Cinematography During the filming of our music video I took charge of cinematography, involving the framing of shots, focus, lighting, camera angles, shot types and mise en scene. Lighting One key aspect that i had to take into account was that we had decided that our video would be predominately black and white therefore I had to look for specific areas of contrast that would look especially effective once the black and white filter had been added. Due to this I used the sun and natural light in order to create contrast as well as the solid colour of the props and costume when outside, however once inside I had to use artificial light from photography lights, which I had arranged for us to borrow as well as using the natural light from the windows to the full extent. For example within the smaller room in which I chose to shoot the shrine scene, I placed the shrine itself right next to the window to ensure that the images would be clearly illuminated as well as casing interesting light across the shots, however I also positioned an extra photography light in front at an angle to the shrine to make sure that everything was visible but also again creating interesting shadows by placing the light at an angle. This was also true when the band entered the room as I placed another light behind them to silhouette their figures which again I though would be effective in black and white.
Light source behind the band
Placing the bag man in front of the sun I thought made him seem more mysterious and almost god like due to the rolling clouds behind him as we wanted him to be seen as an omnipotent figure so this signified this aspect.
Again i added an extra light source as this close up shot of the woman would be emphasised, I organised an elderly cast as i thought that it would help to signify the videos indie nature due to the usual approach, intertextuality can also be seen as we took inspiration from Depeche Mode.
Camera movement I used vertical panning shots from a low angle in order to create a ominous feel as well as creating a narrative enigma effect.
I used this especially with the bagman in order to cast him as a dark and dangerous character which then helped to re enforce the fact that he was a danger to the band by following them. It also gave me scope to include the puddles of water on the floor to create a mirrored reflection of the bagman which gave the impression that he is a powerful force that is above the natural order due to this doubled effect. As well i felt like it was aesthetically pleasing. Again I used an upwards panning shot but this time of Sam (the lead singer) in order to signify this higher status in the band as the front man.
Most shots were filmed using a tripod to uphold the professional look of the video, however some were handheld in order to create a grungy feel through the partially shaky shots to signify the indie genre of the band.
Shot types I used a lot of varied shots in order to create the look of a realistic music video. I used a significant amount of 3 shots as even though Sam as the lead singer is seen as a more central member of the band, i still wanted the band to be seen as a collective.
Within the cafe scene I wanted to take advantage of the age of the elderly cast and use their features to show the bands originality, which i did through the use of close up shots. I also used close up shots of the band in order to highlight the bands surprise as well as the bagman who's most stand out features were the markings on the mask. Mise ene sene In order to create a link between Sly antics past music video "Intro" and to again re enforce the grungy feel of the video I chose the location in mind that it contained a lot of graffiti as well as a variety of large and small open spaces. I used this to my advantage by framing the band in the mist of the graffiti through a combination of medium and long shots to show their journey through the warehouse. I also got hold of three identical retro wooden chairs and an old lamp which were used at the end which added to the indie genre.
As well to help make the shrine as realistic as possible I bought a hundred candles which we set up along side a board that contained printed out images of the band.
Evaluation question 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback? During the creation of our music video and ancillary texts including our magazine adverts and digipak we collected as much audience feedback as possible. We did this not only to help develop upon our package product but also to help define our target audience of our primary and secondary audience and how best to make our products appeal to them. As we wanted our final products to be as professional and hopefully reaching even up to industry standards we needed all possible feedback in order to achieve this. We have received feedback in various different ways including: in person, Facebook, messenger, Skype and text. Gaining feedback over the internet shows the effect of theory Web 2.0 as it wouldn't be possible before for us to post our video and art work on viral websites for millions to view and comment on, therefore giving us feedback. Audience research YouGov is an international internet-basedmarket research firm and played a key part in finding and researching our target audience as well as choosing which magazines to exhibit our magazine adverts in. As Sly Antics is a relatively small unknown band their demographics would not be featured on such a site however I used closely comparative bands to use as examples e.g Blurr, Arctic Monkeys, The Pixies and The Strokes. Demographics that fit with our primary audience
Demographics that fit with our secondary audience
This method however not as accurate still gave us a pretty good understanding of the primary and secondary audiences of Sly Antics. This told us that from the sites findings Sly AnticsPrimary audience should be from the ages of 18-25 and their secondary older audience should be 35-54 and predominately male with a social status of ABC1. However as this was just a estimation it isn't very reliable but does give us a rough idea. The social grading of ABC1C2DEdenotes a persons social class and levels of income. ABC1s are thought of as appreciators of broadsheet newspapers and complex and foreign dramas. However C2DE are more likely to read tabloid newspapers and watch sitcoms as well as film genres such as rom-coms. Overall it is widely agreed that AB isequivalent to upper class, C1 and C2 are upper and lower middle class and DE is working class.It is also assumed that the higher on the scale you are the more intelligent and sophisticated a person is.
We then went on to view Sly Anticssocial media sites including Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in order to further look into their potential target audience. So we looked through their likes on these sites to see what ages and gender of people would be fans of Sly Antics. We also looked at their Soundcloud to see who listened to their music and what genre of music they created. From this we deduced that Primary audience would be 17-25 and mostly male. We then looked into widening their target audience through their secondary audience which we chose to be 12-16 (teen audience) and older around 35-40 which would also be male and female. But before finalising Sly Anticstarget audience we created a playlist featuring a range of tracks from different artists in the Indie genre. We chose songs from different time periods in order to make the test fair for all ages of participants.
Playlist
A stand out interview for audience research would be with an 18 year old university student, after being asked if he recognised any of the tracks we played including Joy Division's 'Love will tear us apart', Arctic Monkey's 'Do I want to know' and The Pixies 'Where is my mind?'. He knew almost all the artists and tracks even those from a different generation. This showed us that the Indie tracks could be seen as timeless to those who enjoy the genre. This means that the indie appeals to a wide variety of ages so we need to make sure out target audience reflects this. To further this we included the Sly Antics track 'Intro' even though he couldn't identify the song he did mention that he really enjoyed it and would look further into the band.
Then we asked a 17 year old male if he enjoyed and regularly listened to songs from the Indie genre and what age range did he think listened to this genre of music. We moved on to ask him what he though Sly Anticstarget audience was. He said that he didn't really listen to the Indie genre but thought that people from the ages of 16-early 20's would be particularly into the genre. He also stated that he thought Sly Antics would be targeting university students so people from the ages of 18-24.
Next we asked a 38 year old male the same questions. He said he that the Indie genre isn't the genre that he predominately listens to however there are a select few bands that he really likes for example Blurr and The black keys. He stated that he thinks that the age ranges that would be fans of the genre would beteen to young adult, but as the genre originated in the 90's people around the ages of 40 would also be fans. Finally he stated that he believes Sly Antics are targeting an audience ranging from 18-35.
However, after asking Sly Antics first hand what their target audience actually is we now know that their primary audience is around 18-27 and secondary audience are "old rockers" more around the 35 plus mark.
Next we looked into the range of magazine that we would publish our magazine advert in.
As our findings from YouGov fit our target audience as stated by Sly Antics,we knew that YouGov was a reliable site. So we then went on to find out which Magazines would fit with target audiences. We found that fans of the bands (Blurr and The pixies) would be readers of Empire magazine and their main readership audience age is 25-39 which fits with our secondary audience. Fans of (Arctic Monkeys, The strokes and Blurr) would be readers of NME and their target audience is 18-24 fitting with our Primary audience. Bands featuring in NME which are relatable to Sly Antics are Foals, Artic monkeys and 1975.
Audience Feedback The feedback we received was crucial in the making of our products as it helped us to creatively build upon our pieces. After Paige created a sample scene for the cafe in the initial stages of editing she presented it to me and Mr Burrows to which we gave her constructive feedback on how to develop it in order to create a second draft.
Paige took on our criticism and reflected back on it when editing the whole video for example she had the tendency to make some takes too long. So from our feedback she cut these down through out the whole video, as this is a convention of Indie music videos to have a series of short takes much like in The Arctic Monkeys 'Fluorescent Adolescent' where they use this convention to create a sense of chaos, this is also especially used during performance footage. We then asked to people to view the video and give us some audience feedback.
This feedback helped greatly as it highlighted areas which weren't very clear and could be improved upon that we our self hadn't noticed. However a problem that we can across was getting willing people to examine our music video, in order to collect a wide spread response, as it was a very busy period of time. Therefore we posted the video on the viral social media site Facebook to solve our problem. This would also allow us to gain feedback from a wide audience including a variety of ages, gender and music tastes.
We have gained a lot of amazing feedback and as we predicted from all different ages. The most instructive feedback was from two previous media students who received full marks for their course work so their constructive feedback was very helpful.
All feedback was taken into account especially the previous media students as their responses were detailed and knew exactly what to look for in a music video as they themselves did it last year so its fresh in their memory. We quickly realised which areas needed to be worked on and what sections were the most effective, for example many positive things were said about the ending in the Warehouse as they commented how the editing was slick, however the beginning received some negative feedback as people said they though it wasn't as strong due to the longer takes and lack of editing to the beat.
After taking all feedback on board another rough cut was made.
We then showed this more developed edit to the year 12 media class who are not experienced in the conventions of music videos but know all about editing processes from their exploration of film openings which they study in AS.
Paige then took on the feedback and worked more on the green screen footage and getting the lip sync perfect.
Magazine adverts and digipak
Audience feedback post 16 student (Natasha)
1. What genre do you think the digipak and magazine advert are aimed at?-Indie
2. What do you like about it?-The font, front image and the effective blending of images 3. Does it look professional?-yes 4. What could be improved?- the back first panel does fit with the rest of the aesthetics
Audience feedback post 16 student (Lucy)
1. What genre do you think the digipak is aimed at?-Indie/house
2. What do you like about it?-Layering, it grabs your attention, large font and likes how the back, front panels correlate as well as the lyrics on the inside panels.
3. Does it look professional?-yes but the cover looks the most professional.
4. What could be improved?- All the text should be in the same font also the inside first panel could also link to the city like the rest of the panels.
Audience feedback post 16 student (Tom)
1. What genre do you think the digipak is aimed at? -Indie/rock
2. What do you like about it? -The lyrics on the inside panels, front cover and 2nd inside panel are the most effective. 3. Does it look professional? -yes. 4. What could be improved? - The inside 1st panel doesn't fit with the rest and the line across same face.
This feedback for the magazine advert and digipak was very helpful as I had individual female criticism (the than ourselves) which was very important as their opinions helped me to pick out aspects that could be developed on which I didn't notice my self for example the colour scheme on the digipak was consistent for 3 of the panels but the 3rd panel didn't fit with the pattern. Also the fact that people correctly guessed the genre of the band from my graphics gave me confidence in my work.
She liked the magazine adverts however her criticisms were:
I could play around with the water in the 2nd advert using the CS6 liquify option
Move the Captive city logo to the right so it doesn't over lap with the lamp post
Move the debut album text down and elongate the pink line
We managed to gain audience feedback from a previous media student Amber Pianforini who is studying graphic design as part of her marketing course therefore her feedback was especially helpful. Her main criticism were to tidy my art work up a little.
Audience feedback- Sam (Sly antics lead vocalist)- late 20s
Sam liked the 2nd magazine advert the best (the boots in the water) and the bold lettering but his criticism was:
He didn't like how I split Captive city over 2 lines.
Use the colour combination pink and black and grey and white.
Next
I will take on the criticism and work on it in my next draft.
I also received feedback from Sam the lead singer of Sly Antics. This was very helpful as he would know wether we had made a product that reflected the band in a truthful way and would appeal to their audience. Sam asked me to create a header for their Facebook page in the same style as my previous artwork therefore I think he was please with what I had created.
My conclusion
I think that we have collected a sufficient amount of audience feedback in a variety of forms ranging from Facebook, Messenger, Skype and face to face. We have also collected it from a wide variety of people of all ages, gender and fans of the Indie genre as well as those who are not. We have received feedback from our primary audience as well as secondary and even from those who dint fit into either. I believe that we collected enough to develop our products to the fullest extent however I would have liked more feedback from our secondary audience as I think this would have helped to make our products appeal to them more, however we did receive quite bit from Facebook.
I used place holders to mark out where the missing footage will go.
Used different shots to experiment with the warehouse footage and with the countryside shots.
I edited to the music more, at around 2:37 you can see this.
Stabilised shots to make them look more professional.
Used transitions to make it seem more music video-like, you can see this with the cross-fade from the lead singer to the man drinking his tea. This is also a direct intertextual link to the Depeche Mode video, "Never Let Me Down Again" as there are shots of an old and young man side by side.
In the next rough cut:
Put information on the blank bits of film where the missing footage is so that people can see what is intended to go there.
Blade footage if the clips are too long.
Keep experimenting with the footage to make sure I get the best combinations.
