to be for Rap/RnB, we decided against this genre as Nick put forward the suggestion of a rock group called Derek's Neighbour. I aggreed. Audience Feedback helped us to understand what the public wanted. We asked them a variety of questions about things that we wanted to put in our music video. This worked well, because myself and Nick had already come up with several ideas about what we wanted the music video to consist of. By asking our target audience these questions we could 'tick off' the ideas that were least popular. Our final idea was the most popular.

Through the use of Questionnaires, I feel we have created a music video that is Record label and public centered. We only put forward ideas if we thought that, firstly the audience would like the song, and secondly if they would like to watch the video.

Once our Ancillary Products were complete, we had a formal peer assessment of one anothers products, we recieved helpful infromation that enabled us to improve the music video. throughout the construction of our music video, we had recieved complements about our Lip synching and editing of music to image. This is because we wanted to give a naturalistic edge to our video. And I feel that we have been successful in this task. Peer assessment helped us I think, because it allowed us make our music video better. We included extra effects to our music video that we previously did not have, that made the video better, we gave a dream like effect to one of our shots that showed 'the boy next door' character to think about the girl he likes. This was a nice break from the naturalism of our piece.                  

Tom Bates - Evaluation Activity 4

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

We used Macs to help us edit our music video, on the Mac; we used the program Final Cut express, this was quite helpful, because we could trim, splice and transit clips in order. Editing on Final Cut express was quite easy at times because all the tools that you need are laid out on a pallet for you to use. Although the tools are on the side bar, if you wanted to include any effects, it was occasionally hard to find the correct transitions/ effect necessary to complete the task.

We used a Mini DV camera to capture our film; they were very easy to operate. Although these were not HD cameras, the quality of our film was still very good in my opinion. We also used a tripod to help keep all the shots steady. The panning arm was quite nice to use, as you could acquire the correct angle and pace of the pan.Using the extention arm, we adjusted the height of our shots, this worked for when I needed to shoot a high angle shot over the head of Matt. 

Final Cut Express

We also used websites like Youtube, Blogger and FotoFlexer. We initialy got   the necessary clips and music video inspirations from Youtube. We captured our information and blog work on Blogger. We also tried to create different types of font styles on FotoFlexer.   

Tom Bates - Evaluation Activity 1

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


1). This clip shows the equipment that the band uses, and shows some of the conventions that the band have included, as they are a rock band, a perfomance is seen to fit in with the forms of the genre. Also the location is established in this first clip. This clip shows the lighting of the day. We were very fortunate to have a good day for the shoot. We deliberately chose to have the band enter before the music begins, this was an intertextual reference to many rock bands. This is used because it is the expectation of the record label. As our chosen genre is Rock, we chose to use a standard perfomance using all band members.

 

2). This clip has a lyrical reference to the song. The lyrics 'you push,you pull, you try to power through' are heard, these lyrics are heard as we see the narrative established in this clip, as the boy next door character is seen to find an empty bottle of milk. We sucessfully used lip synching throughout, we made certain that lip synching and the editing of instrument playing to music was constant.This was made easy by having the band in the music video as appose to having external actors.



3). This clip is a lyrical and visual reference to the song. It also has a narrative visual relationship. On the line "traffic jams inside of my head"we can tell that this isnt really the norm and is a bit jumpy. This was done deliberately because this clip shows the state of mind of the 'boy next door', and shows his mental state. I like this shot because it gives the audience a marked contrast of forrest to urban town. It changes between the performance side of the music video and the narrative.   



4). This is a low angle shot of the lead singer Matt. It follows the conventions of the rock genre. This in partiular is an intertextual reference to the Foo Fighters' song 'Pretender', they use low angle shots to emphasise the band members and their instuments. we used it to give a nice edge to our music video, I personally think that it means they want to elevate to a higher position in the music business. We can see the natural lighting, this is a nice still I feel ,because it shows the forest contrasting against the suit.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-EU-Xwm7RY

This is a link to the song 'Pretender' by Foo Fighters.





5). This clip shows the strong narrative of our piece. I feel that this shot sums up our music video as the girl is in view but the character we empathise cant talk to her.  This is an over -the - shoulder  - shot, there is also a reverse in the music video so we can see both perspectives. I think this shot sums up the lyrics from the song quite nicely. I think we chose to use a strong narrative as this would be the criteria set by a record label of our genre.        



6). This clip is a lyrical reference to the song. It once again shows the state of mind of the "boy next door" character, this is an extreme close up of the phone. This is used to emphasise the lyrics of the song. This idea helped us to connect the performance to the narrative, this has some intertextuality to it as many bands use this technique in their videos to continually promote the band members' faces.         

7). This clip is a good shot I feel because you can see all the instruments of the band. We found this part a bit tricky because we were so focused on the editing of visuals to music, we tried to get all the instruments (and Matt) playing at once in sync. Lots of bands/artists use spilts, we chose to use ours on the instuments as appose to the artist's face. We initially tried to make an equal split of quarters but the frames were too large, so we deliberately made them all unequal in terms of shape and size. This was because we didn't want to follow the normal format of quarter frames.   

8). This still frame shows all the band members in one shot at the same time, I feel that this is a necessity in a music video, especially in a rock video, because it is here that all context about the band is formed. I think the constant theme throughout is that the band are aware that they are not a 'moody' band and are not trying to be, they want to be taken seriously but dont mind having a laugh. This is a longshot of the band. In this shot, we can see the convention of lighting, in this case it is the natural lighting of the forest. In all our shots, we deliberately decided to edit the music to the visuals in terms of the lip synching and the actual band's instrument playing, as this can make the audience believe in the music video.

9). In this shot, we see an extreme close up of Matt's mouth. As this happens he sings the lyrics "Not today", this clip is an intertextual reference to a few rock songs, but we chose one similar to that of the song 'Pretender' by Foo Fighters. We use a few extreme close ups in the music video, but I chose to use this particular one because it is the final frame of the song and I feel that it gives a pinnacle moment to the music video. In our music video, we didn't really use any SFX, this was because we wanted to keep it quite naturalistic. This is not always the expectation of a rock band's record label, but we wanted to show that we wern't tied down to a label, we wanted to express ourselves in a different way. There are only a few uses of SFX in the whole video.

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

We took stills from our music video and analyzed them in the way of how they worked with our conventions:

Here in this picture, the band performers are getting on their instruments. This aspect that we got out of this convention was mise- en scene and costume. We see in this still image that it conveys all of these aspects. In all band music videos, it is vital to have the members of the band playing their instruments along with the music soundtrack if the genre is a 'performance', Even if there is a hybrid of that and a narrative genre. For example Maroon 5's 'She Will Be Loved'. In this song there is a love story intertwined with a performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIjVuRTm-dc

She will be loved



In this still image, There is relationship of the lyrics to the narrative/visuals. The lyrics of the song are "you push, you pull, you try to power through". In the video, Tom goes up to the fridge and pulls open the door to get some milk. We also used editing on final cut express to cut the clip into 4 different parts where they would be a very short black out in time with the singing in the song. Here it is a very obvious convention of David Goodwin's: 'There is relationship between lyrics and visuals' and 'There is relationship between music and visuals.'





This picture here is an example and aspect of our camerawork and editing- shot types, angles, movement; sfx and transitions. Here, you can see a low angle of Matt playing his guitar and singing. We contrasted this shot with a high angle shot next time Matt is showed on the performance genre half of the video. The low angle shot shows to the watcher of the video that Matt is the dominant character in the frame, telling the story and giving the audience the message of 'Procrastination'. A music video that influenced this code of swapping round between High and low angle shots is Foo Fighter's 'The Pretender'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjQ9tuuTJQ

The Pretender






This still image's convention is an example of the lyrics relating to the visuals. In this frame, there is a traffic light. the lyrics at this point sing "Traffic Jam inside of my head". There is also the convention of effects and editing as in the shot there is a blur and the traffic jam becomes out of focus and splits into two. This connotes it being inside the narrators head. The message of the traffic light being red  is a very particular and significant connotation. This is of being static in life and staying in one place, not moving on.

  

Setting/ location was the aspect that I am considering in this freeze frame. Our narrative side of our video took place in very natural locations. Such as a house, a street and a co-op. We used the co op to challenge the forms of conventions of real music videos. The settings in the performance side of the music video is set in a woodland area which is very contrasting to the narrative side. This was the effect we wanted to create. This picture also shows and explains our genre of music and how it is defined, being a typical love song. It shows tom walking away from the girl that he likes.

This still frame is an image from our music video where Tom gets a text and opens up his phone. On the phone it says "Could be down to why I protect my heart!" This picture is an example of the convention 'Relationship of lyrics to the narrative/visuals'. This was an idea which Tom and I thought would work very well as it is intertwining the performance with the Narrative. The mobile phone also an example of a day to day object that our target audience, young teenagers to young adults (15- 25).

This freeze frame is an example of two conventions; One is of our editing and effects. What we did in this clip was split our four different frames in to four equal parts. We realized that this didn't fit into the overall frame so we decided to crop them to make them fit in an uneven way. The convention of 'Relationship of music to visuals' was also used as we used and edited the sound/music with the image as heard on the music video itself. 

In this freeze frame we wanted to focus on the convention of lighting in our music video. As you can see, we had good weather for the recording creating natural light for the performance. The natural light worked well in our filming as it cascaded through the trees and branches reflecting off some some instruments. This created a great convention as the aspect of lighting came through our music video. Again this frame also shows the mise-en-scene convention of our location in the woods and us having formal suits on creating a contrast of status. 2 bands that has influenced us with these two codes were The Beatles, with the band's suits. For example, 'Help'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7JjJJZi1Q

The second band/Music video that influenced us with the location and formal wear juxtaposed was Biffy Clyro's 'Folding Stars'. Because our genre of music was contemporary rock, we used a lot of band footage as well as a storyline. The use of suits worn by the band was another convention as it was very contrasting idea- wearing suits in a forest. This is because it emphasizes wealth and capitalism in a natural environment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNEFkg8B2oM

Folding Stars

This freeze frame here is Matt singing the final words "Not Today" into the microphone. The actual frame itself was a convention of camerawork and shot types, as it is an extreme close ups of Matt's mouth singing the final words of the song. As well as the aspect of Camerawork, I used this freeze frame to portray a convention of  intertextuality or influence of other music videos. The music video we are comparing it to is 'Foo Fighters' 'Best of you'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW15k6zDorc&feature=fvw

Best of you

Publish Post



The day of filming...

It was a long day of filming on the 1st of November. We got up at 9.00 am, Tom got to the Veira household at 9.30. We packed up all of our instruments consisting of: Electric guitar, Electric bass, Drum kit, Drum sticks, Microphone stands, Microphones, Wires, Leads and Amplifiers (It took a lot of time). We then packed all of this equipment into our small Toyota Auris (This took even more time). We decided to take more than one trip to our location, The Whitmoore common in the woods,  Which Matt (our designated driver) reluctantly agreed to.






This is the Whitmoore Common. This was our location where we did our performance genre of the music video. It worked superbly as we had a lot of space to work with.






Once me and Tom arrived with the drum kit we unpacked it and carried it over to our filming location. thankfully there was a bridge just across from where it was so we didn't have to carry the equipment for too long. Once we set up the drum kit, we got flyers that had made the day before and posted them through peoples post box. When we went there a few weeks earlier to look at the location, we noticed
that there were houses about quarter of a mile a way from our filming position. So on the actual day of filming the flyers said this: "Dear Resident, As part of our College Media project, we will be filming a musical band playing in the woods today (1st November). We do hope this will not disturb you in any way as the band are miming to a recording and it will be only drums that will be heard. Hopefully this will not interfere with your daily routines as it will be on the other side of the railway bridge. Thank you for understanding and hope you have a good day.  Nick and Tom, The filming team." 

We then got to work setting up where the camera would be and setting up the drum kit to be in shot.



Once Matt and Dan arrived with the rest of the instruments and equipment we set them up while they got changed into their suits. We also positioned the camera to fit in all of the instruments in the camera's frame.



We set the Electric Guitar and the Bass guitar up one by one...














...and kept them close together to fit in the frame
while Matt and Dan rehearsed the song.











We also positioned the camera to fit in all of the instruments in the camera's frame.












We then started to film our Music Video...

 

Tom and I decided that it would be safe to go through the song a number of times. We took one overall shot of the whole song with the whole band in the frame. This was so we could refer back to this recording during editing just in case we missed out any individual shots. We did this shot twice as we thought it would be useful to have a back up just in case the first shot was out of time. The second shot actually turned out better than the first one.

During filming...

What worked?


What I feel helped us keep our lip and instrument syncing well sunk. This was because of the use of playback from our speakers. We didn't just use any old CD player or small speakers but we used a Bose Ipod dock system which was very loud so in terms of playing in time with the music, we had it all planned out.



What Didn't work?



Being next to a train track was very unhelpful at times as when it was going past it would be too loud over our speakers and would distract the band. Whenever this happened we would restart the clip again. Dog walkers were not a problem but actual dogs themselves were more of a dilemma. This was because they would run through our shots (stupid dogs).




How was the weather?


The weather was actually useful as it was mostly sunny creating the great colour effect through the trees and the reflection of the sun pushing through the branches and reaching the band. At certain points in the day, there was a slight drizzle of rain which, having a lot of expensive instruments and equipment, was very risky. However having the Toyota Auris near by was a very useful object as we could shove our instruments in there until it stopped raining. It was also helpful having windy weather as it created a nice effect of blowing the leaves off the trees and around the ground.




What about the locals?


Tom and I were very worried about what the general public may think about young men with instruments playing too loudly in a forest where they would be walking their dogs. However, many dog walkers and walkers came up to us when we weren't filming and asked us what we were doing. We told them it was for a media project A2's- filming a music video from an unsigned band. They then asked us about the band and who we were. Some even said they liked the music being played from our speakers. One man came over to our camera and started talking to us about the use of different shots and what they would connote for the video. It turned out that he was involved in the media business, especially with using professional cameras and filming local movies- What a really nice guy!


Using a storyboard


On the day of filming our performance we used our storyboard to see what shot needed to be used where. This was very helpful but up to a certain extent. For example, when we had to find out what shot went where in the filming, we didn't have some lyrics from the song matching up to our shots. We the realized that we ad just put our animatic up on YouTube. The only problem was- How did we get YouTube working in the middle of the forest? Well... Matt (lead vocals and guitar) had just recently bought the new Iphone 4. One of the best uses for this was using the phone's 4G. This meaning you can connect to the internet pretty much anywhere. So to solve the problem of finding out which clips went where in the song, we watched our recent animatic on YouTube and used it, as well as the storyboard, to piece our performance side of the music video together.

3 Bands within the same genre as Derek's Neighbour- analysis

Biffy Clyro

Biffy Clyro have been the biggest inspiration to us both (Tom and Nick) as they are very much around the same sort of genre as Derek's Neighbour. Biffy Clyro also appeal to a wide range of listeners, which Derek's Neighbour tries to achieve. Their wide range starts at young teenagers and ends at adults. We needed to think about this when making our music video as it means that a wide variety of ages  will enjoy watching and listening to it. Like Derek's Neighbour, Biffy Clyro are a three piece band, Guitar, bass and drums which is another reason why we picked them.

 
Biffy Clyro have changed they're genre since they're first album. Infinity Land which was a lot heavier than their previous albums included such songs like 'There's no such thing as a jaggy snake'. This song could almost be classed as a metal song as there is the use of screaming from lead singer, Simon Neil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHOsFXqZ0fM







Later on,  Biffy Clyro wrote less heavy songs, still staying in the genre of rock, but focusing more on the epic rock genre. For example in their second to last album 'Puzzle' the song 'Folding Stars' is rocky but is also easy listening. You can hear the lyrics of the song and they tell a story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNEFkg8B2oM&ob=av2n

The song that sounds most like Derek's Neighbour's 'Not Today' is Biffy Clyro's 'Bubbles' from their latest album 'Only Revolutions'. This is because of the structure of the song. It is verse, chorus, verse, chorus, breakdown and then a big outro. The genre, rhythm and feel of the song is pretty much identical to each other. The feeling of repetition reinforces the message of time passing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxUb9Yzr1sE

Keane

Keane have been helpful to us (Tom and Nick) as they have sounded most like the band in our song 'Not Today' by Derek's Neighbour- more than Biffy Clyro. Keane's genre is based more around the pop/rock genre with catchy and memorable melodies in their songs. Keane's target audience is more for teenage girls and boys. Looking at their live concerts you see that their audience is mainly made up of females more than males, so Keane could also be classed as a boy band. Like Derek's Neighbour and Biffy Clyro, Keane are also a trio. Bass, piano and drums (sometimes guitar)

The song that sounds most like Derek's Neighbour's 'Not Today' is 'Somewhere only we know'. This is because, like Biffy Clyro, the structure is very similar to 'Not Today' and 'Bubbles'- verse, chorus, verse, chorus, breakdown and then a big outro. Also the genre, rhythm and feel of the song is very similar to each other. This song 'Somewhere only we know' came from their album Hopes and Fears.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oextk-If8HQ&ob=av3e

Kings Of Leon

Kings Of Leon is the last band with the same sort of genre as Derek's Neighbour. Because they have been around for a while, they have a larger target audience than Biffy Clyro or Keane going into mid 20's. Kings Of Leon's genre is alternative rock. This is normally the sort of rock that is very laid back and easy listening- very much like Derek's Neighbour's genre. Unlike Derek's Neighbour, Biffy Clyro and Keane, Kings of Leon are a 4 piece band. This does thicken out the sound from the band itself.

Kings of Leon's songs in the charts that are played on the radio normally turn out larger-than-life. Their songs will sometimes have a hook that a wide variety of listeners will sing and recognise as Kings of Leon. Two examples of this are from Kings of Leons' 2nd to last album, Only by Night.
-The first song is 'Sex on fire' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94RNp7veIJE&ob=av3n.
 The words "Sex is on fire" (although explicit) become catchy and well known. During its time in the charts, the lyrics of this song became very iconic and something that people were singing everyday.
-The second song is 'Use Somebody' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWhairF_DS8&ob=av2n. Here in the chorus, the voices singing in the background is a melody that everyone sings. It becomes a melodic phrase that reminds everybody of the band.



We (Nick and Tom) hope you have enjoyed reading this post about 3 bands withen the same genre as Derek's Neighbour- analysis.

More to come. x