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

Final Front CD Cover

Final Inside Cover (Back of Front Cover)

Final Second Inside Cover (Back of Back Cover)

Final Back Cover

Final Magazine Poster

For our print based work, I have used a pattern of bad-omen type images and effects. For instance I used an effect called “chrome” on most of the pictures, as it contributes greatly to the evil, supernatural look. Along with this I have made sure that the protagonist and the antagonist are both isolated to give some sense of similarity between them, and of how the antagonist is an inner demon of the protagonist.

As the music and most of our video has dark tone to it, I wanted to mirror this in the art work. Which is why the main colours of the covers are black and red. Black, symbolising darkness and red to symbolise anger, blood and gore.

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

Our music video was inspired by other popular music videos of its genre, mainly previous Prodigy videos, we used the music video for Voodoo People as a prime influence for its simplicity and professional look. As we looked at different music videos in the genre we pin pointed the main characteristics of a music video in the genre. They consisted of:


A primarily disjunctuve narrative – This was the case in most of the videos with them having no logical plot, but well shot scenes.

Fast pace – The songs were mostly fast paced, and so the shots were well in sync with the song’s beat.

Dark and gritty – Now with most videos in this genre the music video’s theme’s were dark very and urban. Rarely were there any daytime shots.

With our music video we decided that we needed to do something original but still keep with the common themes in a music video of this genre. We decided very early on that most of the shots will take place in urban areas at night, or in dark places. We then decided to make the plot disjuncture but something you can still put your head around. We made it with a simple premise, of a man running from his own demons, but used a physical manifestation for this, that way we had a protagonist (played by Mohammed Adel) and an antagonist (played by Ashriel King).

In our disjunctive narrative, the protagonist is running from an unseen foe, the fact you don’t see what he is running from until the end creates an air of mystery and built up tension throughout the video.

We made the music video with a quick cut rate, the speed of every shot is determined by the tempo of the song. So when there was a sudden tempo shift from fast to slow, we would increase the duration of the shot on-screen; this is in keeping with the common conventions of a music videos of this genre where the video is manipulated by the song.

The conventions that we went against were the lengthy performance of the band that was playing. Usually in conventional music videos of this genre, the band would usually be seen performing throughout their vidoes, or at least the band would make an appearance. However, our video is completely about the narrative, apart from a very short sequence where Mohammed is freeystyle dancing in town. We had no lip-syncing, guitar-playing or anything like that. We planned to film people dancing at a rave on Halloween, but some complications arose and so we didn't manage to do so.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For audience feedback, we would have filmed a question and answer, interview style video then upload it to our blog, but we ran out of time and so we did a questionnaire instead.

Here is our questionnaire

1.What did you think of our Music Video?
2.What was good about it, if anything?
3.What things would you say could be improved, if anything?
4.Do you think the video editing went well with the music track?
5.Could you mistake this for a professional video, or is there obvious amateurism?

We showed our video to fifteen people at once then asked them the questions off our sheet in an interview style. Here is their general response.

Question 1

•'It was good...'
•'It was great!'
•'Yeah yeah I liked it, it was good...'
•'I thought it was good...'

Question 2

•'The ending was the best…'
•'Yeah I liked the ending…'
•'The ending was pretty good…'
•'I thought the editing was the best; I just didn’t like the song…'
•'I liked the bit where everything was sped up going backwards.'

Question 3

•‘Err, I’m not sure really…’
•‘I think the one bit where you can see the phone in Mohammed’s hands should be cut. Cos you can just about see it when walks up to the camera from the darkness.’
•‘Nothing for me really…’
•‘I think there’s one part in the town scene where Mohammed’s face isn’t lit properly, but that’s it…’

Question 4

•‘The editing was brilliant!’
•‘Yeah it was...’
•‘Yes, definitely…’

Question 5

•‘Don’t get too cocky…’
•‘Yeah I reckon it looks pretty professional…’
•‘It was well good, but you can tell when something is professional and when it’s not…’
•‘The camera quality of professional videos is much better than the cameras we have to use. If it was done with professional cameras then probably…’
•‘Yes…’

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

We actually didn’t use any green screen for our video because we thought it usually looks quite amateur with the type of cameras we use. Most people usually use green screen when doing some sort of performance e.g. lip-syncing or dancing, but we didn’t have any lip-syncing and only one short dance sequence (Mohammed freestyle dancing in town). Furthermore we thought it’d be innovative to have no green screen and simply use real locations for all our scenes.

We didn’t really use any special camera techniques; as most of our filming was done handheld. The closest thing that came to special equipment we utilised was a steadicam. We used this when filming the long, sped up close up of Mohammed walking down fourteen flights of stairs. This was used to mimic the snorricam effect where the camera is attached to the body of the actor, facing them directly so that when they move, it appears as if only the world around them is moving, but their head stays in one position. To achieve this, Mohammed had to hold the camera out straight ahead so it was facing him and walk down the stairs, all the while keeping his arms as still and straight as possible. The camera was attached to the steadicam to ensure little shakiness.

We did use a tripod, though rarely because we had a lot of shaky tracking shots. The only smooth, non-wobbly shots we did were the one where my character makes appearances at the start and end of the video, and where Mohammed’s characters walks out from the darkness up to the camera with a mobile phone light in his hand, illuminating his face. We wanted that shot to appear is if he has something glowing in his hands, which I hope we achieved.

The most common editing transition in our video wasn’t the ‘cut’, it was a sped up version of the ‘cross zoom’. That is what creates the bouncing in and out effect. The reason I chose this was because, if cut to the beat (which I did) it can make long tracking shots less boring. You could have a five second tracking shot, then, after putting in a few cross zooms, it doesn’t seem too long. Also, in my opinion, cutting all the way through with no other transitions would look quite dull, especially with the track we had.

I inserted a lot of video filters in our video to improve the footage. The earthquake filter caused the frame to vibrate and shake, as if the cameraman (which was me) couldn’t hold the camera steady, which is what we wanted. We used that effect on most of the stable, tripod shots as we wanted to show that the protagonist was feeling under pressure throughout most of the video.

Another one of the filters I used was the bloom effect, which increased the brightness on any lights in the shot. This made the world around the protagonist seem more threatening with large angry lights blazing all around him. Moreover, it looked good.

I did a lot of speed level changes to a lot of our shots, as that is what you get in a lot of music videos these days. Also, high speed shots went well with our track, as the song itself had a very fast paced beat.

CD cover Inspiration

This was one of our inspirations for the CD cover. We used the chrome effect on the computer to achieve the what this picture did.

Music Video Commentary

Here is a link to our music video commentary. I apologise for the terrible video quality, lack of music and blank audio spots. Thank you and enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_5qtcv4yU8

CD Cover (Initial Ideas)

Here is an idea for our front cover

Here is an idea for our first inside cover

The next one was a idea for the second inside cover

This next image was an initial idea for an inside cover. We ultimately did not use it because we had lots of audience feedback suggesting it was way too plain. So we made some changes.

The following picture was said to be too amatuer to be a in the Print Based work. The reason for this was that the visibility levels were very low.

Idea for back cover.

Our Music Video

Here is a YouTube Link to our A2 Music Video. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58dpeG1Sc88

The Acting

As the protagonist of the disjunctive narrative, the role I had to play was surprisingly, physically demanding. I actually lost five kilograms of body weight after the production stage because there was so much running involved. Our directors (Adam, Ashriel and Reuben) made me do so many takes for each shot (especially Adam and Ashriel with their perfectionism), and it required a lot of effort on my part, seeing as though most of the video is of me running around.

Below is an image taken by Reuben of me running in town at around 1:00AM, with cameraman, Ashriel running after me to catch every movement.

CD Cover Research

The song of our video is called 'Omen' by 'The Prodigy'. The CD cover used for the original song is quite different to the one that we are using. However, we do draw inspirations from it such as the dark, creey look. Compare the two, ours to The Prodigy's. On our own CD cover, our co-producer, Reuben Gill drew the text of the cover instead of writing them so it can give a more creepy feel and more creative touch.

Post Production Stage - Editing (Part 2)

I have now finished editing our video and it looks fantastic, at least that's what we think (and a lot of other people do too). Below is a screen grab of our finished timeline.

This part (below) of the timeline took me around twenty minutes to complete. It's towards the end where everything plays in reverse extremely fast.









Seriously, there may be only around five seconds of video, but there were so many cuts, shots and transitions involved that it took me quite a while to piece it all together in order to get that sped up, going backwards effect. It wouldn't let me reverse all the little clips at once, so I had the tedious job of doing them individually.

The Darkness Shot

This shot is part of the fourth shoot. Honestly, the shot of Mohammed coming out of the darkness with a light emitting from his palms was thought of on the spot by us all. It was filmed in a graveyard, and we went to that grave yard that night beacuse we thought we could get some decent footage of Mohammed running through the cementary, scared as hell, but when we got there we found that it was too dark to film pretty much anything. The camera couldn't pick up enough light to see Mohammed sprint. So we filmed that shot with the protagonist coming forwards slowly deep from withing the darkness, towards the camera, on his own, surrounded by pitch blackness, holding one light in his hands (it was a mobile phone by the way) so he was visible to the camera. This added a great horror aspect to the video. This shot has nothing to do with the plot of the video, but is simply part of the disjuncture.

Props That We Used

Here is a list of props that we used and they were used by Ashriel for his character at the beginning and end of the video:

• A hammer

• A television

• A stool

• A pair of sunglasses

• A keffiyeh

• A pair of black cotton gloves

Almost all of these props were provided by Reuben Gill, which is why we call him our producer.

Production Stage (Fifth Shoot)

In this shoot we all went to my house with the intention of filming the destruction of a small 15” TV, caused by Ashriel's character, but because of certain circumstances the destruction was cancelled. In the TV’s place we destroyed two heavy Subwoofer speakers which should have made a big sound, big spark and loads of smoke. I had these speakers lying about in my cellar. We wanted to show things being destroyed and damaged in order to show elements of chaos and anarchy. Ironically we didn't even use the footage of the speakers blowing up in our actual video.
(picture of Reuben's cellar)

The opening and closing shots of our finished video was filmed in one long take (actually it took three takes but you know what I mean). Ashriel (dressed as the Grim Reaper) had to turn on the TV and then the screen would display static, then I zoomed in on the TV screen until it took up the whole of the camera's field of vision. Whilst the camera was zoomed in, Ashriel had get into position behind the TV and stand with his head bowed. Once I zoomed out, then panned upwards to view Ashriel and then his apperance is finally revealed to the audience. This scene was heavily inspired by the 'Come to Daddy' video by the Aphex Twin.

Production Stage (Fourth Shoot)

We filmed in the cementary in Chorlton and one of the subways in Mosside late at night as we didn't have enough good footage for our video timeline. We got some footage on Wilmslow Road as well.

Shooting on Wilmslow road took quite a while, as we filmed the shots with the intention of speeding them up on the Mac to create that sped up background effect. Poor Mohammed was stood stock still for about three-five minutes in during three different takes.

(picture of us filming at subway)

Post Production Stage - Editing (Part 1)

We are now at the post production stage and already our video is starting to look decent. We've captured all our footage and put most of it on to the timeline. It's amazing how editing can make raw footage look good, all just by cutting shots together, adding some video filters, and putting in some interesting transitions.

(picture of me editing on the Mac)

However, we are going to have to shoot some more good footage, as the footage we have now (despite there being a lot) isn't good enough to make it into this video.

Production Stage (Third Shoot)

We met up at 11pm on Market street to film the sequences we needed to film. First of all we decided that we should film on the outskirts first that way by the time we finished filming on the outskirts, market street would be completely empty, or at least fairly empty.

On the outskirts of town we tried to film a tracking shot with the camera man (Ashriel King) on one side of the street and the protagonist (Mohammed Adel) on the other side, but we ran into some problems. Firstly, on the first take, Ashriel was running with the camera, but as he was filming Mohammed sideways, he couldn't see what was in front of him, and he almost ran into a car which was pulling out on a side street. Funny but dangerous, so we discontinued to film like that, plus the camera kept shifting in and out of focus anyway because the wasn't enough light and so much movement.

After a series of tracking shots on the outskirts of town, it was 12am and we headed back to market street, which was then empty. Once there we filmed what would be part of the opening scene. We set the tripod up so Mohammed was framed by the surrounded buildings. Ashriel came up with the idea of editing the footage to make it look like it was on a bad TV, as if to imply that someone is watching the protagonist, and we hope that it gives the impression that whoever or whatever is looking at him on the TV is what he is running from.

Afterwards we did that we decided not to have a tracking shots that were too long because of the unwanted blurry effect. We started with Mohammed just walking as Ashriel followed him with the camera, it was good because we used the camera in a hand held position so it created a shaky camera effect which makes it better when we edit it, because the plan is too speed the footage up.

It was then when we bumped into a couple of police officers. Using my excellent powers of persuasion, I managed to get them to act in our video, so we had yet another tracking shot of Mohammed, but this time he is actually being visibly followed by someone, and it was the police!

That was probably our finest stroke of fortune throughout the whole production. Thankfully the area of town where we filmed them was well-lit and so there wasn't any focus shifts on the camera. The police are another bad omen for Mohammed's character.

We then decided to go to the Piccadilly gardens, this way we can get a scene of the protagonist on his own in town, illustrating his loneliness. To do this we used a combination of tripod footage and hand held footage to hopefully create a surreal feeling to it. However, instead of the protagonist running away from unseen characters, we had Mohammed dance in Picadilly fountains. We then cut between him dancing around, and him sprinting to show a contrast.

Market Street (Main Location)

Production Stage (Second Shoot)

Part 1

The second shoot was done in underneath Chorlton Bridge. The walls here were covered in Graffiti, because of this reason we thought that this place would suit the song we would be doing because the lyrics in the chorus of the song states, “the writings on the wall.” The protagonist (Mohammed Adel) is supposed to be getting chased by his own inner demon. So this location would have really suited our idea of what the theme is going to be behind the video of this song, the reason for this was that the place was dirty, dark and scary, where demons are thought to be the strongest at.

(picture of us fliming in Chorlton)

The many different shots we did of the protagonist (Mohammed) running underneath the bridge, to show facial expression and body language which would initially state that Mohammed is scared himself and is not really sure what is happening.

Part 2

The location of the alleyway was originally chosen by Ashriel King, the corner’s and the state of the actually alleyway fitted exactly into the criteria of location we had for our video, it was a tight squeeze passage where hardly anyone would go through, again the place for a demon to be at. We initially thought of Mohammed going through there as his inner Demon is guiding him into there to maybe cause harm to him or do something evil. In the end, these shots didn't make the final cut.

(Picture of us filming in the alleyway)

Liverpool - Location Scouting

I went to Liverpool for the day to visit some friends and decided that, because of the 'old traditional' look that Liverpool town centre has, it would be an interesting location for our video. In the end though we decided against using liverpool because of the trouble of getting there.

Production Stage (First Shoot)

Filming for the video was, I’d say an easier process than the film opening we did last year. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, you could direct your actor with spoken instructions whilst rolling the camera, as any sounds picked up by the microphone while filming didn’t matter, as the only audio going into the video is the song track and so any other audio could be deleted. This meant we could film in even the nosiest of places and not care about the background sound, unlike the two minute film opening last year.

However, because conventional music videos have a cut pretty much every second or two, it means we had to capture a lot more footage so we weren’t short when we came to the editing process.

Our first shoot was outside and inside a car park.

Part 1

Using our shot list as a guideline, we filmed about ten different shots of Mohammed running around.

The Prodigy

Inspirational Music Videos

The Prodigy - Voodoo People

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WazjVftN6mo

Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Az_7U0-cK0

Omen - Official Music Video

Here is the official music video to our song choice. It consists of footage from a live performance by The Prodigy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olHnyslc-OM

Plot

Although it is a disjunctive narrative, there is an actual story to our video, although it may not be that clear. Basically the protagonist (portrayed by Mohammed Adel) is on the run from our version of a grim reaper (played by Ashriel King). The grim reaper is a personified bad omen.

The grim reaper turns on a TV which is sitting a dark room. He laughs manically as the protagonist appears frozen on the screen. It then switches to real-time with the protagonist standing stock still in the middle of town at night. He looks around then, after sensing the grim reaper watching him, starts his journey running through a deserted city centre. However he has only run for a short time when he is teleported from town into a dark and dismal alleyway. He sprints off again after sensing the grim reaper closing in but again he is quickly teleported into a grave yard. He carries on running, he looking behind him panic-stricken, but he isn’t watching where he is going, and so he drops into an open grave. He screams in absolute terror as the screen cuts to black. Then it goes back to the grim reaper with the TV (now displaying static). He roars ominously and smashes the TV with his bare hands.

Pre-Production - Possible Locations

A Rave

Car Parks

Alleyways

A Cementary

Manchester City Centre

Inspiration

We used this as inspiration, this is because it is creepy and gives off the impression of a tortured soul, we used this as the basis for our protagonist.

Pre-Production - Shot List

Truthfully most of this shot list was a far, far, far cry away from the shots we actually filmed. Seeing as we knew what we wanted in our heads, we saw little point in writing each individual shot down as there were a lot (we had well over hundred) and it would have wasted a lot of time. So what we did first was type up a short list of ideas for shots. We then used it as a guideline for the large number of shots we ended up taking. Here is our original shot list before we started filming, it isn't very detailed, but it worked for us.

Scene 1 (A Deserted City Centre – Night Time)

1. A TV sits in the middle of a dark room. A hand belonging to an off-screen character reaches for the on the button and presses it. The screen displays the protagonist (Mohammed Adel) standing in the middle of town at night. Camera zooms in on the screen.
2. Cross dissolves into medium-long shot of the protagonist in a deserted city centre with his head bowed to the ground. Then as Omen track begins, he lifts his head up and stares directly at the camera.
3. (Medium shot) Split-second shot of protagonist staring at the camera.
4. (Medium close up) Split-second shot of protagonist staring at the camera.
5. (Close up) Split-second shot of protagonist staring at the camera.
6. Extreme close up of protagonist staring at the camera.
7. Medium shot from behind protagonist as he sprints forward.
8. Medium shot from left side of protagonist as he sprinting through a deserted city centre.
9. Medium shot from left side of protagonist as he sprinting through a deserted city centre.
10. Medium shot of protagonist dancing by himself in a deserted city centre.

Scene 2 (Car Park - Night Time)

11. Medium shots from behind protagonist as he teleports from town to outside the entrance to a car park in Mosside.
12. Medium shots facing protagonist as he runs into the car park, constantly looking behind him as if being chased by an unseen character.
13. Tracking shot from behind protagonist as he runs through the car park.
14. Close up tracking shot of protagonist as he runs through the car park.
15. Series of medium shot jumps cuts (in time with the beat) as protagonist runs through car park.
16. Medium shot. Protagonist teleports again. (Dissolve to new location)

Scene 3 (Under a Bridge - Day Time)

17. Medium shot of protagonist as he materialises to this new location.
18. Long shot from shot other side of the bridge as protagonist runs across the bridge.
19. Medium long shot from behind protagonist as he runs across the bridge.
20. Close up tracking shots from right and left side of protagonist
21. Long shot from behind protagonist as he finally escapes the bridge.

Scene 4 (Wilmslow Road – Night Time)

22. Close up of protagonist staring into space.
23. Medium shot of protagonist staring into space.
24. Shot of cars driving down Wilmslow Road

Scene 5 (Park – Day Time)

25. Close ups Snorricam shot of protagonist spinning wildly on the spot.
26. Medium shot of protagonist running around the park.

Scene 6 (Graveyard – Day Time)

27. Medium shots of protagonist teleporting to the graveyard.
28. Medium shots of protagonist running through the graveyard (from left and right).
29. Protagonist jumps into an open grave. (Overhead shot)
30. Close up of the terror on his face.

Film Inspirations

We think that this film was a good inspiration for us as it shows how a man changes because of his environment and his own psyche. It shows a man who is threatened by his own inner demons and it manifests itself into a physical interpretation.

Song Choice

The song of which our group have chosen to do is called OMEN by The Prodigy. It belongs to the genre of drum and bass, and because of the lack lyrics in the song, we have chosen to shoot some kind of disjuncture for the video with some illustrative references to what little lyrics there are in the song.

We picked this song, mainly because our group didn’t want to be restricted by any narrative formed by song lyrics. With this track we have a lot of freedom to shoot whatever we want, as it's all disjuncture anyway, and so even the most bizarre pieces of footage we accumulate will be acceptable. Furthermore, we don’t have to worry about extensive lip-synching as there are practically no words to mime. Also the pace is of the song is very fast, which makes for very interesting editing to the beat.