Tuesday 13 December 2016

Opening Sequence Updated - Samit

Looking back on the opening sequence I noticed that most of the footage in opening sequence was not the same size. So after some editing using Premier Elements I was able to fix the mistake.

Samit

Updated Interview footage - Samit

After reviewing the footage which we currently had for the interview, I noticed that the footage i captured was portrait which created a lot of space on the screen which was not being used and made the whole shot look weird. So, using After Effects I edited the interview footage to fill the blank gaps to make the footage look more appealing in a landscape view.

Opening Sequence - Seyi

I made a copy of the opening sequence and added in my suggestions in order to improve it. I changed the transitions and added in some of my late footage, and achieved this as my end result.



I spotted a few mishaps in the work, and i aim to edit the video to rid of them.

  • In the first part with the spinning globe, there are three dashes at the bottom of the frame and a search button in the top right hand corner of the frame. This came from filming the spinning globe on a phone. On premiere elements, it is shown that we had attempted to remove it from the frame, but it keeps coming up in the final rendered video. The image below shows this:
  • I also noticed that in the rendered video uploaded to youtube, the frames are all different sizes. I will find a solution to this later.
  • I also think that the globe footage is too blurry to be our final product. We may have to screencast on a computer in order to receive the perfect outcome 

Thursday 8 December 2016

NEW!! Updated three column script - Seyi

I spent a week gathering information to create this script. It is not completely perfect, as I need to simplify it, add more data that can be represented in charts, and make all the American information British (such as the currency).

Video
Audio
Time
Camera starts looking at the presenter standing outside the location.
(Leicester Square music Station)












Add in graphics (bar chart)
PRESENTER:

Hey guys, it’s (presenters name) here for Independent Music News London.

50 years ago, we would have all owned a mixtape (pulls out a mixtape) of some underground artist or the other. But face-to-face mixtape sales has always been a means to an end.

Streaming - the best way to release music since mixtapes. But is it beneficial to the artist, or just another method of exploitation? In an industry that is constantly changing, can artists be sure to make sales off streaming right now?

Today more music sales are higher than they have ever been before, due to streaming provided from apps such as Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud and Tidal.
As listeners can listen to as many songs as they want, for a cheaper price through streaming via the internet. This helps the artist reach audiences worldwide quicker.
35 seconds
Cutaways ( of what?) and edits matching the dialogue
VOICEOVER: In October 2012, unsigned rapper, Nipsey Hussle made $100,000 by selling 1,000 copies of his mixtape, Crenshaw, for $100 each.
He shifted every single CD in less than 24 hours at a pop-up store in his hometown of L.A.

So face-to-face sales is not completely dead, but streaming has done so much more for artists so far. But that does not necessarily make it 'idea of the year.'

Spotify says that its average payout for a stream to labels and publishers is between $0.006 and $0.0084, however, Information Is Beautiful suggests that the average payment to an artist is $0.001128 – this being what a signed artist receives after the label's share.

The worst payout of all for musicians, however, comes from Youtube, which pays out about .0003 per play.
An artist signed to a record label would thus have to have their Youtube video played 4,200,000 times in order to earn the monthly U.S. minimum wage of $1,260.
So what about Tidal?
The service pays 0.007 cents per stream — while it doesn’t sound like much of a difference to its competitors, a signed artist would only need to be streamed 180,000 times on the service to make the monthly minimum wage.

Musicians who stay independent have the potential to earn the most money, according to all the average rates. Unsigned artists average about $5.99 for every $9.99 album downloaded from iTunes through a distributor, while signed artist's average $2.30 per $9.99 album downloaded through iTunes. Minus a label’s take on profits, artists also make more per play on every streaming service.
2 minutes 30 seconds
PRESENTER: Streaming will earn artists a lot, but only with enough users. Royalty payouts from streaming might seem small now, but that’s because it’s fairly new. Eventually as more listeners sign-up, the payouts would seem more significant.
The alternative is piracy. If music isn’t easily accessible for free with ads or through a subscription, people will just steal it and then artists earn nothing. Last year alone, 1.2 billion songs were illegally downloaded by 7.7 million music fanatics, costing roughly around 1 billion dollars for the industry.
So if streaming does not bring in the lion share at the moment, then what does?
The big money’s always been through performing And Merchandise – Labels have always cheated artists out of recorded music dollars. Artists should think of streaming as a brand promotion tactic.
So should remain as an independent artist or sign yourself up to a label.

Labels Are Hoarding The Royalties – Services like Spotify and Apple Music pay more than 70% of what they earn to the labels, and most of the rest covers expenses of running the apps. The problem is that the labels push artists into exploitative record deals where they only get a tiny share of the royalties, and the labels keep the rest.
Artists who are frustrated about streaming should demand better deals from their labels, and remember the alternative is getting their work stolen, be patient, and tour. Once more people realize how amazing it is to be able listen to any song they want, the money will come.

As an independent artist, you are more likely to earn a fair share of the money you recieve. So through performing and merchendise, you may recieve up to 100% of the proceeds. However, there are more opportunities brought to the table when signed to a label. So one must be actively searching for opportunities, looking for ways to spread their music on a large scale and probably have a manager, if they are independent.
1 minute 25 seconds
Interview (with artists: a signed artist/manager and an unsigned artist, seated at the same table)
VOICEOVER: We then caught up with two people with experience in this industry...
INTERVIEWER: We are here with (artist name) and (artist/manager) name) at (where you are).
  • How’s it going?
(answer)
  • So, as we all know, you have achieved independent success in the industry, and you are currently signed to a label. We are all excited to find out, how was your time been in this industry?
(answer)
  • Where was your favourite live performance?
(answer)
  • Why did you choose to stay/leave your label?
(answer)
  • Do you feel you are better off with or without a label?
(answer)
  • Where does majority of your income come from?
(answer)
  • Can you see a significant change in income and name recognition since you first started?
(answer)
  • Do you think the internet has helped or hindered your career success?
(answer)
  • Lastly, which deal do you advise coming up artists not to sign or what do you regret ever signing?
(answer)
3 minutes 15 seconds
Vox pops (questions for the public)
We also caught up with Londoners to ask them questions about how they access their music, and why they choose to access it the way they do.
  • Listen to this… would you pay to stream this?
  • Where do you buy/stream your music?
  • Do you illegally download music?
  • What was the last song you listened to that was paid for?
  • Do you come across underground artists? If so… how?
1 minute 10 seconds

Interview footage - Seyi

Below is my footage from when we went to film on Chagford Road. I did not get to post this for a while because the footage was not importing into the computer:



Issues encountered while filming:
  • My camera battery died, so I had to film with the charger in the camera on the tripod
  • Samit filmed on his phone but in portrait, so the footage came out in an odd frame which does not match mine or the other footage we have filmed.
  • Rye's battery died.
  • Someone honked their horn whilst filming outside.
  • I constructed a shot list, but I was the only one who followed it because of the space difficulty, the dead camera batteries and the access to only one copy.
How we could have done better:
  • Our intention before filming, was to film with two cameras. However, there was not much space to set up, so the angles did not turn out as nice, and there was always a camera showing in the shot. We could have positioned them better in order to achieve a variety of angles and shots.
  • We should have full batteries before going out to film.
  • We should not have moved or zoomed while filming, because it is a filming 101 NO, it ruins the raw footage, makes it harder to cut and should only be done through editing or on a dolly.
  • The room was quite dim, causing my footage to look a bit dull. For higher quality footage, more lighting should be involved, as it really helped in my AS work.

Tuesday 6 December 2016

Monday 5 December 2016

Ideas for graphics for the final product - Arman

I have decided to take it upon myself to create the graphs for our final media piece.  I will be learning how to animate to show percentages of our interviews and display facts and figures on the screen for our final production.

Potential interview with A.Human - Arman

Following our interview with Jonny and Danny, we have found many intriguing answers that opened our eyes more to how the music industry revolves around smaller artists.  So far we haven't received a response from A.Human for our interview, however we will have to find a new interviewee if A.Human doesn't respond within the week seeing that our deadline for research+planning is December 15th.

We have an interviewee in mind, he goes by the name of DJ Shitpost, here's his soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/6666666666
We hope that A.Human does respond in time so that we have the opportunity to have a bigger musical name as one of our interviewees.  Though we don't mean to belittle DJ Shitpost, we simply would find it more practical if we had a band assigned to a minor label rather than a freelance artist.

Friday 2 December 2016

Icongraphic 1 - Seyi

Research & Planning AND Construction

Graphs: I decided to use the same graphs and information from the research and planning from the script. I do not intend on duplicating the graphs, but simplifying them and selecting which are appropriate for our central question/topic (streaming and the internet).

YouTube Tutorials: This is my first time using Adobe After Effects so I used many YouTube tutorials in order to create the final product. Below are those I had used:

This was the first video I decided to follow, in order to make my own template inspired by the video below. It was quite difficult as I went through several different videos until I came across the right tutorial. Many of them did not have the same controls as I did or their expressions did not work or it's complicated.



The first thing I had imported into this animation was a picture, to emphasize on the 'bad' statistic, because if our audience consists of independent artists looking to make internet success, then this statistic would be of disadvantage to them. Plus, it was also going to add a sense of humour to the animation, because the picture is constantly used as a meme on social media. I used the video below to learn how to do this.


I then used this song from the YouTube video below (using an online YouTube converter to change it from mp4 to mp3) to put in the background to make it a bit more humour as well as emphasize on the bad statistic. I did not need a YouTube tutorial to teach me how to do it because once I learned how to import pictures, I just applied common sense. The fact that it is a song from an independent DJ makes it more relevant to the theme of our news package.



I was then under the impression that I had finished, however when I had replayed the video because I wanted to admire my work, however I found out that it was not playing sound, so I used the videos below to instruct me on how to do so, and to save the video as an mp4 in order for me to upload it onto YouTube.



Final Product
After a few weeks of research and planning and actually constructing it. I came up with this. However, I will edit it later, just to change the colours to or central colour which we will decide early this week. I will also add the voiceover later, in order for it to make more sense to our viewers. So far it is 6 seconds long, but I will be making more infographics for this news package for more content. Below is my final product: