Evaluation question 1

When were making our video, we did research and took some direct inspiration from other rock bands, such as the foo-fighters. This can be seen as early as our opening shot, which consisted of our members playing guitar and drums. We considered leaving it blank until the lyrics kicked in, where we could start off with our narrative. However as we ran out of time to do a proper narrative, we decided to just stick with the original idea of close up instrument. This is a common convention seen in many rock videos. The direct inspiration for our particular video is the pretender by the foo fighters. Look at the uncanny resemblance.  

This is seen commonly throughout music videos, but we're using a rock song, so I've used a rock example.

Another example would be the close up shots we used. All genre's, and when you think about it, all songs use this at least once. We were no exception, taking the opportunity to show off our lip syncing, much like the pretender video.

As the above this is an example of the foo fighters, this is an example of one of the many times lip syncing was used in pretender video.

However, we did go back and redo our poster. We aimed for the silhouette effect, and tried to make everything look all around better than the previous incarnation.

Though ours may be of lower quality, we followed a few conventions When we did it, we did some basic things such having the band pose, and a website to direct people to. However, ours was different in the fact that we had lower production and a QR code, which have faded out of popularity.

 However, overall we tried following as many conventions as we could, since being entirely original would be difficult to do with our experience and time-frame.


Thriller:
For our thriller, we had to follow certain conventions. We did research in various ways. We watched various classic thrillers such as psycho, the birds and North by northwest.

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 3

We took our audience feedback very seriously. We took some of the feedback and applied it to our rough cut and used it to try and improve it to the best of our abilities.

As this was the most diverse question, it was also the hardest to follow. We tried our hardest to cater to these criticisms, but some of them were outside our control, such as the song used, and complaints of where the filming took place, since we already had one picked and few places to readily film at that point respectively.  However, the correctable ones such as more shot varieties, we tried our hardest, re-filming when possible. 

After we made some corrections to our rough cut, and made our final piece, we asked people what they thought of the product. While we couldn't really go out and re-film, and a looming deadline, we considered a majority of  okay's to be preferable to a majority of bad's. However, if we follow the feedback, we may be able to get more goods, though I won't hold on to it.

These opinions were some of the most important ones for us. Unlike the 1st one, where that was high or low points reading suggestions between the lines, this was clear cut improvements. The ones we took note of  mostly are transitions, or the fact that they should be removed, and the fact that shorter edits and faster transitions came up twice, so we took that to heart and followed through on it. 

This is our final question, and the fact that we got this many maybes is a better out come than we expected,

Evaluation question 4

Here is the evaluation of the hard/software used at various points in our project. I will first go through the hardware, and then the software.


   Hardware: Planning

   During the planning phase, the hardware we most used were CAMERAS and MACS.

   Cameras
  The cameras were used to show our proof of work, and the evidence can be seen on this very blog.  We used 2 types of camera: A camera attached to the video camera we used, and an iPhone 5s camera. We used the video camera for our proof photo, and the iPhone camera was used for the advert photo. However this caused some minor hassle when we had to upload the photo off the iPhone.  However the quality of there iPhone camera was pretty good for a phone camera, and the video camera lived up to expectation.                                              An example of the video camera we used to both film, which will be talked about later, and what we used to take the photo to show proof of progress. it was a decent camera, though some photo's came out a bit dark. 

 This is an example of the type of iPhone we used to take photo's throughout our endeavor. The camera was surprisingly good for a phone.Then the progress was recorded on a mac. The Macs were overall decent, if a little prone to bouts of freezing. The main problem was a change in controls from the windows we were more accustom to. However overall the Macs were a decent speed, and when accustomed were relatively easy to use.

      Software:

  The only real software we used at this point was Blogger. blogger is an easy to use website, and though glitchy at times was overall a pretty solid to use website. However it can be annoying trying to link other websites onto it.                                                                                                                                                    

Hardware: Filming 

 The tripod was a reliable piece of equipment, although some parts were a bit stiff at points. Overall though, very good. The camera was an integral part of filming. However, as it was not a steady cam, unless we used a tripod the footage was ridiculously shaky, meaning we was limited our potential shots as anything out of tripod range would ed up with the aforementioned shakiness. However the footage taken by the camera was overall decent, if a little low in quality at points. The camera we used for this role is the same as the camera we used to take the progress photo shown above.We also the Mac's for editing. Same as above.

Software: editing

Photoshop: We used photoshop to edit our magazine advert. However the transition between windows and macs was not smooth, and it took a while to get used to the difference  and it does show in our work. However it ran smoothly, and taught us how to use photoshop on a mac, though our lack of experience still shines through. 

Adobe premiere: This was the main tool we used for our editing. However as this was our first music video, and only have used it on 1 previous occasion we made several mistake, though we can consider this experience with relatively unused technology. 

As a summation, we used a lot of old yet familiar footage and used this as a chance to show how we've learned and improved over the last year, mainly in our editing and use of software.

             

Styles of music video

Narrative:
This kind of song tells a story, normally shown through the music video, with little focus on the singer or lip syncing. The lyrics are typically reflected in the song. A good example of this would be lady gaga's ''Bad Romance'', which follows hi-jinks of lady gaga's sexual slavery.

   Cinematic:
Cinematic videos can have no actual lip syncing from the singer and instead seek to convey a short movie. The best example for me would be lovey-dovey by Korean girl band T-ara. It is literally a short film, about the length of a tv episode.


Live:
  Live is exactly what it says on the tin. Filmed in front of a live studio audience.

Studio:
A studio music video is a singer recording themselves in a studio doing the singing.

Parody:
A parody video is a video that takes another song and makes fun of it, or makes fun out of it. A good example can be seen in weird al yankovitch.



 Animation:
  Animation videos are videos done in a animated style, unlike the aforementioned live action counterparts. A good example is dirty harry by the gorrilaz.

Constructing the advert

Constructing the advert

Constructing the advert was a long process that we found quite difficult. This was because we had very limited Photoshop skills, to fix this we needed to go back to it multiple times in order to get it to a reasonable standard and learn how to use Photoshop on the Macs. We think we've gotten better at using it, though we're still better on the PC's

To get inspiration for my magazine advert I looked at real adverts and the adverts from previous year groups. I saw that all of the adverts featured a qr code and a website, which mine did not so it looked unprofessional.
To make the advert better me and my group went and took some group photos for the main advert image, we then removed the background and placed the image onto a backdrop that matched the theme of the song. I then created a qr code and added a website to make it look like a REAL advert. However due to low production values, and an out of place background, (A road high shot), it still looks currently vastly subpar to an actual picture

Overall I feel that the magazine advert is okay. The band shot shows that the band doesn't take itself too seriously in contrast the background shows that the song covers a serious topic. There is an iTunes advertisement, QR code and a website link. If i were to do it again I would use a better font and maybe use a better band shot just to give it the "extra" bit of professionalism.

I would make the website a little smaller, as well as a change in font to be less obtrusive.

Audience research

We did a surveymonkey survey, getting people to look at our rough and final cut giving opinions on what they liked and what we should improve.