#a2evaluation

[zackmooremedia]

So a few things to cover with the mise-en scene within our music video. First is the characters outfit, a very scruffy look, ripped jeans, big oversized jumper, and a cap. So not a very formal look, showing him to be most likely a younger gentleman because it wouldn’t be seen as mature or adult like to go out with what he is wearing. Also the mobile phone he is holding in the middle picture to the right, another indication of youth as you would tag the stereotype of a younger person on their phones texting. Other props and background item that add to the theme of the music video are the cigarettes, the alcohol, and the pipe. Showing clear signs of poor health, and even depression. Showing that the character clearly does not care about his health and perhaps wants to take this path of depression. The smoking pipe helps add to the following shot of him moving around the bed and the green screen effect as if it were a hallucination from the drugs. Also the weather it ‘self-showing to be a foggy and rainy day, not the type of weather you would associate with a happy or joyful vibe, in fact it's the opposite of that. So the weather helped add to the dark setting as we looked at the weather forecast and planned it for a rainy day. The car also being in the shot where it crashes into the protagonists, showing him wake up within the grave yard. The car was really just used as way of showing the character be knocked unconscious and taking him to the next shot.

[josephmarlesmedia]

Here myself and Ed have commentated over our music video, explaining why we chose some of the shots we did as well as pointing out which shots were our personal favourites as well as showing which areas probably could've been improved if we had the opportunity to do a fourth shoot.

[finlaymcdonaldmedia]

Evaluation Question Four

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

Link to the answer:

Evaluation Question Four // Video Script

Research and Planning

A key technology that was used throughout the planning and research stages of the music video was Google. This search engine helped me to conduct research into the music industry. This especially helped me to learn more about the theorists Andrew Goodwin and Laura Mulvey. I also used two of Google’s other websites to help me with the research and planning stages, the first of these being google Maps. This service helped massively with the location scouting aspect of the planning process. One location that Google Maps helped me find was our street location for the opening scene of the video. Going into the location scouting process, I knew that I wanted a long straight road that would give the drone a view towards the center of Bristol, without this software it would have required hours of driving around Bristol, trying to find a suitable location, but with Maps it only took about 20 minutes. The street view feature was also extremely useful for this stage as it allowed me to see the street in a first-person mode to make sure it wasn’t a main or busy road, and to also check that the type of housing was suitable for my desired representation of the area.

The next Google-owned website that was extremely useful in the planning and research stages was YouTube. This was the key to exploring existing music videos from my electro hop genre to not only evaluate some of them on my blog, but also to just get a better idea of the codes and conventions of the electro hop genre. It was also really useful when looking for videos to back up the theories that I was exploring.

In terms of presenting all of this information, I used programmes such as PowerPoint and Prezi. I usually used Prezi over PowerPoint when wanting to create a more detailed presentation as it allowed me to easily explore and present lots of different points and ideas in a clear fashion. Prezi also allowed me to add pictures and embed videos into the presentation, which was especially useful when analysing or making a point about a certain video.

Another website that was really useful for this stage, was Survey Monkey. This allowed me to easily construct, distribute, and collate responses to the audience questionnaire which was a key part of the research stage of this product. As well as this, Survey Monkey displayed the results really clearly in graphs and charts which made the presentation and analysis of these results much easier and clearer.

The next technology that I used in the planning and evaluation stages was Adobe Premiere. At this stage, it was used at a very basic level to edit together the focus groups, using simple cutting tools, adding titles and a gaussian blur effect to transition between the answers. This gave us a video version of the participants answers that we could further analyse.

Finally, I used Tumblr to post all of these different forms of research. This social media platform allowed me to easily embed all of the other forms of presentation that I had used to keep them all in one place and to easily add text to help explain each of the different posts.  Not only did this neatly keep all of my work in chronological order, but I was also able to add hashtags to group the different posts to categorise them into their correct research, planning, production or evaluation or sections

Production

The technologies that I used for the production stages consisted largely of the cameras. My main camera for the duration of the process was a Panasonic Lumix LX15. This is a fixed lens camera but the fast Leica f/1.4-2.8 lens was extremely versatile throughout the production which resulted in the shots having a shallow depth of field when required and it also was able to handle low-light situations really well. The LX15 also gave me the option to switch into full manual mode, adjusting the frame rate, shutter speed, aperture and ISO independently to get the desired cinematic look and gave me the flexibility to adjust to changing light conditions easily. This included the option to shoot at 100fps while retaining a 1080p resolution to film the slow-motion shots that became a key feature that was used throughout the final music video. Additionally, I used a Nikon D3300 to take still shot of the production. This helped me build up a backlog of photos that would help me to visualize our ideas and show the construction of the product coming together. I also used four of these cameras in the creation of the 3D jitter effect in the church scene, these were paired with identical 18-55mm lenses and set up with the exact same settings to ensure they all captures an identical image but from different angles.

The final piece of technology that was used during the production stages of my product was a DJI Mavic Pro drone that was used to capture cinematic aerial footage and provided me with an effective establishing shot that helps to set the scene and introduce the characters perfectly. This gave me a huge amount of versatility with these shots, allowing to capture almost any angle of the subject with almost any form of movement. They were filmed in a RAW 4K format which not only captured a huge amount of information within the shot but would also give me much more flexibility when editing and colour grading the shot.

Post Production

I chose to undergo  the first stage of the post production process of the main task using Adobe Premiere Pro. With lots of previous experience with using this software - from not only the Year 12 coursework, but also for lots of other personal projects – I felt very comfortable with the programme and using it to make the most of the footage that I has captured over the 3 filming days. I managed to make use of a whole range of the tools that this software provided for the rough edit. This included keyframing, transitions, and basic colour correction, as well as this, the programme made it really easy to cut all of the clips on the beat or to the right length, to synchronise clips to create effective match on actions, and to create the complex 3D jitter effect.

A lot of the more complex corrections and finishing touches were completed in Adobe After Effects, which included adding a colour correction to the whole video using a LUT and lots of other adjustments using the colour wheels, temperature sliders, exposure sliders and many more tools to create the desired effect. I also used After Effect’s warp stabiliser tool to stabilise any of the hand-held shots that weren’t as smooth as they could have been. This gave the video a much more professional feel, making some of the shots look like they were captured using high-end gimbals or Steadi Cams. As well as this, the static ‘TV on’ effect at the very start of the video was created on After Effects using a keyframed scale and exposure of some ‘TV snow’ footage and I also used the programme to add the masked title in the opening scene. This involved adding a Track Matte effect and keyframing the mask to the backs of the actors as they walk past, revealing the title.

Ancillary Texts

For the production of my ancillary text I set up the same four Nikon D3400s with 18-55mm lenses using a rig to get each of the lenses as close together as I could. I then used a remote shutter release to set off each of the cameras at the same time which I would used to create a 3D stereoscopic GIF of each of these pictures. For the pictures of other objects such as the candle or the statues of the angels, I was able to be behind the camera which allowed me to uses one camera to capture all four different perspectives. For this method, I used a Panasonic Lumix LX15 and set it to burst mode, this allowed me to capture the four pictures by slowly tracking the camera to the side of the subject and taking the pictures at regular intervals. I then opened the four pictures of each of the subjects in Photoshop and aligned the frames of all of these pictures from both methods centring them on one object, such as the glass in this picture. I then created a preset using a ‘film camera look’ overlay, adding a film grain and some authentic scratches to make the pictures look like realistic film camera pictures. This preset was then added to all of the frames from each of the different locations to give them all a consistent style. With this done, I opened the ‘Motion’ tab of Photoshop to create looping GIFs from the 4 different perspectives of each subject. I was really happy with the results and would be using the animated versions of the pictures for the online versions of the digipak and advert as well as online promotions on the artist’s website etc.

I then used still versions of all these pictures to create the advert and digipak, also on Photoshop. I started by creating the album cover, using text tools and a colour scheme that was sampled from different aspects of the image using the Colour Picker tool. I then kept the colour scheme consistent when creating the rest of the panels of the digipak and advert, using the same font and themes to produce a ‘house style’ throughout the products.

Evaluation

I also used these different technologies during the evaluation stages of this production. I used both Prezi and PowerPoint to present the evaluations of my products. These allowed me to clearly present the different sub-sections of each of the questions and once again embed videos and images to back up each point.

Additionally, I used my mobile phone as a Dictaphone which allowed me to voice over the director’s commentary video, letting me make comments over the top of our main task, outlining the reasons behind the creative choices made in the video. I then used Adobe Pro to edit the director’s commentary, as well as using it to edit this video.

The final technology that was key to the evaluation stage was YouTube, this was not only where the video was uploaded to and shared from, but also allowed viewers express their opinion on the video in the comment section. I was then able to use these comments to answer the third evaluation question regarding audience feedback.

[gabrielkellymedia]

Evaluation Question 4

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

[jessicacookmedia]

Here is my Directors Commentary for my music video.

[milliegoughmedia]

Directors Commentary

This is the directors commentary I created for my final music video. In this video I talk about all the edits and shots we used to tell the narrative we created. I also talk about how we used certain edits to make it more benefial for the audience to watch

[mollyyorkmedia]

Evaluation: To Sum Up

This post contains links to each stage of the course in chronological order: Research, Planning, Production, and Evaluation. 

I have included them both in links below and also in a Prezi.

Research:

https://mollyyorkmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2research/chrono

Planning:

https://mollyyorkmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2planning/chrono

Production:

https://mollyyorkmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2production/chrono

Evaluation:

https://mollyyorkmedia.tumblr.com/tagged/a2evaluation/chrono

[abbybraymedia]

Evaluation - Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

This is our focus group. In this we asked our 4 members different questions, for them to answer about our music video. 

What positive comments did your peers, teachers,focus group have about your video?

The main positive comment that we received from almost everyone is the fact that our lip syncing was very accurate and in perfect timing with the song lyrics. This is very good to know because a lot of our music video contains our protagonist performing the song to the audience, and the fact the viewers think it was well done is a success. The audience additionally liked how professional her performing scenes looked, and how her bright lips contrasted with the dark background and costume. In our focus group, we had received a comment that we had represented the past and present in a clever way. We had done this by making the past scenes in black and white, whilst keeping present tense in normal colour. We wanted to edit the footage in a way that had made it really obvious that the music video contained the past and present, and thought that the black and white would signify our idea perfectly. Not only was this mentioned in the focus group, it was also discussed in the comments on You Tube. When my peers watched the music video, a lot of them had mentioned about the cross fade’s we had used. 

They really thought how we had faded in our protagonist whilst crying in over the two actors arguing had presented her frustration and how upset she was well, and efficiently. The second cross-fade we had used was at the ending of the song. Whilst our main character was singing the last line of the song,we faded a video of our male character over her but we still wanted our protagonist to be seen slightly. Our peers had said they liked this part because it related to the last lyric of the song and even though our protagonist was faded out, the audience was still able to see the emotion on her face and how disappointed she looked because her relationship had ended. 

What negative comments were made by your peers,teachers,focus groups?

The negative comments often always referred back to the quality of filming. The comments on You Tube revealed that they had thought we rushed filming some of the scenes because they were not up to the standard they could’ve been if we had taken more time and care during the production stages. One example that was pointed out to me was the camera angle we had used when our protagonist had gotten our of bed. They weren’t too keen on seeing just her legs and claimed it “wasn’t very entertaining”. Furthermore, it was mentioned numerous times that we had too many scenes of our actor lip singing and performing to the audience, and they would’ve preferred if we had seen more flashbacks of the relationship. A criticism we had received from the focus group is that a lot of shots were quite still, and it would be good if we included some pans/tracking shots within the music video however this was very hard to do with the ideas we had because in a lot of them a pan or tracking shot was completely unnecessary and we didn’t wanted to ruin the footage by adding shots/angle purely for variety, and not meaning. It’s not exactly a bad comment but i feel like a few viewers didn’t fully understand the story line of the music video. From the focus group one of the members asked “is she meant to be romancing Ed or Gabes?”, and we have been asked  few times about the story line, and the relationship she was/is in. Even though, we were told by one of the viewers that they really enjoyed the story line, re watching the music video now has made me realise that someone who was watching this video for the first time without any insight of the idea we wanted to propose through the music video might not have been so clear.

How will the comments change the way you work in the future as a group or an individual?

I’m definitely going to make sure i’m way more organised in the future when it comes to doing all the filming and production. I feel like some of our footage would have been a better standard if we had used our time more efficiently and didn’t leave some of our filming dates so late. This wasn’t intentional at all however as a group we should have been more persistent when it came to filming and tried to do a lot of it before the deadline so we had enough time to edit properly and be able to re-do any of our filming we thought wasn’t up to scratch. 

What have the comments taught you about the process of producing and editing a music video?

The comments I have received from the audience have taught me that filming and editing a music video takes a huge amount of time and effort over a long period of time. You need to be consistent with filming and make sure it is all up to the same level. You can’t expect to get all your filming done within a week or two without it being low quality, and mistakes to be made during the filming. With the editing I have learned that it is a long process that takes patience, especially when learning things. It takes a lot of thinking as you want to put the clips in the right places to make it look the best it possibly can. With editing comes a lot of rearranging because when you think you’ve found the perfect place to insert a clip, you change your mind and move it, even if its just slightly to the left or right. You must have high patience as well because some of the tools take time to get to grips with and be able to use correctly on the clip. 

[laurendaviesmedia]

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

[liammonksmedia]

Evaluation Question 4

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eADzzWdSJh3eKWOIS9VMEtenOzQYFMHsI4nhqmCrV7I/edit?usp=sharing

[gabrielkellymedia]

Evaluation Question 3

 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

This retrospective focus group was a very positive exercise, as it produced a lot of positive feedback. The first three comments from the group, when asked about things they liked, complimented our editing, cinematography and narrative one after the other. The only criticism the video received was on the pace of cuts, as some people we’re confused about location changes. Both cases seemed very minor and by their reaction, didn’t seem to affect the viewing. The messages and themes of oddness, loneliness and self-confidence were evidently communicated, as each member of the group referenced at least one at some point. Samson’s comment, though comic, was also valid “Orange… doesn’t rhyme with anything… loneliness”. It’s good to know that our use of costume has evoked the idea of loneliness and Gabriella’s comment at the end was very nice to hear. The focus group was a success in the sense that I got to know a mixture of viewers’ opinions. Maybe in future, I could pick a group with more 'film focused' eyes to get detailed analysis of the film language.

 Going to the platform on which we released the video, YouTube gave us some feedback from members of the public who were uninclined to enjoy the footage. The criticism I hoped to receive only came in the form of more praise – by this point I was confident in my work, but I wanted to know deeper opinions of peers within the target audience, in order to accurately gauge what went well and what didn’t.

 However, it was very pleasing that Tikikiti – a group dedicated to finding and sharing the best indie music videos – commented saying “great” and listing most aspects of film that exist. I’m not sure if they featured our film on their blog/channel, but with assurance like that from fellow filmmakers it doesn’t matter.

With not much other feedback, I decided to ask my friends to give me some more pointed notes on the feature.

Many commented on the colour of the video, especially the protagonists costume:

Coni 18: Her clothes show she's different and difference in her world seems to be frowned upon, which is very relevant to a target audience of young people, really relatable. I felt like I was routing more and more for her as the video went on

Samson 18: The use of costume to represent a distinct singular character (Girl with orange sweater) in an environment where all other characters are the same (shown by the recurring black clothing) was interesting and highly effective at communicating to the audience that the orange girl is the focus of attention and different to the rest of the on screen characters.

George 21: Overall I thought the music video was very entertaining, captivating and technically complex. The use of contrast in terms of the colours used in the video was a clever idea and was visually very appealing - the orange jumper of the protagonist stood out against the otherwise muted and desaturated colours, making her stand out and clearly depicting her as the main character.

Another mutual point of interest was the animation and dream sequence within the film.

Coni: The dream sequence was metaphorical and really effective in the sense that you definitely understood that it was more than a dream, as it actually helped her find the box

Samson: The animation perfectly matches the psychedelic musical genre, and the handmade quality of the animation style again creates a piece that doesn’t feel overproduced. An interesting and unique concept that was also well executed. saturated

George: In addition to this, I thought that the inclusion of animation was very clever, especially given that it matched the music perfectly and was blended very well with the other shots. 

Each gave me very more interesting notes on the film with George making valid judgement of the shakier shots:

George: The choice of setting for the video again helped to make it much more interesting, with a huge array of different locations. The outdoor shots such as in the foggy field or in the forest drew me into the video as they were somewhat surreal and I enjoyed the way in which transitions were used to seamlessly blend such shots in different locations whilst tracking with the main character as she runs.The only piece of criticism I have regarding the video is that at the start I felt as though some of the shots were shaky and could have benefited from the use of a gimble - it felt almost out of place given the high level of professionalism shown in the rest of the piece. That said, it didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment!

I’m glad that the foggy environment didn’t seem out of place, as I hoped the non linear and slightly more conceptual editing of the film would make it blend in like the journey was longer. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get my hands on a gimble and to rent one would have been quite costly. It would have been nice to have some kind of camera stabilisation but one of the last shots actually benefits fro the chaos of the cinematography.

Coni: I like how the end mirrors the start and we never actually know what's inside the box because it highlights the importance of her journey, rather than the outcome; it's how she's developed as a character because of her journey and what's inside the box doesn't matter, only that she got there with everyone being cold and pessimistic.

It’s good to see that people felt the film to be poignant and it’s positive to see that Coni has appreciated the narrative structure. The song, I think, really helps create the pace and feel of the video.

Samson: The main character is also established effectively with an extreme close up at the beginning of the piece. The diversity of shot length and shot type also maintains audience attention, without being complex or feeling overproduced. Some shots were obviously filmed on a foggy day, which I imagine would have been problematic for filming, but colour correction and a nonlinear plot meant that this is not an issue.

Samson has picked up on both the cinematography and the colour grading of the film. Molly and I worked together on the colour correction and I based each shot on the colour of the protagonists jumper.

The extreme close ups and all other shots were meticulously planned by Molly and I.

We were evidently successful in establishing the characters and plot through a variety of film techniques both in production and post. From the feedback I have received, I can see that we have made an entertaining, relatable and emotion provoking work, that can be appreciated both in video and narrative by the target audience.