Final Evaluation Question 4.

 

FINAL EVALUTAION: Question 3

Evaluation Question 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has been one of the most important factor we had to include when doing our project. It has driven us into the right direction, taking in people's thoughts and opinions about we needed to do. 

I would say that the most important feedback we have received throughout the course is the comment left on our blogs from our teachers, I think that this has definitely been one of the most important because they have helped us develop our ideas and guided us to what we needed to do. 

Above is an example of one of the many comments left by our teachers, in this particular comment. Our teacher has left us clear information about the things we needed to do in order to get the grade we had wanted. They were also encouraging us to update our posts more so they could get an understanding of what ideas and concepts we had for out project. This led to constructive criticism which helped us the quality and quantity of our work.  

Above is a video of us doing our pitch, an example of audience feedback would be  Q&A afterwards. This particular type of feedback was very personal, it was sort of like a one on one conversation telling our classmates the things that they didn't understand. I thought that having this personal way of getting audience feedback was very effective as it allowed us to convey the idea we had clearly and thoroughly for for the people who didn't understand.

Here is an example of us getting audience feedback via Facebook, we thought that this would be a good idea as it allowed us to get feedback from people we knew. Below, the users on facebook were allowed to leave comments as such as to what they thought about it. I thought that this particular type of feedback was also very helpful in the process of our project, it allowed us to get an insight of what our friends and peers thought of our work.

Generally, I thought that the best way of getting feedback from people was via the internet. This offered a vast audience depending on the choice of media platform you were using. For example with Twitter, it seems as though I have a lot more people following me who I don't know than who I do know, so this offered a range of feedback from strangers offering their real thoughts and opinions about the Music Video and Ancillary Texts. Most of them were positive and also some of the comments gave us constructive advice on what we needed to improve on for the final music video.

FINAL EVALUTAION: Question 2

FINAL EVALUTAION: Question 1

DRAFT: Evaluation Question 4

Media Evaluation: Evaluation Question 4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

                

Technology has played a crucial role from the very start of the course, it has helped us communicate on an instant level where we are able to get a hold of each other whenever we wanted. Whether if it was discussing new ideas and concepts that had popped into our heads when we weren’t with each other, it gave us a good foundation for us to work on

For our music video, we were able to use a variety of technologies which helped us to achieve the result we wanted. I would say that the backbone of the whole video making process was the use of Blogger, this let us publish our own individual ideas that could be incorporated into the video itself. We were also able to see different ideas each one of us had and take influences from each other to create the piece of work we wanted. For our research and planning, we published posts that expressed the thoughts and ideas we had at the time, the positive points about Blogger is that it allows you to embed pictures and videos from Youtube and other online video platforms to support the ideas you wanted to portray. The most important online media platform we used for communicating o one another was Twitter, this was a practical choice because it allowed to communicate with each other in and outside of school when we weren’t with each other. Another positive aspect of twitter was that there is an app available for smartphones, which gave us instant communication as the tweets would come instantaneously and we would be able to tweet back with a number of minutes. As we had planned to feature shots of London in the video, technology has us in a huge way in terms of organizing and planning the trip. We used the internet to find out the cheapest hotel and train fares so we could save money and use that for our time there, the internet also helped find out what the weather was going to be like in London at the time, this was a crucial aspect of the video as we wanted to portray London as this gloomy and lonely city.

For the making of our video, we used a FujiFilm SLR camera which gave us the opportunity to shoot the shots in HD. This offered high quality shots, which we thought would make the overall appearance of the video more professional and high quality. The camera was also lightweight and featured a strap which we could put around necks for extra safety and support as walking around London with an expensive camera wasn’t particularly a good idea. After we had shot our videos, the transfer from the camera to the computer was very easy as all of the clips had been saved to a memory card; the computers which we used for our editing did not have a memory card reader so we had to acquire one by buying one off the internet. The transfer was fairly fast and easy to do, we made sure that we had a backup of the shots we had done so far so we used an external-hard drive to put the clips onto incase anything happened to the memory card.

To edit our video, we chose to use Adobe Premiere Elements that was available on the school computers. We chose to use the computers at school because they were far more faster than the ones we had at home, at first, we were hesitant when it came to using Premiere as we hadn’t had any experience with the software before. But after experimenting with the software, we become very compatible and allowed us to edit the clips and shots we had. This particular video editing software had a very friendly user interface where we could easily navigate to the clips we wanted and we were also able to cut the clips easily as well. Premiere also had a variety of video settings where we were able to change the appearance of our clips, for example in our video, we chose to use the Black & White filter that was available, we thought that this was effective because it portrayed the dark gloomy isolation we wanted to convey to the audience watching it.

The images I used for my Digipak and Poster were shot by the same camera I had used to shoot the music video; this particular camera gave crisp and clear high quality images of the city shots I wanted to put in my digipak and poster. The editing software I had used for both products was Adobe Photoshop Elements, I already had some experience with this software as I had already used it in my AS year of Media Studies so when it came to making the actual products, I knew exactly what I was doing when it came to what I wanted to do on the program. I found that this program gave me a variety of different methods to achieve the product I wanted, it offers a range of artistic effects you can apply to the images that would make it more interesting to look at. 

DRAFT: Evaluation Question 3

Media Evaluation: Evaluation Question 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

                

Throughout the course, we have received feedback from our teachers telling us what improvements and changes were needed in order to get the grade we wanted. I think that this has been the biggest influence because it is them who will be marking the grade although the music video wasn’t meant to be made for that type of audience. The audience we aimed for at the start of the course was mainly mainstream music listeners who liked whatever was on the charts.

                

While making the music video, we regularly posted on our blog to tell our teachers what we were up to and what ideas we had at the time. I thought that this was a great way of communicating to them when we weren’t in class, the blog become a great foundation for music video to sit on. The comments from our teacher would be their personal opinions saying what they thought did and didn’t work, not only did we receive comments from our teachers, we also asked our fellow classmates to also give their personal opinions about what they did and didn’t like about our idea, we were also open to constructive criticism as this would help us make a music video which would attract people around the same age range as they would be the desirable age group we’re trying to attract.

                

When the Music Video was finished, published the video onto a number of media platforms such as Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and of course, our Blog. We thought that it would be a good idea to do it on a number of different platforms because it brings a variety group of people. We were able to get feedback from people we didn’t know on Tumblr, they gave us negative and positive feedback which was helpful for us to know what we needed to improve on for the draft. Twitter and Facebook allowed us to get feedback from the people that we knew and had a relationship with, the comments and feedback we got from this were mainly positive. 

DRAFT: Evaluation Question 2

Media Evaluation: EVALUATION 2. How Effective is the Combination of Your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

                

To make sure that the combination of my main product, the Music Video and the Ancillary Texts, Digipak and Poster was effective, I had to ensure that I created a ‘branding’ across these products that would make it recognisable to their fans.

Starting off with the Music Video, as this was our main product. I had to base my other two Ancillary texts around this in order to get the overall image I wanted of the band. As the music video only featured the lead singer, I thought that it would be a good idea to not include a picture of the band for the ancillary texts. This would ruin the continuity and it wouldn’t be as effective. As the music video was very heavily based in London, I wanted to carry this idea of using the city shots into my other texts which I had created.

For my Digipak, I was thinking about the overall image of the band, I wanted their music to come across instead of how they looked. So I thought that it would be a good idea to just feature the city shots I had taken in London while we were shooting, this gives the digipak and Music Video a much closer connection making it easier for the fans and people seeing it on the shelves to relate it to the band. For the digipak, I also kept a very simple colour scheme; the reason for this is because I didn’t want it to become too busy and amateur looking. So I stuck with the colour red as this is the colour that in my opinion, really describes the iconic city of London. Whether it’s the classic city buses, old telephone boxes, or even the guard uniforms at Buckingham Palace, I think that red is the most attractive and best choice to include in my digipak.

               

For the poster, I had chosen to use the same image as I had chosen for the front cover of the digipak. I thought that this worked really well together as a combination of branding because by using the same image for the digipak front cover and the poster, it makes it easier for the audience to recognise who that image belongs to. I thought that this worked very well as a branding technique as I hadn’t featured any members of the band on either the front cover of the digipak or the poster.

Overall, I think that the combination of all the products I have created flow very well together. I have used the city to be the main thing element to help tie everything else together. I thought that this was very effective as it showed where the video was set and by using the same Black & White filter as I did in the video, it idea of loneliness and isolation still flows throughout whole products.

DRAFT: Evaluation Question 1

Media Evaluation: EVALUATION 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The first step we took in making our main product was choosing the song to base our Music Video around. We had come up with a list of songs which we both commonly liked, and listened to each of them individually numerous times, but the song we liked the most was ‘Good Life’ by OneRepublic. We began to understand the lyrics of the song and started to map out ideas in our minds of what we had wanted in this particular video, the upbeat tempo of the song also really helped us to figure out the camera angles and cuts we wanted so it would portray the storyline effectively all the while still looking professional.

                

We started to look at other videos by different artists and bands to try and get inspiration for what we wanted to do; the idea which we both liked was to shoot some of the scenes in London. The reason for this is because in the very first line of the song, it says ‘Woke up in London yesterday’, so by connecting to the literal meaning of the song, it would give the audience an instant connection to where the video is set. We watched numerous videos on YouTube and really liked the ones which portrayed an isolated atmosphere; our favourites were Snow Patrol’s ‘Open Your Eyes’ and The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. We really liked use of having a one shot video like the one used for ‘Open Your Eyes’, this particular video featured a point of view from the camera, mounted on the front of a car driving around Paris. I thought that this was very effective as there wasn’t hardly any editing at all, I really liked the simplicity of it and I think that this is the reason why it is so effective. The other video which we really liked was ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’; we really liked this particular video because it portrayed isolation where he wasn’t really connected with the world around him. Even though he is walking down a busy street with people walking past him, when we were watching the video, it didn’t seem like he was in sync with everyone else. So, when we had decided that we were going to use the city for our music video, we began to realise that the song wasn’t talking about how great the city really is, so to prevent the video from not making sense, we thought that it would be a good idea to do a contrast between the City and the Country. This way, we could incorporate the iconic London landmarks which would make the video interesting for the audience to watch as they would instantly recognise it and it would flow with the song as it talks about the ‘Good’ parts of life.

In the process of coming up with ideas, we had to factor in the theorists such as Goodwin and Mulvey. Starting with Goodwin, we tried to incorporate the link between the actual lyrics of the song to the visuals of the video, an example of this would be the London shots we included in the very start of the video, referencing to the lyrics of the song 'Woke up In London Yesterday' and cutting to the shots in the city itself therefore amplifying the lyrics to the audience making them more connected and involved with the video. When thinking about Mulvey, we took her theory of the 'Male Gaze' and applied it to our Music Video, as we featured a female actor for the majority of the video, we think that this is shown through the use of camera angles and mis-en-scene such as the clothing she wore in the video.
                

At first, we challenged the usual conventions of not having a performance in our music video. But when we had finished our draft, we had found that it didn’t quite work as well as we had hoped. So in order to fix this, we had decided to put a performer into the video singing parts of the song making sure we cut into the right moments so the video would flow properly. We thought that it would be strange to the audience as to why there is a male singer and a female actress walking about the city and country, so we had come up with an idea of creating a story behind that the two were in a relationship in the past and he sings about her while she walks around lost and vulnerable by herself. To make sure that the audience got this, we featured a shot of the singer holding a picture of her in his phone and then  dropping it onto a seat, where the camera zoomed up to see her clearly.

                

Looking at my digipak, I think I have again challenged the usual conventions of featuring the artist on the cover. I have done this because I wanted to keep the band sort of mysterious from the audience; I wanted their music to come across more than what they looked like. The idea of me not featuring the band on the front cover came from the Kings of Leon’s Come Around Sundown and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida where they both featured an illustration, not themselves. I kept to all the images used on the digipak Black & White so it would instantly connect with the Music Video. I had chosen the colour red because of the iconic things around London, for example with the old telephone boxes, old buses, letter boxes. I wanted to incorporate this colour because I wanted it to relate more to the setting of the video even though you don’t see the colour of these objects in the video because it is Black & White.

                

The inspiration behind the poster was the same as my digipak, I chose to use the same picture as I did for that because I wanted to create a branding that would it make recognisable to the band’s fans and it would also help distinguish who they are. When looking at my research on posters, I found that most of them featured the artist posing in a strong position to get people’s attention. I would say that again, like my digipak, I have challenged the usual conventions of posters because I did not follow the usual conventions of putting an artist or a band on there. But I thought that this would work because I wanted the band to be more mysterious, I wanted the sound of their music to represent who they are, not what they look like. Like the Gorillaz how they have animated characters playing them in their videos.

                

Final Music Video.

Editing techniques.

Editing Techinques

Problems with Editing

For the editing part of our Music Video, we have been confronted with a big problem. All of our video clips which we shot with our own camera shoots in MOV files, and when we tried to import this into Adobe Premiere but we were unsuccessful because the software doesn't support this. Originally, we were going to use iMovie on the eMac, but we found that it was taking quite a long time to actually import the videos onto there because of the hardware of the eMac was older and slower than the PCs.


To overcome this problem we decided to convert the files in to MPEGs which we could use on Adobe Premiere although this was successful at first because of the amount of clips we had it slowed down my user area. I had to ask for more space on my area which initial made it quicker, however we found that during saving, loading files and rendering the clips the program was very slow and crashed from time to time.

We then decided to use the eMac with the MPEG files which although thought would be compatible with the eMac and quicker to load than the MOV files the eMac did not recognise Eleanor's external hard drive. We then put all the clips on to a memory card and used a card reader to upload them onto the eMac. This worked fine however the clips would not load which we discovered was due to the eMac not being compatible with the newer MPEG format because its an older system.

Therefore we have needed to convert the MOV files again to MPEG files with a DVD pal format which we will use in Adobe Premiere. To overcome the issues with the program running too slowly we have saved the scratch disk files in Premiere Elements to Eleanor's hard drive which has a bigger memory than our user areas. This should speed things up because the clip files, rendering files, scratch disk files and whole project will run off the external hard drive.

Hopefully once our files have been converted we can start using Adobe Premiere Elements more quickly.

Filming Bank lip-syncing.

We have re-filmed the lip syncing shots with Bank and feel that it works better. We also added a modern looking chair to show some context as the shots we did with Henry looked too bare. We kept the rest of the mise-en-scene very simple and made the lighting work so both sides of Bank's face were lit up.

We shot Bank lip-syncing to the whole song - standing up against the wall and sitting down to add some variation and we are going to cut between shots of him lip-syncing and the narrative. To link him to the narrative we created some shots with him with a photograph of Katie both on his phone and a printed picture. We are going to see what looks and works best and use that in the final edit of our music video.

It took a while to get the shots right and for Bank to get used to being in front of the camera but we are quite pleased with the outcome and think it works better as he looks like he is into and really singing the music.

Final Poster

Final Digipak

Filming our singer.

Today we filmed with Henry who is posing as our singer. We filmed in my room against a blank wall and used three lamps to light it up so there wasn't obvious shadows. We played the song so Henry could sing along however it took quite a few shots for Henry to relax singing in front of the camera.

Although we got some go shots and varied the camera angle we felt that Henry was uncomfortable which showed on the footage so we have decided to use Bank as the singer and to link the shots of him to the narrative by filming him looking at his phone with photographs of London and Katie. We will film the shots with Bank in the same location as it looked quite effective but we might add a simple, modern looking chair for him to sit on to give it some context and we need to improve the lighting so the light is equal on both sides of Bank's face.

Evaluation Of Poster

After having feedback, I found that two out of three of the posters did not connect with the rest of the Digipak. Even though one of them featured a classic London bus and the other having a close up of country leaves relating to the whole Country Vs City concept, I think it would be more effective for my final poster, that I choose to use the picture of the London Underground sign in Picadilly. By using this particular picture, it will relate and connect with the front cover of the Digipak and also make it easier for the audiences to recognise who the poster belongs to, creating a sort of branding for the band.

I am going to be keeping this particular picture, but I am going to be changing some elements of it. The first change I am going to make is with the colour of the 'Colours' bit in the title of the album, I am going to be changing this to the colour red as it is on the Digipak. For the picture, I think I am going to be converting it to Black & White, this will make it more alike with the front cover of the digipak and easier for the audiences to realise who the poster belongs to. Another change I will be making is the colour of the London Underground sign, I am going to be keeping the original colour of it which was red, and coincidentally this will match the colour of the 'Colours' bit of the album and creating a much warmer feel to the entire poster by just adding one colour. The release date of the album is almost invisible as the colour of it was black, it blends seamlessly into the high contrast of blackness of the picture therefore making it hard for the audiences to know when the album comes out which is bad for the band's album sales. Lastly, I need to add the record company's details to establish who is responsible for them. This is seen on most artist's posters and makes it look more professional and established that they have got an actual record company sponsoring them.

Change In Music Video

After we recieved feedbck for our music video, we have decided that it would be more effective to have a male singer lip-syncing the song. We have already chosen our lip-syncer, his name is Henry, although he doesn't look like a member of OneRepublic, we can always change that by changing his appearance, clothes, hair etc.

We are als going to try and intergrate the shots of him in with the narrative by using pictures of him with Katie so the audience understand that the two people are connected.

Evaluation of Digipak

After having the feedback , I found that a few improvements were needed for my Digipak and Poster in order for me to get the grade I wanted.

The first thing I have to do it to change the layout of the current Digipak as it doesn't look like a conventional Digipak that you would normally see. What I have created for my draft looks more like inserts for a CD cover. For my final Digipak, I have decided that it will have six panels altogether, three inside and three outside. Another decision I have made after having the feedback is that I am going to be keeping the whole Digipak City focused. I think it works and looks better instead of incorporating both the country and the city into it.

The front cover of the Digipak doesn't need any dramatic changes, but from the feedback I found that instead of keeping the whole of the picture  black and white I should consider changing the colour of the London Underground to Red matching to the colour of the 'Colours' bit of the album name. This picture captures the very essence of the busy life of the city, I like the way that it shows the fast paced environment of the city even when its late at night, it shows that the city never sleeps.  Also on the back, I need to place the record and copyright information and also the barcode to make it look like a real Digpak as all of them have this on. In order to do this, I am going to have to make up a record company and also create the logo for it.

There a a few improvements that are needed on the back cover, for example with the colour of the text. The song 'Falling Leaves' is hard to see against contrast of the picture because of the blackness behind it. I am thinking of changing the colour of the text, but I have to think about keeping the colour scheme with the front. I could use white, but I think this will be unable to read because of the colour of the sky, it would just blend into it and make it hard to see.

I am going to be changing the inside pages completely, I don't think that it works together with the low contrast pictures of the city on the front and back. I think for the inside pages, I will be using images of the city, therefore really emphasising the main feature of the video which is the city although it features the country side aswell. I think that the city will just make it more interesting to look at, and I also think that it would catch people's attention more on the shelves at stores.

I am also looking at making a booklet to go inside of the digipak featuring the different images of London. Just like a gallery book to give the owner of the digipak more things to look at and to also really portray the concept and dull emotions of the city the we're trying to portray in the video.

Music Video Draft.

Editing techniques.

We want to create an illusion of moving crowd around Katie who is standing still, we have practised speeding the clip up to see which speed works best.

Sped up x8

Sped up x6

Sped up x2