Evaluation

In many respects our music video sticks to many of the conventions developed in the media form. We chose to use a style as we thought that it would fit the music that we had chosen and it was one of our first ideas and we thought it was perfect for the song. This choice does slightly challenge conventions as usually it would have been with a part performance to show the band playing the song. We chose not to do this because we thought the story we chose would have a lot more emotion if it didn't have the performance element of it and we think that the video is at an advantage because of our choice. The song doesn't start with the video at the beginning it waits until the camera is in the car, this challenges the convention that the song starts with the video. This gives an extra effect to the video that adds to it. The CD covers fit all of the conventions of digipak, has the name of the band and the track and it has a picture of the band or characters from the music video. The poster fits most of the conventions of band posters, it has an image to show the emotion of the piece and it shows the name of the song and the band name at the top in big lettering.

I have made sure that the digipak design and poster design complemented the video, to try and do this i used screen shots from the video to use in the designs for my poster and cd cover. This makes sure that there is a relationship between all of the products i have designed. You would recognise that these products are connected. When i was making the designs for the posters and digipaks i was all the time thinking about the video and how i could link it back to video so they are designed as a set.


The audience feedback we have learned that we have done many things well but there are still points that we could have changed to make our video better. One of the major bits of criticism we received and would have liked to have changed would have been the shots of Natalie inside. They where thought to have been too dark and didn't get across the feeling we wanted it too. We would have liked to filmed it again but we couldn't because of time restraints. Another bit of negative feedback we got back was about the last shot at the end of the film when it goes to the scene across the lake. We liked that last shot because we thinks it sets the scene at the end and puts the air of doubt about the end rather that ending on the shot of the ripples on the lake. The last piece of criticism was about the very beginning because of the close up of the name Nero way that could seem to be important to the story where as it is just the name of the road. The rest of the feedback was very positive. People seemed to like the idea behind the story i think it is because most people could relate to it, being the emotion and the passion. They also like the way that we carried out the ideas that we had. Audience liked the effects we had used to show more of the tension that was being built up in the song and the video.


I used different forms of technology throughout my project, I think it started with the use of youtube to look at other music videos, YouTube makes it very simple to see a lot of music videos without charge and quickly. The main piece of technology used was used to edit our video. For this we used Final Cut Pro, The editing software from apple. During my AS course I made a video for my website and i used windows movie maker, Final cut pro is a more professional software and meant we could complete our video to a high standard. We found it hard to use at the beginning of the editing process but it got easier the more we used it. James was at the controls throughout editing but we where all there to make the decisions and all learned how to use the equipment. The hardest points to do with the editing was the time it to complete to the standard we expected of ourselves. There where many points where we new what we wanted to do but we didn't have the knowledge to do it. In these cases we used an Internet guide to see firstly if it was possible and secondly how it was to be done. There are many effects on Final Cut Pro, we played around with them but there weren't many of them that we used because we didn't like the effect they gave. We used live type to get the writing at the beginning and the end of the video on there. Using a different programme meant there where many choices of typing that we could have gone with but we went with the very simple white text. When we had finished our video we put it onto Facebook and youtube so we could get some more audience feedback from those sources. I used photoshop to make the computer designs for my digipak and poster. I had used this programme last year so i had in idea of how it worked so it made it easier to get the effects that i was looking for. The resulting effects of that is that they where relativity quick to make and to a good standard product. Because of the lack of footage I found it hard to evaluate what we had done to the storyboard because there where shots we had planned to go on for longer that we couldn't stretch to do. This means that the video appears very different to the storyboard but we did have allot of the same shots that we had planned.


I have very much enjoyed the proses of planning and making our music video, I have learned mostly about the importance of planning. This doesn't mean we got it all right as we didn't plan exactly how much footage we would need. At points we where struggling for footage and had to use the footage we had creatively to get enough to fill the length of our long song. We also had to add extra shots from our story line as that didn't give us enough time. We should have also tried to get our video completed sooner so we could have had more time to make changed e.g. film different shots. We did start early with our filming to try and have it completed well before the deadline but because of the trouble we had with editing to start with we where quite close to the deadline. The genre of the song effected the story that we ended up shooting, the love theme is much more apt to the indie style rather than say Rap that would have a very different story for the video. By having James in our group this also helped us understand the genre more and how the video shpuld look.