Evaluation Blog - Music video

This is our finished video for Pierce the veils falling asleep on a stranger.

-John Harding and Ryan Miles-

Evaluation Blog - Album Art

These are the finalised versions of our album artwork for our cd cover we have four images for the inside and outside of the case and inside of the case.
This is the outside front cover of the cd case:

This is the back cover for the cd case:

This is the inside right side cover for our cd case:

This is the inside of the cd case behind where the cd will go:

Evaluation Blog - Website

http://www.all-saints.bardaglea.org.uk/media_cw/Pierce_the_veil/welcome.html

-John Harding and Ryan Miles-

Radio Spot

Evaluation blog - Write Up- John

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


In our media products we tried to keep them as close to the conventions of a real media product as possible thiswas made possible by the industry level software that was made avaliabe to us to edit plan and construst the music video, album artwork and website. Before we even started on the music video we conducted a survey and several interviews, as a record label would do before creating a music video this helped us to gain an insight into what our target audiences (teenagers) wanted to see in a music video and helped to point us in the right diresction when writing the script and throughout making the videowhe it came to the music video and the rest of the videos we had to edit we had premiere this allowed us to not only piece together the clips but also add in speciall effects using after effcts, aswell as fades, zooms and visual effects and visual effects,

For the Album artwork we used photoshop again this is a semi professional software which allowed us to do more with the images we had which were good but not quite good enough to be used as the album artwork, using photoshop i was able to alter the contrast and insert text to make it look like a professional set of album artwork.








Impossible sequence's
From TRC's video (Below)
One way in which our music video is similar to real media products is that we used motifs that are commonly seen in music videos that were popular with our target audience we found out what motifs the target audience liked to see using the information we gathered from our interviews and our survey. In our music video we use the motif of an impossible sequence this is when we show the speeded up clip of the skyline to show the passing of time from day to night this is also seen in TRC's music video for their song "London's Greatest Love Story" where they also use a shot of the skyline to show the shirt in time with the clip sped up to show that time is passing.











From our music video (Above)

From our music video (Below)

For our music video we chose for it to follow a narrative like many of the music videos that were found to be popular with our target audience e.g. "Stan" by Eminem. Throughout the video we have cuts to me lip syncing to the music as is seen many professional music videos e.g. "Not good enough for the truth and cliche" by Escape the Fate. This breaks up the narrative of the video but it also highlights important lyrics of the video that make the narrative of the video clearer to the viewer.

Escape the Fate's video (Above)


2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I feel that our our main product fitted well together with our ancillary texts as we tried to use the same styles throughout the coursework to give it a flow so it was clear that our pieces of work matched. We downloaded a specifc font style which we used throughout the project on all of our artwork and ancillary texts.

In the video we tried to sustain the same theme throuout which was of loneliness and the feeling of being cheated this went along with the narrative of the music video. The theme is seen in various shots throughout the video where the main character is sitting alone looing at pictures of him and his ex-girlfriend. By filming when it was overcast we felt this would add to the mood making the viewer aware of the characters emotions.

3. What have you learned from the audience feedback?
Once we completed our music video as part of our evaluation we had to gain feedback from test audiences of the target market to see what they thought about it we did this in two ways, we had a group of people watch our video and then give us feedback on it as well as recording them watching the video, we also posted the video on our social networking sites along with a link to our survey so we could get the feedback we needed from the audience in a way that could be processed easily and information gathered from the results.


When had a sample audience watch the video we didn't get much of a reaction from the audience, at the end of the video we interviewed each of them and the general feedback from them was mainly positive but there was some criticism which if we were to go back we would work on. This included the lip sync being out of sync in places, the narrative being sometimes hard to follow and mediocre acting. The group as a whole did agree that the video was effectively aimed at their group as a target audience, they commented on the use of people their own age being used so that they could relate to the video and also that they could relate to the situation the character was in as they or someone they knew had been in a similar one. Another comment by the test screening audience was that in the end shot you could see ryan in the reflection not everyone noticed it but it was unavoidable to get the shot we needed.


From the survey we gathered mainly the same comments but we were able to get more specific information on what the viewers liked than when did the test screening.


4. How did you use media technologies in the research/planning, construction, and evaluation stages?
We used media technologies at every stage of our coursework, without the mac and the industry level software thats installed on them i wouldn't have been able to do the work i have done to the standard it is. Our group had the added benefit of having are own camera and tripod which meant that not having a camera to film was never an issue with us all we had to rely on was the weather and the cast which didn't always work out in are favour.  

As i previously mentioned we used macs for this project, we had the one in school which we used as a group each lesson but i had the added benefit of having my own personal Mac at home that i could use which also had the full adobe suite allowing me to edit podcasts photos and other pieces of the coursework from home. I also had celtx on my laptop which meant that i could work on the calendar, master catalogue and script from home which made things a lot easier as getting a few computer was sometimes difficult. From the adobe suite i used photoshop, premiere and the media encoder. 
             I used premiere to edit the videos that i had to edit which were all of them apart from the main music video which was Ryan's job to edit. Using premiere meant that i could edit all of the videos to a high standard.
             I used photoshop to edit all the photos its main use was to edit the photos to make the album artwork aswell as the images that we put into the website this menat that we didnt have to use any copywritten images. Without this the photos wouldnt have been edited as well as they turned out as photoshop is an industry level software allowing us to do alot more with the photos taken.

            Some of the key softwares we used on this project were free if it was a preloaded software or a free download. We used iwep to construct and edit our website it came free with macs so we could both use it from home. Also we both downloaded celtx so we could make adjustment to the calender, master catelogue and script.
             The most essential technology that we used this year was blogger without this we wouldnt have been able to present all of our coursework together from all diffenernt kinds of media whether it be video's, slideshows or just pure text.

Evaluations - Who did what in the project

Evaluation - Questions

Evaluation - How the project went

Evaluation Questions

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

By carrying interviews at the begging of the project we saw what the potential audience would like to see in a music video. By documenting what they wanted to see we were able to collate what specific needs the video needed. We had a theme love/Heartache which dominated our work. Most videos today tend to have a specific them to do with the lyrics of song. We maintained this trait, as we found professional media products do this.  We had no spending budget so making the video meant we had to use the resources available to us without cost e.g. Park, street, train station. Our video’s main priority was to portray the emotion of the song; this again agrees with conventions of real media products.

 I believe our video still challenges modern day videos because in many ways it is still similar, lip-syncing, special effects, motifs/themes all of which outline the song more in detail. Compared to mainstream music videos we see that our video may not be as advanced or well-rehearsed, we learnt this through the process f progression we realised the amount of work and planning that has to go in.  Present day videos can sometimes cost $4 million dollars, are budget was nothing so we had to make do with what we had.

However, our video still gives off the same vibe/feeling that real media products produce due to carrying out the same conventions.

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

To ensure and outline the professional quality of our project every aspect had to be perfected and suitable. We ensured this by making sure the Music Video, Website and Digipak CD cover, had the same house style this meant that a theme was needed consisting of colour schemes and fonts etc. Our video took place in a park, we wanted to outline this through the rest of the project so for the album artwork, and images were taken of the park which was also our set. The website also had the same colour scheme as the leaves in the album cover.  This gave the user the ability to recognise the song and associate it with the rest of the project.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We found that the audience enjoyed the music video, we see that it gave off the sad heartbreak vibe that the song’s lyrics are portraying we found this to be a great success as this is what we aimed for. Our main worry was that the audience may not understand the narrative the video is telling. However this wasn’t the case as the audience learned the characters they were viewing and were able to comprehend what is going on.

We had made two sections to the audience feedback the first being interviews which were made to find out what we needed to include in our music video, find out the music genre that the majority of people preferred, the different motifs that they liked to see within music  videos etc.

The second section was the test audience, they were to ensure the final finished product was up to standard and fulfilled the vibe we wanted to give off from the song and video. We have successfully portrayed the original intentions of this song throughout its production.

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

MAC Computer
This enabled us to edit and store clips of our music video and was the main function of creating our music video as it included software that we needed to carry out our project

·         Adobe Premiere

·         Adobe Photoshop

·         Celtx

·         PowerPoint

·         Word Processor

The Camcorder
We used my own Sony CX-115E camcorder to record the music video we had created. The camera is capable of full HD and records in a AVCHD format. Due to the files of AVCHD format being a very compressed format (record format). I had to to convert the files into 'MPEG-2' as this meant Adobe Premiere could read the files without potential lag which can cause inconsistensy when in the editing process.

The Camera
We used my Canon D20 SLR, to take pictures for the Digipak and for the website. The camera takes pictures using an 8Megapixel lense. We used the pictures taken and edited them in Photoshop for use on the website and the Digipak. We also used the camera to take pictures for the storyboard.

The Tripod
We used a standard tripod that i owned, we used this for the camcorder and the camera in order to keep it  steady for specific shots and techniques in order to keep the production of our video looking professional.

All these factors enabled us to make an effective video, considering we had no budget to spend we used what we had readily available to use. Without any of the above mentioned not of our project could have been made as they are all key. For the evaluation we made an “MTV-Type” mock up TV show where we take a look into the video and the band itself.

Evaluation Blog - Review

The feedback for our project is mostly positive, the veiwer said that she thought that the acting the in the video was good, we tried to keep it up to to keep iot to a high standard throughout the video which sometimes meant going back and filming scenes to get it perfect.
Another point which she made was that she liked the scenery and how we had managed to make the park more intresting using editing effects and the shots we used, this was our plan since the begining stages of the project. She also enjoyed our attention to detail especially the name in the loveheart on the tree.
She mentioned that she thought the video was good at being aimed at the target audience but brought up the issue that although the artwork was consistant in its theme of nature it may be confusing to some people as to what the message of what the song and the video is about. We did not think this was a relevant issue but it clearly must be if she has brought it up.
As far as the album arwork goes this was the only issue she had with it the rest was postive feedback saying that the front cover showed aspects within the video of the character pining for his ex-girlfrend.

Evaluation Blog - Feedback From Survey

1. Do you think the video showed a narrative?

Everyone who aswered our survey answered yes of slighlt 66% answered yes to this question and only 34% answered slightly. This i feel is a good result as everyone who watched the video understood that there was narative to the video some mopre than othere though.

2. If You answered "yes" or "slightly" to the above question was it easy to understand the narrative?

The comments we gathered from this question were that the narrative was quite easy to understand for most people but quite a few people stated that they failed to understand the narrative in some places as it got too confusing, but overall they understood it.

3. The target audience for this music video was teenagers do you think that it would appeal to the target audience?

We had very good feedback from this question as 96% of people answered yes and only 4% answered no. From this part i feel that the project was successful as our main task of the project was to make a video that would appeal to teenagers.

5. On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate the following aspects of our music video;

Camera Shots and Angles: On average for this answer we go 8 out of ten.

Lip Syncing: On average for this answer we go 6 out of ten.

Acting: On average for this answer we go 5 out of ten.

Use of props: On average for this answer we go 6 out of ten.

Editing: On average for this answer we go 7 out of ten.

Overall Video: On average for this answer we go 8 out of ten.

6. Do you think the video was the appropriate length?

For this question we got mainly positive feedback, people liked that the video had a narrative to it but didnt have a long introduction but 2 people out of our sample would have preferred a longer introduction.

7. in your opinion did you feel that the video lacked continuity?

The feedbakc from this question was very positive with no one selecting "yes throughout the video" or "Often throughout the video" and 75% of people said that the video lacked continuity ocassionly aswell as 25% saying it didnt lack continuity.

8. What aspects of the music video do you feel could have been better or should have been included in the video?

In this section people commented on a few things and they were the acting which could have been better, some of the editing towards the end of the video and that the lip sync was out of place a feww times in the video.

9. What did you think about the special effects used in the music video?

We had only good feedback for this question people liked the use of the time lapse and the fade between characteres walking leaving the main character alone on the path.

10. How do you think our music video compares to professional music videos?

The replies to this question were mixed as some people said that our music video was very similar to a professional music video but then other people said that there where a few factors that meant that the video looked less professional e.g. acting, lip sync and editing

Evaluation Blog - Posting Video to Social Networking Site

So that we could gather feedback on our music video form the target audience i posted out music video onto my personal facebook account as most of the people i have on there are within the target audience. i then put a link below it to the survey i created for the music video asking various questions which relate to the music video what they though about it, if it was effective in appealing to them as the target audience.

Below is the survey i created for the music video

-John Harding-

Evaluation Blog - Feedback from our Test screening

Today we showed our music video for pierce the veils song "falling asleep on a stranger" we also recorded their reaction to the video as well as interviewing them off camera afterwards to get their opinion on the video.

             When they watched the video it wasn't clearly visible their reaction some of the audience laughed at some of the clips but that was it as far as they expressed emotion.  So we relied mainly on interviewing them afterwards to get feedback. From the interviews we got  mostly good feedback but their were a few complaints and comments on how we could improve it. One of the main issues with the video were that the lip sync was out of time in places.
              We noticed this during editing but had trouble getting it right we made several attempts to re-film the lip syncing parts but whenever the video was exported from premiere the music became out of sync in the end we decide that it was ok to leave it as it was because it was only out of time in a few places.
              Another criticism of the video was that in the end shot you can see Ryan in the reflection filming this was unavoidable as we could not find an angle to film from which did not show him, we decided to leave that clip in as it was important to end the video and we didn't have time to re film it anymore.
              There was also comments about why towards the end of the video the clips weren't fullscreen like the rest of the video. This was only spotted after the video had been exported uploaded to youtube and been featured in our music review show, we wanted to go back to finish it but weren't able to in time as it took so long to export that we had to leave it as it was and hope it didn't affect the video too much.
               Below is the video reaction of the test audience watching our music video.

-John Harding-

        

Evaluation Blog - E-mail To Equal Vision

when we emailed equal vision several months ago they gave us permission to use pierce the veils song in our music video this meant we would not be going against any copyrighting. When they replied to the email we sent them they asked to see our final product once we have finished editing it i have sent them a link to the video on youtube and thanked them for giving us permission to use the song as it made our lives easier.

-John Harding-

Evaluation Blog- PTV Music Review

This is our music review show that we made for our music video we also feature other songs by Pierce the Veil and a bit of background history.

-John Harding and Ryan Miles-

Evaluation Podcast - Image of artist

-John Harding-

Evaluation Podcast - Importance of technology

Evaluation Blog - What i did for the coursework

-John Harding-

Evaluation Blog - Organisation Podcast

-John Harding and Ryan Miles-

Evaluation Blog - Evaluation Podcast

-John Harding and Ryan Miles-

Planning Blog - Camera shots and angles

-John Harding-

Evaluation Blog-Themes, House styles and motifs present in our media project

-John Harding-

Evaluation Blog - How does your project challenge real media texts?

When it came to this year of editing we had a much more advanced knowledge of filming techniques and editing effects. This meant we could show this knowledge through our music video. This year we spent a lot more time editing and filming.

Our video is a narrative and we have used narrative techniques to help represent characters within the video, this helps the audience to view and understand the narrative the video is portraying. The audience can clearly see the linear structure of the narrative. We used aspects form last year and real music video techniques that professional media producers use such as camera shots and angles.

The video can easily be passed off as real media text to someone who has never seen the band as they will think the characters involved are in the band itself. We used certain video motifs like in real media such as drinking, heartache and love.

The charcters in our video are all represented as being heartbroken and we use this and the lyrics of the songs to help explain this as they also do in real media texts. The structure goes from start to finish and this is shown through the progression of time that passes as the video gets progressively darker throughout.

We use all the real aspects that real videos use to help produce a unique music video that is our own and original.

Evaluation Blog - How is your project similar to other media texts?

Media project

View more PowerPoint from Ryan Miles

Construction Blog - Premiere

We also used premiere to make our music video. This software is very effective at being used for editing at a basic level. However this is the second year of using this product we have developed our skill and learned more about what you can do. This means the production value of our video will be much higher and advanced than the previous year. We used the program to create the video blogs, lip sync, radio spot and the music video.

I will now demonstrate me using premiere and carrying out a procedure.

Construction Blog - Web site

To create the website for the band-page, we used a program called 'iweb' this is free software that is included with Macs. We found this software to be very user friendly as we previously had never used this program before. The general idea before making the website was to make a theme of colours and we have achieved this as it matches the digi-pak because of the colours of the trees- brown & green and also the autumn leaves which are amber, red. This is reflected in the website.

iweb Logo

I will now show how to demonstrate a step by step procedure on the program. When we first want to create a website we see this window bow below:

We then choose a template for the website we as a group thought that the template 'Freestyle' suits our music video style and stereotype. We will then select 'choose'.














Homepage
Once we had our style sorted we then made other pages to help the authenticity of the music video. This is the homepage we had made welcoming visitors to the 'Pierce the Veil' website. Here we have a brief introduction to the band. We also used a picture that was made on Photoshop, for the bands fake tour dates, we made sure this also looked authentic and real. We also added in the 'Official Piercetheveil' twitter widget that shows current updates that the band makes. You can also see the other pages that we made on the left hand side of the screenshot.

 To add text to the pages we simply used the 'Text Box' button.

This button was used for all of the web pages for where we wanted text to be this was very user friendly and do what we wanted it too.




  
we also used this button to choose between what fonts we wanted to use for our website we used.

Once the 'Fonts' button is selected this window box will appear. The Font Type is: Palatino, typeface: Regular and Font size: 14. This is consistent throughout all the other pages.

We also used the font: 'Portagol ITC TT' at different font sizes for different titles for the different web pages. Font size: 36 in most cases and 60 in page titles.





To add images to the page we simply dragged and dropped images we wanted to use onto the program, we then resized the image for our liking so it looked good on our website.

Below are the other pages we have made

Ryan Miles