Evaluation Part 1-The Plan

 Where Did I Go Wrong?

So now we come to the bit which all artists fear. The evaluation. Now this will be in two parts the first being my plan and strategy and the next will be of the final product that has come out of the plan.

With that lets get to it, so I'll break down each section of the plan like I did in its dedicated post and discuss the good and bad points about it and where I could improve.

First I'll cover the legal and health concerns and how I worked around them. Overall I think that in terms of the considerations I looked at all the necessary bases that I needed to in order to make sure that the final video is successful but that more importantly if there's any legal problems in regards to distribution. The first point I made was about royalties, now looking back at it I can see that while it was important and necessary to cover I won't be making money off of this however looking in a broader perspective it will be good to go over at least once. The other consideration that I feel was covered well was the fact of legal ownership and rights to the intellectual property and the consequences thereof.

Now onto what I consider to be the worst parts of the plan, as I'm sure that you can tell my planning was not great from the get-go it wasn't detailed at all in the right places and was all too brief for the scale of project that I was working on, going backwards from how I structured it in the post.

So other logistics I needed to spread it out more and give better detail into each one even if I didn't to clarify what each section was due to it being covered in a separate section, looking at it now the other significant logistics are all but non-existent and the only good thing was the look at the equipment for the production.

The second part would be the idea portion of the plan, while I feel it was good to scrap the original plan and use something I felt confident with I shouldn't have ditched the first project entirely as it had a somewhat planned out back-up incase things didn't workout and that should have carried over to the project that I am currently doing. In future what I or whoever does a similar project need to cover is the idea that a back-up is necessary for when things don't go right and make sure that it's viable for the project at large and work it into the plan.

The Evaluation 2-The Video

 

 Here we go the be all end all. The fruits of my labors and I have to say that it's rather plain and a bit dull.

So before I get into what went horribly wrong lets go through what was actually okay. For a start I felt that the transitions were okay, they worked well with the effect theme that I was going for in terms of a VHS style by using static to signify the change in what the primary visual is on the screen. On this area I like the overlay that I managed to put together for this as it helped to achieve the goal of home made that I wanted to achieve when planning out this video. There's not much to break down for the audio so I won't cover it as it's just the unedited band audio.

Back to the video and I think that the live video shots were alright. They weren't perfect or what I thought I could get out of it but for the purposes that I needed it worked well.

Now we get to the worst and where it went bad boogle, starting with where I left off above with the real time cinematography. The quality of the recordings was awful, the lighting wasn't anywhere near as consistent or developed as it should have been and the angle wasn't symmetric enough for the effect to fully work, now what was captured failed as well as the video files weren't originally compatible with what I was doing so there was no proofing on what settings the camera therefore it made an inferior product.

The synchronicity of how the visuals were aligned is really off as well, when you look at a typical music video you look at one of the examples that we've used for this area ordinarily the artist pre-records the audio then the visuals are aligned in time with the right balance between the audio and what's being shown on screen to get the full effect of the song as it were. It's not just this that caused big problems but matching the beat is way off too. Generally using the beat to mark where certain points go is vital as it can make or break the flow and unfortunately that's where I dropped the obvious ball for this area. 

Another point is that there's no general story or narrative behind the images I've used in order to reach any of the two ideas that I have discussed previously or the theory behind the original video that made it so successful.

Music Video Analysis 3-Human by Rag'n'Bone Man

What's Over Here?

 Alright now we come to a more recent number in that it was produced in 2016 and breaks up what we've seen so far in quite a few ways. In the past few posts we've spoken about star iconography and how this is used to sell the song more than the song itself and how its the brand of what the celebrity is sells the song. 

So if we look at this first there's a bit of it but it's not as explicit and in your face as some of the other songs that we've looked at so far it's just the artist stood however its more of a narrative message than any of the other videos we've seen. It's equality. Think about the lyrics and the visuals that accompany them, "I'm only human after all." followed by a blur shot of various different people and singular focus before going back to the artist once again which demonstrates a deeper meaning behind the visuals of the video itself.

This video works on a deep level as it tries to demonstrate an idea that we're all people and it uses interesting techniques to make sure that we understand this, I have spoken about Illustration before in this area and it does apply here as it does show a true visual of the lyrics but it has more of an impact behind it as it accompanies what's being said.

This does help to become further impacted by the environment brought by seemingly filmed in location at an abandoned warehouse helping to give this idea that we are all one in the same but isolated giving the song extra layers of depth and meaning.

Looking at this we can see a lot of inspiration from the ideas of Andrew Goodwin, in short one of his ideas comes from the thought of the visuals are more important than the audio of the song and that it should appeal to everyone and this is an idea that's represented within the video itself. The visuals are more definite to see this idea forward by having the main visual of the video being the change of person with certain audio cues.  

The Legal

 Why No Health?

So now get onto the big and the juicy bit again the Legal problems faced with making a video like this but first lets address something.

There's a limit to the amount of health concerns in this type of production. This is down to two primary reasons the first of which being restrictions, due to the COVID restrictions that have been presented and passed I'm not able to utilize as many resources as I would do normally which brings down the health and safety risks a bit. The second thing is limiting the use of original footage which come with it and doing that means that I limit the amount of people involved in this project which helps in terms of keeping things narrow.

I have spoken about legal and health in a previous post (See Promotional Video Tag) however this is an entirely different circumstance with new rules and methods of achieving the end goal for the entire project as a whole.

Now the big and the bad, the legal that hangs over every project and with something like this there's a few big doozies that need to be covered. In a video project like this there's an obvious thing to cover and that's the legality and licensing behind the music/audio used in this video. Since any and all music is licensed and protected in its own way is fully protected by copyright it means that how I proceed will need to be careful as there is no protections that I have which will make this claimable for profit.

Two stages would need to be completed before I could do this the first giving a portion to the official owners of the song and its rights in this case would be the band 'Tenacious D' and the production company there of as they own all the rights to anything made off of it as royalties.

A Royalty is a small portion of profit to be paid out to any owning company for the song or material used when in being used for monetized purposes, it works in a similar way to when you buy a song off of a platform like Spotify. You can pay a predetermined amount of cash for the track, some of that will end up with the platform company while some will go to whoever gets paid the royalty amount which is ordinarily the band or the record company depending on the owner for the rights.

The second is actually talking about the rights themselves, see when you hear in a private establishment a piece of established music like say 'OOPS! I DID IT AGAIN' by Britney Spears there's a license that the company or organization has submitted in order to be able to play and use that set of music within a commercial setting as its copyrighted and protected against usage through an unlawful or 'unlicensed' manner. This helps to protect the owner of the rights and ensures that they get a return and that their intellectual property is protected proceeding but it also helps to protect the companies using it from any unnecessary legal preceding's.

Obviously there's a work around from this and that's use royalty free music. This is free to use and doesn't require all of this technical jargon, but for argument sake its necessary to mention and learn as it's important especially to this project.

Now as I do not have any of this in anyway as the standard cost for a license like this can be anywhere between £300-£400 and this wouldn't help with a second condition of this project and that's the fact that I plan to post this on big social platform so unless I indicate in someway that I am legally covered I do not get the chance to use this in a financial way and posting it onto sites like YouTube mean that the end product will be placed on an unlisted method until this is sorted and it will also block me from being able to possibly monetize it.

Neither of this is a problem as I have no intention of gaining profit and I will share the link elsewhere meaning that the final product will still have reach and impact it will just be in a more indirect manner than before. 

The Plan

 What do I wanna do?

This is a reiteration of what I wanted to do for my last project (the promotional video) as such I won't go into too much depth with these as I covered them to a greater extent in a set of previous posts but I will still cover all of the necessary bases that are required so you get a good idea of what I'm thinking.

Mood Board

So we'll start with the basics of any good production plan and that's the mood board. Now all of you know what a mood board is from a previous post that I made from the last project that involved it, so I won't cover it to much but in essence it's a stage of the plan where you take inspiration from evidence around you and make sure that everything you have is relevant to the project that you wanna make and develop it to make some sense and have it as almost like a proof of concept.

Having the board is essentially like saying "Hey this technique or idea is interesting, I think it could be applied to X through my video and it'll add the layer I'm looking for." so you draw from it in order to get yours to be as unique as possible from outside sources.

So this would be my board, four videos to demonstrate where I took my ideas from. 3 out of 4 of them feature the main artist stationary in some way and one follows a narrative in some way.

This I thought would be a good way to start having some thoughts about what I wanted to get out of it. Given my small amount of resources I decided that making a video using this trend would be a good idea, with the thought of making sure it had a comedic edge to it as this would suit the type of song well.

Taking the idea of a narrative worked well too, this would enable some good planning and projections to make sure that I more control over what I could produce and more importantly will help me to make sure that and it would be great in helping to create a structure making sure I match videos to the beat of the audio.

 Examining the existing video

As this is essentially a remake of an existing video I need to look at what ideas are present inside it as well as what techniques are used to ensure that I make sure to not step on anyone's toes and avoid some serious bite back. This examination has already been written about in a post previously, titled Music Video analysis 2 where I break the video down and talk about some of the ideas techniques and images that they use.

What's the idea?

So now I have looked at the video and thought about some ideas from other ones too and have decided that making my video will be making it in a more comedic sense of things as this will be a good idea to make sure it gets a more wider appeal. It also follows in with the theme idea of the original video itself as much as it is a serious rock type it lets itself be silly with some cheesy effects and ideas itself so I was going to play off the basic of the comedic element from the footage I have in order to make sure that I get it to look bad but work it so that it becomes almost the point.

So after talking to a few people in the form of surveys and a focus group I got a clearer idea of what direction would be best in order to make this project a success. A suggestion that came out of the focus group was to have the footage to look like an old VHS style using an overlay which was a great idea to play the minimalist and to get the full effect of the minimal that I was looking for.

So using the feedback from those areas I can now develop it a bit more, so using the idea of minimal but adding to it by making it seem like a home movie using static for transition from time to time to make sure to keep up this aesthetic. The main purpose behind me doing this is to have the video match the lyrics in a narration form whilst keeping in with the idea of star iconography and other such things.

The Times

So as I have discussed previously discussed setting up a schedule in order to keep up with times and keeping an orderly production is key. Now in the last project I already discussed what a Gantt Chart is and why they're important so I'll keep the summary quick and light, so this helps to give a quick showing of how long the project will take in a more visual style and helps to show a client or team how long you want to spend on each section of the project.

Here is my schedule blocked out into different sections based on the different stages of the production. I kept it to the same style of my previous project as when I was structuring out the various sections for this one the structure of where time was dedicated felt good and that each section had enough of its own dedicated time which lets me ensure this project gets the full quality that the final product deserves.

Now on the face you might think that the various considerations that I made from the last project (see Promotional Video Tag) would just factor in, while this is true not every part is the same for example the filming section links within the planning more, I have spoken in previous posts about how different a music video is to the standard type of video that everyone is used to as it follows different patterns like iconography or choreography which means that you need to plan around it to have an idea on the basic structure to make sure that all of that is incorporated to the best level possible and to a capacity that means the goals are fulfilled (which more often than not is selling the artist and their brand.)

Remaining Logistics

So with all of these ideas and other plans coming together there's still a lot to talk about so I'm going to quickly go over what's left of the planning stage here before moving. 

In essence there is little to no storyboarding related to this type of project as much as it is a recreation of an original music video it almost becomes a fan-made tribute so there wasn't as much planning behind many of the shots in the production but it also helped to keep in with the idea of this to make it as corny and home-made looking as possible so using  minimalist planning and structure helps to achieve that goal.

Equipment list is small too, I've summarized everything I'll need in the production below:

• Camera-Standard DSLR with a basic rig- Free
• Tripod-Normal and used for stability when filming- Free
• Inflatable Guitar-Prop for great usage in filming to help provide the sense of a guitar as back-up incase main prop gets lost or damaged- Free
• Microphone-To help in an emphasis of singing and mark a shift within the edit- Free
• Book-This will help me to mark beginning and end points on the video but also provide a good point of reference for the calmer bits of the song- Free

Everything here has a reason for its involvement as I have stated above and everything that has been used in this production is free as I have it on hand in one capacity or another.

The Idea Generator

 Coming Up With an Idea

So in a previous post I was talking about planning stages and one of them was the biggun, coming up with an idea. Since I didn't cover this in enough or decent detail in that post here's full stage planning of the video that got turned out at the end of this process.

Looking back at that post in particular there was a few ideas that were brought up. Mainly the initial one which was producing a video to the song 'Shoot To Thrill' by ACDC and this was a good idea as there wasn't technically a current or existing official video for the song to work alongside it meaning that whatever ideas I came up with for this would be their own.

Obviously the first thought is to do something big dumb and crazy as that's what would be good and generally considered the norm for a video like this as it plays well into the idea of the song itself, but that wasn't the angle that I wanted, I wanted something unique and different to work alongside the lyrics and maybe not create a master piece but somethig
n that was fun for the viewer. To that end I ended up participating in a focus group in order to get a wider range of opinions from a bigger body rather thna my own brain.

I collaborated with other craetors who were working in a similar field to me and were bouncing ideas off of one another to get the crowd reactions and get the best possible outcome for our projects, when I presented my mood-board to the group at large and what my thoughts were based off other sources from around the same area as examples and with what I had planned originally for a back-up should the main faulter.

A lot of really great ideas came from this session, my new idea came from a spur of the moment decision made at 3AM where the back-up and primary ideas got scrapped due to a number of reasons. The main main one being a complete lacking of application or resources in order to achieve the best effect possible for the chosen song, the continegncy/back-up plan for the video wasn't particularly great either as it wasn't fully fleshed out and was a mess of ideas that weren't fully coherent.

Upon realising this and other short-comings of the idea due to limited resources and timings I couldn't make it so I made the choice to change track and video idea, but I took some feedback that was brought up from that focus group and from it I got the main idea that I have been working with.

The contingency plan was to make a live action version of the video, so it would still be a remake of sorts but the drive behind was to incorporate some of the original music video as well as remake some more of the other elements in order to achieve a great effect. Using this would also help to achieve my goal of making it appear to be a homemade video in the style of a VHS tape as live-action is typical of this method of video production and as such there comes certain conventions, like there has to be noise on the screen and slightly diluted colours.

I was listening to 'Tribute' by Tenacious D and a load of ideas came through my head and I began to wirte out and think about what I could do with this and I settled on the idea to remake the original video of the song but with a home film appela to it while keeping the idea of the original cheesy humourus visuals to go with the song.

So that's the full length story of how I went from an original plan of using ACDC to off piece cheesy home movie humour within Tenacious D.  

The Plan

 The Video Plan

So I started planning my idea for the video and I wanted to keep it brief for here, so I started with generating a shot list.

My idea is to recreate the original video to Tenacious D Tribute but with a more creative twist. Instead of using live action as the subject for the video I have chosen to use stop-motion figures and models and more visualization of what's going on with the song. The type of live action I would go for is to use stop motion similar to that of Wallace and Gromit (Seen Below) but the change would be if the creator was on acid so as much as the graphics would be crude and rough around the edges there would also be some more manic images or ideas present an idea of how this would look is below the source image. This would help to achieve a point of visualization of the lyrics to an emphatic degree but also would help me to achieve one of my goals of providing a bit of humor with stop-motion animation and these little icon transitions.

Shot 1-Angle up looking at a stage with two models on it one of whom has a small guitar shape the other has a microphone in front of him. First two lines of the song.

Shot 2-Bird’s eye view of the two models moving down the desk pan down to them moving away from the camera. Match to the second and third.

Shot 3-Low-angle shot of a shelf with a new model on it, one with hons and a backlight to it. Illustration of lyrics, match the 4 lines. Transition jump cut pop (so nothing initially then jump to it being there)

Shot 4-Medium shot of model, floating symbols to demonstrate the next set of lyrics following an illustration theme of the lyrics. Ninth line set for this shot.

Shot 5-Close-up shot of two models on the desk. Have actions match the next set of lyrics. Up to line thirteen. Jump cut transition.

Shot 6-Repeat style of angle for Shot 1 for two lines, have camera move back showing more of the stage and an audience. Have a globe spinning behind in accordance of the next two lines.

Shot 7-Extreme close up on the eyes for the next line closely followed by;

Shot 8-Have a mid-shot of two models both with a 1 above, have them meet and become a single one with 2 above before separating out into a bigger and smaller model with 2 and 1 above them before remerging into a singular with 3 above it.

Shot 9-Pan up to the sky shooting star across it for the line after.

Shot 10-Back to the stage with images of a sun and moon both shining behind

Shot 11-Return to the low-angle shot of the shelf of the demon model with the back light with exclamation mark above his head before a tail move out to the right vicious swipe. Halo and a question mark above head

Shot 12-High-angle shot of two models shaking there heads one of them slamming something down. Following the next line have one of the models point to the other.

Shot 13-Close-up low angle of the two models with bright backlight on for the line “Ah, ah, ah, oh, wo, a-yo” with a quick cut to the demon model with a bright light on it making it turn away before going back to the two models on the desk.

Shot 14-For the next few lines of the song have some small strobe like lights going off. Mimicking shot 1.

 

This is what I drafted, here we can see the brief of the idea itself using ambiguous language as I hadn't decided the final method of visualization. However there's a structure outside of the numbering for the shots I have listed on screen now, which is to follow the flow of the lyrics to the song itself and using those to help me come up with ideas for what to have on screen.

The reason behind me using the lyrics to generate ideas is a two fold way to structure the video, it follows the flow of the video which means that synchronizing the visuals to the song is easier in the end and not only that but each shot works in tandem with what's being said to help boost the amplification of the lyrics to audio being played. The second is that the ideas came from the song itself which means that I can follow the rule of illustration that most music videos follow these days, but not just that however but a narrative for the song even though the song itself follows a narrative so it has to follow it in some way.

The next step is to work out the schedule. Now I followed a similar schedule structure to that of the previous project as it was an effective method with the right amount of dedication that can be set to each section and it also allows for suitable time during the production to make contingency plan or a bit of filming for the contingency in order to make sure that wouldn't start on the back-pedal for making the contingency.

The last planning section that I had to make was for the storyboard. Below you can see a sample of what I decided to go with for this production, it doesn't follow the usual format but as this production isn't typical I felt that I should try and capture the idea of what I was going for. Ordinarily on a storyboard you would have the motion that the characters and actors would follow while filming but as my characters are going to be done in stop-motion I felt that instead of showing the path and the motion of the characters I decided to make sure that you can see and tell the general positioning of the models/characters as I feel this provides a more accurate idea for the production more than others.

Questionnaires Pt 2

 The Results

Briefly before we get onto the results of the questionnaire I thought I'd give a bit of background behind the questionnaire itself. I sent it out to around thirty anonymous participants who also had a small sample of what ideas I had already in order for them to get a clearer picture of what I was asking about.

The goal was to help me narrow down before pulling together a focus group to help me iron out the final details, the main overarching idea for me to be able to make a few samples for the next stage. Below you can see an example of the general responses to some of the things that I asked in my questions:

The reasoning behind having a chart in this manner is that it clearly lays out each section that I asked after for a viewer, each section has a number and the thought process was the numbers that follow the labels are who voted in favour of having or using the previously stated.

Each section follows a question that I asked on the questionnaire relevant to the production so I broke the questions down in order to get me these categories.

As you can see there are some clear responses such as the choice between edited audio and unedited for the video, as well as stop motion over live action. This has helped to influence what I want to get out of this production as now I have a clear direction for the primary way of the production and it has also given me the chance of getting a decent back-up should the other flop.

In a more detailed format of specifics i.e. what I asked in terms of questions and how they were responded to, here's a few graphs that break it down: 

As you can see here this was a close divide when you actually look at the data. This helps me to determine that while another form of video is preferred I can still make the project a success even with it as a live-action.

This helps me in decision-making as well as allocation because it A) shows that if I were to get a live action video done then I need to dedicate the same amount of time to it as I would the other choice and B) Not to focus on certain parts of it but rather ensure that I give more thoughtful time to each shot if you will as this will effect the quality of what I put out.

Now this area has a much different result to it than any of the others because there's a clear majority over one than the others. 

As you can see on the left there was a small response in favour of this technique however the vast majority decided against it.

I didn't include a development box because I didn't feel that it wasn't necessary to the questionnaire at the time. This wasn't the best method for getting data as for a question like this as I might have missed out on something vital that could help the production.

Focus Group Pt 2

 The Findings

Armed with some feedback from the questionnaire I decided to take what was said into account and begin to make a video based around it. Soon enough I had a small draft sample ready and together to present to the focus group. I'll present the key points below separated out by each section discussed:

Generic Information

There were 3-4 people who participated within this focus group. It took place on Teams and lasted for around 12mins out of a 1hr 5mins video chat where I gave input to other creators as well. We held this on Thursday 6th May.

The Objective of the time

In this focus group I had a main goal of seeking guidance with how to proceed further in making my video. I had a few paths to go down and I wasn't sure which one would be the most effective choice to make this project a success, but my secondary goal was to see what edits would work with the song and the visuals in order to get everything put together in an effective manner.

The Main Q+A

Here you can see an example of the questions that I wanted to ask the group during our time. I'll go through them in brief:

I had two different versions of the same video ready to play and played both for this first part, for the first piece about the audio they liked a first option that I had available with a bit of diluted colour but a VHS overlay.

The second fell in line with what I expected from due to previous reference from the questionnaire where the original audio won out over an edited piece that had been made. This came from the fact that the group felt it made the audio quality seem of a lower quality and that any additional input over what's there already would distract from the song itself. 

The last question that I feel is important to address from this questionnaire is on the subject of lyrics on screen to follow along with the audio. The reason why I feel this is the final important one is because it could be done a lot of ways and figuring out what to do early on before the production goes into a lot of factors; some including tracking or making sure that the lyrics aren't covering any major pieces of the screen. The focus group decided against this as there would be too much information on screen and would distract from the main visuals on the screen itself meaning that there was a high chance of confusion of what the focus was.

Issues and Resolution

A few issues were brought up about the draft video that was shown during this, the top being the best way to execute the video. As I was vague in the questioning and the draft videos didn't demonstrate the idea well there was a discussion about them in order for me to explain my ideas for the group to understand and for us to proceed.

The second was concerning the audio, I made a big point about how the edited audio was good and that it related well to the topic of the video that I wanted to make. However they advised me against it because the sound while different seems poor and that could impact the audience enjoyment but also there could be disassociation between what the audience is hearing and what they're seeing.