Mart's Filmed Evaluation

Mart's Evaluation - Question 3

Question Three: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We gathered feedback on our music video constantly while editing by asking friends and classmates what they thought of different edits. After the music video was finished we had a lesson where we watched every group’s videos and gave feedback with the help of a focus group feedback questionnaire. From the questionnaires we gathered about 15 different opinions and feedback responses for our music video.

I have used Wordle.net to create a 'word cloud' from the replies that we got from the focus group feedback questionnaires. As it shows the most common recurring word was 'suitable' and 'good'. This shows that our music video was successful and the target audience likes our efforts.

Wordle image

The Wordle image shows that the feedback tells us that the video was suitable to the song and kept a good mood of the song, trying to create the right mood of the song was important to us as a group as we interpreted the song as a sort of love song that goes wrong at the end. Through the music video we created a sense of love and a relationship being there between the actors which then split. This idea is something we used on the Digipak, a sense of relationship by being seen together on the front cover, then on the back cover Jenny and Johnny seen separated on the bench.

Seperated on the bench

The actors that played our artists Jenny and Johnny got mentioned for being well cast and appropriate for the roles they were cast in. The ways that we used green screen effects was highlighted as another positive. Many people haven’t realised that green screen was used on the paper burning scene and the green screened picture on the wall at the start of the video. It shows that we did the green screen well if it isn’t noticeable as green screen! Other things that we were praised upon are the amount of shots and the variety of the shots. Even though we only had 2 locations we used different rooms and places in the location. For example, we used around 5 different mini locations in Victoria Park in Ilkeston and 3 different rooms in Beth’s house for the house scenes. This gave us a good amount of shots and locations to work with.

House location



The issues that were raised were some slight issues of lip synching, the lip synching problems are due to one of our actors having long hair and his hair sometimes covered his mouth so the camera couldn’t see what he was singing. On the Wordle image, the word ‘Awkward’ appears when describing our actors. This is something that we agree on as our actors were acting for the first time really in our video so found some of the acting we required embarrassing and slightly awkward. We worked around this issue by filming long sections without them knowing the camera was running to try and get a relaxed less awkward looking performance shot.

Another issue raised was the apparent lack of different shots. In our song Switchblade, there is lots of instrumentals and ‘ah ah’ sections which require performance shots of our actors. Although we had different camera angles in the shots of our actors, these shots looked similar to the audience which was highlighted in the feedback. If we could do those shots again we would move around to different locations within the park to get different backdrops. This would have given the sense of progression in our video.

Moving through locations showed progression

Looking back at our planning stages our music video is different to how we intended it to be. We planned for it to be more narrative than performance but when reviewing our planning stages and looking at how we would film each stage it was agreed that the plan had to be changed as it would be unpractical and difficult to film what we wanted.

I overall agree with the feedback that we received as the general response is that the music video is well made and suitable for the song and the artists. However there is a slight lack of different shots. This issue is understandable as all our shots were bound to look similar as the majority of the video is of the male actor singing and playing a guitar.

Mart's Evaluation - Question Two

Question Two: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

We have maintained a clear image and theme throughout our campaign by keeping everything very similar. For example, our Digipak and Webpage photo shoot was taken when we were filming so we didn’t have to organise another date to meet up for a shoot and that the actors were all in their costumes and would be ‘in the zone’ when it came to acting as our artists Jenny and Johnny.


Our digipak and webpage uses images that appear in the music video and vice versa. This pulls all the different pieces of work together and makes it into one grouped piece instead of feeling like separate work. By interrelating the webpage, Digipak and video it creates a consistent image of the band and that is good for continuity so the audience know what to expect and Jenny and Johnny will be able to use those relations to good effect as it may become a sort of catchphrase or image for them.

A shot without any effects that is used for the album cover

Jenny and Johnny use a shot from their video 'Big Wave' on the album cover

The main purpose of the webpage is for communication to occur between the artists and their fans. This is crucial as the fans want to feel connected and appreciated for the money that they spend on the band. If there is no communication then the fan base would start to become disloyal as the fans need to feel part of the group not just fans on the outside. By placing Twitter and Facebook feeds onto the webpage makes the communication very easy for both Jenny and Jonny to advertise tours and new singles/albums and for the fans to ask questions and communicate between themselves.

The Digipak has to be attractive to the eye as it needs to stand out on the shelf to sell records. In my opinion our Digipak is very eye catching and is appropriate to the song and the artists. It is also very noticeable for the fans to see when buying Jenny and Johnny related merchandise and some of the artwork on the Digipak could be used for merchandise such as posters or clothing designs.

Jenny and Johnny use a image from their music video to advertise their shop

Synergy, which can be defined as two things working together to gain a result that couldn't happen independently is very much a key factor when deciding on aspects of the music video, webpage and Digipak. The synergy between them all has to be there as without it, none of them would be individually successful. This is because the the music video may only get made if the song is popular and for the song to be popular the band has to have a good media image. This is where the website plays into the cycler flow of media where one media product interwebs into other media products to achieve the best results.

As mentioned in the planning and research stages of the production, I found out that the best webpage’s are those that are simple and design and heavily feature the artists images in prominent positions so they are all recognisable. By featuring the band images so much this shows the audience exactly who are in the band and what the feel of the artists is. Another example of synergy is keeping appearance looks similar. If Gene Simmons came onto stage without any makeup on or was pictured without makeup the audience wouldn’t know how to react or they might not even know that it is Gene Simmons due to the change of image.

Gene Simmons with and without make up. Recognisable consistent styling is needed.

Our Digipak and webpage compared well to the Digipak’s and webpages of similar artists. Our Digipak and webpage are very simple in their design but are very effective as they show off the artists in the best possible way and they tie in all of the different products. 

Mart's Focus Group Feedback Wordle Art

I have used Wordle.net to create a 'word cloud' from the replies that we got from the focus group feedback questionaires. As it shows the most common recurring word was 'suitable' and 'good'. This shows that our music video was successful and the target audience likes our efforts.

Wordle says our music video is good and suitable!

Mart's Evaluation Question Four

Question Four: How did you use media technologies in the , research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Digipak – After planning ideas as a group as to how we wanted our Digipak to look like we settled on a picture of Jenny and Johnny together on a bench that showed their unity at that time and together as a group, seeing as their name is Jenny & Johnny we thought it would be strange to only show one member on the cover so all our ideas had to involve both of them on the cover.

Initially I created a picture to use as the front cover art that we have since used on the inside of the Digipak. This shows Jenny sat on a bed with her head in her hands looking visibly upset. Johnny is shown lying behind Jenny ‘flat out’ appearing to be sleeping after a heavy night out drinking which is referenced in the video. The picture had a variety of effects on to make it slightly unusual which is something that Jenny & Johnny are.

The text of the Jenny & Johnny on the Digipak isn’t a clip art text. After searching through various internet font websites, for example dafont.com we couldn’t decide on a suitable font as they were all either too formal for the fun characteristics of Jenny & Johnny or just inappropriate to use. We finally reached a decision and choose to create our own colourful font which I think works really well with the rest of the Digipak. The letters are all individual and were cut out of different magazines. They were then pieced together the different case of the letters, some upper and some lower show that the conventions of typing in all lower case or all upper case doesn’t have to be done.

Magazine lettering created our font

The inspiration behind the artwork on the Digipak was a dinner plate with spaghetti on toast on the plate with a dinner cloth underneath the cloth. Initially the cloth and plate weren’t going to be included and by chance I took the pictures of the spaghetti on the plate with a striped table cloth underneath it. Even though there wasn’t an intention for the plate or cloth it worked really well and Bronwyn and Beth liked the shot. Bronwyn then added the knife and fork along with a different table cloth as it the original one didn’t fill out the shot/cover.

Inside of Digipak. Very homely approach it like the video.

The editing of the Digipak was really easy as we had Photoshop to use on a Mac. Photoshop has lots of different tools that make it really easy to create professional looking material which hopefully we have achieved. For our research we looked on Amazon for the other artists Digipak’s. This allowed us to browse through many Digipak’s with ease without going to a music shop and physically looking at the Digipak’s. Additionally if we had looked in shops we wouldn’t have been able to look inside the case as they all now have security plastic casings around them.

Webpage – The webpage was created on iWeb on the Mac’s in the Mac Suite where I am now. In our group for the song Switchblade by Jenny and Johnny it was decided that I had the lead role in designing and creating the webpage. For the initial research I looked Jenny and Johnny’s official webpage, which has a plain blog layout which is slightly boring. I then looked at other artists webpage’s such as Florence and the Machine, The Fratellis, The Futureheads and Wye Oak. These other artists webpage’s shown me that the webpage didn’t have to be ram packed with different things and that simple was the best but to tweak a boring set layout and have different things that make it stand out from the rest as the webpage is one of few things that the artist can show the consumer that will differ them for the competition if their music is similar to other artists. 

Wye Oak's webpage is simple and very effective in my opinion.

From this I designed the webpage to have lots of pictures of our artist as at the end of the day they are what essentially sell the records as it is all about them. The artists or in our case the actors appear to sit on different words on the webpage to give the webpage a fun feel, to stride away from a formal looking plain layout blog like Jenny and Johnny have presently as their webpage. We had a sort of two layer approach to our webpage, the base layer had the table cloth with the name of the song partially hidden and the artists name around the main layer of the webpage. The letters of the song name and the artists name are in the same style that was used on the Digipak to keep the same conventions and look of that.

Our webpage adds a fun factor which Jenny and Johnny portray in their own products

For our webpage I used Photoshop to make the different images of the artists and the main back images. This is because I can use Photoshop quite well and if I were to make it on iWeb it wouldn’t look as good as it does now. The different tools on Photoshop made it really easy to achieve the look and feel that we wanted to create.

Overall – The online media technology has enabled us to distribute our project to a wide audience by allowing us to have an online blog that made it easy for us as a group to keep and share ideas and work on the project when we weren’t in class time. This means that we have done lots of outside work that have been crucial in making our music video. We had a Facebook group that we used to share ideas and communicate on lots of different ideas. Below are two screenshots of that wall.

Mart's Evaluation - Question One

Question One: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of convention of real media products?

In our music video Switchblade by Jenny & Johnny, we have used the conventions of an indie music video. These conventions are the use of low key lighting which we used while filming the house scenes. By not having bright light on our actors it created a casual not in your face kind of image. Other conventions are the use straight cuts, by keeping straight cuts in our video the pace of the song was kept at a steady rate. If we had been using different transitions the video wouldn’t have flown to the mood we created.

We added subtle changes to other conventions of indie music as our song had a folk twist to it. In folk videos, the artists appear very comfortable in front of the camera; this is something that our actors had trouble with and was something that was picked up in the feedback (question 3). By filming sections without them knowing the camera was on meant we filmed some casual shots of them without looking nervous.

In our video we have included many different shots, for example there are close ups as a note, mid close ups, long shots in the park which work really nice when filmed down the covered walk way. These are all conventions of indie music videos, the idea of the audience watching a band practice or similar is something that is used a lot in indie music videos. The image of a big scale production is rarely used as that doesn’t go along with the casual image of indie music.



A nicely framed shot with perspective angles.

However my favourite shot of the video was as talked about in my 'mini review' was the hand held section in the house with the spaghetti that included a rather nice point of view shot. We used a few handheld shots that worked really well and fit in with the music. We thought about filming everything on a tripod but the effect of handheld shots gave the audience the thought that those shots were being filmed by the actors while having fun which was a element we wanted to create aswell as the love story mood.

Point of view shot

The mise en scene of our actors and locations were easily achieved as Jenny & Johnny appear to like filming in natural surroundings while looking natural themselves so there wasn't any need for snazzy locations or over the top costumes. This is because their music is that of a homely feel, this way putting on a big show wouldn't have been appropriate for this genre or song. The mise en scene of our actor’s figure expressions we thought about. While our actors we playing their guitars by having them lightly head banging and having a uncaring facial expression. This is because they know that what the song is leading to at the end. The overall appearance of our actors was created by wearing black, red and dark blue coloured clothes. By having them wearing boots instead of skater shoes the convention of indie music footwear was changed but as the band have a slight folk image to them the use of boots created that look. 

Our Digipak doesn’t conform to the conventions of a usual indie Digipak as our actors are seen on the front and back of the cover. We used our actors image on the cover to illustrate the relationship between them which wouldn’t have been noticeable had we used for example the inside covers of the Digipak. Initially the front cover was going to be the CD insert cover. This shows the image of the spaghetti reading “Jenny and Johnny” on the toast. This is a feature in our video during a house scene and plays with a lyric “dine out on a dollar”.

Our webpage shows the artists or in our case the actors appear to sit on different words on the webpage to give the webpage a fun feel, to stride away from a formal looking plain layout blog like Jenny and Johnny have presently as their webpage. We had a sort of two layer approach to our webpage, the base layer had the table cloth with the name of the song partially hidden and the artists name around the main layer of the webpage. The letters of the song name and the artists name are in the same style that was used on the Digipak to keep the same conventions and look of that.

Jenny and Johnny - Big Wave Music Video


In the video linked above the location sat in the street in front of the car is used quite regularly throughout the duration of the song. We used this idea by having our Johnny sat on a bench in the park and we came back to this shot throughout our video. In this song, Jenny is the one who is singing the most and she is seen in various costumes in multiple locations. This is something that we couldn't do due to logistics and other reasons. However the locations and  costumes that we used are similar to those that Jenny and Johnny use themselves. There a few similarities in the two videos. Jenny and Johnny are known for having a very good friendship and one that is intimate. This is shown in shots of them kissing and laying on the floor together. We were lucky that are actors were in a relationship so they were happy to do kissing scenes.

Our actor playing the chorus and looking away from the camera

Johnny looking away from the camera while mid chorus

In this shot Johnny is singing the chorus line and is looking away from the camera, we tried to replicate this shot and it works quite well. The overall effect of not looking into the camera is something that we wanted to emphasise on as Jenny and Johnny do not look down the camera very often so to have them doing it in our video wouldn't carry on their conventions.

Jenny singing to Johnny in a shot together

Johnny singing to Jenny in a shot together

For this shot we continued with using conventions that Jenny and Johnny use on a frequent basis in their music videos. As they are a duo they do a lot of shots together even if only one of them is singing. For our video we felt we had to include some shots of them together to carry on and maintain the couple image. Jenny and Johnny’s performance image is very biker like.

Biker image while performing

In our video we didn’t want to portray the biker image as we wanted a different tone to that for our song. The tone we wanted was the love image and this is often seen in a biker image as they are often seen to be big and scary. By having casual clothing with biker boots this used a small section of their biker image while with keeping with the indie love look. 
While creating the webpage using iWeb, I was unsure of how to add hyperlinks onto the page as we had imported a flat image from Photoshop as I found working in Photoshop easier. The only downside is that I had to create all the links in iWeb. I looked on Youtube for a tutorial and followed the following one and the hyperlinks worked.

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.

Mart's mini review!!!

 So now that our music video is finished it is time to look back over the drama of editing it all. With the proper evaulation to come later on in this blog. Myself, Bronwyn and Beth will do each do a mini review of the process.

After lots of stressing and the few usual mini arguements which were going to happen regardless I think that we have created a very good video for the song Switchblade by Jenny & Johnny. We have some brilliant shots in the video that are use many of the different shot types. A shot that I particularly like is the one below. Technically it may not be the best as it is handheld but that kind of shot was very much needed and it just works brilliantly in my opinion.

As decribed in a earlier blog post, this shot took a lot of work as the spagetti was messy and time consuming, we eventually finished it and I shot the handheld section (as I was the tallest....yay for tall-ish people =]). Away from the me shooting the clip I still think it is very good as it ties in the CD cover and webpage into the video which not many videos and covers do.

What our final edits were....

After nearly finishing it all yesterday, Beth & Mart stayed in at college to add the final bits and pieces to the music video. The bits needed adding were a 'push' transition and a fade to black.  After watching it through we noticed that some lip syncing was out slightly so we had to alter the milli seconds to make it perfect and line out fine. One clip wouldn't work as we wanted so we had to go back through our whole footage to find the right section. Even down to the millisecond!!!!!! =O

Push transition

Some final shots....

It's now finished so.....

RELAX =]

Are we finished at last?!?!?!

We think we are!!! WOOOOOOOOH! =D

See below for our finished music video:

Zoom blur effects

After trying various effects on a certain shot to no avail, our teacher suggested an effect called Zoom Blur. We tried it out and it works quite well, much better than the other effects did anyway!

Zoom Blur effect working well

The amount of effects used in our music video is very minimal as we wanted to keep everything nice and natural looking with a everyday feel about it all. The use of green screen is needed due to some of the shots we wanted like setting fire to a moving picture. The chance for a zoom blur came about during editing and looks like it was meant to be there from the start!

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.

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 Finished!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH =D

At last the webpage is finished, woohoo!!! Beth and Mart (with help =]) added hyperlinks to the webpage. See below for the amazing webpage. 

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.