Magazine Advert Research

Magazine Advert Construction

Final Cut Construction

Constructing the final cut of our music video was the longest part of the whole process, once we had done our filming we took all of the footage to our computer and looked through it all, we organised it and named all of the shots that we wanted to use and this was a long process which took us about 3 hours. Once we had finally decided what shots we were going to use we imported them into Final Cut Express so that we could edit our final music video.

 The first shots that we put in were the verses, this is because we wanted the verses to have a lot of shots of the whole band so that you could see them all contributing and you could see the lead singer miming accurately to the words. We didn't want to just have one shot of the band throughout the whole of the verse so we also put in close ups of the guitar and the drums to make it more interesting. When we found it hard to fill a part of the song we left it blank, like shown above, this is so that we could get as much done of the video as we could then we could go back to the blank parts later and fill them in with appropriate shots that would fit in.

 A really tedious part of the editing process was waiting for the shots to render, this really slowed down the whole video making because we would have to wait for 5 minutes per shot usually, as well as this, if you rendered a shot, then decided to make it a tiny bit longer or put a slow motion effect on it would would have to AGAIN wait for it to render, this meant that we were spending about 6-7 minutes per shot making sure it was perfectly placed in the sequence.

 Another part of the process that we found difficult and time consuming was the testing of shots, we could see exactly how the shot would look against the song until we actually put it in final cut and placed it, it was only then that we started noticing things in the background like doors so we would have to either delete that shot or make it short, if the lip syncing was even a second off then it was really difficult to edit it into the song so when filming we had to make sure it was perfect and if it wasn't then we re-shot, we ensured that out lead singer knew the words and wrote them on a white board and put it behind the camera just in case he needed prompting, I think that it is for this reason that the lip syncing in our final cut is so much better than what was in our rough cut.

 Once we got about half way through making our video, we decided to put in the ending before finishing it, this is because we could then see how our video was going to end so we could build a climax at the end of our video leading up to the finale so we planned what shots we were going to use accordingly.



Once we had done the verses and put in the ending we filled in the chorus', we wanted to feature the majority of our close ups in the chorus' because we feel like that is when our song was the most exciting so we wanted to use the close ups to emphasise this so we used close ups if the lead singer, guitar being played and the drums being played, when editing we made sure that the instruments fitted in well with the song and looked like they were actually being played so that our music video would look more authentic.


 Once we had finally finished our music video we converted it using quick time conversion, we did this so that our music video would be in a format that could be uploaded to Youtube and then put on our blog as opposed to just posting a link, converting our music video took a really long time, about an hour, so when it was done we were anxious to just put it on Youtube and get it posted onto our blog.


The next, and final step was to upload our video to Youtube, this as well took a really long time and we had a few moments when we thought that it just wasn't going to work and we would have to find another way to put it on our blog, however, thankfully it eventually uploaded and we were able to get the embed code and post it on our blog.

Font Options

Below is a link to a video showing how I went about looking for the font that we were going to use throughout our ancillary task...



Final Ancillary Task

These are the final four panels for our album cover, we wanted the house style to be sources of light because the album is called 'Torches'

Poster by Faye Rodgers

Evaluation question 1

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

For our media coursework my group decided to create a music video and a digipak and magazine advert. We chose this because we felt as though it was the option that we could achieve the most in, creating a game or a teaser trailer didnt really appeal to us because we are interested in music and the way that music is presented in the media. Before starting our coursework, we researched a lot of music videos like Eminem's 'Stan' and Geri Halliwells 'Its Raining Men'. This research allowed us to analyse and find the conventions that exist in music videos. As well as this, we looked at Andrew Goodwins novel 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory', looking at this novel allowed us to identify and make a list of all of the conventions of music videos. After looking at video's by Eminem and Geri Halliwell and identifying the conventions, we moved on to looking at videos that existed in the genre that our song choice was from, I looked at a video by the Foo Fighters and also Queen and Arctic Monkeys, doing this allowed us to take the list of conventions, and see how they were developed in the videos from our genre.

A convention that we thought it was especially important to maintain was the use of close up shots in our music video, we used a lot of close ups of our lead singer; it is conventional for the lead singer/front man of the band to be flattered by the camera, we also featured some close ups of our guitar player because he sings in the chorus but for the drummer and the guitarist we mainly tried to feature close ups of their instruments instead because that focuses on their specific talent, much like getting a close up of the lead singer focuses on the talent that he brings to the band.

The close ups of the lead singer that we used were mainly featured during the chorus', this highlights the importance of the chorus because it brings the story of the lyrics together. It is also the chorus of most music videos that a lot of the close ups are featured because its when the song reaches its climax usually. There is a lot of demand from record companies for a lot of close ups of the lead singer so we tried to follow this. The use of this kind of close ups is used a lot in the music videos that we looked at in our previous research, Dave Grohl is flattered by the camera in the Foo Fighters music video that I looked at but most importantly, the close ups that I saw of Alex Turner in the Arctic Monkeys videos is what gave me the inspiration for the close ups of Tom in our music video.

 

close up of tom from Paige French on Vimeo.

     

If I look back at my planning, I see the shots from other music videos that we wanted to take inspiration from, for example we wanted a similar shot to this close up from the killers music video 'are we human' and we achieved this, as well as this, we wanted a close up of the guitar like this shot from an Arctic monkeys video which we also achieved, the fact that we have shots in our video that are similar to those in videos that exist in the real media world gives us confidence in the success of our music video.

A convention that we challenged was the use of performance and narrative, a lot of music videos often have a mix of performance and narrative to break up the video and make it more interesting, however we challenged this convention and made the whole of our video performance based because we wanted to give our target audience an idea of what it would be like to go and see the band perform live. However, in our rough cut we followed the convention by adding a bit of narrative in the middle of the video, although a lot of people that we showed our rough cut to actually like the element of the narrative because "it broke the video up" we decided not to put it into our final cut because we think that it made the video not really make sense and didnt look like a gig.

However, we got the idea to make the whole video performance based from watching the video for 'Switchblade Smiles' By Kasabian...

 This video is all performance based which means that our music video would still be successful in the real media world, this video has had major success with over 2 million views on youtube and there is nothing to break up the performance and the narrative so we decided not to either.

We wanted the lead singer of our music video to be active and as though he was actually enjoying being a part of the band, we looked at some shots of Serge in the Switchblade Smiles video and compared them to some of the shots that we have of Tom in our video and it shows that we have created shots that could exist in the real media world.

Another convention of music video's, is that the tempo of the track is used to drive the editing, our music video does this by changing shot when a drum beat is heard or a guitar strum, this contributes towards the effectiveness of the continuity editing. This is also applied to when the track slows down, when it slowed down we put the footage into slow motion to emphasise this.

looking back at my research of the conventions of music videos I see that there is often a relationship between the music and the visuals in a music video. Our video develops this convention firstly by using shots that illustrate this relationship, for example, when a guitar strum is heard, our video cuts to a shot of a guitar, and similarly to this, when a drum beat can distinctly be heard, it cuts to a close up of the drums. This is done in all music videos so that the transition between shots is smooth and flatters the music, for example, in the Kasabian video for 'Fire'

We used medium long shots in our music video when we wanted the whole band to be seen, we did this usually in the verses because you could then see each band member in  their element, you could see that the singer was singing and the drummer and guitarist were playing their instruments and we think that this made the video look authentic because it actually looked like they were performing. Medium shots are used a lot in narrative based videos because there is often a story and the whole frame needs to be seen to allow the audience to see everything, we used it so that the whole band could be seen working together.

Before starting our ancillary task we looked at other album covers from bands in our genre, I looked at the covers of CD's that I had at home like Bombay Bicycle Club and Vampire Weekend because they have a similar sound to Foster the People, I also looked at covers from Two Door Cinema Club and Arctic Monkeys online to see what the artwork was like and how it linked with the name of the album, from this we could plan our artwork accordingly to make sure that it looked authentic and appealed to our target audience.

Our ancillary task develops the forms and conventions of album covers by using artwork as opposed to a picture of the band, this is often the case with bands' albums which is why we did it. The theme of the images that are featured on our album cover is 'humans as sources of light' we showed this by replacing human body parts with sources of light like a bulb or a flame, this idea was inspired by the Two door cinema club cover for the album beacon. The theme of our ancillary task is also closely linked with the name of the album, torches.

Our back cover also uses conventions by having a barcode and the website of the band which is featured on most albums. We maintained a house style throughout our ancillary tasks; we used the same font, kept the font as the same colour, had the same background colour and kept and ongoing theme in all of the images that we used for the cover and the poster. Our album cover is conventional of indie bands' cover because of the simple colours that are used as well as the clothing that our model wears. Here you can see the similarities that exist between our back cover, and a cover that exists in the real media world - the track list for an album by The XX.
 
When creating our magazine advert, there are several conventions that we wanted to follow, we had to ensure that we had the bands website on the advert, we wanted to have ratings from music publications, have the central focus of the advert be the picture - so that the audience would be able to recognise the cover of the album if they decided to buy it - and to have links to the bands Facebook and Twitter. We feel as though we followed these conventions well and that our magazine advert would look authentic when displayed in a real magazine publication. Similarly to all of these adverts displayed, we have featured the artists name and the name of the album on our poster and we have shown when it is released, we have also featured the bands website which is featured on all of these real adverts.

Meet Our Actors

Tom Mcmahon  

Tom is our Lead singer, front man and keyboard player...you may notice him from our rough cut, he was the drummer!

Matt Dickinson 

Matt is our new drummer...

 

Tom Hammond 

Finally, Tom (#2) is our guitar player and only member of the band from our rough cut that has the same role! 

Album Cover Construction

This is the raw photograph that we have taken for the front cover of our album, we knew that we wanted to cut around the outline of our model - using the magnetic tool - and put her on a completely different background so we didnt worry too much about the surrounding area of the photo. We chose this outfit for our model because we thought that the simple black and white colours would not distract attention from the main feature of the photograph which is the lightbulb head.


After cutting out our model and placing her on a different background (a temporary background which allowed us to focus on getting the image of the person just right) we added an effect which made the photograph look as though it was painted, we rubbed out her head and replaced it with a picture of a lightbulb which we also added the effect to. We hope that this effect makes the image look as though it was painted which would add more of an artistic element to it, and seeing as a lot of album covers feature artwork we hope that it makes it look authentic. We replaced our models head with a lightbulb to compliment the title of the album which is 'torches,' we plan to carry on this theme throughout our other three panels and feature different photographs of different sources of light

 We experimented with a variety of different effects to see which would look best on our picture, and when we settled on the 'paint daubs' effect we tried our different strengths to see which would look the most effective. We didnt like the strenght that is shown here because we think it takes the 'look like its painted' element away and you lose a lot of the details of the photo so we lowered the strentgth.

 We changed the background to a simple beige colour and then added a border so that when we moved the overall image onto the black background, there would be a barrier between the two squares. We first tried the border in white but when we put the whole image onto the black background you couldnt really see it very well so we changed the colour of it to burgandy.

Once we changed the colour of the border, we linked all of the layers together and moved the image onto a black background and centered it, we then added the writing onto our cover, the name of the band at the top and the title of the album at the bottom. Luckily, when we went onto the website 'dafont.com' looking for a font and we found a font called pumped up kicks, so obviously we used it because it is exactly what we need to make our cover look authentic.

If we compare the final front cover of our album to the flat plan that we produced, you can see that we have stayed true to our plan and they look exactly alike. The flat plan has helped us figure out what we were going to do which made actually putting the cover together easier and quicker than it would have been without the flat plan.



Inside Left Cover...

This is the raw photo that we have used for our inside left cover, using the magnetic tool I cut around the hand so that I could transfer it onto a black background, the aim of this picture is to follow the theme of humans as sources of light, not literally but metaphorically, we want to add artificial light to different body parts so that if compliments the name of the album.

Once I transferred the image of the hand onto the black background, I added an effect that would make the image look like it was drawn, the effect was called 'rough pastels,' I made the strength of this effect quite high so that it can be seen easily that it is supposed to look drawn, I centered the image in the frame so that it is the main attraction of the picture.

Next I used the magnetic tool again to cut round the flame of this photograph that I took, once I had done that I added the same effect that I had put on the picture of the hand so that the flame would look as though it was drawn aswell, I then transferred the image onto the file with the hand and positioned it on top of the index finger so that it would look like there was a flame coming out of the hand.

Once we had added the flame onto the finger all we had to do was position it and add a drop shadow so that it looked like it was actually coming out of the finger. I added a film grain effect to the background of the picture because the flat black made the whole image look like it had been edited where as the slight effect to the background makes it look more authentic and like it could exist in the real media world.




Back Cover... 

  To create the back cover for our album I simply got a black background on Photoshop and used the text tool to add the track list onto the background. I chose to do the writing in white so that it would compliment the background and because the writing on the other panels of the album is also white so this reinforces the house style of it. I also used an image of a barcode and put it in the bottom left hand corner to make it look authentic. As well as this, i used the text tool again to write the Foster the People website and put it at the bottom of the case, this is conventional of album covers; the majority of them feature this. The font that we used was the 'Pumped Up Kicks' font, we used this because it is the same font that we have featured on the cover of the album.

I used this logo of 'Star Time Entertainment' and put it next to the barcode at the bottom of the cover. This makes the overall image look like it could exist in the real media world because it has the logo of the publisher. Without having a logo on the cover it would take away the professional element that we have aimed to achieve when creating our digipak.
 






 Creating the spine of the cover was actually quite easy, all we needed was a black column that we could add the band name and the album name to as well as the catalogue number.

Final Cut Feedback

On Friday, we showed our video to our media class in order to gain some feedback which would evidently help us to improve our Final Cut even further. Showing it to our media class meant that we got the perspective of a media student so they would be able to notice more mistakes such as errors in continuity editing, as well as this, we are going to show the video to non-media students and see how the feedback differs

A lot of the feedback that we got generally said that we need to focus on our continuity editing, and make some of the shots a bit shorter because there wasn't a huge variety of angles and camera shots, we plan to change the editing and put some more shots in to make it look more authentic as well as making sure that is editing is continuous and the transition between shots is smooth.

As well as getting feedback from our classmates, we also got feedback and comments from our teacher, this allowed us to imrpove our work even further because we can combine the feedback from all three outlets and hopefully come out with a product that looks authentic and improved.

Album Cover Plan

This is a plan for the cover of our album that I have drawn. The album is called Torches so I wanted to make the picture thats on the cover relevant to this title but also want it to look artistic and original. We plan to take a picture of my friend, Laura Bennett, in designer shoes, wearing nice clothes, however, using photoshop we are going to replace her head with a lit lightbulb. I was inspired by this idea when looking at the 'Beacon' cover by Two Door Cinema Club. I plan to have the background of the cover black, and then place the picture in a square in the middle of the cover. The name of the band will then be printed above the picture in either orange or white and underneath the picture will be the title of the album in the same font and colour. Like most bands' albums, our album cover will not feature a photograph of the band on the front, instead we want it to feature artwork, this also applies to the rest of the CD elements.

This is my drawing/plan for the back of the case, like the front, the background will be black and the colour/font of the writing will be the same of that which is featured on the front of the album, which creates a house style. At the bottom of the tracklist will be a barcode - obviously for purchasing the album. We also need to feature the logo for the publisher of the music and we will also write the foster the people website at the bottom of the back cover. The back of a CD case has less detail that what is on the front, this is because its purpose is to simply show the audience what songs are featured on the CD, where as the front cover of the album needs to entice the potential buyer into looking at the CD and turning into a buyer.

This is what the spine of the album will look like, it is perhaps the simplest element of the case that we have to create; the majority of CD's only have the name of the band/artist on the spine as well as the catalogue number at the bottom of the spine. Sometimes the name of the album is also featured on it - this is because when the CD's are stacked up, people can easily look down the CD's and see which album is which because it is marked on the spine.





Our actual CD is going to have a print on it that makes it look like a vinyl, I like this idea because it goes with the genre of music that the album belongs to; vinyl's are not sold in many places but the clothes shop Urban Outfitters sells vinyls of not only old records, but new albums aswell for display - they sell frames with them so that the vinyls can be framed and put on the wall. It is for this reason that we have chosen to make our CD looklike a vinyl; our target audience shops in urban outfitters and so would also be the target audience for our album.


Final Cut

Music Magazine Research

Firstly, I am going to do some research on NME magazine, the New Musical Express has featured countless iconic bands and artists on its cover over the years and I am going to look at how the bands are portrayed, what coverlines are used which makes the potential buyer want to read the article and what kind of photography is used. One thing that I noticed about NME, is that when it features a band on its cover, it tends to photograph only the members of the band that are recognised and the most famous.

On this cover of NME, all members of the Foo Fighters are featured in the photograph, however the lead singer, Dave Grohl, is featured in the foreground and allowed more space than the other members which establishes him as the front man. All of the members are featured on the cover because of the history of the band, they are infamous for having changed not only the number of members but firing and hiring new members on a regular occasion, the members that are on this cover are established as the final Foo Fighters group and have been this specific band for years, it is for this reason that they are all featured on the cover. The coverlines on the magazine make references to Grohl's previous band, Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, this would intrigue the reader about what Grohl would say about the late Cobain.

similarly to the Foo Fighters cover, all of the members of The Wombats are featured on this NME cover. Because there are only three members in the band, it is easy for them to be remembered and established as the whole band, however, also like the Foo Fighters cover, the lead singer of the band is given the central space in the photograph. The coverlines are illustrated by the picture, "why britains gone silly for the lords of the indie dancefloor," the photograph shows this by having a 'silly' picture to show that the band is spreading their infectious immaturity through their music.



Unlike the last two covers, this Oasis cover follows the conventions of most magazine covers that feature bands. NME have photographed the two members of the band that are recognised by the public and featured just them as opposed to featuring the whole band in the photograph. This would suggest to the reader that the interview is going to centre around the Gallagher's specfically as opposed to the whole band; the other members arent there to contribute to the discussion. The Gallagher brothers gained a lot of media attention for their antics on stage, the arguments they had and their famous disputes, it is also for this reason that they have been chosen to feature on the cover; people are more likely to pick up the magazine if they recognise the people on the cover and are interested in the news that surrounds them.

Similarly to the Oasis cover, this Kasabian cover also has the two easily recognised members of the band on the front. Like all of the covers that I have looked at, the singer is given the foreground space to establish him as the front man. Although Serge Pizzorno isnt the singer or  the front man of the band, he is easily recognised by the public because he writes all of the songs and is recognised for his stage presence. The coverlines on the magazine and the profanity that is used "little sh*ts" establishes them as a rock band, similarly to the way that profanity is used in the coverlines of the Oasis magazine cover.





 As well as looking at the covers of the New Musical Express, I am going to look at some covers of Q magazine, more so than the magazine NME, Q magazine tends to feature only the front man of bands on its cover almost all the time. On this cover featuring the Foo Fighters, the main picture is of Dave Grohl, it is only at a closer look that you see the rest of the band - featured really small - in the front man's mouth.
The coverlines of this particular cover are red because this compliments the image of the fire and adds more to the element of rock and roll about the page.

Similarly to the Foo FIghters cover that we just looked at, the lead singer and front man of the band Muse - Matt Bellamy -  is the only member of the band that is actually photographed for the front cover of the magazine. This is because it is the front man of the band that is the person that is recognised the most by the public, not only this, but Matt Bellamy is married to Kate Hudson, and their relationship is high profile, this means that people who dont even know the band, but might be fans of Hudson, may be attracted to buying the magazine to read the interview.