Evaluation: Q4

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

Throughout the course of the A2 Media studies project, as a group, we have not only used media products which we were familiar with, but also lots of online media technologies which we familiarised ourselves with. 

                      

RESEARCH AND PLANNING

    BLOGGER       

My blogger account is a good example of how media technologies allowed for the construction and display of research, planning and evaluation stages. This blog stores everything which I have posted throughout the A2 coursework project. It also archives my posts to make it easier to search for older posts if need be, by archiving by month and year. 

The great thing about using a website such as Blogger, is that it can be found on multi-platforms, for example; I could blog a post from my iphone, or upload a photo to share on my Blogger account via my ipad. On Blogger you can also embed Web 2.0 tools, such as content from YouTube, Prezi, Wordle and eMaze. The Web 2.0 add-ons were featured throughout the whole course of the project, but were mainly used in the research and planning stages rather than the production and evaluation stages; although I did use websites such as Prezi and eMaze for some of my evaluation. 

     

     YOUTUBE                                

Another contributor to the use of Media Technologies was the internet, in particular websites such as YouTube. YouTube was great help for us throughout the whole course of the coursework, but especially in the pre-production planning stages when it was vital to be getting inspiration from other existing music videos, and  to also watch the other music videos of our chosen artist; Passion Pit. Therefore we turned to none other than YouTube. 

     GOOGLE

Google was the main search engine which we used to discover information for our project, especially in the research stages of our music video; for example for the record label research etc. When it came to the ancillary tasks I used Google images to look up existing digipak and album advert designs and so to gain inspiration from these. Google was also used to search for images of Passion Pit's existing digipaks so that I could reflect some of the existing conventions from their digipak designs onto my digipak design. 

SURVEY MONKEY

We used a website called 'Survey Monkey' to carry out our target audience research questionnaire. This website enabled us to create an online questionnaire to be shared with others via various websites, for example; we decided to post the questionnaire on Facebook as we felt the majority of people were more likely to see it and participate in it than on websites such as Twitter. 

FACEBOOK

As previously stated, we decided to post the Survey Monkey questionnaire on Facebook for our friends to fill out, thus being able to discover our target audience. Through this, we were able to pull out our target demographic from not only the feedback in the questionnaire, but also by looking at other features on Facebook, such as Passion Pit's official Facebook page and other artists in common with them, allowing us to look at other similar artists and their target audiences and generic conventions for our video. Facebook was also good in the evaluation and feedback stages of our video because we were able to post our video to Facebook for people to watch and comment on, allowing us to gain further audience feedback in the post-production stages.

  

DIPITY

We used this programme because it was shown to us by our teacher in order to create a timeline for our schedule, and if this was followed correctly then the final product would have been finished by the initial deadline stated on the timeline. However, one issue we stumbled across when using this programme was that we did not meet our initial deadline set for the final video, and therefore had not used this programme to it's full potential. The reason for this issue was that when we initially created our timeline on dipity, we didn't take into account that there could be problems, and when problems occur, we become behind schedule. For example; when our lead singer couldn't make certain dates our whole schedule fell behind, making the whole timeline out of date. Overall, the timeline proved useful to create as it helped with organisation of our video and therefore showed good organisational skills on the whole.

POST-PRODUCTION 

   PHOTOSHOP

Both my ancillary texts were completed in a programme called Adobe Photoshop. I became familiar with this programme during my AS coursework, therefore this software wasn't entirely new to me, however I needed to learn more advanced skills for the completion of my A2 ancillary texts if I wanted them to reach a more professional degree of work. By using Photoshop, I was almost agreeing with myself that new skills would be learnt, I needed to create a digipak whilst also following some of the generic conventions. I therefore, as already stated on my blog, looked at Passion Pit's existing digipak designs and tried to replicate some of the features, such as the colour scheme and the evident use of graphics rather than images of the band or artist. 

    CAMERA

For the actual filming of our video we used group member Zach's Canon 600D camera. This camera was far better than the ones we had used previously at AS level for the stills needed for our magazine production, which was most likely a FujiFilm camera, which are not as high quality as Zach's Canon camera. The picture quality was really sharp as the camera is capable of filming in 1080p HD. This camera also has features such as; Steady-cam, and Zach had a tripod which kept the camera still allowing for minimal shakiness, and therefore a smooth outcome. 

FINAL CUT PRO

For the editing stage of our video, we used a software called Final Cut Pro, which is specifically designed for Mac users. We used this software because it was relatively easy to use and manage as a group, where all our skills will be varied.  Final Cut was a good choice because it had a variety of special features and effects, one effect which was of particular help was called; 'Optical Frame Blending'. However, Zach had to look up on the internet how this effect works because he had never actually used it before,  he had managed to film some shots in 60 frames per second with his Canon camera, this then meant that when these clips were slowed down by half it's speed for our video, they then became 30 frames per second which is above the average rate of approximately 24 frames per second. Slowing down these clips meant that the frames would become visible which massively lacks professionality, therefore Zach discovered Optical Frame Blending. Overall, without this software, our video would not have had the same outcome as it had, and proved to be a fairly straight forward software to use, whilst also learning many skills at the same time. 

Overall, all of these new media technologies were proven to be very useful to both myself, and to the group as a whole. All of these media technologies were free to use which was good for us as it made our pre and post-production stages far easier than if we had needed to purchase any forms of media technology. All of the different websites or software which have been identified in this post have all helped with the construction and research for my music video and ancillary texts. By using digital media technologies I have used technological convergence to ensure that we have produced the ancillary texts and final music video to the best of their ability.

The use of websites such as YouTube, Google and Facebook enabled faster research and planning for the video and ancillary texts, as there was such a variety of sources which could be referred to if needed. Final Cut Pro taught me how to create a music video to the best of it's ability in this specific piece of software which I was previously unfamiliar with. The likes of Photoshop also helped in enhancing my overall skills, especially in relation to my skills at AS now compared with my A2 Photoshop skills. 

Evaluation: Q3

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

Audience feedback is an important requirement in any task since it allows for improvement and alterations to your existing product. It is also important to collect audience feedback from your specific target audience in order to find ways in which improvement can be seen in your product, especially as these are the people who would be the potential viewers/buyers of your product(s).

Evaluation: Q2

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

Evaluation: Q1

In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

ANCILLIARY TASKS:

For question 1 we needed to be able to evaluate how the product(s) we created utilise the codes and conventions of real media products. In order to evaluate my products to the best of their ability I would need to look back on the products which I created for the coursework and then compared them to some real products. I started off with my ancillary products; the digipak and the album advert. 

FINAL PRODUCT:

Final version

Although at times, rather stressful and hectic, this coursework hasn't been half as bad as I had assumed it to be, and I can actually say, I did learn a lot about the editing of a music video and the importance of certain conventions of a music video, and on the whole it was (at times) fun!

It has been a great learning curve for myself and my fellow group members, in the sense that we stumbled across many obstacles which the other groups had not encountered; such as the lip synching, the darkness, the location, the constant postponing of the re-film of the lip synching and the anxiousness that we may not reach the final deadline (but we did!) etc. But we got there eventually in the end,  and I therefore think we can safely say that all these mistakes paid off and that the we are exceptionally proud of our final edit of the music video. 

For the schedule of our production, we stuck to the Dipity timeline which we had created, apart from the last few weeks where we went off schedule and decided to spend more time on the first draft to perfect it as much as possible, as opposed to making several drafts and editing each one - we preferred the idea of putting in more hard work for the first draft and resulting in very little editing to do once feedback was received, which I think paid off. 

There were times in the music video when the acting can be perceived as a little 'over dramatic', although during the editing process, I actually felt that this was indirectly a genre convention, in the sense that many music videos within the indietronica genre are almost mocking either themselves, the genre or other genres - therefore this over dramatic acting can indirectly be seen as a genre convention - working out in our favour. It is also important to note that we are a bunch of sixth form students which practically no money or high - tech equipment, so obviously our music video wasn't going to turn out like a Beyonce music video would. however, for a student effort, we think that we did a pretty good job overall, and made it as professional looking as we possibly could.

Here is our last and FINAL version of our music video - Constant Conversations: 

Enjoy!

Feedback from teenagers

Since the first draft it is important to gain even more extensive feedback so that we can make sure the video is to the best of it's ability, therefore Zach went round and asked some teenagers (The lower end of our target audience) for some more feedback, which can be viewed below:




It seems that most people who have given us feedback for our music video say the same things, both adults and teenagers. They both comment on the cinematography and professionalism of the footage and understanding of the narrative which are the most important things which we tried to get across in our video. There was however, repetition on how the acting could've been better in certain scenes of the video and that it looked very staged and almost fake at times. This was the only strong criticism throughout the audience feedback and the majority seemed content with the video.

Second lot of feedback

Since the feedback from our first draft, we have obviously changed things about our music video. Therefore it is important that we are able to gather some more feedback in regard to the latest (and hopefully final) version of our music video. 

Therefore we asked our fellow peers in our form to comment on what they thought of our music video, and also our form tutor:




The main thing which we picked up from this feedback was that the cinematography, colour grading and the style is very strong, especially the 'haziness' of the scenes. They felt that the narrative was relatively easy to understand, although there was the odd comment about there being too many characters at the start, making it slightly confusing; however at a later stage it is mentioned that actually the more the video progresses, the easier it is to distinguish the characters and its meaning.

Finishing touches

It seemed that time was running out and was unfortunately not on our side, and therefore the finishing touches of our video needed to be finalised. In most cases, there would have been approximately 3 drafts, however as we have already discussed, we wanted to perfect the first draft thus spending far longer on the first draft than probably needed in order to allow for minimal changes on our video after feedback. 

The feedback which we received from our teachers and our form class were easily solved and manageable. 

Problem: Again, one media teacher commented on the first 40 seconds looking like a short film. Especially the display of the artist and song name across the screen.

Solution: We will put the titles along the bottom (instead of over the top of the footage) and immediately it will connote a music video.

Because of this, we very reluctantly decided to remove the existing titles; 'Passion Pit' and 'Constant Conversations'.  We then decided that we would just use the traditional display of the artist and song title - in the bottom left-hand corner, which is of course, a convention of music videos anyway.

Ultimately, this removes the 'documentary' feel to the music video.

Problem: No record label

Solution: Put at the end of the video

For this, we needed to go back over our initial record label research in order to discover who is responsible for our artist - Passion Pit. In which, we discovered that Columbia Records, which is a conglomerate of Sony Music Entertainment. Therefore we decided to put a black screen at the end displaying the record company. 

Problem: A few lip synching shots were out of time

Solution: Re-time them in Final Cut

For this, we just shortened or lengthened each clip as necessary and moved each one forward or backward by several frames in order to match the duration of the lyrics. This did however, take a while because most of the lip synching shots were actually fine so it became more difficult to find the ones which were not fine. However, of course, we did eventually find the out of synch ones and made sure that they were now in synch. 

After most of the final editing was finished, we decided that we wanted to connote the 'film look' despite this being a music video, and despite being previously told to take things out of the video because it was too 'documentary' like - we wanted this look. The main thing we wanted to add was a 'letter box', which is essentially two black bars - one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen. This then gives the video a more cinematic feel to it and adds a touch of professionality. 

In order to do this, we simply cropped the footage by 65.0 px on the top and bottom and it then revealed the black background underneath. However, one problem we encountered was that some of the clips needed to be moved higher or lower in order to ensure that nothing important was cropped out.  For example; on the final shot, half of the girl's head was obscured by the black bar, so we therefore needed to move the footage lower to make the rest of her head visible and so that it doesn't look tacky and careless. 

Before:

After:

The final change made was that we decided to extend the smile at the end of the video for another 5 frames. The reason we did this was because when showing the video around for feedback, a few people hadn't actually noticed the smile at the end, so therefore if we extended it's duration then people should hopefully notice the smile.

First draft feedback

Once our first draft was complete we wanted to show it to our media teachers and see what their opinion was and listen to their feedback. We filmed their response to our video, and they gave us some really valuable feedback:

Here are some of the key things which were mentioned, which will need to be changed in our video:

Problem: Again, one media teacher commented on the first 40 seconds looking like a short film

Solution: We will put the titles along the bottom (instead of over the top of the footage) and immediately it will connote a music video.

Problem: No record label

Solution: Put at the end of the video

Problem: A few lip synching shots were out of time

Solution: Re-time them in Final Cut

Overall editing of our music video

When it comes to editing the footage, we are using a software called 'Final Cut Pro'. This software is thankfully quite straightforward to use and therefore doesn't require much practice or tutorial before fully getting the hang of it. 

Throughout the process of creating and editing our music video in Final Cut, we took some screenshots which explain how to use the Final Cut software. 

We put a section of the clips into the timeline in order to see if they flowed and if they fitted well together, we then made sure that it fitted in with the music and the beat.

We took certain sections from each clip and put it into the timeline. We didn't use all of the footage we had filmed and we chose which section we wanted from each individual clip, as we did not need the full duration of each clip. Previous to the editing, Zach had colour corrected these clips; this therefore sped up the editing process for us once the clips were on Final Cut.

Our timeline began to look rather messy and compact. But thankfully, regardless of the messy display of footage, all the group members were fully aware of the stages we were up to and could understand what was going on.

Once the editing was in full swing, obviously we were getting feedback for what had been produced so far, and as a group we were also able to notice and point out little flaws with the editing so far. One flaw which had been pointed out was the fact that we lacked footage and we needed to use up as much footage as possible in order to cover the full duration of our video. Therefore for certain clips we decided it could be a good idea to slow down some clips in order to fill up screen time and to also fit in with the overall atmosphere of the video. Luckily for us, our clips were filmed at 48fps rather than the standard 24fps which means that the individual frames wont be seen when the clip is slowed down as it was filmed at a higher frame rate.

We decided that the speed of the clip needed to be slower than 50%, but this unfortunately meant that some of the frames then became visible. Thankfully, Zach has good experience and skill with Final Cut and has actually experienced this exact incident before and he therefore knew how to prevent the frame visibility from happening. He used a new tool to Final Cut Pro; the 'Optical Flow' with extrapolates and the bits in between the frames preventing them from being visible.

First draft of our music video

In the media industry, and in particular with the editing of media, be it professional or beginner; feedback is key. In order to receive any sort of feedback it is important to have a rough model for people to comment on and give feedback; most commonly known as a first draft. 

As previously stated, we had an issue when the first draft feedback session took place with the teachers, the problem being that we had only editing the first 40 seconds of the video and therefore had barely anything to gain any feedback on. This was essentially an eye opener for our group, in the sense that we needed to speed up the editing process as time is ticking. 

Although, our argument for the time issue was that we would rather spend more time perfecting the video so that once the final draft is complete it would hopefully be near to the final and finished product and would therefore have little changes to make once received any feedback.

Here is our first draft:

The Rewind

A key feature of our music video is that it features a 'rewind', and in order to distinguish the difference between the rewind and the original narrative, we needed to make it clear, and by doing so we thought it was our best shot to change the colour of the rewind to make it stand out to the viewer. 

We decided on a 'vintage' effect which we collectively felt tied in exceptionally well with the atmosphere of the video and subtly shows the viewer that this is a 'rewind'. Once this was decided, Zach then created three different rewind options, of which we would decide on one final rewind; the brightness altered in each one, which meant that all three had essentially created different moods for the video. 

In order to create the rewind clip for our music video, we would need to reverse all the clips previous to the rewind and then speed them up. We didn't include any lip synching in the rewind as it is separate from the narrative and may also cause confusion and we wanted to keep the rewind as simple as possible for it's full effect. 

Below is a screenshot of our footage on Final Cut and how one can go about 'reversing' a clip in order to create a rewind for a music video. 

Colour correction

Zach took on the role of 'colour correction', which is basically where you simply adjust or tweak the colouring of the footage which we have filmed. In the words of Zach 'colour correction often occurs after the first few rushes have been made and towards the end of the editing process', however we needed to get the colour correction done beforehand. 

The reason that Zach took on the role of colour correction lay in the fact that he has a Final Cut add-on called 'Magic Bullet' which is not available on the school laptops and therefore he needed to do it on his own laptop, and would then be transferred onto the school laptop at a later stage once completed. It was however, important that the whole group were aware of what Zach would be doing to the footage and what the colour correction would look like as an outcome, therefore we needed to discuss what sort of atmosphere and look for the footage that we wanted to achieve from the colour correction. We also wanted a different look for the lip synching scenes and in this look we would have to correct the exposure in some of the shots and to also reduce the background noise, which can become very time consuming, as Zach would know. 

After a short discussion, we chose a look which we feel heavily borrows from the original music video by Passion Pit. This look had quite a vintage finish to it which creates a soft rather than edgy atmosphere to the footage, which should hopefully look really good. 

Here are some screenshots which Zach took whilst undergoing the colour correction process: 

Zach dragged this effect onto the footage in order to activate the 'Magic Bullet' add-on. 

These are the scopes that can be played around with, and the main one which Zach used was the 'Hue/Saturation' ones. 

Three way colouring is key to successful colour grading, slightly offsetting the highlights, mid-tones and shadows helped Zach to achieve this look successfully.

Adding a slight vignette adds a faded look and changing the colour curve on the subject can sway the hue and saturation in order to make the colours softer. 

Here is a brief video in which Zach demonstrates the difference between the colour corrected versions of the footage and the original, and hence stresses the importance and the effect of colour correction. 

Ending open to interpretation

Unfortunately, I was off ill the whole of the past week and therefore have not been in school to help with the editing or shift in ideas.

Zach very kindly sent me a message on Facebook explaining that someone had given him the idea to end the video with the main character smiling, instead of just looking up at the boy offering her a drink, and wanted to know my opinion on this ending. He then told me that he had briefly explained this ending to our media teacher who loved this idea and further offered that perhaps the smile could initiate your own interpretation, that because of the rewinds it is made clear that these are all just possible scenarios which could happen if she takes the drink, and that she is smiling because she knows what she is going to do, but nobody else does; leaving it up to audience's own interpretation.

This is how our video ended before the smile was added in:

This is how our video ended once the smile was added in:

Regardless of our teacher feedback on this shot, as a group, we decided that our interpretation of this is that she is smiling because she doesn't actually know which option to choose and she doesn't know of the different outcomes either, therefore she is still in a positive mind state. What the audience are shown in the course of the video are just possibilities for what could happen if she does or doesn't take the drink. However, this is of course just our group interpretation and it is in fact open to your own interpretation - with no right or wrong answer. 

Encountering some problems with the text used in our video

Since the first teacher feedback session yesterday, the main piece of negative criticism which stood out to the group was the idea that the display of 'Passion Pit' and the song title 'Constant Conversations' gives the music video a documentary atmosphere which doesn't seem to work, and that we need to change it or play around with it. 

However, as previously stated, collectively we decided that we would try whatever we could so that we didn't need to remove it from our video, as we all really like the feature and we think it is a good  inditronica genre convention within music videos; it relates to the Passion Pit's other music videos which feature a very similar convention and it also introduces the artist and the song, which we felt was a good idea as they are not a very well - known band; it therefore helps the audience to become familiar with the band's identity. 

We therefore continued to look into other music videos, in particular Passion Pit's videos, but also from other artists within the indietronica genre in order to see their style of music video and how, if at all, they choose to display the artist and song title. From this research we noticed that in fact many music videos share the same style as we had which obviously wasn't helpful considering we have to remove the text displayed at the beginning of our video - which is a real shame. 

However, from this extensive research, we noticed that Passion Pit's original music video to Constant Conversations (as previously shown) features the artist title and song title in separate shots, which didn't help us considering we needed to find an alternative way of displaying these titles. We then stumbled across Passion Pit's video for 'Talk A Walk' which displays a different way of the song and artist titles: 

Therefore, we decided that it was probably best to scrap the initial display of the artist and song title being separate, and to merge them together at the beginning of our video, in order to remove the documentary-feel:

Teacher feedback session

FIRST FEEDBACK SESSION FOR FIRST DRAFT

During our double Media lesson on Monday 26th January, there was a teacher feedback session in regard to the 'first draft' of our video.

However, of course, we were met with problems. Problems including that we have only edited the first 40 seconds of our video so far, and therefore we only had a 40 second clip to show the class and also the teachers. Seeing this was supposed to be our first draft, therefore this can be conceived as a major issue because 40 seconds worth of video was most obviously not our first draft.

Therefore, this showed us that we had a poor judgement of timing and therefore needed to work quicker and more effectively with our editing. It is also important that we meet the next deadlines required of our group.

However, we still had to show something to the teachers and class, therefore we had to show the 40 seconds which we had edited. The first 40 seconds of our video don't include any lip synching scenes, therefore we were asking the teachers to comment on the introduction of the video and the setting of the scene and atmosphere.


The two pieces of feedback which we received were:

1) The writing over the footage which introduced the song title and the artist and giving it a sense of identity gave the video a 'documentary - type' feel, and not a music video atmosphere which is what it should have been.

However, as a group we were all really fond of the displayed font and we felt that it added to the sleek atmosphere of the video. Passion Pit's official video for Constant Conversations also includes text in their video. Therefore we got the idea from that, and I do not feel that it gives it a 'documentary' feel as opposed to a music video feel, therefore for the moment, we are going to keep the text as collectively we all really like it. 

2) The scene where everyone is entering the 'party in the woods' was too fast and needs to be slowed down and therefore lacked a party atmosphere. Therefore we need to look at alternate ways of editing this footage to add to a fast party pace without it actually being sped up, which is what most of the teachers seemed to comment on.







SECOND FEEDBACK SESSION FOR FIRST DRAFT

Re - filming the lip synching

When looking at some of the footage of the lip synching from the second shoot, we noticed that the lead singer lost track of some of the lyrics and because he was in a hurry some of the footage was rushed and we did not get complete coverage of all the lip synching needed for our video.

Therefore, Zach rearranged to meet Danny (the lead singer) in order to re film the lip synching for our video. Unfortunately because Zach managed to reschedule the lip synching with Danny at quite late notice, neither myself, Amy or Abi were able to make it to the filming.

The footage which Zach came out with looked much better than the first attempt at lip synching, as did the quality of the footage.

Some organising for the schedule of editing

Now that we have the majority of our footage filmed, we will now need to dedicate our time to editing and creating our music video.

Although the actual editing has not yet begun, we still wanted to make the use of our time effective, we therefore spent today discussing our plan of action in regard to the editing.

Our plan of action is as follows:

• Use most media lessons to edit.
• Follow the storyboard as close as possible, while using creative decisions and lyrical cues to decide when to put an appropriate lip synching clip.
• Review all footage twice to ensure that there are no mistakes or problems with it e.g an actor laughing in the background.
• Cut on the beat, as we learnt from the previous Final Cut Pro task.
• If we do any individual editing, show all other group members before clicking save.

Digipak layout

Some brief outcomes from the footage

After the first failed attempt, there was much room for improvement for the second attempt. Therefore we made sure that any previous errors which had been made were not made a second time around. For example; we chose a much closer location which was easier for us all to get to as opposed to Essex which only 1/4 of the group could easily access. We also started filming much much earlier, at 11am as opposed to 3pm, meaning that the lighting would be far greater than the previous attempt which had made the footage very grainy and unprofessional-like. The location of the woods was in a much more open area and thus meaning that the light could be seen and reached easier and therefore the 'ISO value' didn't need to be as high (the lower the value, the clearer the quality!).

In order to allow more freedom, we decided to add a prologue scene and also go slightly off storyboading, which therefore meant that it was easier to allow creativity and non-scripted events to happen. Filming off of a script or storyboard can often mean that the footage is more realistic as people aren't having to act in a certain way and thus can be seen as more natural. After looking over the footage after the shoot was finished, we decided that this was a successful decision as we managed to capture some interesting shots and the acting looked a lot better than the previous video. 

The first major problem that we were met with was when the sun began to set around approximately 4pm.  We decided that it was more practical to get all the narrative shot first, however the lip synching was yet to take place, and the darker it was getting the more we realised that we really needed to get some lip synching done, if not all, then we would have to shoot again on another day. Luckily however, we brought a fill light with us which was utilised to its full potent ion; the close ups looked amazing when the light was directed as the lead singers face. Unfortunately however, some of the long shots had more grain than expected which don't look as great on the bigger screen. 

Here are two screen shots from the footage where the difference can be seen:

No noise.

A slight bit of visible noise, but not a massive problem.

One other issue we were met with was that Danny, the lead singer, was in a slight hurry and so some of the lyrics were rushed and thus some of the shots were not perfected as you can see that Danny is not reciting the lyrics very clearly, and therefore some of the lip synching might need to be reshot. However, this shoot was definitely more successful than the first shoot and the footage we got was much more professional looking than the first. We also gathered up more footage and therefore there was more to play around with when editing.