Evaluation: What did you learn from audience feedback?

We asked students from our class and any students from the college to look at our work and give us some feedback on what was successful and what we could have tackled better!

Did it fit with the music video genre?

"It did in some ways in that it had the narrative structure there which was clear and worked well, however I have personally haven't seen many mainstream or pop music videos like this, but because it isn't a pop song I think it still shows the genre in keeping with your style."

How did our video attract an audience?

"It attracted me because it was very intriguing, and the establishing shots create confusion and a want to know more, but because we see the person sleeping first and see them waking up last it is very clear it is a dream and found it very interesting and wanted to watch it again"

Would you keep this video on if you saw it as a real media product?

" I would! Just because it is so different and inventive, I would watch to see what happens and enjoy the sharp editing"

What did you think of the editing and effects used?

"I loved the idea of the fast forward shots, which really made me relate to a dream because they are sometimes unclear and blurred"

"Also I really enjoyed the reverse shots, which created tension, for example where 'i'm back' appears on the white board. Also I really liked the use of intense, concentrated lighting in darkness to show the idea of night time"

"I enjoyed the use of black outs throughout the piece at random intervals, which showed to me how dreams are very random and have moments of nothing, then chaos"

What didn't go so well?

"I thought that some of the cuts weren't right on the beat of the music so that could have taken more time in the editing process to correct"

"Perhaps I would have liked even more storytelling within the video"

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

Ancillary text evaluation : please click on the link to view a slideshow of my evaluation.

By Rebecca Owens :)

We challenge conventions !!

View more presentations from squib8.

By Becki F :)

Changed our minds after feedback!

We showed clips to the teacher and how to how it was progressing and we got the feedback such as...

"where is the story?''

"It's too random"

"You must adhere to some music video conventions"

Therefore we took to idea of the 'through line' story and added a new character who would be having the dream. We can now justify the 'randomness' within our music video as dreams have no limits or continuity. Therefore we also then adhere to some conventions of a music video in the process.

These shots are placed throughout the video, varying from out of focus 'distorted' shots to shadows on the wall explaining the process of the dream. We now feel, as a group, we follow the structural conventions of a music video whilst maintaining abstract shots with sharp, clean cut editing to maintain our eccentric, 'quirky' theme. Other techniques we have used in this video are 'reversing' the shot, which proved to be very visually pleasing. Another technique we used was to speed up and slow down shots we had. This then directly correlated with the music being quite frantic and never stopping, furthermore it helped shots which looked quite simplistic have a much more dynamic quality. The change in speed also helped correspond with our narrative of a dream sequence, of some parts being more clear and others fast and fleeting by.

Carr Mill Dam

New found location !!

We recently found a great location to film in in college, the art department. At first we struggled with lighting as most of the rooms had a lot of windows letting in a lot of sunlight. We found a specific area of the textiles department in which we used a trail and error technique to produce our desired lighting state. Previously to this shooting period, we had always captured inanimate objects as aposed to humans. Here we tried filming Olivia behind a orange tinted screen to change the dynamic quality.

Experimentation with lighting, shadow and props in the studio

We experimented with a range of backgrounds in the studio using scarves and cloths on tables, to eliminate any chance of amateur settings and effects.

We used tight spotlighting lighting and shadow to enhance the proffesional quality of our shots allowing us to create a mysterious, dream-like atmosphere.

Looking at the Poster advertisement

Again we did the same and printed out the poster in B&W so that we could see how it looked. We changed a few things just by looking at it, for example we added a boarder all the way around the picture in order to create a professional feel, however to still keep with our style we we used the erase tool to erase away some of the white boarder to create an edgy feel. Also we moved the text about the album release etc into the boarder to keep it separate from the striking image itself, and allow the audience to see the image first and be drawn in by that rather than being sold something.

Also we made the face of the person in the picture distorted to keep the theme from the digipak, however we felt because we distorted the body as well in the digipak we should also do that. Therefore we made a decision to use the liquify tool in photoshop to do the same to this image.

The development of our Digipak

After seeing our digipak on screen we wondered how it would actually look if we printed it off in b&w just to put it together and see if it would work once you actually had it folded and all split into sections. From a first look we initially thought i twas great visually, and th image of the dolls head fitted in with our video, and the front cover of the manipulated face was a striking image for the front cover. However after asking a teacher to look at it we got the feedback:

"I like the manipulation of the image, it looks great, however the image of the girl in the tree when it opens out does not fit with the rest of the strange and distorted images we have presented therefore, we decided to manipulate this image to keep the theme throughout.

Our Audience Age

Our song of choice has words in it such as 'Fu*k' and 'sh*t'. Therefore this will limit our audience, to the older teen and young adult, however this isn't necessarily a bad thing because usually the aims for a pop video is to get the largest audience possible to watch your video, however because we have chosen to go with a more unique style of music I think it doesn't concern us that we have a smaller audience, and will aim to attract a niche audience who prefer this kind of music.

However we had to make a few changes to the packaging of the digipak, in adding the parental advisory logo so warn our audiences of the content. This would also adhere to the law.

After a session of using the HD camera to try out a selection of desired shots, we then imported the clips into Adobe Premier Pro. We used the editng tools to play around with different ideas and techniques. We found that certain shots looked more effective than others on the computer rather than viewing them on the camera due to lighting and shot quality.
Olivia

Research and Audiences

A typical music video by a pop artist or band usually consists of the artist singing to the camera along with a through line story which relates to the lyrics. This type of music video entices a specific 'Mainstream music' audience. However because our music video is not going to be entirely stereotypical, we thought it important to research our audience and who our video would be shown and appeal to. Here we have researched what music channels and radio stations our video would be best suited too. We shortlisted three options which we though would be the closest to our style below...

MTV would suit or music video for the reason that it always shows new and fresh music to appeal to young audiences, which would be good for our music video, however on the other hand it is an American channel so maybe would not show British artists that are not very well established, and also the style of music shown is mostly pop and R&B therefore again maybe not fully appropriate.

Kerrrang would fit well because it shows more artists which aren't in the mainstream but on the other hand is predominantly rock therefore our genre of music doesn't quite fit in.

Finally radio 1 seems to be the perfect radio station because the listeners are young people, also it caters to new music in the UK and encourages it, 'Jai Paul' our artist was also discovered by radio 1 in 'The new sound of 2011' competition so therefore is a perfect choice. Radio 1 also has a website where new videos of artists can be placed therefore this would be perfect for our video.

Research....Our chosen song !

After much deliberation, our group decided to create a music video, however we didn't want to do it in the typical 'pop' style. We wanted to construct abstract shots and use complex editing which in turn will help us to develop a unconventional manner of production rather than a commercial music video to a ballad or pop song, for example Girls Aloud - See The Day



We found a lot of inspiration within James Blakes' - Limit To Your Love music video as it contains many 'out of focus' shots alongside detailed, well constructed lighting angles.
However we also wanted to colaberate with the idea of naturalistic continuity editing, just as this music video experiments with.




We decided to expand on this idea of a collection of random settings and scenes, to create a number of fast paced cuts to a song with a heavy beat. In the True Blood opening credits, the selection of random cuts are linked by the theme of the music, and often has cuts of similair places, for example there are a selection of animals, a snake is filmed at 0.24 seconds, a frog at 1.03 seconds, a dead animal at 0.42 seconds and a fox at 1.04. There are also multiplie images with religious intent, for example, a church choir, a fully immersed baptism at the end of the clip and a graveyard of some sort. The group liked this idea of a random selection of cuts thrown together with linking images.






After watching many music videos such as Radiohead's - Creep and Owl City's - Firefly we decided to use a song that would suit a new innovative and un-narrative type of filming and editing.

Jai Paul's lyrical dubstep song - BTSTU incorporates dynamics and variation to make a very diverse, contemporary sound, perfect for our desired style of music video, therefore this is our chosen song for the project.





Becki F & Rebecca O

Initial Ideas - Research on Music Videos

Becki & Olivia

A2 Group 11