Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Friday, 3 February 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Evaluation Script - Question One
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
Inspiration from videos
Compare and contrast your video to others, costumes and editing etc
When producing our music video we looked into the genre of pop and r&b and the conventions in which came with it. We found that in a stereotypical female video there was a use of emotions to carry a certain meaning as seen in our video the actress comes across as quite an aggressive frustrated character, it is this use of emotion in which allows us to portray the underlying idea of the actress being fed up of hiding who she is and furthermore linking in the frustration of her being embarrassed of being herself. Another convention was the use of males throughout a video and the negative reflection they tend to give off, we decided in our video to use the males in order to show the female as the dominating sex, we did this by having the actress controlling the males and their every movement as if they were helpless against her, it is here were we can furthermore link in the expression of feelings that the actress has towards male and the idea that she is fed up of them being in control and abusing her so she is getting her revenge. The feminist theory can be found from this as it is showing the diversity of the female actress and how she is standing up to the male and is no longer an inferior sex, which goes against the usual representation of woman in media as the ‘weaker sex’. Appearances in a female r&b video are important as the visuals should match the lyrics but a use of fashionable/explicit clothing is also required, it is here where our video can be directly linked as we focused on the lyrical use in order to block the video, for example in the first verse the lyrics ‘I get so hungry when you say you love me’ are represented by the actress circling the male character and gradually making her posture straight directly in front of him, from this blocking you are able to recognize the actress as an animal and the idea of her being hungry so circling her prey before she attacks. The clothing used throughout contributes a great deal to the video as it represents the actress in her different forms, for example in the second verse we dressed the actress in a leopard print leotard, this allowed us to show her as the animal she was being represented as. When dressing the character in her casual clothing we focused on other r&b/pop singers and the clothing that can be found from that genre, an example of this can be the use of the high waisted shorts as the pop artist pixie lott wears these and the r&b artist nicki minaj, this shows that we have took into consideration what is fashionable in the genre so that it matches our video continuity. The clothing which we chose for the actress was explicit across the chest area, we decided on this as we felt that it was this body feature which caught the males attention the most, it is here that Laura Mulvey can be linked and the theory of the male gaze as the notion of looking is directed towards the females body parts.
Inspiration for our video came from various media products; we focused on videos within the genre but also looked into how certain videos managed to create an uneasy atmosphere. In Rihanna’s disturbia you see the use of jolted head movements, we included this in our music video as it gave the illusion that the actress was not stable or in the correct frame of mind, super imposing of two scenes is also included in both the videos, in Rihanna’s video it is used to represent the singers mind and show her as a trapped individual who cannot get away, we took inspiration from this idea but altered it slightly so that the super imposing in our video was of the male actor running in slow motion and the female laughing, it was here that we gave the illusion the male actor cannot get away from the female and it is almost like a game in which humors her showing furthermore the twisted mind of the actress. Fast pace editing is included throughout Rihanna’s video and our own, Rihannas video uses the editing in order to represent the singer as distorted and unlifelike, however in our video we used the editing when the actress was behind bars in order to shake them vigorously, this allowed the audience to see that the actress in our video is trapped and frustrated and wished to escape. The dance sequence, which is included within our video, has numerous inspirations. Rihanna’s distrubia has the dancers walk into position with jolted body movements, similarly in our video we had the dancers walk into their positions acting weak and distorted as if they had just rose from the dead this allowed the slight genre of horror in which we wanted to include to be found as the idea of people rising from the dead is unnatural, another video which inspired us for the dance routine was Beatfreakz Somebodys watching me, the video contains humor alongside the horror through the use of representing well known singers such as the pussycat dolls in a different way, the pussycorpse trolls, we decided to use this idea but rather than change the actors we used the well known dance routine the Macarena, it is here where the humor can be found as the audience will recognize the dance in the video so it will therefore stand out to them but alongside this in relation to the rest of the video it is quite random so will therefore be an entertaining surprise for them.
Another video in which inspired us was Lady gaga’s paparazzi, throughout her video she uses still images of actors who appear to be dead, this too can be found in our video as we felt that this allowed the horror of the video to really stand out through the idea that the actress has murdered these people and is now showing the audience openly and willingly, this then furthermore links in with the underlying emotion of the video and the idea that the actress is no longer afraid to say this is me and I’m not afraid to show anyone.
The final video that we took inspiration from was Jessi J’s Nobody’s perfect. A tea party scene was shot of the singer having a miserable time whilst the other actors around the table were enjoying themselves, we used the idea of a tea party but altered it so that the actors around the table were the people who she had killed in prior scenes and the actress in our video was the one enjoying herself. This gave the illusion that the actress was playing with dead body’s and again linked in the theme of horror. We felt that by including this scene the audience would see the twisted side to the actress and see that she is not a female to be messed with.
When linking in theorists to our video Carol Vernallis can be brought in through our narrative, editing, camera movements and framing and diegesis. Carol says that in narrative the video is a visual response to the music, this can be seen with the narrative in our video as the footage we created was based around a female attacking the male species like a cannibal, for example when the lyrics 'now I'm gonna eat you fool' are used a clip of the female actress going to attack the male actor is used to demonstrate that she is about to feast upon him. Carol furthermore goes on to say that in the narrative a theme/narrative may be run through the video but in a montage style, again this can be found within our video as we wished to show the underlying stages of what the actress goes through and how she gradually becomes more open with her true self. We did this by beginning with the female actress attacking only one male allowing us to represent that she is just beginning to stand her ground and find her feet, we then continued to use footage including various other male actors in which the actress had attached which allowed us to represent that the actress is beginning to feel confident about her true self, we then further more used a scene in which all the male actors are based around a table and are being controlled by the actress representing that she has come even further and is now not afraid to stand her ground and show who she truly is. When it comes to editing Carol said that editing may match the musical phrase or beat, it is this specific point which can be found continuously throughout our music video as through the strong beats constantly used and also the creepy storyline that comes with the song we felt that this would be most effective as it gives the audience the idea that there is a lot going on and things aren't simple. A further point that Carol said with editing is that it may become foregrounded – the edits may be really obvious, to draw attention to themselves as opposed to invisible, continuity editing, in our music video the editing techniques such as super imposing, fast pace editing and filters stand out clearly in the video this is due to the context of what is going on in the scene and it allows that certain section of footage to stand out for a particular meaning, for example the super imposing is used to show the actress as an insecure person and although the 'evil laugh' is silent we are still able to recognize that there is evil in her giving us an uneasy attitude towards her. We felt that through allowing the editing techniques to stand out more clearly it would be most effective as it allows the audience to understand the comparison between the actress to an animal in her behavioral ways behind bars but also allows them to understand the actress and her emotions more and also allows the video to link more freely into the horror genre. Camera Movements and Framing Carol says that When it comes to shot types, extremes are very common and also The camera may move in time with the music. These two points are contained in our music video however our music video challenges point one. We decided that a variety of different length shots would come across as more professional however we focused on mainly medium shots, medium close ups and meat shots. Although we did use long shots in footage, such as when the male actor is running along a path way to get away from the actress, we found that the more frequent shot in our video was medium close up. This length of shot allowed us to focus on the actress's facial expressions but through the shot being not too close to her face gave the idea of that she does not want her space invading so is keeping a distance. As for the second point of the camera moving in time with the music we used the zoom in and out at various parts within the video in order to create the illusion that the audience is creeping towards the actress but is then frighted away from her, allowing the actress to again have a uneasy attitude and create the idea that she is not safe. We ensured that on each beat of the song the camera was zoomed in and out in time in order to match the music and be of a professional standard. The final concept that Carol talks about is Diegesis and she states that Actions are not necessarily completed – they may be disrupted or interrupted in someway. Our music video contained the genre horror and it is from this that we included scenes of the actress 'attacking males' however we do not directly show the actress attacking them this is cause we had to bare in mind the audience and also the storyline of our piece as if we had included scenes of the actress biting the males it would have become too graphic for people of younger ages and also the underlying storyline of the actress becoming free and not scared to show what she is would be lost amongst the scenes as they would have no true relevance. It is from this that we only hinted the actress was attacking the males and therefore the actions of what she was doing were not completed and the next scene stepped in, for example on the lyrics 'now I'm gunna eat you fool' the actress pulls the male actors head back and leans in as if to bite his neck creating the illusion that she has attacked him but without showing the audience anything.
Inspiration from videos
Compare and contrast your video to others, costumes and editing etc
When producing our music video we looked into the genre of pop and r&b and the conventions in which came with it. We found that in a stereotypical female video there was a use of emotions to carry a certain meaning as seen in our video the actress comes across as quite an aggressive frustrated character, it is this use of emotion in which allows us to portray the underlying idea of the actress being fed up of hiding who she is and furthermore linking in the frustration of her being embarrassed of being herself. Another convention was the use of males throughout a video and the negative reflection they tend to give off, we decided in our video to use the males in order to show the female as the dominating sex, we did this by having the actress controlling the males and their every movement as if they were helpless against her, it is here were we can furthermore link in the expression of feelings that the actress has towards male and the idea that she is fed up of them being in control and abusing her so she is getting her revenge. The feminist theory can be found from this as it is showing the diversity of the female actress and how she is standing up to the male and is no longer an inferior sex, which goes against the usual representation of woman in media as the ‘weaker sex’. Appearances in a female r&b video are important as the visuals should match the lyrics but a use of fashionable/explicit clothing is also required, it is here where our video can be directly linked as we focused on the lyrical use in order to block the video, for example in the first verse the lyrics ‘I get so hungry when you say you love me’ are represented by the actress circling the male character and gradually making her posture straight directly in front of him, from this blocking you are able to recognize the actress as an animal and the idea of her being hungry so circling her prey before she attacks. The clothing used throughout contributes a great deal to the video as it represents the actress in her different forms, for example in the second verse we dressed the actress in a leopard print leotard, this allowed us to show her as the animal she was being represented as. When dressing the character in her casual clothing we focused on other r&b/pop singers and the clothing that can be found from that genre, an example of this can be the use of the high waisted shorts as the pop artist pixie lott wears these and the r&b artist nicki minaj, this shows that we have took into consideration what is fashionable in the genre so that it matches our video continuity. The clothing which we chose for the actress was explicit across the chest area, we decided on this as we felt that it was this body feature which caught the males attention the most, it is here that Laura Mulvey can be linked and the theory of the male gaze as the notion of looking is directed towards the females body parts.
Inspiration for our video came from various media products; we focused on videos within the genre but also looked into how certain videos managed to create an uneasy atmosphere. In Rihanna’s disturbia you see the use of jolted head movements, we included this in our music video as it gave the illusion that the actress was not stable or in the correct frame of mind, super imposing of two scenes is also included in both the videos, in Rihanna’s video it is used to represent the singers mind and show her as a trapped individual who cannot get away, we took inspiration from this idea but altered it slightly so that the super imposing in our video was of the male actor running in slow motion and the female laughing, it was here that we gave the illusion the male actor cannot get away from the female and it is almost like a game in which humors her showing furthermore the twisted mind of the actress. Fast pace editing is included throughout Rihanna’s video and our own, Rihannas video uses the editing in order to represent the singer as distorted and unlifelike, however in our video we used the editing when the actress was behind bars in order to shake them vigorously, this allowed the audience to see that the actress in our video is trapped and frustrated and wished to escape. The dance sequence, which is included within our video, has numerous inspirations. Rihanna’s distrubia has the dancers walk into position with jolted body movements, similarly in our video we had the dancers walk into their positions acting weak and distorted as if they had just rose from the dead this allowed the slight genre of horror in which we wanted to include to be found as the idea of people rising from the dead is unnatural, another video which inspired us for the dance routine was Beatfreakz Somebodys watching me, the video contains humor alongside the horror through the use of representing well known singers such as the pussycat dolls in a different way, the pussycorpse trolls, we decided to use this idea but rather than change the actors we used the well known dance routine the Macarena, it is here where the humor can be found as the audience will recognize the dance in the video so it will therefore stand out to them but alongside this in relation to the rest of the video it is quite random so will therefore be an entertaining surprise for them.
Another video in which inspired us was Lady gaga’s paparazzi, throughout her video she uses still images of actors who appear to be dead, this too can be found in our video as we felt that this allowed the horror of the video to really stand out through the idea that the actress has murdered these people and is now showing the audience openly and willingly, this then furthermore links in with the underlying emotion of the video and the idea that the actress is no longer afraid to say this is me and I’m not afraid to show anyone.
The final video that we took inspiration from was Jessi J’s Nobody’s perfect. A tea party scene was shot of the singer having a miserable time whilst the other actors around the table were enjoying themselves, we used the idea of a tea party but altered it so that the actors around the table were the people who she had killed in prior scenes and the actress in our video was the one enjoying herself. This gave the illusion that the actress was playing with dead body’s and again linked in the theme of horror. We felt that by including this scene the audience would see the twisted side to the actress and see that she is not a female to be messed with.
When linking in theorists to our video Carol Vernallis can be brought in through our narrative, editing, camera movements and framing and diegesis. Carol says that in narrative the video is a visual response to the music, this can be seen with the narrative in our video as the footage we created was based around a female attacking the male species like a cannibal, for example when the lyrics 'now I'm gonna eat you fool' are used a clip of the female actress going to attack the male actor is used to demonstrate that she is about to feast upon him. Carol furthermore goes on to say that in the narrative a theme/narrative may be run through the video but in a montage style, again this can be found within our video as we wished to show the underlying stages of what the actress goes through and how she gradually becomes more open with her true self. We did this by beginning with the female actress attacking only one male allowing us to represent that she is just beginning to stand her ground and find her feet, we then continued to use footage including various other male actors in which the actress had attached which allowed us to represent that the actress is beginning to feel confident about her true self, we then further more used a scene in which all the male actors are based around a table and are being controlled by the actress representing that she has come even further and is now not afraid to stand her ground and show who she truly is. When it comes to editing Carol said that editing may match the musical phrase or beat, it is this specific point which can be found continuously throughout our music video as through the strong beats constantly used and also the creepy storyline that comes with the song we felt that this would be most effective as it gives the audience the idea that there is a lot going on and things aren't simple. A further point that Carol said with editing is that it may become foregrounded – the edits may be really obvious, to draw attention to themselves as opposed to invisible, continuity editing, in our music video the editing techniques such as super imposing, fast pace editing and filters stand out clearly in the video this is due to the context of what is going on in the scene and it allows that certain section of footage to stand out for a particular meaning, for example the super imposing is used to show the actress as an insecure person and although the 'evil laugh' is silent we are still able to recognize that there is evil in her giving us an uneasy attitude towards her. We felt that through allowing the editing techniques to stand out more clearly it would be most effective as it allows the audience to understand the comparison between the actress to an animal in her behavioral ways behind bars but also allows them to understand the actress and her emotions more and also allows the video to link more freely into the horror genre. Camera Movements and Framing Carol says that When it comes to shot types, extremes are very common and also The camera may move in time with the music. These two points are contained in our music video however our music video challenges point one. We decided that a variety of different length shots would come across as more professional however we focused on mainly medium shots, medium close ups and meat shots. Although we did use long shots in footage, such as when the male actor is running along a path way to get away from the actress, we found that the more frequent shot in our video was medium close up. This length of shot allowed us to focus on the actress's facial expressions but through the shot being not too close to her face gave the idea of that she does not want her space invading so is keeping a distance. As for the second point of the camera moving in time with the music we used the zoom in and out at various parts within the video in order to create the illusion that the audience is creeping towards the actress but is then frighted away from her, allowing the actress to again have a uneasy attitude and create the idea that she is not safe. We ensured that on each beat of the song the camera was zoomed in and out in time in order to match the music and be of a professional standard. The final concept that Carol talks about is Diegesis and she states that Actions are not necessarily completed – they may be disrupted or interrupted in someway. Our music video contained the genre horror and it is from this that we included scenes of the actress 'attacking males' however we do not directly show the actress attacking them this is cause we had to bare in mind the audience and also the storyline of our piece as if we had included scenes of the actress biting the males it would have become too graphic for people of younger ages and also the underlying storyline of the actress becoming free and not scared to show what she is would be lost amongst the scenes as they would have no true relevance. It is from this that we only hinted the actress was attacking the males and therefore the actions of what she was doing were not completed and the next scene stepped in, for example on the lyrics 'now I'm gunna eat you fool' the actress pulls the male actors head back and leans in as if to bite his neck creating the illusion that she has attacked him but without showing the audience anything.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Evaluation Script - Question Three
Q3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
After creating our final draft for the music video we needed to collect a variety of feedback styles from a range of different people (some including our target audience) via social networking sites but also word of mouth. I was surprised at the high percentage of positive comments we received back because as a group there are parts of the video that we would re shoot and change if we had time, so because no one picked up on the smaller scenes that could have let us down it shows that they are not as problematic as assumed. The reason we decided to use the selection of social networking sites is because they have such a large amount of the population accessing them everyday and we thought that instead of just asking close friends to give opinions, opening it up for the general public to leave comments meant we would get truthful and reliable answers from different age ranges and also different genders, this shows we are not being biast by just collecting results from people we know who could only give us successful points because we know them, as a group we were open to any feedback (positive or negative) as it made us think about how things could be changed in the future if we had chance to re do this piece of coursework but also realistically how other people see our video, because some of the feedback we may agree with to an extent but the negative feedback we don’t understand can be used as a useful resource for us to give our own personal evaluation about. Using the Stuart Hall theory to help me comment on each individual feedback comment we received using media conventions and language will show that I have tried to express this specific evaluation analysis at the highest level and as well as using my own personal analysis I hope it’s put into a high grade boundary.
The first comment we received was from YouTube, the reason we posted our video onto this program is because we believed that anyone could view it and make their honest suggestions about the video as a whole. The first comment was from a male who said, “Pros – Lip syncing is good, mise en scene is also very good keeps the audience interested. Good use of props and costumes”
“Cons – One of the main scenes goes on for quite awhile (man running)” I agree with the fact that the lip syncing was successful as when filming each scene we took a copy of the track for our main character to mime with to make sure when editing every part would be in time. It shows that we kept the audience interested, which relates to the Goodwin theory as we created a different narrative with each of the outfits for example the tea party scene the main character looks very classy however the scene where she is positioned behind the metal bars she looks very casual and also quite rugged due to the holes in the clothes. The reason we created a large amount of scenes is because we wanted to show the audience how her personality changes through different characters and locations and it seemed to interest quite a lot of people we found through the positive feedback we also changed her outfits often to appeal to the male gaze theory and this is definitely a point that has been successful as many people have commented on her being exposed, however it was intentional. The con that he gave us is an element where I can see where he is coming from because when watching the video although there are a lot of cuts of him running up and down the long path it does keep running for some time however because we ran out of time filming the rest of the video we didn’t have any other clips to replace it with, however this criticism is useful as it links to some of my negative outlooks on the video.
The next comment was from a female who also commented through YouTube and because she is a current media student we believed she would pick up on what idea we were going with through the video. Her comment was “Very good lasses, looks very professional. Good job playing the part Emily!” although it’s a short comment it’s positive and I really appreciate the professional part because it means by using existing media conventions and following plans from our research we have created a similar type of video. I believe the main elements that relate to why it looks so professional is how confident our main character was as she took on the personality and cannibal type of character we wanted her portray perfectly but also the variety of shots we captured and the thought beats we have encountered which included a shot cut on each fast beat, this would make it more interesting to watch and could have been a point she was regarding too when she said professional.
The next piece of feedback was from a male who I didn’t know, whereas I knew the other two people who give us feedback I still wouldn’t class them as close friends so they are still being truthful without us influencing their judgements, however this unknown male said “This is pretty well done, good job! Great editing” our editing skills are being talked about once again here, although the previous comment only said “professional” the only reason it was seen in that light was due to the amount of editing we did to our video. When it came down to editing each clip we knew we wanted to make the layout exciting to keep the viewers interested and filters from the editing program brought out the technical side to me especially the superimposing part as I learnt how to lower and increase the opacity over one clip to make the level equal for the reveal of both clips through the first verse. Giving compliments like good job! and well done make me feel really proud that I have achieved such a strong final outcome and people appreciate the work that I have put in.
This comment is from a fellow media student who is in the year below us but personally sent me a direct message letting me know how good the video was so I asked her to leave her own comment on the video so we could use it as another use of feedback, to make it easier for her I also told her to post it on the YouTube account as Emily had only added a number of people to our Facebook page so she wouldn’t have been able to access that. Her comment was “This is such a good video! I really like the effort put into the costumes and the variety of different camera shots and angles. I like the speeded up parts that you have edited in too!” Overall I think this is another positive piece of feedback and she was one of the only people to pick up on the camera angles and shots, when filming the different scenes for this we made sure we took a couple of takes to the side of the characters in front of the characters, behind the characters, up close just to make sure we had alot of footage to work with when putting it all together just so the same angle of one clip was played continuously as attention would be lost. The reason we added the speeded up parts of the main character doing jolter head movements and weird body positions was to reflect on her “cannibalism” as she was hiding behind a normal teenage girl’s body and meant she couldn’t be the person she really hoped to be and through the video you can see how the anger builds up right until she lets go and “transforms” in the tea party scene, but adding a high level of speed to some clips would make the audience look again and again.
This feedback comment came from someone with the name Instant Win which meant it’s hard to determine which sex they are from, but that’s the interesting thing about feedback you don’t know who is going to comment. However they said the following “I liked the effects used when editing especially the superimposing, the lip syncing looks professional and the shots are cut to the beat of the music” The reason we added a superimposed part to our video is the fact that the main character wanted to eat the male character and he was running away from her down a long path but we slowed the running speed down so we could put a clip of her laughing at the entrance of the path so viewers may think she has already caught him and this fades in and out so you can see both characters clearly, however the chorus kicks in and you see him moving at normal speed the technique was used for editing purposes. I talked about the lip syncing previously as our character is a performing arts student she knows her rhythms and sense of beats through a song so she timed exactly when to come in, this was also important when cutting the clips to the beats as it meant fast paced editing hence the reason why we did lots of takes in one location because we knew most of them would get used at least once. Again a positive comment but what I have found out when analysing most of this feedback is it’s all very similar and about the same topics; Editing, Lip Sync and Mise En Scene.
We then went onto posting the video on Facebook in a private group and we received 3 different comments. Because the group was set to private it meant that we only added a certain number of people so chances are we would know them however we wanted the truth so we had something to work with. The first comment read “I like the way that different editing techniques have been used for example when you speed parts up”
The second read “Lip – Syncing is all on time so it looks professional. Some good transitions between shots like the fade one including the slow motion laugh. It’s an interesting video; it wouldn’t get boring after a few watches. Also it’s really scary, I like that.”
Finally the last comment read “I like the use of the fast paced editing and how it gives the video a greater effect overall, also how you used real life locations so that it is more realistic, however there are a few shaky hand movements ( but I didn’t think that was important because the video is so good!)”
The reason I have just quoted all of these comments rather than write about each one of them individually is because they all have similar meanings and I think each point can be spoken about as a whole. Editing is talked about alot they all seem to appreciate the speeded up parts which is good to know as there parts of the storyline which hopefully they have considered why we added them in because as well as entertaining viewers we want each of them to understand the storyline we have created. The fact someone commented on the fact that it wouldn’t get boring after a while brings in again Goodwin’s theory about keeping people interested at all times because I believe when watching it more and more the actual story unfolds. Although I am grateful for all the positive feedback getting criticism is more interesting as I get to give my own feedback on it. One person said the camera movements where shaky at times and this is a point that I 100% agree with and if we could go back and re shoot some scenes I would because it’s distracting but also lacks the professional quality of an actual music video.
I went onto ask people to comment on what they believe the storyline is behind our music video and exactly what they see when they are watching it. The reason I did this was to get more detailed explanations but also to link each of the comments I receive to the Stuart Hall theory. The first comment I received was via Facebook; “I believe that Emily has physiological issues throughout the video and she likes to eat people” this male does have some of the correct perceptions of the video as we wanted the audience to notice a change in her personality from looking and acting like a young girl to bringing out her vicious side and attacking the male characters and I think the reason he has mention physiological is because she is going mad through the video as she just wants to be a cannibal and doesn’t want to hide her identity any longer and she does transform in one of the end scenes, however the fact she likes eating people could be known just by the song title so I think that most people would notice that, linking this comment back to the Stuart Hall theory I think this comment links to the storyline to an extent which in he’s theory is called “Negotiated” Where the audience accepts, rejects, or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views, example neither agreeing or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested. The reason I believe this point is true is because he touches on her issues but doesn’t explain what about and how she confronts them, our aim is to make each viewer come up with a storyline and hope it’s the one that we created.
The second comment was given by a fellow media student who we believed would have the ability to use media terminology to a high standard. We again asked him what he thought the storyline behind the music video was he said, "I really enjoyed this piece of work as you can clearly see the storyline is about a young, attractive female who goes around eating boys. This shows you in the lyrics "i eat boys up" Lip syncing is consistent throughout the full music video. I really liked the effects used when editing, especially the superimposing. Overall I find the full video looks highly professional and very entertaining :)". The storyline that he believes to be true is that our main character likes to eat boys, also referring to her as being "attractive" means he has picked up on the "male gaze" theory which shows her wearing revealing outfits to attract the attention of male viewers. He believes that we have illustrated a link between the clips in our video and the lyrics in the song. The reason for this is because we wanted to make sure our music video was keeping in with the media conventions linked to a usual Ke$ha videos e.g revealing costumes, outrageous personality and confident about the characters she is playing which are some of the elements included in our own video. Linking this into the stuart hall theory it shows that the male got our "preferred" storyline of the video, which meant he interpreted it in the correct way.
Below is a chart/graph showing how many people have watched our video and what programs they have accessed it by.
You can see the graph at the top of the image with letters which are shown underneath and explain exactly what each of them stands for. I believe this is a useful way to look deeper into where the feedback has come from and when I go onto presenting this specific question I will go into more detail about how many people used the different programs and also analyse the graph to try and estimate the age range for each separate “letter” and also in the bottom corner you can also see where in the world our video is being watched the most and least, this will also be an element I can look deeper into when presenting this question in greater detail.
Overall the comments we received from the feedback have all been positive and any other points where constructive criticism and nothing to harsh, the reason I believe that is because most of the people watching have only picked up on the negative parts that we also agree with so we haven’t been offended or annoyed as we would change each of them parts ourselves with extra time. Now I just need to think exactly how I am going to present this question it’s either going to be through a video where I will talk about each comment in detail why it is shown behind me through the green screen along with our video to link to each comment as this might mean I add elements in that I maybe didn’t think about when writing this, or my other option is to create a prezi and talk about the comments in detail and what my overall opinion is on each of them, clips can be shown on this too but I just need to think about whether the prezi would be entertaining enough for the audiences to look at.
After creating our final draft for the music video we needed to collect a variety of feedback styles from a range of different people (some including our target audience) via social networking sites but also word of mouth. I was surprised at the high percentage of positive comments we received back because as a group there are parts of the video that we would re shoot and change if we had time, so because no one picked up on the smaller scenes that could have let us down it shows that they are not as problematic as assumed. The reason we decided to use the selection of social networking sites is because they have such a large amount of the population accessing them everyday and we thought that instead of just asking close friends to give opinions, opening it up for the general public to leave comments meant we would get truthful and reliable answers from different age ranges and also different genders, this shows we are not being biast by just collecting results from people we know who could only give us successful points because we know them, as a group we were open to any feedback (positive or negative) as it made us think about how things could be changed in the future if we had chance to re do this piece of coursework but also realistically how other people see our video, because some of the feedback we may agree with to an extent but the negative feedback we don’t understand can be used as a useful resource for us to give our own personal evaluation about. Using the Stuart Hall theory to help me comment on each individual feedback comment we received using media conventions and language will show that I have tried to express this specific evaluation analysis at the highest level and as well as using my own personal analysis I hope it’s put into a high grade boundary.
The first comment we received was from YouTube, the reason we posted our video onto this program is because we believed that anyone could view it and make their honest suggestions about the video as a whole. The first comment was from a male who said, “Pros – Lip syncing is good, mise en scene is also very good keeps the audience interested. Good use of props and costumes”
“Cons – One of the main scenes goes on for quite awhile (man running)” I agree with the fact that the lip syncing was successful as when filming each scene we took a copy of the track for our main character to mime with to make sure when editing every part would be in time. It shows that we kept the audience interested, which relates to the Goodwin theory as we created a different narrative with each of the outfits for example the tea party scene the main character looks very classy however the scene where she is positioned behind the metal bars she looks very casual and also quite rugged due to the holes in the clothes. The reason we created a large amount of scenes is because we wanted to show the audience how her personality changes through different characters and locations and it seemed to interest quite a lot of people we found through the positive feedback we also changed her outfits often to appeal to the male gaze theory and this is definitely a point that has been successful as many people have commented on her being exposed, however it was intentional. The con that he gave us is an element where I can see where he is coming from because when watching the video although there are a lot of cuts of him running up and down the long path it does keep running for some time however because we ran out of time filming the rest of the video we didn’t have any other clips to replace it with, however this criticism is useful as it links to some of my negative outlooks on the video.
The next comment was from a female who also commented through YouTube and because she is a current media student we believed she would pick up on what idea we were going with through the video. Her comment was “Very good lasses, looks very professional. Good job playing the part Emily!” although it’s a short comment it’s positive and I really appreciate the professional part because it means by using existing media conventions and following plans from our research we have created a similar type of video. I believe the main elements that relate to why it looks so professional is how confident our main character was as she took on the personality and cannibal type of character we wanted her portray perfectly but also the variety of shots we captured and the thought beats we have encountered which included a shot cut on each fast beat, this would make it more interesting to watch and could have been a point she was regarding too when she said professional.
The next piece of feedback was from a male who I didn’t know, whereas I knew the other two people who give us feedback I still wouldn’t class them as close friends so they are still being truthful without us influencing their judgements, however this unknown male said “This is pretty well done, good job! Great editing” our editing skills are being talked about once again here, although the previous comment only said “professional” the only reason it was seen in that light was due to the amount of editing we did to our video. When it came down to editing each clip we knew we wanted to make the layout exciting to keep the viewers interested and filters from the editing program brought out the technical side to me especially the superimposing part as I learnt how to lower and increase the opacity over one clip to make the level equal for the reveal of both clips through the first verse. Giving compliments like good job! and well done make me feel really proud that I have achieved such a strong final outcome and people appreciate the work that I have put in.
This comment is from a fellow media student who is in the year below us but personally sent me a direct message letting me know how good the video was so I asked her to leave her own comment on the video so we could use it as another use of feedback, to make it easier for her I also told her to post it on the YouTube account as Emily had only added a number of people to our Facebook page so she wouldn’t have been able to access that. Her comment was “This is such a good video! I really like the effort put into the costumes and the variety of different camera shots and angles. I like the speeded up parts that you have edited in too!” Overall I think this is another positive piece of feedback and she was one of the only people to pick up on the camera angles and shots, when filming the different scenes for this we made sure we took a couple of takes to the side of the characters in front of the characters, behind the characters, up close just to make sure we had alot of footage to work with when putting it all together just so the same angle of one clip was played continuously as attention would be lost. The reason we added the speeded up parts of the main character doing jolter head movements and weird body positions was to reflect on her “cannibalism” as she was hiding behind a normal teenage girl’s body and meant she couldn’t be the person she really hoped to be and through the video you can see how the anger builds up right until she lets go and “transforms” in the tea party scene, but adding a high level of speed to some clips would make the audience look again and again.
This feedback comment came from someone with the name Instant Win which meant it’s hard to determine which sex they are from, but that’s the interesting thing about feedback you don’t know who is going to comment. However they said the following “I liked the effects used when editing especially the superimposing, the lip syncing looks professional and the shots are cut to the beat of the music” The reason we added a superimposed part to our video is the fact that the main character wanted to eat the male character and he was running away from her down a long path but we slowed the running speed down so we could put a clip of her laughing at the entrance of the path so viewers may think she has already caught him and this fades in and out so you can see both characters clearly, however the chorus kicks in and you see him moving at normal speed the technique was used for editing purposes. I talked about the lip syncing previously as our character is a performing arts student she knows her rhythms and sense of beats through a song so she timed exactly when to come in, this was also important when cutting the clips to the beats as it meant fast paced editing hence the reason why we did lots of takes in one location because we knew most of them would get used at least once. Again a positive comment but what I have found out when analysing most of this feedback is it’s all very similar and about the same topics; Editing, Lip Sync and Mise En Scene.
We then went onto posting the video on Facebook in a private group and we received 3 different comments. Because the group was set to private it meant that we only added a certain number of people so chances are we would know them however we wanted the truth so we had something to work with. The first comment read “I like the way that different editing techniques have been used for example when you speed parts up”
The second read “Lip – Syncing is all on time so it looks professional. Some good transitions between shots like the fade one including the slow motion laugh. It’s an interesting video; it wouldn’t get boring after a few watches. Also it’s really scary, I like that.”
Finally the last comment read “I like the use of the fast paced editing and how it gives the video a greater effect overall, also how you used real life locations so that it is more realistic, however there are a few shaky hand movements ( but I didn’t think that was important because the video is so good!)”
The reason I have just quoted all of these comments rather than write about each one of them individually is because they all have similar meanings and I think each point can be spoken about as a whole. Editing is talked about alot they all seem to appreciate the speeded up parts which is good to know as there parts of the storyline which hopefully they have considered why we added them in because as well as entertaining viewers we want each of them to understand the storyline we have created. The fact someone commented on the fact that it wouldn’t get boring after a while brings in again Goodwin’s theory about keeping people interested at all times because I believe when watching it more and more the actual story unfolds. Although I am grateful for all the positive feedback getting criticism is more interesting as I get to give my own feedback on it. One person said the camera movements where shaky at times and this is a point that I 100% agree with and if we could go back and re shoot some scenes I would because it’s distracting but also lacks the professional quality of an actual music video.
I went onto ask people to comment on what they believe the storyline is behind our music video and exactly what they see when they are watching it. The reason I did this was to get more detailed explanations but also to link each of the comments I receive to the Stuart Hall theory. The first comment I received was via Facebook; “I believe that Emily has physiological issues throughout the video and she likes to eat people” this male does have some of the correct perceptions of the video as we wanted the audience to notice a change in her personality from looking and acting like a young girl to bringing out her vicious side and attacking the male characters and I think the reason he has mention physiological is because she is going mad through the video as she just wants to be a cannibal and doesn’t want to hide her identity any longer and she does transform in one of the end scenes, however the fact she likes eating people could be known just by the song title so I think that most people would notice that, linking this comment back to the Stuart Hall theory I think this comment links to the storyline to an extent which in he’s theory is called “Negotiated” Where the audience accepts, rejects, or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views, example neither agreeing or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested. The reason I believe this point is true is because he touches on her issues but doesn’t explain what about and how she confronts them, our aim is to make each viewer come up with a storyline and hope it’s the one that we created.
The second comment was given by a fellow media student who we believed would have the ability to use media terminology to a high standard. We again asked him what he thought the storyline behind the music video was he said, "I really enjoyed this piece of work as you can clearly see the storyline is about a young, attractive female who goes around eating boys. This shows you in the lyrics "i eat boys up" Lip syncing is consistent throughout the full music video. I really liked the effects used when editing, especially the superimposing. Overall I find the full video looks highly professional and very entertaining :)". The storyline that he believes to be true is that our main character likes to eat boys, also referring to her as being "attractive" means he has picked up on the "male gaze" theory which shows her wearing revealing outfits to attract the attention of male viewers. He believes that we have illustrated a link between the clips in our video and the lyrics in the song. The reason for this is because we wanted to make sure our music video was keeping in with the media conventions linked to a usual Ke$ha videos e.g revealing costumes, outrageous personality and confident about the characters she is playing which are some of the elements included in our own video. Linking this into the stuart hall theory it shows that the male got our "preferred" storyline of the video, which meant he interpreted it in the correct way.
Below is a chart/graph showing how many people have watched our video and what programs they have accessed it by.
You can see the graph at the top of the image with letters which are shown underneath and explain exactly what each of them stands for. I believe this is a useful way to look deeper into where the feedback has come from and when I go onto presenting this specific question I will go into more detail about how many people used the different programs and also analyse the graph to try and estimate the age range for each separate “letter” and also in the bottom corner you can also see where in the world our video is being watched the most and least, this will also be an element I can look deeper into when presenting this question in greater detail.
Friday, 13 January 2012
Evaluation Script - Question Four
Q4)
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The planning and research stages of our project were very in depth and we used a range of different "media technologies" to collect the information and resources we needed. Firstly we needed to look at existing music videos that fell into our chosen genre (pop and R&B), the reason we chose this specific genre is because we wanted our video to be fun and up tempo, these are some of the words I would personally use to describe the genre, as being a pop and R&B fan myself I have encountered a variety of videos and songs. We used YouTube to search for certain songs we believed where a part of that specific genre and watched the whole clip before collecting the embed code and inserting the video link onto our blogs, each of us then analysed 2 videos and linked them to media conventions. Collecting the embed code was simple as it was available just underneath the video link and was transferred quickly and easily and because YouTube is a world renowned website we knew it was highly unlikely that viruses could be caused.
After completing that task we went onto analyse both digipak and advert examples, again from pop and R&B artists, this would help us with our future tasks of creating our own digipak and advert as we could get tips and be able to notice clearly the elements used throughout each. For example; artists name, song title, an image of some sort, record label e.t.c. To collect these images we used simply Google Images and it came up with a range of different ones for us to choose from so meant it wasn’t hard for us to separately analyse 2 each, the images were of a average size so the examiner can look at it clearly and notice each aspect we have talked about but also Google allows you to save the images free of charge, which was useful for us as the process of saving the image and adding it to our blogs to analyse was completed very quickly. However a downfall to this program was that some of the images had no relevance to our genre and meant we did have to take a lot of lesson time to search for specific digipak and adverts that would link to our work.
When it came to filling in things like; the treatment sheet and call sheets for each destination and risk assessment, we simply used Microsoft Word as it meant the work was presented in a more professional manner compared to hand written and was another use of media program to show on our blogs. When it came to filling out the call sheet our subject tutors gave us mock ups of what to fill in for each destination, however the treatment sheet and risk assessment was all our own doing, from scratch we added all the information which meant it was easier for us to understand and put into our own words but also if any spelling errors should occur then this would show up on Microsoft Word and give us suggestions of what we might have meant, this small element could result in our work being of a higher level so it’s critical that we do check our spelling and grammar. After writing up our answers we copied the documents across to our blogs.
The final technology we used through the research and planning stage was the Sony Hard Drive Camera, in which we used to film our audience research, it’s a small hand held camera and very easy to work with, the only settings we used when collecting our research was the play and stop buttons; play when we were recording a person’s answers to the question and stop when they had finished and we then moved onto another student before the same process was put into place again. In previous lessons I have had problems with the camera’s running out of battery after a certain time; however this one was fully charged and lasted the duration of our recordings. When finished we simply used a wire to attach the camera to the MAC before selecting the file and copying it into I Movie which is the program that allowed us to select the best clips and put them into place in sync, this is a more simple program to use compared to Final Cut (which we used for our music video) as it has less settings to concentrate on, but overall throughout the duration of our research and planning a variety of technologies where used and all at the highest ability to show off each group members skills.
When we had completed the research and planning section of our blog, we then moved onto the construction of the music video. This included posts from discussions in the group to how we had put adverts and digipak together and the final version of the music video. The equipment in which we used to film our music video consisted of a Sony Hard Drive camera; this allowed us to create a variety of different shots through the cameras features such as zooming in to create meat shots. For some scenes we connected the camera to a tripod to allow smooth and steady camera movements for example the use of whip pan in our frantic running scene. However a downfall that came with the camera was its lack of battery charge as when filming some scenes the camera's battery descended rapidly. Also for the beginning scenes we filmed the tripod was of an unsteady quality and this did interfere with our clips which we reported back to our subject tutor with so she could bare it in mind when it came to viewing these clips in our video.
When it came to uploading our footage we used I movie in order to change each of the clips to a .mov format so the quality would be at its highest and at a more professional standard, then opened each of the clips into Final Cut where we could watch them in full and decide which would be successful enough to be included in the actual music video itself, due to the extreme quality of this program it meant we could cut back to specific parts of the video and separate them from others if it meant making the whole video look rushed and unedited. This is also the program we used to add on various effects to our clips; the jerky screen movement of our main character during the couch scene, we added this effect because we thought that the scene looked slightly boring compared to the rest of the video and by adding the effect to each separate clip it made each one of them more eye catching and interesting to look at.
It had elements which included a razor, where you could cut off a small part of the clip that we may not have wanted to use due to “camera faults” or “focus of the characters” e.t.c this was a process that took a small amount of time, it was the rendering of the large clips that took the longest, especially when we added effects on top of the clips, Final Cut had to select the clip and change it to the new version but because of the large files we were compressing it sometimes meant half the lesson was taken up by just rendering, so for next time we know to cut down our clips into sections.
An element that our group especially found useful was the fact we could speed up the clips to as fast as we wanted, we also had the option to change the clip to backwards these both came into use because the whole video is about making her look disjointed and mental and by changing these small things the small clip can look completely different. We added these two effects on a group of clips towards the end of the video, they all made a montage and linked into together well.
The final main point that Final Cut has compared to any other program is the amount of space you can use to edit clips, we made around 5 layers of different clips so they didn’t get mixed up, but you have the option to keep adding layers when needed but also locking the layers so none of the clips involved can’t move when we were focusing on a specific one, because as we found out if you don’t lock each layer and you make changes to one it moves the rest of the clips out of place.
After fully completing our music video each of the posts that came with it were basically just updating our blogs so all written work was done on there, apart from the rough cuts which needed to be compressed into Quick Time before being added to You Tube, we then took the embed code and updated them to our blog. We created 3 of these and it showed how each time we had changed the video to make it better.
Then it went onto the ancillary tasks (Digipak and Advert), these were both completed in Photoshop, However we used a Nikon camera to capture the photo shoot we put together especially for these two projects. When finished we selected the best few images and added them to Photoshop, because we had used a leopard print reflection not much editing needed to be done to the images themselves, except from a slight amount of contrast to increase the amount of emphasis on the print, it was just the marketing points we needed to include. For example on the digipak; the artists name, song title, list of songs, copyright information, bar code and company logo. As for the digipak; artist’s name, song title, phone scanner, release date, company logo, opinions from magazines and websites. All of these elements where added using the text tool on Photoshop we just downloaded the fonts separately from a internet font website and added them into the font selection for us to choose (Werewolf and Katy Berry), The barcode and phone scanner were both copied from Google images and transferred in as a new layer and our company logo was created in a new tab and then also transferred. The process of adding everything in didn’t take long it was more positioning each of the layers that was fiddly especially on the digipak.
Overall Photoshop was a successful program to use as I believe it had all the appropriate settings we needed to create the digipak and advert in a professional way. However some groups may have struggled to use it because it is slightly complicated, but because I am a photography student I do understand most things. Both files needed to be changed to a jpg before adding them to our blogs for analysis.
Finally we had to create evaluations to go along with our video; there were 4 separate questions which we devised out into the group equally. We decided to try and create each question using a different technology to show the examiner how diverse we are. However the options where very limited, we had the choice of a Prezi, creating our own video, Power point or we came up with our own plan for this question by writing it on Microsoft word then creating either recordings using Screenr of me showing how to use each program or just collecting screen grabs. For question 1 we decided to create a video because it’s the longest and most detailed question and would take less time talking about it and adding in other elements rather than write everything down. For this we used the media studio which is available through college to film our video because it has a green screen which we transferred our video onto as it played in the background as we talked so that viewers would have something to look at and the video was more entertaining rather than us sat in the classroom talking into the camera. There was also a range of lights available and we had the use of the ICT assistant to work all the controls and add our video to the green screen, but also add our writing onto the auto queue and control the speed e.t.c to a level that we could all read comfortably, without he’s help we wouldn’t have completed the video in the lesson time as we would of had to work everything ourselves so it was a great help. After filming all of the parts, the ICT assistant transferred each of the files onto my art drive so I could access them instantly in the classroom to start editing the video together. We again used Final Cut to put the video together, as well as including our filming from the studio we over lapped our voices with clips from our music video that linked in to what we were talking about but also downloaded videos via YouTube and Zamzar where you add the web address and convert to mov and the file gets sent to your hotmail account, these videos were the ones we were influenced by and also used clips from them to compare with our own. The same rules applied for Final Cut as above.
When evaluating questions 2& 3 we decided to use Prezi and I did one and Sophie completed the other. Prezi is an online power point website in which you can add loads of sections of writing and images and then make a path which links them all together before showing it finally in a power point. It’s a very easy program to use as you can change the fonts to what suits you and also the background and font colours using theme wizard (which I kept in with our brand identity – purple and the font – white) you also write whatever amount you need and then alter the size of how the font is shown on screen, you can also rotate it so it’s more interesting to look at. However because my question was so detailed I kept my writing all straight on and tried to separate some of the writing to ensure it was understandable for all. The only bad thing about prezi is that it has no spell checker, so this was very time consuming for me to go through everything I had written to check for mistakes, it would have been so much easier if it changed them automatically.
Finally this is evaluation question 4 which I have completed on Microsoft Word because it’s slightly like bringing everything together, so I thought it would be way too long to include in a video and too much to write about in a prezi, so this is the next most professional way to go around presenting it. It is also a program which checks spelling so has saved me a lot of time, however just presenting the question like this would be seen as “boring” compared to the way we have presented the other 3 questions in the evaluation section. So after completing the written part I am either going to record step by step tutorials using the Screenr program on the internet in which you record yourself talking through exactly what you are doing on screen, for example I could be adding text to Photoshop, as well as showing them where you add text I will also be talking through it. However with only one lesson left to complete the evaluations I may have to resort to something less adventurous, screen grabs of me completing certain tasks, both will be easy to understand just the Screenr might be more interesting to watch.
Overall I think using a lot of different technologies through this coursework module has give me lots of confidence to try new things but also made me passionate about creating each piece of my work to the highest standard I can because I have the resources to do it, I just need the motivation and I hope throughout everything I have done it’s clearly shown.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The planning and research stages of our project were very in depth and we used a range of different "media technologies" to collect the information and resources we needed. Firstly we needed to look at existing music videos that fell into our chosen genre (pop and R&B), the reason we chose this specific genre is because we wanted our video to be fun and up tempo, these are some of the words I would personally use to describe the genre, as being a pop and R&B fan myself I have encountered a variety of videos and songs. We used YouTube to search for certain songs we believed where a part of that specific genre and watched the whole clip before collecting the embed code and inserting the video link onto our blogs, each of us then analysed 2 videos and linked them to media conventions. Collecting the embed code was simple as it was available just underneath the video link and was transferred quickly and easily and because YouTube is a world renowned website we knew it was highly unlikely that viruses could be caused.
After completing that task we went onto analyse both digipak and advert examples, again from pop and R&B artists, this would help us with our future tasks of creating our own digipak and advert as we could get tips and be able to notice clearly the elements used throughout each. For example; artists name, song title, an image of some sort, record label e.t.c. To collect these images we used simply Google Images and it came up with a range of different ones for us to choose from so meant it wasn’t hard for us to separately analyse 2 each, the images were of a average size so the examiner can look at it clearly and notice each aspect we have talked about but also Google allows you to save the images free of charge, which was useful for us as the process of saving the image and adding it to our blogs to analyse was completed very quickly. However a downfall to this program was that some of the images had no relevance to our genre and meant we did have to take a lot of lesson time to search for specific digipak and adverts that would link to our work.
When it came to filling in things like; the treatment sheet and call sheets for each destination and risk assessment, we simply used Microsoft Word as it meant the work was presented in a more professional manner compared to hand written and was another use of media program to show on our blogs. When it came to filling out the call sheet our subject tutors gave us mock ups of what to fill in for each destination, however the treatment sheet and risk assessment was all our own doing, from scratch we added all the information which meant it was easier for us to understand and put into our own words but also if any spelling errors should occur then this would show up on Microsoft Word and give us suggestions of what we might have meant, this small element could result in our work being of a higher level so it’s critical that we do check our spelling and grammar. After writing up our answers we copied the documents across to our blogs.
The final technology we used through the research and planning stage was the Sony Hard Drive Camera, in which we used to film our audience research, it’s a small hand held camera and very easy to work with, the only settings we used when collecting our research was the play and stop buttons; play when we were recording a person’s answers to the question and stop when they had finished and we then moved onto another student before the same process was put into place again. In previous lessons I have had problems with the camera’s running out of battery after a certain time; however this one was fully charged and lasted the duration of our recordings. When finished we simply used a wire to attach the camera to the MAC before selecting the file and copying it into I Movie which is the program that allowed us to select the best clips and put them into place in sync, this is a more simple program to use compared to Final Cut (which we used for our music video) as it has less settings to concentrate on, but overall throughout the duration of our research and planning a variety of technologies where used and all at the highest ability to show off each group members skills.
When we had completed the research and planning section of our blog, we then moved onto the construction of the music video. This included posts from discussions in the group to how we had put adverts and digipak together and the final version of the music video. The equipment in which we used to film our music video consisted of a Sony Hard Drive camera; this allowed us to create a variety of different shots through the cameras features such as zooming in to create meat shots. For some scenes we connected the camera to a tripod to allow smooth and steady camera movements for example the use of whip pan in our frantic running scene. However a downfall that came with the camera was its lack of battery charge as when filming some scenes the camera's battery descended rapidly. Also for the beginning scenes we filmed the tripod was of an unsteady quality and this did interfere with our clips which we reported back to our subject tutor with so she could bare it in mind when it came to viewing these clips in our video.
When it came to uploading our footage we used I movie in order to change each of the clips to a .mov format so the quality would be at its highest and at a more professional standard, then opened each of the clips into Final Cut where we could watch them in full and decide which would be successful enough to be included in the actual music video itself, due to the extreme quality of this program it meant we could cut back to specific parts of the video and separate them from others if it meant making the whole video look rushed and unedited. This is also the program we used to add on various effects to our clips; the jerky screen movement of our main character during the couch scene, we added this effect because we thought that the scene looked slightly boring compared to the rest of the video and by adding the effect to each separate clip it made each one of them more eye catching and interesting to look at.
It had elements which included a razor, where you could cut off a small part of the clip that we may not have wanted to use due to “camera faults” or “focus of the characters” e.t.c this was a process that took a small amount of time, it was the rendering of the large clips that took the longest, especially when we added effects on top of the clips, Final Cut had to select the clip and change it to the new version but because of the large files we were compressing it sometimes meant half the lesson was taken up by just rendering, so for next time we know to cut down our clips into sections.
An element that our group especially found useful was the fact we could speed up the clips to as fast as we wanted, we also had the option to change the clip to backwards these both came into use because the whole video is about making her look disjointed and mental and by changing these small things the small clip can look completely different. We added these two effects on a group of clips towards the end of the video, they all made a montage and linked into together well.
The final main point that Final Cut has compared to any other program is the amount of space you can use to edit clips, we made around 5 layers of different clips so they didn’t get mixed up, but you have the option to keep adding layers when needed but also locking the layers so none of the clips involved can’t move when we were focusing on a specific one, because as we found out if you don’t lock each layer and you make changes to one it moves the rest of the clips out of place.
After fully completing our music video each of the posts that came with it were basically just updating our blogs so all written work was done on there, apart from the rough cuts which needed to be compressed into Quick Time before being added to You Tube, we then took the embed code and updated them to our blog. We created 3 of these and it showed how each time we had changed the video to make it better.
Then it went onto the ancillary tasks (Digipak and Advert), these were both completed in Photoshop, However we used a Nikon camera to capture the photo shoot we put together especially for these two projects. When finished we selected the best few images and added them to Photoshop, because we had used a leopard print reflection not much editing needed to be done to the images themselves, except from a slight amount of contrast to increase the amount of emphasis on the print, it was just the marketing points we needed to include. For example on the digipak; the artists name, song title, list of songs, copyright information, bar code and company logo. As for the digipak; artist’s name, song title, phone scanner, release date, company logo, opinions from magazines and websites. All of these elements where added using the text tool on Photoshop we just downloaded the fonts separately from a internet font website and added them into the font selection for us to choose (Werewolf and Katy Berry), The barcode and phone scanner were both copied from Google images and transferred in as a new layer and our company logo was created in a new tab and then also transferred. The process of adding everything in didn’t take long it was more positioning each of the layers that was fiddly especially on the digipak.
Overall Photoshop was a successful program to use as I believe it had all the appropriate settings we needed to create the digipak and advert in a professional way. However some groups may have struggled to use it because it is slightly complicated, but because I am a photography student I do understand most things. Both files needed to be changed to a jpg before adding them to our blogs for analysis.
Finally we had to create evaluations to go along with our video; there were 4 separate questions which we devised out into the group equally. We decided to try and create each question using a different technology to show the examiner how diverse we are. However the options where very limited, we had the choice of a Prezi, creating our own video, Power point or we came up with our own plan for this question by writing it on Microsoft word then creating either recordings using Screenr of me showing how to use each program or just collecting screen grabs. For question 1 we decided to create a video because it’s the longest and most detailed question and would take less time talking about it and adding in other elements rather than write everything down. For this we used the media studio which is available through college to film our video because it has a green screen which we transferred our video onto as it played in the background as we talked so that viewers would have something to look at and the video was more entertaining rather than us sat in the classroom talking into the camera. There was also a range of lights available and we had the use of the ICT assistant to work all the controls and add our video to the green screen, but also add our writing onto the auto queue and control the speed e.t.c to a level that we could all read comfortably, without he’s help we wouldn’t have completed the video in the lesson time as we would of had to work everything ourselves so it was a great help. After filming all of the parts, the ICT assistant transferred each of the files onto my art drive so I could access them instantly in the classroom to start editing the video together. We again used Final Cut to put the video together, as well as including our filming from the studio we over lapped our voices with clips from our music video that linked in to what we were talking about but also downloaded videos via YouTube and Zamzar where you add the web address and convert to mov and the file gets sent to your hotmail account, these videos were the ones we were influenced by and also used clips from them to compare with our own. The same rules applied for Final Cut as above.
When evaluating questions 2& 3 we decided to use Prezi and I did one and Sophie completed the other. Prezi is an online power point website in which you can add loads of sections of writing and images and then make a path which links them all together before showing it finally in a power point. It’s a very easy program to use as you can change the fonts to what suits you and also the background and font colours using theme wizard (which I kept in with our brand identity – purple and the font – white) you also write whatever amount you need and then alter the size of how the font is shown on screen, you can also rotate it so it’s more interesting to look at. However because my question was so detailed I kept my writing all straight on and tried to separate some of the writing to ensure it was understandable for all. The only bad thing about prezi is that it has no spell checker, so this was very time consuming for me to go through everything I had written to check for mistakes, it would have been so much easier if it changed them automatically.
Finally this is evaluation question 4 which I have completed on Microsoft Word because it’s slightly like bringing everything together, so I thought it would be way too long to include in a video and too much to write about in a prezi, so this is the next most professional way to go around presenting it. It is also a program which checks spelling so has saved me a lot of time, however just presenting the question like this would be seen as “boring” compared to the way we have presented the other 3 questions in the evaluation section. So after completing the written part I am either going to record step by step tutorials using the Screenr program on the internet in which you record yourself talking through exactly what you are doing on screen, for example I could be adding text to Photoshop, as well as showing them where you add text I will also be talking through it. However with only one lesson left to complete the evaluations I may have to resort to something less adventurous, screen grabs of me completing certain tasks, both will be easy to understand just the Screenr might be more interesting to watch.
Overall I think using a lot of different technologies through this coursework module has give me lots of confidence to try new things but also made me passionate about creating each piece of my work to the highest standard I can because I have the resources to do it, I just need the motivation and I hope throughout everything I have done it’s clearly shown.
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