Music Video Feedback

I have uploaded the finished music Video to YouTube.com to get some audience feedback.

From posting my video onto YouTube, this was the feedback I got. The feedback states the resemblances to Florence and the machine, which is a positive as that was my inspiration. It also mentions the shot types I have used, which is positive as I tried to vary this as much as possible.

Comments regarding the way in which it has been edited are also good, as I tried to edit the footage in time to the music as best as possible. The fact the feedback states the story is told well is also a positive.

Here are some other comments I received from my video. This comment contains quite a bit more criticism than the previous one, it comments on how the actresses in the video could have had a lot more guidance in their positions, and the white balance at times made the video look yellow/orange. However in the comment this negative was turned into a positive by saying this sis actually work. The characters lonely feeling worked well with this admittedly unintentional effect.

Final Music Video 'You've got the love'

This is my final Music video for Florence and the Machine. 'You've got the love.'

'You've got the Love' edit 1 Evaluation

I have exported the first edit of my Music video to a quick time movie, in order to evaluate its progress.

Edit 1:

I have also taken some screen shots from the video, the shots below are all ones which I intend on improving or changing for different reasons.

The reason I will be changing the above shot is due to the composition. There is clutter and object in the shots which shouldn't be. I can overcome this by cropping the shot, I will do this by enlarging it and then making sure I cut out the excess objects.

I have been able to get some outside opinions on my first edit, this was a shot that raised some concern. The walking shots the character does along the beach, according to my audience don't really add to the video, and made little sense. This means I need to make changes I order to ensure the video flows and makes sense. I will do this by taking some of the walking shots out of the video.

This final shot is too dark. I have tried to lighten it using the colour tool in final Cut pro. However I do need to keep this shot as it's needed in order to tell the story of where the character is going. This may have to be overcome by either re-shooting with better lighting, or changing this part o the story. I could have improved this when I was shooting by altering the white balance on the camera.

Final Overall Evaluation

Below are two examples of my media product, firstly the front cover of the digipak, and secondly the promotional advert. I am going to discuss the ways in which my media product challenges and develops other real media products.

Above is my front cover of my digipak, next to a real media digipak for an artist of a similar genre, clearly the overall look of the photography is much more professional than mine. However the simplicity of my digipak cover, I feel is a way in which my product challenges others.

The main information needed is displayed on the front cover, for example the name of the artist and song. This is mainly due to the fact that I wanted the image to advertise the product far more than an array of text and lighting. Although my digipak is advertising a single and the Paloma faith album is advertising an entire album, therefore it is far more appropriate for the focus to be on the album name, as it is.

Further discussion into the evaluation of my media digipak is on the following link.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2009/12/evaluation.html

Above is the advert for my promo pak, I am going to compare it to the Kings of Leon advert. My adverts develops well from the Kings of Leon advert in the respect that it en corporates all the same colour tones.

It challenges the Kings of Leon advert as it does not mention the link between the advert and the digipak. This could have been improved in order to appeal to a wider target audience.

The following links discuss further the evaluation of of my advert.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2010/02/advert-evaluation.html

The following link contains an in depth evaluation of other media adverts.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2010/01/advert-analysis.html

I feel the combination of all my media products come together incredibly well, there is continuity in the style of photography and the actress used. The fonts and colour schemes all remain the same and this would appeal well to the target audience as they would be be able to easily recognise each media product as belonging to the same artist, and subconsciously they would look out for this style of product if they like the artist.

In terms of full filling its objective in promoting the artist, I feel again the products work very well together in this respect. The digipak included a range of images and the style of photography used really showed the artist well.

I feel the relevance of love and the song title were shown in a subtle way, this was because I dint want it to be obvious and predictable by using reds and inks in the digipak and advert, instead I went for a more subtle and alternative way of getting the message of love across. By the artist getting eye contact and the way in which she looked at the camera on the front cover of the digipak, I feel I did manage to achieve this.

The expression on the actresses face suggest pondered thought and this can often be linked to love. I wanted to create something which gave the audience something to think about. In conjunction with the advert, the same principles remained. The artist was aesthetically the same, her costume was the same. However her expression changes moderately, she appears much more smiley. This is for one main reason, her entire body is shown in the advert and I think a smile and happy expression is much more eye catching on a scale photograph such as this. I think that this expression was needed also to show the easy going and happy personality I was trying to get across.

In terms of continuity, I did use different fonts for the digipak and the advert, this was mainly because I felt it was important to use a much more bold font for the advert as there was more information to display, and the bolder it was the easier it would be to read.

One aspect of my media products I felt that let it down, was that I dint mention the digipak and the aspects that it offered on the advert. This was a mistake as this would have sold the entire range and broadened the target audience more so.

I feel the music video supports the song very well, the message in the song and the lyrics are well represented in the sequence of events in the video. The girl who modelled for my digipak and advert, was not the same girl who acted in the video, this was because she was unavailable at the time I wanted to film, although this was a shame. I don't feel it really mattered, as many current artists who make videos don't often act in there videos, sometimes because they cant, and they don't want a performance based video, and sometimes because its animation or the point of their video is to tell a story of someone else.

This was the thought process for the group, and the actresses we used in the video were more than happy to work with us on our video, and I think it worked very well. I think the music video represents the meaning of the song, and demonstrates themes of love well, this was an intention of mine from the outset, and most of the original thought processes and ideas were carried out in the making of the music video.

Overall I think the promo pak I have created works really well together, each component full fills its roll, and as a whole it advertises the artist, song and advertisement well.

I did receive a good amount of feedback on all aspect of my promo pak. When each stage was finished I posted it onto either, my space, face book or YouTube for some feedback from fans. I asked for this feedback to be constructive, with that came both positive and negative comments. The allowed me to make some changes and to think of way I could improve, as well as the way I think I did well.

I have learnt a lot from this feedback. Mainly the importance of giving the audience member or fan as much information as possible. They want to know when why and where, and they will accept nothing less. This is understandable, because if they are buying a product they want to feel it is worth their while and they are receiving good value for their money.

To read some of the comments and to see how I would make those changes please follow this links.

Digipak - http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2009/12/evaluation.html

Advert - http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2010/02/advert-evaluation.html

Video - http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2010/03/music-video-feedback.html

I used many different forms of media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of my media product.

I firstly used blogger predominately throughout the entire project to post my progress and evidence my work. The use of this was incredibly important throughout, because without it, I would have been unable to evidence my work and progress. This was mainly used for the evaluation of my work.

I used PowerPoint as part of the research stage of my project, I put together a presentation with other group members. This can be seen on the below link.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2009/11/pitch-power-point-presentation.html

For all the designing and making of my digipak and advert I used both In design and Photo shop. In my product evaluation I have evaluated the use of these two programmes.

In design and photo shop for the Digipak.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2009/12/digipak.html

Photo shop and the Advert.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2010/02/advert-photoshop.html

Finally for the editing and making process of the Music Video I used the programme Final Cut Pro. The Evidence and evaluation of this programme is below.

http://georgie-videoproduction.blogspot.com/2010/02/music-video-evaluation.html

Music Video Evaluation

In this post I am going to discuss the process of making the music video and the tools and effects I used to achieve the finished video.

When I initially captured back the footage to the computer, some of the footage had been filmed in such a way that the character and the shot were elongated and looked dis-proportionate. This was easy to remedy. I select the shot in the viewer, and then selected motion, I then changed the aspect ratio from 33.33 to 0. This soon made the shot look much more proportionate, as shown below.

This is the toolbar found to the left of the screen in final cut pro. Throughout the contstruction of my music video, I used the majority of these tools.


Firstly I used the cut tool, this looks like a razor, and is the tool selected on the panel above. Below it can be seen cutting a clip, this is the tool most commonly used, and I used it to cut up clips into the ones I wanted to use, and ones I didn't. The red arrows below are an example of this. In the below clip you can also see the audio. We found when we were cutting up some clips that it effected the audio, we resolved this by putting the padlock to the left of the print screen on. This meant that the audio was locked and didn't move at all.



Above is an example of the fade tool. This is once again a tool I found in the panel, and it is used to fade a clip in and out, as desired. It can be manually placed so that you can get the exact desired effect. It looks like the black dots above.
These two images represent the effect the fade in and out tool have. I used this throughout the video, and in this example at the end, to fade out this montage of images.

Below is an example of the use of markers. They are used to mark a certain point in either he video or audio. I found this useful when marking a specific part of the song I wanted to match a clip or shot to. This is done by selecting the 'M' key when the timeline is selected.



This section details how I logged and captured my footage. I did this by clicking the file menu and selecting Log and capture. The camera is then connected via a cable, the tape inserted and the following window appears.

I then clicked 'capture now' and this allowed me to control the sections of the film I captured back via the control panel on the camera. By pressing the escape button at any time I could stop the tape from capturing back.

There were some shots in the film, especially towards the end where we wanted to put in black and white. This was one of them. The way in which I did this is shown below.

I clicked effects and desaturate and the clip was put into black and white. As shown below

After I worked on my first edit,there was some room for improvement, firstly the clutter in some of the shots. This could be altered by enlarging the clip.

By selecting the clip, and image and wire frame, I was able to enlarge the clip and eliminate any clutter from the shot.

Other useful skills I learnt whilst making the video, was the organisation of the clips. I found it was best to give each clip a name linked to what it was, this made choosing the clips and locating the footage much easier.

A skill I learnt in this music video which I hadn't previously used, was using a freeze frame. This was effective in my video for a different effect. I did this by selecting modify and make freeze frame which made the clip a still. This was used as a segregation between clips and added a twist to the story, the example is below.

Cross dissolves were an effect I used a lot in my music video. This is because they are a good transition between clips, and as the style of the video is quite deep, they reflected the thought process and emotion of the character quite well, there were several clips I joined using this effect.

This is an example of a cross dissolve from one shot to another.

This was my time lapse. We used this to show the passing of time in the video by seeding up a clock being filmed for half an hour. We did encounter some problems with this however, when we tried to include a cross dissolve from this shot to another, the image became distorted and showed other footage we hadn't selected. This I found was because when you use a cross dissolve it extended the clip slightly to maintain the same time fixture. This looked terrible when we played it back so we decided against adjoining these clips with a cross dissolve.

Throughout the music video I tried to use a range of shot types, below shows examples of extreme close up, low angle shot and mid shot.

(Left) This is an example of a high angle shot where the camera is positioned so that it is looking up towards the character. (Right) This is an example of the use of a mid shot in the music video. I used this as it allowed me to show the setting as well as the character in a good composition.

This is an example of a close up, used here to show the characters expression, this type of shot is also good to be used with the depth of field, as you can see the background is out of focus which makes the shot look professional and well thought out.

There were some parts of the video I filmed with the camera handheld, this was mainly due to the locations when filming, for example when filming on a sloped beach it was difficult to get the tripod to stand straight, and this would have meant the angle of the camera was not right. Although I did try several times, it was clear it wasn't going to work. Therefore when filming on this specific location, the camera was handheld.

There were times when the camera work did look shaky due to holding the camera. I overcame this in two main ways, I either propped the camera up against something like a chair, or got my self and another group member to both steady the camera. I found this was quite effective. Another measure I took was ensuring I didn't use the zoom unless it was really necessary, this is because the zoom enhances any movement in the camera handling even more.

Other examples of when I did use a tripod was when filming in the house and on the road, this allowed me to keep the shot steady, and add a seamless pan to wherever the character was walking. For the style of music video I made, using a tripod was essential, as the character was often walking, so the pivot on the tripod allowed me to use a tracking shot to follow her.

To set the tripod up, I firstly took it out of its case, and extend all three legs to the desired height. For example, if I was filming a low angle shot I would extend the legs fully etc. I then took the plate and attached it to the base of the camera, and clipped the camera onto the top of the tripod. Another way of securing it is to put the camera directly onto the plate which may be secured already to the top of the tripod.

There are several different techniques within the music video, as previously mentioned, due to the nature of the video and the way in which it tells the story, we follow the character throughout her day, this means there is a lot of tracking shots, in order to add a bit of variety to this I tried to vary the types of tracking shots by including, high and low angle tracking shots.

As the character is first introduced we also only see some shot of her feet tilting up to her face. This adds to the feeling of suspense, and teaches us more about the character.

I have also used several establishing hots, in order to set the scene and inform the audience of the setting. I have done this in the video with the use of pan shots to see the entire view of what the character is seeing.

When using the pan techniques we did experience some jolts in the camera control, we overcame this by re-taking the shot and putting the camera on the tripod and using the lever to move the camera, as this eliminated any jolts in the camera work. On the shots on the beach where we couldn't utilize the tripod some of the camera work is jolty, I overcame this at the editing stage by slowing the section of the clip I wanted to use right down. This meant that the jolts were much less noticeable.

In some of the shot we used the zoom to focus on a specific part of the frame, we could have improved her however, tis could more often than not, been much more thought out, and focusing more on the composition of the shot. Such as depth of field, ad other things which may be within the frame.

Another crucial aspect of filming was the camera settings. These had to be regularly altered depending on where and when I was filming. I firstly set the white balance to outdoor for all the outside beach filming I did. This meant that I could achieve consistency with the colour of my filming.

Similarly when I came inside, I set the white balance to indoor to achieve the same effect.
I also had to alter the shutter speed when I was filming under a dark area, this was so that I was able to alter the exposure and get the desired colour exposure for my video. In addition to this the shutter speed can also impact the sharpness of the footage, which I used to help me achieve some shot with narrow depth of field.
In addition to the shutter speed another setting I was aware of was the aperture, which allowed me to control the amount of light coming into the camera, as this was the main setting for making the exposure darer or lighter.
The Manual Focus was essential for the focus of the camera. I found if I left the settings on Auto Focus they were problematic because the camera didn't know what I was aiming for and it shifted focus to whatever came into frame.
Manual focus allowed me to set the focus precisely before filming the shot and when I got used to using this setting it allowed me to shoot more complex shots such as a Pull Focus. It also meant I could achieve a Narrow Depth of Field where the foreground is in sharp focus but the background is blurred.

In terms of communication throughout the project we coped really well. We made good use of a shooting script in conjunction with a clapper board (shown above) This allowed us to keep a log of the shots and re-take any if necessary. The shooting script really helped us to keep to the plan of what shots we wanted to tsake and keep a record of whoch shots were good and whch we may disount, at the editing stage this was crucial as it sped up the process as I was very organised.

We produced an effective storyboard and animatic which meant that each shot was well thought out, and when we came to film we knew exactly what we were going to film. however due to circumstances such as the wetaher and access to locations, not everything we filmed was pre-planned in the storyboard. This was not in any way a negative, beacuse wherever possible I did keep to the basis of the storyboard, and this was still very helpful. The animatic helped when we came to contruct the video, and match the shots with certain parts of the music.

I went out filming twice for the entire footage for the music video. This meant that we had to be organised in order to book out equipment and get to locations on the decided days. The days we filmed also had to be planned around college, and group members commintments, beacuse of this it was importnat that each group memner had each tohers contact details. At the start of the project I handed out a contact sheet for the group members with contact numbers and e-mail adresses.

For each time I filmed we contructed a production schedule, this was important so that we could record the date we were going to film, who was needed and involved, the location and the equipment needed, each group member was presented with this.

Whilst filmng, or even beforehand, we chose not to assign roles, as we throught it would be better if we all took an active role in both filming and editing. We didnt feel we nessasarily needed a director as we were all as involved as each other, and noone needed to be incharge we woeked well sharing the work load and taking an active role in all aspects, including the planning and excetutuion of the video.

Ways in which I chose to communicate whilst the camera was rolling wasnt always used, as before we filmed each shot we talked thriough what we planned to achieve and if for some reason there was confusion or the shot didnt turn out as planned, we stopped the camer and used the shooting script and clapperboard to record what we did wrong and re-took the shot.

The final video has changed considerably from the initial edit, mainly due to outside feedback. I was told the video would benefit from a few changes, some of the shots didn't make sense in the order they were in, other shots were too dark or poor quality. This meant I had to utilise some of the other footage in order to make sure only the best quality footage was being used.

Other advise I took on was the idea of including a montage of images at the end of the video, in order to tell the story of the video. This was something I did decide to do. The outcome gives a slightly different style to the story.

Problems I encountered with the making of this video, are mainly due to the footage. Some of the footage was filmed in 16 dv which meant when I came to capture it back I found that the footage looked elongated and distorted. This was relatively easily resolved, by cutting the clips up and dragging them onto the timeline, I then double clicked the clip, and changed the aspect ratio from the 33.33 which was causing the problem, to 0. This made the clips correct in appearance.

Another problem I encountered was when I came to the quantity of footage, after I filmed for the first I thought that I would have enough footage for the entire video. however when I started to cut the footage up and construct the basis for the video, I soon realised that I was going to need to go out and film for a second time, as there simply wasn't enough footage to use without the video looking repetitive. In reality this was a good decision to take, as it gave the story more depth and meant I got some really good footage second time round to use with the initial shots.

Some of the shots I filmed were not very well thought out, and there were objects in the shot as well, this included cluttered clothes, when looking back over the shots this did make it look very amateur, luckily this something I could improve on, by selecting image and wire frame and could enlarge the shot, to eliminate this problem.

I did encorporate some of my research into the types of shots in my video, the two shots belwo show where I got some of my inspiration for shot types from. The shot of florence and the machine, shopw her to the left of the frma,e where thr background is out of focus. In my shot the chacter is to the left of the frame. I think this addes depth to the shot and allows the audience to focus on the entire frame, which can allow the background to become more apparent.

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of the video, although I strayed slightly away from the original idea, the basis is still there, and in reality the original idea was a bit over ambitious and the final video, was much more achievable. I did still include original concepts such as a time lapse and the story line.

Reject Music Video clips

In this post, I am going to talk about some of the shots and footage I wasn't able to use in my Music Video for various reasons. For example, this shot was angled very badly. We did intend on using this footage for a time lapse, however due to the surface we were filming on the tripod was not level, and this right sided shot was the outcome.















We improvised with this shot by filming when we were driving. This was on the surface a good idea, although it was very difficult to hold the camera steady and also to only get the external view through the camera and not the interior of the car.


















This was a shot we had originally planned to use in our storyboard, however as you can see the lighting is very poor. We tried to resolve this by using a desk lamp, but we found this just made the shadows very bad and the shots was too bad a quality to actually use in the video.


















This shot was supposed to demonstrate the character deep in though looking out the window, however we had some, problems with the pull focus when trying to show depth of field, and this resulted I the character just appearing out of focus throughout the footage. This therefore was not possible for us to use.















One of the first times we went filming was within college, we were experimenting with our idea at this point, and the footage we got was very poor. As you can see we had some problems with the camera, and the quality of shots was very low. We also struggled filming in confined spaces, and as a result we didn't use any of this footage in the video.
















In this shot it was just getting dark, and we experienced some problem with lighting. This shot was crucial for the telling of our story, so we had to use what light we had in the porch. We found filming outside made the control we had over lighting very difficult. So we cut this shot so that we only used the parts of it with the best lighting.
















We encountered problems with this shot with respect to communication. When filming the character in an enclosed area, we found it was difficult to communicate without the character looking at us. This was the first problem, and second was the reflection on the car window of the building outside.
















This shot was very dark, and made the footage look equally as dark. We overcame this by turning on the desk lap to the left of the shot. This worked really well, and meant we could re-take the shot and save the idea we had for the video.

Advert Evaluation

This is my final advert for Florence and the Machine.

I am really pleased with the outcome of the advert, although there are some things I would change.

For example the text in the middle of the advert, should in fact detail that this is part of digipak. If I had the opportunity to do this again, I would have said this. I would change this because if the advert said that it was part of a digipak. It would appeal more to the target audience as they would feel they are getting more for their money.

However, I like that the Britt award logo features on the advert as it suggests she is popular and successful, and may influence others in this way.

The colours used such as the white and coral, are feminine and work well on the sepia background.
I also feel that using sepia as a background and maintaining the same type f image, has meant that there is continuity throughout the promopak






















I have also posted the image of the advert onto the popular social networking site. Facebook. This has resulted in some other opinions on the piece of work and mostly from people in the target audience.

The Florence and the machine page on Facebook has the most fans who were looking at the advert.














I attracted these people to look at the advert by sending an e-mail round asking for people to give there opinion and any advise for improvements. The below comment was the outcome.










From this comment, compliments have been given to its eye-catching qualities, this suggests it would do well as an advert. Comments are also made in conjunction to its suitability to go alongside the digipak. This means that as an entire promopak, this would work well.

I have learnt a lot from making this advert. Firstly, the importance of designing something to target an audience from the outset. Although improvements have been made since my original flat plans, I have kept this in mind throughout.

I also have learnt more in the respect of Photoshop skills. This has allowed me to be more adventurous in this project