Audience feedback

On the remaining days of school (before the easter holidays) Our year group had an after school assembley for year 11, 12 and 13's to watch our video's and comment on what they liked and enjoyed the most. This was a great turn out and filled up the seats! Many people had lots to say on our video, which was a great help! We also had the chance to watch the year 12's productions and gave them audience feedback as I felt that their films had a range of some of the best idea's, as they were an assortment of all different genres not just horror/thriller.


Here's some of our audience feedback from the day;

Black and white fitted well with the tempo of the song.


Good narrative that fit with the song.


It was a realistic portrayal of the story that the target audience of young teenagers can relate to.


They used good locations.


I liked the idea of the reversing clips. It really made it clear to the audience what was happening.


The photo's looked realistic.


The studio scenes looked professional.


The play fighting scene showed how much they loved each other, and I liked how this was contrasted with the fighting scene behind the broke arrow to show that they had broken up.


I liked the split screens at the end, with the contrasting light and narratives.


It was perfectly composed, a really good music video.


Good story telling.


I loved the editing, especially the L.O.V.E and the bed scenes in IKEA. I thought this was edited to the beat well.


I liked the L.O.V.E


The camera angles and effects were effective.


The black and white made it look more natural and fit with the emotion of the narrative.


Good transition between footage.


It fits well with the pop genre.


It was really good.


I loved the animation of cupid with the heart.


The L.O.V.E was effective.


Good different angles and speeds.


I liked the broken arrow.


Good portrayal between past and present.


I like the change of scenery, it made everything really touching and the fast forwarding made the video feel emotional.


I like the romance of the characters portrayed and how one shows the difference of how their relationship changed with their body language.


Good lip sycnhing and creative angles used throughout.


The rewinding scenes which embody the essence and meaning of the clip.


Good use of photographs.


The singing seemed very realistic.


Good use of black and white.


Good links between shots.


I also spoke to a friend via iPhone, and asked her how she felt about our music video..

Evaluation

After a long easter break, and with exams and media deadlines round the corner; myself, Sophie and Emmak met up today to create and finish our media evaluation. We met during the afternoon at school, and went throught the media evaluation questions 1,2,3 & 4. We discussed and wrote down our answers before we recorded the real thing.

We decided to record the whole evaluation, except for question 2, which is a personal opinion on our own digi packs. Most of our answers although pre arranged/planned were from our own opinions, which made the discussion seem more real and interesting as all three of us were having in depth convosations about our media production.

We've uploaded the evaluation and edited in black screens at the start of the questions, so that it is not too confussing, as we do talk a lot!!

Changes

-Opening Credits
- changed ikea shot
- changed lip synching
- new opening
- l.o.v.e to the beat
- changed clip behind the broken arrow
- unreversed the arrow
- edited to the beat (bits in ikea)
- Added the water umbrella "ooh" shot
- made alex and myself appear on the split screen when the word "love" is sung
- alex and myself brighter contrast - happy times, me on own - darker

Changes to lip syncing

I noticed that some of the lip syncing cut off half way through a line, for example the the clip at Ally Pally after the still shots above she sings "Giving me all your time, you.." which is cut off of half of another line. I thought that this doesn't happen in professional music videos and that I needed to change it. However it wasn't as easy it sounds, as once I cut a bit off of that clip the whole timing for the whole music video was out of sync. I therefore had to refine the clip after that which was the couple play fighting, the good times on the bed in Ikea and make it slightly longer. Seeing as we have a lot of footage, this took a lot longer than I thought it would have.

The next lip syncing shot I changed was this screen shot.
From our audience feedback from Michaela's group who were in the media room at the same time as we were editing, they thought that this shot fit in much better than the shot before. The shot before was just myself not even singing at all in the studio and trying to have a Marilyn Monroe effect with the hairdryer. However this hairdryer wasn't as powerful as we hoped and didnt have much effect. They also said that this was a different shot, mid-shot/closeup from the side which reflects our different camera angles. She also end up with her hands near her chest which in the next shot of her seeing "Like a broken arrow" in the studio that's where her hands start, so the music video flows more.

I also changed the main kitchen Ikea scene. I still wanted the intertextuality of "The sinks broken..." from the film (500) Days of Summer but I needed a better clip as the clip we had chosen before, although I really liked it as I was running into the kitchen and you could instantly tell it was Ikea, was too shakey, even when I did stabalise it. However this clip still has myself taking things out of the "oven" and given food to Alex then running over to the sink and laughing that the sinks broken. I found this clip a good potrayal and good intertextuality of the film. It also shows a wide shot which is composed well as Alex is sitting in the rule of thirds in the left corner.

The next lip synching shots I changed where the shots up against the wall where I sings "Oh, I miss him, I miss him, Im missing him." However all the lip synching I found she was pronouncing "him" well as you can't tell that her lips are closing. I did however editing it anyway so one shot was, "I miss him" another shot did the next "I miss him", and the last shot, which returned the the first did "Im missing him". I thought that this was a good idea, but seeing as the lip synching isn't perfect i'm not sure if it works well. I will need to get some audience feedback from other members of the class to see what they think. I also liked these shots as the background goes from black to white to black and this is a connotation of slow pop music videos, having flashes of black and white.

I also added more studio clips the same as the starting initial studio clips. I think that this was a good idea as the whole music video has to have a linear timeline somewhere and refering back to the initial studio clip shows some versimilitude and continuity to the music video. This is a shot where the microphone is hanging and I was singing into it facing to the left in a checked shirt.

I then changed the shot where I was holding the camera and singing into the camera. I thought that this would be a good idea if we were still doing the home video effect. I would have liked to do the home video effect however the green screen was not achievable on final cut or iMovie as the green wasn't a clear enough green, this may have been due to the printer or to the actual camera, but if I had better quality equipment we would still try to do that idea. I then decided to replace that clip with a clip of myself singing at Alexandra Palace. I like this clip as she is composed to the technique of the rule of thirds and to the right of her you can see a lot of sky line and all the lights from the city.
I also adjusted the side by side shot of me and Alex looking at photos. On the left of the shot is of me looking at pictures with her head down and in darkness where as on the right of the shot is Alex and I both looking at the pictures together in a brighter lighting, this then represents the good and bad times of the couple. I also made the shot so that it starts off with her looking at the pictures on her own then the second picture on the right comes in on the beat on the word "love" to represent that she loved him.

Editing To The Beat

I also noticed that the start of the chorus all of the editing was a bit miss matched and was not edited to the beat at all, which I thought was weird as that's what we get marked on, and seeing as our song is slow, we can't do a lot of sharp cuts for our editing but we can use the beat to edit to. So at the start of the chorus when myself and Alex jumps on the bed in Ikea, immitating (500) Days of Summer I made sure that she lands when the first symbol sound is played. On the next symbol sound I made sure that her face was shown and then quickly on the next one his face was shown. After that a two shot of the couple together was next shown on the fourth symbol noise and finally on the fifth symbol noise he kisses me.

Changes..

At the start of the film I replaced the bit where the girl touches her breasts as we felt that this was very inappropriate for an innocent pop music promo. I replaced it with a clip of me in Ally Pally running up to a telescope and looking into this. I think that this starts off as an establishing shot to set the scene that she's in Ally Pally, alone and broken up with Alex. It also can act as if she is looking down the telescope into the music video as it goes straight into the stop motion of L.O.V.E.

Opening Credits
We added in basic Times New Roman font the opening credits to the music promo in the bottom left hand corner. I did a bit of research into the credits at the start of music promos and realised that the lines go:
Song Title - Line One
Artist Name - Line Two
Album Name - Line Three
Production Company - Line Four

Seeing as we all have different album names as we all have different digipak's I found the third line slightly difficult to do, however with a bit more research into album names I found two different initials.
LP - Long Play
EP - Extended Play

Extended play is not a full album, but not quite a single. So the CD in the shop would have our music single, broken arrow and plus maybe two or three more. Seeing as all our digipak's have around 12 songs on it this would be the full album which is sometimes referred to as long play. So I will change the opening credits to Broken Arrow EP to mean the single and it will avoid any confusion with album covers.
Also I carried on our production name "SEEN producitons" from year 12 as it was easier and it fits with our group.

We tried out our film in colour, by copying our footage onto another project to see what it looked like. I am really in two minds as to whether I prefer this to the black and white or not, as in some ways it looks effective with all the different colours, but in others, I liked the use of the black and white as black and white signifies a memory, and/or flashback.

Evaluation Research

Here are the four questions needed for our evaluation

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

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

The marking criteria

Level 4 16–20 marks

There is excellent understanding of the forms and conventions used in the productions
There is excellent understanding of the role and use of new media in various stages of the production.
There is excellent understanding of the combination of main product and ancillary texts.
There is excellent understanding of the significance of audience feedback.
There is excellent skill in choice of form in which to present the evaluation.
There is excellent ability to communicate.
There is excellent use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation.