Evaluation - Question 4

MUSIC VIDEO

Watching our music video on the big screen was a fantastic opportunity to received a feedback from our other student. It was not only helpful but also very intresting, becuase we had a chance to hear what other people think about our music video.

The first reaction after screening was excited. Everyone clapped and screamed giving us very positive feeling that we have done a very good job. Moreover we have reach our aim of not only promoting our artist but also entertainment the audience.

During process of editing we were keen to hear a comment from everyone : student, teacher and even media technicians. They all were in different groip age from 16-20 and from 35 up

Student -Eleni

First thing what Eleni has mentioned has a range of different location. We have actually think very carefully about each of them, and we wanted to present the activity as well as the location which I am sure emphasis the hobby of each character. The strong base tracks one with lots of different and bright colour was very good and eye catchy. Beside the mise-en scene, she also comment on the editing which were on the beat and keep the music video with the nice flow creating vert energetic atmopshere.

Teacher-Dan

I am really g;ad to hear what Dan thinks about the music video. I think he was most skeptical about our vision of the music video.However, he said lots of very positive thing.Again he has pointed the range of different location as well as the realy good editing on the beat. Everything has got a nice structure. Just before we started to film a projector scene he said that it is definetly not going to work, however even with a dark lighting and a 'covered face' he like it. Moreover the artists' atiitudes and performance in front of the projector make it really standout and funny. It add a strengh and good structure to our music video.
He pointed that there is a scene when we have cut through singing or it was out of sync. I am not sure if you can hear it, but I am saying that we have spotted it too , and afterward we had fix it.
He also suggested that we could add a filter and extra special effect like slow motion We actually added a colour filters and another slow motion.
Despite all of that , even with not finished product, Dan stated that he would be perfectly happy with the product as it was in that time. 


                                                          Our Technician-Micky

Mickly as a particular person who has dealed with our problems and concens during editing, has said that we have done really good jon. He has pointed out that the projector scene has a really good impact on the audience. It was colourful, funny and outstanding.  He did not say anything bad which mean that he must truly like it.

Teacher- Rebecca

Rebecca said that our video is very enjoyable to watch especially because of mixture of colours, but she doesn't really understand what's going on in it. She also complained that some of our sip sincing was out of place. We have tried to fix it as much as we possible can, but we did not have enough base track to swap this bits. Robert did not feel very confidence in front of the camera and he 'messed up' certain part where he neither have eyes open or singing. Also one particular shot from the back wasn't not so good. I really wanted to swap it with a new/or different one however we didn't have enough time to do it. Also rest of the group like that shot so I had no chance to persuade them.

DIGIPAK

For my digipak I was received verbal feedbacks rather than a written down. However most of them were very positive, and non of them actually suggest than I could change something or done in different way. On facebook I has received a feedback:

Aron has pointed out that he likes the 3D effect on the advert -out now. This actually ensure me that I did really well about using different font for this part of information. He suggest that he did not like that the front CD cover is placed on the right corner. I think if I could have much time i would add a special effect or other thing to make it more soft. I think that it kind of look 'fake'.  On the front cover of the digipak pictures front the side works really well. The font is modern which really well suits the genre conventions. 

I was considering the black%white digipak instead of colour, however I have decided that it will link the video , advert and digipak much more effectively if I would done it in the black&white.  The idea of fisheye picture work perfectly on the skull with hat. It created a very positive feeling and funny mood.

Finished blogging!

Thanks to all the media teachers for helping me through the process, and of course to the rest of my group! It surprises me that I'm not annoyed with the song, but I am with everyone else's! I am really pleased with the outcome of our music video and ancillary work, we worked really hard on them!
FIN!
 ❤ 

Evaluation (Extra): Screen on the green

This is the cinema we visited to watch our music video.

My sister used to manage this cinema, although now she manages the Aubin Cinema in Shoreditch. In her spare time she likes to make interesting videos, ranging from movies to short films. She is apart of Project Trident (www.projecttrident.com) who make videos such as these:

http://projecttrident.com/videos/tellisonEdith/ - Music Video

http://projecttrident.com/videos/purpleTeaser/ - Film

She starred in a music video for Hot Head Show - PAYLOAD, a narrative music video. (She is the blonde zoo keeper).



The video mostly contains animation and jump cuts, which fit with the theme as the music was a modern jazz/rock piece, so the beats would be more upbeat and jagged. They have included animation at the beginning, which our video didn't do, but may be put into consideration for next time. However this a narrative , telling a story, rather than our disjuncture video. Our artist is lip syncing and looking at the camera (one of Andrew Goodwin's points), and in this video the character has no lip sync and doesn't look directly at the camera. This contrasts because we are promoting our artist, whether this video is promoting the video itself, having a weird, interesting and humorous concept that would bring views to the music video, hoping that people would then search for other songs and videos by the same artist.

Evaluation-Question 2

To understand better all those point that I talk about in the video I am going to visual them as well. Here are couple of example:

Music video costume

Picture I used for digipak/advert

Advert

Inside Panel

Font from digipak and advert

Hat on the head to make it more funny

Final Music Video

Evaluation-Question 3

This is an example of photobucket slideshow presentation of how I changed my front picture of digipak in the photoshop.

Here is a video of our pitch during which we had presented our digital stroyboard. Our teachers were not sure about our idea, they could not imagine. Through digital stroyboard our idea became much more clear to them, and they had accepted what we wanted to do. They had also give us many very useful advices about what we could do better, or maybe think about particular idea again. Our final outcome is different from the digital storyboard, however the stroyboard helped to visual main point but also throughout process of improvement and development idea some of them has changed or even we did not use them.

Evaluation Q4

We've recorded our cinema screening to show you how people reacted after watching video :) The reaction was very positive, some people were giving standing applause, some cheerful screaming from girls as well. However, most people already saw our video during editing time, so the reaction could be "little" overreacted! :P

The feedback we've received after cinema screening was not only very helpful, but also interesting part for our evaluation. We had a chance to know what other people think of our music video, what are their reactions and what made the biggest impression on them. I think that we all felt really proud when people were giving positive feedback!

We asked not only for teacher's opinion, but also students and media technicians. Large age range is very important, as teenagers might be attracted to different aspect as grown ups :)

Eleni said some very helpful stuff about our music video. She said that projector screening was made our video very energetic, and she was really attracted to bright colours. Also, different range of stories made our video interesting to watch. I'm pleased that colours made an impression on her, especially that colourful video was a main point to make teenagers attracted to Mic CTRL.

Dan - our teacher - said that our video was successful because it was fun. For me, it is good to know that stupid dancing in front of camera payed off.  Even through projector "covered my face", my performance was so entertaining he didn't pay much attention to it. That was a really interesting comment, as I learned that not everything must be perfectly recorded to look outstanding. Also, now I'm quite sure that our video would be terrible without projector screening. Well, maybe not terrible, but surely boring.

He commented my "out of sync" singing, and said there is one shot that we could've change. We've found this problem while editing, however, somehow, I messed up on every single base track in this moment! Well, those things unfortunately happens and I learned my lesson to be prepared, and make sure you watch every single base track before leaving recording area...

Micky - our technician - just like Dan was very pleased with projector screening. He said that it was very entertaining and fun to watch. I'm glad to hear so many positives about my performance, especially from people how really know what they're talking about and have years of experience. I realised that not only teens find my dancing entertaining, and adults also like the colours combined with weird dancing ;)

Tony - also my teacher - was saying that I should be "a pop star", and he really enjoyed the colours we used throughout video (white, red, blue). What I realised was that girls did really amazing job when they were choosing appropriate costume for me (maybe by mistake), and colours of my jacket contrasting with the sky made a amazing contrast. This made an impact on adults, who really enjoyed colourful scenery.

An addition, when we were editing our video I frequently asked Micky for his opinion. Once, Tony and Micky were arguing about the skateboarding part. Micky was saying that it should be black&white to make greater contrast, especially because most skateboarding clips were cutting to really colourful art room. Tony was against this idea, however now he claims that Micky might've been right. Conclusion? Do not listen to Tony :D
No, but seriously, I've learned that sometimes it's good to make a balance between colours and dark. I might have even greater effect after all! But well, we'll not be able to check who was right.

Konrad - 17yr old student - He was really impressed with editing and he really enjoyed effects we applied. That's good, I'm glad many hours of editing were worth it. We even came on Saturday to edit for 7 hours! :) I've learned that people from our target audience enjoyed fast editing, as well as combination of different lightings used (as Konrad said). Teenagers often pay most attention to editing, and less to Mise en scene. I think this this applies to Konrad as well!

He also gave me a review about my digipak. He spotted that vibrant colours represent the genre and my digipak has connection with video we've created. This is very important, as people watching Mic CTRL's music video could easily spot his CD in HMV. Also, my digipak's font is connected with 70/80's disco typography.

He also spotted the hat I was wearing in music video is visible on CD. What that means, people do recognize certain symbols and signatures once you'll show them few times. My hat was outstanding (even through it cost 2.5pounds in Primark =) ) and if singer wants to be successful in those times, he must have something that nobody else has. 

On advert, he also spotted that the background is very colourful and connected with my video+CD cover. It means that repeating few items or scenery throughout whole project is very important to new artist, as he will be automatically connected with them. He also likes that I've used logos of social networks and QR code to connect with my target audience. That is true. Teens often use internet to connect with artists, so having a facebook account or QR code that will redirect them to my website is crucial. To be successful, you must know your audience better than they know themselves!

Evaluation - Question 3

Question 3: "How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?"

I have created the "Prezi" to show you how I used different technologies.

Q3 on Prezi

I used many different effects during creating my digipak - Magic wand, colour replacement,  Stamp and colour editor.

Here, I've created a short tutorial showing how to use "Magic wand" to cut out object you don't want to.

I also made a quick tutorial showing how to use "razor blade" and cut a part of a clip you want to.

Here is a video of our pitch we've made, which is also showing our digital storyboard. 

A lot of things changed over the time. Most aspect were cutted/changed, recording places were completely different, however our teachers had a better idea what are we going to do. And this was the main purpose of pitch :)

Evaluation Q2

EVALUATION Q1

Our music video is connected with Dance/Electro Pop genre. An artist we've created - Mic CTRL - is a "combination" of techno/dance/dubstep stars as Calvin Harris, Example, Olly Murs. They've influenced us at the beginning when we started to think about genre and music videos. What we liked about them was a colourful and fun style, just what we could expect from Electro pop!

Our music video follows conventions of Carol Vernallis's theory. Music videos of different genres have the same/similar aspects as ours, and that makes our music video better and more energetic.

- Master shot/base track - we used five different base tracks to make our video more energetic by quickly changing the shots. The cut must've been done on the beat, so that video is more "in sync" with music. 

-Jump cuts - We used them in purpose to shorten our clips and make our video much more striking, interesting and exciting to watch. This is a way to show a lot in less time. Probably nobody wants to watch a boring movie, where nothing is happening, especially in fast and energetic songs like ours. Instead of showing a whole clip that can last few minutes, we could cut unneccesary scenes and shorten to few seconds. A lot of quick still shots make it look like like GIF. Colours are very bright and surely are very eye catching. Also, the movement and cups changing places look exciting to a viewer. 

Important thing I've done over the whole music video is eye contact with viewer. I often look at the camera, which makes me also a narrator.  Also, I think that audience was "a part of a music video", what Goodwin states as a important aspect. Whenever I look at our video, I feel really happy about the connection I'm making with me (in this case :) ). Also, I did some really stupid things in front of camera. Dancing like an idiot and giving "mega weird" faces was actually very useful and payed out. Energetic performance surely made audience happy and created a lot of laugh across the cinema.

Our video can also be linked with Goodwin/s theory. It's quite difficult what is the type of our video, however our teacher says that it's a mixture of disjuncture and amplification. Music video clearly shows people doing stuff they like (hobbies), where song is basically about love. Maybe it's not clear at the beginning, however when you really think about connection, you can spot that it shows a love to hobbies, and not to people. 

Our teacher, Rebecca, realised that when I sing" I feel so close to you right now...", there is a transition to Evie. She told us that we created a love connection by mistake. This is something we haven't realised at all, but she might be right. I don't think it's a problem, because everyone has their own mind and everyone can see something else. 

Olly Murs' song "Heart skips a beat" was a really important part of our research and surely a great help when it came to camera work.  Olly in his song used many different shots. Combination of fast pace and quick cutting made his music video outstanding. You cannot see a single still clip, and all of them seem really fun and energetic, just like ours. I dance like a fool in front of camera, and Olly also does. However, our video tells a story, and you can't say the same thing about Heart Skips a beat, where he mostly tries to promote himself.

Our video repeats images in sync with music repeating lines.  Audience becomes more familiar with the genre I am presenting mainly thanks to the intertextuality. As I said before,  Electro pop music video should be really colourful, and dancing in front of projector with colours changing on my face did great job to work well with other colourful scenes; like cups or painting. 

We have used many close ups and mid shots on skateboarding part to make his tricks look really effective and dangerious. Also, a combination with few long shots shows more clearly where is the skateboarding taking place. Olly's music video uses exactly the same shot types.

Strong connecting with the viewer created a lot of pace and things going on. The rate of shots changed was very high, and most clips didn't last more than 1-2sec.  This combination with colourful props made it look really interesting and "crazy"! :)

Projector screening was taken from Rihanna's song - "We found love".  Actually, we realised that this could be a nice addition to our music video after we almost finished whole editing. She influenced us with a colourful screening and frequent image change. When Rihanna is mostly screening clouds and heaven which can be connected with calm-ish song, we're using very colourful "Electro pop" words to create striking effect.

The song "I gotta feeling" by Black eyes peas influenced us with slow motion. A combination with fast pace song can be really powerful, especially on moments when music slows down. In our song, we are using slow motion when Evie blows a glitter. In the same time, music slows down. Later on, when dancers are falling down, we also use slow motion and I think it made a fantastic impact on our video, and they fall down in beat with the song. Later on, everything comes back to normal speed.

I was influenced by Calvin Harris' CD cover "Flash Back" at the beginning. A lot of things were developed at the later stages, just like a background. 

I created quite similar "Big Bang" on photoshop as you can see on his album's background, however I didn't work good enough with my costume on photos. Red colours were blending in, and I didn't want to edit my photo at all. In that case, I went to graphic department and made a "splash" of different colours that we've chosen to use. Then I scanned it, and pasted on my CD cover. After some cropping, colour balancing and enlargements I found well working background with photo I wanted to use.

The "Big Bang" is actually used, and you can spot it inside CD cover and also on advertisment. 

Calvin Harris influenced us to use "digital" typography, or "Pixelated" as other people often use to call it. 

My background can absolutely be connected with music video, as I used many bright colours just like in video. The same outfit on CD cover and on video will make Mic CTRL more memorable for the audience. 

The black stripes on top and bottom of music video look really good because they are contrasting with bright colours. Too much colours could make you disoriented and you don't know where to look at. Where Calvin used half black-half colourful background, I wasn't able to do so. Black stripes are "replacements".

We challenged some stereotypes just like we did with genre conventions for music video created. Most people think of teenagers as lazy vandals, who only care about "getting drunk" and good party. We showed that there is always something in everyone that make them look outstanding. Everyone has their own passion ambitions, and we must respect them no matter what. Not every girl is a "slut" . Not every boy is a "vandal".  Evie is wearing full costume, just like dancers. Mic CTRL and the skater do not hide alcohol in their pockets and swear at police passing by. This is because not everyone is the same.

Evaluation: Q4

Q4. Analyse one or two comments that you received of the video, focusing on potential changes or improvements – how could/would you change your product in relation to this feedback? What have you learned about what your audience said about your products? 

Q4 Introduction
by: epatz

As you can see in the video, when the video finished there was a big cheer, so I would take that as positive feedback. The majority of people I talked to afterwards also had positive comments, so I would say that was a success!

I asked Erika what she thought of the video, and she spoke highly of the warm colours, which reflect our pop genre. The things that stood out for her was the glitter and the cool performer. Overall, she summed it up as 'awesome'. This was very positive, and her comments refer to key scenes of the glitter transition, the editing of the colour filter in all scenes to make the colours brighter and the performance of the artist which connected with the audience.

Hanifah's feedback was very enthusiastic and positive, having the pop projector background being a key aspect of the video which stood out. She said it was interesting, which was the intention we were going for, as our video was made to entertain viewers. Also the popular glitter scene was once again mentioned, which means that it must have had a strong influence. She summed it up as 'amazing', a description I can also agree with!

Max said that one of the strongest parts of the video was the glitter scene, which also left a good impression on other viewers. However, he picked up on a weakness, which was the piano playing. He said that the piano playing wasn't on the screen when it was meant to. Our vision was to have the piano disconnected with the music as it was showing a hobby, although this did not come across on screen. This would be something we could improve on, so we can film it again and perhaps having it playing in time with the music so viewers would be able to understand and connect with the playing.

Nick commented on the styling, which we did indeed take time thinking over and made sure it fit the genre and the video. He also picked up on one of our creative techniques of filming, the illusion of painting on the lens, which Nick thought was impressive. He said the performance of the artist was humorous, which is a good comment to make, as we tried to make the video as entertaining as possible. We wanted to create a fun, colourful theme to link with our genre.

This is what Nick said when I asked him for feedback for my ancillary work.

The improvements are understandable, for instance the letter correction should have been automatically detected. Considering that the improvements are minor, the overall impact of the ancillary work linked quite well, as it is fair to say that it reflects my video and its genre greatly, due to the colour scheme and styling.

Strengths of Ancillary work:

-Entertaining photos that represent the artist's personality

-Colour scheme through-out so there is a constant theme of electro-pop

-Silhoutte effect

Weaknesses of Ancillary work that can be improved:

-Minor mistakes (e.g. letter)

-Using same colour font on digipak and advert (even though they are from the same colour scheme)

-Clarity of logos/links

This is a print screen of our video on vimeo. There was a comment which commented on our use of colour, which is good as this was one of the key aspects of our video that represented our electro-pop genre.

Video Feedback. I asked my target audience of 16-25 year olds.

Strengths of video:

- Colours 

-Interesting ideas/concept

-Creative use of shots and editing (e.g. paint scene)

-Humorous impact

Weaknesses of video that could be improved:

-Piano scene could be filmed with more light  

-Piano could be edited along with music a bit more

Overall, getting feedback was very helpful and useful as it made me consider what I should improve and do better next time.

Survey for audience

Hi! You can fill up our small survey about our music video! Thanks a lot ;)

Evaluation-Question 1

We decided to make our music video within the Electopop/Dance genre convention. Before we have started even planning what music video we are going to do, we all have agreed that we want it to be colourful, lively and unique. When we realised that the song made by Calvin Harris-Feel So Close perfectly fit in to our own personal expectation, we were happy. Moreover because we all wanted it to be full of colour, energetic and modern this gave us one more advantages to follow the genre convention without any problems from the start till the end of the project including music video and and digipak. 

In the music video DJ Fresh-Louder the beginning starts with the establishment shot of the sunrise in the city. Straight away audience receive a message that this video is going to be warm, sunny and probably contain lots of half-naked people to emphasis the idea of fun, freedom and paradise-like place. We decided to go with something similar. We filmed sky with clouds. We also decided to film tree to draw attention of the audience, and to show the rapid movement. This create an obvious editing to the audience, but also tells them that this video is going to be bright, have lots of colour and want to wake up feelings like- passion, freedom and positive energy.

Goodwin theory

He stated that the traditional narrative analysis doesn’t apply to the pop videos.  Music video has such a different structure

Theory

1. Pop videos are built around the song. Most of the music videos don’t not carry the narrative structure
2. Artist can plays many roles in the music video – be a singer and character at once
3. The singer looks directly at the camera. This builds a strong relationship between the audience and the artist.

Our video

1. We did not follow the narrative structure of normality-problem-resolution.  We have presented our idea in much more simplistic way. We focused on performance rather than a story. In the video each of our character is progressing in their activity. We can see this improvement as the music video gradually goes in to end.
2. Robert as an artist has played role of singer and narrator. In the video he doesn’t have a relationship with any of the other character. All of them are showed on their own, like they have a separate life. However Robert beside his singing part he also played a good role in the entertaining the audience. His attitudes as the performer was stunning, especially in the projector scene. This make the audience feels more engaged. Moreover because Robert is really enjoying himselve and having fun this help us to promote him more.
3. Most of the time Robert is looking directly at the camera, which build nice relationship with the audience. They get a scene like he is singing to them. Also other character like a skateboarder looks into the camera which draws attention of the audience.  

In order to other point of the Goodwin theory, pop video rely on repetition. I must say that we keep up with it. Most of the base tracks are repeat over and over again to make the audience become more familiar with the image of new artist. But what is more important the audience starts to recognize particular image and fit them with each particular genre. This let the audience build up the certain expectation of  each of them. For example by repetition of the projector scene the audience associate the bright and lively colour as well as energetic performance with the electropop genre.    Also the repetition bits set up the structure of the video.

In the Goodwin opinion, we can classify 3 different types of music video.

Illustration –video tells the story

Amplification-introduce new meaning that don’t contradict with the lyrics but add layers of meaning

Disjunction- little connection between the lyric and video

I believe our music video is a mixture of both amplification and disjunction.  The lyrics of the song talk about the relationship between man and woman.  However we used it to present the love of each character to their particular passion eg. skateboarder to the skatepark/skateboard, the piano player to the piano and  the dancer to the dance itself etc. This emphasis the feeling of teenager to their hobbies but also show them as very talented despite their young age.  We are amplifying  a different meaning of the words but also present the level of disjunction because we actually created them in our music video.  Without even realising, in one of the scene during the transition from one clip to other we could actually agree that we have carried an 2 different idea about love. Just before first chorus when Robert is singing ‘'I feel so close to you right now', 'your love pours down on me', 'there is no stopping us right now'.  Suddenly an image of Evie blowing the glitter comes up on the the screen. It can be seem as Robert is singing to her, as she is his lover. However this is a small exception, because throughout the rest of the music video it is clearly to see that we did not carry out any relationship theme.

Transition between one scene to another

Dj Fresh-Louder

Our music video

       comparison

Skatepark and skateboarder scenes from DJ Fresh -Louder has influenced us to create something similar. We shot lots of different jumps, moving along the ramp etc. We also have mixture of close ups, mid/long shot to emphasis the real atmosphere of skateboarding. The audiences are more excited and can actually feel like they are in the music video. The establishment shot let the audience see and recognize the setting of the location- skatepark. I think that our final outcome is good as the original real media product. 

MIC CTRL in front of the projector

The idea about of using projector in one of our base track was influenced by the Calvin Harris ft Rihhan- We Found Love. We really like this idea and had lots of different ideas what image we can use behind the artist. We have found out lots of different thing on YouTube like: city, psychodelic images etc. However we decided to put something colourful. We have put 'electropop' text on the projector which really emphasis the  genre but also gives a 'flow' and build the postive and funky atmosphere into the music video. 

However the biggest influeced has a real media product Calvin Harris into the final outcome

Calvin Harris-Ready For The Weekend

The colours are simple. It is kept in black&white atmosphere. But props like shiny goggle add a party and disco mood as well as the funky font. This very attractive woman can not see anything through them, but the idea of goggle imitating the circle to indicates CD or Vinyl image come through out the artist's other CD cover as well as in music video later on. There is no any special effect. A good picture plays very significant role. It has very strong impact on the audience. Moreover the title 'Ready for the weekend' emphasis the genre of the music - disco/electro pop which is very often play in the clubs during the weekend. It gives a sense of people waiting and being ready for having fun and just enjoying selves and free time with accompanies of good music. 

I have decided to create a 3 panel, which is very unconventional in this type of genre. However the rest of the composition and design I decided to keep with the same conventions' pattern. I chose picture from the side. The most important thing is the hat and the outfit because it comes through all media product ( music video and ancillary products).  

The album title ' Disco Never Dies' also refers to the electropop genre conventions. It suggest that whatever we are doing we also can find time to enjoy and have fun, and this album will help us to find it in our busy life.  I did not use any special effects. I concentrated on the quality of the pictures. I think they fulfill my aim of having strong impact and drawing interest and attention of the audience.