Audience feedback on text/font in music video

We had a media professional look at both texts we are contemplating adding to the beginning of our music video and he stated one 'fits in better'' but the other is ' harder to read.' So we may have to try and find a much more simplistic text font to add in, or just leave the idea of the text appearing in the first shot of our music video and have all text appear before it. 

Another audience feedback on the other hand said she likes the other one as its 'very weird' and she 'likes the idea of it', but when viewing our other choice of text said it seems too 'posh and aggressive' too her. However, 'weird' is not how we want our artist to be viewed and in comparison to the media professional who saw our whole music video before our text so he can understand how we've already branded our artist, we decided to show her text before the music video so maybe her feedback isn't as reliable. 

                                   

Conceptual Digipak's

Definition and importance of a Digipak

More presentations from Marc

Development Of Ideas and Concepts Up To Now

Effects scrapped

Me Myself and I (Yung Bush)

The constant filter effects were at first, appealing to the eye and this particular music video was believed to be a key influence in making the editing a strong contribution in the our overall production. The ideas that were presented were rich throughout the video. However, I decided to opt away from these particular effects as although the effects were appealing to the eye and appearing to disorientate the audience, which would work well for our genre of surrealism, we thought that it would not flow well with the rhythm and the style in which the artist is being presented. Furthermore, we decided to follow Andrew Goodwin's convention of “there is a relationship between the music and the visuals.” The effects shown above completely go against this theory, hence why they were not used in our music video.

Acclaiming over 40 million album sales worldwide Michael Jacksons thriller is the most successful album of all time. His high quality music was of course a key factor leading to its success. However the albums digipak appeal played a vital part in its own way. The basic medium shot of the artist himself in simple plain black and white is simply constructed but yet is highly sophisticated. The white may portray purity of the artists music and the black background plays a complimentary role in emphasizing the white costume. To add further, the artists stylistic choice of gold text in italic handwriting font, strikes the audience emphasizing the text, potentially leading to the audience to focus on the household name.

What we decided would not be appropriate

The combination of the above images were deemed to be "too weird, funny, or completely inappropriate", by our group and as a result, although initially seeming like potential ideas, we decided to not proceed with these costumes in our music video as they would not be as effective in portraying our chosen theme of surrealism.

Frank Ocean Digipak (Alternative Soul artist)

Sam Smith Digipak (Soul artist)

Deadline timeline

Bird nest burning (Cut shot)

We decided not to use this shot which we were going to use at the end when I sing 'pretty bird' because once again it is too dark even after trying to brighten the contrast on Final Cut Pro, and the lighter we was using to light up the nest is also in the shot, so we just don't feel it's one of our stronger shots. Despite being able to crop out the lighter in Final Cut Pro by zooming into the image which tended to just bring down the quality of the shot.

Digipak experimentation

Whilst being introduced to the programmer Adobe Illustrator to potentially develop a digipack, I experimented various covers and eventually developed this cover. However, I did not feel that this was particularly satisfactory, in relation to our chosen genre and theme of our music video. This is as firstly, the video does not contain a modern theme, it is a instead,a surreal theme. So for this reason such a digipak would not be suitable for our artist Marco Levi as it would not demonstrate a surrealist theme and conventions needed by the artist. Therefore, we have come to the conclusion that the digipak cover shown below was not adequate. However, we gained some knowledge of how an improved version would look like. We came to the conclusion that as the video had a persistent outdoor natural setting, the use of earthy, natural colours would be suitable hence in this aspect the colour selection in the trial digipak worked. On the contrary, other aspects such as the modern font were not so successful.

Why we make reference to Alice in Wonderland

Alice in wonderland

Alice in wonderland is about a young girl who discovers a magical world full of mysterious beings, she meets the weird and wonderful people of wonderland, although our video is not based on a young girl and its also not based in wonderland, we decided to create a similar sensation and incorporate strangeness into the real world, this links to surrealism, which is our main theme. Surrealism is all about implementing eccentricity into the real world, our goal is to achieve the same sensation for our viewers and listeners . We do this by using unusual props and putting them in odd places, for example, having marc outside sipping tea (reference to Alice in wonderland tea party) with a mannequin seated next to him, unlike a real tea party, one of our guests are inanimate, this is a direct reference to Alice in wonderland as well as surrealism.         

                

Jump cuts

Jump cuts are a common editing
technique used in music videos
for various different reasons such as; to show the quick passing of time or to speed up the sequence of shots.

In the short clip on the right hand side taken from Beyonce's 'Freakum Dress' music video, jump cuts are used in an extremely creative way to allow; the choreography she's doing in different clothing to look continuous whilst changing her costume, and the dancers in the background to also change their costumes and  positions as Beyonce changes her, but again it looks sharp, clean and effective due to the jump cut's used to allow her to achieve this in her music video.

               
                                                                                                                                                                 

We tried to use jump cut's to show the quick passing of time I've been looking for our female actor after she's disappeared in the shot before and have me moving closer and further away in each shot doing different gestures to reinforce the quick passing of time, but decided the quality of the shots just weren't strong enough besides a car and shed being in the Mise En Scene which would have distracted our audience from the real purpose of the shot and may even have attracted criticism as it would take away from the concept of surrealism by looking so modern and realistic.

                 

Frank Ocean- Promotion

Surreal shots we shot/used in our music video

 View this Pinterest Board at: http://uk.pinterest.com/marcolevicd/surreal-shots-we-shotused-in-our-music-video/

Word Insertion ( Coldplay Influence)

                 Music Video for Coldplay's 'Magic' 2014


                              

After watching the first 20 seconds of Coldplay's music video for Magic I thought instead of having to re-shoot the Tv snow shot to fill in the gap we have at the start of the video which is running the sequence of shots at the start of our music video when when we watch it back. I thought we could use words to fill in the gaps instead, stating first who the music video was directed by (Hud Ahmed), then who the music video was shot by (Valentino Memaj) and lastly the song title and our artist (Wonderland- Marco Levi.)

However, due to the fast editing of our shots at the beginning of our video and the continuous sequence (from the time the mannequin moves to face me and I approach the sofa to sit down and watch the television ) the words will have to not be on the screen for more than a few seconds so adding special effects and transitions to the words once we insert them similar to that of the words in the 'Magic' music video may not work,as the blank word shots may not be on screen long enough for a transition or special effect on the words to be necessary, but we will try it out to see before we come to a decision.

Collage of intially researched surreal images (not used)

These images are perfect examples of surrealism, however we did not end up using these because although they didn't have to necessarily relate to our video and Alice in wonderland theme, it proved to be difficult to execute and replicate these images because we lack the expertise needed as well as the materials it wasn't necessary so we eliminated them, it was also very time consuming in attempting to recreate these pictures and we realized we could over schedule if we had dwelled on creating the perfect shot, however we did make substitutes for a few of these images and used them for our own creative shots that we fabricated ourselves, for example we did not recreate the bird cage image however we did use a bird cage and we left it on a tree for Marco to find, this bird cage is linked to Alice in wonderland, Alice constantly sees distracting items during her stay in wonderland which side tracked her goals of going home, our Marco's goal is to find a girl in a red dress, during his search he finds the bird cage which keeps him occupied. This means he is left in questioning where she is further, the lack of conclusion keeps him wondering and the mystery doesn't end.

Collage of initial researched Surreal images (Not used)