Digipak, Advert and Evaluation

This is our evaluation of our whole process making the music video.

Digipak And Advert

I'm having a slight problem uploading the digipak and advert onto here, so I'll pop over to the mac's at some point tomorrow to try and change both files to a Jpeg, then they should be alright to upload!

Jeni

5th January

Today we finished our evaluation and all we have left to do now is present it on friday.

Jeni, Kenny, Andy

Final Video

Jeni, Kenny, Andy, Meredith

Feedback

We have been recieving some really good feedback from those who have viewed our video online, so I thought I'd post it up on here! ..The video has been posted online purely for feedback purposes, so that it can be used in our evaluation and as social networking sites are so popular, I thought we would be most likely to get decent feedback if I posted it onto facebook.

These 4 screenshots are from the video I posted on facebook. It shows that 19 people have 'liked' it in the few days that it has been online. There are also many comments on the video from other Yale College students, teachers and ex-students and some younger schoolchildren. This feedback is extremely positive and I am very pleased with the comments people have made.

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This comment is also off facebook. My Mum posted the link of the video around in order to get us some feedback. This comment is off a family friend and is again, very positive, but also quite alot more detailed than some other facebook comments.

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'Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin:

The subject matter of the video is bang on the money this year with the 70th anniversary of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain etc. I am glad it wasn’t given the Hollywood big tears and broken hearts treatment which would have detracted from the simplicity of the story.

The locations for the outdoor sequences were obviously chosen for effect and the railway sequences did extremely well not to take the easy route of going all Brief Encounter. The use of sepia/washed out colour in these scenes to contrast with the more vivid colour of the happier times section was good in that it subconsciously resets the mood.

Costumes wise, only a grumpy ex military giffer would notice the chap wearing an Artillery Officers Cap with a RAF Greatcoat!!!!!

The outdoor sequences of the singer at 0:44, 1:51 and 2:28 don’t fit with me at all I am afraid. The singer has been ‘narrating’ from a retrospective position all through the movie, so to take the singer into the live action seems wrong. Same thing at 3:04 - though that does provide something of a link into the next section which I take is meant to show the passing of the soldier by fading him out?

The montage at the end is very good perhaps it could have been a bit longer as it does finish very abruptly, maybe that is a problem of the upload though? An arty fade out, perhaps into poppy fields a la Blackadder would leave the viewer with a more powerful image to glue the work into the mind as a remarkable, not just a good video.

The only big criticism is the lighting of the singer. The constant shift in and out got quite irritating after a while. I got the impression the light shifts was meant to mimic air raid searchlights? Thinner pencil beams against a screen in the background would be better and leave the singers face constantly lit to stop the distraction.

Overall this is a cracking effort and one which could teach the professionals a thing or two about story boarding and how a film can be lit and coloured to enhance effect.

I claim my invite to the MTV awards ceremony now please!

Graham'

This is an email from a family member of mine. He makes some valid points and offers good criticism. He is the only person that has noticed (as far as I know) that Andy is wearing an RAF coat and an Army hat, and as he says, this may only be because he is ex-military himself. The performances he talks about did have a point to them, but maybe that didn't come across as we wanted; the performances that took place in the narrative spaces, ie. the canal, were there to show Miss Mercy returning to the places of her memories alone. I'm pleased that Graham picked up on the fading out of the soldier to represent his death :)

I completely agree with what he says about the lighting. It was, as he says, to mimic searchlights, however we did not actually want the lighting to be done the way it was. All of the group agreed that we wanted the performer to be lit throughout the song. It was a teacher that made us do it the way we did.

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This is an email off Rich Brady from Denbigh Army Surplus; who is the man that allowed us to borrow the greatcoats and boots, who I am extremely greatful to!

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I'm no expert on modern music videos. I find them to be nothing more than a four minute "aren't we wonderful" shout out for groups that neither have talent nor taste. This however is very refreshing in a variety of ways.
I viewed it first without the sound (for no other reason than my husband was watching TV and I was eager to view it) and the storyline came through loud and clear...well done! I loved the idea of the steam train and the costume drama mixed with the modern shots. The production is excellent and there are several sections with fantastic perspective views which, photographically, are visually appealing. Close-ups of the singer with the dark background and dry ice (?) link with the platform scenes well. I was therefore eager to view it again with the sound and wasn't disappointed that the lyrics did fit my perception of the story from the visuals.
Congratulations, you've produced something that would hold its own against many of the modern music videos that I've seen. The production, photography and editing are all excellent.

Cordelia Galley

PS: I'm also jealous of the young lady with the long hair ... mine was that long until a few months ago and I regret that I had it cut short!!

Again, another very positive email, this time off one of my Mum's friends.

I'm really proud of our music video and am thrilled with our feedback!

Jeni

After asking both my friends and family what they thought of our music video the feedback has been really good. They said that the narrative was very clear and easy to follow throughtout the video and that the lip-syncing was on the money. They especially liked the train footage which we filmed in Llangollen and the war footage where Andy was writing a letter to Meredith.

Kenny

14th December

Once again, Meredith didn't turn up. We desperately wanted to do a photoshoot with her to get better images for the digipack and advert, but as she hasn't turned up so many times now, we've been unable to do it and have had to use the images that we have taken previously. Once again, we have to work our way around Meredith and get along without her co-operation.

Jeni, Kenny, Andy

Final Video

Video was finished and finalized on Friday and we are now getting feedback from a lot of people :D
Still waiting for an appearence from Meredith so that we can do a photoshoot for the digipack and advert!
And we also need to do our evaluation, then we're finished.

Jeni, Kenny, Andy

8th December

Due to Meredith not being in today, we couldn't take the pictures for the digipack that we needed to take. This will hopefully be done on Friday if she decides to turn up.
Other than this, the digipack is coming along well. The effects have not yet been put onto our video mainly because of people being on our computer. However, this is not a huge job, therefore isn't a huge problem.

Jeni, Kenny, Andy

6th December

Just thought I'd update the blog and say that tomorrow we will hopefully add the last effect to our music video and complete the digipack :). We will then just need to do the advert.

Playing Around With Ideas Again..

Jeni

Inside of CD cover?

I was thinking we could maybe use something like this? It's only a very rough attempt, but I think the writing works because it goes in with the whole photo album idea. So we could either choose two seperate images to put on the inside, or have something more like this....

?

Pictures don't work, but just to give a vague idea of what it would look like.

If not, we could try having a collage kind of thing: a mixture of photos from the video, photo album and tv studio, aswell as maybe the letter from Andy, and some other images that express Miss Mercy's character and star image? Let me know what you think :)

30th November

Been editing today :) Nearly done.

Jeni

26th November

We've been in the editing suite nearly all of today! And, finally, everything is all in place and all the lip sync-ing is done! All we need to do to it now is add in a couple of effects, to make the memories more..memory-like. This shouldn't take too long and can be done in Tuesday's lesson!

Jeni, Kenny, Andy, Meredith

I Might Be Going Abit Overboard With These Now..?

I quite like this one :)

 

And this one is alright..

It's just the white balance that annoys me about this picture! Her face just doesn't look right :(


Jeni

Playing Around With Ideas..

Just been messing around with some ideas really, I don't know if you'll like any of them. I think that for the front cover of the CD, we need a more contemporary picture, because Miss Mercy is a contemporary artist, and it is just the video for Who Am I Living For that is old and set in the 1940's. Or maybe we could use something like these for the advert? Or maybe we shouldn't use the at all?

I quite like the black and white, with the colour coming through. It's abit like it's in the past, with the present coming through. Same with the writing, the song title is black, but the artist name is coloured.

Jeni

Change From Original Ideas..

Just thought we should mention that; in our original ideas, we were going to have Meredith pregnant in the narrative, but we decided against this idea a while back. Thought we should clarify this, as there is an earlier post about an idea of how to portray her pregnancy..

Jeni, Kenny, Andy, Meredith

Front Of CD Cover?

Maybe something like this for the front of our CD cover? What do you think?

Jeni

Back Of CD Cover Idea

I just put these together really quick to see what you all thought? And whether this was the sort of thing we were going for? Obviously the one we do properly will look better than this one..

Jeni

Feedback And Change To Target Audience

Just thought I'd post about all the positive feedback we're getting :D Everyone who watches it seems to really like it!

Now that we've filmed, edited and watched a lot of our video, we've come to the conclusion that our target audience may have changed slightly. It still includes teenagers, but we also think that the video would appeal to up to 30year olds. We think this because the themes and narrative of the video are quite 'heavy' and slightly older viewers may be able to relate with these themes more than teenagers would. However I think the teenage range is still quite a big chunk of our target audience because they are the people who are most likely to be browsing YouTube, for example, or watching music channels.

Jeni, Kenny, Andy

TV Studio Filming And Digipak&Advert Research

The shoot in the TV studio went REALLY well today, except for us being pushed for time because of Karen giving another group half of our time in there. But, we did get everything done that we wanted. The search-light performance looks really good and effective! We've started to edit that in now, and shouldn't take too long! Then we just need to add the finishing touches, and the video will be finished for our deadline next week!