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.