Draft Music Video (Updated Logo)

Codes and Conventions: Magazine Advert

I analysed my own magazine advert to assure I was following the codes and conventions of how it should be. I am satisfied that my advert uses a lot of the same techniques of professional magazine adverts. Here is how my advert follows the codes and conventions of a magazine advert:

Draft Magazine Advert

I have completed my draft magazine advert and am now going to spend time getting feedback, improvements and suggestions from my target audience. 

One of the biggest developments is the fact I chose to change my 'Mr. Blue Sky' logo to something that suited the magazine advert and the theme of the song more. Consequently, I am also changing the logo I use in my music video to assure synergy between my different promotional products. 

Ancillary Task 1: Magazine Advert

Today, I begun to plan and create the magazine advert for Mr. Blue Sky. Firstly, I drew up a very rough layout plan of how I wanted my magazine to look. It was very brief since it was mainly only for me to be able to see how things are positioned on the page. 

Once I had created my plan I created a new Photoshop document. I made it A4 size (the size of most magazines) but changed the resolution to 300 pixels/inch. 

I then screenshotted the clouds from my music video and opened up the photo in Photoshop. I selected a sample of the blue from the sky and then used the magnetic lasso tool to select just one of the clouds. 

I copied and pasted this onto my poster and used the transformation tools to position them. I changed the size and position of them and I flipped the bottom one vertically so that they looked like different clouds.

I opened up the sun from my music video in Photoshop and used the elliptical selection tool to copy and paste it onto the poster in the top right corner.

Using Photoshop

Today I practiced using different Photoshop tools in preparation for the creation of my magazine advert. I practised using the transformation and adjustment tools and I also tried out the filters and various selection tools, such as the lasso and the selection tool. I also used the cloning tool. You can see a few of the results below!

Production: Draft Edit

Below is a completed draft of my music video. I am going to work on my ancillary tasks for the next week now whilst I seek audience feedback from my target audience.

Production: Green Screen

Today I filmed the green screen part of my music video - the final piece to my first draft jigsaw! Max was the person I filmed but I couldn't have done it without the help of Molly and Joe, who held the green screen for me!

We had to pick a location with good light shining towards the screen, so we chose a rather large cupboard with a window. We also used the artificial fluorescent lights to light up the screen and Max a bit from above as well. We had no frame so Molly and Joe had to hold it very still ... luckily, we managed to do it in one take! 

This is what the footage looked like when I imported it into Final Cut.

I then applied a 'keyer' effect to the foreground clip, once I had layered it on top of the background time lapse clip that I downloaded from YouTube, and this was the final product. 

Production: Update 25/11

Today, I completed piecing together my music video! I did leave a blank bit where I am intending on doing green screen .. but that will be filmed next week. 

I did use a lot of different editing techniques, mostly consisting of different ways to use keyframes, but the most exciting addition to my music video is the end part, where lots of different people sing together on different screens. It was easy to edit the frames, but I did have to be very precise when positioning them to make sure it looks neat and consistent. I then altered the colours of each frame to make it look as beautiful as possible - another way of making the multicolour theme run throughout my video.

Additionally, I used a really pretty sun. Again, the sun was a PNG image that I only partially positioned on the frame. Then, I used keyframes again to change the angle of the sun after a set amount of time. This made the sun move at a consistent speed. I also flipped the clip around so that the sunlight was on the side the sun was facing and at one point, Max even looks up at the sun and it lights up his whole face. I am really happy with it. It is one of the prettiest shots in the video in my opinion!

I also made a few more basic changes. For example, all of the new clips have been manipulated to be in line with the rest of the video, all with a gorgeous blue sky and lovely green grass. 

In order to follow my audience feedback, and trying not to use the same shot too many times, I decided to use some outtakes in my video. During the "where did we go wrong" at two different parts in my video, I have used outtakes of Jak stuck in the swing and Max stuck on the slide. I used a basic camcorder effect as well to make it look like more of an outtake, but it still fits with the video. It think it looks really great!

 

The final shot in the video is of Max and Jak skipping off into the distance. I altered the speed of the clip to 40% so that it is in slow motion. I changed the colour of the sky and the grass. The final part of the video uses the original ending that I edited in earlier today on GarageBand. 

Here is an update of what my video is looking like so far. For some reason it exported with a bad sound quality but you get the idea!

Production: Editing My Track

I decided to use the 2012 version of Mr. Blue Sky for my video because it is a lot better quality, the music is a bit funkier and it is a lot shorter than the original. However, one thing missing from the 2012 version that I loved is the beautiful ending where it plays one long note and you hear "Mr Blue Sky". For me, this part feels like the end of a show, it feels like a much softer conclusion than the slightly abrupt 2012 version. 

Therefore, I decided to use GarageBand in order to edit the song and merge the 2012 version (used for almost the entire video) with the ending from the original. 

I had never used GarageBand before, but it was a fairly simple operation. Once I discovered the 'Track Volume' drop-down tab underneath the track, I was able to alter the 2012 track to fade out. Then, I split the original (Track 3) clip and deleted the part of the song I didn't want. Once I aligned the two clips, and altered the track volume of Track 3, they now fade nicely into each other. It was kind of like using Final Cut Pro but with audio! It is obvious that the song transitions, but I don't think it matters too much since it essentially acts as a nice conclusion to the music video. I will have credits at this point, thanking all of the people who have given up their time to contribute to my music video, and then I will have the shot of Jak and Max skipping off into the sunset. I hope it is going to be a really lovely ending! 

Production: Update 24/11

Today I filmed and edited the next 15 seconds of my music video. I had a vision for how I wanted it to come out, looking like "Just Dance" characters, so they don't look too human and I wanted it to be bright and colourful.

I had 3 people in it - myself, Molly and Jono - and we each took turns to sing and dance in front of the camera. Originally, we came out looking a bit like this...

But after editing the clips, we looked more like this!

I edited all of the colours in the video. I also added a 'focus' filter to focus on our faces so that the rest of our bodies and the background looked a bit blurry. Finally, I added cross fade transitions between the first and the last one but decided to just have it cut between the different dancers as I think it looks a bit better than having a dramatic transition! 

I think it looks pretty cool. I'm not entirely convinced its perfect but I can't put my finger on why! I am going to wait until I next get some audience feedback in order to see what they think of it. 

Production: Adding Motion

Because I am not able to edit the next part of my video until the footage is filmed on Tuesday, a lot of my time has been spent on improving and perfecting the first part of my video. This has included responding to my audience feedback and also trying out different animations to see what works. 

I am still trying to overcome the issue of GIFs not being compatible with Final Cut Pro X. I have been using PNG images but these can prove difficult to make it look effective because they don't move! For example...

I added a seriously cute hedgehog to the bench scene yesterday. It is probably my favourite image yet! But it was so difficult to essentially 'embed' it into the scene. Although it is obviously a cartoon I wanted to make it part of the frame and unlike previous animations, I couldn't make it walk around or anything because it was sitting on the bench. 

Firstly I tried making it bounce up and down but it didn't look right at all. Although I asked my friend what they thought of it and they said they liked it, it looked messy and out of place. I decided to keep it in there for the meantime until I came up with a good alternative way to make it work. 

And then it came to me! I used the flip effect to make the hedgehog look left and right to the beat of the music. It worked out really well. There are 4 main beats to the frame and so I used the 'Flipped' effect to make the hedgehog change the way it was looking. 

I also mentioned my squirrel yesterday. I am beginning to add slightly more complex motions to my video now I have fully grasped the technique and so this squirrel runs onto the screen, sees an acorn, runs over and eats the acorn and then runs off of the screen. 

I found two images of squirrels. One was standing and the other was eating. I made sure they were a very similar colour and style of cartoon! Then the squirrel ran over to the acorn, the acorn disappeared (as did the squirrel), the eating squirrel appeared and bobbed up and down very quickly and then the original squirrel appeared again, but this time with the 'Flipped' effect on it, and ran off in the direction it came from. 

I am still continuing to add effects as I really want my film to be very animation-heavy. Over the next few days, whilst I have some spare time before filming my next bits of footage, I am going to continue researching my ancillary tasks so that I can begin them once I have completed the full first draft of my music video. 

Below is an updated version of my music video. 

Responding to Audience Feedback

I have been getting a lot of audience feedback over the past few days for my current music video to see how I can improve it. I have responded to a lot of the feedback my target audience gave me to make it as good as possible. 

When Alex watched my video and I recorded her response, she said that the teeth look a little creepy. A few other people also told me this, including Molly, who tweeted me feedback. Therefore, I have removed the colour alteration from the teeth to make them look slightly less scary!

Also, Gary gave me some feedback about the guitar instrumental. A lot of people said that it looked a little boring because not much happened during it. Gary suggested that I spiced it up a bit by adding cartoon blue notes coming out of the guitar. 

I gave this a go and it did work very nicely. However, some others said that the CUs of the mouths were a bit out of place, such as Cristina. 

This feedback certainly got me thinking about how I could make the mouths fit in nicely. And then I decided, why not spread the multicolour effect throughout the video? Consequently, I decided to make the musical notes coming out of the guitar multi-coloured. It looks great! The guitar solo looks more memorable and the teeth look slightly less out of place. Along with the rainbow I am beginning to integrate it in a bit better. 

Ellie and Molly loved the 'comical parts' and thought I should add more. Additionally, Cristina also suggested that I added more of the animation elements because she thought they looked good. 

I have therefore begun adding in more animations to the video to make it even more comical. My personal favourite new addition so far is the squirrel running up to an acorn and eating it!

I am still getting audience feedback whilst I make some changes and so I hope my video will keep on evolving!

Research: Audience Feedback

I have begun to gather audience feedback on my music video to see what my target audience think about it. I have taken to social media in order to get as much audience feedback as I can. I have posted a link to my first draft on Facebook and Twitter and I hope that some of my friends will let me know what they think!

Please give me feedback for my music video! https://t.co/lTQME8Mhla
— [G]εöℛցℰ ｨʊѵϑϒ (@tuvey1997) November 18, 2014

Post by George Tuvey.

It wasn't long before people started tweeting and Facebooking me their feedback - another perk to having teenagers and young adults as my target audience!

@tuvey1997 haha that's brilliant! love the clouds at the start! maybe a font with slightly cleaner edges for the title could be used? ...
— Stephen Clarke (@StevoClarke94) November 18, 2014

Stephen's feedback was definitely something I agreed with, and so I am looking into getting a logo that is a lot sharper and better quality. Especially since it is so near the beginning of my video, I really think this will help enhance its professionalism.

@tuvey1997 the start is incredible :) just be careful when it comes to over editing as the teeth may creep some people out a bit!
— molls☺️ (@molzzzz_) November 18, 2014

I can understand how the teeth could be a bit creepy to some people! I am going to try and take the colour out of the teeth. I think it is important that it is still very heavily manipulated in terms of colours because some people may find the CUs of the mouths a bit gross...but I need to keep a balance of having it look abstract and funky without making it scary.

It wasn't just Molly who wasn't fond of the teeth either! Alex offered to watch my video and give me some feedback in person. This video shows Alex watching my music video. She saw a very early draft, way before I added any significant effects or had even finished piecing it together, but had not seen any of it since.

Ellie (and Molly!) really liked the more comical parts of my video and so this is something I intend to continue including when producing the next part of my music video.

Jonno suggested that I try and manipulate the colours of the houses to make them suit the theme of the video more. This is something I hadn't thought about doing and am looking forward to giving it a go and seeing how it comes out!

Jake spoke a lot about my camerawork and suggested I try using a few more CUs of my actors to make sure my shots are varied, and so I am planning on using a CU in the last part of my video. He also suggested that I move the camera a bit more and again, I completely appreciate this. I am hoping to work a little bit with keyframes in order to make one of the shots pan to add a bit more motion to it. I'm not sure which one yet!

....and Mel just thought Max's glasses were sexy. I have to agree.

@tuvey1997 Max's sunglasses are tres sexy👌
— Mellie (@UmulisaMelissa) November 18, 2014

I also managed to reduce some people to tears. Perhaps not quite the response I was intending on but I suppose any emotional impact is a good thing.

@tuvey1997 a tear came to my eye it was so fabulous!
— Indie Steggall (@Indiesteggs) November 18, 2014

Some people weren't as fond of the caterpillar as others. I have decided to only use it once and find alternative animals to have in the other scenes.

@tuvey1997 that caterpillar annoys me 🐛😉
— rebecca (@beckyredit) November 18, 2014

I also showed a larger group of Year 12 students who had never seen my video before. They seemed to respond really well to it and were particularly impressed by the colour alteration. They were amazed by how I managed to make it look so sunny! Amy liked the CUs of mouths for "Mr Blue Sky, Please tell us why". Aaron said he liked the caterpillar and everybody agreed, so I think I am going to keep that part in! One person also said - and I quote - "this is actually making me feel quite happy" - which is exactly what I wanted when I first set out to plan the video!

Production: First Draft

This is the first draft of my music video. It does not include the last verse since this is still in production but I hope to have it completed by about the end of next week. I would like to get as much audience feedback as possible now - especially how my target audience thinks it could be improved! 

If you do have any feedback or suggestions for my music video, please can you let me know? Either comment on this post or get in touch some other way.

Production: Adding Effects

I have now begun perfecting the first 2 minutes of the first draft of my music video. 

I have been using many different effects and editing techniques. The approach I have taken for my video is to present it as half real-life and half cartoon like and so I have been trying to have different cartoon elements in my film. 

However, I came across a problem when I discovered that my editing application, Final Cut Pro X, is not compatible with moving GIFs and this was a huge issue for me because it meant that none of the cartoon images that I wanted to insert could be moving. However, I have worked a lot with keyframes in order to give some of my images movement to make them look as lovely as possible!

Near the beginning of my video I have inserted a PNG of a rainbow. I used transitions to make it slowly wipe in from the left to the right, and then fade out just before Max runs across the screen. I carefully used the transform tools to alter the scale and position of the rainbow and line the flat edge up with the roof of the house. This also involved changing the angle of rotation. It looks great with the blue sky!

Also, I added a cartoon sun in when Max sings "look how the sun shines brightly". Again, it was originally motionless but to make it look slightly more part of the frame, I added a 'flashing' effect to the sun. I had to alter the intensity of the effect so that it wasn't too overwhelming. I also added a 'spot' effect to the shot of Max so that it looked like the sun was beaming onto his face and this fades in when the frame tilts upwards!

My favourite cartoon addition so far is the cartoon birds I have used later on in the video. I used keyframes in order to move the birds up and down flying across the screen. When sped up it looks like they are actually flapping their wings...especially the blue one! I am really happy with this effect.

The final effect I have added is in the shot with Jak lying on the grass. I added different cartoon flowers that I found online. Again, in order to give them motion I used key frames, but this time in order to alter the scale of them as opposed to the position. They all grow at different times and paces throughout the frame.

One problem I did have with the flowers was the fact that because the shot was filmed without a tripod, since I had to hold the camera vertically, it was quite shaky and because of that, sometimes the flowers went on top of Jak. Therefore I made use of the stabilisation tools. I set it to automatic but turned the smoothing up to 3.0 in order to make it as least shaky as I could. It now looks a lot more steady and the flowers stay growing around him as opposed to on his face!

Overall I am really happy with the effects I have added so far. Some may need a small amount of alteration but I am planning on gaining some audience research shortly and will see if there is anything that they do or do not like!

Research: Magazine Adverts

For my first ancillary task, I have opted to design a magazine advert for my song. I researched into what music magazine adverts look like in order to try and get some inspiration for my own.

Production: Guitar Solo

The guitar solo is filmed! We decided to film the solo from three different shots:

Long shot of guitarist sitting on the ground.

CU of fretboard.

CU of guitarist playing. 

Of course, I edited these shots so that they looked more shiny and summery than a dewy November morning. It's safe to say it was more difficult than my other footage to alter because the sky was darker and the whole shot just looked less bright! But after messing around for a little bit, I managed to get a balance that not only looked nice but looked the same as the rest of my video.

I then added in a glitzy transition between Jak hitting the post and Micky playing the guitar solo.

And finally, I added my favourite effect - Bokeh Random - to just make the whole scene look more bubbly and fun.

Here is the  video containing the guitar solo. I have now completed my filming up to the end of the second verse.

Production: Update 10/11

I am planning on filming the guitar solo for my music video tomorrow. I am going to film the solo a few times in different ways:

• Long shot - showing guitarist as a whole playing the solo. 
• CU - showing the guitarist's fingers playing the guitar.
• POV - showing the guitarist's point of view playing the solo.

I will then use these different versions and create a compilation of these videos for the guitar solo section of my music video. I am hoping to film and edit it into place by the end of tomorrow!

I decided to change the CUs for the "Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why" because I have decided that some people may find my video slightly...well, disgusting...having mouths so close up. And of course, this isn't the kind of reaction I am going for. Thus, I edited the shots so that they are particularly cartoon and abstract. They suit the theme of my video a lot more and helps to get rid of any close-ups of less comforting body parts!

 Although I am still filming my music video, I am also beginning to look at receiving audience feedback for my music video. I am going to ask a small focus group of my target audience to watch my music video and give their feedback for how I can change or improve it. 

Production: Update 07/11

Today I have begun to create the next part of the video after the guitar solo. I have found a guitarist, Micky, who I have arranged to film next Tuesday so I am going to miss that bit out for now!

I continued to alter the colours to make it look as bright as possible. The lip syncing is a lot more noticeable with the footage I have for the next chorus and this could potentially be a slight issue. However, I have decided to leave it for now because arguably, the video is particularly informal and so the lip syncing doesn't quite need to be perfect. Is This The Way To Amarillo has a very similar feeling to my video and it is quite obviously lip synced! 

Below is another video of where I have got up to with my music video. I am yet to film the guitar solo yet and so the screen goes blank during it at the moment! It is beginning to come together slightly.

Production: Update 05/11

I continued with some more editing today trying to perfect the first part of my draft. Firstly, I decided that the first part (before Max and Jak start performing) was particularly long and needed something else to keep it lively and entertaining. Therefore, I found a YouTube video of some beautiful clouds. 

I downloaded this clip and then added it into the first part of my video. To make sure it remained as bright and happy as possible, I altered the opacity of this clip so that my beautiful colour-altered sky that I filmed myself was still very obvious with the clouds subtly moving past in the background. I think it looks a bit nicer now it has some clouds drifting across the sky.

I decided to try to use animated cartoon clouds as well and see if it looks any good and it worked! I found a cartoon video of clouds online and I think it gives my opening a lot more quirkiness and character. I definitely like it more than using real life clouds!

I also continued to use the colour alteration tools to make my video as bright as it can be. However, some shots were more difficult than others. For example, in the shot of Jak and Max sitting on the bench, there were a lot of different colours in the sky and plants that meant it was difficult to edit the colours without them spilling. Therefore, I had to make many different, but very similar, corrections.

Production: Update 04/11

Today I imported my first lot of footage into Final Cut Pro. I had enough footage to then begin to piece together all of the video up until the guitar solo, allowing me to see if the lip syncing was good enough and seeing if I had sufficient footage for the video to flow nicely! It is a first draft and so, is nowhere near perfect.

I am very happy with my footage so far. I definitely do not see the need to refilm anything at this present moment in time - I think it is all of good enough quality to leave until I have filmed the rest of my footage before I begin making minor improvements.

I then began looking at some of the effects that I could use in my video in order to make it as beautiful as possible. I know that editing is going to be the most impressive aspect of my video, and so I am using this opportunity to experiment with the program and see what I can do. My favourite discovery so far is the colour adjustment tool. This means that I can select a colour (or set of colours) which I can then manipulate into whatever colour I like. With this effect, I can make the sky look a lot bluer and the grass a lot greener! Because I think my video should be very abstract, I am fine with it not being completely realistic.

I have also found a great Music Television logo that I am planning on using at the beginning of my music video in order to make it look more professional. It is a .png which means it has no background  and so I am put it over the blue sky that I filmed. 

I also created my own Mr. Blue Sky logo on Adobe Photoshop that I exported also as a .png and inserted into the same part of my music video. It looks great with the blue sky!

I also stumbled across a fantastic video effect for the very first part of my video, when the old-fashioned fuzzy noise thing is happening. It looks really well and almost looks as if you are 'tuning into' the music video...I really love it!

I have also added light leaks into some of the frames in order to make them look more happy and summery. They have worked really well but I am not using them in every shot as I think they could be easily overused!

Below is the work that I completed today. I only edited up until the guitar solo and a lot of the frames have not been edited at all yet. I simply used today as an opportunity to see what I could do using Final Cut Pro!

I am planning on filming some more (the green screen part, different people singing) next week so that the week after, I can begin to piece together a completed first draft.

Overall I am very happy with my progress and because I am slightly ahead of schedule, this gives me a great opportunity to continue experimenting with what Final Cut Pro can do!