Slideshare

As for question 4, I wanted to add in images, I thought that showing this section as a power-point would be really effective as I could separate the different technologies I have used and learned about and show images of them. I used a website called Slide-share to upload my power-point and show it on the internet.

Question 4 - Technologies from conniebriggsmedia

Question Three Back Up

My Prezi presentation that I used for question three seems to sometimes not work Therefore as a back up, I also made a power point presentation and put it on slideshare, similar to my question four.

Question Three - Audience Feeback from conniebriggsmedia

Filmed Evaluation

I wanted to do a commentary over my work for question one and two, as I felt it was important to demonstrate visually what I had done as well as talk about it. I included clips from the video as well as various print screens of editing processes and references to my influences to show as well as tell how I created my video and evaluated how well I had done this. I then uploaded it to YouTube so it can be seen.

Audience Feedback - Survey

As I sent this directly to my target audience, most of the answers are from females aged 16-25, as I was aiming for a slightly mature teenager/young adult target audience. I only sent my survey to my target audience as it was their opinions that counted the most; therefore I wanted to collect information from them.

The majority answered yes to this question, however 4 people did say no. This is expected as music video’s tend to have less clear narratives as they are shorter movies, therefore some things cannot make sense as the action happens very fast and there is only a short period of time for people to watch and understand it.

Again, the majority here did say yes, however I did receive a few no’s. Close up shots of the artist are important because the screens we now watch videos on have become smaller in the form of mobile phones or tablets, therefore tight framed shots are important to showcase star image. During editing, I tried to include many quick cuts to close up shots of the star, as our pace was quite quick, the audience may have missed some of them. However next time I would take this into consideration and include longer frames of close ups to really empathise the star.

 

I wanted to make this an open question so I could receive as much feedback as possible. The majority of people did say yes because the editing and music is synced and we meet the conventions that Andrew Goodwin laid out in his music video theory.

This was multiple choice question; therefore many of my audience selected more than one option to describe my star image. The majority selected fun, which was the image I was trying to create by putting her in funny scenarios. Also as the video is a parody of stalker movies, having the element of fun was really important to the video and it’s come across to my target audience. The second most popular was Natural, which again was something I was aiming for, as my star image isn’t very overt, and she is styled quite simple and plain in order to relate to our target audience. Some also chose dramatic and down to earth, which again is good, as down to earth again, suggests a sense of believability in character and naturalism, which is important to the folk genre. The narrative is very dramatic and funny; therefore I can see why some people put her down as dramatic as we did exaggerate some scenes.

I wanted to include this question as we did use a lot of intertexuality to link to stalker movies in order to create the parody. Again, I left it as an open question to see if they could spot it on their own. The majority got the most obvious one which is Disturbia, as the binoculars are a recurring reference throughout. They also recognised the spy iconography, which I expected as we used very iconic shots with the newspaper. But some people did say no, however this is okay as intertexuality can be subtle and not always picked up at first.

This question got a mixed response. The majority did say yes and there was only one know, which means that most of them felt that it fit in well with the genre. However four people were unsure. I think this is because we weren’t aiming for one genre such as just folk or indie, we were trying to combine aspects of both, which may have caused confusion to some of the viewers. Next time, I would try to emphasise just one genre more predominantly, in order to make the conventions clearer.

I asked this question as it’s a key convention of a music video to have a link between the music and visuals in a sense that the shots cut to the beat of the music. Most answered positively, with only two no’s and one not sure. I felt this was achieved as I really did focus whilst editing the cuts ion making sure that everything flowed and that it all synced well with the music, and it seems that the audience agrees.

I fell that the most important part for a video is that people, in particular your target audience, enjoy your video and find it entertaining, which is why this was the last question on my survey. Everybody said yes because it was funny and relatable, which is great as that was what I wanted to aim for. I wanted to make it funny to show a light nature to our star as well as have an understandable, relatable story, as our audience would have been in that situation with a guy not being available before, so they could relate and look back and laugh.

Audience Feedback - Focus Group

As well as doing a survey, I asked my target audience to watch my video and then answer some questions in a focus group to collect their opinions on camera.

The general feedback was positive and these were the key points that came up:

·         Found the narrative easy to follow

·         Recognisable storyline as it was based around love

·         Medium paced editing that fit in with the beat

·         Star image described as a girl in love and they felt it was a relatable situation

·         Seen as quite quirky, fun and natural

·         Fits in with the folk genre

·         Spotted intertexual references to Disturbia, spy images and one hour photo

·         They felt that there was enough close ups of my artist

·         The video itself was described as Funny comical, really funny, wanted to watch it again

Advert Final Draft

My final advert conforms to the conventions of a music video advert. It has the artist name in the largest font to draw attention and it's also in a bright colour with a round, bubbly font to reflect her fun nature and create continuity within my work. The main image has my artist in focus as she is the central point and with a natural mise-en-scene to represent her natural, fun like character, which again is a theme I have continuned throughout my work to create a full, recognisable star image. I have included where to get it and the front of the digipak as this is often featured in adverts and links the advert to the digipak. I've also organised font size in order of importance, with the artist and album name as the two largest in the advert, as they are what the advert is all about, selling the album, therefore it is important to have those two prominent within the advert.

Advert First Draft

Here is the first draft of my advert. I tried to apply the normal conventions of a music advert, by using my star as the main focus of the image in order to create recognition. Also, I have kept with the theme of nature that runs throughout all my media texts and again used the same fonts in order to create a recognisable image that will attract my audience's attention. Plus I added in places where they can buy it and the cover of the digipak to make it easy for them to find it and because its something that is common within adverts.

Photo manipulation (Advert)

I wanted to keep the image of my advert very natural looking and real, as this is something that represents my artist, therefore i didnt want to over edit the image. All i decided to do for now is create focus within the image so my artist becomes the most eye catching within it.

I started off with the image as it was:

I then duplicated the layer and added the Gassuian blur effect  to blur the whole image, making it out of focus:

Next, i used the magnetic lasso tool to select myself within the image as it made sure the cut was really smooth and allowed me to be really precise:

I then deleted what i had selected so the background image, that was normal, came through, making myself clear within the image and creating focus:

Here is the final image:

I Then realised that the c9olours look really dull, therefore saturated the image to make it brighter:

Images for Advert

Here are the images I took to use in my advert:

Survey

Here is the link for a survey asking questions on my final video:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TFWBQ3V

I would appreciate if everyone could answer the questions

Thank You :)

Final Digipak

Here is the final draft for my digipak. After my draft I really wanted to play around in Photoshop and make the images more fun, and that's where I got my cartoon idea from. I also used a lot of saturation and hue tools to edit colours and make them pop, so it give the images a really fun feel which is how I want my artist to be represented. 

Below are some screen shots of effects I have used.

I used the hue/saturation tool after cutting out the pillar to adjust the colours in order to re-create the cartoon-feel I demonstrated on the front of the digipak.

To add the cartoon effect to the rock, I first removed the background. Then I went around the outline using the pen tool. I then added two effects of the top, film grain and then paint daubs in order to create the cartoon effect. Next, I added a drop shadow and again played with the hue in order to create the cool, multi-coloured rocks featured in my digipak.

I then added the same changes to the tree to create the same cartoon effect.

Next, i added in a cartoon background of a sunny day and used the rectangle took plus filters to create grass. i then added all the cartoon elements in to create the full image.

I then added myself into the picture and played with hue and saturation as well as colour levels on certain layers such as the rocks and tree to create a more colourful image. I cut myself out of the front image I used in the first draft and then placed myself into this scene as it depicts the same image, but in a more fun, cartoon way which helps exaggerate my star image. In order to make myself stand out in the image I added a slight light yellow glow around me and again adjusted the colours to make myself more prominent in the image.

Digipak Photo's

Here are some of the photographs I took to create cartoons out of for my digipak:

First Draft Digipak

For my first draft, I wanted to play around with effects and colours within photoshop and above is what I managed to come up with. I want my star to seem fun, therefore by intensifying the colours, it adds a sense of fun to the image. Also in brightening the greens it really makes the nature aspect of folk music clear and a key part of the images. I also wanted the back and the CD to look authentic, so I played around with lables and text to achieve the effect I wanted. However I don't think it looks very proffesional at the moment, therefore in my final draft I will look at actual CDs to replicate the conventions. I also aim to create a cartoon background for all my images, taking photos of trees and various aspects of the park, and making them into cartoons to place my artist in. I think this will work better with my star image as it is more fun and girly, and still shows the nature aspect of folk genre. I also feel like my artist's music has a quite young, pop feel to it, therefore by using a cartoon it again makes it bubbly and fun, which will attract my target audience.

Photo Manipulation

This is the image I indend to use on the back of my Digipak. I wanted to again adjust the colours to make the artist stand out in the background. I duplicated the layer and then turned the top layer a red sort of haze in order to make the pillar and my artist's cardigan stand out.

After this I used the background eraser tool to erase the background and return it to green. Then I used the blur tool so that the focus is on my artist. Next I used the lasso tool to highlight my artist (as above) and then I increased the yellow in the colour adjuster in order to make the guitar and her hair stand out. I then used the background eraser tool again to erase the yellow haze on her dress and face, in order to make certain features stand out.

This is the image I aim to use on the inside of my Digipak. Firstly I again duplicated the layer so I could adjust the colours. The first thing I did was increase the green so that the greens in the background stand out in order to connote to nature as part of the folk genre. I then used the background eraser tool to erase my artist out to stop the green tinge on her. I then used the blur filter to soften the edges around her and draw focus to her in the image.

I then repeated what I did above but with a red colour adjust instead to make the cardgian stand out.

After doing this I then realsed that my artist face had been dimmed by all the colour adjustments, so I used the magnetic lasso tool to accurately select around her face and neck and increased the brightness so her face became more clear and stood out.

I then also realised the guitar didn't stand out as much as I had hoped, so I selected it again using the magnetic lasso to get a smooth cut and increased the yellows to restore the guitar to a more normal colour.

And this is the final outcome :)

Final Music Video

Here is the link to my final cut of my music video:

Final Filming

Our final filming date was on the 21st of Feburary, in which we went back to the park and re-filmed some of the couples shots and added in a new scene to link the two scenarios shown. Also, we filmed some more movement shots in order to show more diverse shots in our video. The weather again was an issue as there were frequent small snow flurrys while we were out, however it wasn't bad enough to stop filming so we worked through it. We were going to also take some pictures, however it was too cold and wet to get the shots we wanted. So for now we are focusing on finishing the music video and then we will work on the Digipak and Advert.

Editing Rushes

Firstly, as we had a lot of different clips it was important to organise them into bins (folders), so we filtered them into scenes and days so that we could easily find the clips we wanted. This saved time as it became easier to edit knowing where everything was.

Another thing we had to learn to do was how to speed a clip up so that it fit in with the editing pace, as sometimes they looked better when the action is played faster. For this we increased the speed by a percentage (which you can see above) and did this on the actual timeline rather than the clip, which made it easier to change if we needed to.

The hardest thing we had to learn was how to create a split screen, as it was really tricky to get it perfect. For this we had to place one clip on top of another and then crop/resize the image so that they both could be seen. Above is a picture of us re-sizing the images and moving them so they are the same size and are next to eachother.

Above is the finished split screen and you can see in the time line that one image is placed on top of the other to create this.

We also used a lot of cross dissolve transitions to blend images and link scenes to make the narrative clearer.Tthis was relatively easy, as you selected the two clips and added the transition between the two. You could then adjust the speed and time that you want it to take by clicking on it and dragging it to how many seconds you wanted.

At the end we wanted to desaturate the image and make it dull to show that something had gone wrong and emphasise this as the sad part of the video. To do this we went to effects, then video filters, image control and then desaturate. We could then decide how much colour we wanted to take out and this created a really good effect in the video.

Here is just a shot of the timeline and as you can see it has multiple different clips within it to make the cuts in the video quick and entertaining. This was also helpful as we could cut to the beat and effectively get the syncing perfect so everything was in time and looked proffesional.