FINALLY FOUND
PRODUCED BY HANNAH SUTTON, VICKIE TOMLINS and LEAH HOLT
Watch our film at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ZC2JxGM2U
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When planning for our music video, we used real music videos to help us come up with ideas and storylines for our project.
We chose the genre of Indie/folk for our music video. Most professional videos that suit this genre either go two ways, they either make music videos that focus on the band entirely or develop a story line, like ours. We chose this genre because it is considerably underrated. Music videos nowadays mainly focus on Pop and R'nB. Indie/Folk is a genre that should be more widely known. It could be suggested that there is a connotation that comes with 'folk' songs, that they are mainly for older people and we wanted to show that this is not always the case, and that folk songs can be applied to younger generations. This can be seen in our music video through the young actress and through the childlike storyline. Typical conventions of an indie/folk genre include close ups of the singer.
This can be seen in 'Stereophonics' song 'Dakota'. The Stereophonics are a band that play indie music, like Sarah Russell.
As can be seen from watching our video, we used a lot of close ups of the singer. Unlike the majority of indie videos, we did not show any instruments, this creative decision allowed us to challenge traditional conventions of indie videos.
Taylor Swift, a 17 year old country-folk singer in the United States was a big influence. Taylor Swift managed to completley change the face of country music. She modernised it and managed to gain an audience that ordinary country singers would not be able to attain, such as Johnny Cash and Faith Hill. Taylor Swift's surprisingly seasoned country vocal style made her a star on Country Music Television. She released her self titled album in 2006 and quickly because a star singer and song writer, nominated for a Grammy Award by the Academy of Country Music as best new female vocalist. Taylor Swift cleverly found a niche market associated with older audiences, and exploited it by re-creating it to suit a younger audience. Taylor Swift gave us insparation for revolutionising the name of folk music.
These are some lyrics from Taylor Swift's song "Love Story", you can see the similarity in the meaning of her songs compared to Sarah Russell's.
You can see her sat on her bed. We used this to come up with the idea for our actress to be sat on the bed when she is upset. This shot shows Taylor Swift sat on her bed, holding a card saying "You Ok?". This shows that she cares about the boy, like Leah cares about Ant. Throughout Taylor Swift's video "You Belong With Me", it shows very clearly how Taylor feels for this boy. This can also be seen in ours through the way she holds his hand and the way she lies on his stomach on the bench.
We used this mid-shot (below/left) as an idea for our film. We have a lot of shots showing the couple as happy and enjoying each other's company. We have done this in the shot with the two of them on the hill, lying on the bench (below/right) and lying on Leah's bed. Unfortunately, as this scene went on to show pictures of Leah with another boy, this in effect ended the relationship, which is not what we intended to happen.
When planning our video, we wanted to show a dysfunction in the relationship, however, although the song lyrics don't involve upset, we had to create this using visual effects rather than audio, in effect, we were creating a deviant message. We used a scene from Taylor Swift's video "You Belong With Me", where a couple is seen arguing. This shot showed the couple on the bed, using a number of mid shots and close ups, the couple were talking and laughing. Then our actress went out of the room and we distanced to a long shot. Ant (the boyfriend), then went through her belongings and found a picture of Leah and another boy. Leah then re-entered the room and the couple are seen arguing, Ant then leaves and Leah sits on the bed and rips up the pictures. Though, in the end, despite it being good footage, it did not fit in with the lyrics of the song and we felt it looked out of place. Despite the fact that we had previously storboarded our ideas, as a group, we collectively decided that this angle was not the right one. By having an argument in the middle of our footage, it broke up the video (as well as the relationship). We wanted a music video that had a sense of continuity and happiness, so in effect an argument would not help us gain either of these two things.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When planning our ancillary tasks, we wanted a creative link between the two for marketing and distribution purposes. This allowed us to have a sense of continuity and to make our product recognisable to audiences through brand continuity. The options for a music video were:
-CD/DVD Cover
-Magazine Advertisement
-Website
We chose to do a DVD and a poster. We decided against a website as we decided that we did not have enough time to complete it to a good level, as one of our problems was that we over ran on the filming and editing stages of production. Also, as none of us had ever created a website before, we feared that we didnt have enough creative knowledge necessary to make a good website and felt we could do a better job on the other two.
As I have said previously it was very important for us to use elements in our ancillary tasks that would allow it to flow from one to the other. We did this through a number of ways. Firstly, the colours we chose for our magazine advertisement and DVD cover(mainly red, black, grey and white) were used throughout our ancillary tasts. These colours were chosen as we thought that they gave an 'indie' effect. Through research on the internet, we discovered that they are not dark colours but they have an element of ambiguity. We also chose these colours as our target audience were mainly males, aged 15-30. The colours were bold and solid which we found appealed to the late-teens and mid-20's as these colours are more youthfull, whereas elder people tend to draw to paler colours. The writing was very edgy and stood out more. The font remains the same throughout our ancillary tasks, we felt this to be very important as font is something that is very distinguishable. We did not find any fonts on the computer that we liked, so we went on a website called
Here there are a wide range of fonts, ranging from simplistic to edgy. This website was extremely useful as it allowed us to experiment with resources outside of what were given.
This is a website I found that backs up the evidence that youth groups prefer bolder colours, and as people become older, their liking towards bolder colours depreciates. http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/preferences.html
This is a copy of our DVD cover, followed by a print out of what the actual CD would look like if we were to make one.
These are a few examples of album covers from Indie artists, you can see the correlation between ours and theirs, in the sense that they all use dark, bold colours.
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We also made a creative decision to put screen grabs onto the back of our DVD case. This gave an instant connection from the video to the DVD cover. We chose the shots which best represented the music video, such as two of Leah, our actress, singing, also two photos of the couple together. Although this was not planned, we chose colours for our DVD cover and magazine advert that featured a lot in the music video. For example, red comes up a lot in her clothes and the rose, and grey comes up a lot on the roads and the sky. The last way in which our ancillary tasks interlink with our music video is when Leah is in the cloud and is smiling and biting her tongue, this mirrors how she appears in the music video.
Our group decided it was very important to conduct audience feedback. As we had spent 3 months on the production of our music video, we wanted to see what people thought about it. We carried out audience research at the beginning through questionnaires and using a flip camcorder to interview people about certain ideas.
We used two methods of audience research. Firstly, we conducted questionnaires to find out what sort of music people like listening to and what they look for in music videos. We conducted this by sending out 20 questionnaires to males and females aged 15-18. This, we found, was very quick and effective and allowed us to gain a lot of data in a very short space of time. We did however suffer a few problems, mainly from lack of data due to small sample numbers, we should have sent out perhaps 10 more questionnaires to get a more representative view from our audience. It would have also been better if we had gained a wider demographic. Our questionnaires only went out to people aged 15-18 who were white, middle class people, due to convenience at our school, though we then found this to be rather limiting, as we went on to discover that Indie/folk music was aimed typically at up to 30 year olds.
Flip cameras are an easy way to record footage and upload them onto a computer. It was a very spontaneous idea for us to use these, as our teacher had recently purchased one and we decided it would be a different way of collecting data. We decided to use this opportunity and film different people from our year and ask them about particular ideas. One idea we were keen to get feedback on was the idea of using a green screen. When watching our film, you will see that we used a stop motion effect when filming our couple doing certain motions, e.g. holding hands. Our original idea was to film this on a green screen so we could add certain effects such as hearts, and a wand. Audience feedback on this idea actually came out to show that most people favoured this idea, as they believed it was innovative and would add character to our video. Right up until we started filming, we were sure we were going to use a green screen, and this was mainly down to the encouraging response from the audience. However, the green screen we had access to at school was quite small and would not allow us to show a long shot of the couple, which is what we desired. Although this is not what eventually swayed our decision, we did not want to compromise on our original ideas. Ultimately, we did not want to risk having poor footage, and didn't want to risk poor quality of shots. Which, essentially could look quite tacky.
Our questionnaire research was actually very important. From this, we changed a couple of ideas. For example, originally we were going to focus on a music video based on our singer, and have the storyline as a secondary plot, however, from our research, we found that people watch the videos for the storyline, as they find it more interesting, and many people thought that it was important that the lyrics were reflected in the storyline. So, we did not feel that by having a music video centred around the singer would be reflecting our audiences needs.We conducted audience research amongst numerous people after we had completed our video. We gathered a number of comments that helped us to see how other people saw our video, which was good, as we had been seeing the video from our eyes and we had admittedly become rather unaware of what other people's take on our video might have been. From audience research we learnt that:
- People liked the idea of trying to introduce folk music to younger ages
- They liked the childlike feel to the video as it suited the lyrics of the song
- They liked the fact that we entered her head, hence entered her thoughts to show where the songs perspective was coming from
- They liked the stop motion effect to show a change in scenario
- They thought some scenes looked rather staged and unnatural
- They thought the quality of the picture could have been better
To get feedback like this tells me that, for the majority of our video, we did a good job. It is hard to produce a music video in 3 months that is going to suit everyone. Given the little time we had, to get feedback that was, for the majority, encouraging, makes it seem that we did as good of a job as possible. The negative comments we recieved, such as there were some scenes that looked rather staged and unnatural, were expected, as to make a couple who are not actually seeing each other look natural is rather difficult, especially as neither of them are actors.
If we had another chance to do our video again, I think there would have been a few changes. For one, we perhaps would not have made our video so simplistic. Although most Indie videos tend to be quite simple, ours, you could say, was rather dull at times. If we had introduced another storyline, then it would have made the video more interesting, and more watchable. If we had another chance, we would have also taken advantage of the equipment available, such as help from lighting props. Help with lighting would have been particularly useful as some of our scenes seem rather dull as we shot them in the winter. It would have been good to create a summery atmosphere to suit the theme of the music.
Overall, I found audience feedback particularly useful to guide us through the production stage, however, we did not use audience feedback as much as we could have, and ours was perhaps not as indepth as it could have been.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
As we were producing a music video, we used a lot of technology. As media students, it is important to experiment with different types of technology, particularly in the production stages of our coursework.
We used technology throughout the production of our music video. To begin with, we used a certain amount of technology in our planning stage. In the planning stage, we used very simple forms of technology. We used Microsoft Word to write down certain ideas, and to write our questionnaire. Microsoft Word is a very simple form of technology and it helped us to organise out documents to make them easy to comprehend. We used emails to communicate with the manager of Sarah Russell. Due to copyright laws, we had to have permission from the manager. All we had was an email address, so we used this to contact him. Below is the email we recieved from him letting us know it was OK to use her song 'Finally Found'.
Hi Hannah,
I've just got to my hotel and got on the internet.
That's no problem at all using that song. Keep me posted with how you are getting on
Best,
Dave Swallow
Audio Engineer / Tour Manager / Tour Consultant
Analogue Engineering & Productions
Recent Credits:
La Roux Ane Brun Here and Now Seasick Steve The Hoosiers
Email is a very simple way to stay in contact with someone and means that we did not have to waste time setting up a meeting to ask for permission to use this song. We used blogger to document our progress with our video. Blogger.com is a easy way to instantly post a document online. Blogger was an easy way to document our progress with regards to planning and production.
As has been stated before, we used a flip camcorder to document our research and planning, such as audience feedback. This was incredibly simple and easy and cant be uploaded onto the internet within minutes. We used this as we believed it was an inventive way of documenting research.
As you can tell, we used a Mac for the editing of our films. One advantage of editing on a Mac as opposed to a PC is that Mac's have had a lot more computer software developed for editing films, such as iDVD and Garageband, all of which we took advantage of throughout the editing stages of our music video. Mac's, unlike PC's, cater for the more creative projects, such as ours. They also provided a challenge when it came to how to use them. By using a Mac for 3 months, it allowed me to develop my understanding on how to operate a Mac, rather that using a PC, as I have used these for some time and already know how to use one.
One of the biggest forms of technology we used throughout our production of our music video is the Internet. We used the internet from planning, by researching existing artists such as Taylor Swift, to then using the internet to document our evaluation, like I am doing now. The internet is a huge interface that allows us to search almost anything and it most definitely helped us to come up with ideas for our music video. In particular, YouTube, a leading website that hosts videos, helped us to take ideas from existing media products and turn them into our own.
When constructing our video, we used a significant amount of technology. Essentially, this started with using a DV camcorder. This was obviously for the filming of our video. Unfortunatley, due to lack of equipment, we could not use a HD camcorder, which is possibly why our feedback showed that many people thought our video lacked in visual quality. It is a shame that we did not get to experience using a HD camera, however, given the equipment we had available, we did the best we could. The DV camcorder was easy to use and was very easy to transfer onto Final Cut Express, which is the application we used on a Mac to edit our film.
Final Cut Express is a non-linear video editing application created by Aple Inc. We used Final Cut Express for the entirety of editing our film. Putting the film onto Final Cut Express from a DV camera was very simple, and took less than an hour. From this, we then watched the film through and looked at which scenes worked, which needed more footage, and which ones we should delete completley. It is very easy to cut the scenes we don't like and re-work the ones we did like. We didn't really suffer any problems from Final Cut Express, apart from our lack of general knowledge on how to use the application. We then went on to add the music onto our video. This proved difficult as we then had to re-work the film to match the timing of the lyrics. We also struggled to fit the time scale on the music, the music to our song is 3 minutes 14 seconds, where as our footage stretched to almost 4 minutes. We therefore had to cut scenes which we actually liked, and would have wanted to keep in the video. When editing our film, we found that the colouring of our video wasn't quite right. Some scenes looked very dull, due to the fact that we filmed in winter. We used Final Cut Express to colour correct the colour of the picture. For example, where the couple are sat on the bench outside, we made this lighter so that the faces were more visable. In the shot of the two outside on the swing we made this lighter to show that they were happy, we then made the shot darker when he had left her. Before finding Sarah Russell's piece "Finally Found", we were struggling to find songs we liked. At one point, we resorted to going on GarageBand, a software which enables you to experiment with different tracks and different instruments, to make your own song. GarageBand is very easy to use, but the song did not sound professional, which is why we then went to look on MySpace, to find artists that had had some music experience.
This is what Final Cut Express looks like. It is very clearly set out and the blue bar represents the video where as the green bar represents the audio.Livetype is a programme develoed by Apple Inc. that allows you to add titles to videos. We had used this for our AS piece and it was, again, very simple to use. However, we experimented with different titles but did not feel that, in the end, titles were suitable on our music video. This was a creative decision and in the end, I believe it was the right decision to make. Having titles would detract from the music video, we could also not find a style of writing on LiveType that suited the theme of our music.
This is LiveType, as you can see, the format is very similar to that of Final Cut Express. This helps to create some correlation between programmes and allowed us to understand the programmes a lot quicker.
We used a programme called Cubase. Cubase allows you to record audio. This is what we used for our directors commentary. It was important for us to have a commentary to have another way for us to reflect on our work, though, the commentary focused more on the creative aspects of our video, as opposed to the production of it. Cubase allowed us to record speech and then copy this onto our film. We made two copies of our film, the final version and one with the directors commentary incorporated into it. We then copied this onto iDVD.
The last programme we used when editing our film was iDVD. iDVD is a software programme the comes with Mac's. iDVD allows you to copy your film onto a DVD and create a title menu and add music and pictures as well. iDVD gives different themes to choose from and we found a vinyl one that suited the theme of our song very well. We then burnt the disc to create the finished product.
Overall, technology allowed us to take our ideas and creativity to the next level. Without the use of technology such as Final Cut Express, which allowed us to edit our film and delete the scenes we didn't like, our film could have looked rather amateur and inexperienced. I believe technology allowed us to expand on our creative ability and to add features such as a directors commentary that we would have previously not been able to do.
Final Evaluation of Finally Found
In conclusion, I beleive that Finally Found was successful. Based on my personal opinions alone, I believe that this project has allowed our group to develop creative ideas and put them into practice through using our music video as a source of experimentation. By experimenting with ideas, I believe that we came up with a video that challenged traditional ideas of Indie/Folk music videos, which is essentially what we set out to achieve. We changed the way folk music is normally seen by working with previous indie/folk music videos and challenging the representations that they portrayed. For example, instead of focusing on the band, like most indie music videos, we decided to focus more on the storyline, as our audience research showed that this is what viewers look for. This is also an example of how we used audience research to change and challenge original ideas that we had. I enjoyed working with different forms of technology, such as Final Cut Express, and in particular using the DV camcorder. This was the part that I enjoyed the most as it was the part where our groups creativity could really be put to the test. As can be seen from our storyboards below, many ideas changed. Such decisions like these are the parts that I found to be the most motivating. If I had another chance, there are definitely parts of the planning, research and construction I would like to change or develop, but in general I am very happy with the end video and believe it shows a true reflection of the effort that went into the music video by our group as a whole.
