Saturday, 21 May 2011
Friday, 29 April 2011
Final Overall Evaluation Video
(Please excuse the logo that keeps popping up in the middle, I had to compress the video from HD to a lower quality format in order to upload onto my blog)
Music Video evaluation
I got a lot of audience feedback for my music video once it was completed because it was important to know whether they liked it as a whole and would watch it over and again. I had to edit it over a couple of times until myself and my peers thought it looked like a professional music video. For example, the start of the music video had quite a few random shots in it just to fill up space because of the way ‘The awakening’ starts. I could have cut the introduction of that track but this would have made the video start too abruptly therefore not making it so effective.
The music video enhances the music because it has a flow to it and the cuts go with the beat of the song which ultimately keeps an audience interested. Also, audiences enjoy having a visual to aid what they hear, so the music video and the mis-en-scene aided the enjoyment of the music and music video as a whole. It also adds meaning to the song because we can see Abbie’s physical emotions through her journey and her passion for music and the audience can empathise with her. The messages my video sends about women is that you don’t need to sell your body in order to get you to places and express your talent, Abbie is clearly well clothed and not exploited in any way, it is simply her talent brought out and this is what we as an audience want to remember her for, no ‘the girl who wore a short skirt in her video who looked “sexy”’ – that would be exploiting.
I think my video is unique especially because of the locations we shot at, the most amazing location we captured was in London in the evening over the River Thames. The colours were so bold and bright and looked almost like a fantasy. The fact that it is Abbie’s personal journey and her expressing herself through music, this makes it original because everyone has different outlooks on life and what they want to achieve. You can empathise with Abbie because of the range of close up shots and medium shots which makes you feel closer to her. The closer an audience feels to an artist, the more they would want to watch the video. The feedback I received from my peers was that they would want to watch it again and again because there’s aspects of the video which they don’t catch the first time, and also they enjoy looking at the scenery because it suits the song and musical genre, making my music video – a successful video.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Website Production
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| DREAMWEAVER |
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| DREAMWEAVER |
Before starting to use Dreamweaver, I went onto youtube and searched for a few tutorials to try and teach me how to use it because it looked very complicated. Despite looking at this tutorial, I found that Dreamweaver wasn't very flexible and it was a lot more technical and harder to move things around the page etc. Making a site using Dreamweaver seemed to be a very long and daunting task so I looked at other website creators and found Wix.com.
I found Wix to be an excellent website designer, it allowed me to add images, links, Facebook 'Like' buttons, text and so much more by a few clicks. As oppose to Dreamweaver, I reckon I would have been there all day.
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| Final Website, created on Wix www.wix.com/zazax0/abbiesinger |
This is a screen shot of my final website (More below when you scroll down). After looking at numerous existing sites I got an idea of a basic layout that I could use. I felt that the use of pictures of Abbie would be important because every site has pictures of the artist somewhere, and plus, people viewing this site would want to know what Abbie looks like and what kind of artist she is. This is where the 'About' section comes in where a brief bio of her has been written. The colours used all link to my CD digipak design so this has kept consistency throughout and also the turquoise-blue colour is viewed as calm and peaceful which links to the values and beliefs of what audiences see Neo-Soul as. The slideshow at the top of my website doesn't portray Abbie in a sexual way at all as they are not revealing. Abbie wants her musical talent to be the obvious aspect of her that everyone knows her for. This is also an important part of the Neo-Soul genre because typically, it is about expressing yourself and singing about life events etc as oppose to Hip Hop and RnB which may present artists in more revealing clothing and talk about more explicit things such as sex and girls.
After presenting this website to Abbie herself, I gained her feedback and friend's feedback who all said it was very good but could be tweaked in different areas. So Abbie suggested a change in font to make it more like someone had handwritten the text instead of using standard 'Arial'. So I took this on board and changed it on my site. Another thing Abbie pointed out is the navigation at the top of the page which should have buttons like 'Home' 'Profile' 'Music' etc, however I have had problems getting these to come up. I am currently working on it.
Video Production and Post Production
Video Production - Initial Photography
After storyboarding and creating a shooting schedule, the main aim was to stick to this schedule so that our time wasn't wasted and neither was the artists. We had set locations which were in Central London (London Bridge and Picadilly Circus), Valentines Park and in a Studio.
With the initial photography, we managed to capture shots from day and night and the ones which looked excellent were the night shots on London Bridge over looking the river. These shots were good because they had relevance to my CD digipak design with the whole idea of water being the symbol of calmness and serenity.
The shots we had issues with were the ones in Picadilly Circus as there was always a lot of people walking around and getting in the way of the camera so in order to tackle this we had to re-shoot and people were made more aware that we were recording after a while. (Permission from the council was received for us to film there).
When it came to editing and looking back at all of the footage, we decided that we needed something that looked professional and would wow the audience. Also we found that in the footage we already had, some parts of the song weren't sung well enough for us to sync when editing, which is where the studio footage came in. The use of our school's drama studio which had lighting, effects and a blacked out room was excellent as it made Abbie stand out in the footage.
Post Production
Editing is one of my strong points so to start with I didn't really have any troubles when editing my footage and creating a rough-cut. When it came to making sure all the singing was in sync with the track itself, this is when the task became a bit tedious. But after reshooting in the drama studio, this filled all the gaps and made editing a lot more easier.
The main effects I used in my production was a cross-fade and fade in-fade out. These were the only effects that had relevance to the type of song I was dealing with. If I were to use box transitions and sliding effects, this wouldn't work because the song is quite slow and calm. I used effects because they are a way of keeping the audience interested instead of just seeing cuts throughout the video. Also, it makes the video look more professional and shows the skills I have learnt and used as an editor.
The actual footage shot compared to the storyboard version is quite different. In the storyboards, we had all these ideas of Abbie waking up on a piano from the previous night of writing a song but the mis-en-scene wouldn't have worked because it would be obvious that it was filmed in a school hall using the school piano. Also these ideas seemed too familiar as those of Alicia Keys and we didn't want to simply copy those ideas as it was important to keep a unique element to the production. In the actual footage shot, we came up with more ideas which some came at the spur of the moment. In the end, whether or not those shots were used, the more footage, the better off we were.
After storyboarding and creating a shooting schedule, the main aim was to stick to this schedule so that our time wasn't wasted and neither was the artists. We had set locations which were in Central London (London Bridge and Picadilly Circus), Valentines Park and in a Studio.
With the initial photography, we managed to capture shots from day and night and the ones which looked excellent were the night shots on London Bridge over looking the river. These shots were good because they had relevance to my CD digipak design with the whole idea of water being the symbol of calmness and serenity.
The shots we had issues with were the ones in Picadilly Circus as there was always a lot of people walking around and getting in the way of the camera so in order to tackle this we had to re-shoot and people were made more aware that we were recording after a while. (Permission from the council was received for us to film there).
When it came to editing and looking back at all of the footage, we decided that we needed something that looked professional and would wow the audience. Also we found that in the footage we already had, some parts of the song weren't sung well enough for us to sync when editing, which is where the studio footage came in. The use of our school's drama studio which had lighting, effects and a blacked out room was excellent as it made Abbie stand out in the footage.
Post Production
Editing is one of my strong points so to start with I didn't really have any troubles when editing my footage and creating a rough-cut. When it came to making sure all the singing was in sync with the track itself, this is when the task became a bit tedious. But after reshooting in the drama studio, this filled all the gaps and made editing a lot more easier.
The main effects I used in my production was a cross-fade and fade in-fade out. These were the only effects that had relevance to the type of song I was dealing with. If I were to use box transitions and sliding effects, this wouldn't work because the song is quite slow and calm. I used effects because they are a way of keeping the audience interested instead of just seeing cuts throughout the video. Also, it makes the video look more professional and shows the skills I have learnt and used as an editor.
The actual footage shot compared to the storyboard version is quite different. In the storyboards, we had all these ideas of Abbie waking up on a piano from the previous night of writing a song but the mis-en-scene wouldn't have worked because it would be obvious that it was filmed in a school hall using the school piano. Also these ideas seemed too familiar as those of Alicia Keys and we didn't want to simply copy those ideas as it was important to keep a unique element to the production. In the actual footage shot, we came up with more ideas which some came at the spur of the moment. In the end, whether or not those shots were used, the more footage, the better off we were.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Webpage research and drafting
- Alicia Keys - http://www.aliciakeys.com/uk/home
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| Alicia Keys Official Website |
- The background is quite abstract and not blinding or in your face which reflects the kind of music she makes
- - The scrolling background of the Alicia Keys heading shows a bird and a calm blue background which follows the typical conventions of calmness and serenity. This theme is also featured on the side panel of her site where we can see feathers and all sorts of designs and is continued throughout the whole site. The fonts used on Alicia Keys website are quite simple, sophisticated and flow quite well which suit the genre of her music: soul. Her hair is kept simple and sophisticated also.
- - Listeners would be attracted to her and her music because Alicia Keys official site provides music and lyrics for all of her albums. Also, fans have the ability to be part of a community based around just Alicia Keys, message boards which allow people to leave comments for Alicia Keys to read showing their support and many other giveaways such as VIP tickets and opportunities to meet her.
- - Alicia regularly blogs things that she believes in, which fans can comment on, on how much they have been inspired by her words, this allows the fans to feel a lot more closer to her as an artist. (Twitter and facebook)
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| DRAFT WEBPAGE DESIGN NUMBERS HIGHLIGHTED IN GREEN IS WHAT I WILL BE DISCUSSING |
2: Abbie's track will automatically play once the website is accessed and audiences have the choice of whether the want to pause/stop it.
Also, having the music video there allows the audience to choose whether they want to listen to the track or watch the video, giving more choice, as some people may find it annoying if they are forced to play the video in order to listen to the track. It may even slow down their computer which is not what people want.
3. The photo sharing gives the audience the opportunity to feel part of a special community that only some people can have access to making them feel even more like a fan of Abbie and having personal engaging by uploading pictures that they have with Abbie with the approval of Abbie herself.
4. Latest tweets and merchandise allows audiences to keep up with AbbieSinger and follow her footsteps and get the latest news on what she is doing. This may be important to people who idolize AbbieSinger. Merchandise let people feel more involved with Abbie and supporting her by purchasing her branded items. E.G: Singles/Albums/Posters Etc.
Latest videos can consist of her music videos, her singing acapella, interviews etc and anything audiences may want to see to keep up with her progress.
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