Final Video!

L: Evaluation

Media Evaluation on Prezi

K: Audience Research Evaluation

For my part in the audience research I conducted 2 personal focus groups, testing the final product, also testing the rough cut at an earlier stage. I concluded our results on the sucesses of our research and its validity awell as testing the print work on a large audience and drawing conclusions from teacher comments and peer feedback creating a slideshow and uploading it on 'slideboom'.

Evaluation 3: Audience Research

savee

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K: Audience Research update

Today I finished the audience research question 3 of our evaluation, I added in Beckis results, completed the powerpoint presentation setting appropriate backgrounds and adding text then uploaded it onto 'slideboom' a web 2.0.

B: Audience research results

Here are the results from my focus group presented on a PowerPoint uploaded by slide boom. The results overall are very positive and i think that both our printwork and video are effective in terms of continuity, being conventional and understandable.

My focus group were all male and the over all response was that the video was of a very high quality and very effective.

Things in which people would change are...
- Make the girl shots slower to connote her being dead.
- Show more shots of the boy.

The average overall rating of the video was 9/10 which is a very good result.

As for print work again the overall response was very positive all members of the focus group felt that brand continuity was created throughout the tour poster, digipak and video.

Things in which people would change are...
- Create a leaflet for the digipak.

The average overall rating for our printwork was 10/10

Here are the results...

results

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B: Focus group questions

For my part of the audience research i have created a set of question prompts to aid my focus group. The focus group will consist of 6 people from a variety of ages but all male.  This will create a comparison between mine and Kitty and Lilli's audience research giving us a wider variety of results and a better overview of audience responses to our video.


Here are the questions for the focus group.

Media 2nd focus group

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B: Audience response from youtube

After looking at our video again on youtube i noticed this comment...

sixfeatsmall05 has made a comment on TWGSB Group 5- Ben Howard, Follaton Wood:

really great video, impressive! Ben should hire you to make a video for this great song to be released! -Cote all the way in the USA.

Well done girls!!

K:Evaluation 1, 2

EVALUATION 1:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products on Prezi

Please view each 'Prezi' full screen.

EVALUATION 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? on Prezi

B: 2.How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When creating our groups print work we all took on a separate role and had a different part of the print work to create independently. Altogether we created a digipak, Album advert and a tour advert. My part of the printwork was to create a four pane digpak which is conventional to the indie/ folk genre as well as creating a good artist image and continuity between the other print work as well as the music video.

The tour and album advertisements are both suitable for our chosen magazines and advertising criteria; local magazines would be used as Ben Howard is a local singer song writer who would play mainly at universities and local halls, daily london newspapers in order to try to expand Ben Howard as an artist and music magazines such as NME in which Ben Howards style would fit into well.

Both the Album advert and the Tour advert were designed to attract the attention of the reader by using beautiful photography anchored by a bold font which stands out and grabs peoples attention as well as being easy to read thus getting the message across and promoting Ben Howard successfully.

The Digipak on the other hand is designed to run as an illustration of the album as a whole. It would be seen on itunes when downloading tracks as downloading music has now becoming more popular. This will ensure that an artist image and visual representation is still being created as the album cover would be downloaded aa well. You would also see the digipak in music retailers such as 'HMV' on a wide scale, appealing to a number of audiences as well as small scale shops such as 'soundwaves' specialist in folk/ indie music.

Here is my contribution to the print work, a 4 panel digipak, album cover.

The main feeljng i aimed to achieve when creating the digipak was a sense of a naturalistic environment using pictures reflecting on the indie/ folk genre in which Ben Howard fits into.

I feel that the photographs i have used work well to promote this image...

 

1. The inside right panel of the digipak is a photograph of a CU shot of Autumn leaves on a tree, this is representative of the tree focus in the main song of the album Follation wood as well as being a visually pleasing image to use. The image of a tree acts as a signifier to look at the form of life and death as well as having Strong connotations to the lyrics in the track of the girl hanging herself from a tree. The colours used on the tree pannels are very autnmus and warm giving it a feel of being alive, connoting the narrative of the music video.

 

2. The inside left panel of the digipak again is focusing on the natural feel of trees but from a LS angle compared to the CU of the inside. I feel that this contrast works really well when both panels are positioned next to each other. Again the colour is warm signifying life which is the main theme of the narrative of our music video creating a sense of continuity between the print work and the music video.

3. The Front cover of the digipak is an image of the Artist Ben Howard using aa shot from behind, being representative of the singer song writer feel that i wanted to achieve. The way the audience is positioned with Ben Howards back could be representative of him as an artist as 'Dyer' writes in his first paradox a star must be both ordinary and extraordinary to the consumer. Ben is reflected as being ordinary in that he has no great status as well as being extraordinary that he is not looking at the audience therefore making him un accessible to look at. In relation to this image and the video, the image could be a signifier of the loss and sorrow that Ben feels in that he cannot look straight into the audience.

-This is representative of Dyers second paradox that the star needs to be both present and absent to the audience. Ben is present in form on the cover giving the audience something to relate to thus building a star persona but at the same time he is absent in that they never are revealed his true identity and the image of him is positioned with pictures of nature making him seem as ab average person. This is conventional of the genre juxtaposed to a rappers digipak for example which would consist of lots of CU images promoting them as a star, Ben Howard is perceived as being more down to earth.

4. The back cover of the digipak is a picture of the fields with sheep showing nature and matching the colour, contrast and scenery line of the front cover, giving the album continuity.

Here are some images from music videos in which we got inspiration from...

Dyer would argue that the stars commodity's are produced and consumed on the strenght of the meaning created, i think that the digipak has very strong signifiers and connotes both Ben as an artist as well as anchoring the track.

To create the basic digipak i used photographs edited on photoshop to create a Autumn like colour feel.

I then researched fonts on the website 'dafont' to find a font similar to that of Ben Howard, originally i found a more feminine font but after discussion with the group i chose to create continuity with the tour advert, and album advert.

After this i found a bar code and record label logos as well as email addresses following the conventions of an album cover in order to promote and advertise the record labels and to create an audience using web 2.0 media outlets. These are positioned of the back pane of the digipak along with the track listing.

This digipak adds value to the track due to the strong connotations between the two, it is also very conventional to the genre therefore would appeal to the tastes of the audience. The digipak also conforms to both of Dyer's paradoxes thus would be argued uses the right techniques to appeal to the audience leading to them to buying the track, becoming fans and watching concerts creating Ben Howard a successful career in the music industry.

The combination of the Advert, Digipak and the video all construct a very strong coherent artist image which would be successful when creating a fan base making Ben Howard clearly identifiable as an artist. This image is shown to be very down to earth and naturalistic which would appeal to an audience who enjoy the indie/ folk genre of music and like an accessible artist. Dyers paradoxes again work well to explain the way in which Ben is both accessible and distanced from the audience through the photography and the way in which he is not a key character in the video.

B: 4.How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The use of ICT is a key aspect of our project helping with research, production and audience research as well as working as an effective way to present our findings.

- Web media applications enabled my creative process by giving a effective method to present findings, keep information in order and visually explain complicated ideas.

- Web media applications such as the blog using 'Blogger', Prezi to create visual representations of ideas and Youtube to help us research conventions of genre and music videos have all helped the created process immensely.

- The software 'Premier' and 'photoshop' also played key parts in our creative process, letting us edit our footage to create the music video as well as creating print work such as the digipak, tour advert and album advert.

- The blog was the key part of our process, allowing us to communicate as a group and visually explain our ideas. As some group members attend a different school this was a really valuable tool for us to have and allowed us to keep up to date with our process. As well as if one member of the group is absent, they are able to catch up with the work effectively.

- Blogger also allowed both the teacher and group members to comment on each others work letting each other know how successfull their research was and acting as a way to communicate ideas helping our final process and outcome.

- Blogger also allowed us to embed videos from 'youtube', upload photos and write descriptions therefore keeping everything in order and in one place and helping us make sure we incorporated all our research into our final video and filming.

- In the final stages of production, the blog was used as a production log helping us to record all shoots and editing sessions as well as setting deadlines and targets helping us to  keep on track and meet deadlines.

- Although blogger was a very effective media application sometimes there were some challenges, At times blogger would not load posts properly and there would be big gaps making it look messy and unprofessional, this was time consuming to correct.

- In some cases some videos, slidebooms and prezis would not load correctly because of copyright issues or privacy settings, this meant that we had to look for alternative videos which was time consuming.

- In addition to Youtube, and blogger we used a variety of other packages to communicate our ideas, Slide boom, slide rocket and prezi were both used to create presentations to display ideas as well as being part of our pitch, to help us clearly show our ideas.

- These all consisted of embedded videos and pictures to again display different ideas which were then all posted on the blog linking all our work together and having one collective point in which we can refer to.

- Survey monkey was also used for our audience research, this helped us to test our concept on a wide variety of people as well as creating graphs for us online to help us display and read our data.

- The animatic was a very significant part of our work in terms of planning for our final cut. Cutting it to the duration of our footage enabled us to ensure that we had enough footage and to ensure that the footage linked together. For parts we were unsure of we used our storyboard to display an image so that we got a really good understanding of what our footage was going to look like.

-Through creating our animatic we could apply our storyboards into a moving image style so we could get a better sense of how our music video was going to look so we could re order, cut and add shots in place if we needed to, thus making the editing process a lot easier. This also clearly identified to us when a reshoot was going to be in order.

-To create our animatic we used 'Premiere 9' which allowed us to quickly add, move cut and edit the footage to put together our animatic.

Here is our animatic...

-ICT also played a key part in researching our audience Particularly through the site 'SurveyMonkey' which enabled us to create an online questionnaire with a variety of question types.

-This enabled our audience to easily answer the questions online accessed through us emailing them the link or posting it on the social networking site facebook. Allowing them to reply on the web page itself so the questionnaire was more acesable to a larger audience.

-Surveymonkey enabled us to choose the most appropriate question type for the question in which we wanted to ask our audience for example and open question, closed question or rating scale. The open questions were particularly successful in getting a more developed in depth response from the audience, this allowed us to use their ideas as inspiration. Closed questions on the other hand allowed us to get quantitative data in which we could quantify when accessing and analysing for example a simple yes or no question. 

-Survey monkey also allowed us to analyse our results by creating charts and graphs so we can easily display them to others, in the pitch for example.

- Slide boom was also used when researching our target audience, i made a powerpoint to display to my focus group which i then uploaded onto the blogger to show my contribution as well as display my results.

- To create my print text i used 'photoshop' software, my part of the print work was the digipak and i used a variety of editing techniques and effects to create this. The main template of my print work was downloaded from a record company's website which gave me the proper dimensions for a digipak design.

- The main editing took place on the photographs looking at the saturation to increase the sharpness of the photographs and colour balance to give them an authentic autumnal feel that our group wanted to achieve throughout the production process. I also edited the brightness and contrast levels of the photographs when needed to ensure that all images matched and looked visually pleasing. To match the colour of the footage, colour tones were also edited increasing the red and yellow levels to create the warm orange colour the same in which was created in our video. 

- Font was also considered very carefully when creating my digipak, i wanted to create a coherent brand image as well as being original and signifying Ben Howard as an artist. I used the website 'DaFont' to search for fonts which i found appropriate. On my first draft i used a pretty font that looked like handwriting but after looking at other group members work we decided that we needed to use the same font to create continuity in our work./ I then re edited using the font 'bebal'. I used this to write Ben Howards name, the album name 'Follaton Wood' and the track listings. I think that the font worked well to promote Ben as an artist.

- As a group we collaboratively used premier 9 to edit our music video. Premier allowed us to easily edit our piece by letting us cut, delete and drag footage into the correct order. This then allowed us to create our final piece by letting us cut to the track and finalise things such as colour contrasts and transitions.

-I individually went through the footage at first and deleted shots in which we definitely wouldn't use for example, when we had filmed without realising the camera was on, if someone or something such as a bag was disrupting our shot or if the quality was just not good enough. I also cut some static shots which were really long, this allowed the main editor to look through the footage easier speeding up the process. As well as giving us more space on the time speeding up premier.

- I also opened another project and edited the saturation levels of all the footage to see weather it created the feel that we wanted to achieve, as a group we decided that we wanted more colour contrast than saturation. To solve this we changed the levels of 'redness' on the colour chart of each piece of footage, adapting the 'RGB' levels in order to create the warm orangey yellow colour wash we wanted we then increased the red and green colours but slightly decreased the blue level on each to give a more autumnal feel. Kitty made sure each were to the right level so the footage all matched up, the red colour 115, the blue 95 and green 105.

 

-Other techniques In which premier allowed us to use were, the cut tool to get the exact bit of the footage in which we wanted as well as the zoom tool to crop out any unwanted parts of the shot. Transitions were also used in our piece, mainly dissolve transitions between the boy and girl shots to create a link between the two characters and to signify them as a couple. This also linked the footage as it was predominately random shots and created a more dreamy feel which is what we wanted to achieve.

-Time stretch tool was a key part in our editing process, to create a dreamy feel from the girl shots we used the time expansion tool to slow down the footage into slow motion. This created a contrast between other shots and connoting her death as compared to him being alive. We also used time expansion tool to speed up other shots for example the church pan as it was to slow.

- Although premier worked very well as an editing tool there were some challenges in which we needed to overcome, sometime premier would be very slow due to the amount of footage in which we had on the timeline, this was time consuming to us when we only had a few hours at a time to edit due to other lessons at school.

- In addition to this the footage needed regularly rendering which was also very time consuming as it took along time to do so. To solve this problem we adopted the technique of rendering when we were in other lessons so that we did not waste any editing time and would be able to meet our deadline.

-Having so much footage also made it difficult to navigate around the timeline. We had more than two hours worth of footage and once we had dragged all the shots we wanted to use on the time line it took up alot of space and memory making it slower to run and not all shots loaded immediately meaning we would have to wait to see what we were editing. To overcome this is was vital that we deleted any footage that we did not want to use, meaning we had to be realistic and not just hold on to footage.

- Another issue we faced was the public being present in our shots, most of our filming was done in calverly park which was very busy at times. When editing we found many shots in which would be perfect to use but there were members of the general public in the background. To overcome this problem we used the zoom tool to crop out any bits in which we did not want to show, then moved the framing so that the shot was still visually pleasing.

- In addition to this with premiere we found that every time we made a cut to the footage it would cut the audio track on the audio timeline below, this then messed up the order of the track and parts were missing thus would not play properly. When we replaced the new track into the timeline at the end of editing some of the cuts had shifted so we had to go through each part and cut it correctly to the new real 'Follaton Wood' song by 'Ben Howard' as well as trying to edit the track to how it was before, with less instrumental.

 

One problem in which we found was the memory shortage, our memory card got full very easy so we had to keep deleting footage during our shoots, this was very time consuming. We overcame this problem by checking the memory on the memory card before every shoot, deleting unwanted footage.

Another problem was the lack of battery life in the battery's which meant that we had to charge the battery at any possible time to ensure that it lasted the whole shoot, to overcome this problem we took two or three fully charged battery's with us to ensure we did not run out of charge mid shoot.

In addition to this we had problems with the quality of some of the footage taken in either dull evening lighting of bright lighting such as on the pier. This was due to the white colour contrast, to ensure that this did not occur we had to make sure that we opened the lens onto a white background to allow the camera to adjust its settings.

ICT helped me alot in my evaluation. I chose to use a variety of ICT  to present my work for example PowerPoint and 'Slideboom'. ICT also allowed me to upload and embed videos to my work as well as print screen then screen dump images from our video and editing process to illustrate and back up my comments. This allowed both the teacher and group members to interact and analyse each others work, thus working collaboratively. As well as the blog being a key way to display my work it helped on all aspects.

L: Progress Update

Today I came into school to look over the video and make a few changes that would enhance the narrative in the video. I added in a couple of dissolves and slowed down some clips to make it look more dreamy. I cut out one of the fireman's boots and added onto the image of the rose and the rabbit mask instead.

Group: Video Re-edit

- Heart shot at 31 seconds - dissolve
- Rope swinging slow down- 37
- Church pan 53 seconds
- Slow down 1.25- Hair blowing in wind
- Lip sync- 2.42
- Cut jouney out- 1.50
- 1.35 needs to be made longer con move over in space of fire boots, dissolve between them
- Fire boots out with radiator in.
- 1.52 sequence dissolve transitions.
- Yellower- 2.50
- Slow down- 3 mins- walking shots, duplicate it move it shadowy

B: Audience research question 2/ 3

 

Our methodology was very effective when doing our audience research. The first stage of our audience research was creating a survey monkey testing the genre, artist, song and primary ideas. This was emailed to teachers and students as well as posted on the social networking site Facebook. From the responses survey monkey transformed our data into graphs and charts making it easy for us to review and show in our pitch.

In addition to this all group members conducted a focus group asking set questions and allowing the audience to expand and lead the discussion. Each focus group were sown the track and asked to give ideas on what they imagine when listening. They were also given examples of video’s which inspired us and asked whether they though that they would fit the track and work effectively as a music video. This also allowed us to test our initial ideas and get inspiration from the focus group.

After this the results were turned into graphs using excel to display our findings as well as having a group discussion comparing results from the different focus groups in which each group member conducted. The sample audience is varied age groups and of both sexes as the folk genre is controversial. Although, it is more appealing to the older audience compared to youth as not mainstream music channel, chart music.

We have conducted the same methodology when testing our final video and print work to our target audience. We have sent our final video out with a survey money in order to get a wide scale response. As well as showing it to our focus groups to get a first hand response. These methods will give us a good response to our video allowing us to gain effective target audience research.

By creating both a survey monkey questionnaire and focus group we are producing both quantitative and qualitative data thus would produce representative results therefore making our methodology very effective.