Change of plan

The plan for our music video had to be changed slightly. Originally we had decided to film a group of people, however we felt that with the time we had it would be more realistic to use one actor who is part of our group. By doing so it has meant that we have not had to rely on other people who may have their own commitments or may not have been available on the times that we needed to film.

Evaluation and Feedback of video

My evaluation will be focused around the following four questions:

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


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


• What have you learned from your audience feedback?


• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of all your products?

I have presented my response to the first question, In what ways does your video use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?, as a PowerPoint presentation:

I have uploaded a brief video of myself talking about question two 'How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?':

For question number three 'What have you learned from your audience feedback?' my group ran a focus group and published the finished video on Facebook to gain as much feedback as possible. We felt that the feedback we gained from the focus group was invaluable and if having to do the project again we would have a clear and concise idea on things which may need re-thinking or re-working. This is a video link to the group interview: First of all we showed our final music video to everyone in the focus group. We asked questions on the following subjects:

• Choice of location for our video - what was good? what was bad?


• The story line - what did you think it was about? did you like the idea?


• Costume - do you think it reflects our genre?


• Overall strengths of the music video?


• Overall improvements that could be made?

Feedback that can be taken from the focus group is that the text at the beginning of the story wasn't clear so the narrative became confusing. A suggestion on how to improve the music video was to include more people/ characters in the video, this might also improve the clarity of the narrative. For example filming a couple breaking up etc. One person commented that they enjoyed the wide range of shots, however it could have been more interesting if more effects were added during editing.

People also commented on the video we uploaded to Facebook. One person said that they liked the creative camera shots where we layered footage and increased the transparency to give the video a ghostly effect.

Another comment was that 'the lighting at about 2 and a bit minuets was a bit harsh - couldn't see much' because the footage was so bright it has effected the quality of our footage. Improvements that you could make to lighting would be to adjust the composition of the camera on set getting the right balance so it does not affect the final footage. Film in more shaded areas, highly exposed areas are likely to be bright on sunny days, by opting for a more shaded area this should help minimise this problem. Finally re-shoot the shot on a less bright day, during editing if the shot does not look quit right, make a note of the problem and re take the shot.

Other feedback was that the writing on the text at the start of the film was hard to see. The text explains that the girls relationship is over and therefore it is important for the progression of our narrative. If the text can not be clearly read that might mean that the story line has not been properly understood. One way that this could be improved would be to think of other ways to present the message for example finding a letter or an email, these might show up better on the video once filmed.

The last question 'How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of all your products?' relates the the software and equipment that I have used throughout this coursework task.

Almost every element of this coursework task has been IT based. My computer skills have vastly improved and I now confidently know how to use complex editing programs such as Final Cut Pro. and even my basic knowledge from AS of Adobe Photoshop, Google documents and Blogger have all majorly improved.

I had only used Final cut pro once or twice before and at first was extremely taken away with how complicated it was. However, our initial class task of copying an existing music video meant that we had a lot of practice with the program before having to use it for ourselves and became quite comfortable with it quite quickly. As we progressed through our editing lessons we picked up new editing techniques which allowed us to be creative with parts of our footage, for example we learnt how to layer two clips and increase the transparency which gave the effect of the same person walking in different directions but at the same time. If given more time this would be something i would defiantly like to look into further. Using Final cut pro we stored all the footage that we had filmed, by dragged the clips onto the time line it gave us a clearer picture of all of our footage we had. Using the razor tool we could chop long pieces of footage into parts, delete the rejected footage piece together the rest of the footage that created our final video.

The Digipack and Advert were both created using Photoshop. I learnt how to place photographs and edit the brightness and contrast of the images creating stronger bolder images. I learnt how to use the colour picking tool to select a colour from an image and drop that colour into a created box. This meant that the image had a natural coherent feel. After creating the documents we then had to save them as JPEG files.

Although I do have great experience from using Blogger last year, I have had to refresh my knowledge on how to upload videos and images and input URL's. When displaying work in a PowerPoint format, the PowerPoint has to be uploaded to Google Documents and transferred into a URL to embedded on your blog or retrievable through a link, these are all skills which I have had to re remind my self of from last year.

I have gained a lot of experience and knowledge in photography and also filming using a Canon XM2 camera and Mini DV tape to record our footage. We were taught how to use the cameras for example how to alter the white balance and exposure, and also taught about their many features such as zooms and how to adjust them accordingly to the shot you desire. I have also learnt how to use camera equipment to get the best shots, for example for the majority of our footage where possible we used a tripod, this was because we were confident in knowing that we would have the stillest, smoothest footage possible.

Finished Video

http://youtu.be/PiuBM3InauM This is the link to my groups music video Sweet Disposition by Temper Trap

Creative camera use

In this blog I have print screened particular moments in the final video where our group has used creative techniques which emphasise the characters drunk, delusional, confused state of mind.

In this part of the video (2mins 30secs) we set up a tripod and recorded a shot of the actor walking towards the camera. We cut the shot into sections and deleted parts of the actor walking which meant that as

the actor walked they jumped closer to the camera. We used the editing creatively to speed up the footage to match the pace of the song.

In this second part of the video (2mins 43secs) we recorded the actor walking away from the camera, using a tripod it enabled us to keep the positioning of the camera the same so that when the actor turned around and walked in the other direction the same type of shot would be filmed. By changing the transparency of the footage and layering the two different shots it gave the video a ghostly effect and enforced one of the themes in our narrative of a girl 'finding her self''.

Rejected Footage

Theses are a few examples of rejected footage: We found that this footage was too dark to use. It had rained the day before and the weather was extremely over cast. Because of the rain the day before it made the mud extremely slippery and water logged so filming the actors lines was near impossible. We re shot this footage on a sunnier day, the ground was a lot firmer and less slippery and also meant that the footage was brighter.

Our idea for this shot was to have a a time lapse of the stream, during editing we decided to reject the footage because there was not enough movement in the shot to make make a good quality time lapse. Also the footage was too dark amongst the rest of the footage in the video.

This was a tracking shot we attempted, we decided to reject the footage because the camera movements were too poor quality and out of focus. The rest of the footage that we filmed using a tripod was smooth and of a high quality, so by using a slow zoom we managed to create a similar effect of a tracking shot but with the quality of a tripod.