Music Video Final Cut

Here is the final edit of our music video... We hope you enjoy it!

Finished Digipak

L Zafo Records Website

The following is the link to L Zafo's website, "L Zafo Records". 

https://lzaffonw11.wixsite.com/website

Evaluation Final Cut

Here is the final cut of our evaluation, enjoy!

Written Personal Evaluation

Underneath is a copy of my written personal evaluation:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I think our media product does all of that to forms and conventions of real media products. It uses many conventions of a typical old-school hip-hop video that we have tried to recreate. Examples of this include a tense atmosphere, dark low-key lighting, smoke, hoods up and of course bling. One would usually split old-school hip-hop songs and videos into two sections – ones that represent the dark side and grim nature of being a thug, and ones that portray the riches and luxuries of being a successful thug. Taking this into consideration, our video outs both sides of old-school hip-hop into perspective, showing a more tense side (i.e. hoods up, darkness etc.), and a more laid back side (i.e. fancy clothes, car, champagne etc.). The video of the song Ain’t Goin out Like That by Cypress Hill can be reminiscent of our video in it’s dark, tense fashion, whereas scenes in our video can be compared to some of Biggie Smalls’ videos that try to show the luxuries of being a rich gangster.

• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our video, being part of L Zafo’s album Golder’s Green, has a dark yet upbeat feel, which is meant for the audience to re-embrace the old school hip-hop vibe of music and life. Although lighter at times, the video is supposed to have quite a suspenseful feel. With my digipack being the cover for L Zafo’s album, which explores the struggles of his life as a teen drug dealer, I tried to stick to the funky gangster feel of it. For instance the Zafo written on the front cover of the digipack looks like it has been spray painted as graffiti, and the L has a gold chain hung around it’s foot. Also, the other photos in the digipack are of a more or less cartoon nature thanks to filter’s on Photoshop, which suits the funky old-school vibe, along with everything revolving more or less around the colour green, which is also common of hip-hop genre, to stick to a color, like Wu-Tang Clan have done in the past as you can see. Now because the video and digipack were of this more funky, gritty nature, I tried to give a certain degree of elegance to the website, as it is not in fact a website for the album Golders Green but rather for L Zafo Records – The record label which L Zafo founded and uses himself . So this is where all L Zafo songs, videos, tour dates and tickets are released, sometimes involving other artists completely in collaboration with L Zafo. So I chose this elegancy over funkiness to be able to target a wider audience. There is background information of L Zafo on the website, something that may interest one completely not into old-school hip-hop, and for this reason I made the website look like this, so even a sixty-year old who despises hip-hop can go onto my website and not be completely turned off, thinking… ‘Ah, its just another one of those gangster rappers’… as it does not appear that way, and actually looks professional. I actually asked a few members of our audience focus group to take a look at my website and digipack – at the time still under construction – and they seemed to really like the digipack – my guess is because its hip, its artistic, its colorful, its nice to look at – but for my website, rather than comments of how nice or bad it looks, they all basically said the same thing – that although its not finished, the ideas were good, and it gave a nice balance to the vibe and mis-en-scene of the video and digipack. So I took this advice, and carried on in this matter as you can see.

•   What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We had two audience focus groups – one supposed to create a primary target audience, and the other imitating a secondary/tertiary audience. The primary target audience was made out of a group of 6 friends of our age,  who are all very into the hip-hop genre (especially old-school). Their reactions were all very positive, with all of them very much enjoying the video overall, and only a few others commenting on some unfinished edits, which was completely normal, as we hadn’t even finished our music video by then. One member of the audience pointed out moments of slight emptiness in the video, which we have thoroughly worked on since.  The other audience focus group (recreating a secondary/tertiary audience) was made out of my mother’s friends (aged 30-50), all actors and directors themselves. Although we still received some really great feedback – especially directed at the success of the dark tense nature of the video in gripping someone, and the charismatic side to the video which was ‘fashionable’ or humorous’ as they said – a few of them didn’t seem to enjoy the gangster feel of the video, and some others seemed to be even insulted by some of the profanity in the song. I believe this came down to the fact that some people will not like this genre, and some people will be offended. It has been the story of hip-hop from day 1, and I believe it is because it challenges certain aesthetics.

• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used a Panasonic 4K camcorder to film the music video, using it with a manfrotto tri-pod to support it, or handheld. For many moving shots in the video, we used a gimble (Ronin DJI) to steady the camera whilst we moved, and it worked beautifully. We also used a Rotto light to light ups some shots in the dark, with a reflector as well to help. To produce our websites, we used Wix, which is a cloud-based web development platform that was first developed and popularized by the Israeli company also called Wix. Its so simple was a great aid in helping us both create nice websites. Wix ADI is the program on Wix.Com that helps create your website using artificial intelligence after collecting data from you of the ideal aspects of what your website is about. This made the process very smooth, and I can say for myself that Wix ADI did help create and create itself some stunning stuff. We both used Photoshop to produce our digipacks. It was an excellent choice as it is a complex yet ideal platform to create pictures and i-dents, and there are so many different effects and filters that you can apply to photos. For example, as you can see in this photo of my digipack, I have applied a filter from the filter gallery in photoshop. There are an array of selections and the control of color contrast is great. You can easily change the shades and tones of different components of color in your photo. Although the layers and all the different tools got us really confused at times, all these tools and such are very necessary in advanced graphic design task such as ours. I did use Illustrator as well, but only for one part of my digipack – to draw the L in the L Zafo on the front cover of my digipack. I used illustrator as it is certainly the best platform to draw and illustrate things as the lines have very smooth curves and that do not pixelate as they tend to do in photoshop

Evaluation is done!

I have received word from Bruno on the other side of the Atlantic, that the Evaluation is complete! This is great news as we are now ahead of schedule, and we will be uploading it to our blogs shortly.

Editing Evaluation part 2

For three more days now, we have edited our evaluation. All there is left for Bruno to edit when I leave tomorrow, is the fourth and final question on technologies used. This is more than doable for Bruno, and I am in fact very relaxed and stress free leaving to America.

Editing Evaluation part 1

Over the past two days now Bruno and I have been intensely working on our Evaluation task, editing all of our footage together quickly, but with a lot of care. The problem is though, is that I will be able to edit the video for only 2 more days, but then I will be going to America for revision/holiday. This trip has been planned already for months, so I will be unable to cancel. I am sure with the time remaining, Bruno can easily finish it on his own, as we will have done the majority of work already.

Voice Recordings for Evaluation

For the last bit of our evaluation - the technology question - Bruno and I have now done several detailed voice recordings, which we will edit as voice overs in the video. We shall now begin editing as we have all of our raw material.

Website and Digipak Progress Check 3/Completion

I have now completed my website and digipak. I believe they are both of a high level, and will be an aid in helping me achieve a high grade. Both will be published here ASAP.

Filming Evaluation parts 2&3

Over the past couple days, Bruno and I have completed filming our evaluation task, up to question 4.
This will involve a voice over of some of the footage we have taken already, so we are close to completing this stage before we can edit it.

Filming Evaluation part 1

Today Bruno and I filmed the first part of our evaluation task here in school. All was fine, and we will be filming question 2 tomorrow.

Website and Digipak Progress Check 2

It has been the better part of 2 weeks now that I am working on my Digipak and website, but I believe I am extremely close to completing them, and it should all be tied up within the week.

Evaluation Planning

Bruno and I have now co-ordinated a script made from our personal evaluations, and we are hence ready to start filming. We will be filming throughout the next week individually and separately. We also plan to make voice recordings for parts of the video.

Pre-Production for Evaluation

Today, Bruno and I were made to write out answers to the evaluation questions. These answers were written as personal answers, but in order to produce a script for our evaluation task, we must integrate our two answers.

Website and Digipak Progress check 1

Over the past week I have been working very hard on producing my  website and digipak. I have made a great amount of process, but there is still quite a lot of work to do. I will keep you updated on my progress.

Zacky Unavailable for Photoshoot

For his own personal reasons, Zacky is unable to take part in the project any further, as he is having his own trouble at home. This comes as a major blow to Bruno and I, but we are thinking positively. There are still a number of ways we can produce digipaks and websites without photos of Zacky.

Photos for Digipak

The next steps of our coursework involves us separately making digipaks for albums of 'L Zafo', and websites representing L Zafo.  We will be needing Zacky to do a photoshoot with us, so we have a good selection of photographs to use for these tasks.

Website and Digipak Plans Begin

I will now be moving on to the final stages of my coursework, wherein I will be producing a website and digipakfor 'L Zafo'. The website will be made using Wix, and as you know, the digipak will be prepared on Photoshop

Photoshop

For making our Digipaks, we will be using Photoshop, and other Adobe applications if necessary.
These applications are all designed inch perfect to developing images in graphic design, so we couldn't ask for a better platform.

Editing part 4- Finishing it off

Over the past week Bruno and I have edited our video, completing it, also using all the feedback from our audience focus groups. It is to be uploaded to this blog ASAP.

Audience Focus Group 2 Feedback

Our second audience focus group's reaction on the other hand was a little bit different.  Although some enjoyed it - saying it had a tense atmosphere which was very gripping, and a little bit of charisma which lightens the moods - not only did the others dislike the song, but they thought the concept of the video was lacking in a storyline... In hip-hop videos usually there can or cannot be a story line - some have it, some don't. I attempted to explain that there isn't supposed to much of a storyline, but some were having none of it. Either way, we attempt to work on the video according to all the feedback we were given.

Website Research 2

The ROCNATION website is a great example of a simple, concise, attractive website that I am taking inspiration from to make my own to promote the artist, L Zaffo.

Homepage:
Photographs of music videos and album covers (digipak designs) cover this page, along with a nice contrast of the red and black mix. There is little amounts or writing, and where it is, there are few words with big letters. Here the colours of the photos are not particularly bright, but they do stand out more than other parts of the webstie.


Representation of Artists:
I think ROCNATION's 'Artists' page is very well designed. The only writing on the page is to outline the different sections of this bit of the website. It is simple, yet a great way to put all the artists together on one page. All having an equal square each, the colours are either black & white or unsaturated, giving a nice contrast to the bold red and black of the website layout

Audience Focus Group 1 Feedback

Our first audience focus group have us back some really good feedback. 99% positive; they all said they really enjoyed it, and the atmosphere we have created is excellent. The only thing they could point out as an improvement were a couple of edits in the video that were a bit slow (as they weren't exactly finished).

Audience Focus Group 2 Seclection

For our second audience focus group, Bruno and I have decided we need to replicate a secondary/tertiary target audience for the video. For this, we have decided to use my mum's friends, as they are all 35 years old and over, and in general either dislike or 'don't mind' hip-hop.

Audience Focus Group 1 Selection

For the first audience focus group Bruno and I showed our first draft of the music video to a group of our friends that we especially selected as they have a high interest in the genre. We believe this would replicated a primary target audience.

Editing - First Draft

We have now completed a first draft of the music video and will be showing it to audience focus groups in order to receive feedback that we can work on the video from.

Website Research 1

The Supreme website is another website that I will be taking inspiration from to promote L Zafo. This page relies on its photography and simplicity. Although the actual website tends to annoy me with an array of technical errors when many people are on the website at once, the design of the website is very attractive to me in its modern and simple manner.

Editing Part 2

Over the past week Bruno and I have still be in the media room editing all the time. We are more or less close to a first draft, and should be finished in doing it next week with about  a couple more sessions.

Editing Part 1

Today we began editing our music video. We have put some bits and bobs of footage together but overall there is still loads to do.

Final Cut

For editing our music video we will be using Final Cut Pro, on iMacs. We have both used this last year to edit our thriller openings, and we're happy to use it again - its a great, complex yet easy to use application for editing.

Filming Day 4

Finally, all the filming for our music video is done. Today Bruno and I have captured all the remaining scenes we hand in mind on camera. We ran into no issues, and we are confident our footage will not disappoint. Now, it is time for editing, for which we are excited to move to the next step in producing this video.

Snow Problems

Once again we are stuck with the problem of having to cancel a shoot. For our fourth and final shoot, we were supposed to film tomorrow, but sadly it has snowed a lot today, and the snow is supposed to continue through till Monday. It is already a hazard to the equipment to use it in the snow, and especially if its actually snowing. Visibility is already low, and the consequences of breaking any of the expensive bits of equipment are too great. For these reasons, we have called off filming, and it is to be postponed toll next weekend.

Equipment Checklist for Shoot 4

Here is the equipment checklist for our fourth and final shoot:

• Panasonic 4K Camcorder

• Manfrotto Tri-pod

• Roto Light and Reflector

Props for Filming Day 4

For our final shoot, we will need the following props:

1 red Ferrari jacket
1 pair of red Nike basketball shoes
1 Adidas track suit bottoms
3 The North Face puffer jackets
3 hoodies
2 rings (gold/silver)
2 cigarettes

All items are to be gathered by tomorrow in preparation for filming.