Bronwyn's Filmed evaluation

Wordle art

I used wordle art to crate a word cloud of my evaluation.

 

Bronwyn's Filmed Evaluation

Question 3

After the deadline for editing our music video’s the class watched back everyone’s music video to give the groups feedback of how well we did and what our strong and weak parts were of our music videos. This was very interesting as we could compare how well we did against other people and it was a chance to see what we could get over all by filling in a questionnaire and putting a mark down what we would give them with the marking criteria in mind. The audience age was from 17 to 18 and was a mix gendered.  

Overall I’m happy with the feedback we got as it was mostly positive comments back. I was worried with what we might have got back; as I felt, as it was our class marking it they might be really harsh. But they all said similar things and gave pretty similar marks, which was good as everyone noised the same thing and was all on the same level. It was more over average, which is what we wanted.

They said the music video was

-Suitable for the song we did, as the conventions related to the genre and it suited the mood of the music being slow.

- Appropriate actors cast and costume.

- Good lighting

- Good locations fitted with the genre and story

-Kept you interested by having narrative and performance based.

-Shots were steady

-Well framed shots

-The effects were well done

The number one thing that people loved was the green screen effect of the paper being set on fire with the moving image. They weren’t sure how it work and said it looked quite professional and didn’t look tacky.

The negative feedback we got which I do agree on is:

-Some of the lip synching issue being out of synch

-Our actor’s hair being in his face too much was distracting and couldn’t see him singing.

-Shorter shots needed to keep attention going

-Actors to look more comfortable.

-More close up shots

I think we would have overcome more of these issues if we had followed the shot list better as it had more ideas in there we would have had more different shots. But I feel we did the best we could do and our feedback has been more positive.

Question 2

In the process of making the digipak and webpage, ideas kept changing and being developed but we always had the idea of having something fun and quirky. We kind of maintained the theme of having a dinner table set out with a home feeling of pictures, newspaper and a dinner plate (with Jenny and Johnny being spelt out in spaghetti). The overall idea of this came from the line in the song ‘used to dine out on a dollar’ we though we would interpret that line for the couple to have there own personal meaning behind it and have a recognising object of a slice of toast with alphabet spaghetti spelling something out. That idea helped us from the first design of the digipak on paper as we can see where the ideas started out. Also we knew that we wanted our product to be bright and colourful to grab audience attention, Photoshop would be useful to achieve this by changing the colours and contrast.  

What we have maintain through out the CD and Webpage

-Used very bright and colourful colours. To get the colours to stand out more, with the use of photoshop we were able to turn the contrast, brightness and colours up to get the effect we wanted. Gives a cartoon look.

-The layering effect is well maintain through out the CD cover and website which gives a 3D effect.

-Shows the quirkiness of the band     

When making the CD cover and webpage we show on both products the backgrounds being on a table cloth and having cut out lettering from magazines of the words ‘Switchblade’ or ‘Jenny’ and ‘Johnny’. Which connected them together and showed that quirkiness of the homey felling theme. But we do show a difference of the two products by the webpage main focus having a different theme and atmosphere to the CD cover. The reason for this was when using Photoshop a photo we took of the bottles on the floor looked very effective when altering the filters and colours and we wanted to show the conventions of the sex, alcohol and drugs by the image being bottles and cans which is a contrast between the two. 

We felt that Jenny and Johnny’s website could have been more interesting as well. It’s very simple but I do like how they’ve used their colours and there iconic snake.

From Jenny and Johnny’s music video they have used an image from ‘Big Wave’ for the front of there CD cover. And we did something similar of having our actors in our location of our music video for the image to go on our CD cover. This promotes the music video as well you can recognize where the image is from.  

  Official CD cover 'I'm having fun now' 

Image from music video

A shot of the CD cover with the picture of them in the locatio on the same bench we filmed at.

A shot from the music video same bench.

Question 1

Our music video= Jenny and Johnny 'Switchblade'

-See music video in a diferent blog post

Our Artist Offical music video= Jenny and Johnny 'Big Wave'

Jenny and Johnny 'Big Wave' Video link

Rivalry artist= Best Coast 'Boyfriend'

When looking at these indie folk music videos the conventions we expect to find in these music videos are performance base, natural locations, for a relax/unique image from the artist, a quirky twist and maybe narrative. Our music video shows similar characteristics of both of these music video through our genre style of music. Another convention inside alternative indie videos are references to sex, drugs and alcohol to show an exciting life style.

 

Showing these conventions of the alcohol in our music video.

One of the first things I recognized between the music video was the location and lighting of the mise en scene. Even though in ‘Boyfriend’ and ‘Big Wave’ music video, are shot in America and you can see this through the is different climate and objects (like the cars), compared to our music video shot in the UK. But they all had a similar atmosphere between them all, showing outdoors natural places in natural light like you would see in an indie folk music video.

Because of having these outdoor locations the costumes are very different, as ‘Jenny and Johnny’ and ‘Best coat’ they both have a vintage rock and roll style and have gone for costumes that are more summery in these videos. The girls are in dresses and wearing bright and colourful colours. As America is warmer and probably shot in summer time they could use that convention of wearing more colours. But as ours was shot in December it shows how the weather can control the costumes, as we had to ask our actors to wear warmer clothing. If we shot this in summer we would ask our actors to wear summer clothing. But I think our costume showed a nice twist of Jenny and Johnny characters being English.   

As our song is slow and more relaxed (not upbeat) the length of some of our shots were quite long to an averaged shot length of music videos. But this suited the music as it being mostly acoustic you don’t want the shot changing constantly between a long verse. Where as ‘Boyfriend’ have an average 2-4 second shots but because this is constant through it makes some of the shots look longer, which as the tempo of the song is a steady 4/4 count (not to fast) with a constant beat is a appropriate with there style of song. Where as in ‘Big Wave’ they’ve got shot that are less then a second as they’ve got so many different effect going off this has kept the viewer more interested by having shorter shots. 

The use of editing effects in these videos shows different styles and use of effects. As in ‘Boyfriend’ they don’t use any effects apart from a slight hazy filter effect in the shots to make it look more vintage. 

Where as in ‘Big wave’ there are so many different effects by having loads of different coloured filters and effects of pixelate and having slowed down shots. And they combined more then one effect together. This was effective as they made some shots more interesting by having a filter over the shot.

They also used some animation in there music video as the snake appears on the women’s back in a drawn on effect.

The use of our effects is completely different, as we’ve used green screen effect. Which I feel, we’ve challenged the conventions, as I haven’t seen many music video’s future this use of a photographic image moving and it shows unrealism. And especially of a photo being burnt as well, which works really, well as people in college asked us how it was done. We were going to use a filter over some of the past parts in our music video but we didn’t have time to experiment with the filters as we ran out of time.      

In our music video it was important that we showed a love story as we had that advantage of the artist being in a relationship (Jenny and Johnny), our actors had a strong connection to the role of Jenny and Johnny as they were in a relationship too. Shots had to include both of them in together showing their relationship.  

The difference between our music video is we had narrative of a love story as well as performance base of just of our actors, where as in ‘Big wave’ it was more performance base and showed them being in a relation (no narrative). But in ‘Boyfriend’ it had a loose narrative of someone getting married and the band performance overlapping each other as the band performing at the wedding. (Best coast had the same idea as  Paolo Nutini did in his music video ‘Candy’ which I did my textual analysis on).

14 Key images from our music video

Below is a selection of key images from our music video with annotions. We think that these are the main images that appear in the video as it follwos the storyline and narration that we wanted to show in the video. This narration matches the song and lyrics well in our opinion. =]

Push effect in chorus

Nicely framed shot of walkway

Very start of our video

'Mirror effect' what isn't a mirror or meant to be a mirror...Greenscreen FTW!

Our actor as Johnny peformaning singing section

"Sleeping throug the afternoon...."

Lovely shot of "Jenny and Johnny" written in spaghetti!

"with your feet on the ggrrrooouuunnnnddd"

A nice couple shot in the 'good times'

Feeling playful in the park...

"Here's Johnny!!!"

3...2...1 look sad! =[

....still in that fun playful mood! =]

General instrumental filler.

Bronwyn's mini review!!!

Yay we have finished our music video. It’s been quite a roller coaster to get it done but overall I’m happy with the end result. I’m happy with the ides we came up with for the song especially as it was quite hard to think of ideas, as it wasn’t upbeat. I think as our band is unknown hear we had an advantage to producing our music video as no-one is expecting a certain style compared if we did a band well know like Florence and the Machine. I’m really happy with the screen effect of the burning paper as no one has done it before in the college and people have no idea how we did it. That is a high light to our music video. I’m glad we were able to use a nice location like Victoria park in Ilkeston that add something nice to it. It worked well by having a narrative and performance base music video as it work with the song. I think if we went back in time I would have stuck to the shot list as it had more varies of shots and had more action going of, which we didn’t film. The parts of the film I’m not to happy with is the pushing off effect but it was the best way to fit it to the song as the lyrics over lap each other. Also the arrow bit as it’s really cheesy and our actor looks uncomfortable. But I’m a happy bunny with the final piece.    

Are we finished at last?!?!?!

We think we are!!! WOOOOOOOOH! =D

See below for our finished music video:

Editting on the 17th January

Only the 17th January's lesson and 2 more lessons to go until the dead line of finishing the whole music video. Beth has got better and is well enough to come to this lesson. Although she hasn't been here for the past few lessons and has missed the editing process. It came to our advantage of her watching what we had done, not knowing what happens and be able to tell us what she thought of it (which was kind of nerve racking). She was very happy with the overall editing but wasn't to happy with the green screen of the photo zooming and blurring effect. Which we all agreed on it not working.

We started editing more of the chorus but this was quite hard to do as the lyrics overlap each other as Jenny sings over Johnny and vice versa. Getting the lip sync in time was a changeling as cutting the clips to show who's singing each line would be off the beat. So we used an effect which pushes the other one off the screen. It does work but I find it distorts you and is quite confusing so I think we should change it as I don't feel it fits in either.

Another worry I have is that I don't feel that we have enough different shots to fill the whole song out without it being to repetitive. But hopefully we'll be able to sort some of the order of the shots out.

Editting on the 13th

On the 13th January we had our 3rd media lesson to do more editing. Beth wasn't there in the lesson as she was ill. So it was hard in some ways as there was just me and Mart, we had to consider what Beths input would be and what we had discussed about editing before when making making decisions.

On the 13th we had a bit of a late start as the Mac computer we was using the program imoive kept crashing and being really slow. And as we started editing putting things in order the imove crashed and we had lost the half an hour of work to begin with so we had to keep saving after every 5 minuets.

We tried at the start by having Johnny walking to the spot and setting up of where he was going to be buskin, without the music to begin with but then have the music come in when he started playing his guitar and counting in. We tried editing all the different clips for this to work but none of the clips were right as our actor kept going wrong and we weren't counting the music in time. But instead we had a clip of a high angle shot of his feet walking on the street to fill the introduction out. This worked really well in the end as it didn't reveal who the person was. It was a mysterious way to start the intro to the song.

We managed to edit the first minuet and had to do some lip sync with song for the first time. It was quite tricky as we would move the clip just a little bit more where we would think it would fit then we would be toatally out of it. Some times it was hard which way to move the clip to get it in time with the music. But we were really lucky with getting some clips in time.

Although we had many problems with the computer I think we acumplished quite alot in the lesson as we've got the first minuet jsut about done.

Editing on FRIDAY 13th!!!!!!! =O

Our lesson on the first Friday 13th of the New Year started badly and went on giving us bad luck!!!

Beth got in contact with Bronwyn and Mart to pass on the bad news that she was going to be off the lesson as she was ill.

Throughout the lesson we had many problems with the Mac and iMovie crashing and not working as normal. After a while and a fix, the Mac started to work normally again and we managed to edit the first minute to the beat and with lip syncing. It took ages to do but was worth it as that first minute looks really good....well we think so anyway!

Editing

Todays lesson Beth couldn't be with us as she had a trip with film studies. So we had to edit without her. We checked that the green screen worked with the photo on the walls. It did work but the green bottles at the bottom of the shoot was reacting with the effect. Although we didn't do as much editing as we would have liked to as we discussed problems and ideas, which is helpful as when we edit together we should be able to sort them out quicker.

First lesson back....

We started back at college last week from having the Christmas brake. First lesson back we uploaded all the footage we recorded in the holiday. Then started editing the clips putting clips in order and getting rid of any clips we didn't need.

Filming = success!

Today we finally managed to get all our filming done as planned. Unfortunately, Mart was unable to make it as he had a prior engagement but we decided to film without him as we were concious of getting too close to the deadline. We filmed the whole of the performance scenes, the park scenes and the ending in an hour which we were really pleased with. Overall we ended up with 12 minutes worth of footage (although at least half is probably bloopers! :)) We were really pleased with how everything went and glad to get inside out of the cold when we were finished. A great start to the new year media-wise :D

New filming date?

After much planning, organisation and mind changing we have decided on Monday the 2nd as our new filming date. Although, seeing as our filming dates have a tendancy to fail at the last minute I wouldn't get the baloons out just yet :) Still, heres hoping it all goes well.

On another note...Happy New Year From Beth, Bronwyn & Mart! :D

3rd time lucky

As we've had problem with filming in the past few weeks. We have booked equipment out over the Christmas holidays to get all our filming done. Ready to edit when we come back after Christmas (=D).

The provisional dates we have planned to film on are the 27th, 28th and 29th. We will film on ones of these days or maybe two if we don't get everything filmed in time.

When we come back on the 4th January, our next lesson is on the 6th. We shall be importing all the clips then and then we will have two weeks to fully edit the video.

Webpage kind of finished, but not yet.... =O (stay tuned for more on this breaking news story!!!!)

The webpage looks finished below but it is missing all the hyperlinks and when Mart tried to add them it all messed up...noooooooooooooooo. On Thursday with Beth's amazing iWeb talents it should be done quickly as its a easy  task to do. 

CD finish

inside

outside

The CD cover is finished! It has met up to our criteria of what we were hoping for, for our end product. 

Let down!

Again today was meant to be our second filming day. But our actors told us this morning that they wouldn't be able to make it. This meant that we couldn't film again, so we're going to have to film some other time but as it's getting closer to the Christmas holidays people are more busy so it's going to be harder to film. Fingers crossed hopefully next time we plan to film it will get done.

As the dead line for the CD cover and webpage is in for week on Thursday the 15th. We have almost finished both. We have a lesson on Tuesday when we will finish it all.