Evaluation Question 4

When planning my A2 Music Video I used blogger to upload and present my research, this was very useful as all my research was conducted on the Internet. Google also played a massive part in my research as I mostly looked at the background history of different artists/bands, Posters, Albums and Recordings, as this was vital to create a professional soundtrack of my original song. To do this I went onto YouTube and looked at different music videos by different pop/rock bands within my band's genre, Busted and McFly were the main bands which influenced my music and writing as they are both British formed and both bands sing about different experiences in their lives. Whilst researching different narratives to influence the story behind my music video I also looked at the artist’s advertisements/posters to help generate a theme for my print artefacts. With that in mind I also looked at different Music Shops online which plays a massive part in an artists career, I looked on iTunes at the 3 specific artists I used to base my music video and print artefacts on and had a look at the music charts to see which albums had been most successful, with that I then compared each cover and picked key features to use on my poster and cover. I also took to social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to look at the artist’s fan pages to see what pictures they upload to help promote certain songs and albums, whilst I was on the pages I also had a look at the fans to see how I could generate my target audience. After deciding what narrative I would use for my music video I needed to create a storyboard for the shots used in the video. Again I looked on Google to see what storyboard templates were available online which could be useful when drawing my scenes + adding dialogue, Google was also useful for searching for risk assessment templates to use whilst filming to check for health and safety hazards.

Whilst filming the music video i used my Canon EOS 500D DSLR to film the narrative and performance footage, however in the performance of the song i used multiple cameras to film different angles at the same time as the performance, I mounted a GoPro to the top of the guitar and bass headstock to get a shot of the musician strumming the bass and guitar with a view down the neck of the instrument. in order to make sure the camera angles were stable i used a tripod which was placed on a dolly for moving shots to try and keep the footage as stable as possible. In my music video lighting was one of the most difficult yet important features of my music video, for this i used a lighting desk provided by the school where the performance was filmed to give the performance more of a live effect which contrasts well between the narrative and performance. whilst recording the song in the hall sound was an issue as the drum kit was very loud so we couldn't hear the song well, in order for the musicians to hear the song we turned the free standing speakers towards the band to allow them to hear the song loud enough to sync too. as this song is an original written by my band t5, to record the song i spent many months recording and editing the song on Cubase pro 7 which is an audio production recording software which music technicians use to record their portfolio for music technology. i spent many months making sure the balance and quality was of high standard and sounds like a professional recording. as you can see in the video there are many tracks which have been edited accordingly to sound warmer than the raw samples, once it was finished i then exported the song and uploaded it to premiere pro where i could then edit the video. in the music video costume was very relaxed during the performance however played a key role in the narrative. as i mentioned before the performance and band costume is very natural and modern to relate to the target audience, however in the narrative the male character is wearing a suit to show how sophisticated the character is and how professional the character is towards the audience. the female love interests are both wearing white skits/dresses to connote purity to relate to a “heavenly sight” as he is dreaming about the girl of his dreams - his guardian angel. in the music video props are also used drastically in the video to help add more realism, props were mainly used to help promote and advertise the artist seen in the music video by using the band logo in different ways in the music video. In the video i used a lot of music technology to create an authentic music video. i used 2 guitars, one bass guitar, a drum kit, two amps and two microphones with added stands. the main use of the instruments is to create a purpose for the performance to make it look like a live performance. 

During Post Production, i used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the music video in which i was able to import the music via my SD Card which was inserted into the side of my Mac. Whilst editing i added transitions which corresponded to the storyboard i drew in pre-production (when planning the music video). I was then able to add short and long cuts to the editing process which made it easier to work out which clips were in time with the song. As it is an original song written, recorded and produced by myself, i spent many weeks and months recording the song which is The Last Dance. I recorded the song at in the Sixth Form recording studio, i recorded all the audio files onto Cubase Pro 8 which is a professional music production software. Once the song was completed and produced i then imported it into Premiere Pro and synced it to the video to make the mouth movements of the singer stay in time with the song. Once that was done i started to work on the Print Artefacts. Due to the fact the band recently did a performance in front of a live audience i thought it would look better to get a natural pose for the poster and album cover. I took my Canon EOS 500D DSLR camera and got my friends to take many shots of us performing. These pictures became the basis of the Poster and Album Sleeve. To edit the poster and album sleeve i used Adobe Photoshop. The text used on the poster and album sleeve was downloaded from Dafont.com which is an online downloadable resorce for Photoshop fonts. All the songs listed on the back of the cover are real original songs which i have written myself about personal issues in my life. I thought i could use these topics to make the album more sentimental towards the audience to allow them to relate to some of the songs. 

In the Evaluation i used Premiere Pro again to edit the video as it is a very reliable system. To record the voice overs i used a Focusrite 2i2 Audio Interface which comes with a Condenser Microphone at studio quality to create the voice over for the videos. I also recorded the voice over into cubase and read from a script to make sure i didn't miss anything out. All the other video files including some Music Video examples came direct from YouTube using Det.Url which is a URL Video Downloader.