Evaluation question 1

When were making our video, we did research and took some direct inspiration from other rock bands, such as the foo-fighters. This can be seen as early as our opening shot, which consisted of our members playing guitar and drums. We considered leaving it blank until the lyrics kicked in, where we could start off with our narrative. However as we ran out of time to do a proper narrative, we decided to just stick with the original idea of close up instrument. This is a common convention seen in many rock videos. The direct inspiration for our particular video is the pretender by the foo fighters. Look at the uncanny resemblance.  

This is seen commonly throughout music videos, but we're using a rock song, so I've used a rock example.

Another example would be the close up shots we used. All genre's, and when you think about it, all songs use this at least once. We were no exception, taking the opportunity to show off our lip syncing, much like the pretender video.

As the above this is an example of the foo fighters, this is an example of one of the many times lip syncing was used in pretender video.

However, we did go back and redo our poster. We aimed for the silhouette effect, and tried to make everything look all around better than the previous incarnation.

Though ours may be of lower quality, we followed a few conventions When we did it, we did some basic things such having the band pose, and a website to direct people to. However, ours was different in the fact that we had lower production and a QR code, which have faded out of popularity.

 However, overall we tried following as many conventions as we could, since being entirely original would be difficult to do with our experience and time-frame.


Thriller:
For our thriller, we had to follow certain conventions. We did research in various ways. We watched various classic thrillers such as psycho, the birds and North by northwest.

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 3

We took our audience feedback very seriously. We took some of the feedback and applied it to our rough cut and used it to try and improve it to the best of our abilities.

As this was the most diverse question, it was also the hardest to follow. We tried our hardest to cater to these criticisms, but some of them were outside our control, such as the song used, and complaints of where the filming took place, since we already had one picked and few places to readily film at that point respectively.  However, the correctable ones such as more shot varieties, we tried our hardest, re-filming when possible. 

After we made some corrections to our rough cut, and made our final piece, we asked people what they thought of the product. While we couldn't really go out and re-film, and a looming deadline, we considered a majority of  okay's to be preferable to a majority of bad's. However, if we follow the feedback, we may be able to get more goods, though I won't hold on to it.

These opinions were some of the most important ones for us. Unlike the 1st one, where that was high or low points reading suggestions between the lines, this was clear cut improvements. The ones we took note of  mostly are transitions, or the fact that they should be removed, and the fact that shorter edits and faster transitions came up twice, so we took that to heart and followed through on it. 

This is our final question, and the fact that we got this many maybes is a better out come than we expected,

Evaluation question 4

Here is the evaluation of the hard/software used at various points in our project. I will first go through the hardware, and then the software.


   Hardware: Planning

   During the planning phase, the hardware we most used were CAMERAS and MACS.

   Cameras
  The cameras were used to show our proof of work, and the evidence can be seen on this very blog.  We used 2 types of camera: A camera attached to the video camera we used, and an iPhone 5s camera. We used the video camera for our proof photo, and the iPhone camera was used for the advert photo. However this caused some minor hassle when we had to upload the photo off the iPhone.  However the quality of there iPhone camera was pretty good for a phone camera, and the video camera lived up to expectation.                                              An example of the video camera we used to both film, which will be talked about later, and what we used to take the photo to show proof of progress. it was a decent camera, though some photo's came out a bit dark. 

 This is an example of the type of iPhone we used to take photo's throughout our endeavor. The camera was surprisingly good for a phone.Then the progress was recorded on a mac. The Macs were overall decent, if a little prone to bouts of freezing. The main problem was a change in controls from the windows we were more accustom to. However overall the Macs were a decent speed, and when accustomed were relatively easy to use.

      Software:

  The only real software we used at this point was Blogger. blogger is an easy to use website, and though glitchy at times was overall a pretty solid to use website. However it can be annoying trying to link other websites onto it.                                                                                                                                                    

Hardware: Filming 

 The tripod was a reliable piece of equipment, although some parts were a bit stiff at points. Overall though, very good. The camera was an integral part of filming. However, as it was not a steady cam, unless we used a tripod the footage was ridiculously shaky, meaning we was limited our potential shots as anything out of tripod range would ed up with the aforementioned shakiness. However the footage taken by the camera was overall decent, if a little low in quality at points. The camera we used for this role is the same as the camera we used to take the progress photo shown above.We also the Mac's for editing. Same as above.

Software: editing

Photoshop: We used photoshop to edit our magazine advert. However the transition between windows and macs was not smooth, and it took a while to get used to the difference  and it does show in our work. However it ran smoothly, and taught us how to use photoshop on a mac, though our lack of experience still shines through. 

Adobe premiere: This was the main tool we used for our editing. However as this was our first music video, and only have used it on 1 previous occasion we made several mistake, though we can consider this experience with relatively unused technology. 

As a summation, we used a lot of old yet familiar footage and used this as a chance to show how we've learned and improved over the last year, mainly in our editing and use of software.

             

Styles of music video.

Progress of filming and editing

    First of all we had a production meeting to discuss ideas for us to go and film, when, and where.

 
We planned to film our music video project over the christmas holiday. However due to various circumstance, with recurring themes. However, we have managed finally to get some filming done, however, we have not been able to get as diverse an area or as much filming as we would like. however, we have managed to find some symbolism within our shots, making the best of a bad situation.

    Our decisions were limited by time and locations, due to members of our team not having a lot of transportation outside of walking, and and a looming deadline assured that we had to take whatever footage we could grab, and worry about the quality of which later.

      On day 1 of filming we went over Hanault forest. however, due to our mistakes, instead of lip synching the full song, we only got about a minutes worth of footage per time. This means that although we got some decent footage whilst we was out, we had to go and get some more. This was fine as we had to go out and get some urban shots. There we got some shots of walking from different angles, to fit with the general theme of the song.

   To finish the first bout of filming, we went and got some shots of us in the band room, to imitate the look of people playing instruments. however, due to a minor mix up between shots,  two of the members swapped instruments, and due a filming taking place at a later date, there was a sudden change of clothing halfway through.

   Then we came to our first editing session. We were struggling to put together a coherent piece with accurate lip synching, so we had to go out and get more footage, especially of the band, since our current produce was disappointing with neither the lip synching or instrument playing being any good. However after we re-did the shots, it came out looking much better.

    We needed some more shots to amplify the feel of the music, so we went out to Valence park, and did some recording there, namely on the different pieces of equipment.  Some of this was removed from the final product for looking too out of place.

   Then came editing. As we edited, we came to several conclusions. As we edited, our band rooms, we had several problems with our footage. First of all, inconsistencies. The clothes of several of our band members changed clothes in between shots. We had to also redo our project, incorporate the new footage in with the old footage. As we edited we had two different projects. The rough, which is our testing to see how we could incorporate the different footage, and the proper project, which has refinements, as well as the final transitions.