Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Evaluation Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When looking back at our project, evaluating the process we realize how important it is to receive feedback and act upon it because we have to make sure that we have cover everything that may be important to our target audience and any potential viewer.

Our process in receiving feedback started before we decided to start filming our video when we asked our target audience what they expected in a video and how they wanted it to be like.

Firstly, we got a group together of similar characteristics which they all listen to similar music video I decided to create and interview with them. I asked them questions such as:

 "What do you typically expect from a music video?"

           "What makes a successful music video?"

           "What makes an unsuccessful music video?"

           "What do you love about your genre and its type of music videos?"

For the information we have received from the interview allowed us to create a story line that is relevant to the video and its lyrics as well as making a performance scene that fits the stereotypes of the R&B genre.

"You know when like the little doggies running around"

By Elliot Stedman

Our Research Done Over The Project

We then decided to look at examples of videos to see what type of subject in lyrics, location , gender and props and costumes. As we did this we began to see a correlation develop over the different ears in the genre we had chosen. For example, in R&B videos there was a lot more slow transitions and the mood was often a lot more delicate as the singer often sang about their feelings for a loved one etc.

This was evident as we took feedback from some the the lyric analysis and interpretation to see if the audience liked what we had in mind for our music video.

From this we could add an interpretation from the group
and incorporated them into our plot in the story line. We
covered things such as action props and placing.

As you can see we highlighted the keywords in
each line so that we knew what we were going to
to portray during our own music video.

This was further backed up as we were praised by others in feedback for out editing and setting a good pace for the music video we had created.
           "The editing throughout the video was smooth and fitted both the music and the narrative."

"The setting was realistic, considering the image of professionalism that you also pulled off in the projector scenes."

After filming the video we decided to make a flip book showing all our feedback that we received from our classmates.

However, upon reflection we thought that there were some elements that our crowd couldn't see such as the true effect of the blue over layer which made it look dark in the viewing but gave it a sense of realism of the time of day in online viewing.

From this we were able to highlight all of the most common problems and reflect it upon them, analyzing each one to see whether it was something we could change  These were highlighted yellow.

They said things like:

"Its too dark."

We solved this by removing the original layering and adding a much thinner layer; giving us the professional light but kept they clarity.

"You used more than one similar venue."

We solved this by adding more different sides so that we had more variety.

"The costumes were spot on!"

We were pleased to see that our costumes analysis and research into clothes conventions were recognized.

"The cast were well put together."

In addition to this I decided to put a blog post poll in order to ask if they liked the video with the album cover and poster. I thought that this would be a way in which we could ask our followers such as people who also do media, not just in our but in the younger years too, to cover different age groups such as the year 12s to the lower end of the school. Also online viewers from around the world could participate so that we could check if this could be received internationally as a music video.

From our results, even though we only had one participant it showed that they thought our album cover was not only professional but fitted well with the rest of our media package.

Not only this but I further decided to ask a younger individual about our media package to see if it was successful and believable.

 Firstly I chose him as he fitted into the target demographic;
Between the ages of 14 - 30
Listens to predominantly Hip Hop and R&B.
Wears street wear such as hoodies and high top trainers
And the music would be a reasonable choice and his iPod playlist.





"I think that this music video is very good! It has all the normal things that you see in an R&B music video. she suits the part very well and although there are a few areas that could have been timed better she mimed incredibly well. the props and setting were spot on and I would say that if I didn't know this was media project I would struggle to tell among real ones."

"The album cover is really good actually, better than I expected! It looks very professional and there is a strong colour scheme throughout which make it look more realistic i can actually imagine Melanie Fiona using this as an album cover."

This is all all the feedback we received from social media sites such as us emailing a person in industry; giving us a professional view but having personal views from Facebook, from our peers and other who do not do media. This allowed us to get honest responses because they wouldn't know the effort behind making a video and would be totally honest whereas our classmates would have some sympathy for our efforts. 

By just looking at all the  feedback we had received we decided to have a group meeting and discuss what we could do to improve or what we would change if we had to start over....

I think we would start over I would get filming schedules out of the way quickly as possible to save time as we were often running over time in filming because of the time of day that we had to film. I think that I also would have made sure that we had got casting right and secure first as well as venue as they were to main factors in our downfall with our first music choice . We had realized during this process that people were so hard to reply on as it as our project and not theirs, anything they did to help was to be from pure generosity, however there were some times where we were ready to pay for venue.

Construction - Making the shots slip into the timeline and increasing or decreasing shot length. - Prince And I

During the construction and editing of our music video we decided to use final cut . Since no one in our group was a pro at using final cut it meant that some  of the effects that we wanted to use in our music video either limited or wasnt done at all. This for us as a group was destressful, knowing that this would hold us back in editing and then would bring down the overall quailty of our music video. Luckily we had final cut pros at our disposal via youtube on the internet. We found that most of the problems that occured, when searched on the internet or youtube could be easily overcome using the tutoriasl that were availible. this allows to learn tthe skills quick enough to apply them to our video without it looking shabby.

Here is one of the videos we used to help us with the editing:

From watching this short video you would probably have an idea of what type of problem we encountered during the editing. Well, on recording day where we went to shoot our videos we thought we had done a great job in terms of lighting, the song and...the lip syncing. But we were later proved wrong when we were exposed by final cut. We put in a clip into final cut and made sure it corresponded with the sound track and found that our artist had come out of lip sync or was too slow or too fast half way in a verse. This was a problem, a very big problem and with the deadline for our rough cut just days away and no time to record, we needed to find a way to overcome this problem. This is where the help of this video came in. We simply used one of the tools on final cut to speed up or slow down the video so that the lip syncing and the sound track went together!(Prince)

Here is how we did it: 

First i had to locate the problem or the part of the clip which i want to edit and either make slower or faster. When thius was done i highlighted/selected the part fo the clip. I then i went to "Modify - Speed"



This caption shows us moving the speed by increasing
the percentage.





In this shot we had to move the shot within the created
timeline we had and then slow it down using
properties then speed. Thus tehn decreased the shot making it slowed and the overall shot longer or we could do the reverse. 





In this shot it shows us moving the black bars that we have
 created into the newly cut and shortened scene.
This was gragged acrosss the timeline which allowed us to
use it across the video without replying it in every shot added.



Album Cover Research - Melanie Fiona And Others - Sath

To begin creating the digipack for our music video for the song 4AM, we needed to look further into digipacks. The best place to start was by looking into album covers for the artist Melanie Fiona as she is the artist of the song 4AM.

Melanie Fiona's fist album was called 'The bridge', it was released in 2009. The album cover for the album consists of a close up of the artist's face, the picture seems to be a side portrait shot with Melanie facing the camera but looking past it to the right. It gives us a sense that she is looking back at something which could be her past. The photograph is presented in a grey scale format and shows a lot of the shadows in the picture. There is very little highlights shown but gives there is enough which helps define the face of the artist as well as parts of her hair. There is also a white spotlight on the wall behind the artist which goes with the colour scheme of the album cover which is black, white and grey.

Melanie Fiona's next album was called 'The MF life' and it was released in 2012 which is a three year gap between her two albums. At first sight when you compare the two album covers, you can notice that her second album cover has a lot more colour than her first album cover. In this album cover, the picture is a long shot which shows a side view of her leaning down against a lamp post. The picture is taken on a sunny day and has a lot of bright colours as well as a purple heart in front of the lamp post. Since this is titled the MF life, i think that the warm bright colours and the atmosphere of the picture is shown to put across the nature of Melanie's life and her personality.

The next album cover i am going to be analysing, is the album cover for '4' by Beyonce Knowles'. I chose to analyse an album cover of Beyonce, as she is another R&B singer and that is the genre of music that 4AM is from. For this album cover, the colour scheme consists of black, yellow, and pale green. The black and yellow is shown using Beyonce in a medium shot showing her with both of her arms over her head. The idea of Beyonce having her arms over her head, it looks as if she is relaxing without any care for what she is doing. She is shown to be topless with a long black furry coat hanging over her shoulders to cover most of her torso but leaves her belly showing. There is a lot of golden jewelery used in this album cover, it is used to show the wealth and status of Beyonce as she is a well paid artist.

The next album cover i will be looking at is for the album 'Talk that Talk' by R&B singer Rihanna. This album was released in 2011 and was the singer's sixth studio album. This album cover consists of a close up of the artist's face. She is shown wearing an sleeveless top with a lot of eye make up and lip stick. She is also shown sticking out her tongue which shows us the nature of Rihanna and her personality in the album. There is a big 'R' on the top left hand corner of the album cover in grey which is used to represent Rihanna. The album name is written on the wrist of artist almost making it look like a tattoo which helps it blend into the photo and makes it look natural.