Final Product

Final Digipak

Final Poster

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

Feeling Good

Abbi Douetail, Will Edgely, Isobel Boddy and Lizzie Ward Thomas


Excellent and considerate understanding of the technologies used in production of the video, for example in terms of digital picture quality and the use of FCP. There are evident links between creative decision making and use of technology on both productions of the video using professional digital cameras and in the post production editing process – in discussion of match of action, lip syncing and graphic matching. This is sustained and thorough and accurate in discussion of the branded themes of the MV of S&M. The commentary shows a discrete awareness of the use of new media technology and uses discriminating examples really well, particularly to selection and construction of narrative, using masks and editing techniques, such as cross cutting Excellent command of terminology and well presented – understands and discusses convergence really well. There is sustained justified decision making links between the technologies used the product and audience reception.
This is a well considered documentary, well done.

Evaluation Task 4 - Pre Production

Before filming our music video, we needed to storyboard what we wanted to happen within our music video. After storyboarding these ideas, we then stuck them up onto a white wall so we could film them individually with a Sony NX5, and afterwards lay them under the song of choice. We edited all of these individual shots together using Final Cut Pro and synced the shots up to our track of choice (Feeling Good - Muse). This in turn gave us a rough cut of our video, therefore, if all of us were away on the day of our shoot, we would be able to leave someone else in charge and they would have been able to complete our idea. This also made us realise that some shots would not fit in certain places and that they would look better in other areas, it also made us realise that we did not have enough intensity within our music video and it was all a bit slowand soft which did not suit the theme of the song. Therefore, this pre-production use of media technology was crucial to the final outlook as it gave us the opportunity to correct certain areas of our animatic, and without our storyboard animatic the final product would look alot different today.

Here are the videos of us recording our storyboard animation :

EBlogger itself has been a crucial peice of technology that we have used in achieving the best results within our Coursework and our Music Video. It has allowed us to blog all of our pre-production ideas and our change of ideas, aswell as our research and planning. It has been extremely for us as a group, as all of our ideas have been in one place rather than everywhere which has allowed us to change ideas and find old bits of planning extremely easily.

Underneath this sentence is a link which helps to show the advantages of blogging, which is extremely relevant to the work that we have been doing and what we have achieved via the use of online blogging:

Benefits of blogging

Mobile technology has also been extremely useful for us as a group. The use of our Iphones was extremely beneficial as we were able to take photos, screen-grab pages from the internet and search links all while on the move and we were not confined to just our media lessons to complete the coursework. We could upload all of our photos and screen-grabs straight from our phones to our blogs, a number of the photos on this blog were actually uploaded while we were shooting our Music Video. With the use of internet on our smartphones, we were able to order costumes for our actors and have them sent to our shoot location which helped planning extremely well and it took a large weight off of our shoulders and while most groups were running around looking for their costumes on the day, we were safe in the knowledge that our costumes would be with us on time and in the right place. This use of the Iphone helped us enormously when it came to planning and it really shows how technological advances help within the media industry and pre-planning of a music Video shoot.


The use of the internet helped us achieve the best possible results in our coursework and although it wasnt the most exciting form of media technology we used, it was crucial! We used the internet to acces sites such as EBlogger (which is of course critical to our success in the coursework) YouTube and Google. Google was used alongside the Iphone as we were able to research band costumes and photo ideas for our band on google wherever we were, however most of the research was done in the class while we were all together as a group. Youtube was by far and away the most important as it allowed us to take inspiration from various groups and their attempts at their own Music Video's. It also allowed us to upload our Music Video, and receive feedback which has been extremely important in regards to our final coursework mark.


Finally, we set up a photoshoot with the band and although we were able to take photos on our iphones, it was easier for us to achieve the best look for our poster and digipak if we organised a professional shoot. The day went extremely well and we all had turns in directing the band and telling them how to stand and where to stand etc. All of this planning could not have produced the best results as we needed the photography studio, the professional photographer and the professional camera and we ended up using Adobe Photoshop to achieve the excellent Poster we have now. All of these peices of equipment are uses of media technologies that benefitted us in our final peice.

Evaluation Task 3 What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Here we can show you screen grabs of the feedback that we received via online media such as Facebook and Youtube

Evaluation Task Three

Feedback

Please check your blogged entry for spelling.  A good evaluation which takes on well audience viewpoints.  I feel that could have collected a wider set of feedback - ie questionnaires and those found on your  You Tube posting.  In evaluation perhaps you could have quoted what you audience said about the MV.  Also have you covered the CD digipak and film poster?  Do not forget you designed a campaign, not just a MV.

A good effort, please ensure that you post teh feedback video and make the necessary changes/ revision to your blogged entry.

Evaluation Task 3 - Focus group

After looking at our focus group, there were many issues and worries that we had about our product, yet at the same time we got a good amount of positive criticsm. We showed our focus group the Music Video that we had created and looked for their reaction, and after showing them the video we found that there were a mix of reactions.


After finding this reactions we found that many of the focus group were unaware of what the Music Video was about and they believed that it was actually about Domestic Violence which was our original theme rather than the new theme of S&M. After explaining what the production was trying to achieve and show the audience the focus group found that it made much more sense than they had previously thought.


We moved onto asking the group about what ages they believed to be appropriate to view this Music Video and they thought that it should be available to be viewed by children as young as 12 yet a part of the group highly disagreed and thought that it should be viewed by children between the ages of 14 and 15. However, this focus group was built up of 17 year olds and when we asked the older generation of viewers what they believed they said that they would not want their children watching this as it is reasonably dark and disturbing.


The group believed that the poster and digipak definitely portrayed the image we were trying to achieve but they also added that it could have been slightly more edgy and different which would link in perfectly with the Video and the image we were trying to get across to the audience. One problem we had with our focus group was that it was all female therefore it was a limited sample, preferably we would have had a few boys within the same age group within our focus group. However, this was a seriously good way of getting feedback from our target audience.




After looking at Hall we realsied that the readings of this video can be seperated into three different groups

1. the preffered reading: this would be for people to understand our product and realise that the concept of S&M is what we were trying to achieve. We would also like people to be more aware of the concept as it is often ignored by mainstream society.
2. the negotiated reading: this would be that the group did not understand the concept and thought it was about Domestic violence but would still like the issues to be addressed.
3. the oppositional reading: this would be that they found it disturbing and that they did not recognise what we were trying to achieve by producing a video about S&M. This has arisen through both the hanging scene and the suffocation scene which were found as disturbing, however they would not have a problem with the way in which our band was set up and their performance in the video.

Finally, we realised that our audience was definitely not passive and had a mjor input into the way our product worked and how it didnt. All this extra information helped because we could accomidate to our audiences preferences before the Video is released.

Evaluation Task 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Evaluation task 2

View more presentations from hurtwoodhousemedia5.

Our Questionaire

Questionnaire:

Circle answers

• Are you male/female?           

• How old are you?

• What’s your favourite music genre?

• What did you think was the concept of our video?

• Did you find it disturbing?

• Would you want to watch it again? If so where and when?

• Would you send it to your friends?

• What did you think the band image was?

• Is there anything you would change?

• Do you like the video? If so what did you like about it?

• What did you not like about it?

• Do you think the poster and video linked together?

• Would you buy the album?

• Did you like the digipak design?

• What would you get out of watching the video?

• Do you feel you relate to the band? If so how and why?

• Do they represent you in anyway?

• What do this band stand for?

• What attitudes to they represent?

• Is there a message? If so, what?

• What do you think could be improved in any of the products?

• Do you think they all seem like they are from the same band? Or there some differences in the image?

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