Evaluation Question Four:

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

Evaluation Question Three:

"What have you learned from your audience feedback?"

When Alex and I first began this project at the beginning of the year, we had a different idea to the one we used in the end. For our first idea, we decideed that we needed a questionnaire to ask our audience which ending they would prefer in the video as we could not decide! We put this survey on our blog. Here is a snashot of how it looked:

Here, our entire video relied on the audience feedback. Without their help we would not have been able to complete our video and please the viewers. It was important to get the audience's feedback, as these would be the people who were watching our video and we want the video to be pleasing for them.

As we did not need this Survey in the end, I took it off of my blog.




Another time we used audience feedback was when we produced our first rough cut of the video. We showed our media class and teacher and asked our peers to write down their views and ideas on a piece of paper. We gathered this information and used it to improve our video.







As shown below, I produced a questionnaire that my audience filled in, after watching my music video. The results from this questionnaire are also shown below, along with other techniques I used to monitor my audience feedback.

As I am unable to upload every single questionnaire (there were a lot of them!) I have turned the results into charts that are easy to read and will reflect the effectiveness of our video.

Question 1:

(Scale: 1 - Likely. 5 - Not Likely)

Question 2:

(Scale: 1 - Very Effective. 5 - Not Effective)






Question 3:

Question 4:

I'm sure my audience were just being polite, or were scared that I would bite them, but no one answered question 4, and so I am unable to show any results.

Question 5:

For question 5, I asked my audience to state any further comments they may have. Some suggested that we add TV Channel Logos to the corner of our video, however we decided against this as we did not want to appear biased towards a certain channel (although we would have put it on MTV had we needed to.)

Overall, our group learnt a lot from audience feedback. We found that the audience can be very helpful when producing videos as they allow us to take feedback and edit our product accordingly. Without the feedback, our project would not be half as good as it is now!

Evaluation Question Two:

"How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?"

When producing the album cover, I found that I had to check with Alex and Glenn (my group members) to ensure that we were using similar colours, effects and had similar ideas, so that the main product and the ancillary texts worked together. Below are some images of how I made sure that the combination of my main product and ancillary texts were effective.

We first began my researching ideas for the video. This resulted in our story line, song choice and who we would use in the video. Once we knew the genre of our song choice, it was easier for us to determine what the ancillery tasks would look like. We began by filming our video. Once we had all the footage, Alex and I were able to take still shots from the video that we liked and use them in our ancillary tasks. Alex began by taking a still shot of Glenn from the filming we got when Glenn was leaning against a tree. This particular shot was not used in the final cut, however, it is obvious from glenn's positioning, and the clothes he is wearing on the ancillary task, that this shot was from the video.

He turned this image into a magazine advert, as shown below.

Although this is the final image, Alex was unable to use the Album cover as I had not yet completed it. Alex used dark colours and fades on this advert which worked well with the genre of our video. By using an image from the video, the audience are instantly reminded that the two are linked.

This was similar for my Album cover production. I used an image from the filming we made and manipulated it using Photoshop, to produce a CD cover that related completely to the video.

Below is a montage of the video, advert and CD album that shows how effective the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are.

Evaluation Question One:

"In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

The song we chose to use for our music video falls into the musical genre of "acoustic". This means that all instruments used in the recording of the song are acoustic. For Joshua Radin's song 'Winter' the only instruments used were guitar and vocals, making it fall into the genre of acoustic music. This meant we were unable to produce a fast paced performance video as it clearly would not fit with the tempo of the song. After hours of research, we were able to find ideas that we liked and were able to interpret into our own video.

We also looked at the lyrics of the song and noticed that they resembled a man's thoughts who had lost someone close to him, this allowed us to further our ideas as we knew what we wanted our audience to feel when they listened to the song and saw our video. Here are some of the lyrics that denoted to us the sad feel of the song:

"Your name is the splinter inside me while I wait

And I remember the sound of your November downtown

And I remember the truth

A warm December with you but I don't have to make this mistake

And I don't have to stay this way

If only I would wake."

Using words such as "remember" made it easy for us to analyse and work out the meaning behind the artists words.

After much discussion, we decided that the best storyline for us, would be to have a boy reliving memories from a happier time when he was with his girlfriend. This storyline is similar to "Dreamboy" by Don Broco. Unfortunately, the video does not reflect the image we are going for, and we decided not to take ideas from this, showing how our music video challenges forms and conventions of real media products.

As much as we hoped it would, our music video did not come together straight away, with no inspiration, and we had to find ideas from somewhere... After hours and hours and hours and hours (you get the idea) of looking at and watching YouTube videos, we found a few transitions and effects that could be used in our video. For example, the faded edge around the video when in a memory came from Ellie Goulding's version of "Your Song". The tempo to this track is very slow and relaxing, a lot like the song we would be using in our video. Ellie's video was a great help when it came to inspiration as it offered us many ideas.

Below is an image of a faded shot from Ellie Goulding's video, and an image of our video with the similar effect:

This effect enabled us to portray the feel of a memory. It showed that the boy in the video missed his girlfriend and constantly thinks back to better times. Although the effect we used is similar to current day videos, it also challenges them, by showing happier times and memories, the video is able to challenge other videos that show sadder times. A prime example of this is Jason Derulo's song "What if". This video shows how he could have saved his girlfriends life by rewinding time and not speaking to her for the first time, This video shows happier memories, but the video is always tainted with the sense that he will lose her, or will forget the memory. Our video continues to challenge this, as the audience is unaware of the outcome of the video. Does he find his girlfriend again? Or is she lost for ever?

Storyboard

I know this is a tad late, but here is the storyboard that I drew for the group. This was our original idea, hence the repetition. Looking at it now, we see it is incredibly repetitive and boring. Luckily we were able to see these mistakes whilst editing the video and were able to get some more filming done to make it more interesting for the audience.

Below is the Animatic produced by Alex. This is what we used to structure our video.

FINISHED CD COVER AND FINISHED MAGAZINE ADVERT

Finally finished the CD album. Here it is:

Alex has finished the Magazine Advert here:

And Glenn has just finished editing the video:

Questionnaire

Question 3 of my Evaluation Questions is "What have you learned from your audience feedback?"

To answer this question, I must first receive feedback from my audience. As shown in a previous post here, I have already asked my media class to view the video and write down any criticism they have. Asking my media class abled me to receive strong critical perspective on the rough cut and advice on how to improve it. However, that was only my first draft. Now that we have finished editing, I am able to produce a questionnaire that I can hand out to my audience once they have watched the video. Here is the questionnaire I produced and I will hand these out within the next week and total up the answers.

Editing Techniques

Glenn has been working so hard trying to make our video look as good as most music videos, and also make it look continual. Here are some of his posts, explaining how he made each effect.

Cross Dissolve

Dip to Colour Dissolve

Soft Edges

Finished Editing

It is with great joy (and relief) that I inform you... WE HAVE FINISHED EDITING!

I would like to thank Glenn Rice for the amount of work and effort he put into editing the footage we filmed.

We feel that the final product is a great success and will fit perfectly into the current stream of music videos.

Hopefully the final product will be put up on Vimeo and i will be able to put it on here to see.

Rough Cut Number 2

Here is our rough cut after taking everyone's feedback into perspective.

Hope you enjpoy it :)

Feedback

Once we finished our Rough Cut, we had a showing to our class. We all watched each others videos and wrote down any feedback we had. Here is the feedback we received from everyone:

After carefully reading these comments, our group came together and wrote down all the ideas we had based on the feedback and viewing our peers videos. Here is a quick spider diagram of what we came up with:

We planned to start filming these changes at the weekend, Alex and Glenn were able to film the memories with our friend Lucy (I was unable to make it and was glad that Glenn and Alex were able to go on without me there). However, we didn't manage to re-film any shots as it got very dark very quickly. We will return to the woods on Thursday morning to continue filming.

ROUGH CUT :)

Here it is. The rough cut!

We still have a bit of work to do, this includes filming a few more shots and editing bits of the video where the singing may be out of sync or where we think we can improve transitions and etc. We also plan to remove all scenes where a guitar is present and will replace them with 'memories' of the girl and boy seen in the video.

CD Cover Done

In my last post, I had decided on a picture to use and had added a slight effect. Since then I have worked quite hard on it. I added a few more effects, added a fade around the edges and added the title of the album and the artist. Here is how the image looked before and after:

I began with the first image. From here I searched online for some interesting effects and this is how I came to the final image. I began by copying the main image by pressing Command + J.

For the image I wanted, I had to add an effect to the second layer called High Pass... This gave the layer a strange grey effect as shown below.

I set the Radius to 5.0 pixels after I experimented and found that this gave the best effect. After this I changed the blend of the layer to 'Overlay'.

Next I copied the original image again and placed it at the top of the layers list. After Desaturating this image, I changed the blend to 'Hard Light' ending up with this image:

Once I had this base image I merged all the layers together and ended up with one image. I added the Artist name and Album title and added a glare for a bit of effect. Alex had already made the Magazine Advertisement by now, which made it easier for me to choose the font. We wanted an obvious link between the three platforms and managed this by having a consistent font throughout the advertisement and album cover and for the album cover having an image from the video.

After I added the writing the CD cover was beginning to take shape:

Next to add a fade around the edges. First I made a Rectangular Marquee selection of the area I want to see:

By selecting the 'Add layer mask' button at the bottom of the layers list. Once this was selected, the area around the selected area disappeared and a menu appeared below the layers palate. From here, I was able to fade the edges of my image to my desired effect.

However; this is not where we end. Next I need to make the fade black. To do this I must create a layer and place it under the original image. Once I have done this, I must colour the layer black so that the fade looks more effective.

Finally, to add one more effect. I added a Lens Flare to fit in with the genre of the song. This was simple as the option was under 'Filters' at the top of the page. After selecting 'Render' and then 'Lens Flare' I was faced with some options.

I played around with the effects and finally settled on a flare that wasn't too obvious and looked like the sun. Here is the final image:

CD Cover

Before I start my CD Cover, I need to research current covers. Here is the slide show I made of some of the Album covers in the charts at the moment. This will help me see what makes a good CD Cover and will influence our ancillary task.

Seeing as we have changed our ideas, we have had to change our ancillary ideas. We've decided that we are going to produce a CD cover and a magazine advert instead of the website homepage. Whilst we were filming for our music video, I took a few shots for possible CD covers and here are some of the best:







However; I don't feel that these will suffice by themselves and will need some effects to make them passable as a CD cover. Here is one attempt for a surreal looking cover:

I'll have a go at a few more effects and see which one our group prefers.

Change of Plans... Yet Again!

Once again we were let down by a band.
Accidents pulled out right at the last minute (the day before we planned to film) and we were left with nothing. We managed to stay in contact over Facebook through the Christmas holiday and came up with the idea of using 'Winter' by Joshua Radin.



The song is acoustic and slow and we found that it is reasonably easy to interpret.
Our group member, Glenn, can play guitar and we will be using him for the video.
Whilst looking for a setting for our video, I came across a small lake (more like a puddle) with a log next to it in some woods. The scenery is perfect and here is a picture:


We began filming at the weekend and managed to get a fair bit done. We hope to come up with some surreal ideas to interpret into our video as we feel it will fit well with the song.

Ancillary

We have decided to make an Album cover and a CD face and produce a home page for a website for our ancillary task.

I will be focusing on the webpage, Alex will be focused on the CD album and CD face and Glenn will focus on editing the film. We will help each other with these tasks and run ideas past each other, but it is down to us to do our own job. This will help speed up production time and should allow us t work through it quicker.

We've had a few ideas for the CD face. As the band is called Accidents we felt it would be fitting to have a hospital chair on the CD face. we are uncertain as to whether there should be someone sitting there. But Alex came up with the idea of a pregnant lady in the chair with a split condom on the front cover. Although this would be fitting, I feel it is a little inappropriate and may be seen as comical.

Glenn came up with a better idea, seeing as the album will be called "This is a Burial" he thought that the album cover should be a photo taken at night, of a man digging a grave.

Whilst the boys were sitting there, not doing much, I decided to make a rough version of the album and CD. Here's what i made:

It's not a final, but the practice was good. I used pictures from the internet, however, we fully intend to take our own pictures for the real thing.

REVAMP.... AGAINNNNN

Okay, so for the (hopefully) final time, we have rethought our ideas and have gained a group member. Glenn Rice was initially planning on being in our group, but decided he would prefer to work on his own. We accepted his views and started our work. However, Glenn's ideas fell through, like ours and he asked to join our group. We were ecstatic that he would be joining us as me and Alex were having trouble agreeing on certain ideas.

Once Glenn joined us we came up with an idea that we could all agree on. A performance video.

We have the hall that we would like to use, Riverview, we have the band we would like to use, Accidents, and we have the audience we would like to use. So far, so good.

Setting Ideas

Alex and I have decided to do some of our filming in Brighton as we feel it will fit into the idea of our story. We decided that Brighton Pier would be ideal with all the lights on.

I wasn't sure whether Brighton Pier would be open, seeing as it will be December time, so I looked up some information on the Brighton tourist website and this is what I found.

Letter of Permission

Yesterday, Alex wrote to Island Def Jam for permission to use the song 'Walking Disaster' by Sum 41.
This is the letter he used:

Dear Copyright Holder,

We are A level students and we are writing to request your permission to use one track from the latest album by Sum 41 entitled Underclass Hero.

The track we wish to use is 'Walking Disaster', track 2 on the album.

With your permission, this track would be used in our current A-level Media Studies
project which involves creating a music video for a popular music track, as well as
producing an album and a magazine advert for the artist.

If we received your permission, this track would ONLY be used in an educational
context and be viewed by our media class, our teacher and the OCR exam board
moderator. It would NOT be released to a large audience or uploaded to any public
video websites.

The artist and your company would of course be fully recognised throughout pre-
production and the final video itself. A copyright notice, with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full
details.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Alex Newcombe and Sophie Brown

Main Character

Seeing as our character has been away from home, it is logic that his clothes will be shabby and dirty.

Here are a few pictures of what I thought it should look like.

Our character's going to have to be wearing ripped, dirty clothes if it is going to look realistic so here is an image of some jeans I found:

Whilst looking for clothes for our character to wear, I came across this image:

This is the exact image we want for our character.

We are also going to need a few more people in our video, and two of these characters are going to be adults, who pose as the mother and father, currently we are having a bit of trouble finding adults that will be willing to help. Both our mothers said they wouldn't mind helping out, but we need to find a man to act as the father.

Here is how we want our adults to look.