Final Music Video - Sam Boyd - Let It Go

Sam Boyd Website

https://tommylustigman.wixsite.com/samboyd

Final DigiPak Images

Outside Digipak (Front cover, back cover, spine)

Inside Digipak (Inside cover, CD)

Evaluation Task 4 - Video Script and Video

Animatic:

·         To develop our skills, we filmed our storyboard. This was called an animatic and it enabled us to see that our shots were too slow and long. This allowed us to realise that we had to create more shots, as each shot was too long. We edited our animatic on iMovie with the song in the background, this meant that we could see if the shots we had planned matched the lyrics/narrative we wanted to portray. We therefore decided to include more close ups to cut between his star image and narrative, which sold the artist accurately and also expanded on the narrative. After finishing the animatic, we knew what we wanted our narrative to be so then we could then focus on what special effects and editing techniques to use in post production in order to make our music video professional and higher quality.

Research:

·         Once we had planned our core narrative, we had to research into similar artists who were doing a similar thing. We watched music videos and analysed products of artists like James Arthur, Hozier and Declan McKenna. We noticed the key theme of their music videos was the lip syncing and wide shots whilst they were playing guitar.

·         Another aspect of Sam’s star image we got from research was the dark clothing with the flat cap to show that he is an organic artist. Lip syncing also shows emotion towards relationship.

·         Guitar playing in studio shows Organic artist. Focus on lyrics.

Studio:

·         From making a first draft of our video and receiving feedback, we noticed that people thought that were not enough locations and we were repeating a lot of shots. Using this information, we filmed in a studio to make the video more professional as it became relevant to his star image and filled the gaps that were void. In our video, the studio shot of him picking up the guitar as the first shot, shows how important the guitar is to his star image and organic appearance.

·         Slight pan and look at the camera makes it personal and emotional

·         Studio shot represents him being trapped in the relationship.

·         Cross cuts between studio and outside show contrast in emotion of happy and sad.

Camera:

·         We knew the camera shots were important to reveal to the audience how the narrative was progressing and what emotions they were feeling at any moment. We used a range of shots in our video as a way of portraying a variety of emotions. For example, High angle looking down on him and sitting down shows he is weak and now has less power now he is alone.

·         Panning shot of them on different sides of the tree represents that he can’t get her out of his head. Shows how they are so close yet so far

·         Low angle of guitar, hat and dark colours emphasise his organic image. He wants to build his confidence.

·         A music video is a promotional tool for the artist therefore it features close ups designed to sell the artists star image. In our video, we do this in the studio shots where there are many close ups of him playing guitar.

·         The male gaze is always employed in music videos to sexualise women. e.g.certain shots of the female actress are purposely used to attract a male target audience.

·         Our skills in camerawork this year demonstrated the way we had improved as we were not matching generic conventions and had more choice over the way we represented our artist. We used two adaptable lenses rather than last year when it was one fixed lens and this enabled us to make sure that the close ups were high definition so we could focus on the artist lip syncing. The 50mm close ups were effective for selling the artists star image as organic, whereas the 18mm lens for the wide shot enabled us to focus on the narrative and how he is feeling after the break up. In addition we also used whip pans which we couldn’t master last year. This enabled us to match the energy of the song with the vibrancy of the fast-paced movement of camera.

       

Editing:

·         In this genre of music where you are singing about real emotions that people can relate to, the editing of the video is the most crucial part as it can either make the narrative relevant and relatable or boring and similar to every other artist. We used many different editing techniques in post-production. For example, Black and white to show sadness. Lyrics match visuals - things are changing.

·         Slow motion portrays how time is moving slowly. Throwing stones is a distraction and stress reliever.

·         Montage of all the flashbacks to show the narrative and make it as clear as possible that he misses her.

·         Flashback in bed showing their good times. Different colour scheme shows contrast in emotions from before they had problems

·         Discontinuity editing techniques are employed. Shots are repeated, narrative doesn't have to make sense and many different locations can be used to sell the artist to the song. In our video, we used 3 different locations in order to sell our artist.

·         In our video, there is lip syncing and flashbacks to emphasise narrative. Lip syncing is a key feature and is employed to sell the artists looks and image, we do a lot of this in our video. Our lyrics tend to match visuals and cut to the beat of the song. For example, when the lyrics are "Think its time to walk away", our female actress gets up and walks away.

·         Our music video required more advanced editing skills and enabled us to use after effects as well as demonstrate how our skills progressed in premier pro. As we had more footage and we were creating an artist's image from scratch, we had more freedom and therefore cut from performance and narrative element frequently. We made sure our song was cut to the beat on premier pro and matched up the lip syncing to the milli-second on the timeline to make sure our artist was in time with the song.

Post-production:

·         Once the video was edited and all the shots were put in order with the relevant transitions, it was all about making the video that extra bit better by improving the quality of the shots, the lighting, the scenery and the colours. Throughout [pst production, we colour corrected and colour graded to improve the quality of the video and to make it more professional. For example, we Edited in the glare to show he is singing about her. Lyrics match visuals.

·         Him standing up and trying to move on. Smoke effect makes video more professional and brings the studio shots to life.

·         Change in colour of flowers from black and white to colour show that he is hopeful that they will be happy in the future.

·         Additionally, in post production, we added an advanced sky replacement and a time lapse. We did this on after effects by duplicating the layer twice then applying the filter 'Colorama'. We then clicked the drop down output cycle and set the pre-set to 'ramp grey'. We did this to create an alpha channel which makes it transparent, turning it white. We then clicked outside the arrow and added a black one to play with the channel to ensure the area we did not want was black and the area we do want is white. Then put a layer over the white. We then applied the colorama effect again to the top copy and changed the track matte to luma inverted matte to take the white and make it transparent. The edges of the trees had to be tidied so a matte choker was applied and it was then the case of playing with the geometric softness so it looked realistic.

Andrew Goodwin stated in 1990 that most music videos shared similar characteristics or conventions that demonstrated how they were different from television programmes or films.

Evaluation Task 4 - Digital Technology and Planning

Evaluation Task 3 - The Feedback process

Evaluation Task 3 - YouTube Analytics

From these statistics, we can see that the average watch time is 1 minute and 48 seconds. Considering our video is 3 minutes and 36 seconds, this statistic is poor and we are surprised by this as the narrative spans the entirety of the song therefore we felt it would entice people to stay engaged for the whole song. We believe this could be because some people who watched our video are not fans of the alternative pop genre and therefore were not our target audience. Furthermore, the like to dislike ratio is 10:0 which is very positive us from the people who watched our video who have a youtube channel, almost all of them chose to like the video which means we are targeting the correct audience demographic and people are enjoying our work.

74% of the traffic sources for the music video were in the United Kingdom, which we expected, considering the music video was shared and targeted within this geographical location. Since our music video is intended to be favoured by alternative pop fans all around the world and so hopefully others will share to attract a global audience. Over 70% of the views were from external sources such as social media, which shows how social media played a big role in appropriating a target audience. In terms of gender, the viewers are split which is what we expected. 50% of the viewers were female, which may be due to there being a girl in our video which would appeal to the female audience.

From these demographic statistics, 100% of our views are from our target audience of 18-24 year olds which we are very pleased with. We believe this is because the people that watch youtube are predominately of this age bracket therefore we are being intelligent as we are targeting the platform in which we will receive the accurate demographic of views. 

Evaluation Task 3 - Feedback Research Topics

Evaluation Task 2 - Promotional Campaign

Evaluation Task 2 - Talk show

Evaluation Task 2 - Social Media

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Evaluation Task 1 - Keith Negus

Evaluation Task 1 - Music Video Conventions

Evaluation Task 1 - Digipak Conventions

Evaluation Task 1 - Similar Album Covers

Evaluation Task 1 - Website Conventions

Digipak Feedback

Post Feedback Editing Changes

1. We got some studio shots and replaced them with some of the original clips from our shoot day.

2. This was then updated and lip synced with the audio.

3. After this, we lowered the brightness for the studio shots so it was an almost black background. This made these shots more intense and emotional.

4. For one of the shots from the original shooting day, I made it look like there was 2 of our actor walking instead of just one.

5. I did this through the 'blend' effect, and put 2 layers of the same clip over each other, and clicked on the 'blend with layer' and blended the to images together. As well as this, I put a brightness effect whilst also providing the clip with the 'Track matte key', which further helped the effect on this clip.

6. On the shot with our female actor drinking, we slowed it down by changing the duration to 70%. This gave it more meaning and emotion.

7. We received feedback about the potential to improve our colour correction and colour grading. Using this feedback, we added an advanced sky replacement and a time lapse. We did this on after effects by duplicating the layer twice then applying the filter 'Colorama'. We then clicked the drop down output cycle and set the pre set to 'ramp grey'. We did this to create an alpha channel which makes it transparent, turning it white. We then clicked outside the arrow and added a black one to play with the channel to ensure the area we do not want is black and the area we do want is white. Then put a layer over the white.

8. We then applied the colorama effect again to the top copy and changed the track matte to luma inverted matte to take the white and make it transparent. The edges of the trees had to be tidied so a matte choker was applied and it was then the case of playing with the geometric softness so it looked realistic. 

Editing Changes

1. On all our flashback scenes, we put a 'gamma correction', 'echo' and 'leave colour' effect on. The gamma correction and leave colour effect made it look like it wasn't at a present time and was in fact in the past, whereas the echo effect made it look like a flashback.

2. Later on in the video, we added a blending shot. This saw our female actor looking like she's on the guitar, getting 'played' by the male actor, which has many aspects to it. We did this by cropping the shot so it only shows our female actor in the guitar instead of on the whole screen, as well as adjusting the scale of the shot to make it fit.

3. To make these shots blend in, we overlaid the shots together, and added a 'multiply' blend mode.

4. On the shot of our female actor walking out the room (on the flashback), we slowed it down in order to make the watcher feel the story more and realise how fed up and upset she really is. We did this by changing the 'speed/duration' to a lower %.

5. The shot of the sky changing colour was a very difficult one. It was done on after effects, which the 'change to colour' effect. I added time frames to change to several different colours, and changed all of the blue to the new colours shown on the clip. It gives the shot more excitement than just having a normal shot of the blue sky. Also, we added 'lighting effect' to give it a bit more brightness. However, this shot has now been removed.

6. For the shot of the image getting smaller and reversing, we overlaid 2 shots together twice, reversing it the second time. This was done by clicking on 'speed/duration', and clicking the box saying 'reverse'. Also, we made the image get smaller by overlapping and reducing the scale of the 2nd shot.

7. During the flashback containing the letter, we added a 'dip to black' effect. This showed the time effect of him having fun and him finding the letter, as well as portraying the darkness and disappointment inside him.

8. After finding the letter, we did an 'additive dissolve' whilst also showing 2 shots blended. This created emotion when singing the lines 'Why are we doing it anymore', showing his disappointment. This was done using the blend mode and blending it with the original shot.

9. We put a larger echo effect on our actor in the bathroom, when cleaning his face. This gives the watcher the idea that he is a different person to what he was, and 'doesn't recognise himself anymore'.

Website Feedback

Positive:

• Relevant Images that portray the correct star image. 
• Good manipulation of images on Photoshop
• Good information in the 'About' section gives fans a good insight to the road the artist has been to get to this point. 
• Logos of hyperlinks to music downloads makes it relevant to the online age and also expands the range of people that can potentially access the music.
• DigiPak on home section shows a good range of images and thought towards camera shots.
• In the contact section, the image is great
• Quote from big media company advertising new album '5 star' is great. 

Improvements: 

• Tour venues must be different and all over UK rather than just London
• In the music section, change the picture and add the digipak
• In the news section, the dates are wrong (2023)
• In the about section, change the last paragraph to something more realistic. Upcoming artist, not a big artist yet. The picture for this section is too serious.

Gathering Audience Feedback

What is the point of doing a survey?

• To find out what your audience wants to see in the type of video you are producing.
• To help you make productions decisions that will attract your target audience 
• To show you have developed a music video that is relevant to your target audience 
• To show you have an understanding of audience in music video production

Types of Research:

• Qualitative - This method of research questioning aims to discover their opinion and preferences of the target group. Questions in this type of research will be probing or open questions. 
• Quantitative - This method of research questioning enables the gathering of figures or data. You will use this type of questioning when you want to record statistics on audience preferences. Closed questions are used in quantitative research. 
• Both these methods should be used to gain a wider understanding of information from your target audience. 

When do you use Surveys?We have undertaken research into our target audience throughout all stages of the planning and production. This included the following:

• Pre Production surveys - Before we began we researched into different types of genre and target audience. 
• Interviews - we interviewed our potential target audience regarding our initial ideas
• We got feedback from our target audience via our animatic and how we could improve it. Also received feedback about on main singer/artist and whether  he was effective.
• We got feedback from first draft, second draft and final version. 

Focus Group

A focus group is a group of people who take part in a discussion about a certain topic or product before it has been launched/released. A focus group can also provide feedback to the makers of the product, so that they are able to make the necessary changes. This group allows all members to participate with each other during the discussion, and give a new range of ideas and perspectives.

In this case, we got feedback for several different things. These include our website, music video and digipak. We looked at the feedback provided by the focus group who in this case, was classmates and other classes (from a different year group). Allowing a different age group to give us feedback has given us the opportunity to take into account that our video must be perfect for different age groups rather than just one. Therefore, we listened to the feedback of different focus groups and attempted to adjust our products, in order to make them great for everyone.

Music Video Feedback

Sam Boyd - Let it Go - First Draft

Sam Boyd Merchandise

When designing and pricing the merchandise, we took into consideration the types of people that would potentially purchase these items. From research into similar artists, we found that hoodies, t-shirts and caps were the most popular as they could be worn during many different social situations and were comfortable and fashionable. We have a range of colours for each design to accommodate for peoples different fasion preferences and we would not have taken this step into this investment if we did not believe there would be demand and high turnover for each product. In terms of pricing, we are aware that Sam is not a global superstar and is in fact an upcoming British artist therefore we have looked at similar artists and found an acceptable price range to market these products. We believe people would be willing to buy this merchandise because the ticket prices are minimal as well as the subsidised price of the items. 

Music Video Feedback Survey

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CKKTR7K

Open and Closed Surveys

We will create a survey on surveymonkey, questioning others about our video. These questions will include our star image, what they liked, and how they rated it overall.

It is important to have as little 'closed' answers as possible. This is because it limits the people to what they can say whilst also limiting our feedback, whereas an open question can have as much detail as possible, and give us more specific answers. Therefore, we will only ask one or two closed questions, and the rest will be more open minded and allow the answerer to say what they wish.

Open questions can encourage our audience to write a more detailed response which in turn will enable us to evaluate their feedback and use it to make improvements. Downside of this is that unless we put an age bracket on our questions, if we get any negative responses, we won't know if this is valid as they may not be our target audience.

ReDraft of Front Cover

Feedback:

• Font does not match star image
• Image can be seen as over-edited
• Good colour contrast and representation of star image
• Detail of guitar

DigiPak Draft

Feedback:

-Front cover is too heavy and dark for what a front cover should be like.
-The actual CD may be a bit too plain.
-The contrast in colour of the front and back player may look odd.

Costume

When planning what we wanted Sam to wear, we looked online to see what shops had things available that suited Sam's style. We dressed Sam in this style as it represents his emotions whilst making this album as well as selling his star image of being organic. We looked on h&m and these were the results:

Audience Feedback on Website

Positive:

• Relevant Images that portray the correct star image. 
• Good manipulation of images on Photoshop
• Good information in the 'About' section gives fans a good insight to the road the artist has been to get to this point. 
• Logos of hyperlinks to music downloads makes it relevant to the online age and also expands the range of people that can potentially access the music.
• DigiPak on home section shows a good range of images and thought towards camera shots.
• In the contact section, the image is great
• Quote from big media company advertising new album '5 star' is great. 

Improvements: 

• Tour venues must be different and all over UK rather than just London
• In the music section, change the picture and add the digipak
• In the news section, the dates are wrong (2023)
• In the about section, change the last paragraph to something more realistic. Upcoming artist, not a big artist yet. The picture for this section is too serious.    

Development of Website 2

We used a website called Wix to create our own website for our artist. We used it in many ways:


We had to delete a couple of page options from the home menu, such as 'gigs'. This was because we already created a 'tour' option, and felt that we only needed one of those two options.


We also had to change the menu bar at the top. This is because it originally clashed with the background image, and therefore it was difficult to see the options. This was done through changing the colour of the words or through changing the design of the bar, and we decided to do the latter.

We decided not to keep the same image as the background for each page, and gave ourselves several different options. This meant we had to take many different pictures and carefully choose which ones went on the website and which didn't. We also edited these images once selected, to make it look more based on our star image.

We chose different scroll effects, as we felt that choosing 'freeze' was more relevant than letting the page scroll down and view the image further. This wasn't necessary as some pages were quite long, and would've exceeded the length of our pictures and therefore may have changed to half the background being black.

We hyperlinked many of our options, to make it more of a realistic website. For example, when you wanted to buy a ticket it would take you to StubHub, or if you wanted to purchase the album it'd take you to iTunes. We felt that this was very necessary in order to make the website the best it could be.

Front Digipak Ideas

Editing

1.We filmed some studio shots and replaced them with some of the original clips from our shoot day. We did this because we felt we had a lack of shots to fill the entirety of the video and this filled those gaps. Also, the studio helped us sell the artist as more organic as we felt this wasn't portrayed enough from solely the shoot day footage.  

2.This was then updated and lip synced with the audio by removing irrelevant aspects and cutting other parts to fill this bit in.

3.After this, we lowered the brightness for the studio shots so it was an almost black background. This made these shots more intense and emotional and focused purely on the artist and his music.

4.For one of the shots from the original shooting day, I made it look like there was 2 of our actor walking instead of just one. This heightened his emotions with the intent of portraying his intentions to reconcile. I did this through the 'blend' effect, and put 2 layers of the same clip over each other, and clicked on the 'blend with layer' and blended the two images together. As well as this, I put a brightness effect whilst also providing the clip with the 'Track matte key', which further helped the effect on this clip.

6. On the shot with our female actor drinking, we slowed it down by changing the duration to 70%. This gave it more meaning and emotion.

7.On all our flashback scenes, we put a 'gamma correction', 'echo' and 'leave colour' effect on. The gamma correction and leave colour effect made it look like it wasn't at a present time and was in fact in the past, whereas the echo effect made it look like a flashback. This was done to show how happy they were previously with the comparison of all their problems in present day.

8.Later on in the video, we added a blending shot. This saw our female actor looking like she's on the guitar, getting 'played' by the male actor, which has many aspects to it. We did this by cropping the shot so it only shows our female actor in the guitar instead of on the whole screen, as well as adjusting the scale of the shot to make it fit. This was done to show where the power in the relationship was held and who made the key decisions. To make these shots blend in, we overlaid the shots together, and added a 'multiply' blend mode.

10 On the shot of our female actor walking out the room (on the flashback), we slowed it down in order to make the watcher feel the story more and realise how fed up and upset she really is.

11.The shot of the sky changing colour was a very difficult one. It was done on after effects, which the 'change to colour' effect. I added time frames to change to several different colours, and changed all of the blue to the new colours shown on the clip. It gives the shot more excitement than just having a normal shot of the blue sky. Also, we added 'lighting effect' to give it a bit more brightness.

12.For the shot of the image getting smaller and reversing, we overlaid 2 shots together twice, reversing it the second time. This was done by clicking on 'speed/duration', and clicking the box saying 'reverse'. Also, we made the image get smaller by overlapping and reducing the scale of the 2nd shot.

13.During the flashback containing the letter, we added a 'dip to black' effect. This showed the time effect of him having fun and him finding the letter, as well as portraying the darkness and disappointment inside him.

14.After finding the letter, we did an 'additive dissolve' whilst also showing 2 shots blended together. This created emotion when singing the lines 'Why are we doing it anymore', showing his disappointment. This was done using the blend mode and blending it with the original shot. Our key focus was to show the narrative clearly and to make people feel emotion between the failing relationship.

15.We put a larger echo effect on our actor in the bathroom, when cleaning his face. This gives the watcher the idea that he is a different person to what he was, and 'doesn't recognise himself anymore'.

16. When showing a shot of our female actor on a tree, we added a 'lens flare' effect. This made it look like the sun was shining down on her, and there is hope for her/them.

17. The shot of our actor throwing stones into the lake was slowed down to 75%. This gives it emotion and makes it seem like time is going slowly for him as he is upset.

18. For the shot of the two walking into the sunset, we edited it so that our female actor fades away. This was done by filming 2 different shots - one of them two walking together, and one of just him walking. They then faded when they were in the same place in both shots. We also added lighting effects to give it some sunlight, which transforms to darkness. This was done to show how their relationship has faded and they are not as close as they used to be.

19. The shot of our actor throwing flowers has been given a 'change colour' effect, where the sky is changed to a darker colour.

20. Our shot of the actor on the floor miming has been given a lighting effect - this shows there's hope for them both due to them both having light in the corner, and it being the 'light at the end of the tunnel'.

21. Our 'flashback of flashbacks' at the end was a conclusion of all flashbacks. It shows their long journey and that they've been through a lot, and it's got the 'dip to white' effect between each flashback to make it look like more of a flashback.

22. It ends with the flowers changing from black and white to colour - this was done by putting 2 shots and giving the first one a 'lumetri colour' and 'tint' effect, where we made it black and white. The final shot was given a 'brightness and contrast' effect, to enhance contrast and emphasise the colour, giving them hope of their relationship.

Development of our website

We are using Wix to create the website for our artist. We have included tour dates and locations, song titles and album name as well as description of the artist, his past and his achievements as a result of his music career. We took photos in the studio to include in the background of the website so the quality of the image was high. When making our website, we wanted to include colours that matched the tone of the music and the star image of the artist. Rather than focusing on images solely around the artist, we wanted to incorporate elements of his love for making music as well performing it. This is why we included pictures of his guitar and him playing it in comparison to images on other artists websites that are focused purely on selling the image of the person.

When deciding what font to include throughout the content on the website, we researched in to similar artists who are appealing to a similar target audience. We looked at Hozier, Jake Bugg and Declan McKenna and we noticed that they all had similar style of writing. This gave us reassurance that the font we implemented was correct and appealed to audiences similar to our artist. When planning how our website was going to be designed, we also looked at these similar artists to see the layout, the colours they included and the possible inclusion of sale of merchandise. This is something we weren't sure about including as our artist does not revolve itself around making money off its star image however some similar artists did and some did not sell it.

We also included a contact part of the website. This gives fans the opportunity to interact with the artist and breaks down the barrier between fame and reality. Our aim of including this was to make fans give the artist feedback on what they like and dislike about his music, him as a person or potential improvements of his website. The improvements that can be made from this is vital for the sustainability of the artist as if people continue to dislike what they do, they will go off the music of the artist and eventually lose fans.   

Clothes for Shoot day

We wanted our artist's clothing to be organic. Doing this requires his clothes to be dull and very little colour. We have looked up possible clothes to wear, however, we established that our artist already had clothes that were good enough, and exactly what we needed.

We wanted our artist to wear something that an everyday man would wear, and so we didn't feel the need to buy clothes from stores. To do this, we looked at clothes websites such as Topman, Asos, Zara and more. This is what we were willing to purchase (if the artist didn't have it already):