In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We aimed to make our music video resemble the 60s and 70s, we achieved this by adding filters changing the colour of the of the video making it more vibrant fitting the psychedelic theme. At the intro and ending the colour is black and white symbolizing that Jimi’s music gives it colour.
When thinking of ideas we looked at Jimi’s other videos and Stevie ray Vaughn to get inspiration and decided it would be best to do a performance based video because of the guitar theme and also the lyrics are too metaphorical to base a story on the lyrics. Ours is very similar to other videos in the genre. We also went for a comic appeal by dressing me up as a white jimi Hendrix. Our video is different due to other jimi Hendrix videos due to our access to better recording techniques and better editing software. I made the guitar performance more realistic by learning the song beforehand so we could sync my hands perfectly with the shot. Our video is not like other pop videos due to it not being pop music we went for a more experimental style of video.
We also looped the intro so I could fit more shots in before I start playing guitar. We were thinking of making the entire video in black and white due to it being an old song but we decided not to because we would not have been able to use all the different filters and therefore it would not be as psychedelic.
we used a wide range of shots including close ups and long shots which is normal for a music video. in the goodwins music video analysis he said there should be a relationship between the music and the visuals and we achieved this by syncing passionate guitar playing in time with the music and we used a lot of trippy effects such as reversing the shots and slowing them down and filters to make them fit with the sound. we demonstrate the characteristics of the genre by using a hippie outfit and using an outdoor environment in the meadows to symbolize the free independent nature of the music.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Evaluation Question 2
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
In our project we combined specific elements in various ways so that they would all be in some way related. The outstanding element is the colour scheme used throughout, this consisted of psychedelic colours such as purple, green and yellow. The reason we chose this colour scheme was to play on the Psychedelic Rock genre, this was typical for albums and music videos of the 60's and 70's.
Star image was an important aspect in this project as the music video consisted mainly of a performance narrative. On photoshop I had various images of the stars, I therefore integrated them with the CD cover and album advert. The planet is a nod towards the trippy infrared like effects in nightclubs like UFO of the time with their groundbreaking Lightshows and the fact that the Psychedelic Rock bands sometimes sung about space, like Pink Floyd and at one point The Rolling Stones.
Various themes are brought forward through the Psychedelic genre; they consisted of nature, space, peace, love and many more. We referenced this through our locations. The location was natural, it being next to a river and is mostly set on a meadow, this references the Hippy Movements link to nature and the counterculture of the time, which is contrasted with the buildings we filmed on which is an attempt to show the watchtower. The Jimi Hendrix Costume is attempts to show an authentic rock star of the late 60s/70s with the flares and the Afro and the peace sign all icons of that era.
In our magazine advert we feature the front cover of our album, by doing this we are encouraging the target audience to seek out the album because if they are fans, they will want to buy the music and by giving them a visual aid, will increase sales of the album. Also, by adding a review by NME a hugely popular music magazine to say a good thing about the album, may make people outside the target area want to buy it as well, which means giving the album a broader target audience. Finally, by adding the retail stores and websites give the customer the idea of where to find it, making sales easier. For the magazine we brought elements from the other pieces of work. The picture of the star was from the video, and the album cover was the one we actually made ourselves.
The cover art is another representation of psychedelia with the planet and the stars meant to represent a person being at one with the universe when that person is listening to Jimi Hendrix, it may also represent the musicians quest for the ultimate song as his silhouette is in the distance.
The video, cover art and magazine advert compliment each other well because they consist of the same elements in the same media, and represent our creative vision and influence of Psychedelia and Jimi Hendrix. This would hopefully make our target audience and others want to buy the album.
evaluation question 3
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We posted our video on YouTube and Facebook so people could comment and also asked a few people from our class to make comments. Most people only said it was good so I asked what improvements could be made. ‘You could use more locations’ one person said so if we had to do it again we would spend more time filming and research into locations more. Also I could have spent more time on the ending because I rushed it due to the deadline. ‘You could of got a more realistic costume or painted your self black XD’ another person said but obviously I’m not going to paint myself black but I could have got a better mustache. ‘You could have been more enthusiastic’ I could have done a better performance if we filmed on a warm day.
One person said, "It's very good, just is this a parody video?" While we agree it can be seen as a parody video, with the overblown costume and the effects, while we were making the video this was not our intention, as we were expecting it to come out a lot more serious, and more as an homage not as a joke, because we did not want to disrespect Hendrix or overdo the joke side of it. But when we watch it back, we do end up laughing, so in the end the product has become more parodic than serious but we still believe it is an homage. We see it as a pastiche of late 60s/70s music videos because the costume is so over blown and the location is natural and reminiscent of footage of areas where hippies would camp or their festivals.
Another said, "the effects are good, but they could've been trippier." Yes we believe they could have been a lot more trippier but because we again did not have enough time in the end to make them more elaborate. My own feedback is that if we had more time we could have used a much bigger variety of filters and also we could have made them go in time with the music. Also we could have done more shots for each location I was in such as more close ups and long shots.
We were told the video quality was “quite poor” and that the camera was sometimes “shaky”, with the camera quality we were unable to do anything about the quality because the camera we used was old in comparison to newer camera’s so the quality issues were not our fault, and if we had more time we would have used more effects to make the picture quality look much better than it could be. The camera was shaky because some of the shots required us to do it handheld, so it was practically our fault if it ends up very shaky. We did try to mask the shakiness by speeding up the shots we used which did work because, unless you look very carefully it doesn’t appear to be shaky at all.
evaluation question 4
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
When researching the locations for our shots we were able to use google maps to find and take photos of our locations. We could use word to jot down ideas when planning the video and then copy and paste onto the blog saving time. We also had access to final cut pro due to the large amount of apple macs in the collage, which is a very powerful editing software. When editing the video we used a variety of filters on almost every shot making all the colours look much more vibrant.
We also used automation to make the colour fade in at the start and end of the video. During the guitar solo we used a intense filter also making the screen shake giving the solo more of an impact. We could also make shots that would usually not work together using cross fades to make them fit seamlessly. We also used jump shots giving the effect I could teleport by keeping the camera in one place while I do a performance in different locations then cross fading them together. We used a variety of different camera angles and ranges such as close ups on my face and mouth. A variety of establishing shots and panning shots and close ups on the guitar. Towards the end we blended me playing with another psychedelic video giving it a trippy effect. During the middle section we reversed some of the shots and slowed them down giving the effect that jimi’s playing was slowing down time and reversing it. We synced these shots with the music making them more effective.
When making the cd cover we used photoshop using a variety of different gradients and filters blending different images together and changing the colours giving it a psychedelic nature fitting our theme.
when editing in final cut pro we had access to many different tools for editing out video such as being able to cut and change the lengths of video. you can also expand the audio so you can see the beats so every image fits with the beat. in some shot we create a trippy effect by slowing down and reversing video clips. we could also make some shots fit where they usually would not by changing the speed of the shots for certain sections.
when we used filters we could get the effect we wanted by changing the parameters of the filter changing the way it effects the clip e.g. the filter during the guitar solo did not fit with the colour and was too intense so we changed the colour and intensity.
the cameras we used were of a reasonable quality but had very good zoom features. however our video did not need to be in hd so the quality was good enough. i could not remember the lyrics so we used the internet on Alex's phone to get the lyrics up. the internet was also a very useful tool for all information we needed such as when were searching for album covers and information on jimi hendrix. when putting things up on the blog we were able to link videos from youtube which was useful because it would not let us upload out finished video directly onto blogger. however it let us upload out images fine and although we left it plain we could have changed the background and font to something more interesting.
When researching the locations for our shots we were able to use google maps to find and take photos of our locations. We could use word to jot down ideas when planning the video and then copy and paste onto the blog saving time. We also had access to final cut pro due to the large amount of apple macs in the collage, which is a very powerful editing software. When editing the video we used a variety of filters on almost every shot making all the colours look much more vibrant.
We also used automation to make the colour fade in at the start and end of the video. During the guitar solo we used a intense filter also making the screen shake giving the solo more of an impact. We could also make shots that would usually not work together using cross fades to make them fit seamlessly. We also used jump shots giving the effect I could teleport by keeping the camera in one place while I do a performance in different locations then cross fading them together. We used a variety of different camera angles and ranges such as close ups on my face and mouth. A variety of establishing shots and panning shots and close ups on the guitar. Towards the end we blended me playing with another psychedelic video giving it a trippy effect. During the middle section we reversed some of the shots and slowed them down giving the effect that jimi’s playing was slowing down time and reversing it. We synced these shots with the music making them more effective.
When making the cd cover we used photoshop using a variety of different gradients and filters blending different images together and changing the colours giving it a psychedelic nature fitting our theme.
when editing in final cut pro we had access to many different tools for editing out video such as being able to cut and change the lengths of video. you can also expand the audio so you can see the beats so every image fits with the beat. in some shot we create a trippy effect by slowing down and reversing video clips. we could also make some shots fit where they usually would not by changing the speed of the shots for certain sections.
when we used filters we could get the effect we wanted by changing the parameters of the filter changing the way it effects the clip e.g. the filter during the guitar solo did not fit with the colour and was too intense so we changed the colour and intensity.
the cameras we used were of a reasonable quality but had very good zoom features. however our video did not need to be in hd so the quality was good enough. i could not remember the lyrics so we used the internet on Alex's phone to get the lyrics up. the internet was also a very useful tool for all information we needed such as when were searching for album covers and information on jimi hendrix. when putting things up on the blog we were able to link videos from youtube which was useful because it would not let us upload out finished video directly onto blogger. however it let us upload out images fine and although we left it plain we could have changed the background and font to something more interesting.
Friday, 9 December 2011
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