Filming our Script

Our filming session consisted of going to the studio to record our script, whereby we talked and explained why we did what we did for our video. We have decided that we will have our music video audio quietly so that the commentary is the audiences main focus. We had to ensure that we got things done quick because we only had 1 lesson to film. We also decided to have our music video small in the top corner of the directors commentary clips, this should give it a fairly professional look.

Script

QUESTION 1

Toby: It was essential for us to try to make our media product as professional as possible. To do this, we developed research on other professional music videos to generate ideas for our own production and to help us include conventions of real media products and therefore improving our music video.

Graeme: In order to understand the conventions of the genre of our chosen song we had to first listen to it and other songs from the band so we could find out what type of music they play and the characteristics that go along with the specific genre. It was clear to us that 'The Pink Spiders' are a Rock/ Indie type band and therefore we would have to conform with the conventions of a indie rock style music video and develop our ideas with this in mind.

George: When researching indie rock style videos by 'The Pink Spiders' and other bands we found that the majority of them are based around a performance in which the band plays the song directly addressing the different cameras. There is also normally a recurring theme throughout the video in order to make it more exciting and make the performance stand out. This is something that we felt should be included within our video so it would look more professional and therefore more successful.

Andrew: We also developed on this idea by having another element planned within the video that we could cut back to throughout; this was the character "Emily" at her 17th birthday party. In the original plan of the production we wanted this to be one of the main aims and elements that made up the video, by having two separate story lines that represented the two different sides of the character and a performance that introduced the band. However during the filming stage we released that this would of been harder to pull off successfully than a performance would be so we toned down our ideas and decided to only include a small storyline showing the character 'Emily' blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. I feel that this was a good decision that the group made as we had a limited amount of time to film.

Toby: Also by having a main storyline instead of a performance-based video slightly goes against the conventions of rock videos so this was a beneficial decision.

QUESTION 2

Graeme: Our music video and the ancillary text are effective. In our poster advertising a tour we used the band members to help connect the poster to the music video. The poster works well because the design and colours go with the typical style for the type of music. The magazine advert and the digipack work together because they use the same colour and font styles to help make a connection and give an effective combination. The music video is very focused around a boy band, this is then shown in the poster because the image used includes the band members posing in a very similar way to which a real band would, the image is also edited and given effects that help portray the characteristics that were shown of the character within the music video, these characteristics include being relaxed and messing around but at the same time getting a serious piece of music which they want to sell.

George: The music video does have a black and white filer that isn't used in the poster, this is because we want the poster to have colour to help attract people to the band. Because of this they aren't directly linked through the visuals but there still a good combination.

QUESTION 3

Andrew: As a group we have learnt a lot from the feedback we have received from other groups, a lot of the feedback was positive and recognized our aim to show a sort of behind the scenes/performance video, Expressing the band as what a band would do, messing around etc. A lot of the feedback also made us feels as though our ideas were not quite what were planned, for example someone said,

Toby: "You should've showed more of the girl to show more of the story behind the video."

Andrew: We agreed with this and made us wish that we had done. We were generally happy with the feedback because the comments related to what the initial idea was, and left us feeling as though we achieved the majority of the things we wanted to.

Graeme: For example, respectable performance in sync, visuals and lyrics relating, correct jump cuts and no long clips to make it boring etc. The feedback definitely reassured us because the video wasn't exactly what the plan was, even though many of the things we portrayed were correct with what we wanted, it was showed in different ways. So for people to say I liked the way you did so and so to show this, we were happy that people were able to see what we were trying to do.

QUESTION 4

Toby: We used a range of new media technologies in the different stages of our music video to have a successful music video produced as our final product.

For our research and planning we used a variety of tools on the PC including the Internet to produce blog posts with our own planning on and using video sites and other online tools to research other things that we would find relevant to our music video.

George: For example, we used youtube to view other music videos that were within the Indie Rock genre to get an idea behind the genre and generate a list on the blog of genre characteristics. This helped us develop an idea of what we wanted in our music video and helped us in the planning stage later on. Our online blogging was very beneficial to the planning and production of our music video. This was because we used it to record useful information we had found about the genre, ideas we had for our own music video and planning the different days in which we decided we were going to conduct our filming, to ensure that we had a successful day, and the most productive day possible. Other tools online that were useful were things such as facebook to help us get in contact with the band who's music we were developing a music video too.

Andrew: We also used a digital camera to record still shots. We used this effectively as we took shots of our location to create a location reccae to make sure that everything was in order for when we did our filming.  We were also able to check that we thought the location fitted in with the mise en scene that we were aiming to achieve, and gave usthe ability to include the genre characteristics within the video that we wanted.

Toby: We also used a HD video camera for the recording of our music video.This was incredibly useful for us as we had ability to record our whole music video portfolio of clips we needed as the video camera had the ability to store clips with the memory card. The HD video camera we used also gave us the ability to play back recorded clips on the spot. This was incredibly useful within our filming process as once we thought that we had done a clip to a standard that we were happy with, we were able to watch it back on the video camera to check for errors, and make sure that it was of an acceptable standard.

Graeme: Different programs were used on the computer to develop diffent aspects of our coursework. For example, we used iphoto to develop our digipack, and we used final cut express to do the editing on our music video