Based on Our Research Into Immediate Media Products

We had an idea as to which brief we wanted to do before we started the research however after carrying out some research it has cemented our choice of choosing to do a music video.

The group I am working with is two girls; Olivia and Annie. We are all confident in producing our blogs and carrying out planning and research. We are also all confident in voicing our opinions and this has led to us coming up with different ideas and constantly adding bits to make the idea better. Olivia is especially good at creating original ideas and Annie is good at filming and making sure to include different angles and shots. I feel I am quite good at organising and adding detail into the ideas. However, the main area we will struggle is when it comes to editing the footage together as nobody is completely confident with this and therefore we will try hard to make our idea even better so it makes up for the lack of editing skill. 

This year all of the groups ultimate aim is to improve on our piece of work we created last year as we feel we have learnt a lot of skills throughout the process and we think we have picked up understanding of what needs to be done in order to create a higher standard piece of work through listening to our audience feedback. We also aim to improve our editing skills this year as last year we all felt we all had a lot of help from other groups and our teachers. However we would like to keep the same the amount of effort that we put into our work and the level of detail we had in our blog posts. 

Research Into Existing Music Videos - Student Made

Wings By Birdy A2 Media Video

This student made music video uses a mixture of both lip syncing and a linear narrative, there is an equal amount of both. This music video is one that stood out throughout our research. The main character is a young girl and she is a strong focus for the media product and this allows us to engage with the video and therefore allowing the emotional aspect of the video to come through. There is no dialogue at all throughout the video and I believe that it isn't needed in this video as it would distract from the emotional connection you get with the video. There are also no credits, which I also believe is a suitable choice. There are multiple locations, three, used between the live performance and the narrative but they all have a link to nature and isolation. 

Wake Up A2 Media Video

Unlike the first music video this media product doesn't include any lip syncing whatsoever but it contains a linear narrative throughout. There are also credits in this music video and they fit in very well at the start of the music video with the modern design and tempo. Another interesting and very good aspect of this music video is that there is only one character used throughout. There is a lot of point of view shots in this video which allow us to feel as if we are going through the same experiences as the character, however these are well complemented by different camera angles and shots to show the skill of the producer/director. There is no dialogue which is quite common within music videos. There are many different locations used throughout two different countries which I haven't seen in any other music video.

See You Again Media Video

The majority of the music video is lip synced and this is presented through narrative and live performance. There are two main characters in this video and the focus of the video is on them throughout. The narrative allows us to feel a connection with the music video and the live performance seems to be included to control the tempo and represent the sadder side of the song and that is why it is presented in black and white. There are no credits or dialogue in the video which seems aprropriate. A number of locations are used throughout but the two more prominent ones are a school setting and the woods. 

Research Into Existing Music Videos - Professional

Artic Monkeys - Why'd You Only Call Me WHen You're High?

This music video has a sole focus on the narrative and therefore there is no lip syncing from the band throughout the video, which is fairly uncommon in music videos. The video also has a main focus on one character with smaller influences from other characters and this makes it very similar to our music video idea. There is dialogue at the start of the video and then the song starts to play and then they have included the rest of the dialogue through text talk, which is a creative idea that we could include in our music video. There are multiple locations used, three, a bar, a house and a suburban area. There are no credits used throughout the music video.

Charlie Puth - We Don't Talk Anymore

Once again this video is all narrative and therefore there is no lip-syncing involved throughout the video. The video mainly revolves around two main characters and the storyline is based around the fact that they have recently broken up. The video doesn't include any dialogue and therefore there are just lyrics in this particular video. There are numerous locations which are all in the city of New York, including bars and city streets. There are two sets of credits in this video; one at the beginning and one at the end through the form of texting and this creates a link throughout the whole video.

Twenty One Pilots- Ride

After doing two videos where the videos revolve around a narrative I wanted to find one with more live performance and lip syncing, like this video. There is still a little bit of narrative included in the video where the band are in the woods and then they change their location at the end of the video; these locations are the woods and then the studio. There are two main characters in this video and they are the actual band members. There is also no dialogue in the video to go alongside the lyrics. 

A2 Coursework Brief

We were given two briefs by our media studies teacher; one was to make a short film lasting around 5 minutes in length as well as making a film poster and a film review to go in a magazine. The other choice was to make a music video as well as a digipack and a magazine advertisement for the digipack (promotion pack for an album).

My group (myself, Olivia and Annie) have decided to make a music video as it is something that we were all more interested in and passionate about and therefore felt that we could produce better work with the music video than a short film. We are all going to use the feedback that we received from our preliminary tasks to try and produce a better piece of work for the final product.

PRELIMINARY: Evaluation Question 3

What have you learnt from audience feedback? 

Although we have managed to gain some audience feedback it is not as much as we would have hoped for as Richard still hasn't edited the video. However, the most important thing that we have take from our audience feedback was that people felt engaged with the video even though they hadn't heard or didn't like the song that we had done the video to. 

Initially, we got other class members to give us feedback on the footage that we had available as it was displayed on the main screen in the classroom. The main thing we took from this feedback was that they liked the different shots and angles that we had taken, they specifically liked the shots of the live band because they were up-close and detailed and his helped them engage with the video. They were also fond of the variety of shot in the car park (wide shots, tracking shots and tracking shots), they felt these shots made the video exciting and it wasn't boring at any time. They also said that they liked the techniques we had used whilst filming because it made the video feel more professional and that you could see we had spent a lot of time constructing these shots. 

We then showed our media studies teacher and he said that although he liked the video, there were a few things we could improve on, the main thing that he said was that we should have used different locations elsewhere because we limited ourselves by wanting to stay close to the area, for example he thinks we would have found a good rundown housing area (that we originally wanted) if we had branched out further and sacrificed accessibility. 

We also could have been better with time management on certain projects and aspects of the video as we feel that it became rushed towards the end of the project due to some members of the group not doing their tasks which meant others had to pick them up as well as doing their original tasks. If everyone had pulled their weight we feel that the footage could have been much better.

Also, we originally wanted to have equal shots of live performance and narrative but we have ended up with much more narrative which is something we wish we had realised at the time so we could get more shots of the band. 

Finally, we didn't actually get any good shots of the band from far away and so all the shots we had to use were close-ups of the guitars and all the lip-syncing was done in the narrative rather than the live performance, which wasn't something we had planned.

PRELIMINARY: Evaluation Question 2

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluating stage?

Construction and research 
It could have been really difficult to construct and research our media product if we didn't have the use of technology. This was because we had to try and find good locations that would fit in well with the idea we had. As a result of that we used the internet to search around for a good location and then we used a online map service to tell us how far away it was from our school so we could see the accessibility of this location, as we needed to make sure that the actors and the members of our group could get there without difficulty. We also used technology while we went to look at the locations because we used phones and a Canon 60D camera to take photos of the locations. We then transferred and downloaded these photos onto Blogger.

Planning
The planning stages of our preliminary task used a lot less technology but we still chose to use a word document to plan our locations out decided who would take on what role within the group. The majority of planning was done by having discussions with our group as we found this the most efficient way to get things done. We also made a group chat on Whatsapp so that we could keep in contact easily throughout the task and be able to communicate quickly and easily if any changes were needed to be made to a location of filming date/time. We also used a reminder system on our phones so that we would get notification to tell us what we should be doing/have done that night, this allowed us to keep on top of our workload without getting too stressed towards the end of the task.

Evaluating
We would normally use quite a lot of technology in the evaluation stage as once the video was edited it would be uploaded to an online streaming site such as YouTube so that people could watch the video online and give us feedback for it. However, because the video is still yet to be edited we have had to show our friends and family little bits of the footage that we have managed to download onto our phone in order to get any evaluation. Kate, a member of our group, used PowerPoint to answer the first of the evaluation questions. Once again, we used our Whatsapp group chat to check how individuals were getting on with their evaluations and so that we could help each other out if anyone got confused on what to put. 

PRELIMINARY: Evaluation Question 1