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?

Digipak

This draft is to give you an idea of what the final draft is going to be. We decided to make the lead singer the focus of attention. We displayed this by having him in the middle of the image with the rest of band set smaller behind him. We also have a single image of him in a dark atmosphere showing the darkness of the single and also focusing on him.

This is the final draft. The changes i did to this image is that I made Patches image more contrasted and brighter to emphasise his expression. With the image of the whole band I made the background white when before, the sides were black. I got the image of the back cover from google images. I used this image because it related to the narrative of our single. Its dark and relates to the hanging scene in our music video

Feedback

The posts you provide of the shoot day are ok, but descriptive on reflection - you could have linked more the lighting design into the concept of mise en scene.  You have also omitted any comments on the performance/ narrative element of the MV - in particular the 'hanging scene'.  This took a lot of organising. And finally you could have commented on any significant shots that were filmed.

Also blogging requires visual evidence to support what you write - can you blog any images?

My groups roles during the shoot day

Although i was mainly involved with the lighting, during the narrative I had the opportunity to work on the dolly to shoot some tracking shots that we needed for our final piece. I was not the only one who got an opportunity to do this as Abbi also had a go on the dolly. Both of our attempts to do this came out extremely well when we looked at our shots before we started to edit. We also all took it in turn to film the behind the scenes footage that will be posted on my blog shortly.

personally, I really enjoyed my position within the group and enjoyed the opportunities that I had during the shoot day. I particularly enjoyed my Lighting position which enabled me to work closely with the main members of the technical staff that we have at Hurtwood. It placed me in a position which required alot of work and responsibility and after the shoot had finished, I felt that i had met those challenges head on.

Abbi, as the most organised of the group took control of the Director's position. This was a joint decision made by the group and we all felt that at the end of the day that she had done an incredible job. This job involved her giving stage directions to those performing in both the narrative and the performance. It also involved her looking at the screen that was attached to the camera to make sure that the shots we were getting were good enough to be used or whether or not we had to get another shot.

Izzy, who is involved in the Hurtwood Film academy took control of most of the Filming. This again was a joint decision by the group as we felt that Izzy would be able to capture the best shots within the group. Izzy also worked alongside Abbi, to make sure that the shots were as near to perfect as possible.

Finally there was Lizzy, who did an outstanding job working the playback. Lizzy's love for music made her perfect for the position of playback due to the fact that she could tell exactly where to put a new line into the film and knew exactly how the members of the band should be playing their instruments to make it as realistic as possible. During the band run through in the morning Lizzy played a vital role in positioning the band and helping them rehearse their parts within the song.

Vince lombardi once said that "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection then we can catch excellence" and in my eyes this is extremely suited to our efforts on the day and throughout the process of forming the group and setting up the whole of our shoot day.

Evaluation of Shoot Day

The shoot of our pop video to "feeling good" by muse was on the 21st of november. Unfortunately, due to the difference in availability of members of the band, the morning was a lot more stressful than we had hoped for. This meant that we had to make sure that we got all of the shots that we wanted of all of the members of the band in a limited amount of time. We also had to set up our set in the morning due to the fact that the shoot on the friday before ours lasted longer than expected, therefore we had to set aside time to create the set the way that we wanted it to look which again took up more time.

We managed to get or set done extremely quickly and we managed to set up our lighting at the same time. The mise-en-scene that we wanted to create was the feeling of an old hotel room and we as a group felt that it was achieved very well via the use of dirty old wallpaper that we managed to scuff up a bit more aswell using tea bags and 'mould-on' spray. We used this both in the performance and narrative, however within the narrative we used dirty sheets and an old bed, to create the sense of a old, horrible hotel room.

On the morning of the shoot we all had a job to do, my job was to sort out the lighting during the set build within the morning and to sort out the cues to which lighting should come in at what points during the song and performance. The use of darkish lighting ended up being easier than expected due to the fact that it was easy to programme the light settings on the control panel that I was using. The most challenging part of the morning was getting the spotlight on the lead singer at the precise moment which was crucial to the professionalism of the shots.

Overall, the whole group worked extremely well together and as we dive head first into the editing process, the shots that we have achieved to get are looking better than we could have ever imagined. 

Feedback

A competent set of posts.  You need to account for the process of constructing the poster. You have leapt from image to final prodcut with no evaluation of how.  Also the photoshoot organisation is simply described and the blogged photo's are poorly presented.  You will need to reblog these.

Day before shoot

Today is the final day that we have to prepare for our shoot. This afternoon we are building our set in prepration for the performance on monday morning and today we are trying to fit molly within the harness and we need our theatre productions manager to help us to do this. This is of key importance due to the fact that we need Jason to do a risk assessment before we use the harness and because it is an important aspect of our video. in regards to building the set, we need to move the walls and place them in an area we think is most suited to our production. We need to also put the bed into the room, and make sure that everything is in the shooting suite when we need it including bed side table, table lamp, paintings etc. finally, we need to mess up the wall paper to create a dirty/old room

Final Photos for the Digipack

After the photoshoot today, we had come to an agreement on the final pictures that we wanted to use for our final digipack. we edited them, decided where to put them on the digipak and cropped them.

HEAD SHOTS OF BAND

 

                                                   

                           

SHOTS FOR INLAY OF DIGIPAK

 

shot of lead singer for inside of digipak:

 

Photo Shoot Day

Photoshoot

Today we did our photoshoot and thankfully, it went extremely well. Due to the fact that we had already planned our shots, we went straight into doing the shots rather than messing around creating ideas and wasting time. We managed to get all of the band members into the studio on time which i was very pleased with as it showed we were organised and had a real idea of how to organise effectively. After taking the shots, we decided to edit our shots to black and white so it looks more professional rather than in colour.

SHOTS FOR FRONT COVER OF DIGIPAK

MID SHOTS AND BODY SHOTS

pianist

singer

        

bassist

drummer

guitarist

SHOTS FOR INSIDE OF DIGIPAK