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Creative Critical Reflection

Q1: How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?

When producing any media text, conventions are followed and broken. Media texts with similar conventions fall under the same genre. There are general conventions in every medium, eg; establishing shots in films. To produce our music video, we had to follow and break many conventions of the electro-pop rock genre and conventions of music videos in general. Our music video has a proper start and an end, this is a common conventions of music video, this gives the video a realistic feel. The narrative represents a girl using a mobile phone using a dating app where she swipes left a lot of guys and then she swipes right and next she is sitting on her bed crying and depressed about her previous break-up. As she gets up she receives a notification where she gets the match. Here we broke one of the common music video convention, that women these days get cheated on most of the time and gets depressed about it. We broke this convention; in no way did we portray the character as an object or a prop but we created a character who develops throughout the narrative. She is being suppressed in the beginning, later she begins to stand up for herself, as she decides to move on and uses the dating app to find someone new which connotes a new beginning, and after she starts having fun conversations and is living her life now.

We picked up a few conventions from electro-pop music videos on how to represent the band, what shots to use, what the location should be like, how the mise-en- scene should be handled etc. As establishing shot is a very common convention in film and TV we broke another convention by starting our music video with a close-up of a hand using a mobile phone without it the video starts abruptly. As our genre was electro-pop most of the music videos which come under these are music clubs or house parties,  we used three different locations for this shoot like my friend’s house, a coffee shop and a ground (for performance base shoot)  the use of these types of locations in electro-pop  music videos is a common convention as houses and out-door locations fit perfectly.

The representation of the artist or band also follows conventions of electro-pop music videos. As in most bands only vocalists are present so we did the same we have shown different clothes in different places to give a cool electro vibe. He’s dressed as basic electro-pop genre artists. We’ve used mid close-ups mostly during narrative, so expressions are shown and when the lead singer looks into the camera he’s trying to connect with the audience. This is a common convention of music videos.

We used parallel cutting to show the band preforming and the narrative, this too is a convention of music videos. A common convention in music videos is that after going through a breakup the person is devastated in the narrative. He or she does are often seen using drugs or something negative but in our case we showed that she was free after the breakup she felt happy during the new date and as she gets catfished the cycle repeats from being depressed again, the process brought a moral lesson. We’ve represented social issues such as people making fake profiles and putting fake profile pictures to catfish as how online relationships starts and become toxic and lead to depression and suicide. Our main social groups are youngsters and millennials because these are the main groups who would be interested in relationships.

Q2 How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

Different elements of our production work include the music video, the digipak and the website. These three-cover film, print and online media. The three of the media texts serve a single purpose and that is to promote the music album and these three do that successfully. Digipak Music Video Website

An audience survey we conducted revealed that the majority of the audience watch music videos online on YouTube. Usually they are redirected to these sites from social networking websites such as Facebook twitter Instagram etc. Our band has pages on these websites and links to their pages on the websites. The digipack will be available in most music stores and the album will be available to buy online on iTunes the link of which is available on the website. All the elements are owned and produced by the record label which is RTM Records.

The house style concept helps make all our products look related. Such as some of the fonts used in the website is the same font used in the digipak. The images used are similar and so are the logos and the backgrounds. We created a color pallet and used the same color tones throughout our coursework.

 Q3 How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?

Our products engage with the audience in various ways, firstly we have a web page that is easily accessible. There our music video is embedded and when someone enters our web page they see all the stuff related to our band and by scrolling what they see is the music video as well as the digipak and the track list of the album easily accessible because we embedded the sound-cloud link as they have a separate page there too , which gives the viewer an idea that it is an important aspect of the web page itself.

Moreover, YouTube also recommends videos due to one's search history. This means that if a person seems to have a taste in music that is similar to the genre of our band, our music video is very likely to be recommended on his main YouTube page. The most important thing is to be very active on social media, and to have official pages on as many as possible social sites. That is why the band has a SoundCloud, Twitter, Facebook Instagram profile, so that they can reach as many people as possible, even if they are using just one social media Site. These profiles that they created can help promoting our music video by posting them on the above-mentioned sites. Furthermore, they can post images with the digipack and include a link to their website from which the digipack can be ordered. In addition, music video could be promoted on all band's media partner's websites due to their logos being printed on the digipack. Those websites could write special articles to present the release of the digipack and the music video.

Another way to engage with the audience is to actually have a performance artist on the stage with the band during the concert. This will make the audience more interested in the song, and might lead them to search the web. Obviously, we would promote the music video on TV, on channels such

as MTV and other music channels. We would do the same with radio stations, where they would also promote the digipack as a new album. It would also be distributed in the specialized music shops. The artist as we who actually created the digipack, music video and website can use their social media platforms and personal portfolio websites to promote the video and to tag the band. The web page link would be posted on each of their social media profiles, so audience can be informed that it exists. While the music video will be distributed digitally, as I mentioned before, on TV, YouTube, Facebook and many more.

Q4 How did you integrate technologies, - software, hardware and online - in this project?

 I had a little knowledge of professional camera usage. As I learned more about different cameras with different settings this time, I learned how to use a Canon EOS 80D with 18-135mm camera and also tripod. I learned how to set the Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed in order to get a desired lights and colors. Moreover, I learned how to focus my camera on the wanted area.  I find this very important in order to have clear footage that can be edited with ease. After the camera work platforms, we used to edit our music video was Premier Pro and iMovie For a heads-up I learned how to use Premier pro  from YouTube by watching tutorials and learned all the basics of editing, trimming, cutting, correcting the and saturation, opacity. And for the Behind the Shoot footage we used iMovie.

 For the after effects we used Adobe After Effects because we used a green screen in order to create the pop-up texts on the video. In order to do this, we had to learn how to use Key light effect which removed the green screen.

 I learned that research and planning is essential in order to get a final piece that you are satisfied with. Each shot, camera angle, movement, has to be previously thought of and tried so that when the shooting day comes one will not encounter problems. Moreover, without the online help, especially YouTube tutorials I would find it very hard to work in After Effects because it is a very complex software. But I searched on YouTube and on After Effects official site information in order to get the desired image.

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Feedback

So after posting the final music video on YouTube, we shared it on different platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat to get reviews and feedback. We got different views from everyone some liked the song but mostly liked the concept and even some people liked the cinematography/edting. Here are the feedbacks that we received.

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The whole Behind The Shoot

Here’s the final BTS made by Rameen Talha for our music video. We all have been working together through thick and thin. Shooting the music video was quite hard, as it was our first time but how we all cooperated with each other and made it fun and possible for us to make the final M/V. 

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Final Music Video

With our First Cut complete and out of the way, not only had I become more comfortable with using Adobe Premire Pro, but I also felt the desire to learn more. Since our First Cut was far from perfect due to lack proper match-on-actions, and the absence of colour correction/grading and motion graphics in certain clips, as well as the title of our track, it needed to be find tuned and final adjustments needed to be made.

Firstly, through the use of razor tool and unlink feature, we were able to make the minor yet essential changes needed for effective match on actions and hence proper continuity. For our audio, I added the diegetic sound of the iPhone message ringtone (e.g., the only diegetic sound we used),  which I merged with the music and the clip to give a natural feel to the music video which will also allow our audience to establish a connection and feel a part of the video.

The next that was needed was adding the title screen of the track. For this task I used Adobe After Effects. While I could have possibly managed the task in Premiere Pro, I personally felt that After Effects was more adequately equipped to aid me in my task. 

Since we had decided that for our title screen we would use neon text, the first step was to make it. Opening up, Adobe After Effects, I started with a new composition and began to work. For this I used Motion Graphics Panel and Effects Panel to create the title screen by individually adding and adjusting each letter on the title of the track. After this was done, I simply exported a mp4 of the two second clip and imported it in Premiere Pro in my final music video sequence and synced it with the beat of the track.

Next step was colour correction and colour grading. Switching to the Color Panel, I began by the setting the tone of the clips. Seeing as though most of the indoor shoot was done on similar camera configurations and I had experience with colour grading because of my passion for photography, I had a rough idea on what was required to set the colour of the individual clips. I started off by adjusting the tone on the clips i.e., exposure, constract, highlights etc before moving on to the white balance to give the video a pinkish tint.

For me, the copy/paste feature was quite useful as I could simply apply the same effects on the other clips instead of individually adjusting each and every clip which could take hours.

After colour grading was finished, I moved on to the Effects Panel and searched up Colour Correction from which I selected Change to Color. This effect was quite useful for me as I had simply needed to change the green colour to yellow colour to represent and build our concept (symbolising warning) by selecting the required colour/setting the needed colour and adjusting the tolerance.

After all possible colour correction and colour grading was completed, I moved onto the Motion Graphics Panel, a much loved feature among editors, and added our required graphic elements, text message bubbles from the default effects gallery, and drew the arrows using the pen tool to animate them.

After adding new clips, readjusting them, using effects, transitions, colour balance title screen clips, and motion graphics we came to produce our final music video which took us weeks to create.

We are extremely proud and happy to show our final work to the audience as we worked extremely hard on it.

Here is our Final Music Video:

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First Cut Draft

Now hat we had a Rough Draft, we moved on to the first stage i.e., First Cut. During the Rough Draft, we had simply used basic features like import, the drag and drop tool, razor tool and the selection tool. While we had all our clips compiled, it was time to synchronize the clips and fix any mistakes by narrowing down our clips.

Firstly, we created two had two separate sequences for our narrative and performance therefore it was easy to us to sync these together. A problem that I faced while editing was that the audio of the clip, while aiding me to sync the audio, also caused disturbance for me. The mute and eye tool helped me overcome this issue allowing me to easily focus on the sequence we wanted to concentrate on. After we had finished syncing the clips we used the unlink feature to disconnect the audio from the clips and then used the clear option to remove the audio so there was only the track left. Admittedly, the process of trimming and syncing was time-consuming and required a lot of patience on our part, we managed to complete it while learn many different tools through working on a platform entirely out of our comfort zone.

Without further-ado, here’s our First Cut:

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Rough Draft

After we were done with the shoot next comes the selecting and rejecting of the clips that we need in the music video, because me and Tehreem are good in editing and as Tehreem has more experience in editng and the software (Adobe Premier Pro, Lighroom) that we are going to use.

We did shoot on Tehreem’s camera so after she gave me all the clips from her SD card and after we both selected the clips and finalised. We made a folder named “Final Narrative” and copied the selected clips in order in the final folder.

So after arranging the videos and after learning how to use Adobe Premier Pro we imported the videos on the Premier Pro and started to cut and crop the parts which we were not needed. We shot extra few seconds for every shot just in case so we get the exact second shot that we need.

After all the cuts and crops I arranged the videos and muted all the audio as this is just a rough cut and we dont need the audio in this. You can see same shots in different places as we had to make montages of her so we cropped these texting videos in 2 seconds each.

New footage was added in order to replace few scenes which we couldn't be record at the shoot.

The last step included the merging of all the footage into a continuous shot without any spaces in between. We had a little shot list problem in between as we didnt go according to the shot list, so we had to shoot some scenes again.

After all the changes and merges the rough cut was ready. Here below you can see.

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Analysis of Footage: Accepted Clips

Here are some of the clips that we selected for our final music video:

Clip 1:

The overall lighting and camera movement of this clip was quite satisfactory and stable, and the plus point for us was that our actress followed the time range and queue perfectly.

Clip 2: This clip was quite vital for us as we needed to build a certain suspense and intrigue with it. Seeing though this was a part of our opening sequence, Minahil (being the best of us at pans and tilts) shot this scene and captured it quite perfectly. The overall movement was good and the lighting would require little correction.

Clip 3: This scene was all about the actress’s expressions. Maham, our actress, portrayed this part perfectly, with a stunned/shocked/slightly scared expressions. Additionally, the angle of the camera was perfect for the eye-line match that was required in the scene.

Clip 4: Our model had not only lip-synced his part quite well but his body language also radiated the mood we wanted to set for the music video.

Clip 5: This scene was difficult to shoot as the actress had to keep her expressions in check and we had to keep the time range for the two parts we needed in check but nevertheless, the lighting, and overall feel was exactly what we required.

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Analysis of Footage: Rejected Clips

Now that our shoot is complete, oraginsing the footage and selecting the right ones was vital for us to move on with the first cut of our music video. As such here are some of the clips that, unfortunately, could not make the final cut alongside their respective reasons.

Clip 1:

The reason we rejected this clip was because, for one, the lip-sync of the performer was not obvious and there was no connection being established to the audience. Additionally, we felt that the clip was too hasty and rushed.

Clip 2: Not only was clip severely under exposed, the model also did not complete the time for a match on action we had considered therefore this clip had to be re-shot.

Clip 3: Overall, we felt the clip was quite shaky and in completely lacked any expressions or feeling needed for thr narrative of the music video.

Clip 4: We rejected this because of the fact that it was zoomed in and out of focus. Additionally and consequently, you can not visibly see the expressions of the actress which were quite vital to our narrative.

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Organising the footage

Seeing though we were done with the shoot, the next step was compiling our accepted clips and separating them from the clips we would reject. For this was quite a lengthy process as we had to sit down and manually go through each and every clip to select the best one.

After that was done, we made a separate folder for the selected narrative clips and the accepted performance clips and arranged our footage for the Rough Draft.

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Construction Of Website

This post is made by Rameen Talha.

The website that we designed was in Mobirise.

We already decided what our website will look like as seen in our mock up sketch now it was time to implement that sketch into a real website.

This is what the home page looks like and it is pretty basic however tha attractive part about this home page is the back drop of it which includes a collage of our male models pictures that we took especially for this website.

So this was the site style and i choose the title’s font as well as the colour scheme of it. And the fonts are pretty simple and clear for the audience to see and read off of.

This part is when i fixed the menu bar and interlinked the pages with the home page to make it easy for the audience on going on which ever page they wanted to visit.

Here we actually had alot of pictures of the model which were basically like bloopers of the photoshoot , so i thought to compile them together and make it the main back drop of the website, adding a simple black and white filter to match the theme. Also this is giving the raw photoshoot of the music video making it more realistic and attracting the audience. As well as the black and white filter gives a nostalgic touch to it. The picture selection is done by Minahil. She helped in choosing which pictures should be included in the collage and helped me in this.

photoshoot and cut and pasted it on the background which is very similar to our digipak back cover , this gives more promotion to our digipak as our website resembles to the digipak. The colour scheme of our website is also very similar to the digipak. These pictures were edited and fixed by Minahil who altered the picture and pasted it on the background.

This part of the website is when i added the tracklist and linked the music from soundcloud into the made up playlist. So the audience could easily access the music directly from the website.

I added the official music video on the website to promote it and just simply embeded the youtube link.

This is setting up the social accounts on the website of The Basics.

And finally this is the link to our final website:  https://thebasicsorg.mobirisesite.com/

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Mock Up - Website

This post is made by Rameen Talha.

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Inspirational Website

This post is made by Rameen Talha.

As we will be creating a website to promote our music album , i decided to search up some inpirational websites of existing electro pop artists. As you can see these are a few examples that inspire us to create pur website in terms on the color pallet , the layout of the website as well as the font style of the written elements of the website.

The Troye sivan’s album cover is a very unique one where only his back is showing for the front page of the website. Gives us a mysterious side to what type of music he sings and the vibe of the website. The colour scheme of the purple contrasting with the black which gives a pop of colour to it. The home button in the purple colour attracts attention as it is the important element of the website.

One republic’s website is a very basic yet effective one , it doesnt include alot of infromation nor has alot of images or writing but includes everything that a website should contain. The color scheme of this website is very dainty looking and the font of the their bands name gives us the feeling of a type writter typing this.

Halsey’s website on the other hand is also very basic looking and the color pallette is straight up black to emphasise on that color as being dangerous or possibly could depict how the song make you feel empty or depressed with a hint of pop to it due to her genre of music. These websites especially attract the younger generation and the websites are not complexed at all , so it would be easier for the audience to find and look at the website and perhaps be up to date with the artists work.

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Analysis of website 3

This post is made by Rameen Talha.

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Analysis of website 2

This post is made by Rameen Talha.

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Analysis of website 1.

This post is made by Rameen Talha

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What is a Website?

This post is made by Rameen Talha.

A website is a collection of such as multimedia content which is typically known or identified with a common domain name and published on at least one web server, for e.g. Google.com , wikipedia.com

Purpose of website:

The main purpose of creating a website is basically to convey specific information to the audience or helpful information. The audience may learn something new and innovative and the easiest way to excess information quickly would be using a website. So for example we are making a music video and our website would be considered an entertainment website which will include our music video as well as updates that the audience might want to know about our album. 

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The Final DigiPak

So the digipak is ready and here’s the final look.

Front Cover:

Back Cover:

Inlay and CD: