PRELIMINARY Evaluation question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and your ancillary text (CD cover)?

I think our combination of our main product and our ancillary text is very effective. We thought that for an album cover we wanted a simplistic design that still attained a greater meaning. After looking at an array of album covers including Biffy's own design, we decided that something more minimalist, yet still artistic would fit the song a lot better. Throughout the filming the couple were surrounded by a lot of nature. We took inspiration from that and decided scanning plants and flowers would connect well with the video outcome. After going to a garden and selecting a variation of leaves, flowers and petals we laid them on the glass for scanning, where we arranged the placement of each item. Above you can see two designs, the first was just a test shot to see how the outcome would actually look and the other was a more constructed visual.

The small petal and the end of the branch we thought could represent male and female in the video, how they are just touching, they are still connected but rather distant and neither 'item' is up to its full potential. It's not a flower it's only a petal and it's not a huge branch it's just a few leaves. I think it's a good metaphor for the music video, the characters aren't thriving at the end and there is a slight presence of decay and fracture in the relationship. It also is minimalist and slightly artistic which is what we wanted initially.

PRELIMINARY Evaluation question 1

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

From a conventional music video it could be expected that there would be some narrative scenes, along with some lip syncing and also some band play shown. Our music video develops the narrative by showing it throughout, the whole thing is based on a story which is told with the help of the lyrics.

Going against conventions, our music video doesn't use any lip syncing or band play however it works well because it is almost like a full story is being told. Something we could have done differently would be to have used a band for some parts however we had a limited amount of time to film for this task and it would have been a waste of money to spend on hiring a band out for the preliminary task whereas it would be different for the real thing.



Constructive criticism we have received is that our video seems to be repetitive in some places, which is something that we can all take away from this and use in our final videos. The reason it can feel repetitive is not the location, because we used three different ones, but it is more so that we only used narrative instead of mixing with other techniques such as lip syncing and band play. Most music videos use a mixture of techniques however there are some, such as 'All Of The Lights' such as Kanye West where throughout the video all that is shown is the lyrics printed on the screen. Something we have learnt is that the forms used to convey the music video work in different ways depending on the song.

PRELIMINARY Album cover

We thought that for an album cover we wanted a simplistic design that still attained a greater meaning. After looking at an array of album covers including Biffy's own design, we decided that something more minimalist, yet still artistic would fit the song a lot better. Throughout the filming the couple were surrounded by a lot of nature. We took inspiration from that and decided scanning plants and flowers would connect well with the video outcome. After going to a garden and selecting a variation of leaves, flowers and petals we laid them on the glass for scanning, where we arranged the placement of each item. Above you can see two designs, the first was just a test shot to see how the outcome would actually look and the other was a more constructed visual.

 

The small petal and the end of the branch we thought could represent male and female in the video, how they are just touching, they are still connected but rather distant and neither 'item' is up to its full potential. It's not a flower it's only a petal and it's not a huge branch it's just a few leaves. It can be a metaphor for the music video, the characters aren't thriving at the end and there is a slight presence of decay and fracture in the relationship. It also is minimalist and slightly artistic which is what we wanted initially.

The other more constructed cover we enjoyed making. However when evaluating both designs we thought that it was too cluttered and messy and didn't look as effective as the first one.

 

PRELIMINARY Final video upload

PRELIMINARY images while filming

Here are a few images I took at the different locations of how we selected and constructed the shots. I worked with Tommy who filmed all of the clips on which angles would be the most appropriate to film from, in order to subtly convey emotion. The river scene was the most interesting shot to get as Tommy walked through the river to get the best possible shot looking up to Charlie and Maria (as seen above). Despite not going very far out for our locations, because we had suitable places locally, we definitely worked the shots and carefully decided the best angels for the music video.

PRELIMINARY Shooting schedule

Despite the cast only being constructed by two individuals, arranging for the entire group to meet to film proved one of the most difficult tasks. When we were considering the locations we came to the conclusion that we could film all the locations on the same day as they are within 5 minute walk from each other. This meant that we would only choose the day where the weather looked warm but not too hot to film, as we were carrying filming equipment, outfits for the actors to wear and our own school stuff. We selected Monday the 18th of July as it enabled us to have the rest of the week to edit the footage. It also gave us flexibility when looking at the footage to redo any scenes that didn't meet our expectations for the outcome. Also the rest of the week looked to have appropriate weather conditions which was ideal. We filmed during a free we all had 4th period and lunch, as that was the only free time we all had.

PRELIMINARY Final cast and roles

This is Maria Page and Charlie Frazer, who we have chosen to act in our preliminary task music video. We knew who we wanted to choose without auditions as firstly we are very limited with a short time frame and secondly they both had the look our group wanted to achieve. Charlie and Maria both look much older than our age group which is exactly what we wanted as we wouldn't be able to afford a professional actor so we wanted our age but looking older. If they looked younger the plot of our music video could be slightly unrealistic as it is unlikely a teenage couple would face the type of situation the song seems to be about.
In the end I am happy we used Maria and Charlie as Charlie does a level drama and wants to go onto acting as a career in the future so he was really committed and focused, likewise we picked Maria as she is a very confident girl which worked well when filming as she wasn't embarrassed to act.

Final roles:


In the end, I took on the role or organising such as organising the actors and days of filming as well as writing the blog posts with Hannah. Liv was in charge of filming and making sure we had all the footage we need. Lastly, Tommy took on the role of editing all footage together into a music video as he has previous knowledge ands experience using editing software.