Audio Commentary

Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When we first started looking into some typical pop promos I noticed that the majority of them were very stylised and featured skilled low key lighting as well as intriguing unusual cinematography but editing transitions that weren't out of the ordinary. Promos from bands such as Massive Attack (who employed the highly regarded promo director Walter Stern) tried to be different but in a very intelligent sophisticated way. They used artificial lighting and slow motion as well as casting actual actors to star in them. Meanwhile other bands like ACDC would heavily rely on performance and the kinetic energy of a live crowd. In contrast, the Noah and the Whale promos were 'quirky' featuring very high key lighting, very colourful costumes as well as unusual cuts such as swipes and 'star shapes.' Our finished promo is meant to be a combination of style and quiet sophistication – there is a storyline that is about heartbreak which very closely follows genre conventions of other Noah and the Whale promos given that songs such as Love of an Orchestra and Blue Skies also deal with the end of a relationship. The fact that we told the story with super 8 film meant that we felt we had given it a home movie type of feel with occasionally chaotic camera work thus fulfilling our 'quirky' responsibility. It was essentially our 'something different' and helped to create a unique identity for our promo. However we decided not to fully mimic our band's style so we avoided tacky over the top edit transitions even avoiding rapid cuts, until the very end, which is somewhat of a genre convention in pop promos as directors often feel that they want to pack in as much visual flair as they can in such a short space of time. By slowing down the pace we were able to concentrate on telling a simple moving sotry showing off our mise-en-scene - keeping the costumes dark so as to portray the characters' sombre moods. I felt that we achieved a good balance between stylish and quirky heartbreak whilst creating verisimilitude by using natural lighting and believable locations. The super 8 effect is used to highlight the differences in mood between the two time scales – super 8 is playful and sunny and upbeat whilst the footage with just our main character makes use of a cold day to show his loneliness after the relationship has ended. In addition we also employed close ups of his expression to further show the audience that he is experiencing feelings of sadness in this time frame whilst also using long shots from high angles to show his sulking despondent demeanour.

Our use of locations was vital to creating the right tone – parks are usually associated with families, couples and children so these connotations made it an ideal location to set our 'happy' section. By setting some of the action in the tennis courts there was also created a playfulness to the dynamic of the relationship and the caged barren nature of the tennis courts when the character was alone helped to inflate the aura of isolation. Meanwhile, docks with the crisp cool water often create connotations, along with the bobbing ships, as feeling almost ghostly and a place of reflection (film and TV characters often go on their boats when growing tired or afraid of the rest of the world) so this equally seemed ideal to set as the location where our main character is in mourning. Despite this though we were able to show a happier side to the location, with our female character, by using the excelling number of restaurants and the almost idealic nature of the boats creating an exotic feel. The boats are a passage to anywhere.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In the end, for our package and print advert, we decided on a still image from our film as the motif. We considered using an animated image as it would have tied in with the band's indie image but couldn't come up with an idea particularly original or appealing. I thought that the image of the two characters together would look heart warming but on reflection our use of natural light, which worked well in the film, simply made the image look rather naive and amateurish. In the package as a whole we tried to play more on the 'happy' side of the relationship as we thought this would play better to the market and to the band's image. We showed them as effectively a mirror image, with the two shot, showing that they were ideally suited to each other. In addition the youthful age of the characters would hopefully appeal to the target market for this package which is teenagers and people in their twenties. We hoped that by showcasing the super 8 effect on our inside cover we could further demonstrate its uniqueness and stand out to consumers as an attribute unseen in most other pop promos and DIGI Packs. We were also careful to use very similar type faces and fonts in both texts to continue our links and not to confuse the audience by disaligning the products. In our research there were bands such as Muse whose pop promos differed rather in tone from their album covers (they had a dark rebeelious promo but a kaleidoscopic cover) but we decided to go more along the lines of artists such as Mika whose package contained almost complete visual symmetry. An advantage of a difference is the opportunity to appeal to a wider demographic but given that our preliminary research showed our promo to be aimed at a generally specific audience this argument was unsatisfactory to us. Finally, our ideology of the package is simple 'love' and that people are on the whole happier together than alone.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Judging from our research into our band's core audience it was obvious that the key demographic for this promo were teenagers and young adults with an interest in offbeat music and film (The Squid and the Whale, Eagle vs Shark etc.) so it was important to make a promo not in the style of a big profile band (like JLS or Girls Aloud) with lots of dissolve cuts to close ups of good looking people or costumes designed to be revealing and 'sexy.' This audience would also be fairly middle class with a decent amount of money to spend on DIGI Packs. On showing our promo to an audience that fulfilled some of those criteria there was a generally positive response. They told us that the narrative was easy to follow and they agreed with our choice of locations for the reasons I mentioned earlier. They particularly liked the super 8 footage as they believed it added a new dynamic and highlighted the sunniness of the characters at that time whilst also praising the fluidity of the camera during these sections with further approval of the authenticity created by the 'home movie' tone which was further enhanced by a strong performance by our female actress. There were of course complaints – they thought that the yellow titles up top looked cheap and tacky and not in keeping with the tone of the promo but simply an unnecessary distraction. They also would have liked to have had more close ups of the main character in mourning in order to showcase better the grief he was feeling, they also said that one shot (where we used a manual focus) wasn't executed very well with one suggestion being that we should have 'rolled' our finger down the manual focus button rather than twiddling which only caused a rather jumpy effect instead of the slow move into the mid shot we desired. Also, there was an element of confusion about the ending where I as editor used an effect to make the girl look ghostly thus producing ambiguity as to whether the girl had died or if the couple had just broken up. Ideally we wanted to create the feeling that either way the girl had become 'dead' to our male character for one reason or another. One brief negative point was the thought that that last shot should have used the super 8 effect because as it was absent, confusion was caused in terms of knowing at what point in the timeline that shot occured. But really the biggest complaint was the simple fact that the band wasn't in the promo – there was an argument that how could the film be promoting the band if they aren't even in it? This was a problem we knew we would face from the beginning so it came as no real surprise.

Moving on, there was unfortunately a bad response to our DIGI Pack. They agreed that the front cover (the still image) looked cheap looking as if the image had been stretched out of it's correct dimensions and that the three images lacked an overall concept. It was as if they were from different albums. The feeling towards the print advert was the same – it just didn't stand out and I myself have to agree that as a group we weren't clear enough on producing an eye catching motif or truly showing off the band's image of 'do it yourself art' and a breakaway from mainstream music.

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

To finish, it is important to note that we carried out most of our research on the internet using YouTube to view and then analyse pop promos from both our own band and others in order to better get a grip of the market. Fan forums and the way Google easily allowed us access to them was also key in working out the messages and values of the band and their fans. Blogger served as a quick and easy way to keep an online diary of our progress as it allowed us to write succinctly whilst also being easy to upload vital images and videos to help explain our thought processes meaning it was probably the most important technology. It was only rivalled by the abilities of FinalCutPro to really create our super 8 film effect which was vital in our tone. There was a lot of experiment on the programme under the 'bad film' and 'colour corrector' and it was only the time we were allowed on the programme that enabled our eventual success. Of course, the DV cameras hugely helped our filming capabilities given their easiness to transport from one location to another as well as their sturdy nature on a tripod to allowing us to add fluidity and realism to the camerawork when filming the flashbacks. Finally, Photoshop helped us to create our inside covers but looking back, we perhaps should have used it to create our front cover as well as it may have led to a more original indie set of artwork. It was alos my first time on Photoshop and given that I was chief editor, I didn't get a lot of time to perfect my skills so I feel guilty over having not contributed sufficiently to this aspect of the coursework which I think has been established as our weakest area. Chris managed to use software on his home laptop to create really interesting offbeat images which have better suited our album cover.

Evolution Of Super 8 Effect

FINAL EDIT

Print Advert

We decided that our print advert should be based around our album cover, so as you can see this is the case. Whilst the image is the same, enabling consumer cohesion, there is additional information pertaining to the date as well as adding a couple of fictional quotes from national newspapers to give the product 'status' and respect from a large potential market.

Furthermore, we have kept the same red typeface as the DigiPack cover and this continues the constant image and helps to market each section of this project into the same market. Hopefully a consumer will recognise the DigiPack cover from this advert given the semantic imagery.

Final DIGI Pack Design

As a class we agreed the DigiPak/CD Covers should contain:
Band, Song and Record Label logos
Titles - Band, song/album name
Track listing
Copyright Protection logos and information (©, ®, ™)
Barcode & Price
DVD details - age certification or 'Parental Advisory: Explicit Content' label
Pictures - front, back, middle (inside and outside)
4-Sided with 2 Spines- 2 pics outside (front/back covers), possibly 2 inside
6-Sided with 3 Spines- 3 pics outside (front, middle, back covers), 2 inside, with Production pics or a "Production & Artwork" booklet
Collector items
Competition entry forms
Limited Edition - 'Exclusive DVD included', 'Bonus tracks', or 'uncut version'.

I believe we have included all of these in our cover: we have a list of the tracks to the background of our favourite shot - a rising sun, the front cover of the couple in 'motion' with identical imagery to our print advert and finally an example of our super 8 film footage to showcase this technique to a potential audience. We also put a faded image of a duck behind the actual disk just for 'kitch' value.

Next Editing Session

After receiving feedback from our tutor I decided to swap some of the shots around thus differing our narrative slightly. In the original version we first introduced the female character in flashback and then jumped forward to our main protagonist sulking in grief, however we now introduce him first and the girl at around 1 minute. I believe that this allows the audience to understand the storyline more effectively as they can see the despondency of the main character and know that he has lost his 'love.' As well as that I was concerned about our allegro instrumental sections due to the fact that at first we simply had shots of the characters observing ducks in the pond. Therefore I moved the 'duck' shots to take place as part of the scene setting and had the instrumental sections contain Emily running (to demonstrate the upbeat music).

Also I decided that the opening forty seconds felt a touch slow so I experimented with the addition of 'titles' and found that this worked fairly well and the band had also used titles in some of their own pop promos. Most importantly I added the super-8mm film effects by using in built functions on Final Cut Pro including 'bad film' and 'colour balance' to all the shots where the 'girl' was in shot.

Other group DIGI Pack Ideas

This is Emily's design for a cartoon based DIGI Pack which would in many ways reflect the offbeat quirky nature of the band as well as standing out from most other covers you find in the market. The downside would be that it may a look a bit childish which could alienate our young adult demographic.



These two designs were created by Chris using his home laptop. As you can see they experiment with different fonts as well as seeing debating whether a mid two shot is better than two separate close ups.

This simple design was a communal effort and despite the image being quite plain it is an image we think sums up the story line of our pop promo very well. Although more details will have to be included on the final front cover.

These final two designs were created by hand by Vhris and then scanned onto blogger. They are my favourite images but I beleive that they would need some fine tuning and organisation in order to allow them to be the final covers.

Individual DIGI PACK Ideas

I am the first to admit that I am rubbish at art and I realise that my efforts at fonts look kitch to be polite and nasty to be honest. I think however that my still shots could used somewhere, if only on the inside cover, as they aere well lit and create interestingly shaped pathways and contours which could be used as a metaphor for the passage of time our pop promo will go through.

Editing

Over the course of two lessons I logged all of the footage we collected from our three filming sessions in order to begin to cut it together. Following that I cut together the shots to form our desired narrative. I quickly realised that some of our shots lasted too long (7 or 8 seconds) and that they were not in keeping with the traditional quick paced cuts of pop promos. However we didn't want to lose great swathes of the footage we liked so I broke up the longer takes into two or even three sections and placed other shots, as well as dissolve cuts in some cases, into them. I was mostly pleased with the results as we got as it enabled us to see our main character's physical journey and therefore his enveloping sadness over loss of his partner.

Mostly I employed conventional edits in order to establish a narrative based video but when we switched either timeframes or locations I decided that it would be appropriate to use more unothodox edits that were often symbol based as this drew the attention of the audience so that they were fully aware of the change. I also decided to use our extensive footage of animal life in the instrumental chorus as these were our shots with the highest degree of quick movements but after several views I have become unconvinced by this and am considering putting in recaps of the couple's exploits instead and using the animal footage more as way of establishing location during the less allegro like section of both verses. I think it's important now to cut rapidly between both time frames during the chorus in order to show the stark contrast of the main character's feelings from one period to the next.

After studying our first edit I am fairly pleased with the footage of our main character looking despondent as well as most of the shots showing the couple's jovial times. However I am still slightly concerned by how we are linking them together and making best use of the juxtapositional nature of our video, i.e the upbeat song with the end of a relationship. It is alos important to note that as of yet we have not finalised the method which we will use to make the flashbacks look like Super 8mm film footage which I believe will be vital in establishing contrast.


The following log was created by Chris Kenworthy and I have modified the personal pronouns to refer to myself.

Log, Capture and First Edit
Today we managed to sort out the problem we had last Friday with logging and capturing our footage. There was one minor hiccup, where we started to record instead of playback our footage, but we only lost a couple of seconds of footage which wasn't that important anyway.

After logging and capturing the footage, I started to piece together all the shots in a timeline in Final Cut Pro, whilst Chris continued his research into the aged-film "Super 8mm" Film Effect using both the internet and Final Cut Pro to experiment with different effects. Emily, meanwhile, continued to develop her own individual ideas for the Digipack (CD Cover) and Poster.

Chris exported the first edit from Final Cut Pro into a ".mov" file. The cuts and transitions are not yet perfect, as this is like a first draft of the project so far. Therefore, don't expect to see perfection. He then uploaded the file to his YouTube Channel, and will soon upload it here once he has compressed the file to a smaller size.
The photographs above are screenshots Chris made of the handheld shot which rotates 360 degrees in a circle - we used this shot in our editing.





Research into the Super 8mm Effect for use with Final Cut Pro
Although Chris is not Chief Editor, and I am, he might be working in cooperation with me as the Co-Editor. Therefore he has kindly devoted himself into finding some research into the "Super 8mm" Effect we had discussed about in Group Production Meetings and agreed to use if possible for the flashback elements of our Music Promotional Video for "5 Years Time" by Noah and the Whale. He found the information below on: http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/918311, when someone had posted on this forum "Can anyone suggest the best way to emulate a super 8 or an aged film look in final cut pro?":
There are many plug-ins (Nattress is one) that simulate the effect. But if you want something cheap and free. Export the clip out of FCP using "Quicktime Conversion" Then, under Option-Filter-Special Effects, you can add some a film hair/dirt effect that's not too bad. Combine that with color correction in FCP and possibly some speed adjustment (Old 8mm always seems sped-up a bit) it might just work for free. Ernie Santella Santella Film/Video Productions

http://www.santellaproductions.com/.

Chris also found the following useful information on this website:
http://www.nattress.com/Solutions/solutions.htm#6:
I want to make my video look like film: The Film Effects package was designed for you! Whether you are using PAL, NTSC, or HDV (or HD or SD) Film Effects has settings which will make your video look much more filmic. Film Effects does 25p conversion for PAL frame rates and 24p conversion (with 3:2 pulldown added) for NTSC frame rates. It has over 20 presets and you can make your own. There are over 27 plugins, all designed for different aspects of making your video look filmic and can be used in combinations or separately. Film Effects also gives you immense control over the gamma and tone of your image, so it can be a great tool even when you're not trying to make your video look like film.
I want to make my video look like old Super-8 film: Film Effects has a preset called "Old Projector". This might be exactly what you're looking for, or you can use it as a starting point.

Chris found the following useful advice on: http://library.creativecow.net/articles/smith_stephen/film_look.php (ALL CREDIT TO THIS WEBSITE AND THANKS FOR THE ADVICE!! WE WILL CONSIDER THESE IDEAS AND HOPEFULLY THE RESULT WILL BE AS PLANNED!!)
1. Black & White or Sepia
Black & White
Select the desired clip in the time line.
Choose Effects > Video Filters > Color Correction > Color Corrector 3-Way.
Double click on your clip and then select the Color Corrector 3-way tab in the viewer. Drag the Sat (Saturation) slider tab to the far left.
Drag the Whites slider to the right and the Blacks slider to the left slightly, this will add more contrast to your clip and make it feel more dimensional.
Sepia
Select the desired clip in the time line.
Choose Effects > Video Filters > Image Control > Sepia.
Double click on your clip and then select the Filters tab in the viewer.
Change the highlight amount to give the clip a more realistic sepia color. I find 33 works well for a lot of clips but it does vary.
Click on the triangle in the Tint Color box and then adjust the S slider to give your clip a more faded look. I find 58 works well in a lot of situations.
2. Export Clip
This is where you get to add all of the visual effects that are associated with old or damaged film.
Mark in and out points on the timeline of the clip or clips you wish to give that old film look to.
Choose File > Export > Using Quick Time Conversion.
Give the clip a name, locate where you would like to place it and select what format would work best.
Click the Options button. In the video settings section select the Filter button.
Click on the triangle next to the text Special Effects. Then select Film Noise.
Click on the Hairs button and change it to Scratches. Set Scratch Density to 0.
Adjust the Dust and Film Fading > Film Fading setting to None.
Change the Hairs settings and the Dust and Film Fading settings to your liking. I adjusted the Hairs > Hair Density to 48, while I bumped the Hair > Hair Length to 47.
Click Ok and then click Ok again in the Movie Settings box. Then click on the Save button.
When the clip is done exporting your in and out points remain on the timeline. Repeat steps A through D and then change the Scratches > Scratch Density from zero to around 6. Don’t worry about the scratches looking fake, that will be remedied in the next section.
Click Ok and then click Ok again in the Movie Settings box. Then click on the Save button.
3. Double Clips up
This section will take the edge off of the fake looking scratches.
Import the two clips and drag them into the timeline.
Place the clip with the scratches on top of the clip with out.
Drop the opacity of the top clip to about 30 percent.
4. Ad Flicker
This step adds that extra touch of believability to that old film look.
In the Viewer click on the A in the film strip.
In the drop down menu drag the mouse to the word Matte. Then click on the word Color from the menu that pops out of the side.
In the Viewer select the Controls tab and then click on the gray box.
Change the color to black and hit OK.
Select the Video tab and then drag the matte to the track above your two clips in the Timeline.
Click on the Clip Overlays button on the Timeline and lower the clips’ opacity to 17.
Select the pen tool from the Tool Pallet.
Add a keyframe to every four frames of the matte. Then drag every other keyframe to zero opacity.

Filming

In the last week of the Christmas term we filmed in two locations, Christchurch Park and the Ipswich Waterfront. We gathered all of the shots we were scheduled to get on those days but unfortunately on the friday when we were due to complete our filming heavy snow and staff absence prevented us from doing so. However we are endeavouring to work out an afternoon or two when we complete our filming. For the time being further heavy snowfall has made filming in our locations impossible so we are for the moment spending our time updating our blog and beginning to log, capture and edit our existing footage.

During the filming we have managed to execute we have been keen to produce a variety of camera shots and angles which serve to add both texture and characterisation to our video. For example we have played around with focus in some of our shots so that our main character (Chris K) is at first out of focus and then comes into it as the camera comes across him. We hope that this technique will produce the effect of portraying the character as someone who is not quite in tune with the world because he is in mourning. As well as that we have used several tracking and panning shots to show the character's journey, moreover his meandering struggle with his own existence.

Disruption

After this successful shoot we were forced to wait until after the Christmas break to complete our filming, however there then followed several weeks of snow and bitter weather rendering our filming capability obselete. As a result we were forced to fit our filming into the first available friday morning but this meant that our 'actress' Emily Halls was unable to film so our own group member Emily Swager kindly consented to play the 'girl.' We shot for around ninety minutes at Christchurch Park, filming her 'playing up to the camera' as if the main protagonist was holding it and deliberately making the camerawork slightly shaky and amateurish knowing that we would be adding effects to make the footage look like old super-8mm film. We also filmed some shots with both Chris and Emily in frame so as to provide a link between them in terms of relationship for the audience.

Additionally we went on to film by Ipswich Waterfront, employing many of the same handheld techniques as we 'followed' Emily along the quay side. We filmed here for around ninety minutes again and were satisfied that we had garnered all of the footage we needed.