Dear examiner,
Here is my A2 final media production. Due to many time constraints linked to: my location being remodeled halfway through filming, Having to change the cast at the last minute due to illness; and subsequently having to re film the whole of my production, i am not happy with the quality of it.
First of all, i will say that i'm not completely happy with this piece. Throughout this evaluative piece on my production as a whole, i will state areas that i'm not happy with in my A2 final production
The introduction
I used the switch sound effect and that influencing the change to the grey scale pallette to suggest that this was a moment of reflection and story telling for the main character and him influencing the change to grey was his attempt in trying to set his story as best he can.
This links to the common convention which uses a grey scale or a muted colour pallette to suggest a negative change in their life. Aside from Noir films, this technique is used in a variety of media platforms to suggest a negative swing of events; as if to suggest that all the colour has been ripped out of their life. This is shown in the video of "How to Save a Life" by The Fray.
Secondly, in the scene where our main starts to get out of bed, i was planning to have a small clip of the girlfriend appear out of nowhere and start to hug him. This idea fell through due to what went in to making the shot. From the way i was envisioning it, there would have to be a hole in the bed so the actress could reach out and being the hugging scene. This would have involved a large cost and greater planning however, so i decided to scrap it.
Rhythmic Editing
I decided to use a variety of rhythmic editing in this piece as it featured quite a few moments that benefited from matching the music to the video. This is seen through the series of short shots at 0:52- 0:59 of my piece.
Lip Sync
I decided to use elements of lip sync in both locations of my music video (the Dark hall with the piano and the bedroom) This is common place in many music videos to grant an extra link between the video and the song. However, my use of lip sync in both the piano and bedroom scenes show how the singer is deeply immersed in his recount of the story. a similar use of lip Sync is shown in Hoobastank's "the reason" video.
Fade and Overlay editing
I used a fair amount of overlay editing to create a disorientating mood for the viewer which links to the alcohol in the video and linking to the situation the main character finds himself in.
One area where i wish i had used an overlay track is the section marked by the lyrics "she takes you in with her crying eyes". Without the overlay, that section seems rather clunky as the clip of the girl his just simply placed in the middle of the main character drinking. I wish i had used better transitions aswell as many of them seem rather rushed
Composition of shots
Many of my shots feature pretty standard staging, common in many different examples. My main source of composition theory was the rule of thirds, where the action of the picture is focused normally towards the sides of the screen rather than in the centre. This is challenged by my shot of the main falling onto the floor with a halo of pictures surrounding his head.
Conclusion
While i'm not completely happy with my piece overall; looking back on it, it is clear to see where my inspiration has appeared in my shots, composition and ideas leading into the production.
I decided to make a DVD cover and band website for my Ancillary texts. The main themes running through both were the colour schemes, which is taken from the album cover the track is off, and the idea that the music video is used as a comeback; bringing the artists music from the old days into the modern eye again.
Looking back, i can see that one of the main colours in the theme is completely off, but i feel it still links well with the overall theme of the video in terms of the grey.
In my about section, i talk about how this video is a chance for the Artist, John Mayer, to bring some of his older songs back into the limelight again. This is also referenced on my DVD cover when looking at the rolling stone review.
There are many issues with these ancillary texts, however. For instance, i wished i had taken more time to get photos of the new cast when i had to change them suddenly close to the deadline. This meant that all images are captured from the main task itself rather than taken in post. This has lead to some issues in the cropping and finding ways to fit them on a website or DVD cover easily. It also limited my range of shots to choose from.
Due to my late finishing because of casting and location difficulties, i didn't have much time to be able to conduct full audience research. I have been able to show it to close friends and family, however, which has given me enough points for me to take on board and allow me to develop as a creator and user of the media.
The First element commented on was the greyscale, some thinking that it would be better if it were staggered better rather than it being constant. While i can understand their point, i used the greyscale all the way through to try and illustrate the depth the main character is going into to best tell his story. This has allowed me to see how some elements that i thought would benefit the story and cinematography aren't received in the same way by consumers. This suggests that a better approach is having consumers involved all the way through in order to make sure that some elements are visible in terms of their reason for being.
Secondly, my sample seemed to like the element of recount held throughout. My brother suggested that the first transition into the bedroom scenes, marked by a fade, links it to being more dream- like, which was the mood i was trying for.
other observations made by my sample were;
good examples of camera placement and shots
nice use of establishing shots
maybe needing a greater diversity of items and shots
There are issues concerning objectivity when using a small sample like mine. First of all, a small personal sample is less likely to be heavily critical of your work due to the personal factor between you, meaning that you don't receive a full critique. Secondly, there is little hard data to collect in order to spot trends and create charts. This is often an advantage of an online survey as you can reach a large amount of people that can fill out a small questionnaire in their leisure. Furthermore, there is a chance that a fair amount of people involved in the questionnaire don't know you as a person very well, meaning they have more freedom to be critical.
However, keeping the sample size small with an unstructured interview allowed me to get a greater, more in depth view from people rather than just receiving a numerical outcome.
Tomska is a youtuber with over 4.3 million subscribers, with a side channel called dark Squidge (645,000 subscribers). On this second channel, Tom posts a weekly vlog series called last week, where he records various parts of his week and puts it all into one video for the start of each week. As Tom gained his fame through making comedic short films and sketches, and has built up a small team over the years to help run his channel and content; it is incredibly interesting to see the inside view of the creation of youtube videos and the maintenance of channels.
However, The vlogs don't purely focus on this; they also focus on Tom depression, obsesity, relationships, self doubt, worry, his life story, all forming into a well rounded video each week. So, not only is it a deep insight into the inner workings of a youtube channel; it also provides the creator with a greater connection to his fans which he otherwise wouldn't be able to achieve due to his other content (Sketch comedy) not having that lenience. Below are two examples of videos showing the range of emotions and experiences carried through last week.
Even though Tom tends to put a comedic twist on everything in these videos, there is still evidence on the fine line that they have to walk in order to stay in this line of work. Even with short, quirky remarks like "have we been fired yet?" when addressing their trip to Hungary show some of the possibilities faced by content producers.
This second video also carries a very important message that, if you are suffering with depression or other mental illness, it is important to build strong support networks of friends to make your life easier to deal with. And that's exactly what Tom has done as displayed by the video below. So, while also providing an insight into a creators life and their different styles, he his also creating an escape for people, and giving them meaningful advice and proving that it works.
When Youtube was in its infancy, it was primarily a platform that was treated much like a social media. People would make videos dicussing their days and views, sending video messages to each other, and the occasional short film. then in 2006, a new regular content producer started to appear with the tag "Lonelygirl15". At first she seemed like the typical teenage girl content producer with strict parents.
As this channel progressed and started creating more content, her fans started to notice weird things taking place in her life such as things on the wall, bruises, stories about her parents etc. This worried a lot of the fanbase, creating an explosion in subscribers, comments, discussion on forums creating theories such as her parents being satanic priests or cult leaders. Eventually, it was revealed that Lonelygirl15 was actually a character, created by Greg Goodfried (a Lawyer), Miles Beckett (plastic surgeon intern) and Mesh Flinders (a Screen Writer).
This is the first example of people manipulating the platform in a completely new way, by creating a character with a story arc but presenting it to the consumers in the most common video format on youtube, vlogs. This very much signaled the start of further manipulation of the platfrom of youtube and the development of the marketisation of youtube.
below is an interview with the creators of Lonelygirl15:
Unsurprisingly, this reveal was met with some backlash. Even though the creators carried no malicious intent with the creation of Lonelygirl15, viewer's still didn't like the fact that they were being lie to.
This does bring up an interesting point though. Looking at a few lists of so called "fake videos" and the drama that seems to collect around them, it brings up the point that very few of us truly know how real much of the content we watch is when it comes to prank videos or vlog channels. Below is a video showing some other fake video "scandals" in the past including Lonelygirl15. If anything, the video shows just how volatile the platform of youtube is and the lengths some people will go to just to get themselves extra viewership. I hope you enjoy.
Michael Wesch is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. In 2008, he gave a lecture about how instrumental the role of Youtube and the world wide web is in general in evoloving the human race from an anthropological standpoint. He states that as sites such as youtube give the public the chance to contribute to the mass media, more and more people are having to change themselves in terms of personality or how the appear in order to fit in with the new medium and society.
As this lecture was given in 2008, many of the big famous youtubers who gain income from the site haven't started out yet. Instead, he focuses on how the platform was used as a means of connection around the globe; almost like a new social media. This can be seen by the fact that a majority of the videos that were posted back then were roughly 3 minutes long (about 200,000 a day back then- this has increased dramatically though) with ordinary people discussing their views and talking about their philosophies and lives.
Furthermore, he discusses how anyone with access to a webcam can join in on the global discussion rather than needing a full film crew or a producer commissioning the work. This lead to the creation of online dramas and the emergence of the channel known as Lonelygirl15, but i'll discuss that in a separate blog post.
This video clearly demonstrates how media how now influenced society in such a way so quickly that has caused shock waves resonating throughout the world, leading to mass societal change in only 20 years or so.
Stop motion is a technique where lots of photos of an object or scene are taken where minute movements are made in the scene between shots. Typically, this technique is used with clay figures and scenes to make films and TV episodes such as Wallace and Grommit and Flushed Away. But stop motion has been used in live action. Popularly in scetches on youtube and in indie films to create an interesting effect in a scene.
This video illustrates how stop motion can be a cheap tool that can be used to create intriguing visuals that can compliment a song well, and also create visuals without the use of animation. Taking inspiration from some live action stop motion videos, i've decided to include a small scene of stop motion in my production. While it won't contain anywhere near the amount of frames as some other small scenes of stop motion as i want it to go with the rhythm of the song, it is still classed as stop motion.
Its interesting to me how well older stop motion videos hold up compared to newer ones. For example "sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel. What was a groundbreaking piece of media for the time can still be considered just as groundbreaking many years on.
I believe the reason that this video from the 1980's can still hold up to newer stop motion videos is down to the fact that the fundamentals and technique of stop motion haven't changed. While they have been refined over the years, as can be seen in the Wallace and Grommit films when comparing the first and latest films together, they are still all about taking a sequence of many shots and putting it together to form moving image.
As i discussed in my blog post about stop motion, i plan on using a small clip of stop motion in my music video. While looking at various videos employing stop motion, i remembered a video that i saw about five years ago, "In your arms" by Kina Grannis. This is an incredibly unique music video as it employs Jelly Beans to form the main background and scenes in this stop motion video.
Looking at this video, it is clear to see the power and presence stop motion can have as a medium for creativity. After remembering and re watching the video, i found a separate video documenting the behind the scenes of the music video. It is after watching this where i stated to realise the time involved in making a video of this style and magnitude. The fact that a 3:30 minute video can take a year just to shoot it baffled me. However, the sheer devotion and creativity paid off as this is one of my all time favorite music videos.
2,460 frames
1,357 hours (22 and a half days)
288,000 Jelly Beans
While im not looking to employ stop motion of this magnitude in my production, it does give a great insight into the depth a creator has to dive into to create such a complex piece of stop motion. The fact that they had to make sure that every hair and minute aspect of Kina's expression was the exact same as their reference photos is amazing. Also the sheer amount of time involved in creating the back drop just for one picture on the camera. All in all, this is a fantastic project which lead to a great music video that i would highly recommend.
Due to the time constraints of my previous song, i decided to change my idea and wrote up; my plan, shot list, props, locations and actors in one sleepless evening. I have been working on this idea for the past few months and am already feeling more comfy with this song and the time.
The new song i am creating a video for is "Dreaming with a Broken Heart" by John Mayer. (linked below)
I chose this song because I've been a fan of John Mayer's for years and the song provokes quite strong visuals just waiting to be applied to the screen. Themes included in this song are: loss, regret, being broken hearted, longing. With this range of moods, it lends itself to being quite a melancholy piece with interesting rhythmic elements that can be built upon. In fact, i'm planning to branch out in terms of techniques and use a small scene of stop motion to convey one idea I've had about the main characters heart sinking in his chest.
I'm confident that i can deliver a high quality product in good time whilst also delivering on the evaluation aspects and ancillary texts.
One of the ancillary texts I have chosen to accompany my main task is the band website homepage. With this in mind, i devoted some time to look at some band websites. The websites i chose to view were Red Hot Chili Peppers, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Twenty one Pilots. I found that there were a list of criteria that these websites had in common. These websites all had:
Tour dates and locations
navigation to media (pictures,videos)
merchandise
downloads to music
music videos
links to social media
Ticket sites
Compare this to the twang- no websites just rely on social media and separate sites for Merch and tickets. While the bigger bands websites do have links to their social media and other outlets, smaller bands like "the Twang" solely rely on social media and businesses to advertise gigs ad tours and distribute merchandise.
One site that breaks the mold for more established bands and musicians is John Mayer's website. His website appears to be completely devoted to his new EP's (extended playlists) and a video advertising his new tour as seen by the screen captures below.. While it still contains the links to social media, it focuses less on the merchandise and more on the music and where you can listen to it.
Looking at the variety of examples of different artists websites, we can see that they all contain the same themes with varying amounts and emphasis. A website like the Twenty One Pilots one focuses more on the merch, whereas John Mayer's focuses more on tour dates and new releases rather than merchandise. This has aided me in one of my ancillary texts as it haas given me a greater insight into the themes featured in an average band website.
BBC Three is a rather unique case study of what the future might hold for television channels. This is because BBC Three used to be a TV channel, but in 2016 moved to be completely online to act as an extension to BBC Iplayer (the BBC's catchup service). On this new platform, the BBC are now able to create exclusive shows for the online space. These include documentaries, comedies and dramas; making it more into a netflix like platform just without the subscription.
The move of BBC Three from terrestrial television gives us a glimpse into the future. I feel the BBC used this move to break into the market of catch up and on demand TV which has grown exponentially in the past few years with platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. We can see that BBC Three being online has given the BBC a chance to advertise some of their internet exlusive shows such as Taboo and the Asian Provocateur (my personal favourite).
But with more and more TV channels making the move to online due to the popularity of netflix, is this where TV will be going in the next 10-20 years? personally, i think no. While i agree that streaming platforms are stealing the show at the moment, for channels with as high a reputation as the BBC still having significant foothold, and the markets for TV's still booming, i feel there will always be some live television rather than it all being located online. Below is a link to the BBC 3 site
Now that my Main Task music video is well underway, i need to start focusing my attention to the evaluation and ancillary texts. The evaluation section of my main task counts for 20 marks out of the total 100 for my coursework in media. This means that it carries significant swing in the end result and grading. My teacher, Mr Buckmaster, has provided an in depth powerpoint exploring the 4 questions and how best to go about answering them. In this document, he includes the questions that need to be answered, possible methods to best display a response and past pupils work so that we have some examples. The PowerPoint is linked below:
Cobus Potgeiter is a South African youtuber who creates primarily drumming based content. In January 2012, he set up this kick starter called "the YouTube Band Project", a scheme where he would get musicians from all over the world to send audition tapes over YouTube in the hopes that they could form a band and record an album. The kick starter was needed to fund travel, studio time and accommodation. During this process, after the band mates had been selected, Cobus made a vlog series following this once in a lifetime experience. below is a link to the Kick starter video and the first episode:
I feel like this experiment shows just how powerful technology and the internet is now and how it is able to connect us all. But aside from it being a good case study on how the media has brought us closer together; it is also a great documentary, which links to another type of media that i haven't gone into in my blog or research.
What i mainly draw from this is a greater understanding of the field in which i want to work in, sound for music and film. But it also carries the forms and conventions of many documentaries of a similar type. While it isn't a traditionally set out documentary, it builds upon many of the features present in them in order to best present the experience these 5 friends went through. I would highly recommend a viewing.
IMDb is an internet TV and film database which has proved very useful and interesting in both my school and home life. On this site you can find: Actors profiles, Films, TV shows and many other interesting articles and lists for the users to sink their teeth into.
On a typical page for an actor consists of: a small Bio, where they were born, photos and what they are known for. This "what they are known for section" is incredibly useful if you wish to see more of an actor at their best.
Where IMDb really shines is its film and TV pages though. On these you will find: the title, a score out of ten given by IMDb's own critics, a synopsis and the actors involved with their characters names at the side. This is especially helpful as it allows the user to seek out their favourite actors in a certain film to find more of their work. This was the case with me and Sam Rockwell when i watched "Green Mile" and loved his performance. from just 5 minutes of searching i had compiled a list films featuring him and also films related to those that i may enjoy. All in all, IMDb is a very useful tool for someone wishing to widen their film vocabulary and also strengthen their knowledge around the whole subject.
Over school holidays, i tend to find myself watching quite a few horrors and thrillers. There's something about the atmosphere and the tension created in both of these genre's that i can connect with very deeply. It was only until recently where i began to understand it after stumbling across a few interviews of Alfred Hitchcock where he define's the differences between suspense and mystery. To describe this, he used his famous analogy of the bomb, which is explained in the video below.
While this is a very good description of what suspense is, it doesn't describe how this can fit into a film. One scene from the recent film "the conjuring 2" carry's quite a lot of suspense using the pre-requisites of a suspenseful film.
Warning: this is a scary scene. Viewer discretion is advised
This scene exhibits some elements that are common in suspenseful moments in cinema. Probably the most prolific in this particular sequence is the pacing, lighting and sound track. Suspense normally relies on the scene to be slow, but gradually gain momentum as it carries on. This is exhibited by the shadow walking towards the picture and the placement of the portrait in the background of most of the scene. This gives the audience a focal point of the scene- they know that what is going to happen will be related to that picture. This is aided by the music. Because there is virtually no music, or little sustained notes on the strings or something, it keeps the audiences attention purely on the visuals of the scene rather than overwhelming them.
One series on youtube I've been getting into recently is Walter Banasiak's Top five best/ Top five worst. In these videos, he comprises a list of 5 of an actors best and 5 of an actors worst performances in his opinion.
Part of the appeal of these series for me is the fact that it shows even some of Hollywood's most beloved actors (such as Ben Affleck, Johnny Depp and Jennifer Lawrence) have bad days and don's always put there all into a performance. And this can has such a detrimental effect on the final piece. It also introduces aundiences and fans to films that they may not have seen, even though they are considered fantastic films. This is the case for me watching "Ed Wood" after i saw it on the top 5 best of Johnny Depp's performances. Linked below are the Top five best and Top five worst videos for Jim Carrey.
This has proven to be quite a valuable tool for me as i always love finding new cinema experiences and widening my knowledge and skills through absorbing this medium. And with this third party presenting films that people have probably never heard of either supporting or destroying these actors work, it can help you to form a more critical view on many actors seen to be at the top of their game. This was the case for me and watching their top five best and worst of Tom Hanks; and actor who i previously thought was untouchable. But looking at some of the performances they bring to light, it is clear to see that every actor has the ability to have a bad performance.
