Evaluation: Q4

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

Part 1: Pre-Production and Production

Part 2: Post-Production and Evaluation

 

Evaluation: Q3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

INTERVIEWS:

We interviewed different people after they had watched our music video, asking various questions about their likes and dislikes of the video, as well as questions on out digi pack and what they liked/ disliked about that. Some of those we interviewed had been interviewed in the pre-production stage, so we decided to use that to refer back to what we did or did not take on board in our production.

Music Video Reflection:

Digi Pack Reflection:

LINKING BACK TO AUDIENCE RESEARCH:

We also edited some of the interviewees and their responses with their responses from the last time we interviewed them - during the research and plannning stage of our coursework - to see how we use their input when planning and producing our video.

COMMENTS ON OUR VIDEO:

Once we uploaded our video to youtube, we shared the link on various social media; facebook, twitter and tumblr, and asked people to comment with things they liked and disliked, and any improvements that could be made.
(click images to enlarge)

It is clear to see from our audience feedback that most were pleased with our video overall, and only pointed out several things that could be improved. We then took these aspects on board to edit our product further.

SUMMARY:
Overall the audience said it was well edited and followed a good story. They were entertained and thought the  Many could not find a negative, but those who did mentioned that some areas of the video were very dark, and one suggested that we emphasise the car crash at the end more.

CHANGES MADE TO OUR VIDEO:

Using all of this feedback, we then made some changes to our production piece based on what people had mentioned in comments and interviews.

Using the audience feedback, we altered the colour settings on some of the clips to make the video flow better, and cut out faulty sections that did not quite fit or took to long etc. I think this made a huge improvement, as even though the changes made were fairly subtle, the video seems to flow much better.
Examples of changes:
- reduced saturation on flashbacks more
- cropping of clips
- deducting sections of clips that were jolting or did not fit
- cutting down or replacing clips that took too long
- fixing drastic changes in colouring to ensure consistency

Evaluation: Q2

How effective is the combination of your main products and ancillary texts?

Evaluation: Q1

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

Music Video:

Print:

Final Digi Pack

Album:

Advertisement:

Drafts for Digi Pack

To begin the creation of our digi pack, we decided to make the album cover first, and then work around that for the rest of the album pack and advert. We worked from the principal idea of a shadow at night as it reflects the typical lower class, street lifestyle that is associated with indie rock.  Once we decided on an image, we imported it into Fotor and edited it in several ways to find the one that best suits our artist.



We decided on the central image, with a green tint to it, as it appeared more edgy with the darker colouring but not too dark so that the content cannot be identified. We thought that, visually, it looked better and we worked from there for the rest of the album.





We then took several photos that we could possibly use for the back and inside covers:

Product: Music Video (FIRST CUT)

Requesting Permission

When we researched the artist of our chosen song, we found the contact email of their manager. Using this, we requested permission to use the band's song by emailing the manager.

Shot List

We created a shot list in order to show how we have thought about each individual shot for our music video after creating our storyboard. This allowed us to plan in more detail before/as we started filming.

Production Schedule

Presenting Our Treatment

To prepare for our presentation of our treatment, we wrote a script in order to elaborate on the post on our blogs. The script included basic notes for us to add to when speaking aloud so that we weren't relying on the script too much.

Treatment

Chosen Song:

We have chosen this because the lyrics include the conventional theme of relationships and also contains elements associated with our genre. It also has a lighter indie rock sound which was preferred by our target audience. Hopefully this will attract out target audience more because, as well as approving of the video we will produce visually, they will like the song.

 

Our video will follow a young female on her downward spiral into self-destruction after ending an unhealthy relationship.

 

We created a collage with images taken from other indie-rock videos we looked at in our research in order to get an idea of what our video will look like visually. These present the kinds of elements we will include such as a couple, darker lighting, domestic setting, messy hair and make-up.

 

 

 

Costume:

Luke:

The male will have the typical indie rock style that is present in most videos of the genre. We chose to dress him in a white t-shirt to mask his darker side as it is not until later in the video that he is revealed to be the villain. His casual style will also provoke identification amongst the audience and reflect his middle/lower class status. 

 

 

Alice:
By having a female protagonist, we will challenge some codes and conventions of the indie-rock genre as the majority of protagonists in the videos we looked at were male, and any female characters were love interests, meaning they were secondary characters and had less importance. We decided to have a female lead as the majority of the people who completed our questionnaire were female, so most of our targt audience will be girls/women.
The audience would therefore be able to relate more to a female protagonist, no matter her personality, just because of the fact that she will be a girl. In addition, having a female protagonist challengs typical codes and conventions of the genre as lead characters are predominantly male, however on the other hand, she still reinforces the typical 'weak' female character within indie-rock music videos as she cannot cope with her relationship and it ending.
The female protagonist will have a typical 'indie-rock' style, but it will be much more exaggerated, and as the video unfolds, her appearance gets darker to reflect the changes in her mental state.

 

Timeline:

References:

Film:

We had inspiration from the characters Blaze and Marcus from the film 'The Last Song', as their relationship is similar to the one that we want to portray. This is due to Marcus having a temper and gets angry at his girlfriend, where as Blaze is weepy and distressed most of the time. In addition to this, their appearance links well to the indie rock genre as they are mainly dressed in black and Blaze has the heavy make up and ripped clothing showing her lack of care in appearance. The mise en scene portrays their personality and mood.

Music Videos:
Other music videos have heavily influenced our planning, mainly High Hopes by Kodaline, Robbers by The 1975, Seen It All by Jake Bugg and Let It Go by The Neighbourhood.
We put together an assortment of shots in order to show the types of mise en scene and camera work we wish to include in our music video. This ranged from things such as cigarettes and alcohol, to two shots and over the shoulder shots.

 

Storyboard:

We produced a storyboard in order to get a basic idea of what our video will look like when it has been edited together. It also allows us to know what camera shots and movements to incorporate into our video. From producing the storyboard we can see what shots we need to include more of, for instance, we need more close ups on Alice in order for our audience to familiarise with her and understand that she is the protagonist.We have also seen that we shall incorporate more flashbacks in certain scenes, like the scene where Alice picks up the alcohol bottle for the first time, this will allow the audience to understand why she has chosen to consume alcohol, as they will constantly be referred back to her relationship with Luke.

 

SCENE 1: (on streets) Alice walks amongst friends and meets up with Luke. Things are very awkward and he keeps ignoring her, she ends up running away.

 

  

 

SCENE 2: (at home) Alice tries to find different ways to distract herself from things, such as watching the television and reading a book. She gets more and more frustrated and ends up turning to the only thing left that she thinks will work; alcohol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCENE 3: (on the street) We start to see Alice in her drunken state after her downward spiral into alcoholism. This will be edited with flashbacks of times when her and Luke were together, happily, and other times where he got angry at her for no reason.

 

 

 

 

 

SCENE 4: (on the streets) It all becomes too much for Alice, and as all her thoughts race around in her mind and she can't stop thinking about Luke, how they were together and how he treated her, she gets into her car whilst drunk.

 

 

END: The video will be left on a cliffhanger so it is open to interpretation as to whether she drinks and drives, it will open for the possibility of her self destruction.

 

 

Our video uses non-chronological narrative, which accommodates our target audience as, in our research, we found that the majority preferred a non-chronological narrative. In additon, there will be no perfromance in our video at all, which works well to what our audience wanted as they said they'd prefer either a video with both story and performance, or just plain story, so we decided to go with a story video. As well as this, most indie-rock videos that we looked at were story based and, if there was any performance, there was little of it. This is because indie-rock videos tend to surround the theme of relationships and they are better told through pure narrative in music videos as, especially if it is a band and not a solo artist, the artist can interrupt the love story by appearing for performance.

 

Comparison to music videos from our research:

We compiled a comparison of shots from our storyboard to screenshots from the music videos we looked at in our research in order to show how we have taken the indie-rock genre into consideration during the planning stage of this production.

 

 

Location Scout:

Whilst taking the photographs for our storyboard, we were able to scout for the locations for our video. We found a quiet street where we can film some of our street scenes, as isolation is a key theme in indie-rock videos so we want to avoid having unwanted people in the background of the shot when we start shooting the video. Near to this street was an alleyway, not too cut off so there would be good lighting for the scene that needs to be filmed there.

 

 

We also decided to use one of our houses as Alice's home as it includes lots of dull colours such as dark green and dark red, and we could easily alter it to look messy. The living room and dining room connect so when we shoot Alice in the living room, the table from the dinner argument scene will be present in the background, really establishing that setting as her home, instead of using two separate locations.

 



Character Profiles

We put together moodboards for each of our characters including images that we associate with them.

Firstly, we created our main character's mood board; the female. We wanted to create the impression that she had a typical indie-rock appearance, and we incorporated images of before and after she breaks down, with cleaner images of her make up as well as smudged and darker images.