Question 4

In order to find an artist for us to create a music video for we used the website unsigned.com. By using this website it would allow us to find an artist that had not yet been signed by a record label. This would avoid copyright issues because we know that the artists on this website have yet to been discovered. We didn’t really have a genre in mind when searching for an artist we were just looking for an artist/ song that we all liked and thought that we could make a music video for. Once we found the artist and song that we wanted to create a music video for we contacted them via email asking them for permission to use their song. Below is a screenshot of the email that we sent to the artist, we explained who we were and what we were going to do. We also used Soundcloud.com to look for unsigned artists; the band that we chose and found on Unsigned.com was also on Souncloud. This website was easy to use and really helped us when finding an unsigned artist and song that we could create a music video for.

We used YouTube a lot during the research and planning stages of creating our music video. This website helped us in the early stages us to find existing artists that are of the same genre as the artist we chose. We looked at music videos to find out the conventions of the genre that we had chosen as well as conventions of music videos in general. We looked at the overall videos as well as editing techniques used, doing this helped us with our production and research as we wanted to make sure that our music video looked professional and like an actual music video.

 

I used Padlet, Moovly and Prezi throughout to display information and research that I had found. By using these website it makes my work look more neat and organised. We also used Prezi to display our ideas for our music video, this website was used to create our pitch and it made it look more interesting compared to if we had just use PowerPoint also using Prezi makes our pitch more enjoying and exciting for the people watching it.

To edit our video we decided to use premiere elements as this would make our video look more professional. This software also allowed us to use other techniques such as spilt screen and freeze frame. We edited our preliminary task using iMovie as this is simpler editing software and is quite easy to use. However it isn’t as good quality as Premiere Elements and therefore this made us want to use it over iMovie. We chose to push ourselves and use new editing software that we hadn’t used before, learning how to use completely different software but it would result in a higher quality video because it is much more complex and professional. Premiere Elements allowed us to use more effect and editing techniques which iMovie did not provide such as split screen which we used throughout our final music video. This editing software also allows you to be more precise with editing as it meant that we could make sure that the song matched lip-syncing and therefore looked professional and like he was actually singing, this software made it easier to do this. As we had to learn how to use this software from scratch it was more time consuming however this benefited us in the long run as we ended up with a good quality video. We also used this editing software as it allowed us to look at the timings and therefore helped us to get a more accurate edit as you can cut to a millisecond.

 

We also used Poll Everywhere during the planning stages; we used this website to gain audience feedback of our ancillary sketches. This website is easy to use and we have used it before therefore this wasn’t new to us. This website is easy to gather feedback and it meant that we could find out feedback quickly and easily as the website displays all feedback given. Below are the Polls that we created for our ancillary tasks.

We chose the band 3rd Rock Revolution because we liked their song 'Put on ya boots'. The genre of this band is blues, funk and rock which is a hybrid genre. I thought that by having the mixed genre it made the track more unique which is another thing that I liked about this band and their track. Also when we first listened to our chosen song we found that it wasn't a typical rock song which we liked, the song contains the rock style beat of the guitar and drums and a males vocals which sounded bluesy and also added to the uniqueness of the track. The band’s name 3rd Rock Revolution implies that they are a rock band, however they are not a stereotypical rock band as their music doesn't sound like the typical rock song. The bands image also indicates that they subvert the rock genre as they don't have the typical rock image/ look this also made us chose this band.

We found the band on Unsigned.com, after a long time searching for an artist that we felt we could create an interesting music video for. We used this website to overcome copy right issues. If we created a music video for an already existing band it would have meant that we would be copyrighting that artist as they are already signed to a record label. The issues that we could come across if we used copyrighted music are legal issues as it could mean that the music video that we created would not belong to us as we haven’t ask for permission to use the signed song and its not our song whereas choosing an unsigned artist would not leave us with these sorts of issues. We also used Soundcloud.com to find unsigned artists that we could create a music video for. After finding the band and our chose song we then needed to contact the band to ask them for permission for us to use their song to create our own music video for it. On unsigned.com the band had contact information, they had both an email and a Facebook page so therefore we decided to contact them via email however we didn’t get an email back and therefore decided to create the music video for that song anyway.

 

We also used Photoshop when creating our ancillary tasks. We used this website to edit the pictures that we took of our actor for the front of the digipak and poster. We used Photoshop to change the brightness and saturation of one of the pictures to make them look the same. By using Photoshop we were also able to create a template for our digipak and make the six panels before adding the pictures and information we wanted. This was easier for us as it allowed to create the six panels with the correct measurements using the ruler on this editing software. This website really helped us to create good quality ancillaries and meant that we could create the ideas that we had.


We also created a Vox pops during the research stage of our music video to gain feedback of what our audience wanted to see in a music video and what their favourite genre is. We asked ten people six questions about music videos to gain information that would help us with the planning and making of our final production.

We did lots of research into our chosen genre which was funk rock and used YouTube to research existing artists that are of the same genre. We didn’t find much on this genre as it isn’t very popular. However we got inspiration from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music video for their song ‘Can’t stop’. This band is of the same genre as the one we chose and therefore we used this video to help us to come up with ideas for our music video. Another music video that we found inspirational was ‘Bittersweet symphony’ by The Verve; this music video gave us our idea for our promo.

The shots above are from the music video for ‘Bittersweet symphony’ by The Verve.

 

 

Below is a tutorial of Premiere Elements, this shows how we did the spilt screen within our music video.