Digipack Design

Diary Entry 12 - discussion of decisions when editing

Today, Tyra and myself looked through our music video on Final Cut Express once again as we have discussing, and have had previous discussions on whether or not to add special effects to the final video. We brought this up in conversation, as we wanted to increase the effectiveness and impact that the video has upon the audience. We therefore went through the video cut by cut to see if we could add any additional transitions to make the narrative clearer or to make the video look better on a whole. We did end up adding 2 extra transition effects, one in which was a fade in transition to a shot to show a sudden change of time in the day, as well as a cross dissolve to make the video flow more effectively. We looked over the video as a whole again, and found that these extra effects significantly improved the flow of the music video.

Diary Entry 11 - Transferring music video to Final Cut Express

Today in lesson, Tyra and I completed our final edit of our music video, and transferred the video from iMovie to Final Cut Express in order to put the finishing touches to the video. After watching through the final piece, we found that the beach scenes had a grey scale to the footage, yet the rest of the footage, including the performance shots were bright and sunny. The main reason this happened is because we filmed on different days so due to weather differences, the colourisation throughout the video changed constantly. We therefore decided to colourise the whole video, except the performance shots, so the whole video looked dull and grey. We wanted this effect as it relates to the emotional and sadness of the narrative of the song, as well as going well with the lyrics and the meaning of the songs. We were however, unable to finish this in one day as it is a very time consuming process as each individual clip has to match the same colour tone and the previous. This is taking longer than expected, but we are still working within our time schedule.

Feedback to our first edit - changes we made in response to this

Today me and Tyra finished our first complete edit. We decided that it would be a good idea to present this first edit to our fellow classmates and to receive feedback, so we can get ideas about how to improve this first edit. The documents below show what our fellow classmates liked about our music video, as well as other things that we can improve on.

By doing this feedback task, it helped us to understand what components of our music video was successful, and also what wasn't so we can therefore make improvements. Overall, we got consistent feedback that the camera shots and the framing was well constructed and at a high standard, and the narrative being capturing and entertaining. However, one issue we did come across more than once is that there was not enough performance shots and that these shots should by synchronised more accurately. Tyra and I took this on board, and soon added more performance shots from previous footage and made sure that all the miming was in sink with the song.

Software we are using to complete our music video

At the moment, myself and Tyra are using iMovie HD to edit and put together our music video. Even though most other groups in our class are using 'Final Cut Express' myself and Tyra are more familiar with iMovie and so decided to stick with this piece of software as we think that we can get through the editing at a much quicker pace as time is running out and we need to meet this deadline! After we have completed our editing, we hope to transfer our footage over to Final Cut Express to add finishing touches, such as transitions, special effects and maybe even titles at the beginning.

iMovie HD

Final Cut Express

Dairy Entry 10 - Performance shots

Yesterday myself and Tyra filmed the performance scenes to our music video. We filmed in 5 different locations to make sure we had enough footage that would last throughout the whole music video. We have also uploaded this footage and have started to put the narrative and the performance together on iMovie. It is looking good so far :) we are both happy with the progress!

Styles and conventions of music genres

Hip-hop:

Hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music is a musical genre consisting of a stylised rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping (a speech that is chanted). It developed as a part of hip-hop culture. The term hip-hop is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip-hop music. The genre may also incorporate other elements of hip-hop culture, including DJ’s, scratching, beat boxing and instrumental tracks, rapping, break dancing and graffiti writing.

Rock:

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960’s, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has it’s roots in 1940 and 50’s rock and roll, heavily influenced by RnB and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and is incorporated from jazz and classical music. Rock music has centred on the electric guitar, with a bass guitar and drums. The common conventions of this genre is that the artist is normally a white male, that has been seen to be one of the key factors that shape the themes in rock music. In music videos, the rock genre normally provides the audience with live performances on a stage.

Folk music:

Folk music is an English term surrounding both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways; music transmitted by the mouth, music of the lower classes, and music with the unknown composer. Traditional folk music is also considered as ‘root music’. It usually uses simple melodies with short sentence structure in verses and with a chorus. The vocals are normally accompanied by tambourines, or more up to date using acoustic guitars. In modern music videos, folk music tends to be concept or narrative based.

RnB:

RnB is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940’s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed to urban African Americans, at a time when urban, rock and jazz based music with a heavy beat was becoming more popular. After the 1950’s, this style of music contributed to the development of rock and roll, and the term R&B became used to refer to music styles developed from electric blues, gospel and soul music. The newer style is known as ‘contemporary R&B’. This genre of music is based on strong emotions, with a lot of rhythm and beats. In RnB music videos, it is usually performance based, using woman for voyeuristic reasons.

The conventions of a music webpage

The banner is normally the first thing the viewers see which contains what is below:

Logo:

They feature the bands logo in some way or another. This helps fans recognise that they are on the correct site. This is usually a large size and featured somewhere near the top of the page.

Tabs:

A homepage would feature links to other pages on the website, which are likely to be located at the top of the page under their logo. A common convention would be new updates and upcoming events to keep the viewers informed.

Example of one of their music videos:

Music videos of their current work seem to promote their music more than swamping the audience with text. This would be through the use of still advertisements, videos and links. The key is home page need to be simple, and eye catching, so fans are not swamped with information they don't want and can easily navigate their way around the website.

Podcasts and links to social networking sites:

This makes the audience feel like there interacting with the artist and allows them to find out more about them as well as release dates, tour dates and gig dates, for example.

Advertisement of new album:

This normally includes the picture that is on the front cover of their new album. Advertising this to the audience persuades them more to buy it, and is constantly shown through the website to remind the fans.

Intertextuality in music videos

Intertextuality refers to the way in which texts gain meaning through their referencing or evocation of other texts, that producers assume audiences will recognise. Advertising and music videos are two genres that rely heavily on the use of intertextuality to achieve a particular effect. Often this borrowing of a text to link it to a second one is stylistic. This means that a text will mimic or otherwise copy certain stylistic features of another text. Usually this is done in order to create a particular impact, although there may be instances where this borrowing may seem simply a matter of convenience to give a music video, for example, a particular look. A few examples of music videos that use intertextuality to draw in the audience are shown below:

This video uses intertextuality to attract the audience, as it relates back to Rebecca Black's song 'Friday' as the lyrics of the song also talk about friday nights, and seeing as Rebecca Black is also in the music video, this draws in the audiences attention.

History on 4Music - Channel 4's music channel

4Music is a music and entertainment channel in the United Kingdom that’s is the only channel within the Box Television Network to be branded under Channel 4. The channel replaced ‘The Hits’.

4Music first launched in August 2008. The channel launched with an on-screen countdown from ten minutes counting down to zero. During the countdown, clips from popular music videos were faded through the screen including clips from promotions for the channel. The channel then launched at 7pm with a promotional advert for the channel then fading into ‘Davina and Steve's 20 Big Ones’. The first song at number 20 that played was ‘The Pretender’ by The Foo Fighters.

Not only were music video broadcasted on this channel, but live coverage of the 2008 V Festival was shown on 16th and 17th August and highlights were shown on subsequent days.

In the present day, a chart is compiled of songs from a particular artist that has released at least 20 singles such as Beyonce, Christina Aguilera and The Black Eyed Peas. The public then get to vote for their favourite song on the 4Music website and the results are shown on the results show.

Music Website Analysis

The music website I’ll be analysing is a band called ‘Tellison’. The reason I picked this band is because they’re not that well known or famous and I didn’t want to be influenced by an artists well known ‘star’ image. Their website appears to be fairly simple and plain, but this may be the case because they do not have enough money to invest in someone to create an eye catching website.

The first thing the viewer gets to see is the Header of the webpage which shows the name of their band and the name of their new album. This draws in the audience about their new album and is a way of advertising the viewers to buy this album. Below this they provide a link to follow them on Twitter which benefits the band as the more people that get to know about them, the more popular and famous they will become. The fact that the viewers are able to keep up to date with their lives also means that when the band are planning a concert or a gig, the ‘followers’ on twitter will be the first to know. To the side of this is also a link for people to add them on Facebook. The fact that they decided to put links to the two most popular social networking sites means that most people who go on their webpage will more likely have either Facebook or Twitter.

Below this are tabs including news updates, videos, photos, live events and information about the band. This therefore means the viewers are given as much information about the band as possible so when there are upcoming events or new pictures from a previous concert, the audience are able to relate to the band for those purposes.

In the body section of the website, it contains a link to buy their CD online, but also includes other options for the viewers to buy their music for example, Amazon and iTunes. Again, this is an easy way to persuade their audience to buy their music as people tend to want a fast and instant way to download music, and the sites they provide to do this, do that exact job.

For people who have not heard of their music before, they present a music video from YouTube in the side bar, to give the viewers a taster of what their music is like. Therefore, if they like the sound of the music then they can click on the link to buy the album off Amazon or iTunes.

Further down in the body section of the website is general news from the band members, where they blog information updates for the viewers purpose only. This is a good way to interact with the audience as the viewers will feel like the band members are talking generally to the person reading the comments.

The colours of this web page related to the colours presented on their new album, which is mainly black, white and blue. This therefore means the audience are constantly made aware of their new album, especially as the background of the website is the picture of the front cover on their CD.

This is an image of their webpage: