Extra research and planning.

Video I was a part of which consists of some planning from a long time ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwX22p_QKSQ

Final video link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l06MS6tV8vU&feature=plcp

Final music video

video evaluation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdf04kN1N8A&feature=youtu.be

Bad quality video evaluation. My laptop's camera and mic suck.

Evaluation

Again just incase my webcam won't film or it isn't high enough quality or whatnot here is my evaluation. Note: It was meant to be read out loud.

Evaluation:

In what ways does my medias product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

My music video takes the standard conventions for the genre, so lot’s of performance shots and lots of the band themselves and little to no story. It doesn’t challenge since going against the grain doesn’t seem productive in sticking firmly as part of the genre and although it happens commonly with music videos of real bands I wanted to enforce the genre conventions and make sure the video was not misunderstood.

 The advert is typical of many adverts in music since it expects you to know who the musicians in question are and just tells you the bare facts. It does these things and I’d say reasonably well and gets the message  across.

The digipack is a simple design from which the genre couldn’t get confused with any other, large guitars across the front may not be original but it does say immediately to any who see it what the genre is, another convention followed. The inside cover has cropped shots stuck together to show the band. Holding instruments, having a band shot isn’t always here more commonly it would be additional album art or blank rather than a picture of the musicians themselves if I stuck rigidly to conventions but instead I diversified here and choose to put a picture. The cd side has a clock face with guitars for hands. Clocks are round and so is the cd so it’s a nice surprise once you remove the cd. Finally the back cover has a simple background to it which I’ve overlaid the album details, production company logo, barcode and copyright information onto. Followed conventions here without any real challenging.

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

My ancillary texts are an advert and a digipack. These all contain an image of the band from the video and contain the song and album names. In all ties in together to create a single thing. The main product, my video takes the style and runs with it creating this image as it goes. The combination is clear since images from the video are on both ancillary texts. The combination using simplicity and the same images goes back to the conventions used generally in this genre of music. Simplicity gets noticed and remembered and the name/image starts moving round and getting bigger so that’s what I’ve gone for and used.

What have I learned from audience feedback?

The feedback I gathered was nearly unanimously positive citing the enthusiasm, camera angles used especially one looking down a guitar neck as major likes by those who filled out the questionnaire. Dislikes include there not being enough variation and not enough close ups for the purpose of lip synching which is fair criticism. Those two are the highest rated dislikes featuring on the median of questionnaires. Nearly all of those who filled out a questionnaire said that the video was appropriate for the song with a small minority agreeing but also saying that a different location might have been better. Collating the results of the rating out of 10 I asked for shows 8/10 to be the average and for the rating for lip synching it’s a 7 total out of 10. (With rounding.I’m not doing fractions or decimal points.). I asked for other comments as well which not many filled out sensibly but for those that did they said that they enjoyed it and it entertained them.

What I learned is that I’ve done reasonably well but I have a large amount of room to improve the video.

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

In the construction stage I played around with various editing software, filming short clips and playing around with them to get the hang of editing and learn how to do it well. I use iMacs and digital cameras for this and the same again when it came to filming the actual video.

Research for the video I used the internet for and my own extensive knowledge of the genre I had previously to this course. I used my own prior knowledge for the most part relying on that more than the internet. Again I used iMacs and this time PCs as well as using prezi to show off a bit of research data on occasion.

During planning I used excel spreadsheets and various social media, namely twitter and facebook to try to find a date and time where I could gather my actors and props together. There wasn’t many collective dates so I had to get the most out of the little filming time I had.

During the evaluation stage I’ve used youtube to post asking for comments on my video, social media again to promote the video and ask for comments again and finally I used a forum I frequent asking for comments (this was the least successful route I took). The last thing I did was word process the questionnaire and physically handed it out to people asking them to watch and to hand back the questionnaire when they finish. Finally I used my laptop’s webcam to attempt to film this evaluation and then upload it.  

Audience feedback

Just in case my webcam doesn't work well enough I'm posting this here. Any x2/x3 or whatever is the amount of times people said it so x2 would be 2 people said the same thing.

Audience feedback.

Likes/dislikes

Enthusiasm/performance  X8

Down the guitar camera angle x6

Vocalistx2

Timingx2

Edited wellx2

Well synchedx2

Camera angles x5

Singular nature of shots/scenes x3

Some shots have daylight background while others have night-time. Continuity

Didn’t like the song

Not enough close ups for lip synching x3

Location

Appropriate video for song:

Yes x14
One felt that there should have been a story. (I assume they didn’t hear the lyrics.)
Could have had better setting but beggar/choosers. X2

Rating

8, 8, 9, 7,6,7,8,7,8,7, 7,7,9,7

Lip synching rating

7, 7, 9, 8,9,3,7,9,5,5,7, 6,7,9,4

Other comments

Entertaining. X3

Fit together well

Show close up lip synching.

Really good!