A2 Media Coursework Evaluation

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A2 Media Coursework Evaluation

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Music Video Audience Feedback

I conducted this survey in college at lunchtime. I asked 100 students the following:

1) Did you enjoy the video?
93% Yes 7% No

2) Do you think the video reflects an RnB song?
100% Yes

3) Do you think the video looks professional?
83% Yes 17% Could be improved

4) Would you change anything about the video? If so, what?
85% No 15% Add more scenes of artist doing other things e.g driving

5) Do you think the video accurately reflects the song?
100% Yes

I feel that the results of this survey are very important as it is fundamental in the marketing of a new artist to use audience feedback to make improvements, however as i conducted it in college, I was only able to ask a small age group (16 - 19) of our demographic and feel that if I had conducted it in a public place and included older members of the audience, the results would be more accurate.

Lizzie - Save the Pain

Audience Feedback - Digipak

I conducted a different survey from my partner a we felt that by doing two, we'd have a better indication of which digipak is more appealing. I went to Brent Cross Shopping Centre with printouts of both digipaks and posters and asked 100 people the following:

1) Which cover do you prefer?
59% Amanda's 41% Mine

2) Which back cover do you prefer?
62% Amanda's 38% Mine

3) On your digipak of choice do you feel any improvements need to be made, if so what?
66% No Improvements necessary 33% suggested minor improvements on the inside covers

4) What genre of music do you feel these digipaks are for?
92% RnB 8% Soul

5) Would you purchase/download your digipak of choice?
81% Yes 19% No (Do not like RnB)

From this survey I have come to the conclusion that Amanda's digipak is more appealing, both our digipaks successfully depict an RnB album and those who like RnB would buy one of our digipaks.

Our final digipak and poster is Amanda's, I feel that it will attract our target audience better than my own and looks more professional.

My Partners Digipak & Poster

This is my partners digipak and poster, I find it very effective indeed. The image used on the front cover is memorable and attracts the male gaze and the black and gold designs look really luxurious and proffesional. I personally prefer my partners design to my own however to ensure we choose the correct design, we will conduct a survey.

My Digipak & Poster

I decided to use the close up face shot of the artist as the front cover of my digipak. As mentioned previously, this is very typical of female RnB CD covers. I feel that the image is particularly effective as the use of eye contact will attract the attention of the audience and the parted lips are typically seductive attracting male members of the audience. Her tousled her gives a 'bed head' effect which evokes sexual images to those attracted to her. I chose the colour blue as it connotes sadness and 'feeling blue' which is in line with the song title "save the pain" and also challenges conventions as blue is a masculine colour and our artist is female. I used photoshop to edit the photo. The original was in colour and I decided to make it black and white as I feel that had a lot of white showing in the background and I used the copy colour tool on photoshop to add in more hair making her hair look fuller and filling the white gaps. I feel that this was successful. I also used the blur tool to remove blemishes and marks and used the eraser tool to make her teeth and eyes whiter and brighter to give an airbrushed look, which conforms to the conventions of females in the music industry as images are always edited in post production before use.

On the back cover I decided to use an image of the artist which I once again made black and white using photoshop, however I kept the artists dress blue to continue my blue, sadness theme and to also separate the costume from  the artist as all exposed skin in black and white, attracting the male gaze a term used by Laura Mulvey to describe images that invite males to look at females in a sexual way. The use of eye contact and the slightly parted lips here have the same effect as they did on the front cover. She is holding her stilleto in her hand, stilletos are notorious phallic symbols and the fact that she is holding it will also attract the attention of the male audience, even if not consciously. I placed the song titles around her body to emphasise and highlight her womanly figure. I decided to keep the background white and plain as I did not want the background to take away from the striking pose and image of the artist. The costume seen in this image also features in the music video and I feel that this effectively creates synergy between the two products.

This image will feature on the inside back cover (i.e where the disc sits) so I decided  to keep it text free as any writing would be illegible. I chose this image as once again I feel that her facial expression is quite seductive. The costume is the same as that on the back cover to create continuity and familiarity as it also features in the video. I also chose to make this image black and white as the disc will be white and blue so I do not want this image to take attention away from the CD itself.

I chose to use this image as I feel that it is quite natural image as she is not looking at the camera and is smiling. The background of the image shows typical urban buildings in London, as it was one of our aims to keep Lizzie 'British' and I feel that this image acurately portrays Lizzie as a down to earth, British artist from a humble background. This is one of the sets used in the video itself, again creating continuity and synergy throughout the product. All in all im very happy with the final product as a whole and feel that it reflects our artist successfully.

Final Storyboard

 Whilst my partner finalised the order of all the shots in our video I decided to create a new storyboard to show the changes from our original idea to our final product. I apologise in advance for the pictures as I am no artist!

 As you can see the final storyboard is far more detailed than the original. This shows that at the beginning we didnt realise just how many shots would be necessary to create a music video. This storyboard also shows our changes. Originally the scene where the girl catches her boyfriend cheating was meant to take place in a cafe, we however changed this and thought that finding out in her own house was far more heartbreaking and we wanted the video to move people. Originally our male lead was meant to be white to challenge the idea that black women and white men don't get together, we however changed this as we felt too much emphasis was being placed on the race of the couple not on the ideas behind our video.

Editing The Video

Screen Grabs - Editing the Video

EDITOR - AMANDA GANJEH

My partner Amanda used a variety of different editing techniques and styles to create our final product. Throughout the editing process I provided feedback to Amanda and we also made use of the number of students around the media department, most of whom fit into our primary audience, who we also asked to provide feedback along the way to ensure our product appealed to our target market.

This is copied from Amanda's blog to show the process she used to edit our final product.




A screengrab from shooting the singer's solo scenes. Clearly you can see that the effects used are the compound blur, levels and brightness. This is done to enhance the quality of the image and to make the singer look more attractive as well as making the background more attractive. I believe this will appeal to the audience as a music video especially as it's visual so effects and attractiveness of singer and scenery is vital.

 

I have provided some before and after screen grabs of the editing I did on the video. It is rather common for people to shoot a scene or a video or even take pictures and think they look good in camera but once uploaded the picture or clip doesn't look good. It is important to either reshoot the scene or take the picture again, unfortunatley I could not reshoot the scenes due to busy schedules so I had to edit the scenes that didn't look good as best as I could more than all the other scenes.

First scene that didn't look good but was vital in the sequence was the intimate bedroom scene.

 BEFORE

 AFTER

As you can see before it was barely visible, everything was dark and the two actors could hardly be distinguished especially as it was filmed in a dark setting. What I decided to do was add a brightness effect (Brightness= 5 Mix= 42) so that the actors could become visible however this made the image come out very grainy and a terrible quality so I added a compound blur (Amount=4) This smoothed out the image a bit to give it a better quality as well as that 'dream' effect that all the narrative sequence maintains consistently throughout the video. Lastly I tinted the picture (Grey 44% and Amount 90) to give the effect of a dream or past reality that I had originally planned the whole narrative to contain. I did attempt to add other effects and brighten the picture further as best as I could unfortunately this was the best I could edit this shot due to the circumstances of the shot.

 BEFORE

AFTER

There was nothing wrong in this shot as the angle was correct and the quality was fine. I added a Grey tint 44% and a compound blur Amount 4 to keep the narrative efffect I mentioned earlier. I used this effect for a reason to create a dream like story for the narrative to not only seperate the narrative from the singer's solo scenes to avoid confusion but also create a more interesting visual for the narrative. The connotations of a tint on a narrative are that it does create either a surreal or alternate reality or even potrays the past. This was what I was trying to create a past tense narrative that that would also be an interesting thing to watch. This would keep the audience watching and listening thus marketing the product at the same time.


Here are some further edits made on the video for various different reasons.

BEFORE

AFTER



As you may see there wasnt much difference before and after the effects in these snapshots. That is because the effect was added just to create complete continuity with the whole sequence. This helped create a dark intimate setting with a hint of romance for a dark n romantic scene.

BEFORE

AFTER

There was an edit made on this scene because as mentioned earlier, the background and the whole shot seemed dull and therefore may have led to the audience not finding this scene attractive to watch. The following effects were added: Compound Blur= Amount  and Levels with a Gamma of 1. Unfortunatley with this effect and the sunlight on the actual day  affecting the shot, it created a shine on the singer's forehead. After a while trying various different effects I wasn't able to reduce the shine so I believe that this was the best effect for the shot as far as this shot could get.