Audience feedback about our rough cut

After showing our rough cut to our peers we have received very positive feedback about it. Our class mates believed that our video is appealing because it has a strong narrative and fits with the song well. One person said "The story would be clear even if the song was not playing, you don't need the lyrics to understand what is happening", this suggests that we have been successful in following the storyline and creating a visual representation of the lyrics. It was also expressed that everybody felt a lot of sympathy for Jonny's character, as the rain, the sad music and Jonny's facial expression makes it obvious that he is upset; in addition, by showing how happy the new couple are, our audience believed that we have created more sympathy for Jonny's character as it emphasises how alone he is and shows what his relationship with Jess' character could have been like.

I also put our rough cut on facebook and asked people to give me some feedback about it. Below is a screen shot of their comments...

Similarly to our class peers, our audience on facebook have suggested that the storyline fits well with the music and lyrics, in addition it has again been said that we have successfully created sympathy for Jonny's character. I am very happy with the feedback I have got from peers on facebook. It has been very positive and has helped us ensure that our filming and editing has been successful and that our video is appealing to our audience.

Rough Cut

Below is a rough cut of our video. We watched our footage and selected the best shots to include in out video, we have edited this together and experimented with editing the exposure, contrast, brightness and saturation of shots in order to show the emotions of the characters. We have also explored using transitions in order to make the scenes connect and flow. We will get audience feedback about our rough cut so that we know what changes to make for our final video.

Editing - Transitions

I have captured a screen recording of part of the editing process - within the video I am adding some transitions to our film in order to make the video flow well, this is important as it will make our video better quality and more appealing for an audience because the change from one scene to another will be smooth.

In order to add transitions I picked three shots which I felt did not flow or connect very neatly, I then chose two types of transition from the menu; I drag and dropped these into the gaps between each shot and lowered the time each transition takes, in order to keep up the quick pace of the video and efficiently change from shot to shot. 

I chose 'Cross Dissolve' for the transition between the two dunes shots as the shots relate to one another and the transition needed to show that the two shots are connected and Cross Dissolve overlapped the two shots and then reveals the second shot. On the other hand for the change between the dunes shot and the shot of Jonny in the rain I decided to use 'Cross Blur' because this blurs the sand dunes shot and then shows the next shot; I feel that this suggests that the scenes are not related as it does not merge the shots together. For a similar reason I chose to time the first transition to 0.2s and the second transition to 0.3s in order to create a slightly larger gap between the dunes shot and the shot of Jonny, so that it would be clear that they're separate.

Editing - Contrast, Exposure, Brightness and Saturation

Above is a screen recoding of the editing I did in order to adapt a shot of the couple at the beach to look as though the weather is sunny. On the day we had scheduled to film this scene the sun was not very bright and the shot therefore looked quite dull. During the shots of the couple we want to connote happiness and love, for this reason it is essential that the weather looks warm and the shot is well lit. As the original shot is dull it would have connotations of sorrow and loneliness, so I decided to experiment with the levels of exposure, contrast, brightness and saturation of the shot, using iMovie, in order to make the shot sunny and more appealing.

Evaluating our recent days of filming

On the 21st and 24th of November filmed the rest of scenes for our music video and we will now be able to edit our video together and create the final product. The scenes which we shot were the bed scene, a conversation between Jess and Tom under the covers, and Jonny walking to Jess' house and asking her to get back together with him. These are key scenes in our video as the bed scene shows the separation at the beginning and the Jonny approaching Jess scene shows the attempt to fix their broken relationship.

Each day I wrote a diary within which I reflect upon the days filming and consider how we could deal with any issues with the filming we have done:

We will be editing our video over the next couple of weeks; creating rough cuts and receiving feedback from our teachers, peers and target audience as this will help us to ensure that our video is as entertaining, appealing and successful as possible.

How our audience consume media and how we would promote our video

If we were to create an official music video for a singer or band in real life, decisions about advertising and promotion would be essential in order to ensure that it was revealed to our target audience. This is important because if the video was promoted in the wrong places/websites then the number of views of the video would be significantly lower than they would be if the video was advertised to the correct target audience, and therefore the sales of the song would not be as successful as the artist and their team may have hoped. When creating and promoting a music video you have a responsibility to access the target audience and encourage people to watch and enjoy the video. Therefore if the music video we are creating was officially created within the industry we would have to carefully consider how our audience consume media and where would be the most successful places to advertise it.

 

In the video above I have interviewed a student in my year called Heather Scutchings, she is 18 and the A Levels she is studying are drama, photography and media studies. The questions focus on how and when she consumes media; this will help us consider how we would advertise our music video if it was to be an official video for the song.

I also did some research about the amount of time our target audience spend using different modern technologies. I found that young people,ages 13-24, spend an average of 16.7 hours a week online, excluding email, this shows that as we are targeting a teenage/young adult audience the internet will be a key place to advertise our music video. Additionally I found out that it has been suggested that teenage girls spend more time on social netoworking sites than boys, this confirms that using internet sites such as Facebook and Twitter would be successful places to promote our video because our target audience is predominantly female. It has also been estimated that on YouTube girls spend more time watching music videos whereas boys spend more time watching comedy or action short films, therefore I believe that YouTube would be a useful way to target our female teenage audience. I also discovered that young people spend an average of 13.6 hours per week watching televeision, therefore TV would also be an ideal place to advertise our video to our target audience. In addition I found out that over half of spotfy users do not pay for either unlimited or premium use, therefore over half of users listen to adverts between songs; therefore I also believe that spotify would be a suitable place to promote an atrists song, album or music video if we were to create an official video.

After carrying out these two forms of research me and Kaylee, my partner for this media project, we have come to the conclusion that the best places to advertise would be using websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. These websites are very popular amongst people within our target audience and they allow users to share, like and comment on posts, therefore if people enjoy our music video they can easily share this with their peers. Another form of promotion which we believe would be successful is during the adverts on television, from our interview with Heather we have concluded the best times to advertise would be between 5pm and 10pm as this is when the majority of our target audience are home from school and would be watching television. In addition we could advertise on Spotify and on youtube (as the video is loading) as these are both sources with the majority of music listeners use and our target audience will be very aware of.

In addition through deconstructing music videos and looking at album covers / adverts I have noticed that the majority of artists have a website where people can find pictures, videos, merch, and updates about the bands tour dates/songs/albums, in addition the majority of websites allow fans to sign up to a mailing list; this is a very useful way for bands to keep fans updated and advertise their band. An example of a website which our would be similar to is Lower Than Atlantis' website which is shown in the screen shot to the left. The address for this website is included in all of the bands advertising, such as magazine adverts, tour posters, and adverts of sites such as YouTube and Twitter. Therefore we feel that if the video we are creating was official we would always show links to the bands website in advertisements, for this reason when we create a magazine advert for the song we will ensure that a website address is included to show that if we this was an official video for the band we would show links to A Rocket To The Moon's website.

Therefore if we were to work in the industry and create an official music video for the song 'Like We Used To' by A Rocket To The Moon, we would advertise using social networking sites, magazine adverts, a website for the band and possibly television adverts in the evening, however we realise that this sort of promotion is very expensive for the majority of bands and therefore is not always an achievable way to advertise. In addition we would create video adverts to include on music websites such as SoundCloud, YouTube and Spotify as these are accessed regularly be music listeners and can be accessed on laptops, phones and newer technologies such as ipads.

Teachers feedback

I have recently spoken to my media studies teacher about how I can improve my blog, the feedback she gave me was that my blog is currently at a good standard, however if I wish to develop it further I should:

• Include more audience feedback.
• Put more pictures on of shot ideas.
• Include more pictures of myself carrying out activities such as editing and filming.
• Go into more detail about what I have learnt from the presentations I have put on my blog.
• Consider how your audience consume media and how you would advertise to them if the video was official.

In order to improve my blog I plan on making all these improvements and they will assist me in filming, editing and evaluating my work.