Evaluation Question 4

I used Zoho show!

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2: Technologies

To answer this question I have made a video commentary.

This is the plan and script I used for the voiceover of my video commentary:

Script Plan

And here is the video:

Evaluation Question 1: Audience evaluation

I ran a focus group with 2 members of the target audience in order to gain some qualitative data.  This is the focus group:

I asked the two of them several questions about my music video, digipak and webpage. The first question I asked them was what worked well in the music video. I asked if they thought the music video was similar to other indie music videos and one of them said "it was similar where just a bunch of random stuff happened." This is useful because it tells me that I've succeeded in sticking to the conventions of indie music videos as it was recognisable. However, neither of them had seen too many indie music videos so that response may not be extremely valid. When I asked what worked well one of them said "in the video it told a story about the band." This is good because our initial research told us that our music video should have a clear narrative and this response shows that we did. The other said "I like how the digipak and website are all consistent. It's all black and white and it's got the same style." This response is helpful because it shows that I have achieved synergy between my webpage and digipak and he had picked up on this before I asked him the question about synergy which is even better. However, when I did ask him whether he thought they all linked he made a comment implying that only the digipak and webpage linked, but not the music video. This means that if I were going to do this again I would have to make sure that the music video also links to the digipak and the webpage and follows the same style of synergy. Another comment about the webpage was that "it's everything you'd expect from a real band" which is good because it shows that I've managed to successfully create a webpage for a band that the target audience can consider similar to other bands' webpages.

Filming - Thursday 13th December

The filming today had many more problems that we had to overcome and didn't go as smoothly as yesterday. We planned on filming the whole performance area of the video today, and we managed to do so, but there were a number of hindrances. There were many problems that we did manage to overcome.

Firstly, we were not allowed to borrow the drums from the school's music department which we had previously been promised. We had to get the drums that I had at my house to the school. Those drums weren't as good as the drums we could have got from the school but they were good enough to use. Secondly, when we arrived back with the drums we found out that we had been kicked out of the drama room that we were going to film in because we had waited to long to film and there was a club that had that location booked. Luckily, our school's main hall (Boothroyd hall) was available to film in and it was close by so it wasn't too much trouble moving all of the stuff over. We were also unable to get a mic or a mic stand but we just decided to leave this out as it wasn't too important.

Digipak - Final

All I have done to finish off my digipak is add the band's logo in the bottom-left hand corner of the front cover. I altered the logo slightly for the digipak so it fits with the sci-fi theme of the album. But I didn't change it too much so it's still synergistic with the website. Now my digipak is finished.

Webpage - Final

Today I made a lot of changes to my webpage. I changed all of the images to black and white to make synergy with the digipak. Unfortunately, the music video on the homepage cannot be changed to reflect this as it as a thumbnail from the video. I added in the twitter feed that I had previously created and I

also replaced the AC/DC logo with the band's logo that I created. After a few minor tweeks and resizes of a few things the homepage is now finished.

Twitter feed for website

I created a fake twitter account for my band that I could update and add to my webpage. I will be using this particular screenshot that I captured from the actual twitter feed on my webpage.

Logo

I have used a few things in the logo to reflect the ideals of the band as well as the conventions of indie music. Firstly, the word 'The' is an homage to a 1960s British band 'The Who' as it looks very similar to the 'The' in their logo. Since our band is a throwback to 1960s British bands I think the homage to 'The Who' will be a clear indicator as to the style and ideals of our band. Secondly, the black colour that has been used was directly influenced from my research into indie music as I found that the colour black was often used by indie bands. Thirdly, the compass has a denotation as well as a connotation. The denotation is that a compass is directly linked to the word 'Lost.' The connotation with the compass and the word 'Lost' is one of our band's ideals which is the idea of these young 18 year-old boys being at a point in there life where they are lost and confused. This also links with our band's target audience because the target audience are 18 year-old boys who will also be at this point in life.

Music video - Final

After finishing our rush cuts we used this time to make the finishing touches on our video before we could call it complete. We add a 'bad tv' and 'bloom' effect to the shots in the elevator to symbolise that he is travelling to a different place and that something strange and sci-fi is happening. We also added an 'echo' effect to the shots where the actors are coming and going from the elevator. This makes it look like they are materialising into a new place and gives it a teleportation type look. We also added an 'earthquake' effect at varying levels towards the end of the video as the music, the ASD and overall pace of the video picked up. Unfortunately, after we had done all this and dubbed the video as finished the program stopped responding before we could save it and we lost all of the days work. We had to go back and do it all for a second time but managed to get it all done to the same standard. We then added titles to the opening of the video. After these finishing touches our music video is now finished.

Progress to digipak and webpage - 8/2/13

Today, on my digipak, I edited the back cover slightly so that the dark edges matched the front cover. I also added in the album title and song titles to the front and back covers. I had to choose a font that fit the ideals of indie music which was simplistic and black. I decided to use the rockwell font because it fit these requirements.

I then went and edited my webpage and changed the font to rockwell as well in order to create synergy. I also changed the youtube video template (originally a Queens of the Stone Age video) to mine and Ryan's rush cut video. 

Editing - 6/2/13

Today we finished all of the rush cuts and have put everything in place and in order.

There are a number of things we still have to fix before our music video is finished. We have to make sure the aspect ratio is correct on every clip. We must make sure every clip is properly in sync. We must add effects to make the video look better. We also need to make sure that everything is the way we want it and that there aren't any alternative clips that are better. It's now all about adding the finishing touches.

Editing - 5/2/13

Today we carried on editing the video as we went. When we got the bass narrative part we ran into a problem where one of the shots lasted too long so we wanted to speed it up. We created a video explaining our problem and how we solved it:

Progress to webpage - 1/2/13

In terms of my webpage, I replaced the home picture with a picture of the band. I also added some more pictures to the bottom of the page.

Progress to Digipak - 1/2/13

Today I began my digipak and have made a good amount of progress to it. Firstly, I decided on what I wanted for the four inside panels and I decided that I wanted close-ups of the band members. I put these pictures into picmonkey (a picture editing software) and played about with them so they looked the way I wanted them to. I decided to make them look black and white and to remove the background from each picture. I made sure I put the same effects on each picture to make sure each panel of the inside was similar. For the outside I used pictures of the whole band and made them look rather abstract and blurry. This is because the title of the album is 'Lost In Space' and the blurriness of the picture fits the title. I also decided to use black and white to fit the conventions of indie music where a lot of it is associated with the colour black.

Peer Feedback - SMART Target

Ryan and I showed what we had done so far to the rest of our group in order to receive peer feedback. They set us a SMART target which was to add some effects to the narrative part of the video in order to differentiate it from the performance. We were going to add effects on the shots after we'd finished but we decided to try it out beforehand since they'd suggested it to us. We tried experimenting with different effects to see what could make the narrative look more 'dreamlike' without going over the top. We tried many different effects but have yet to find the one we want to use. At least now we know what not to use.

Editing - 29/01/13

Today we started structuring our video and adding in our narrative. We're working through our video chronologically as we believe that this is the easiest way about going about it. At the end of the lesson we are a minute into editing the narrative. What we have been doing is adding in the narrative in the order that we want and then cutting it away at certain points in order to add performance. So far we are just doing rough editing to get it in the right order and to get the structure correct. Once we have done this we will go back and polish up all the shots, add effects, etc.

Editing - 23/01/13

Ryan and I have been editing our music video for a few weeks now. So far we have been syncing our video of the performance with the audio. It is taking quite a while because we are trying to sync up 16 video tracks as accurately as possible. One problem with this process is that each time we sync up a video track we have to render the video which takes a few minutes each time. Despite this problem, we are almost finished and will move on to adding in the narrative and editing the performance soon.

Shot by shot music video analysis - The Killers

The Killers by

Progress to webpage - 18/1/13

Today I made a good amount of progress to the 'About' page of the site. I added the first pictures into the website and wrote biographies for the band and a couple of individual members.

Progress to webpage - 11/1/13

Today I worked on my webpage for the band. I took the template that I had previously created for the home page and began adding the content into it. I added the content for the 'latest news' section, the 'about the band' section and the 'latest cd' section. I also added in hyperlinks so specific texts can link you to the different places on the website and changed the background of the website to black to match other indie band's websites. Once we have done the photography (which we plan to do next week) I will be able to begin replacing the placeholder pictures with the actual pictures that I am going to use.

What we have left to do as of Tuesday 8th January before we can edit

So far we have all of the footage from the performance and most of the footage for the narratice. Unfortunately, due to circumstances we were unable to film the footage for the bassists part of the narrative and still have that left to do. We are currently in the process of arranging the location for this. We also have to film one more part of the elevator shots where they all get out of the elevator at the end of the video. We have to arrange two more days for filming for each of these parts.

Also, this isn't required before filming, but we also have to take pictures for our digipak and we will have to organise a day to do this.