Final Evaluation

Change of Evaluation idea!

We have decided that instead of going ahead with our original idea of just using iStopmotion, we will be doing 2 sections on iStopmotion and 2 sections of an informal commentary. This is because using just iStopmotion would be extremely time consuming and we got worried that we would not complete the evaluation for the deadline. Therefore we had decided questions 2 and 3 will be an informal commentary as this shows the examiner a different insight to our video by actually seeing the creators of it. We also changed it because we thought it would be unexpected and would stop the examiner from being bored of seeing just iStopmotion video, which look very much the same after you have seen them.

This new and improved idea will help us to keep on track with the deadlines and also allows us to try 2 different ideas in one piece of work.

Evaluation Schedule

As we are doing a very time consuming and fairly visually dynamic Evaluation video, we thought it would be helpful to us if we made a schedule as it will help us keep on track and ensure we meet the deadline given. Below is a rough outline of when we will be doing each section of the video and how long we will spend on it.

1.  11/12/12- Recording voice over clips (1.5hrs) = COMPLETED
2. 12.12.12-14.12.12  Starting the animation of our video, hopefully completing all questions across these 3 days (6hrs)
3. 17.12.12- Finishing off animation and uploading to final cut to edit in all necessary clips needed (1hr)
4. 19.12.12- Uploading to youtube and blogger(1hr)

Hopefully if we stick to this time schedule and ensure that we put all our efforts into making sure we don't spend extra time on it, we should have it done by the deadline.

Ideas for a Creative Evaluation Video!

As we want our evaluation video to be eye catching and ensure that the examiner and whoever else wants to watch it is not bored, we wanted to have a fun and creative video that keeps the viewer entertained and focused on our video.

We came up with some ideas however these ones are not our final idea as they are not that exciting.

• Prezi- We dcecided against this idea as it may be quite boring to have to sit through a powerpoint presentation which is interesting but not very unique.
• Commentry video- We again decided against this idea as to have it to a professional standard would take a lot of time and effort which we are short of. It also could be boring just watching us sit and talk about our video.
• Regular powerpoint- This idea would be the most boring out of all of our ideas as there is nothing visually dynamic about it and it would mean the examiner would just have to read slides rather than watch and listen to our evaluation

Therefore as none of the ideas really worked for us a a group, we have decided to do a IStopMotion video, as it is extremely dynamic to watch and will hopefully keep the viewers very visually engaged as well as engaged to listening to what we are saying.

To keep within the theme of our video and genre, we are going to make the video look very rustic by using again neutral colours and unique settings. For our setting we are going to use a white brick wall. To answer the questions we will be using little bits of paper showing bulletpoints of the major points we are making from our answers, we will also use pictures to show examples, as they are mentioned, from the video. By using IStopMotion this allows us to have a creative flare with our video give us an oppurtunity to try new media technology, it also makes our video a lot different from the other evaluations in our group.

Evaluation Questions and Qnswers.

Below is the questions we must answer in order to evaluate the Music Video project we have completed this year.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product is a music video within the Indie Folk genre. Upon finding a song in this genre we had to look into other music videos of this genre by our artist, Lissie. We also had to look into other artists of this genre, like Mumford and Sons and Birdy, to find some common trends and conventions through all the videos. Most of the conventions in this genre were shown through the Mise-en-Scene and Camerawork of the videos. Certain trends throughout the videos we watched, in terms of Mise-en-Scene were natural scenery, natural hair and makeup, everyday normal clothes, minimal props and ambient lighting. The conventions that came up a lot in terms of camerawork were a variety of different shots, different angles, minimal movement and using the camera to focus/unfocus the frames. In terms of editing, Indie Folk music is very basic and does not have a lot of variety, the most common editing techniques used were cuts, colour correction and slow motion. In our video to the song ‘Here Before’ by Lissie, we did not challenge any conventions that we found in other videos, however we did develop some of them to suit our song, for example the tempo and mood. The Mise-en-Scene conventions that we researched into were developed the most, for example instead of using everyday normal clothes, like other artists videos we researched into such as Lissie’s video for “Everywhere I Go”, we wanted the outfit choice to suit the mood of the song, which we felt was very ethereal and wondrous, so therefore we chose a white flowey dress to represent the dreamlike aspect of the song. Another costume used in the video was neutral shorts and a white jumper as this also showed the natural side to the artists style and although could be considered everyday clothes we chose this as it was similar style to the dress however it is slightly more casual therefore making a clear distinction from the other scenes. Another example of the ways in which we developed the conventions is through the lighting in our video we used ambient lighting, as other Indie Folk videos do like Birdy’s video “Shelter”, however in post production we developed the lighting to create a more diverse colour palette of more grey/blue tones, which again helped create a dreamlike moody aspect, which is how we thought the song should be portrayed. The camerawork conventions seen in other music videos of our genre did not change; we used most of the conventions we saw throughout other Indie Folk music videos we researched into. The conventions we used the most in terms of camerawork, was the diverse shot types; which is displayed throughout the whole of our video, variety of angles; such as in the penultimate scenes of our music video where the artist is shown singing from a high angle shot and the use of focus/unfocus; which we used particularly in the beginning of our video and in the final scenes and also minimal movement as these were the most common conventions we saw in Indie Folk music videos, particularly in Mumford and Son’s video “Little Lion Man” and Birdy’s video “Shelter”. In terms of editing we followed the exact conventions we found in other music videos of our genre, so we used only cuts, slow motion and colour correction in post-production. All of the editing was used the whole way through, colour correction was changed to a colour scheme which we fit match the tone of the song which was a colour palette of greys and blues. Slow motion was used in our video to add a dramatic effect and important parts of the song that stuck out to us as listeners. We also had a variety of different shot lengths using both long and short shot duration throughout the whole video. We tried to stick closely to Goodwin’s theory by follow most of the points this theory makes. We particularly focused on the genre characteristics, notions of looking and the record label demands.  We did not want to challenge any of the conventions we saw in other Indie Folk music videos as the genre is so unique and uncommon on its own, that by challenging the conventions it would take away its individuality and that’s something we wanted to keep within our video.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

The 3 products I created were a music video, a magazine advert and a digi-pack. We linked the mise-en-scene within our main product (music video) and the ancillary as we stuck to the same natural colours and scenery, and if you were to watch the video you can notice this. The pictures we used for our digi-pack were ones we took whilst filming so they link together and the singer was wearing the same dress and hairstyle. The singer wore a cream long dress as cream is a natural colour and her hair was wavy and down and we tried to not style it too much. For the makeup we used a natural skin colour foundation and an enhanced natural Smokey eye, and then when we created the magazine advert we used a dark Smokey eye to show a difference in video and magazine.  When taking pictures for our magazine article we had to think back to our genre and think of an appropriate outfit and scenery that matches our genre. For example we kept our artist in neutral colour clothing such as beige jumper as the image we created of our artist is based around being natural.  Most of our lightening throughout our video and digi-pack was bright so we had to find somewhere with a good light. We think that it is effective because if you watch the video you will be able to notice the singer in the digi-pack and magazine so the audience will make a connection and this means it’s recognisable. On the front of our digi-pack the picture is of the girl in her cream dress standing on the beach looking down as if she is ‘troubled’. The back to our digi-pack is just a capture of the forest as that’s another natural setting and we just wrote our song titles down the middle, it’s simple but effective. We wanted to make sure the audience would recognise both video and magazine as if the digi-pack was in a shop to buy.  Although the singer looks a little different in the magazine she is still natural but people will look at her in a different light as she is in a different atmosphere than we had seen in the digi-pack and video.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Throughout the whole music video project, we have been given feedback consistently from not only the teacher but our peers. The first bit of feedback we got from our teacher and peers was given after we presented our music video idea to our class. We presented our main ideas; including information on the micro areas and the conventions we would follow. After we presented our ideas our peers and teacher gave us feedback on the positives of our ideas but also gave us constructive critism. Positive comments were things such as “well thought through ideas’ and ‘good ideas for post-production’. We also got constructive comments such as ‘How will we challenge Goodwin’s Theory’ and ‘need to think about the Mise-en-scene in terms of location’. The positive comments were a very good confidence boost, however the negative comments had more of a positive effect as it helped us to realise what we need to improve and how we can ensure that everything will go to plan, particularly in the shooting process of our video. To overcome the comments given we decided to take them on board and really work to ensure that the negatives turned into positives. After this we didn’t really get a lot of feedback, as we were in the production stage of our music video, so there was not much we could get feedback on. However when we started post-production stages of our video we got consistent feedback from our teaching, giving us advice as we went through the editing process. We got small feedback comments but they were very useful and helped us to improve our video.  When we did our rough cut of our video, which shows the first 40 seconds of our video, we got feedback from our peers, like our presentation we got both positive and negative comments, however we found the negative comments more helpful than the positive, this was because they allowed us to see our video from a different perspective and notice smaller mistakes that we might not have noticed in the editing stage. The comments we got given helped to alter our video in a way that made it more appealing to the viewers, as the comments allowed us to know what people really liked and disliked about our video. Some of the positive comments we got were ‘Music compliments Visuals’, ‘Variety of shot types’ and ‘Blur/Focusing effects are good’ which as mentioned before really helped us to get a boost of confidence however we focused more on the negative feedback. Some of the negative comments we got were ‘Camera is slightly shaky’ and ‘Miming looks a little off’ the comments we got were comments that we couldn’t really fix as they were mistakes made during the filming process. The comment on the miming is something we focused on a lot as in other music videos in our genre, the miming is 100% on point because it should look like the artist is singing live, so therefore we spent extra time editing to ensure this was on point. Another comment we got was that our ‘lighting looked artificial’. This was easily fixed as in post production we had enhanced our lighting, so it was easy for us to go back to our colour correction and change it to ensure our lighting looked natural but still fit our genre conventions. We found all our feedback extremely helpful, particularly the negative feedback, as if we had not got it our video would not look like it does now and we would have probably lost marks for simple mistakes that other people could point out to us.

4. How did you use media technology in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?

We used a great deal of connections within the planning of our video. Firstly we used online media on a PC such as websites like Youtube to research other video’s within the indie-folk genre to give us idea’s on what to base our video on. We also used Wikipedia to research into the indie-folk genre and to find artists we can study. Finding an artist gave us a chance to watch their video’s on Youtube to see how they use micro areas of editing, camerawork and mise-en-scene. After all our research we posted everything we found on blogger so we could keep track of everything and it would save so we can come back to look at it in a later stage. When starting to film we used Cannon Digital recording camera to capture all of our video. We didn’t find The camera tricky to use as we had used it previously to film so we knew exactly how to use it. After filming we would come back and import the footage onto the Apple Mac using a USB to see what we had filmed and put onto the software ‘Final Cut’ which is editing software. Using final cut was easy as we had previously used it before. Final cut gave us a chance to tidy up our footage using tools such as ‘Colour correction’ and ‘cutting’ sequences and we used the speed button a lot to slow our video down. We would then place it together with the song, this then meant we had to make sure the lip syncing wasn’t out of time with the song, this sometimes proved harder than we thought. We then had to use you tube again to upload our video onto so others can see; we uploaded it through QuickTime which enables you to watch video’s. Later on when designing our digi-pack and magazine we had to take pictures using a ‘fuji- film digital camera’ which is a professional camera to capture quality pictures in all sorts of lighting. After taking our pictures we uploaded them to Photoshop which enables you to play around with pictures and edit it in any way you choose. We changed things such as lighting the background and the singer’s outer image. We colour corrected things such as the dress colour, and darkened the skin colour and hair to make it stand out more. We used the ‘burn’ and ‘dodge’ tool which lightens and darkens the picture. We added text on both the digi-pack and magazine for example ‘Lissie’ – the singers name, title of the album, list of the songs and quotes from another magazine’. In our evaluation stage we will be using a software called ‘Istopmotion’ which is a filming software but looks different to footage filmed by a regular camera, ‘Istopmotion’ is filmed on a apple Mac.

Final Magazine Advert +Analysis.

Our Magazine advert has changed vastly from our practice. We have changed not only the image but the layout. We also did more research into other magazines opinions of our artist to get a better insight of what other people think of her. WE also chose an image that was more natural and suited our artist more, we also added a picture of the front of our digi-pak as this makes it recognisable to our audience.

Final Digi-Pak

Front and Back of our Digi-pak.

Middle sections of Digi-Pak.

Above are all the sections of our digi-pak, from our practice digi-pak we have not changed that much apart from enhancing certain things and adding a further middle section, the CD design.

We tried to keep all the font the same to avoid confusion and stuck very closely to our neutral colour palette that we like to keep to as this portrays our artist very well.