[DF] Evaluation (4)

• We used Blogger as a host for our academic blog throughout the planning, construction and evaluation stages. Blogger is an example of Web 2.0 which has had a massive impact on the media, as it allows democratisation since potential directors, authors and musicians can more easily and cheaply get their work published and advertised. A key part in this, and what makes Web 2.0 what it is, is greater interaction between the consumer and the web and its content. Similarly, pluralisation is a result of Web 2.0 – a media landscape in which people can more freely choose between a wider range of sources.

Our blog.

• In order to plan promotional campaign we used a variety of different methods, all recorded on the blog as we went so that we could easily refer to it at a later date. We began with secondary research – watching music videos from our chosen genre, and these we analysed in multiple ways.

• One way was a deconstruction of a music video, and later deconstructions of print advertisements. This helped up in finding out many of the things which make up these texts, and how they add meaning or affect the consumer. We also carried out technical analyses of music videos. For this we took a set of notes regarding camera techniques, duration and action of each shot in a music video. This helped us to see how many shots we really needed, what the distribution and proportion of different camera angles and shots should be to keep it interesting and also how the narrative/concept and performance should be distributed throughout the video.

• Using Adobe Premier 9, we used our storyboard to construct an animatic. Due to us changing our concept a few times during the planning, our animatic was not explicitly useful on our actual shoot, as we felt more comfortable deciding what shots we wanted on location, due to the nature of our concept. However, the storyboard and animatic were useful in gaining experience in planning out our video, and testing out concepts in a way which allowed us to get a glimpse of what the final product may look like.

• When shooting, we used a DSLR camera, allowing us to take high-quality footage and photographs, as well as change the lens easily (we used a fisheye lens for some footage), zoom quickly and smoothly and alter the focus manually. We had very few issues with the camera, however it was important for us to plan and prepare for a potential dead battery mid shoot, for which we simply brought spares, and to make sure everyone filming knew how to use it properly and keep it safe.

A shot using a fisheye lens.

• To edit the video, we used Adobe Premier 9. Some key techniques we used with this software were time stretch, which allowed us to slow down, speed up or reverse clips. We used this at various points in the video for several purposes, such as keeping the clip in tempo with the song, making a previously uninteresting shot quirky or to reuse a clip in a different way.

• Another technique we used was image control, which allowed us to alter the brightness, contrast, saturation and hue of a clip. We used this primarily to bring out the colour of the T-shirts more and in general make the colours a bit more vivid and less washed. Precise cutting was also crucial to our production.

• Many segments of the video were stop motion from clips, or two clips which needed to look like one continuous shot. In order to do this and make it look interesting and believable, we needed to use the cutting tool very precisely by zooming far in and using multiple timelines to line them up.

 Two separate clips edited to appear as one consecutive clip in which the T-shirt changes mid-shot and mid-jump.

• In Adobe Photoshop, we created our print works. The main functions of Photoshop we used were layering, image control, cropping and brushes. We used layering in order to place many images over one another, and order them how we wanted with the ability to reorder them if we needed. Image control was necessary to fix issues with lighting between the different images, for example with one cropped image having the light source from a different angle than another. We used cropping to move our images from our blue screen background onto our main canvas. Brushes were also used in order to make the background a bit more busy with less negative space, which we found detracted from the image.

• Our audience research was carried out in two main ways: online surveys through Survey Monkey and focus groups. Our online surveys were used when we wanted a larger response. We found that these were useful for closed questions, however the open questions were a bit too susceptible to non-serious answers, as a result of the anonymity granted by the internet. Our focus groups (such as our first concept pitch) were much more useful in gaining answers for open questions. 

A survey to gain feedback for the finished music video.