Music Video

A note from your favourite exam candidate (Formaly signing off)

Goodbye! I am surprisingly sad to say that the long, stressful and time consuming coursework period is over.  Thank you for going through my blog - I hope it was relatively interesting and that the effort I put into it shows through, so farewell! It has finally come to an end. I've really enjoyed being a part of this project and I'm so grateful for my group, who have been amazing throughout this process. Also thanks to the teachers and technicians that have had to put up with us.

Farewells

A final Blogger entry before the password is changed, I hope whoever is reading this has enjoyed the posts. I hope my writing was not too boring and you can see the knowledge sprouting out. My word mr examiner that is an awfully great tie you have on/ ms examiner, did you just get your hair done? You know Nathan would love full marks :). Special thanks to everyone who made this project excel from teachers to group members.

This is the conclusive blog, Farewell! 

Evaluation Question 4

4) What Have you learned from your audience feedback?

Over the course of these past few months, we as a group have received a high amount of audience feedback from the production of the video and my ancillary work. I stress that, a lot of what has been produced has been crafted by the viewers sitting around, dropping opinions and verdicts as the production was taking place so there was much positive feedback as to when it was shown in the cinema The Screen On The Green.

Here is a picture of me and group member Temi, as we sat to watch the A2 media music videos. Our music video, played near to the beginning and set the bar for audience cheers as many peers knew of the party and even attended so they all had high expectations for the final video. The audience enjoyed the scene where guest Diego has water thrown in his face, as many know who he is, people found it humorous as it was not expected. I also heard positive comments on my attire worn in the video, as we were one of the only groups that stepped out of the way to make our outfits stand out as you would on a night out. 

Facebook also allowed me to receive feedback on my media music video. People had been contacting me, asking when the video will be completed and what grade I have received for it. My auntie especially as the party was in her house and she wanted to be sure that this was even for my media work. So when I posted this on Facebook I was barraged with comments and likes expressing their views and opinions. Despite the short time it took to produce this music video, it surprisingly was not reflected in the comments section. However when speaking to my friend Shivz who makes music professionally, he did not like the superimposition used and argued that it was a bit too much, however the students at City and Islington enjoyed it as they said it conformed really well with the genre. 

Ethel's feedback proved to be a lot more judging which is what we need. The comments I received embraced the video and a lot of the comments were from people who have not done much media work so they're opinions would be very different as to someone who specializes in this field. Ethel's cousin left really good feedback and criticism noting the positive aspects but highlighting what could have been improved such as the lighting in the music video. Overall the feedback received from people on Facebook was generally positive.

In class feedback

Despite the combined efforts of my group I feel that we could have done a lot more to improve the final edit of our music video. Being a bit of a perfectionist, watching Nathan Miller Flashback a month after it had been up on Vimeo changed my views on it entirely. Of course it is a fine piece of student work but when I watch music videos now I pay very close attention as I produced one myself so I can't help but to compare and see what others have done and what we did not do or did not do as well. This led to more of a general discussion of the flaws of my music video rather than spot the errors, I knew what was wrong and many later feedback interviews proved the audience saw the same thing. 

The lighting was a key error in Nathan Miller Flashback not only wasting a lot of time having to re shoot but also putting us as a group at a disadvantage with dark clips. To get the night feel for a music video, what better way to do it then film in the evening. However this was against us as the light on the camera would flicker on and off at times. Making them too dark or just making the clips look silly. With having to film over and over again, we drew closer to the deadline than anticipated with only two days to come up with a finished piece of work. Taking this into consideration I feel we did a great job and this was noted in a lot of feedback received because peers knew our situation and how far behind we were with the actual finished product, which led to some favoritism with our work. But none the less the shots could have been enhanced and made a lot smoother had everything gone to plan in the beginning because it really was a race against time to get it finished so Flashback does not exert  an optimal piece of work. So first point being I would have ensured the lights were working before we went off to film.

The superimposition was used heavily in our music video. Despite having the initial plan to do so, it proved to not be as popular and perceived as we viewed it. The feedback from peers proved otherwise with many stating that the 'Loved the drunk effect' however this breaks down to who gave the feedback because upon speaking to someone who makes music video on a regular basis, many would say that it was stressed a bit too much, confusing the audience and to be fair I can partially agree. I as the planner of the music video know its true intent but asking someone out side of college and who specializes in the media field would state its not the greatest of effects. Instead when asking my friend Shivz his views on the music video, all he could state was the shots did not have a clear enough gradient (or something along those lines) which is now how I view our music video. Looking at any music videos on TV, you will notice how they look very clear. This is not always to do with the camera being used as told by the directors shooting Shivz - Refuge. Instead stating it relies heavily on the editing and what you can do with the shots that makes the difference. Looking at a professional level Shivz sent me the guidelines for posting a music video on TV and here they are :

'BROADCAST QUALITY

CHECK the picture and sound quality is of broadcast standard.

100% colour bars

Audio should peak at -6db and NO HIGHER

DOUBLE CHECK audio and pictures are in sync

AVOID the use of flashing images and regular patterns. (Flashing lights and certain types of regular visual patterns can cause problems for some viewers who have photosensitive epilepsy).

Please do NOT include any title on the actual video (e.g. artist name & track title these details will be added by Channel AKA).'

It varies on what you are trying to aim for with your music video to get the best feedback and I look at professional videos for guidelines, it is reflected in the attire worn really well ( as complimented by many who viewed Nathan Miller Flashback) but the editing and the sharp shots was not really there. But this of course breaks down to the fact that we were drawing closer and closer to the deadlines and just had to get it done.

My ancillary work was perceived far better than the media music video as this was the part of the course where audience feedback was constantly chipping to the finished product. My teacher Anabel stated she did not like my initial album cover saying it was too much which led to the class agreeing. Back to the drawing board I diluted it down and received much better feedback to the new product, however group member Temi stated that I should experiment with it because I may like the finished outcome so I made the digipak predominately black to reference to the music video. This received high appraisal by peers many stating that our group has the best album artwork and our genre electro pop allows for us to have very unique designs as mine was described with my back cover. Many thought I stole the show with my small but effective additional booklet signed by myself on photoshop. Many said it looked very professional. I did have a lot of negative reviews during the progression of my ancillary work but I ran with the feedback and in the end did not receive much negative views when asked what could I improve on.

In conclusion as photoshop is not my strongest feat I feel I did a really good job with it, creating a realistic piece of ancillary work. I also did not get to speak to anyone who uses photoshop professionally so I was absent with  the criticism, in my opinion not the best but very well done in relation to the genre and the general digipak and advertisement conventions. The video on the other hand is still a very good piece of work but not to my standard, if given a second chance i'd ensure the lights were used effectively and I could manipulate the colour and contrast of all the clips to make the shots look really sharp. Overall feedback concluded a great piece of work. 

(I had a video I wished to upload regarding positive feedback but the files became corrupted some how so many of the quotes have been referenced throughout this blog, and they will not essentially divert much from other group members as we all are in the same group at the end of the day so the video below has been created by Asilhan but expresses views that equally influence my perception on my music video)

Evaluation Question 4

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After completing our video we were taken on a trip by the media department to The Screen on the Green cinema, where all the music videos from the entire A2 year would be showcased. In my opinion this was an invaluable experience, as we were able to see an audience's reaction to our music video and also faced with the possibility of receiving individual feedback.

The video below was recorded by one of my other group members Asilhan on the day of the screening. As you can see from the comments that were filmed, we were given great feedback. This was also consistently true for all the other feedback we have received throughout the editing process from our peers and online via Facebook.

Here is just a few of the comments we received on Facebook from when we all individually posted the link. As you can see most of the feedback was positive. However we did receive some constructive criticism in there as well, which I am quite pleased about. Because without constructive criticism it would be totally pointless of us putting the link to our video on Facebook other than to get an ego boost from people telling us our video was "Awesome" etc.

Below you can see an image I created using a brainstorm creation tool (bubbl.us) which compiles together several comments I received via Facebook in response to my ancillary work. Many positive things were said, but there were quite a few suggestions and things to think about too.

Click to enlarge.

In particular one comment got my attention "Maybe just one too many images of the artist used in the advert" this piece of criticism is correct in my opinion - I agree with this person. The only reason why there are 3 images of my artist on my advert is that on the right hand side there was a big black space, like to say something was missing. So to get rid of it I added an image of my artist face. Looking back on it i still would have done the same thing because in a way I am fulfilling a major convention of a digipak, which is to promote my artist and raise awareness about him or her.

Evaluation Question 3

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

First and foremost excluding the hardware, the level of research and planning would not have been as significant if it wasn't for the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. I used Wikipedia when we as a group came to a conclusion with what song we was going to be doing. If we went with a rap/hip hop genre research I would not have to be as heavy on the research but as I knew little to nothing on our chosen genre. I felt it was relevant to do thorough research on it to get a good sense of what the characteristics are or were and who were the most popular. The research concluded with bright colours, sunglasses, suits and parties being characteristics of the genre. I also learnt that Electropop is or was only a sub name for the genre synthpop where the instrument synthesizer was dominant. Time moving on, conventions changed but I still got a lot of inspiration from the pioneers of the genre for a solid electropop feel.

Like last year, the macs were equally as vital and important this year. The process of getting screen grabs on a mac is far quicker and easier in comparison to a normal windows computer. By pressing ctrl shift 4, it allows to take a perfect screen grab of what is on screen. Regardless of the software, this little feature in my opinion is the most important feature to creating a blog because of the time being saved compared to a normal windows computer (taking a screen  shot and then putting it in MS paint and cropping). With the screen shots, our college installed a new software called Voila. I am not 100% sure as to everything you can do on it, as I only used it in my earlier stages but I was using it to highlight certain aspects of the screen shots that I was talking about this includes drawing shapes around them. When at home I was using MS paint to do so, equally the same process only when you screen shot it includes the html bar and start options etc. This just tampers with the resolution of the final image even after cropping as it is so big compared to the macs small precise screen shots. My favorite MS software to illustrate screen shots was MS Powerpoint. As I could put two or more images next to each other, scale them up and make annotations, it saves the over complicated process of using an unfamiliar software to do so. 

The internet played a major role during this project. The website Blogger was essential for the coursework, keeping a track record of research, planning and most importantly the progress of the candidates. Youtube remains another important website as expected, with the youtube channels in place the popular music channels VEVO helped to get a feel for the genre we was going to explore. VEVO included other songs from the artist and similar songs alike. Despite researching on Wikipedia, this allowed me to simply click songs at random and get a feel and inspiration from the music videos without having to do heavy research on who is and who isn't an electropop artist. Facebook equally proved to be as important for feedback and I also used it for the first time to create and plan an event (the party). It allowed for all guests to know what the plans were especially if there was a change of plan as there was (see above screen shot).  The Blackberry mobile device also ensured everything went to plan in terms of the party, allowing for guests to communicate with the hosts and broadcast messages (send one message to a number of selected people on your contact list).  Conforming to our earlier observations of the music industry in rapid decline of legal sells , I used youtube converter to get some suggested songs from guests for the party. (It was for educational purposes :D) I then just put these songs on my Ipod touch and connected it to the aux wire of the stereo at the party.

My Last Blog

This will be my very last blog !! :(

I've enjoyed this entire project, from the research and planning stages, to filming, to editing, etc and I am lucky to have been with such a fantastic group! We all contributed together and came out with a good video and great individual ancillary works.

I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to all the media teachers that has helped us and also thank you to the examiner reading this - I hope you have enjoyed my blogs!

GOODBYE!!!!

(This is me and my group helping ourselves to some cake - this was during our filming stages)