Input (Reflection)

Throughout my blog, I use the word narrative, however, when I say narrative I don't mean that my music video has a story line that you can see, but a narrative with a 'meaning' that develops throughout the video instead.

Ancillary Task 1- Inside Cover Feedback

We got feedback from our first ideas of our inside over where the CD is going, and the most re-occuring audience's ideas for us were:

 

POSITIVE

 

"we like the photograph on your third idea where she is mirrored but we would prefer to see her whole face rather than half of it"

"I like that your going to have it monotone, as it will compliment the rest of your CD Digipack"

 

NEGATIVE

 

"I think you need to put the photograph onto the CD rather than as the background, it doesn't look good like that"

"I think you need to use the third photograph with her full face, but onto the CD"

 

 

Final Video Feedback

We got a group of 30 females of the age of 16 together to watch our Final Video, this group was the same one we had shown our previous videos too, so they were aware of what it looked like before. We handed out pieces of paper and asked them to write down what they thought of it and what they understand from our video.
These were the results we recieved:

1. 'I like the start of black and white and the transition into colour'
2. 'It seems natural and effortless, good scenery'
3. 'Very Good!'
4. 'The narrative is clear, black and white = sad, colour = happy'
5. 'Clear emotions from start to end'
6. 'I understood the narrative from black and white to colour meaning sad to happy'
7. 'Really good, I like the slow transition to colour'
8. 'I like the nature backgrounds and bright colour'
9. 'Atmospheric scenes of slow motion hair blowing in wind and laughing, very powerful'
10. 'Emotive, I'm glad you got rid of the black socks!'
11. 'Use of black and white to colour made your narrative clear'
12. 'Camera angles and the selective focus shots were effective'
13. 'The scenery and natural light work well making a summery scene'
14. 'The atmosphere in the video matches the song'
15. 'Really enjoyed and understood the story'
16. 'Really, really good, colours are so bright. I like the change in colours for the change in emotions'
17. 'I like how it ends the same way it starts'
18. 'The outfit changes suit the themes and backgrounds'
19. 'Black and white- sad, colour- happy, very clear!'
20. 'A lot better than last time!'
21. 'Colour was happy, black and white was sad!'
22. 'I think it was a really good video, I liked how it went from black and white to colour according to her emotions'
23. 'Slow motion effects are atmospheric!'
24. 'Transition in emotions is good!'
25. 'I like how it changed from black and white to colour because she changed from sad to happy'
26. 'Much better than before, shots are in order in relevance to her emotions'
27. 'No black socks, makes it look so much better!'
28. 'Emotions are so much better, sad and happy'
29. 'Music fits, good scenes, good video!'
30. 'I like the meanings behind the colours, good facial expressions they go nicely with the song lyrics'

Ancillary Task 1 and 2

We have listened to our Audience Feedback from Ancillary Task 2, and decided to enhance some of our text so it is more prominent and dark. We also added (14) to make it clear what year it is in, and we have changed the 'plus guests' font to the sam colour as our border and embossed it on photoshop to make it stand out and more readable. To follow conventions of advertisements we have also added the facebook, twitter, youtube and phone barcode logo's to interact with our audience so they can interact via multi media platforms with our product making it available to wider range of audiences.

 

 

After we asked our Audience what they thought a good name for our album would be, we looked into some of the ideas and chose 'Momentum' as the name, which we have now added underneath the 'AA' to make a clear link between the two ancillary tasks which shows continuity.

 

 

(Inside left cover)

 

Feedback for Ancillary Task 2

Me and my partner Laura, asked for some feedback from our target audience on our 3rd draft for Ancillary task 2. We know it needs some tweaking and adjustments to make it look more proffesional and we plan to work on this, but we wanted to get a certain idea on what exactly our audience thinks of our Advertisement.

The positive feedback we recieved was: It is really effective
                                                                 Bold, very dramatic
                                                                 The two faces look professinal
                                                                 Very Eye-catching and proffesional effects
                                                                
The comments made for improvements were: Couldn't see some of the writing
                                                                          Some of the font could be darker
                                                                          Need a year next to September
                                                                          The writing needs to be enhanced
                                                                         

Audience Feedback on Ancillary Task 2 Ideas

We have shown our ideas to a group of girls in our target audience and asked what they thought and the feedback we got was mainly negative. We anticipated this would be the case, as we didn't like it our selves. What we were trying to do was make our magazine advertisement colourful rather than, black and white similarly to our CD Cover, however from the comments we recieved we have changed our mind.

Negative Comments: Her name overlaps her head and doesn't look good
                                   The colours don't work you can't read the font clearly
                                   The dress is unflattering
                                   She looks really pale
                                   There's not enough text
                                   The page doesn't look proportions

Audience Feedback

In my previous post, I had made some questions I was going to ask our target audience and reflect on the results we recieve. Me and my partner showed a group of 25, 15 year old girls

We had mixed feedback on which CD cover they liked the most, they seemed to like them both but the overall verdict by one or two opinions was the 1st cover.

What they thought was sellable about the albums were:

positive comments: It's plain yet effective

                                It's different and has a strong impact on the audience

                                The mirror effect is powerful

                                It's appealing to the eye

                                The mirroring effect and the overlaping looks professional

                                It's emotive and not over done with words and colour

The final question we asked was 'what do they think a catchy name is in 'one word?'

Comments: Momentum
                   Moving On
                   The Other Side
                   Over You
                   Love Died

                   

Target Audience Feedback

We are planning to show a group from our target audience, two of our ideas for our Album Front Cover, we want to know:

 

 Which one they prefer?

Why?

What it is they think is sellable about the album?

and

What do they think a catchy album name is in 'one' word which reflects the narrative of the video?

 

 

 

Feedback -Target Audience

We have again shown our 1st draft of our video to another group of girls this time aged 17-18, so a year or two older than our last target audience group and we asked them what their thoughts were. What was interesting, compared to the other focus group was the different type of feedback we recieved. For example a lot of their comments were a lot more critical and useful in order to help improve our videos understanding, rather than minor adjustments, they said:

What Went Well: the slow motion effect
                               good use of guitar
                               lovely scenery
                               laughing scenes are very atmospheric
                               good miming
                               the video suits the song

Even Better If's: mix of emotions (make the narrative clearer)
                             timing of some shots to improve the lip syncing

Compared to out last focus group, these peole thought we needed a clearer narrative as the lyrics weren't always clear with the types of shots we included. Therfore, we plan to clearly start the video with sadded slow motion shots, to emphasise she's looking back on her relationship/past and then as the video continues we show a gradual tansition into happier shots which portray her looking forward to her future without the negativity and without him.

Ancillary Task 1- Audience Feedback

Expect to see:

 Picture of Artist (close-up or mid-shot)

Name of Artist

 Eye-catching colours
Special Effects

 

Colour Scheme: Black and White
or

pale pastel colours to compliment outdoor scenery in video clips

 

How should the Artists name be on the cover:

Central at the top
Central at the bottom

Diagonal across the top corner

 

What do they want from it:

Eye-catching that makes your Artist stand out
Simplicity
Not too busy, so there is too many distractions from the product itself

 

We are going to ask our target audience:

 

What they expect from to see on our Cover?

 

What colour scheme do they want after seeing our photos?

  

How should we have our Artists name on the cover?

 

What do they want from it?



 

Audience Feedback for our First Draft of our Music Video

We have now shown our first final music video to a group of 15-17 year old females, in our target audience, we have recieved their feedback and plan to take their advice and improve as much as possible in our video to what they have said.

This chart shows the four main ideas given in our feedback, our audience felt the the black trainer socks did not look good, some of the lip syncing was out of time with the music, some of the scenes looked like she wasn't playing the guitar properly and the dress could be twirlier when she is spinning.

Some of these ideas can be improved on, for example, we are re-editing some of our scenes to crop out the black socks whilst she spins, however we cannot re-film to put her in a bigger dress as the weather is no longer good enough to be outside. We are trying to edit out timings so the lip syncing is in sync more noticably and the we have cropped some guitar scenes where it looks as if she isn't playing it realistically.

Filming Stage 3

On the weekend just gone, we completed our last stage of filming. After reflecting on our other stages of filming we knew that our aim for this video was to film our model singing the chorus with the lip syncing in perfect time. After getting feedback from a group of people in our target audience we knew we had to change our video around so that we had performance during the chorus and narrative through the rest, as our audience expected to see a change when the music changed but with the order of our video at the moment they don't. During our next editing phase, we are going to change our order around and show a clear change between narrative and performance.

 

CLIPS

 

 

 

 

 

Audience Feedback

We have shown our audience what we have edited on our video so far, and asked what they thought of it. The feedback we got was that the quality of the videos are very good, the colour is bright and the editing with slow-mo creates a very atmospheric feel. However, when the music gets to the chorus, they expect to see the model singing and she doesnt, even though she sings elsewhere, they expected to see some change in the video during the chorus. During our previous stages of filming we have had trouble with our model singing in time to the music. Her singing seems to be out of time to the actual song, so during our next stage of filming we are going to get our model to sing the chorus fully three times. As thats how many times it appears in the song and then this allows us alot of filming to cut when editing.

Filming part 2

This weekend, me and my partner Laura are planning to film our second stage of our music video. Looking back on our first stage of filming, we have learnt that we need to use a tripod to steady the camera movements, we have also planned to film our model singing the full song completely so we have lots of material to work with when editing. We also think transitioning our scenes between the same scene of our model singing and then alternating scenes of narrative will create a professional appeal to our video. 

From the beginning we had planned to use three locations, one in the meadows, one in a pub/cafe and one in a bedroom, however the use of public spaces to film is extremely difficult as we have had problems getting permission, and the lighting in the particular bedrooms we have access to, is not so good. Therefore we have decided to use the meadows as our only location for filming, however there are many different scenes at this setting that we can use. For example, the bridge, in long grass, under trees, in the woods and in the river. 

Photos and Clips from Filming

PHOTOS

Whilst filming we took some photos of our model in different positions and locations. We are pleased with these outcomes, but we are undecided weather to use them for our ancillary task products so we are going to do a separate photo-shoot with our model against a white backdrop with studio lighting, to give a chance at it looking more professional. 

I really like this photograph as the lighting is shining behind our model, connoting a positive ambiance to our model.

I feel like this photo is too posed

This is my favourite photograph as the lighting looks natural against the models face, and you can see the sunlight shining on the water through the trees.

I dont like my models facial expression, as I feel it is quite serious. However I do like the lighting against my models skin and the brightness of the colours.

I like the lighting in this image as it is bright and accentuates all the colours but the model is looking down and I feel it makes her look sad.

The lighting is too bright in the background of this image and the model looks in an uncomtfortable posture.

I really like this photo, however the quality of it is not so good as it appears blurry.

 

CLIPS

 

These are some clips from our first part of filming, they are undedited and still have the orignial sound to them. When editing we are going to remove the sound from the video's so that you can't hear the surroundings, talking and music we played during filming.

 

 

 

We liked this video as our model portrays a happy role model figure but during editing we will crop the clip down to be percieved as memories rather than dragging it out.

 

 

After reflecting on this video, we felt the lighting was too harsh and bright against our models face and chose not to include it as part of our video. However, we did like how the models hair blows in the wind creating a natural, calm, atmosphere which is what we want to put across in our video.

 

 

Watching this clip we notice our models lip syncing was not in time with the music at all, and therefore for the next stages of filming we need her to learn the words off by heart, to look proffessional.

 

Reflection after first stage of filming

Me and my partner Laura have completed one stage of filming for our video now. We went to our first location which is the Meadows and began to shoot our music video. Firstly, we chose our models outfit which was a yellow and white lace knit jumper and blue scalloped shorts which we decided look very quirky and vintage which is the look we are aiming for. We also put red lipstick on our model to make her appeal to a wide audience, red is a bright colour which connotes confidence and passion which we want to show as good qualities for girls to have, but it can also come across as a sultry, provocative colour which will attract the male audience. We then positioned our model in different settings and body language positions and began filming. Some of our scenes when looking back have turned out well with good camera angles, lighting and miming. However, some of our clips, have turned out blurry, shaky and the lighting is either too dim, due to a sudden change in weather or too bright causing a flare against our models skin. For our next stage of filming we plan to use a tripod to allow no shaking from the handheld and we have decided that we will use two cameras so we have a wide range of angles incase one side appears better than the other. We are also going to keep the weather in consideration, so if the sun goes in or it begins to rain we will stop filming until it improves, to allow for the best quality we can achieve. 

Ideas for Filming (using lyrics) and Audience Feedback

I asked a 17 year old in my class, what she thought of these ideas for filming

 and her response was: I like the idea of fading the scenes together when editing,

to create smooth transitions between the different scenes. I like how your using the

lyrics to define what your scenes will have in them. However, I feel you need to

make it really clear to the audience what has happened in this girls relationship, as

your not having a male character in your video.