The Final Video

The Final Website

Here is a link to the final Website. All reasoning for the construction and style of this website can be seen in previous posts

http://benblair16.wix.com/jessyb

Final Digipak

This is the front cover of my Digipak. It is clear and simple by showing an image of the artist alongside her name and the title of the album. The idea to have the name of the song coming out of her mouth as though she is singing is influence by Kanye West's 'Good Life' video, which can be seen below.

The black and red text was chosen as they are bold colours that stand out, especially as they contrast with the pale background. This is the colourway that her name and album is written in on her website and the inside front cover of the digipak below.

The inside front cover

The CD holder.

 The red writing on the back of the digipak stands out from the light background and corresponds to the colourway on the front cover.

Evaluation Question 4

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

Research and Planning

YouTube

While in the research and planning stage of my video I used YouTube a number of times in order to help myself find and reference other existing music videos. These references can be seen in my final video from the mirroring effect used in the party scene, influenced by Jay Z & Kanye West's 'Paris' video that we found on YouTube. YouTube is extremely useful for this as it has an incredible number of songs and music videos that are available to anyone who uses it. 

iPhone

When using synaesthesia in audience research, I played them the song using the iTunes application on an iPhone via a pair of earphones. This was helpful in the construction of my music video as it allowed us to see what our target audience was interested in viewing.

Hotmail

We used Hotmail.com to email the person at EMI France responsible for giving us the permission to use the song. Without this, our video would not have been possible.

Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is a website that allows people to construct a survey and post it anywhere on the internet. We asked questions pertaining to the genre of music and what the viewers would like to see in the video, to which we had a number of responses. These were helpful in guiding us in the right direction with planning. 

Construction

GoPro HD HERO2

The GoPro HD HERO2 is a small, high definition handheld camera which we used to film the time lapse and the party scene due to its convenience. As the GoPro can be mounted on almost any surface, we mounted it on the wall in the studio where we filmed the majority of the video to create a time lapse of our video shoot. This was then used for the introduction of the song as it fit in time with the beat. There is a light that can be mounted on the GoPro's case which we used to film the party to give the feel of the film 'Project X'; this shot from the film shows the brightness of the light that was used to film at this night-time party. The easy maneuverability of this camera made it very easy for us to get all different types of shots ranging from closeups to group shots.

Adobe Premiere Pro 2

Adobe Premiere Pro 2 is the software that we used to edit our video. Although this software is somewhat dated, it still proved sufficient by providing a vast range of tools to use. The transition effects were rather simple, therefore we used common ones that would make the video look simple yet professional such as dip to black, cross fade and scroll from centre. The software, however, proved its age by shutting down every few minutes due to the size of the file we were editing, which was highly inconvenient and made the editing process very tedious. There were enough effects and filters on this version of Adobe Premiere Pro for us to make a decent looking video. We set a colour filter for one shot which allowed us to give some variation in quite similar shots. An off centre mirrored shot created the effect that the performer is standing back to back with herself, which is one of the most interesting shots in the whole video. Other than these simple effect and a few more, we did not anything particularly daring which meant that we did not have many difficulties with the software.

Canon C3000

We used the Canon C3000 camera to film our footage in the studio. This camera is very high-tech and we were only able to use it as it belonged to the owner of the studio. This camera had an incredible number of settings to use, however our limited knowledge of cameras inhibited our use of these tools and settings. We only used the white balance and zoom for this, as well as the light intake when we used to strobe light. This camera produced incredibly high quality footage, however we could not use it as it was too big a file for the school computers to process, which caused a great deal of stress and problems. 

YouTube

Once the video was edited, we uploaded it to YouTube without any problems.

Wix

Wix is a website which allows people to create their own website, and offers templates to personalise it. It is very simple as it has a toolbar that make structuring and styling the website very simple. I created a simple homepage with a few tabs on the top that send people to view tour dates, twitter, the video and the album. I was able to add a twitter feed to the website just by adding the username of the fake account I created for my artist. Wix was very helpful however it could have some more exciting tools, and could expand on the already existing tools. An example of this is the limited number of fonts available to write in and the limited number of layouts possible. 

Adobe Photoshop Pro 6

I took it upon myself to download a trial run of Adobe Photoshop Pro 6 to construct my digipak cover. I found this to be very confusing and difficult to get used to, as it is an advance piece of software. All I managed really was to create simple images of the same size of 120mm x 120mm for each of the 4 sides of the digipak. Despite the digipak being simple, it is effective. I could not find any form of word art on photoshop, which meant that I had to use rather simple fonts, however everything else was sufficient.

Evaluation

Prezi

Prezi is an excellent website that allowed me to create a slide show-like presentation in a different style, while looking incredibly professional and polished. Prezi is very simple to use, and it has a theme of moving from one point to another which shows the progression of my work. I used a template to create my presentation, and was still able to add some personalisation to it by adding new details such as new areas of information and arrows to show which information is next.  

Soundcloud

I used soundcloud to record one of my evaluation questions. It was simple to sign up and even simpler to record. No problems occurred when using soundcloud. 

Slideshare

Slideshare is another very simple tool that I used for an evaluation question. All that was needed was for me to create a PowerPoint presentation on my computer and convert it into a Slideshare presentation on the website, then upload it to my blog.

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 1 from benblair16

Artist Website Influence: Rihanna

I felt that Rihanna, the biggest female pop star in the world, would be a good person to relate my artist to and mirror her image, as that is similar to the image I am trying to create for Jessy.

On Rihanna's website, there is a tab created just for her Facebook and Twitter pages, which can be seen here:

I therefore decided that this would be a good thing to do for Jessy's website. This convergence between an artist website and twitter allows the two mediums to complement each other and create another way of publicising the artist and putting them as much in the public eye as possible. Similarly to Rihanna's website, I incorporated a Twitter tab which sends the user to a page dedicated to Jessy's social networking.

For this I had to create a false twitter account for Jessy, under the username @jessyb_official. The use of the word official in this username makes it seem as though Jessy is a real pop star who may have impersonator accounts on twitter. I even tweeted a link to the music video to and followed a number of famous people on her account, such as Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles and pop stars such as Jessie Ware, as these are the types of people an artist of Jessy's genre would follow on twitter. Furthermore, I incorporated a follow button and a tweet button so that the user could access Jessy's twitter via their own account without even leaving the website page.

GoPro HD Hero2

We have come up with the idea to use a POV shot in the party scene, to make it appear to the viewer as though they are at the party themselves. This helps us to use a variety of differing shots in our video, and will help to lure in the viewers attention. For this we decided to use a GoPro HD HERO2 handheld camera, as we already had one available to use.  The HD HERO2 can easily be mounted on walls, and for this reason we shall use it to film a time lapse shot at the beginning of our video, as it also has a time lapse setting. It will also be very convenient to film the party section with because of its practicality due to its size.

Here is a video of the HD HERO2 in action.

Audience feedback from our showing

Here are the answers to the questionnaire we handed out at the showing of our video.

We felt that a short questionnaire would give simple and concise answers, which we felt would be most helpful.

Here are the answers that we found to be constructive:

1. Was our performer fit for the music video? Why?
- Yes, she was good looking and was dressed the part. I liked the red trousers.
- Yes, I think she was perfect because of her look and the way she was dressed.
- Yes, she seemed very natural in front of the camera which is important.

2. What was one thing in particular you liked about the video?
- I really liked the was you had the point of view shot at the party, it made it seem very real
- The fact that it was a dress up party and all the cuts on the beat
- The studio was very professional
- I liked the range of different shot types in the studio scenes

3. Do you think the video fitted the house music genre?
- Yes, because of the flashing lights and dancing
- Yes, the Dj and dancing really helped
- Yes, the strobe light was really good
- Yes, you could tell the genre of the song if you were to see the video with no sounds

4. Is there anything that you didn't like about the video? Why?
- Not really no
- Nothing really noticeable
- I think you could have had the performer from the studio at the party
- It could be longer with the studio coming in again

5. Did you like the transition from the studio scene to the party scene?
If not, what didn't you like?
- Yes, it was very smooth
- It could have been done better with some blending of the two
- You could have incorporated the performer more
- I liked it

Editing the Party Scene

Once we had filmed our party scene we captured the footage on the school computers; as we used a GoPro camera for this instead of the camera we used to film in the studio, capturing this footage was far easier than with the other footage. 

The strobe lights that come on in the studio once the music starts to build up to the drop helped to set the party scene, and help the transition between the two locations look more natural and less random. We also began to alternate between shots from the party and shots from the location gradually, and this editing between locations became faster paced when the song starts to pick up pace, and eventually becomes a flicker between shots that become harder to differentiate between. This gradual movement into the party scene is effective as it builds excitement in tandem with the music.

This is our use of the mirrored shot, inspired by The Throne's 'Paris' video that I spoke about previously in my blog as inspiration for our video. This piece of editing is effective as it creates the feeling that there are more people in the room, in affect enhancing the party-like atmosphere.

This mirrored effect is continued in this shot, where it was used as the camera moves closer towards the person wearing the poncho, and eventually zooms so far into the poncho that the next shot is a close up of the poncho, and rapidly zooms outwards. This is a good way to transition between shots as it differs from some of the other techniques we used such as dip to black, cross fade and scroll out from centre.

In the party sequence, we picked up the pace of the editing and made cuts to the beat of the song. We also reverted back to this shot of the DJ every time the music got to a certain point every 8 bars, where it sounds like the synths are dropping again.



We gradually began to include shots of the performer from the studio towards the end of the song, and slowed down some of the footage to match the fade out of the song. This is to match the pace of the song and bring it to a close effectively.

Editing the footage from the studio

We ran into a problem as soon as we began the editing process, as the footage obtained using the advanced cameras that we used to film this section of our video was not compatible with Adobe Premiere Pro 2, an old version of the software, and did not play on the computer monitors. As this was the only software that was available to us, we had to convert our footage into smaller AVI files which worsened the quality. This made the footage viewable on the school computers, however the resolution was still too high which made the footage incredibly jumpy and glitchy, making it impossible to watch and edit. As a result of this we had to worsen the quality of our footage a number of times until the glitchiness was no longer such an issue, however this worsening of quality was not to the extent that the footage was no longer of a high enough standard; we were finally able to begin the editing process.

As we began to cut up and lip sync our footage, it became almost immediately became apparent to all of us that the simple cutting of shots and filters that we used to edit our AS Level thrillers was not going to be adequate for this project, as we created a flowing and cohesive video in a very short length of time. This allowed us to experiment further with our creativity and add more daring effects to our video.

We began by putting filters on the shots to give them an interesting effect by altering the colours. This will help to maintain the interest of the viewer as they are less likely to be bored by repetitive, plain studio shots due to the great variation in the images shown, despite the shots being the very similar.

 This shot was in fact rather simple to produce, as all we did was overlap a shot of the performers silhouette over an extreme close up shot of her singing the lyrics. The reason that we are able to see both images clearly is due to the opacity of the long shot being reduced. This shot is effective as we are able to see the performers body, allowing for the male gaze that is drawn in by so many music videos, while still being able to see what she is singing.

 This is a snapshot of the cross fade transition between two shots. This is simply to retain the viewers undivided attention by continuously showing new images, and interesting ways of presenting them.

This is probably the most effective editing we have produced in the first half of our video, as the two images presented on either side of the screen are from identical shots, however one is in black and white and a close up, and the other is in colour and an extreme close up. The viewer is unlikely to notice that these shots are the identical, making this an excellent way of utilising our footage and the editing tools.

Website Influence: Arctic Monkeys

Something that I definitely wanted to include in my Website was a page dedicated to Jessy's upcoming tour dates. To find an influence for how to go about this, I noticed the Arctic Monkeys website, which I had previously used to help me design the layout of my website, has a tab dedicated to gigs. The link for this is available below.

http://www.arcticmonkeys.com/gigs.php

As Wix does not allow for me to create a page as professional looking as the one used by the Arctic Monkeys, I created a page that was simple and fool proof. 

The layout keeps in theme with the rest of the website by keeping everything on a single page with no obstructions for the user. It has a list of the US tour dates that I made up for Jessy to 'perform' at, and mentions that further international tour dates are to be announced.

Filming Day 2

This was our second attempt at filming the party section of the video. We addressed the issues that occurred at the other party before going to this one, to ensure we would not come across another stumbling block. We attached a light to the GoPro camera, this meant that there would be no chance that the footage would come out too dark. Initially i was skeptical to have such a bright light shining on people at the party as I felt it would lose its authenticity, however after watching some clips of the film 'Project X' (which inspired us to film a similar party scene) it became apparent that there is a bright light shone in most of the close up shots while still looking effective.

As the camera is only small and handheld, we took turns walking around the party filming the action. At first we thought that we would just be able to film the people dancing and we would not have to intervene, however we did not get the kind of shots we were looking for. Most the time people were just socialising rather than dancing for the camera. We should have anticipated this as most people would shy away.

We decided to take a different approach by asking people to do specific actions and pay more attention to the camera. After this, we began to get much better footage. We did not plan most of the shots we used in the final edit, and this actually worked in our favour as the footage felt very authentic.

After we got some good closeups of people dancing for the camera, we filmed the shots that we had planned before. These were all very easy to capture as they were simple shots. One was of the DJ spinning his decks that we plan to repeat several times in the video; another was a very closeup shot of a pair of head phones. These shots were chosen to keep within the conventions of a house music video. We filmed another shot of a party goer drinking a shot for when the music drops, and the final shot was a point of view shot of someone leaving the party via the back door.

All in all this was highly successful as we were able to make it so by learning from our previous mistakes.

Artist Website Inspiration

The Arctic Monkeys have a layout for their website that I feel is a perfect template for any artist.

This bar at the top of the website gives the user the option to view a number of different sections of the website, each to do with something different about the band. I will use a similar bar on my website as I feel it makes it easy for the user to navigate the website and find what they are looking for. 

This is a picture of the homepage on my website, inspired by the Arctic Monkeys:

I only made a few of the buttons as I would be unable to create other pages such as a fans forum and a store as Jessy is not a real artist with fans or merchandise.

Artist Website Influences

I have looked to take inspiration from other artists websites to help me construct my own website for Jessy. Kanye West's website is interesting to look at for inspiration as it is kept very simple, even after updates. It is usually just a single page with no links to any other area of the website, consisting of his newest singles and some of the singles of the artists who are signed to his label. However, the website was recently updated to display only the music video for Tyler, the creator's new song IFHY. Despite this not being a promotion for Kanye West's own music, I think that the website is effective as it leads the user to watch the video straight away as there is nothing else to distract him/her. I will use this for Jessy's website on the video page, however I will have other sections of the website available about the album and tour dates, etc.

Here is a link to Kanye West's website:

http://kanyewest.com/    

Filming: Day 1

Our first day of filming went reasonably smoothly; we planned most of the shots we wanted to get done and added a few more unplanned ones so that we had a good amount of footage to choose from.

There were a number of things that we had to do make sure of before we started the filming:

• The performer brought with two outfits suitable for a music video
• The lighting was set up correctly (we decided to include the lights in the shot to add something different to the shots rather than just having a plain white background
• The camera was placed the right distance from the rest of the set to get the perfect shot
• We placed an X on the ground for the performer to stand on 
• The music was being played over the speakers for the performer to lip sync to
• The monitor was set up so that some of us could see the shot clearly as it was being filmed
• Set up the GoPro camera for the time lapse intro shot

We began the filming with the first shot of the performer standing, singing the introduction. This took several takes to get a successful shot as the performer had not learnt the lyrics as we had asked her too. After a while however, we got a good shot and we were able to move on as the lyrics are the same throughout the song.

We repeated that section of the song a number of times, with the performer in different positions and outfits. We shot the clip from a side view mid shot, side view extreme close up, and straight on extreme close up. We also filmed a shot of the performer sitting on a chair. All of these shots were necessary as it would be boring for the viewer to just see one angle of the performer, and there would not be much to edit. I came up with the idea for the performer to stand in front of the lights, in order to make a silhouette. This shot could be used for the few seconds after the time lapse shot and before the singing starts.

The transition shot between the studio footage and the party footage was in fact rather challenging. We had to decide how we wanted to create filler footage during the build up to the drop in the son. To do this, while maintaining excitement in the video, we turned off all of the lights in the studio simultaneously and turned on a strobe light while our performer was appropriately dancing to the build up. This adheres to the conventions of a house music party video.

The filming went reasonably smoothly, with only minor obstacles to avoid, such as setting the right speed for the strobe light to be captured well on the camera, but other than that it was very successful.

New party location

There is another party coming up in the next few weeks that we have permission to film at, however it is fancy dress. The fancy dress theme does not comply with the theme of the video, although we have made the decision to compromise and film it anyway. We have taken heed of our mistakes from the first party, and mounted a light on the GoPro camera. Hopefully this will give us better results.

Complication with our party footage

We ran into a massive stumbling block in regard to our party scene. Our deadline was fast approaching and the footage we shot at the party came out far too dark without unnatural light. We initially thought that the lights from the party would be enough to illuminate the footage but this was not the case. The entire scene needed to be filmed again.

Luckily there was another party coming up just 2 weeks later which we were able to film at.

I felt that this mistake was very avoidable as it was obvious that a dark room would not have sufficient light to get good shots. When I watched over shots from 'Project X' it is clear that there is a very bright light used to film all the closeups. The GoPro camera has a case which allows you to mount a light on it; we will use this for the next party.

Risk Assessment

There will be a number of potential risks that we must consider when filming our video. These risks are different for our two locations.

Risks in the studio:

• tripping over wires
• spilling drinks on the equipment
• not standing on the infinity wall (it will break - potentially dangerous and expensive)

We will manage these risks by setting some rules for inside the studio:

1. Be careful where you step
2. No drinks allowed near the equipment
3. No one near the infinity wall other than the performer  

Risks at the party:

• slipping on spilt drinks
• people bumping into each other
• drunk people (unlikely to be a risk) 

These risks are harder to manage as they are unpredictable, therefore all we can do is just ensure that all spillages are dealt with and to stay out of the way of other people.

Digipak Research: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

The digipak for 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' by Kanye West is very unique and interesting to take influence from when creating my own digipak.

This Digipak opens up into four sleeves, each containing something different.

This is a picture of my copy of the digipak fully opened so all the sleeves can be seen. If looked at carefully, these drawings form the name Kanye West- the name of the artist. It is clear that much thought was put into the planning and detailing of this digipak as every small area is covered by some form of art relating to the artist or the album.

When the two outer sleeves are folded inward it can also be seen that it says the title of the album on the left hand side, and the track list on the right hand side - all cleverly drawn in a similar style to the name of the artist above.

The left hand sleeve contains the album booklet containing album credits, lyrics and other pictures. The left centre sleeve contains the five interchangeable album artworks, as can be seen below.

These pieces can be slid into the sleeve, which has a small window from which the artwork that is at the front can be seen.

The two right hand sleeves are used to contain the CD and the 30 minute 'Runaway' music video DVD.

This digipak is very interesting conceptually, however I could not create something like this myself for my digipak as I do not have several items that would take up several sleeves worth of space. However, the idea for an interchangeable cover is one that I may use for inspiration.

Online survey results

We used an online survey creator called Survey Monkey to compile a survey to ask people questions about music videos in the house genre, which we then posted on Facebook and Twitter for people to see.

These are the results:

This research was not particularly successful as people did not take it seriously. However we did get some good responses

Party Location

We are intending on filming the party scene at our friends birthday party as there will be many people dancing in a small space which will give a similar effect to that of our inspiration party film 'Project X'.
For this we intend on using lots of close up shots of peoples faces and group shots of people dancing. This will help us create the right image for a house music video.
We also want to film some shots of the DJ as this is typical of a house music video. We are aware that this will be time consuming so we will take turns walking around with the GoPro throughout the evening.

GoPro Hero 2

We are using a GoPro Hero 2 camera to film both the time lapse shot and the party scene.

The GoPro has a setting which takes a picture every few seconds (you can set how many seconds this is) which we will use as a time lapse of us setting up to the end of our filming. This time lapse shot will be at the beginning of our video for the into of the song until the melody comes in. We thought this was a unique way of filling the intro gap.

The GoPro is a small camera that can be mounted on objects (helmets for extreme sports etc...) or carried in your hand.

We will also use it to film the party scene in a similar way to the film 'Project X'.

Complication with our location

Unfortunately we are unable to film at the warehouse as the owners objected to us filming on Saturdays as they are practicing Jews and Saturday is the sabbath. They also said that the were unwilling to have an A Level project filmed there as it is a professional location. We found this to be strange as our peers had filmed there the previous year, however there was not much we could do about it.

Considering the fact that we were nearing our filming deadline we had to find a location quickly. A member of my group's father owns a studio near where we live, which we could possibly use to replace the warehouse, but it would not be large enough for the party scene to be filmed there. Hopefully this location will be fine and we will be able to film there within the next few days.

Location

When looking for a location, we set our minds on a warehouse setting for the first half of the video. We were aware that another group of students from our school had used a warehouse for their AS Level Thriller, so we inquired about their location. It is about 20 minutes away from all of our homes, and is owned by the grandfather of a student in the parallel media class. We acquired the relevant number to arrange a visit, during which we took a number of pictures to see what the location would look like on camera.

This location is only for the circular tracking shot and the time lapse.

Choosing a performer

When considering girls to be the performer in our video, there is certain criteria that must be met:

• She must be comfortable and confident in front of a camera
• She must have the right appearance to be a pop singer
• She must be within a certain age bracket

We were aware that it would be difficult for us to gauge whether or not people would be good in front of a camera without actually seeing them in action. We found a girl called Jessy Barnett that was within the right age bracket, had the right appearance, and had just left Sylvia Young Theatre School. We felt it was our best bet to go choose her as she was experienced in performing arts and is likely to look good for the camera.

Here are some pictures of her: