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

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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

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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

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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.