QUESTION 3 - what have you learned from your audience feedback

[VIDEO OF AUDIENCE ANSWERING QUESTIONS]

Feedback from our audience is essential as these will be the main consumers of our product, and it is important that we know what they are expecting in order for it to be a success. All compliments and criticism have been useful in the development of our music video.
The feedback from students was mostly positive which we found a huge delight as our target audience for a music video is ages 16-30. We asked questions to find out what we could improve in our video to make it more pleasing/interesting for the viewers. We discovered a key positive aspect of the video is the locations and style of editing which makes the audience feel disorientated to give the effect of partying. Another aspect which was noticeably commented on was the artist performing alone through out the whole video. The main concept of our video was the highlight an individual/independent women having fun in her freedom and not needing a man to rely on. The fact that the independence of the artist is noticeable meant that our dominant message has been clearly received.
The negative feedback was mostly about the lack of cut aways. To improve this we researched house music videos on Youtube and found images that commonly occurred in each. We noticed the artist or characters in the videos to be in sunset hours/ night time which we felt emphasized our characters freedom which we were trying to imply. We also decided to use various locations rather than just black and white studios and then one location. This meant more cutaways and images to look at as well as again showing the concept of freedom that the independent character has.

THINGS WE IMPROVED:
ADDING IN ARTIST IN NUMEROUS LOCATIONS


NATURAL LIGHTING - JUST GETTING DARK

                             

These are some ideas i have screen captured from other music videos of which i think will look effective in our music video and would be conventional for our chosen genre House.

 

This is a shot of an industrial motor way. I think this would be a good cutaway from the artists face for our video. It gives an urban feel and relates to the genre of house. With speeding cars it could work with the pace of the beat in our chosen song. It would look especially effective in reverse to tie in with the meaning of the title 'reverse skydiving'.

 An image of the artists silhouette with a urban glowing back ground behind to emphasize it. Again this would be an effective cutaway for our video and it seems as though the character is out late and could possibly connote she has been partying. The genre of house is commonly associated with these kind of images and so adding images like this to our video would be conventional.

When receiving feedback on our ancillary tasks (album cover and advertisement) it helped us to improve a lot of aspects. For the advertisement we were told that our colour schemes and images didn't compliment each other nor did they fit with the house genre. The image was taken from a blooper in the creation of the video. The artist has brightly coloured pink hair. The rest of the image was in black and white and above a white back ground with the album name in a bright blue circle. We then re-created the advertisement a numerous amount of times un till we felt it fitted perfectly. The image is now a black and white floating head facing away from the camera. The hair colour is not noticeable but the style of hair could be associated with being rebellious which reflects the idea of freedom. The circle with the album name is no longer bright blue but is instead a thin lined grey circle with a simple font stating the artist and album name. Keeping a simple colour scheme meant that the audience can have an individual opinion on the style. 

BEFORE IMAGE OF ADVERTISEMENT: AFTER IMAGE OF ADVERTISEMENT:

The album cover received much more positive responses and needed less improvements. The title of the album is 'Spirit' and the song we made a music video for is called 'reverse skydiving' so we conventionally decided that the images on the album cover needed to reflect these titles. We created a space/universe explosion by mixing food colouring with washing up liquid and milk and took pictures using a HD DSLR nikon camera so that the images were defined. At first all of the images on the cover were different but after gaining feedback we discovered that making every image the same would look more effective. We then edited and inverted the image of space/universe explosion so that the colours fitted out genre and dragged it out to cover the whole album cover. Over the top we added text which states the songs on the album. Having decided from feedback that the multiple images looked unconventional for house we improved it.

BEFORE IMAGE OF ALBUM COVER: AFTER IMAGE OF ALBUM COVER:

construction continued

Construction Sliderocket

Dark Room Lighting Experiment

In the shot below we filmed in a dance studio which was used as a dark room effectively, this allowed us to experiment with dynamic lighting using a spotlight and a cover over it. Then we used the cover to allow certain amounts of light to be released and projected onto our performer Rae, at the same time we were moving the light in the movement of the music.

bad test shots

 These shots are supposedly the black studio shots for our music video (testers). The mise en scene of the shot is not what we want and does not emphasize the artist in any way like we would like it to. The back ground is supposed to be completely black with a light glowing on the figure. As we used small ordinary lamps, a shadow has formed behind me which does not look effective especially for a music video. The image is slightly pixilated due to the low level lighting and unfortunately this is not the actual black studio we were hoping to use and so we just played around with/practiced the placing and performance. However, my placing within the shot is way to simple and basic for a house genre. I am not in costume, hair and makeup making it difficult to get the full effect.

Construction

whilst setting up the white studio scene, we had to prepare the white sheets and ensure they had no creases which could be picked up on the camera. These images show i and my group ironing the sheets to make the shots exactly how we wanted them.

We were fortunate enough to have a dolly track to help up with our filming. We placed the camera on a tripod which could be moved backwards and forwards on the track. This meant we could have smooth transitions for this particular scene/location of shots. To the right of this image is the edge of a massive filming light we were also lucky enough to borrow. This was the main lighting and gave the shots a high level glow on the artists face.

I held up a white piece of paper to help with the adjusting of the lense against a white background. By doing this, jacob could play with the brightness of the camera and to make our shots the way we wanted them to look.

These are a few of the lights we had to light the white background. They gave a bright effect to the shots as they reflected off the white. They also highlighted the body image of the female figure which is a common theme with in our music video.

 We played around with the monochrome effect out 

doors infront of a brick wall for an urban effect. 

These are only testers for our album with the incorrect 

costume. We played around with the natural lighting to 

create a natural feel to the image.

This is the set up of the white studio before the massive 

white sheet was pinned up for the background. You can see the

 tracking device we used for smooth 

close ups and distant shots.

permission

 

This is an email to the head of the drama department (Mr Walsh). The email includes us asking for permission to use the dark drama room for our black studio scenes/shots within our music video. It is important for us to book the location so that we are not disturbed and so the owner is aware we are on this specific location at that particular time.