What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We carried out audience feedback on our music video because we wanted to know if we had succeeded in creating an effective media product and the general census of what people thought of it. In order to do this we conducted a series of four interviews with four individuals (3 of whom who were in our target audience) in which they were asked 5 questions each which where related to our music video. The 5 questions also had further pointers to help the interviewees answer the questions.

The first question was: "What did you think of the camerawork?

-Was it shaky or still?

- Was in focus our out of focus?"

With this question most of our participants commented on how there was a lack of camera shot variations. The participants said suggested that the video could have had more different types of shots rather than the noticeable use of occurring shots such as wide shots. One interviewee particularly commented on how she liked a shot in which a wind up toy came into focus as it came towards the camera. She thought that it was a creative shot. Looking back on our music video, we agree that the product did not have a wide variation of shots.

Our second question was: "What did you think of the editing?

- Were the cuts too fast or too slow

-Were the transitions suitable?

-Were the effects suitable?"

In their responses to this question all of our interviewees (bar one) said that cuts in the video were too long. They acknowledged the song of the video was not exactly a fast paced song but they still expected it to have a somewhat fast cut rate (we agree with this criticism as we too felt that the cuts in the video were too long at times). However, that said, the participants all agreed that the transitions implemented in the video (such as 'cross dissolve') and as well as the effects used (like 'soft focus') were suitable and effective.

The third question was: "What aspects of the video do you think we could have done better on?"

With this question the majority of the respondents replied that one aspect of the video that they would like to get improved would be the longevity of some or most scenes (such as the coloured greenscreen scenes). Participants felt that the scenes often took too long to move onto to the next scene. One participant commented on our frequent use of varied coloured greenscreens. The participant made it aware that the use of a variety of coloured greenscreens/backgrounds was too much and that we could have replaced some of those scenes with more narrative scenes (i.e. showing the male and female characters in the video arguing).

For our forth question, we asked this: "What do you think of the ideas we used in the video?"

-like the wind up toy scene and lemon scene

The participants thought that some of the ideas we implemented in the video were creative at best. One of these ideas was our frequent use of stop motion. Most participants commented how they liked the way stop motion was used to create the effect that inanimate objects were moving. Another idea which was liked was the lemon scene. Participants thought that the scene was comical as the female character in the scene behaved and utilised the lemons in a humorous manner.

The final question interviewees were asked is: "Overall, did you like the video?

-If so, why?

-If not, why?"

In their overall response to the video and the questions we asked them, the participants said that they enjoyed the video in general. However, there were some issues that some participants did not enjoy about the video.One of these issues was the long length of some scenes. Although they enjoyed the video, the participants noted that this issue stopped them from enjoying the video fully. Another issue that a participant specifically felt weakened their enjoyment of the video was the frequent use of coloured greenscreens/backgrounds. The participant suggested that we should have implemented more narrative scenes in the video to replace some of the coloured greenscreen scenes.

After reviewing the responses from our audience feedback we feel that our video was able to portray the theme of a relationship breakdown (to a primary target of 15-24 females) that we intended to portray. However, judging from other aspects of our feedback we also feel that the video was not as greatly crafted/edited as we had initially hoped (our frequent use of coloured greenscreen backgrounds and long length of some scenes were the main issues affecting the quality of our video).

Digipack Analysis

The main focus throughout our digipack specifically on the front of the CD cover and the magazine advert is the use of the scrabble pieces. This was a main idea which we have also used within our production work. We had this original idea due to the effectiveness it would play when we incorporated it with stop motion. We believe that the use of the scrabble pieces during our production work was one of the areas we succeeded on, this resulted in this concept being used throughout our digipack. We believe that is is noticeable as well as keeping in with the theme of kitsch and particularly random objects.

The colourscheme throughout the CD cover is Baby Blue, Green and Baby Pink. We believe that these are very feminine colours which are similar to that in the original video by Kate Nash. E.g. Baby Pink being the main colour of the cake used - A particularly random scene also. These colours are very subtle yet the use of the scrabble pieces, the flowers and the lemon acting as the sun make it an eye catching piece. We believe that this is because the scene portrayed on the cover is very 'random' which will make the audience question the reasons for certain elements on the cover. This is effective in making the audience more attached to the CD.

For the magazine advert we tried to portray the feel of there being a scrabble board on a table and there being a game current. Again we have used the 'scrabble pieces' (which were actually a font). We think the use of the 'random' pieces below the board which are supposed to symbolise there being a game played at that moment. The spare letters spell out "Hit Single" which we believe is very imaginative and can be portrayed as humorous which is the overall effect we were hoping to portray throughout the whole of our production and digipack work. The scrabble board we made from scracth which we believe has been made to a high standard.

All throughout the digipack, there is an underlying theme of 'randomness' and also a strong link between all aspects of digipack but also the production work. We believe that it was the ideas from the production work which spurred our imagination to create the digipack pieces in which we did. As a group we don't believe that there were many areas in which we could have improved on as we believe as a whole our CD cover/inside was made quite effectively. However we do believe that the magazine advert could have been made to a better standard and there should have been more of a group effort on this part. The lack of effort in the magazine advert we believe was down to the lack of time which was down to our overall lack of effort. If we were to do this project again, we would have definately communicated more and then as a group determined the overall digipack pieces as opposed to part of the group doing in solely.

Group Reflection

We have filmed ourselves as a group answering the same questions that we asked our interviewees during their interviews. The reason we chose to do this was because we wanted to show our overall reflection (as a group and as individuals) on all of the aspects of the project and what we thought of it.

Note: One member of our group (Rita) was not in on the day we filmed the following video due to illness and therefore we thought it best that she should add her reflection(s) in text form above the video rather than us having to re-take and edit the whole video again.

Question One: What did you think of the camerawork?

I thought the camera work was good but could have been developed if we had more time. The scenes with them sat on the sofa was a bit shaky due to the camera positioning. There were also some other scenes that also had shaky movements such as the scene with the sick on the shoes, that was obviously handheld but like I said before, if more time was provided we would have been able to improve the video better. The scene with the windup toy was interpreted very well, as the process of it being out of focus at first, then gradually coming into focus worked perfectly. All of the camera work was done to the best of our ability.

Question Two: What did you think of the editing?

The editing to me worked well but would of worked better if we were more focused on the editing towards the beginning. The cuts used in our video were too long and many of them were too fast., there was a scene of her looking through some bars which stayed on for far too long, this was caused by lack of variation shots. The green screen was much harder to edit then we thought it was going to be whilst filming. The transactions were okay as they were flowing at normal music video pace. The lip syncing was also stressful at some points, most of the stop motion used was excellent especially the stop motion of the teddies moving away from each other towards the ending of the video. On the other hand the scrabble stop motion of ‘foundations’ was too fast.

Question Three: What aspects of the video do you think we could have done better?

More stop motion should have been included instead of loads of filming, this would have improved the video greatly. I think if more time was provided then editing would have been of a much better standard. Some of the shots would have been re-done and we would have chosen to use the green screen less as it would have been less hassle. The main thing we all agreed on that would of defiantly been changed was the choice of song, a more up tempo song would have been possibly easier to edit.

Question Four: What do you think of the ideas we used in the video?

The ideas we used in the video were very original as we used elements of the real video and re-created them in our own way. One of the main ideas we came u with was the lemons scene, but unfortunately it did not get represented the way we wanted it to. We had some really creative ideas but also had to change location, the windup toy idea was the best portrayed idea so far.

Question Five: Overall, did you like the video?

Overall enjoyed the video, as all our hard work and effort has gone into it. Obviously there were many aspects of the video that we wish we could have changed, but the only thing we can do now is be happy with the finishing product that we got. We also have established that we had a limited period of time and some of that time went to waste as in the beginning we failed to communicate with each other, towards the end it got better and we finished the video.

Scenes Not Used

During the filming of our music video, it was our intention to use most of the footage that we had taken. However, there was some footage/scenes that we chose not to use in the final cut of the music video. One of these scenes was the clip below. We chose not to include the scene in the final version of our video because after reviewing the scene (after it had been uploaded onto our editing station) we realised that the scene was not ideal to be included in the video as we felt that the white and black colour scheme/mise en scene in the scene did not complement the bright colour scheme/mise en scene (such as the varied colourful greenscreen-ed background scenes) in our video well.

Note: Please excuse the low picture and sound quality of the videos. This is due to the fact that we had to upload them in a lower format of quality (unlike the higher format of quality for the original files) because of technical difficulties (such as the blog having difficulty in uploading/accepting the videos in the high quality we initially intended to upload them in).



Another scene we chose not to include was the fridge magnet scene. Initially, this scene was suppose to be part of a series of other fridge magnet scenes which would have been shown in a somewhat quick secession of movement through stop-motion to create the effect that the fridge magnet letters in the scene(s)/series were moving on their own. However, due to technical difficulties (which were only discovered after the scenes were uploaded to our editing station) with the camera and the camerawork, we found out that the scenes had been recorded sideways meaning that the footage also came out sideways. Therefore, the footage was deemed unusable but we then re-took the scenes again (although we took them as photos rather than filming them) and they came out as we had hoped. Another justifiable reason as to why we did not include the series of fridge magnet scenes was also due to the fact that the fridge used to place the letters on, was reflective which caused unwanted reflections to appear in front of the fridge, therefore, ruining the mise en scene we intended to have. Below is an example of why we chose not to incorporate any of the fridge magnet scenes (before we re-took them) into our final edit of the video:

Director's Commentary

Here is our Director's Commentary of our music video for the song 'Foundations' by Kate Nash.
Note: Please excuse the low picture and sound quality of the video/commentary. This is due to the fact that we had to upload it in a lower format of quality (unlike the higher format of quality for the original file) because of technical difficulties (such as the blog having difficulty in uploading/accepting the video in the high quality we initially intended to upload it in).

How Effective is the Combination of your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?

Our CD cover and our main product compliment each other quite well as in one of our scenes in our main product we have used scrabble pieces to spell out the word 'Foundations'. So this was our main focus in the CD cover (and the magazine advert) as we thought that it could be a design theme that links the two items with the video, rather than the CD cover and magazine advert not having some form of design/style connection.

As our video is quite 'casual' we decided to do a quite simple yet complex CD cover and magazine advert, with the front CD cover containing scrabble pieces, a lemon in the corner representing the sun against a light blue background with clouds at the top of the cover - all of this was done in a cartoon like style. This was done because we have seen Kate Nash use a cartoon style CD cover for the song 'Foundations' and also in one of the music videos we did genre research on when planning how to create our video. However, the way in which we utilised the cartoon style theme in our products was by making the theme far more cartoon-ish compared to the cartoon theme in Kate Nash's CD cover.

As Kate Nash uses a cartoon like theme in most of her videos we wanted to incorporate that into our main pieces. Using scrabble Pieces, a scrabble board and lemons, which we Incorporated both into our finals pieces of the CD cover and magazine advert.

The CD cover helps to sell the product as it's quite simple yet slightly comical as well as being eye catching (due to the bright colour and cartoon themes used) particularly to our target audience of 15-24 year old females (as the colour and cartoon themes we used have connotations of femininity) therefore the product should attract consumers (albeit mainly 15-24 females). Also, our use of bright colours connote the Indie/Pop genre style that Kate Nash and the song (especially the topic of a love relationship) are associated with, thus making sure that all the appropriate and relevant conventions and marketing elements (such as the use of bright colours which have feminine conotations) for our song have been implemented into our cover in order to make sure that the CD has the best possible chance of marketing.

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

In the research and planning stages we used a video camera with a stills function to take location shots when we considering which locations to use for our video. The camera wasn't exactly the best (for example, it sometimes had trouble focusing properly if objects were placed near in front of it as well as shallow focusing and deep focusing) but in the end we managed to do the tasks we aimed to do. As for the construction stage, the video camera was vital.

The video camera was an important piece of equipment as we used it to record the footage we needed to create our media product. An issue we had with the camera is that when we were filming the fridge magnet scene, we turned the camera on its side when it was recording (in order to capture all of the footage we were recording) but when we reviewed the image during the uploading stage, we found out that the footage had been recorded diagonally (even though at the time, the display on the camera told us otherwise). We retook the fridge magnet scene. Like in the construction stage, the video camera was useful. The camera was useful in the sense that we used it to record our video feedback. There were no issues.

For the video we used the green screen for most of our lip syncing scenes. The green screen was useful because it allowed us to film scenes and then afterwards we were able to change the background colour of the scenes with whatever colour(s) we chose (which was a convenience as we didn't have to film in front of many different coloured backgrounds). This was particularly useful for us as that is what we did frequently in our video.

This greenscreen is one of the media technologies we used for our video.

Due to the fact that we used a greenscreen in our video, it meant that we had to use cameras which were able to capture and work with the greenscreen effect. The 3 cameras (which were in 'mulitple-camera setup') we used to record the greenscreen scenes were called JVC GY HDMI 251s (with studio attachments). We used the studio attachments such as the Tricaster Video FX Switcher - the software used to operate the cameras, to view the footage taken by the cameras.

These are the JVC GY HDMI 251s cameras. we used to utilise and capture the greenscreen effect in our scenes.

This lens on the camera is what gives the camera its ability to record in and capture the greenscreen effect.

Like the previous cameras mentioned, Final Cut Pro (FCP) was an important tool for the group. FCP was vital for us because it was the software we used to edit our footage. FCP provided us with countless techniques that we could use on our video (such as the transitions (like 'cross dissolve'), effects (like' soft focus'), speed changing, image imposing on a video and others which are too many to include).

Double click the picture above to view it in a larger size.

Another piece of software we used was MPEG Streamclip. We used MPEG Streamclip because the format of the recorded (when uploaded onto the Mac) footage was in a format (.MOV) which FCP could not read meaning that we would not have been able to edit the footage. Therefore MPEG Streamclip, was used to convert the footage into an MPEG format (a format which FCP is able to read) enabling us to use FCP to edit it.
The hardware platoform on which we edited our footage through FCP was an iMac. The iMac was ideal for editing as it had adequate processing power to edit our footage as well as being designed and built specifically for editing video/film footage. Also, FCP will only work on an iMac so we had to use it.

This is the iMac setup we had. On the left is the iMac and on the right is the display monitor which we used to view playing footage.

Finished (Music Video and Digipack)

We are pleased to say that our music video and our digipack have now been completed. It was not easy (it was a struggle at times) but we have finished the work. One of the difficulties we had during the production process was communication. We believe that this problem came up because as a group we didn't know each other well meaning that it took a while for us to 'gel' together. Nevertheless, in the end we were able together in order to complete our work before the deadline (10/12/10) last week .

Although we have finished our music video and digipack, there are still a number of other things we still need to complete. These include: our evaluation, director's commentary, our thoughts on the overall video (as a group) and video feedback interviews on what people thought of the interview.

Editing Overview

Over the last few weeks we have been working hard on our music video and also on our CD covers and magazine advert.

With our music video we have added transitions on it between clips (such as cross dissolve and fade to black). Transitions were added to create a cleaner cut between certain scenes. We have also added effects like soft focus. Soft focus was added to some of our scenes because of the sympathetic, vulnerable and sad connotations it gave to our scenes (those connotations are suitable as our song is about a failing relationship). During the editing we also learnt how to add coloured backgrounds to our greenscreen scenes. The 'Chroma Keyer' technique was slightly difficult to learn/use at first but we eventually mastered it.
A certain issue we had when editing was making sure that the scenes which had lip syncing in them matched the audio as they went along. This was particularly difficult and frustrating at times because we were determined to make sure that the lip syncing was perfect (getting the lip syncing right meant that, at times we had to rearrange footage (in terms of position on the timeline) as well as reducing some of the time lengths for other scenes on the timeline using the razor balde tool).

We have also had to alter some of the editing/scene plans we intended to do (such as having a greenscreen background with lemons in one scene). This alterations were due to issues such as: not having sufficient time to record certain scenes and thus having to replace the missing footage with other footage (such as extract scenes from the lip syncing run throughs) that had already been recorded but not used previously in the music video and missing planned filming days due to a lack of thorough communication or attendance from group members.

Two weeks ago we also had to film some new 'last minute' footage (such as the swinging scenes) because we realised that we did not have enough 'decent' footage which gave the video wide variation. For example, if we had not recorded the new last minute footage that we used in our music video, then chances are that the music video would have been mainly dominated by the greenscreen lip syncing scenes that we recorded earlier in the project, rather than having a variation of scenes.