COMMENTARY

This is our final commentary, we used clips from the music video and of the speakers as well as using the music in the intervals between clips.
Enjoy!

Final Commentary Video

Music Video Evaluation - Paige

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

 The song we chose to do (McFly) is quite hard to attribute a genre too, but could be put under Avant-Garde Metal, although the band themselves (Pinkly Smooth) are a Heavy Metal band.

  Avant-Garde Metal is a subgenre of metal which is highly experimental which uses unconventional and unusual sounds, instruments and vocal techniques. 

  As such, when we created our music video we wanted it to have an unusual feel as well as being experimental and trying a project, that could potentially go very wrong. Luckily, it didn't.

  We set our music video to the lyrics of the song, taking inspiration from the words "Father" and "Wolf" which gave us the idea of Little Red Riding Hood. 

  Although we knew a childrens story wouldn't completely match the tone of the music and unusual vocal style, so we had to make our project seem a bit darker than a usual fairytale and get a performer who could live up to the rough vocal style.

  We used certain conventions with the lighting, e.g. we kept everything dark and moody to add to the atmosphere we wanted to create, and we used a performance alongside a narrative, which is often seen in Rock and Metal videos.

 How effective is the combination of the product and the ancillary texts (Magazine Advert and Digipak)?

 The Digipak and Magazine Advert uses is quite experimental due to it's colouring and styling which also conforms to the type of music video we created. The combination of the three items is interesting as they vary quite a lot in style. Our music video is very dark and moody whereas our Digipak and Magazine Advert are very colourful and almost Victorian in style, because of the font and background style. We chose this because it was quirky and Avant-Garde itself.

What have you learnt from the audience feedback?

  From the audience feedback we have learnt that though we created a good and very interesting music video, the plot of the story was lost on some of the audience.

  This is quite disappointing, as we tried to create markers and hold the story together through the use of titles at the beginning of the piece introducing the characters and photographs later on when the line "I'm still your father, child" is introduced to reinforce the relationship between Little Red Riding Hood and the Woodcutter.

  Although we did learn from the audience who watched our music video that they thought the story of Red Riding Hood was a good contextual choice and that it did indeed conform to the genre of music. They also believed our piece was very professionally done, as well as performed convincingly and edited well.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger, search engines, photoshop, final cut express, HD camera.

 

 

This is the finished magazine ad, we used the same background as the digipak, but used a different colour scheme as to inkeep with the background.

We chose the pea green colour because of the album name, the pink because of the lions colour and the yellow because it stood out and framed the image.

The photo was placed slightly to the side to make people follow the eyeline of Charlie (the wolf) and look at the release date. The bottom 2 lines are the names of three of the songs on the album.

Magazine Ad Planning

 This is the list of notes we created to know what to put on our digipak and advert, the long list at the bottom is the song names we randomly chose, including McFly.

Pinkly Smooth
In a Pea Green Boat Under The Sea
Coming: 13/12/11
Bucktan Records
www.pinklysmooth.com
5 STARS
“Amazing, inventive and…interestingly titled!” Kerrang
“In a Pea Green Boat Under The Sea, is one of the best albums of this year. Pinkly Smooth have done it again!”  Rock Sound

Alice in Blunderland
The Boy who Ate Cats
Mcfly
Uninspired
The Tale of Little Brian
Bush Woman
No Shit, Sherlock
Iron Dragon
Dom
King Thrushbeard
Esther Chocolate And The Previous Comment
Solitude and the Everlasting Pain.

Logo for the magazine ad and digipak

I created this image from a photos and screenshots we took on the day of filming.
I used photoshop to merge the images together and edit them in a "Sumi-e" style, as to fit a 'fairytale' convention.

Made up track listings

Alice in Blunderland
The Boy who Ate Cats
Mcfly
Uninspired
The Tale of Little Brian
Bush Woman
No Shit, Sherlock
Iron Dragon
Dom
King Thrushbeard
Esther Chocolate And The Previous Comment
Solitude and the Everlasting Pain.

Costume Ideas - Websites for costumes

http://www.joke.co.uk/adult-deluxe-little-red-riding-hood-costume~22232.html

Feedback from other groups on our video

-Good relationship between the lyrics and the visuals but is a bit confusing sometimes
-The story is entertaining
-Red Riding Hood was a good contextual choice
-Good narrative and performance
-Performed very well and convincingly
-Conforms to the genre
-Mysterious look and feel
-Professional look
-Perfect filters, not too dark or too light
-Didn't feel like a typical fairystory
-Good use of close-ups for performance.

Correspondance between Group and Max

These are the messages between the group and Maxim who played our woodcutter.
There was indeed cake.

Rough Cut - Group discusion

This is a collection of thoughts and ideas we have compiled on our rough cut, this is to help us work out what has worked what needs changing and where to go with it next. We have had some feedback from other groups which has also influenced some of the ideas we have here.

Editing:
             We have to make sure we keep our style of editing fluent for the whole video ~ This means       that filter effects use the same settings and cover all the clips ~ We also could use transition effects to move between the singing scenes and the acting scenes in a more interesting way this might mean using a fade or similar effect to transition smoother.

We also need to cut more and avoid staying with one camera shot for two long and to help create a sync between the song and the video by cutting on the beat and making sure both the audio and visual come together well.

Camera:
             Our camera work seems to cover most of the basics and has an alround good effect however there is a few parts that can still be worked on this mainly means that when we cut between shots we take in account the effect different shots can have and cut acordingly. This should make sure there is good flow and we dont break continuity or confuse the audience by suddenly cutting to a strange angle.


Performance:
                     Our performance focuses around the story of little red riding hood we need to make sure that this is obvious and make sure the links are clear, while its not the same its important that the audience notice it as if they dont then that defeats the point of using it as a background reference to the song. This means we must keep a clear coherent focus on the characters to make sure it noticeable, while the singing sections wont really inforce this so much if used in conjuction with the performance it should help make the 3 characters The Wolf, The Woodcutter and Red riding hood easily recognisable.

Genre conventions:~

Review of P1-02 rough cut

P1-02 Rough Cut Analysis

Editing:

Faster cuts

More cuts especially for the last chorus, could easily incorporate shots from earlier choruses.

2^nd walk at the end should be cut out, and go straight to bed shot for continuity.

Needs to fit music better, cuts on beats etc

Perhaps filters added, contrast etc because lighting is a bit dull.

Filter added to walking shots/memories?

Shots between present and flashback should have a special effect/transition.

Mise en Scene:

Worked well, good choice of locations and props.

Costumes also well chosen.

No complaints about this.

Camerawork:

Some really good long shots and close up shots.

Not much movement but fits in with the song.

Camerawork would work better if the shots were cut and changed more often.

Genre Elements:

A lot of focus on the lead singer.

Good use of flashbacks to give context to the song.

Very sort of boy-girl song.. typical of genre.

Use of makeup created a nice effect.

Performance:

Lip-synching was good, well timed, singer obviously learnt the words.

Acted performance was good, fitted the genre.

Could have benefitted from more movement.

Could have done with seeing male character more to make us understand why she’s singing the song.

What and how to improve:

Improve last chorus with extra cuts and faster shots.

Filters on flashbacks.

Shoot more footage of male character for backstory.

ROUGH CUT

 

This is the rough cut of our music video project. Overall we are happy with it, although some further editing is needed and obviously, it needs to be finished.

Because we had to export it on a small resolution it plays a bit slower than it should, but we will be exporting in HD for the final piece.

Plans

This is our filming plan for various shots we need.

Test shot of Western Stand Off

 

It works when you click it. This is demonstrating an idea we had off a western stand off style shot.

Arron and Amar's Presentation

• The music video must be visually engaging
• The first 30 seconds are the most important, if they audience aren't drawn by then, they're likely to turn over
• pre-planning is important- pre visit locations and make sure they are suitable for filming
• cover the performance aspect 3 or 4 times, using different angles and shots
• shoot lots of footage so you never run out of things to include
• don't use a complete narrative
• schedule shooting
• Block
• complete a digital storyboard

2ND TEST SHOT

Basically, same as the first test shot, although this one shows skipping. Sorry it's sideways.

TEST SHOTS

No, they're not brilliant, but they are just ideas of how we could film the chasy scenes in our RRH music video.

This is how one of our chase scenes could look if filmed from the wolfs perspective.

OMG LOCATIONS

Although this isn't our actual location, it is very similar.

Storyboard Gif

We made this a animated gif since we couldn't scan the storyboard on.

P.S. IT PLAYS IF YOU CLICK IT.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf - Roald Dahl.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

As soon as Wolf began to feel
That he would like a decent meal,
He went and knocked on Grandma's door.
When Grandma opened it, she saw
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
And Wolfie said, ``May I come in?''
Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
``He's going to eat me up!'' she cried. And she was absolutely right.
He ate her up in one big bite.
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And Wolfie wailed, ``That's not enough!
I haven't yet begun to feel
That I have had a decent meal!''
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
``I've got to have a second helping!''
Then added with a frightful leer,
``I'm therefore going to wait right here
Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood
Comes home from walking in the wood.''
He quickly put on Grandma's clothes,
(Of course he hadn't eaten those).
He dressed himself in coat and hat.
He put on shoes, and after that
He even brushed and curled his hair,
Then sat himself in Grandma's chair.
In came the little girl in red.
She stopped. She stared. And then she said,
``What great big ears you have, Grandma.''
``All the better to hear you with,'' the Wolf replied.
``What great big eyes you have, Grandma.''
said Little Red Riding Hood.
``All the better to see you with,'' the Wolf replied.
He sat there watching her and smiled.
He thought, I'm going to eat this child.
Compared with her old Grandmamma
She's going to taste like caviar.
Then Little Red Riding Hood said, ``But Grandma,
what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.''
``That's wrong!'' cried Wolf. ``Have you forgot
To tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?
Ah well, no matter what you say,
I'm going to eat you anyway.''
The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature's head
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, ``Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat.''

Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes

This story has influenced us as it is the alternative version of the traditional Red Riding Hood story, which in turn helped us create our own alternative version.