Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

The session was very helpful as we asked a range of questions which aided our initial ideas of how we were going create a music video for the genre of R&B. I firstly created a power point of visual aids which included pictures of R&B artists and extracts of music videos from these artists. This formed the base of our questions and helped narrow down our talk which would give focused and detailed answers.

Firstly, we informed the group about the background of R&B with some information about general conventions and how it had changed over time. We asked what the audience already knew about R&B and who their favourite artists were in general to see if anyone's favourite artist was in fact, an R&B artist. By asking these sorts of questions we were able to question why they liked certain artists and what about them made the stand out from other artists.

There were some older R&B videos mixed with some newer ones and so we could show this comparison to our audience. When asked which type of R&B was better, the audience response was generally that an older type video was preferred as they gave more of a sense of reality. They didn't like the newer videos as they focused more of wealth and success which came across arrogant as well as the desirable, sexual representation of women which was not approved by many. With this information, I found that it helped us understand exactly what path we were taking for our song choice and gave us ideas of would do in our planning and production stage. 

A question that was put forward questioned whether narrative videos were more popular or performance based videos. We showed them extracts of Drake's 'Started from the bottom' which is very much followed with narrative and compared it with Usher's 'Yeah' which is predominantly a performance by Usher himself.

we found that some of our audience enjoyed the story telling element of the music video as it was something to follow however, the more popular choice was the performance based video of Usher as it focuses more on the song itself rather than a story which allows the artist to dance to his own music and let the music do the work. We decided from this choice that we would include both within our music video so that it appealed to a wide variety of our audience and found during the post production stage that both suited the look better and worked to a more professional level. We found that the way the performance was played on the chorus areas added to the continuity of the music video.

Another piece of audience feedback was from our second focus group that was done after post production, this time we asked a different group of people that were the right age and asked them to critique the positives and negatives as well as give us opinions on what we could do to make it better.

From the negative side of things, the audience realised that the rose wasn't actually seen as a motif and they found it rather random at the end of the music video, i found this a piece of research that i understood and i felt that we could have included the rose more in the music video and i feel that if i could re-do my final piece i could have included the rose in more important parts of the music video.

Another negative note that they pointed out is that they felt they didn't understand the story line completely and wanted another male character to portray the cheating or for the timing on the texts to be displayed longer to allow the audience understand the cheating story line.

On a positive note from the focus group, the audience said that they found the lip syncing to be effective and they all found this to be a technique that they understood was difficult but was pulled off well.Another part that they found worked well was the story as a whole, they found that we were able to portray the positives and negatives of the relation well and found the settings and body language ideas to connotate to what we wanted to achieve.

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Question 1 slideshare from ebonibirchall

Final Magazine Advert

Final Digi Pack

Digi Pack Pictures

 These pictures were taken in the woods near my house and I took them around 12 pm to ensure that the sunlight was used as an advantage for my pictures, I wanted to use the light to represent the religious side of Tavonga yet keep the theme still young and effective. The image of Tavonga in the run down building is a building i had found in Broadheath that I found represented Tavonga's 'hood' side, i wanted to include this in my representation as I found that many of my target audience were attractive and liked this idea od someone to look up to as a brave and strong idol.

Magazine Advert 4

Edit Of Font

From my last choices of font I decided to change the font to 'Algerian' as I found that it gave more character to the digipack and magazine advert, I found this font to fit the title the most and I found that if I chose a font that was different to any others done before tavonga would be able to be recognised more.

Digipack Content

Magazine Advert 3

Magazine Advert 2

Editing- Magazine Advert

 




With my editing, i used an app called 'UNION' to create overlapping images and a unique style that was different to any other digipack or styled magazine advert I had seen, this ensured that Tavonga, as an artist, stood out from other artists in the R&B scene, which is what we wanted to achieve as a group in the first place.With me using this app, I was opened to multiple different opportunities and ways in which i could represent him.
Within the app, you had three different sections that enabled you to produce your image. Firstly you had the background section which allowed you to place your chosen picture and edit the lighting,contrast.saturation,temperature,or able you to flip or invert the image, this image would form as a base or main image for your final piece. Next was the foreground,with this you could edit the blend mode, which allowed you to layer your image a certain way,opacity and the same effects as you could with the background. As well as this, you could mask your image by erasing or shape your image to give a final certain look. All of this enabled me to produce an image for my final piece that would include multiple different elements instead of having to choose between certain things.

Font

These are multiple different fonts that I wanted to choose from for my magazine advert that would also be shown on my digipack to show the continuity. These fonts came from Publisher and I wanted to chose a font that was simple yet stood out from the other text as well as the dark background.
After consideration, I finally chose the first font as I found it to be simple yet stood out as being quite recognisable with its own presence as well as this, with the title of the song being "socio rehab, which i kept from the street art, I wanted the font to be different and simple so that the main attraction font was of the title its self.

Photography

I took specific pictures of Tavonga to represent him in a specific religious way, I suggested using white pants and a smart blazer to ensure that his image wasn't represented in a negative way, I didn't want to include jewellery and only accessories that would take the idea of his religious image away. I found the the white pants represented his religious image the most and after looking at previous images of religious people, white is a colour that represents religion and all things positive- which is what I wanted to achieve.

Here I took a picture of some manchester street art that I found to be quite retro and placed a personal image on Tavonga as it represents where he has come from and his origins. I liked the idea that the picture had a boy and girl on the front as it represented the couple/relationship topics that is represented within the song of so sick, this meant that I was able to represent this without making it too obvious. I feel that this piee of art gives a quirky and individual style to Tavonga's look within it looking unusual.

Magazine Advert Development And Ideas

Here is a sample of one of my design ideas that I was thinking of using for my magazine advert. I used some photography that I took of Tavonga as well as some street art from Manchester so that his personal life style was included through out.

What is SOCIAL REHABILITATION?"Social rehabilitation aims at getting people back into society.

I kept the font used from the street art to be the title of this album as I thought it represented Manchester and I find that the idea that it is based of rehab reveals his side of becoming bigger and better in life which is what artist aspire to become. From this magazine advert I pointed out the flaws and positive points to see whether I would keep certain things or edit them, despite the fact that I liked the idea, I found the image to be too dark and complicated the background image. however, on a positive note, I liked the way the image of the girl and boy stood out, however, also took the focus away from Tavonga's face.

I have decided that I will keep he idea of the street art but replace the background image with a lighter one to reveal more of Tavonga's face, rather than the street art.

Final Product

Editing 7

This was our final editing session, we had no timing constraints as we were staying after school and we were able to get everything done to a high standard without feelings pressured because of time, however we did realise that today was our deadline and needed it done.

The last piece of editing required us uploading the footage of Tavonga's performance as well as multiple transitions that would piece the footage together in a professional and continuous way. We began by uploading the whole video of Tavonga's performance from Beth's phone and it was very helpful as we had the whole song to choose from, we could choose which parts we wanted and where..however after some speculation we decided to choose the parts for the chorus and some other parts within the verses as well as ending the music video with this too.By matching up the visuals to the lyrics,this matched with Goodwin's theory of music videos which states that when the lyrics match up with the visuals on screen, the audience can understand the text much easier. As this was stressful to deal with, me and Beth took turns to delete and re crop come clips as we found that even a second out would make a difference to the whole music video, we had to zoom into the footage to make it accurate.

All of the footage was in order was past editing sessions however, our last task was much more complicated as this was the more syncing of the lyrics of the song to Tavonga's singing. In order to do this, me and Beth  turned up the non diegetic audio of the song so that we could all tell which part of the song Tavonga was up to. This was very challenging as we then had to turn up the diegetic audio to match this up with Tavonga's lips. This took fine concentration and was a very stressful task as we had to lengthened certain clips as the song was too long for the amount of footage we had, a. After about 1 hour however, the performance's were all in the correct places which made the video looked very professional.

The final task of editing was to include transitions as otherwise the whole video would feature various jump cuts and would be very difficult for the audience to follow and workout. The 'cross dissolve' and 'fade to clear' transition was very useful as this pieced together the clips to show how the action was changing from the perspective of Tavonga to I after the argument scene, I found that from all the transitions these two were the most professional and smoothly went through multiple shots. Me and Beth found that the transitions fitted most in the places where the setting and mood changed so that the audience understand clearly that it was a different flashback and change in mood.

Editing 6

This was an editing session done at lunch and we were only able to edit for 45 minutes, In this session, we ensured that all the footage was landscape because last time we had trouble and realised the footage kept on changing to landscape and vertical. The majority of the session was taken up by adjusting the length of many of the clips and starting to place the music is sync with Tavonga's lips. We have filmed the whole performance of Tavonga in the car park so that we can place Tavonga doing this is any place of the music video. We frequently used the 'blade and crop' feature on Final Cut Pro X to cut the clips up to make sure that they matched up in time with the other shots that we had and to cut out any diegetic speech or noises that were made after we had the footage that we wanted. We were also cropping and re moving the scenes that we had re filmed at my house as they were now landscape and fitted in to the video. 

Editing 5

All of our filming footage had been uploaded onto the mac's apart from the footage that I had filmed individually at my house, this was done as the group were unable to travel to my house.We came back during a lunchtime to use the Macs and edit more of the clips that we had been previously editing and cropping. Again, we placed all of the footage in order to suit the narrative and song lyrics, as a group we decided to find slots within our music video to place the footage of Tavonga, we wanted these to be placed in the chorus and other places so that it had continuity. We decided upon this as were we unable to film the flashback scenes in the Christmas markets as they had closed and so we replaced with these scenes.

Filming 5

 Due to the fact that my other peers not being able to come to my house, I decided that I would film the parts in my bedroom my self with the help of my mum to help me know when the position of the camera was correct. I used the tripod and my sisters Iphone 6 to film this as I needed my own phone in the filming process as it was a prop that was needed within this section of filming.

I firstly filmed both parts of my self where I have received a text from Tavonga and due to circumstances of myself cheating within the music video, I have purposely made me facial expressions unhappy as I wanted to portray the fact that is it a text that I did not want, I did this as it clearly reveals the emotions of my character to the audiences clearly.
This is juxtaposed with the facial expression that is pulled when she receives a text from two male characters and I used a smiling expression- this is the part of the music video that reveals the narrative and storyline as to why the argument happened in the first scenes of the music video.

 I used a variety of different angles and shots to portray the texts and continuity of my character receiving the text, by doing this, it built up the tension of wondering who the text was off. I used to idea of getting closer and closer to the phone and finally using a close up shot to reveal the texts. I filmed this part for a few seconds to allow the audience to read the text and understand the situations that both characters have put them selves in.

Magazine Advert Draft 1

 Here is my first draft on my magazine advert, i wanted to create a a magazine advert that portrayed Tavonga is two different lights revealing his true side(his personal side) and his R&B/artist identity which I revealed through the black outline as it portrays that it isn't his true self.I took this idea from Justin Timberlake's album front cover of the 20/20 experience which reveals the bottom half of his face and top half being mechanical, I feel that this is also done to represent the two sides of his personality that is seen and that isn't seen, however I have changed it to be shown as that Tavonga wants his true side to be seen and not his fake identity. I though that this idea was original and informative about his personal side which again links to what the audience want within an artist.

The main idea was taken from a picture that  had recently seen on Instagram of model Ashley Moore who has this drawing done of her, I copied the layout and form of this drawing as I thought it portrayed the look that I was going for, however I want to alter it to instead of it being painted and being more of a comical sketch, I want to use photoshop to edit the photo onto the parts showing.
I thought the fact that one eye is being hid reveals this idea that he wants people to look through his own eyes and see that he wants the real him to be shown.

I didn't add on the extra content to this draft as I wanted to discuss with my group what the album name would be as we would have to be matching to make the artist known.

Magazine Content Research

Magazine ads require you to consider your brand image and how you want to portray that image to your target audience. Magazine adverts are usually used on brands and people that have a lot of money and have a record label as magazine adverts aren’t cheap as they are used so widely and target such a large audience.

· The advantages of a magazine advert is it accesses a large specific customer base. While many older people would read the newspaper, music artists target magazines to target the younger audiences which has a better and more specific and appropriate audience.

· As well as this, readers have been known to keep magazines for a loner period of time which means that the advert with in the magazine will be relevant for a longer period of time.

Filming 4

re filming

 Today we decided that we would re-film the parts that we had filmed previously but unfortunately were filmed vertically instead of horizontal which gave the look on black sides around the edge, we realised this mistake as we were uploading and decided to re-film. Although we tried to use ken burns as well as crop to get ride of the black sides, we realised that the quality of the filming was lowered when we zoomed in and gave a blurry effect which wasn't professional to use. We used to old footage from our phones to try and get the exact same footage we had previously filmed and tried to figure out the angle and what sort of footage that we needed. This worked successfully and we used the filming in the final product

Filming 3

In this session of filming, the group and I went to 2 different locations through the help of a friend with his car to finish filming the footage for our video. First we visited John Leigh Park to film the scenes where Tavonga and I were in a flashback of the happy memories that they had as a couple, this would be set near the start of their relationship, we aimed to constantly film them with smiles on their faces to give a clear view to the audience at what stage this was at. There was an obstacle at this point as the natural lighting that we had planned to use from the sun had gone down by 5pm so we improvised with artificial lighting from the flash lights on our phones which were pointed either side of the camera as well as Me and Tavonga. As I was playing a part for the footage at this point, Adam and Beth took the dominant roles of filming by using a variety of camera shots and angles to focus on our body language and facial expressions, however even though i was an actress in the filming, i was still giving options and ways to make it successful .


At the same location, we filmed a similar piece where Tavonga and I were showing affection on a bench in the evening. The low angle shot was used to create a sense of romance which was used from the feedback of our focus group. The audience said they preferred old romantic RnB videos as opposed to new ones about wealth and success and so we created a very romantic feeling with thelove and romance of the couple and the rose which was used as a motif and symbol of love. In the same area of the park, I then suggested in filming another romantic scene where Tavonga and I would hold hands and walk to and away from the camera. We used the scene where they are walking away to show how the connection they have is beginning to fade as this is the story of the video which we faded out with a transition to the next scene..

Our second location of the night was a car park in Hale where we knew we could have a professional background for Tavonga to dance in front of. The brick wall background was suggested by Adam and was used as a significant location, the lighting was done by using a  car to shine the headlines on as a form of spotlighting to assist the aesthetics and created the effective shadow. The back shadowing helped Tavonga to stand out and we filmed a wide shot so that we could include his range of dance moves and the whole performance. We played the song off a phone to help Tavonga get the lyrics right and had Tavonga lip sing along whilst performing so that we could edit the clips between the narrative give a continuous look to our music video. We will then match up his voice with the audio when editing by turning down the diegetic music and
overlapping it with the non diegetic audio of the song which is already uploaded onto the Macs.

Editing session 4

Today, me, Adam and Beth decided to go back in school and spend our lunch doing some extra editing, firstly we added the time lapse at the start of our music video to portray the good mood and positivity in the relationship at the start that we wanted to show towards the audience. This is the time lapse that Beth and I had filmed hours before.

After this, we decided that due to scenes such as the Christmas markets parts failing, that we wouldn't have enough filming to complete the song, so we decided to pull the song back and for it to start as soon as the door opens at the start, which covered a minute of the song already. This was a decision that was made successful and decided that we actually preferred the song to start hear as the door was a good motif for the song to start at.

As well as this, we placed the shots that we are planning on re-doing in order so that it is easier to do when we had re-filmed the content.

The one thing that we focused on however, was the matching up of the shots as we wanted to include many different shots within our music video to show the different angles and emotions of the characters, we did this we using the blade in final cut pro and cutting up to certain parts in different shots for them to match up, the main place we did this was when I threw the glass and as the glass smashed onto the floor, we had to keep re cutting this scene as we found that there was a large gap from when I threw it to when it landed on the floor, we decided to good a good few seconds of it, however still keep the slow-motion effect on the glass as it hit the floor as we found it added a dramatic feel.Another scene we cut a lot of was when me and Tavonga stormed out the door, because there we so many different shots that we wanted to include, we decided to include multiple different angles which included alot of blading. This took around an hour to do as we had to keep re-watching the scenes.

Time Lapse

On Friday in a free period is school, Beth and I decided that we would film another time lapse as we realised that the weather was sunny and thought the weather represented the good emotions of the couple at the start. From looking at past Time lapses that I wrote about previously, I realised that the including of clouds made the time lapse look better and more effective and showed the timelapse clearer.

Editing Session 3

Today, My group and I went back at lunch and edited the parts where we are in Adam's house in the kitchen. We decided that instead of this part being the narrative before the song, we would start the song from the beginning of the filming from when the door is opened and slowly introduce the song with a fade.

We decided to do this as a part of our music video because on our storyboard we wanted to film certain parts in the Christmas markets, however with Tavonga being busy with his music and college studies, we couldn't film in time and by the time we could it had closed, which means that this covers this part of filming.                                                                                                                                  

As well as this and due to the previous filming on the I pads failing, we ordered those parts into spaces where we will be re-filming to make it easier on us to understand the order and many shots are similar.

Editing Session 2

 In my editing session two, it was just me and Beth that went back as Adam was busy playing football for the school team and unfortunately couldn't get out of it. Beth had recently filmed a short time lapse at her home that she uploaded which we cropped and placed onto the film timeline to see where and how the time lapse would fit in, because the time lapse was dark, we decided that we would place this time lapse near the end of the music video where the relationship starts to go down hill. The timelapse will show the pathetic fallacy and mood of the characters and the atmosphere that is meant to be shown to the audience.

Because a lot of our filming was filmed on the Ipad, when we plugged the Ipad out after downloading the videos, it came up as missing camera and insisted that we had to keep the Ipad plugged in to have the content which meant that we would have to re-film because of this problem too.

As well as this, because when we were filming we had to shout of instructions on what to do and we were talking through out, we had to get ride of the diagetic sound by pulling the bar down. We realised we didn't need diagetic sound as the song would cover all the sound anyway.

Editing Session 1

Today The group and I went back at lunch time to place our current filming onto final cut pro and placed it in order so that for the next session we would be able to get straight into cutting and deleting things that we didn't want. We placed the footages filmed on both I pad as well as I phone and placed both on, however one thing we realised was that the footage on the I pad was blurry and din't have the same good quality as the footage from the I phone, as well as this, 40% of the filming was done portrait which means that some of the filming doesn't fill the whole screen and makes the music video look non-continuous, this has resulted in us scheduling another filming session to re-film these parts in Adams house and film Horizontal on the I phone to ensure the same quality.

One problem that we will face with us having to do this, is that the hair, make up and clothing will have to be the exact same as well as all the objects and content within the kitchen too to ensure nothing has changed and it again looks continuous.

Problems With Our Filming

The only problem we had for filming was the fact that the way we filmed with the Ipad was the wrong way round and when we placed the filming together certain parts that came from the Ipad were the wrong way which means that we will have to re-film these parts on our next filming session which is Tuesday the 12th of January. The filming will be quick and won't take up much time however we will have to ensure outfits and make-up is exactly the same and the location content is the same to make it continuous and prevent noticeable mistakes.

Filming 2

Today, we met up with Tavonga for the first time and we decided as a group that we would film the narrative based parts of the film and set the location in Adam's house as Max- who's house we were supposed to film at was unresponsive and we were unable to get in contact with him at the time.

We started off filming the parts that didn't need me or Tavonga in the shot- this included the pan shot of the wine bottle and the rose falling on the floor, these shots included using a mid shot and a low shot and seeing the rose fall in slow motion as we wanted to add effect. even thought the rose shot wont be added till the end of filming we thought that instead of coming back to Adam's house we would film all the parts that we needed for this location.

As well as this, we filmed the arguing scene which involved the argument about the cheating and the storming out scenes.

Here we used a close up shot of the handle to start of the argument, we used multiple different shots from mid and long shots to show the continuous effect of the female character walking through the door- we decided to do this to add different shots to show the tense atmosphere of the room- the idea of using the original diagetic sound of the heels adds to the atmosphere as it is the only sound in the room and with the mid shot of Tavonga's face staring at her reveals this.

This is a two shot of the female character and male character, revealing the female characters emotions and facial expressions, here shows her smiling and grinning at the fact that she has cheating which reveals that she isn't overly emotionally attached to the male character, this is later revealing in filming when she is seen texting other males.

Filming 1

Within filming 1, it was just me and Adam filming as Beth had organised plans and she could not make it, we decided to start off doing the time-lapse of the house that we would be filming in, this took around 2-3 hours as we had to wait for it to get dark to create the desired effect.We took this idea from a past A-level music video that we watched and thought that this was effective and represented love emotions and feelings. We wanted to use the light to dark effect to reveal how their relationship has gone dark and turned from good to bad over the time of their relationship.

Here shows their time-lapse compared to our one, we have decided as a group to re-do the time-lapse as we feel that the cloud effect that this group got showed more of the time-lapse effect and due to weather conditions there was too many clouds at this time.

Start Of Ancillary Task

To start of my ancillary task, I have printed off a template from the internet as a base for my digipak so that I can have an accurate viewing of how the final product will look. I am planning on drawing a rough sketch of my digipak on this so that I know what photos I need to take of Tavonga when it comes to filming.



I have taken photos from the internet of artists that have previously had photos for their music advert. I have taken photos from successful R&B artists to gain inspiration for my own music advert, I will be considering the shot type, angle, lighting and what props and costume will be used.