FINAL VIDEO;

TILLY & TOM - 'NO SOCIAL' FINAL VIDEO from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

These are some of the technologies that I used, in my research I contacted the band to ask whether I could use the song and also watched many videos of similar music to see what the genre conventions of an Indie/pop music video were. For my planning I used my blog to record everything we planned and also created an animatic on final cut express to plan what shots we were going to do. For the evaluation I used pages to create pie charts in a creative way on our images to show the feedback we received.

I also made a website for the band (shown at the top) to promote the video as if I were making the video to be released. i uploaded songs and posted videos, photos, and events and news.

the link for the website is www.shortwaveset.fourfour.com

Rough Digipak Feedback

**Click To Enlarge**

It is clear from the feedback of our Rough Digipak, that the majority of people thought it was colourful, this was good as our aim was to have a lot of vibrant colours shown on the digipak. Comparing this to the effectiveness of the overlapping of images, the feedback did not show that people were so keen on this technique, so maybe this was not so important as what we initially thought. One third of the people we asked made it clear consistency was not a strong point of the rough digipak, so maybe we needed to relate the digipak not only to the video but all the images on the digipak as well. We also needed to add a track list, and perhaps use a collection of images, which related to the video more. They also liked the font and thought it fit well with the genre of the song.

We took all of this into consideration when finalising our Digipak (shown below), and we rethought our whole idea, bearing in mind the strong points that were said, so we kept our font, but changed our images. We took screen grabs and used them as our poster image and both on our cover interior and exterior - making sure that they would all link together throughout the digipak and also to our video as consistency was a weak point of our rough digipak. We also altered the contrast on the images to give an edgy look, which proved effective in our feedback.

Pitch Feedback

**Click To Enlarge**

From the feedback for our pitch idea, it is clear that people mainly liked our concept, while some people said it was realistic and possible, others said that our locations may be a problem, especially being outdoors the weather may cause problems. However, we decided that our positive feedback outweighed the flaws, and we thought that we would be able to work around our locations, as we had several in mind, and had thought up a back-up plan if we weren't given permission and tried to make sure the days we filmed suited the weather conditions - bearing in mind that the weather is temperamental.

Rough Cut Feedback

**Click To Enlarge**

From the feedback for the rough cut the main areas to improve were that we needed more footage, but that the costumes were good, and set a good contrast between the location and performer. People also still liked the concept and thought that we had a few good camera angles in there also. However, we were in desperate need of more cutaways along with more footage, and we also needed to make sure that the weather was not effecting the performers performance. There were other things that they didn't pick up on such as the editing needed neatening up a little, in some clips you could still see some other video tracks playing underneath them also my shoes were in the shot at the end. However these were all issues that we could work on and I think by the time we had completed our video we had taken all of the feedback into consideration and touched on each of these points.

Below are some screen grabs from several points we had to improve upon.

Final Feedback

We haven't had any final feedback from our teachers, and only a few comments from our class, therefore, we didn't think it was appropriate to produce pie charts like we have the rest of our feedback. However here is what final feedback we have got:

"like the costume changes, good lipsynching. cycle shot is very nice"

"I like the good use of the different shots you have used. I especially like the shots around the bike, and also through the fence. Well done"

"It's quite samey all the way through, you probably shouldn't have used all your locations at once."

"I really like the bits where she's on the bike and behind the fence thing, these work very well.

I also love how she contrasts the rest of the background.

However some of the cuts are too sharp for the video and don't really fit with the rest."

"starts of with the girl not looking very happy but for about 4 seconds she has a happy moment, and that stand out from the video and does not really work as the rest of the video she looks lost which is good"

"Bright costumes on a greyish background works well. Nice camera angles."

Overall i am quite happy with the feedback that i have got back and think the things to improve on would be done if I had more time.

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

I made this collage to show the similarities between my digipak and the video. The pictures at the top are screen grabs from our video and the two bottom pictures are my digipak and poster.

All of the pictures in the digipak are taking from our footage. We chose to do this rather than use the pictures which we took as we felt it would form a better relationship between the two images. We also turned the contrast up on the digipak pictures as the originals look very washed out and plain as stills.

9 grabs for another vid

1. In this shot we see the artist saying '2004' as he says 4 he puts 4 fingers up. This is the only part of the video where this kind of link between the lyrics and visual appears.

2. This shot shows the artist in the foreground with all his 'homies' behind him. This is how the record company woud want Lethal Bizzle to be represented.

3. Here we have an African women doing a dance which is typical for this kind of video. It represents a sort of street gangster style. other artists such as 50 cent and snoop dog use these kind of images.

4. Big shiny rims are a typical representation of this genre. They are seen in the majority of music videos which belong to this genre. Here we can see the artist and some other people in front of what looks like a shop wall with rims on it.

5. In this video they have used the camera in a way which makes you feel like the artist is talking to you. The camera is always in front of the artist and he occasionally points into it.

6. This shot has a weak UV light on it which shows up the logo on the artists hat. Most of the shots are quite dark so this is a nice change of lighting.

7. In this shot there is a rim in the foreground with the artist behind it. This is another typical trait of music videos.

9 grabs

1. We understood the main lyric in the song, 'a dog dressed in clothes is still a dog' to be a metaphor. In our video we have the dog as the nice looking girl however she is not in very nice places. Even if you dress well in an unpleasant place you are still in an unpleasant place.

2. This shot shows the singer in an abstract shot behind a fence and a bush. The style of the band is a bit abstract so this would be how the record company would want their artist represented.

3. Music videos which are shot outside and/or which vintage style props such as the bike in this shot generally belong to the indie genre. We felt that our song was slightly indie but also a bit abstract, this is why we used slightly unusual shots.

4. When we were watching other music videos we noticed that what made them look entertaining and not boring was movement. This gave us the idea of having our performer on a bike. This is a screen grab of her riding the bike.

5. I particularly liked this cut away that we filmed from behind the bike and the performer is riding from side to side crossing across the camera.

6. We did not concentrate too hard on the lighting as we filmed mostly outside. However I like the way that the sun is shining on the straw in front of the performer and the white sky behind the bush.

7. This shot shows mise-en-scene as we had thought of putting the bike behind our performer so that it links with a later shot where she lies down in front of it.

8/9. The walk away at the end of music videos is very common. This shows shows our performer walking away. Close ups are also an important part of making an effective music video, this shot shows one of our close ups. It is also a common thing to not see the characters full body in the beginning of the video.

Final Digipak

Now, we have completely changed our digipak design, as just yesterday we got more footage, which we are planning on using for the best part of our video, so we have taken a few of the screen grabs from the footage, and made them the main theme of our digipak.

This mornings editing

This morning i have just been putting all the footage into synch. We had a few problems doing this on friday as there were some differences in the song that was on the computer and the one we had on my phone when we were filming however i managed to download the one we had on my phone and put it into final cut. this did cause it to loose quality but it's not too serious. This happened because i put the song on my phone at home so i must have downloaded a different version to the one we have.

Others Digipaks

From looking at others digipaks this morning i have seen that they look a lot better when they use a downloaded font i.e not one that is already installed on the computer. I have also noticed that the better ones are ones that have themes and atmospheric images, wether they are dark and distorted or bright and happy.

I particularly like the way that yasmin has overlapped the crumpled paper with the other images. I may use this technique to ad a car wreck type picture to the front/back of my digipak to create consistency with the inside and the outside covers.

Feedback on Digipak

• colorful
  
• relates to music video
• good font
• needs more consistency
• needs a track list
• good contrast of colors
• effective imagery
• maybe use a collection of images
• like how there have been images used twice but have been manipulated and turned black and white and overlapping. 

I am pleased with this feedback, it back up what i thought was good and what i thought needed changing. Nothing really was brought up that i wasn't aware was particularly good or bad.

I may try to add more consistency by putting a faded car wreck picture or something along those lines in the background of the front and back covers. I will also add a track list.

Fortnightly reflection

I had aimed to make a post every fortnight in this project reflecting on how things have been going. This is my second.

There's not much to say really. The 1st - 5th of Feb went well. We spent our time ironing out our idea, making it so that we had thought of everything that could go wrong and finding a solution. We made a story board for the 1st 40 seconds of the video and then made an animatic out of this. At this stage i was feeling positive about the project and it seemed like everything was going to go smoothly.

However the week of the 8th - 12th where we were supposed to be getting all our test footage i got ill and only came into college for one day. We got a tiny bit of test footage from newmarket road with our performer but it wasn't much.

The next week was half term and we had hoped that because we hadn't got any test footage we would be able to shoot some over half term but it never happened because we were too focused on our social life. This meant that the following week where we where meant to get all our real footage we didn't really know what was going to work etc.

The week of filming did not go to plan at all. On monday there was a trip which cut that day as a chance to shoot. Then our performer was not free until yesterday afternoon but still there was a time limit. We did not use our time well either which meant we didn't film very much. Today we are going to shoot everything at 1.30. I feel very motivated to do this and i think it will go well. We cannot shoot at the weekend as me and tilly both have work.

Weather

This is what the weather looks like for todays filming. we will be filming from about 1.30 so this looks alright. The dark clouds and light rain may add effect to our video.

25/02/10 shoot

The filming yesterday did not go as well as we had hoped. We didn't get nearly as much done as we wanted to. This is mainly because the people at newmarket road scrap yard don't make us feel comfortable. It was fine when we were just taking pictures but with hannah dressed in just a dress and tights around the typical scrap yard workers its hard to perform. Instead we went to the back of where i work where there are skips and containers. The footage was good and what we wanted but because we had wasted a lot of time thinking weather or not to film at the scrap yard we didn't have much time left to actually film. This meant we didn't get many takes done.

We plan to film again today (26/02/10) in the afternoon. This will hopefully go a lot better and we will not waste as much time. This is basically our last chance to do any filming as me and tilly both have work over the weekend.

Weather :(

I just looked at the weather on the BBC website to see if its going to be raining when we are planning to film today (1-4) and there is going to be heavy rain from 12-6. This means that we are going to be un able to shoot today as we do not have the equipment to keep the camera dry and it would be un fair to make our performer stand in the rain and cold for that amount of time in judt a dress.

Costumes

animatic

Tilly and Tom's animatic from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Schedule for 2nd Feb - 19th March

2nd - 5th of Feb - Animatic week

This week we are going to be doing our animatics. This will be at least 30 - 40 seconds long and can be for any part of the song. Its purpose would be to give the band/manager an idea of what the video will look like. We will be trying to think of literally ever shot we could put in there so that it keeps up a pace and looks effective.

8th - 12th of Feb - Test footage week

This will involve making phone calls to get proper permission to film then once we have this we will drive over to all our locations and get as much footage as we can. We will experiment with different angles, static or moving and see how we will manage the suns position as this could very easily be a problem for us. We may then very roughly edit this together with the soundtrack and upload it to the blog.

15th - 19th of Feb

HALF TERM

22nd - 26th of Feb - Filming week

In this week we will be doing all our actual filming. We will take what we learn from our test footage and shoot everything. We will try to shoot more than what we've planned so that we can be sure we have enough footage.

1st - 5th of March - Rough cut week

This week will be focused on creating a rough cut. The deadline for this is friday the 5th. I am looking forward to this part as it is when we see all out work start to come together. Hopefully it will all go well and we won't have any problems with the amount of footage we get etc. We are tying to avoid this. Any time that we have free this week we will be spending on our digipaks as these are due in next week.

8th - 12th of March - Finished video week

Our final video has to be finished by the end of this week so we will be working hard to finish our edit. 11th of March is the deadline for our digipak.

15th - 19th of March - Evaluation week

In this week we will be doing a lot of evaluation tasks and looking back on our project.

Reflection

I am going to try to start doing a reflection post roughly once every 2 weeks. This is my first.

Over the past week I have been enjoying creating our ideas. It was hard to get started but after a while we got there with our idea. We got a very positive response to our pitch and I am very pleased with this.

However are still things that need improving, for example, we still haven't really developed any proper plan/shot list for out project, we've simply got our idea. We did start the timeline but didn't get very far. This may start to be a problem very soon so I will be trying to get the ball rolling with creating a full plan.

When taking pictures of our locations we had planned to think about shots and angles. I don't feel that we did a very good job of this and that we should have spent longer at each location. However we did have a time limit and we only just managed to get back in time so this would have been hard.

Checkpoint

Something im looking forward to:

The editing and seeing the video come together. This is the part of the process that i really enjoy. I find it satisfying to see the end project of all our hard work.

A problem that may occur:

Not being able to film in construction site, dump or scrap yard. We have been to take pictures at our expected locations and nowhere had a problem apart from Milton landfill site but that was only because the manager wasn't there. We have got his phone number and I'll give him a call on Monday.

Solution to problem:

Film behind shop where the skips, bins etc are. This will maintain the homeless, industrial look and so we will not need to change anything about our idea.

location photography

Today we went out to take pictures of our locations and start to think about our camera angles. We went to the scrap yard on Newmarket road and milton dump. They were both very relaxed about letting us take pictures so hopefully it will be the same case for filming. We also asked if we could take some pictures of the landfill site in milton but the manager was not there so we got his phone number and were told to ring him on monday.

This exercise was useful as it gave us a chance to go to our locations and have a look around. It also gave us some more inspiration for other shots and angles.

here are some of our pictures

3 videos of the same genre

How many cuts does a professional music video, a longroad student video and a hurtwood house video have in the first 30 seconds and the first minute.

Professional video :

• 30 seconds - 24 cuts
• 1 minute - 48 cuts

Longroad student video :

• 30 seconds - 2 cuts
• 1 minute - 7 cuts

Hurtwood house video :

• 30 seconds - 16 cuts
• 1 minute - 29 cuts

contacting the band

I just sent a message on myspace to the band asking if we could use their track.

Costume ideas for "No Social"

We want brightly colored clothes including skirts, hair accessories, shoes and possibly other accessories such as hand bags. We are thinking that the costume may not stay the same through out the hole video, there may even be 4 or 5 different costumes. This means we will also have to think about where our performer will change costume when on location. The locations that we are thinking about are not likely to have any buildings or buildings that we will have access to. Another option is to think about the costumes and make them easy to change in and out of so that out performer can just get changed in my car which is not very big...

right up of pitch feedback

Today we pitched to the class for our idea. We feel it went well however could been better if we had finished our moodboard for "I'm good, I'm gone".

Feedback for Im good Im gone:

• I like the empty room idea.
• Detailed idea. Using the lyrics for inspiration.
• Lighting idea is good.
• Costume and props are possible.
• Dark clothe good contrast with white room.
• Could have different locations to keep interest.
• Empty room - good keeping it simple
• Could leave it ironic by leaving her next to the phone at the end.
• I like the idea of one location and i think if you keep it simple it will work
• I like the simplicity.
• Good ideas for camera shots and lighting.
• Hard to fit with the track.

Questions:

• where is the white room?
• what shot styles where you thinking of?
• costumes?

From this feedback we have learned that our overall concept may struggle to keep the viewers interest. We have also realised that we may need to re think the idea in terms of the white room as this may be hard to find. This idea was our second idea and therefore we did not spend as much time on it.


Feedback for No social:

• Like the concept of the dump and the girl in nice bright clothes.
• Costume sounds interesting.
• Camera work sounds good.
• Like the abstract idea.
• Quiet detailed ideas for the video.
• Getting the ideas from lyrics is a good idea.
• Nice idea.
• Good idea.
• Location could be difficult.
• Setting and mes-un-scene
• Clear idea
• Good description of the feel of the idea.
• Abstract.
• Clear concept.
• Urban.
• Set idea is very interesting.
• Angles + edgy.
• Realistic and possible.

Questions:

• Where's the dump?
• Construction site - how will you get this?
• How are you going to get scrap yard to film in?
• Relying on a dump - maybe bring your own objects?
• Where is the construction site?
• Where is it filmed?
• Who's acting?
• Just one location?

This feedback has made us confident that our idea will work. It is very positive however we also learned that we will defiantly have to think it trough a lot and make sure we have everything sorted before we go to location.

I'm good, I'm gone treatment final

Treatment

I'm Good, I'm Gone - Lykke Li

After listening to the lyrics of “I’m good, I’m gone” and thinking about the overall concept, we came up with one final idea. The main lyrics that we were thinking about were “You’ll be callin’ but I won’t be by the phone” , “If you say I aim too high from down below” and “If you say I’m not okay, then thats the goal”. After a long time of pondering these lyrics we decided that the song is about the singer getting over someone that she was in a relationship with and she has finally moved on. Hence “I won’t be by the phone”.

Imagine a plain white room with nothing but an arm chair and an old retro phone on a small table next to the chair. The camera starts at the beginning of the track with a shot of the back of the arm chair and the table with the old phone on it. The camera starts to close in on the arm chair and move round, until it get the the front of the chair, with a girl all dressed in dark clothes and makeup lying across the chair.

The video would just consist of the girl, a white room, an old phone and an arm chair - all kept very simple, with lots of different camera shots and angles of the girl in the arm chair next to this phone.

After the last chorus when the song ends on '…I wont be by the phone.' The girl will be up from the chair and walking away from the chair, and more importantly the phone, leaving the phone as the main focus left in shot for the last few seconds.

The song itself is very emotional and we want to show this using the few things we have in the room, most importantly using the girl to show emotion, especially her eyes taking a few close ups of those, and and using the lighting in the room to set the mood.

Things we will need:
⁃ White room (Longroad photography?)
⁃ Arm chair (Tom)
⁃ Retro style phone (Angelica?)
⁃ Stage Lights (Longroad)

No Socail treatment final

Treatment

No Social - Shortwave Set

After listening to the lyrics of 'No Social' and thinking about the overall concept we came up with one final idea. The main two line of the lyrics that we kept boiling the song down to was 'no one is fooled' and 'The dog dressed in clothes is still a dog'. After thinking about the obvious we thought up with a more metaphorical way to put across our video.

Imagine a beautiful goddess like girl standing in the middle of a dump/construction site, dressed up in all nice clothes - quirky dresses and eccentric hair and make-up that will really make our girl stand out, around this dump/constriction site. Nothing too over the top - keeping it quite simple and sort of abstract as that was the main thought that came to us when listening to the track.

If possible we would like to set a few shots in an old bus/trailer/caravan, but we understand that these may be hard to find so we will so our best with what we can find on our no budget project.

We want a lot of different angles throughout the video and loads of cut aways and zoom ins to leave it having an overall edgy look, and keep it interesting. At the beginning using loads of long shots showing the location, then mix those with loads of different angles and close ups of the girl as the song starts. Tie these altogether with with cut aways of the location a lone, and showing a lot of expression in the girls face and very clear emotions of her feeling lost and lonely - vulnerable.

The song itself is fairly repetitive in the lyrics, so we don't want to have this showing in our video, make it very diverse and almost surreal using the objects around the dump/construction site and making the most of what we find there.

List of locations that we will look at shooting at:
• Cambridge dump - Milton
• Cambridge construction site
• Burwell Brick Pits
• Burwell Gypsy Park (though we know it will be very dangerous to shoot here, so this may not be an option later on)

Treatment for “I’m good, I’m gone”

Treatment for “I’m good, I’m gone”

After listening to the lyrics of “I’m good, I’m gone” and thinking about the overall concept, we came up with one final idea. The main lyrics that we were thinking about were “You’ll be callin’ but I won’t be by the phone” , “If you say I aim too high from down below” and “If you say I’m not okay, then thats the goal”. After a long time of pondering these lyrics we decided that the song is about the singer getting over someone that she was in a relationship with and she has finally moved on. Hence “I won’t be by the phone”.

A possible idea for this would be to film the full performance about 6 times in a plain white room. We could possibly have some ornaments such as a retro phone or an old arm chair. We would also use some lighting to make it look more interesting. She would be wearing dark clothes and make-up.

List of things we will need:

• Retro style phone
  
• Arm chair
  
• White room
  
• stage lights
  
• Performer
  

Peer Feedback for I'm good I'm gone

• Be more descriptive - what will happen in the video?
• What will the girl do?
• What sort of camera angles will there be?
• Where will you get your props from?
• More specific
• Is there an ending?

treatment for no social

Moodboard for No Social

This is our mood board for No Social, you can see in it how our ideas changed as we looked at more, different pictures. We started thinking about something very abstract using bright paint and light effects, however then we watched the actual video and it was too similar to what we were thinking of doing. We wanted to come up with something new and original. We thought about the lyrics again "A dog dressed in clothes is still a dog" and we came up with the idea of a girl dressed in nice dresses at a dump or construction site. Using the idea of her being the dog dressed in clothes - really nice clothes, however she still has nowhere to go, she may still be a dump dressed in rags etc.

Pitch for No Social

Tom H And Tilly's No Social Pitch

View more documents from longroadcreative.

This is our pitch. We used keynote to create it. It contains our moodboard which we made on photoshop with pictured from google images and flikr. It also has our postcard to market our video. We made this on photoshop simply using the current single cover and a downloaded font. There are then some screen grabs of our work being made in photoshop and some screen grabs of our searches.

Possible 3

Wicked Little Girls - Esthero

* Good beat to it
* Good lyrics
* Good concept


No Social - Shortwave Set

* Good beat
* Good creative flow
* Good lyrics


I'm Good, I'm Gone - Lykke Li

* Good beat
* Good lyrics
* Good concept
* abstract

reasons for not choosing tracks

Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective

* too distorted
* lyrics aren't clear
* repetitive

Shadows - Au Revoir Simone

* long intro
* a bit plain/dull

Margarita - Brakes

* a bit odd
* would be hard to find a male singer to fit the voice

Mansion in the Sky - The Brianjonestown Massacre

* repetitive
* boring and depressing

Feel the Love - Cut Copy

* didn't feel any creative flow

Number One Enemy - Daisy Dares You

* Chipmunk? - black vocals?

Lets Go Surfing - The Drums

* repetitive
* the concept (surfing) hard to capture

1234 - Feist

* Girly
* too well known

Lie - Jazzanova

* Slow
* too mellow
* girly

Love Sick - Lindstorm & Christabelle

* Simular to other tracks

On Tuesday Jasmine came to our class at Coleridge to offer her advice on making a music video. It was really good to get her guidance and suggestions on our music videos, and the processes we will have to follow to make sure we create a video of standard. Jasmine was just 18 when submitting her video to BBC Blast - the video that she complete for part of her coursework at her college. Herself, a long with a few other girls all put in so much effort to get the piece to a high standard (see below).

After winning the best music video, she had the great pleasure and chance to work with the 'Black Dog' company and directing another video with a budget of £3,000! In this process she said she realised how important it was to plan it out all properly - she refers to this method as 'Treatment' - visuals, keys lyrics/key quotes, storyboard etc. In her brainstorming process she said it was really helpful to take references from other songs, not to steal them but to borrow and get inspiration from them.

Some major advice jasmine gave us was about shot listing and storyboarding. She said it was useful to keep a shot list, as it has the times and lyrics of some points in the song, so it is easy to work out where you want each scene to happen. Also, storyboarding is all about making every key point accurate, and also to try doing these on post-its so if it doesn't work out when you come to edit, you can move it out the storyboard and perhaps put it in somewhere else.

Things I have learned:

• don't get too focused on one shot
• be in control - love it - get involved
• make it fun
• get everyone involved
• keep people up to date - email etc.
• keep any documents up to date - dates etc.

Update

We spent today getting everything up to date as tomorrow we are having a talk from Jasmine Blackborow who entered a video into the BBC blast best music video competition last year and won. The prize was an entire crew and a £3000 budget to make a high quality music video. This sounds like a very good oportunity i am looking forward to talking to her about how she got to where she is and listening to her techniques, tips and advice. We are also going to listen to the track options which we get to pitch for to use in our video.