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Friday 9 December 2011

Evaluation task 3





We interviewed 4 other groups and asked them for feedback on our video. The questions we ask them were;

  1. what were the positive parts to our video
  2. where are areas of improvement
  3. how does it show typical conventions of a music video
  4. how professional is our music video in terms of cinematography/editing/mise-en-scene
  5. how suited is the style of the video to target audience/style of music/ artist or band
  6. how effective if the combination of the main product and ancillary task



The majority of the audience feedback was good apart from the fact that the lip-syncing was out of time but we managed to fix this problem before we posted the video to youtube for our final music video. Also some people couldn't understand the narrative and as a group we can see where we have gone wrong in this sense, it can be unclear to some people as the Covent Garden scenes don't completely link to the begin the way we planned them to. This was because we lost our footage along the process of filming and had to change our ideas. However overall, most people understood the narrative and how it worked with the performance part of the video.




Louise: By getting audience feedback it allowed us as a group to find out the positive parts, and the areas for improvement within our music video
Bijal: In terms of audience feedback i think we can all agree with all of the comments we received. The costumes and characters that we chose for our music video we were very happy with and also feel that they fit with the style of the video. We think that they worked well in order to reach the narrative and attract the target audience. 
Stephanie:The style of our music was a pop genre and therefore the music video had to be fun and lively, the audience feedback showed that they thought we achieved this within our music video.
Louise:The audience feedback showed that overall they thought the video looked quite professional through the use of cinematography, editing and mise-en-scene. We tried our best to make the video look as professional as we could, by filming a whole variety of shots and then cutting the video to fit to the beat of the song.
Stephanie:The audience thought that we needed make our lip syncing tighter, however this was quickly amended as the music video they saw wasn’t the final edit.
Bijal:As a group we would agree that the thing that we would change was to stick to the plan better than we did, we made various changes allow the way of the filming process which ended up making it more complicated for us however we are all happy with the final product.


Evie: Due to still not being in school I was unable to partake in the audience feedback video, however fortunately I was in for the audience feedback lesson so I was able to take notes of how to improve our video and what worked well in our music video;
On Monday 28th November we dedicated our lesson to showing eachother our music video's and giving strengths improvements and the recognisable conventions. Our music video was the second video to get shown, and while watching the video we realised that our video was slightly out of time with the music as we had had difficulty when editing that when putting clips in place then the other clips which were in place would move slightly. This was unfortunate as we had our video perfect and it was definitely noticeable when the lipsyncing was out of place. However, we knew that once we had shown the audience that we would be able to put the clips back in to place.
The feedback we received was very positive which was really good as we wasn't sure how well it would be received, the strengths that the class commented was on was the performance aspect, which was good as  most of our film was based around performance, the performance was our main strength due to our cast as they were very enthusiastic and fitted the roles perfectly. Other strengths that the audience picked up on was the fast paced editing, we really worked hard on making sure we had enough shots so that we could use quick shots to edit in as we were using a fast paced song and the main convention we wanted to follow was the 'cut to the beat.' Another strength was the mise-en-scene elements, such as the costumes and the settings, we were really happy that these were noticed as we worked hard on buying the right outfits and finding the right outfits and also even though we had a couple of troubles with the locations, we overcame these problems and the locations we used was perfect for our type of music video. Also the lighting was commented on with how effective it looked, this was a bonus for us as we were lucky enough to have professional lights in the drama studio to make it look as professional as we could.
Areas for development that was commented on was the lip syncing as some of it was out of time, however we knew that we could fix this in which we did straight away once we received the audience feedback. Also another area for development that was mentioned was the quality of the shots, we used two different cameras from the school however we realised our mistake once we uploaded the footage as the quality was extremely noticeable. However, we were unable to change this as we would have to go back and re-film and it still wouldn't be guaranteed quality.

Stephanie: In today's lesson everybody showed their music videos so we could complete our audience feedback task. We talked a little about our videos before we played them, as Mr Sears asked a few questions, and then we showed them to the rest of the class - they then gave us some feedback. Our feedback was given in three separate categories: strengths, developments/improvements and how it is recognisable as a music video/conventions.
Our group was second to show our music video. The first category the class gave us feedback on was ‘strengths’ – we had a big range of features that people commented on. Our opening received a lot of good comments, as they liked the first few opening shots of the character, this was because it gave a big build up to the start of the song. The class liked the lips whistling to the music at the beginning as well, as they said it was unique and many of them hadn't seen this before.We were told that our settings were very good, especially the Covent Garden scenes - they liked that we had normal people walking around in the background, compared to actual cast; nevertheless everybody seemed to like the drama studio setting, as it had good lighting and created a fun atmosphere. Our casting received good comments, as they thought we picked it very well and that they all had a lot of enthusiasm whilst filming. Editing and framing was also a positive, Mr Sears said he really liked the group shots of the guitarist with all of the girls surrounding him, as it really went with the theme of the song - the pace of the shots was also good as we cut the images to the beat of the song.
Improvements are something that we really listened to, as we would like to improve our work as best as we can. One of the main improvements that kept coming up was lip syncing, this was because in certain places some of the actors weren't in time with the music. As a group we agreed with these comments, from lunch time and in Friday's lesson we added in the last final shots, which put a lot of the lip syncing out of place - after 5 hours of editing, we decided that it was time to go home and try and sort it out on Monday before showing the class. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to fix all of it, so some parts especially the sections with our lead female singer wasn't in sync - luckily after the audience feedback was finished, we made a few slight changes and got all of the lip syncing back in time. Although the class liked our introduction, some thought that it dragged on for a little to long and was silent for quite a long time - after thinking about it, we realised we could have maybe sped these clips up, but we still liked the original idea. One other point that was brought up from a member of the class was that they didn't understand the narrative - she went on to explain the bits she didn't understand. This was the scenes where 'Mick Jagger' is being chased and caught by the group of girls, this was our fault as we didn't plan this part carefully enough, as it should have been closer to the beginning.
Conventions were the last part to be given feedback on. The class all agreed that our music video followed most conventions, this includes having a performance and narrative, lip syncing and our editing - cutting the clips to the beat of the song.
Overall, the class seemed to like our video as it was comical and light hearted - our strengths definately outweighed our improvements which is a big positive. We took note on our improvements as we all want to make sure our work is at it's best.

Louise:This was the lesson we received all our audience feedback. We let our class watch our video. and they generated the positives of our video, areas of improvement and conventions of a typical music video. The feedback we received was really good, people found our video funny and loved all the costumes and the enthusiasm of the actors. They thought the editing was great and fast paced.
The areas of improvement they pointed out were the lip-syncing was out of time, but we were aware of this. Also some people couldn't understand the narrative in parts, such as the groupie part in covent garden so we all thought that would be an area of improvement.
Some of the conventions that were pointed out include; lip-syncing, fast paced editing, cut to the beat of the song, performance and narrative and all these were included in our music video. which showed that we tended to use the conventions a music video needed to make it recognizable.
The second part of the lesson entailed us recording each groups audience feedback, this was also part 3 of the evaluation task, I went round and filmed different groups answering a series of questions i put to them about our video. Evie and Stephanie had to be filmed by other groups, giving them feedback. After all the feedback was collected I edited it all together so i could put it on the blog.

 Bijal: Unfortunately I missed the lesson when we showed our class our our videos in order to receive audience feedback from them - their thoughts and ideas on our final piece. Luckily we filmed each groups separate feedback in detail (shown above). This allowed me to see what was said in this lesson even though I couldn't actually be there. Feedback was given in three different categories: strengths, developments/improvements and the recognisable music video conventions.

The first category was 'strengths', luckily the class seemed to like t he video as much as we did, and they saw the idea we wanted the video to portray, for example most of the class understood how the narrative worked in the with the performance parts of the video.We had many strengths that people commented on, firstly the beginning, they liked the quick introduction before the song started, as it fit in with the narrative and it gave a good build up to the start of the song. Our settings were one of the features of our music video which received good feedback, the audience liked the drama studio settings, and said it was appropriate for performance scenes and allowed us to create a fun atmosphere, the Covent Garden scenes were liked as they said that our cast in with the general public as it also created a funny atmosphere - which is what we tried to achieve. Another strength the class thought we had was our casting, they thought that we picked an appropriate cast since it fit in with the genre of our music video and they created lots of energy for the music video, their outfits and mise-en-scene also helped to create this effect.

Improvements was the next category of audience feedback - this aspect of the feedback is something we as a group focused on, as we want our video to be the best it could be, and be as professional as we could make it. The main improvement that the class agreed on, was the lip syncing on the video, from a certain point in the video, the lip syncing was slightly off, this is something we spent a long time in editing working on, and we agreed with the comments received from the class, and when we looked at our video in iMovie HD, we realised the exact point that the lip syncing was out, and we quickly made adjustments to make sure the lip syncing was tighter, and fit perfectly with the song. Another part that could have been improved were some clips in the music video dragged on for longer than they should. For a fast paced pop song, the clips should be quick and fit to the beat of the music, most clips did, however the audience thought that some clips could have been shortened, and I agree with this, we could of made the certain clips shorter in order to make the entire video fast paced. 

Finally conventions was the last category, the class in general identified most of the music conventions in our music video, they all agreed that we included conventions such as lip syncing, performance, narrative, that generally our editing was cut to the beat of the music, one person was the main character throughout, different setting, a variety of shots were used and at the end of the music video the song faded out.

Overall the class enjoyed our music video and liked it, they saw the comical, fun, light-hearted effect we were going for and tried hard to create and show through our music video. Our strengths greatly outweighed our improvements and even though we were very grateful of this, we took on the improvements and mentioned and analysed them in our evaluation tasks.

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