Audience Research

As part of my audience research I have created a questionnaire to hand out at my church to see what the general view is on christian music videos. I included these questions:

How much contemporary christian music do you listen to?
Do you enjoy listening to new music?
How many music videos have you seen?
How many christian music videos have you seen?
If its not a lot, would you be interested in this sort of thing?
What kind of music video would you prefer?
If neither please state what you would prefer?
Do you prefer music videos to...
Have you heard of the band 'The Rend Collective Experiment' before?

I will hand these out at my church this week and hopefully collate all the information the week after

Mood Board

To help inspire me with my music video I went across the internet looking for things that I thought might relate to the music video that I want to create. Here is what I came up with:

Some of the stuff that I have found here may way have inspired me to try some different things out with this music video. I might attempt to try out a form of light painting and I think I may have the lead singer/guitarist singing and playing at the same time wherever the guy is running.

My New Video Camera

I have recently purchased a new Full HD video camera from Amazon. I got this for my home video work but also as the video camera we used last year in school just weren't very high quality. The camera is a Sanyo G320 and goes up to full 1080p HD quality at 60 frames per second. I did some quick videos in the common room at school on all the different settings and created a video with all videos on so that I could see the quality difference of the videos. See below (You will need a HD screen to see the video in HD):


Video Camera Research from Adam Latham on Vimeo.

After this I have decided to choose the 30 fps in FULL HD. This means that it won't take as long to process the video when it comes down to it and will also DOUBLE the amount of video that I can take in one go. With this camera it also means I can use it at home and when I wish to without having to book it out with school

My Video Objectives This Year

I WILL:

• Get my youth group involved
• Range of locations
• Plan as much as the production
• Use a range of camera shots
• Use new better editing styles

I WILL NOT:

• Put myself in the video
• Leave it all to the last second
• Forget about the song itself
• Be afraid to try out new things
• Only do work in school

Music Video Research

Underneath are several chrisitan music videos that I have looked at to get ideas for creating my piece of work. All videos are from YouTube.

This is the original video












So what I have seen from these videos is that a lot of them just generally have the band members just playing their music in different locations. The kind of music videos that I want to be creating is the kind of thing that is shown in slow fade where the video is going backwards and there is the slow motion of the things reversing into form like with the picture frame etc. This is the kind of ingenuity that new music videos should contain and what I want to see more of in christian music videos. I think I want to do something amazing and unexpected in my video. I think I may try to do everything in one take if I can work around the logistics.

I want to challenge the things that people expect to see from christians like with the organ music and sitting on pews on a sunday morning with our suits on etc. Its something which is not true for all of us and its time now that technologies have advanced and become so much more accessible for the smaller companies to create amazing effects like huge bands and video companies make everyday. I think now is probably the best time of all

Digital Technology

• How has digital technology helped you to capture your ideas for media production?
I used iMovie to edit my video and my video was uploaded to Vimeo afterwards so that the whole world can see my video. I also used wordpress to put all of my notes and production sections on the internet to save paper

• What benefits do digital technologies offer? Are there any disadvantages?
There are several issues to do with secrecy and secure files. It is a real worry that if you save some files and later find out that they have disappeared you could be really set back and lose a lot of work

• How did digital technology influence your work in post-production – for example in the creation of video effects, or the manipulation of images.
The use of technology was limited as we didn't have the software that we have this year. Really the only bit of post production that I did was slow down the footage and add a vignette and slightly changed the colour

• How have your skills with digital technology developed, and how has this influenced your productions?
Since last year we have new better software and I have been slowly trying to train myself up with the software by looking at tutorials, videos and making things of my own to go on youtube

• What role might digital technology play in the distribution of work such as yours?
I will be using YouTube to help distribute my video this year. I can use all sorts of extra things like Facebook and Twitter etc. There are also loads of extra things all around on the internet and through the school that will help too

Coursework Action Plan

There are many things that I need to look through before I even get anywhere near actually filming and editing the footage for my piece. I have decided that the song I have chosen is MOVEMENTS - REND COLLECTIVE EXPERIMENT. This song is a christian song so there are many different things I need to research for this video.


PLAN:
Background Research on Song

• Find Lyrics
• Look at original video
• Contact Band
• Look at inconventional videos shots/editing

Mood Board

• Look at other chrisitan music videos
• Find ideas that fit the lyrics

Audience Research (At my church)

• Ask if they've seen any music video
• What christian music they listen to
• How many times they've seen music videos

Scripting/plan

• Location ideas
• Character ideas
• Relate videos to lyrics

Storyboard

• Draw out shots
• Finalise script

Location Research

• Rivers
• Roads
• Wymondham centre

Choosing the Song

I have decided that the best way to go is to look at MUSIC VIDEOS
Because I think christian music can create great pictures that I think is what I want to do. Also, it seems that some christian music videos are very typical and its exactly what you'd expect to see and I want to change that.
My next task is to look at some christian artists and songs and see what it is that I want to produce. I will list the songs and artists I have looked at underneath:

Casting Crowns - Until the whole world hears, Lifesong,
Mercyme - This life, The generous Mr. Lovewell
Matt Redman - The glory of our king
Hillsong - Your name high
David Crowder Band - ...neverending... , foreverandever etc...
Rend Collective Experiment - Movements, Come on my soul
Switchfoot - Gone, Hello Hurricane
Tenth Avenue North - Hold my heart
Tobymac - City on our knees, Showstopper
Phil Wickham - You're Beautiful
Simon Brading - Let the rain come
Kristian Stanfill - Say Say
Hawk Nelson - Live life loud

I have decided to choose the one in bold. I am hoping to send them a letter explaining what I wish to do with their song as I think they might be interested

G324 - Ideas For Briefs

TV Documentary

Last year, me and a couple of friends tried to make a documentary that very quickly turned into a 'mockumentary.' If I were to do a documentary this time I would do it seriously

Ideas:

The modernisation of the Church - This is something that is quite close to my heart actually. I think a lot of people still believe that the church is somewhere that you go to read off a scripted service and listen to an organ. This is not so however.

Teenage Reputations - Teenagers are getting bad press all the time with people being killed and teenage pregnancy number going through the roof but is this a harsh generalisation of the youth in this country

Local Newspaper

I used to write a load of fake newspaper stories so this could be a great idea to get me going.

Ideas:

Jazzed up and modernised parish church newspaper - Go about modernising the local news and the way people get up to date

Short Film

I did try making a short film once but never got to the editing stage. I might go and finish it one day

Ideas:

Post apocalypse disaster - Man appears in a field in Norfolk in an post apocalypse world with only a phone and a few instructions in how to survive.

______________________________________________

Questions asked by Ideas Partner

Where will the films be set?

How will you keep the watchers/readers focused?

A2 Media Portfolio Brief

There are five options which from which we have the correct facilities to create. These are as follows:

1) Music Video

2) Original Children's Drama

3) TV documentary

4) Local Newspaper

5) Short film

ORIGINAL CHILDREN'S DRAMA

Ref. Wikipedia - 100 Greatest Tv Shows

Top 4 - All animated/puppets: Simpsons, Muppets, Danger Mouse, Bagpuss

Wide range of programmes from Dr. Who to Grange Hill to Blue Peter to Wallace and Gromit. Seems some of the most popular are from the 70s and 80s like the muppets, bagpuss, the clangers and the wombles

Ref. Wikipedia - Children's television series

Children's tv is almost as old as TV. Most programmes from the UK involved a heavy educational plug. Shows started to become more entertaining like looney tunes and scooby doo etc.

I think that I don't want to make anything really stereotpical and not very interesting or too patronising so I don't think I want to do this one

MUSIC VIDEO

This is the one I am particularly interested in. I am a christian and I think that there is a lot of christian music that can paint pictures in your head and I they are many great songs that don't have music videos. I have found a band called 'Rend Collective Experiment.' I think the video that they have made for 'movements' isn't one of their best however the lyrics and music of the song is very cool and I think this is definitely something I can do.

I will look at several christian bands to see what others are doing and what I can incorporate into my video. I will list videos I have looked at underneath:

AS Course Reflection

Research

Audience Research:

Looking at other film openings
Online, other examples of action films

Planning

Challenge Post

New Year, New Blog

This is Adam Latham.

I am a video maker and student from Wymondham. This is where all the stuff for my A2 media course will appear over time.

Meanwhile, check out my Youtube channel and all the cool videos that I am making :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/adslatham101