Monday 30 January 2012

task 3: what have you learnt from the audience feedback part 2


We gathered our audience feedback from YouTube comments and a focus group involving 5 students form our target age group, 2 boys and 3 girls.

What we learnt from this discussion was that they understood the video but all agreed that the narrative should have been more clear and extended. The comments on YouTube told us that the narrative needed to be more clear, that the online audience liked the dancers and that they enjoyed the retro 80’s feel to the video as well as the song choice but wanted to see more variation in shot choice.

We also heard what they thought of the digipak and poster and found that whilst it did stick to the ‘feel’ of the video they didn’t like the poster as it was to full and didn’t flow enough which I agree with as it was not complete, I will place the completed one up soon, none of them commented about the stencil being linked in the sense of rebellion.

The advantages of having used these sources to gather this information was that we could see where we went wrong in post production and editing of both music video and secondary tasks.  Having used a focus group helped us to see peoples reactions as they watched and real time answers of what they thought of the entire project. The disadvantage was that the YouTube comments could have been biased or unreal as people tend to feel protected and can say whatever they want from behind a computer, however this could come to an advantage as we had no damaging criticism to the video.

The feedback from the video showed us that people as a majority liked the dancers, the song and the style of the video as well as the colours; however it did bring to our attention that they did not like the way that we bolted through the narrative without much thought.

From feedback of our groups we found that what we had tried to encode into the video was read well, they understood that we where trying to show rebellion through teens drinking and smoking at a house party and they brought up the point that they did not find the band to be attractive, which was one of the points that we had discussed in our group to encode, this was done on purpose to display that they where sold on their musical skills as a band and not on the sexualized nature of them. This was evident when the girls in the focus group talked about how they didn’t find the band to be attractive but still said that they enjoyed the song.

We tried to encode into the video that the band are not sexualized and we did this by not shooting obviously sexualized shots like them thrusting their crotches at the camera but instead we focused more on them playing their instruments. 

task 3: what have you learnt from the audience feedback




 granted some of the comments that we received from youtube are similar but we have some that are constructive and one that comments on how we could improve. 

during our group crit I writ some of the points raised down so as to have written points to remember:

constructive/ liked: 
                the colour scheme of the video along with that of the digipak
                the neon feel
                the dancers
                they understood and read into the druggie/ experimental youth culture
                to the question of wether they would like the band live they all answered that they would go see them at a festival live rather than in the video
                they understood the look of indie ie. afros, clothes, instruments and neon light for the look. 
what they didn't really like/ understand: 
                the narrative the thought needed to be extended and done more obviously. 
                more band energy like they needed to seem more with one another and not like strangers.
                some of the girls wanted a better looking band 
                and some of the group wanted less drug culture influence in the video. 
this does however show us that they understood that the target audience was meant to be of youth experimental culture and the the band was not meant to be sexualised or even appear sexy but that we where selling them on the target audience and music.  



Friday 27 January 2012

Feedback on Task Three

Can you please complete this evaluation task over the weekend.

Feedback on Evaluation Task 2

This is a proficient task which has been completed.  I do feel that the last two slides which need to be addressing the question more closely - offer evidence to support your arguments.
Also theory is loosely formulated with your response - ie Richard Dyer or a discussion of Kotler's marketing mix.
You have branded the act well , but fail to communicate this to the audience and across your campaign.
Finally you do need to sustain the analysis by linking your production to the theory used.

task 3: what have you learnt from the audience feedback


we had a group critical analysis session with five people and after having showed them the video we asked them several questions:

What is you opinion of our star?
What did you like about our video?
What don't you like about it?
What elements do you think we could improve in our campaign?
Was the narrative clear in the video? 
Did you pick up any hidden messages and meanings?
Would you bye this album?
Would you see this band at a music festival?
Does the star image suit the band?
Would this video appeal to your friends?


Thursday 19 January 2012

SOPA law



I found this interesting as it is a law that if passed will slow a lot of the Procumer activity seen on the internet such as reused jokes (EG. Fenton the Dog, LOLcats and many more)

Saturday 14 January 2012

Feedback

What you blogged so far about the CD cover is good.  However the evaluation task is incomplete - in terms of evaluating the analysis of the music video.  Can you complete this evaluation exercise as soon as possible please.  Do also refer to the reading that we completed in class.

Friday 13 January 2012

Tuesday 10 January 2012

six pictures of the video and how they stick/ challenge conventions.


the classic band wide shot: 
This is one convention of the music video as this allows us to see the whole band.

Setting the Narrative:
This adheres to conventions as it sets the scene or setting in either a few shots or just one. We showed the setting to the narrative through several shots of people drinking, getting cigarettes out of packets and talking .

Close ups of performance:
as the picture and the name shot literally shots with close ups of the band performing.

Secondary Performance:
The secondary performance is important towards keeping the audience interested, in this case we had dancers performing a dance sequence that we shot form various angles and cut to create a dance sequence in the middle of the song.

Obscure shot that had no great importance to anything:
a shot that we placed in as a sort of reference to the 80's half feel to the music that we thought could be entertaining to some but had no great importance to the music video other than to say "look we've got a disco ball and lasers."is does however show that we know about the rule of thirds through the framing of the disco ball. 

Through Crowd Shot:
this was used as a sort of way to show that the band Lanmou was playing at the house party. We also showed that they where playing my using shots from the side of the band looking into the house party.
this shot was a track shot slightly low angle looking up onto them to give them godlike status. and make it clear that they where the star vehicle to this video. 


We decided to keep to the same feel of the video for all aspects of the advertising campaign as shown in the colour scheme and the rebellious nature of what is shown, mise en scene during the music video such as smoking and drinking amongst young teens and graffiti used for the album cover and poster.

one of the problems we encountered during the editing process was that we had messed up some of the shots and that large sections of the shots where unusable due to the footage being completely off time. we found whilst screening the raw footage that we had shots in which the framing was off for the most part, the set would cut off and so we could see lights exposed above the set.