Professional advice: Blueprint Editor Workshop

Our group was fortunate enough to have a Blueprint Film Foundation professional editor to come in and deliver a workshop which helped us to learn more advanced editing skills. 
Dave spoke for one hour about different editing techniques eg luma key and how to alter colour, saturation levels and also how to use filters effectively.


This enabled us to edit our music video to a higher-level. In addition, we added effects and filters  to develop the representation of the star image; we enhanced "warm" and "cold" shots and this also improved our narrative.

In some of our shots the lighting wasn’t the same, making the shot where he says "Till it’s gone, gone away" very average and boring. After the workshop we were able to up the saturation and change the lighting so it appears  exactly same in each shot.

Furthermore, he also advise dus about cutting with the rhythm or on the beat. Some of our cuts were off beat.


He said "It might take a while to zoom in really closely and use the arrows but it’s well worth it because you can be sure each cut is perfectly on beat". After this, Kenza and I sat down together and sorted out the cuts and we are really happy with our learning and journey. The end product is now starting to look more professional and advanced.

I personally feel that the workshop helped dramatically with our progress and we are both now a lot more confident with Final Cut Pro X. 

Conclusion: Digipak Research

How This Research Has Influenced My Creativity And Planning :

 

•  I really like the way the black colours create an atmospheric attitude.
• The colour scheme works very well. The use of gold, black and white works very well. Each colour contrasts the other, helping it become easier to read and stand out.
• The gold font for the artist’s name makes it clear that they are very important.
• I now know that in the Digipak I will need to use a smaller font for the institutional details.
• I really like how the photo is the same in the album and the poster, developing synergy and brand identity
• I don't like how the background behind the star is a normal wooden fence, I personally feel this makes it look very simple.
• I like the colour to the roses on the CD, unfortunately I cannot see any synergy within the colour so I don't really see the point in them.
• I like the way the hit song "born to die" is in a blue font over her white top. The colour helps it stand out and synergises with the sky.
• Again in this Digipak the institutional details are printed in a small font.
• I like how the artists name is in a bold white font at the top of the front cover. White text stands out.
• I real like the artistic design and colour scheme used for this digipak.
• I like the way there is no photos of the artists at all. However, I could not use this in my Digipak as we need to create the star’s identity, so using a photo of the star is very important.
• I like the way the CD slots into a little compartment.
• Again, in this digipak, the institutional details are in small print.The colour scheme for this Digipak is great!
• I love the different shades of reds, pinks and greens.
• I like the thin large font for the names of the album and artist. Unfortunately, in our digipak we are unable to use small font for the artist’s name as we are attempting to develop a star identity. 
• I really like the border around the back section of the CD. It works really well with the colour scheme and aesthetics of the CD and digipak.
• I also think the same font on both adverts has worked really well in developing the brand identity for Olly Murs.
• I like how emotion is targeted in both of these front covers.
• The pink background really breaks conventions of male pop artist advert. I really like this aspect as it makes it unique.
• I really love the vibrancy of the front cover. The rainbow like colour scheme really stands out and is very eye-catching for the viewer. 
• The cartoon creates a distinctive, aesthetic pleasing design to look at.
• I like how the colours have been used in this image (blue to red) - fitting with Strauss’s theory.

 

Planning : Group Post - Target Audience Research for Rough Cut 2

1] Do you understand the narrative of the music video? 

 2] Do you think the video is clearly of the pop genre?  

3] Did you notice the costume changes? Which costume do you prefer/ remember/ like the best? 

4] Do you think the locations are effective? Which location do you feel worked well with the song? Was there a location you didn’t like or understand? 



5] Do you think visuals and lyrics matched? 



6] What was your favourite shot and why? 



7] Which shots didn’t you like? Didn’t understand? 



8] What representations have been created? 

9] Does this music video launch the male singer as a new star? Would this video make you look online for more information about him? Do you like him? 

Conclusion: Advert Research

How This Research Has Influenced My Creativity And Planning :

• I have identified that a simple background can sometimes be very powerful when attempting to develop a focal point.

• I really like the unique image of him as he breaks conventions and looks smart at the same time as childish and entertaining.

• The fonts and text in this advert were very well designed and stand out a lot I really love how the developers have done this.

• The link to his website was a very good way of promoting more of his products.

• I love how the colour scheme is entirely linked with hair and lips.

• This advert colour scheme really symbolises love and passion.

• I love how large the front cover is.

• As a close up of her face is on the front cover, it would be a good aesthetic design for the image to be larger. This creates synergy, helping the audience identify her album.
  

   

Research: Target Audience 4

We asked members of our sixth form and lower school (ages 14-18) to watch our video and answer questions relating to the genre, presentation of the star and if she found it interesting.

These are the questions we asked and answers we received from this research:


1] What genre of music video does it look like?

(Female aged 16) Pop

(Female aged 14) Romantic Pop

(Female ages 17) Pop




2] Do you like the way he male star is presented? What do you like? -

(Female aged 16) I like the way he's presented as a typical teenager applying to the target audience. I also really like the way he looks like he’s singing the sing.

(Female aged 14) yes, looking into the camera and it looks like hes speaking to you.

(Female aged 17) yes the pink clothes help link him to more of the female audience.




3] Would the MV make you interested in finding out more about him? -

(Female aged 16) Yes, seems interesting, want to know more about him. I want to know why he wants to "bring love back around".

(Female aged 14) Yes, I wanna know why he's lonley.

(Female aged 17) Yes, I'd like to see what else he thinks about.




4] Which shot do you like the best and why?

(Female aged 16) I like the way people are holding up a "bring love back aroud!"poster - spreading positivity. How he looks to be sining the song - this looks authentic and preffesional.

(Female aged 14) I like the shot of the hands in the shape of a love heart. It is really effective when your trying to bring love back around.

(Female aged 17) My favourite - when he faces the camera on the first words. It makes feel like the audience is included. "you, you, you" when he's clothes change.




5] What is the narrative of the MV? What dont you understand about the story?
(Female aged 16) I understand that the story is about spreadin positivity and brining "Love Back Around". Narrative - spread positivity as throughout the song the main these is "Bring Love Back Around".

(Female aged 14) Love, he is lonley and wants to be loved.

(Female aged 17) Brining trust in people back to the mainstream.




6] What dont you like?

(Female aged 16) some of the shots sound drowns out the song.

(Female aged 14) the part with the poster, it would look better if they were saying it aswell.

(Female aged 17) the shots of the phone being there, then disapearing the hand moved slightly.



Research findings:



1]This research has been very helpful as we now have an idea regarding the thoughts of our target audience. It is brilliant that our target audience can identify our genre so easily, as this was a key target for us. We intentionally used pop genre conventions in order to anchor this meaning.

2] It is also perfect that our TA sees our star as a typical teenage boy. This is exatly what we have attempted to create regarding his apperence and facial expressions. As she also likes the singing into camera aspect, using this throughout the MV was a very good idea due to it also developing the pop genre conventions.

Planning: Thankyou (group post)

To say thank you to Connor we bought him a weatherpersons meal, a card and a small gift to show him how appreciative we are for him acting in our video.

Planning: Evaluation of film shoot (23rd,24th,29th Oct)

On our first day of filming, our shot locations were the park and Brigg town. Arriving at 12 and ending at 4. The date was Monday the 23rd of October. We were very successful throughout the day as we achieved many of our key shots for 2/4 locations we plan on shooting at.

On our plan, we wanted to film all the shots in Brigg town before heading over to the park and filming there. Unfortunately, when planning we didn’t take into consideration the towns heavy population during half term. As there are 2 secondary schools and 2 primary schools based in Brigg, many younger children and teenagers stood the risk of walking into shot. This could have caused issues regarding safety as we would have needed parental consent. As we did not have enough time or control to ask if people would be okay with standing out of the shot while we filmed, we decided upon moving locations to the park, only getting half of the shots we planned on taking. This came as a learning curve to us as we now know to take into consideration the heavy population that comes with a half term break. Looking back at it we should have arrived and filmed earlier as most younger children and teenagers are not around town in the morning.

When filming in the park there was no one around, making it a perfect time to film. We took many of the shots we planned on taking on another day of filming. During the filming we came up with more ideas that could have worked in the music video. Shooting these ideas gave us more options to work with. In the park we stumbled upon one key issue, a group of teenagers proceeded to make noise making it very difficult to focus when shooting. A lot of the shots we attempted to take during filming were spoiled by this group of teens. Because of this we decided to move locations again to another area in Brigg town. This wasn’t quite what we wanted to do but there was nothing else we could have done. Fortunately, the area we filmed in Brigg after filming at the park was perfect, barely anyone was around and we were able to get some great shots linking to the lyrics "dead in this town".

On Tuesday the 24th of October, we filmed at the location Kenza's House between the times 1-3pm. This was a great time of day to film at this location as the weather and lighting was ideal for filming inside a house in Doncaster. This shoot was very successful, and all planned shots were perfectly executed as planned in the script breakdown. The private location meant that our actor’s confidence was raised drastically. He has been very easy to work with and been fully co-operative throughout. The single problem we had when filming at Kenza's House was the shot of Connor as he stood in an a particular area of the location. The lighting was different in the kitchen and this meant that the darkening weather affected the shot considerably. We determined that it wasn’t necessarily a vital shot, and felt that moving it to another location would not have caused an issue. If the shot taken within the location had been necessary, we could have rescheduled it on an alternative day when the weather was better.

We needed a very quiet period in a town location, so chose a Sunday afternoon to film the town shots.  We knew Brigg would be less populated on a Sunday, rather than Monday. We reviewed the weather  forecast and identified the afternoon of Sunday 20th October as a perfect time of day to film. However, the weather forecast was wrong, at 2 o’clock, it began to pour with rain. The footage we had collected prior to the downfall was very good. However, after 2pm, filming became impossible and so the shoot was rescheduled for 5th of November at 12pm.

I am personally very happy with the progress we made as a team when filming in all locations. We are both really happy with how the video is starting to turn out and are glad we are a great working team.
Throughout this filming we have learnt to understand and take into consideration how populated an area could be depending on the day, time, weather and school holiday dates. Communicating with the team is essential. We had to be sure all the required people could attend the shoots and that everyone knew what was expected for each shot.  
We also learned that shots which pull back to a high angle, and low tracking shots can be very difficult to do without the right technology.

Planning : Lunch For The Actors

To say thank you to Connor, I paid for a Weatherspoon’s lunch. I felt this was necessary as he took hours out of his day to help us work on the music video. In addition, I also felt buying him lunch would help him feel comfortable when acting in public.

Research: Similar Product Research (Adverts)

Similar Product Research (Adverts) from AlexanderSherrattASmedia


I feel this research was vital towards my planning as I now understand that the lighting can be used in a shot to emphasise colour and make it stand out. As well as this, a bright coloured footer can develop the band identity with the artist and that colour, e.g, Ed Sheeran.