Final Artist Feedback and Comment on Digipak

I emailed the final music video to Emily and this was her feedback:

"The final thing is great! Love the changes you've made, it's a lot more fluid throughout!"

I also asked her if she had any ideas for album names as I need it to be something related to her personality and music. She said:

"I'm working on a concept double album 1 acoustic based called, 'peace and prosper', and 1 an eclectic mix of electronic, heavy, full band etc called, 'roots and revolution'. Nothing set in stone of course but it's the way I've always wanted to present my work- I don't think I have a 'genre' other than acoustic at the moment because it's just me and my guitar".

Therefore I will experiment with the title 'peace and prosper' for the front of the digipak as it is something she already has in mind. It also forms a collective identity for all the songs so it fits well with the acoustic genre.

Feedback from the artist

"I've watched the first draft and your first round of feedback ... and I'm so pleased you chose my song as the soundtrack for your video. You've done the track an incredible justice, and your ability to critique your own work and creativity rivals mine even now at 22. I agree with the changes that might need to be made, but nothing that you hadn't already identified yourself. Seriously, you've done an amazing job, and your attention to detail means that you won't ever go far wrong! I'm excited to see subsequent drafts and feedback, and obviously I can't wait to see that final product! I'd love you to storyboard a track of mine called 'Berlin', when things with A2 and uni applications have calmed down, and when I finally film it, I'd love you to direct it!"

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Emily's feedback was largely very positive and flattering! She has agreed that the parts of the video I highlighted to her (the missing parts and the feedback from the audience) need to be altered in order to improve it. I'm pleased that she felt I did the song justice as this was the main thing I wanted to achieve. I will continue to edit the video in order to make sure I follow the audience feedback and improve it. 

Re-filming and Footage Review

On Thursday 2nd January 2014 I re-filmed the performance parts of my music video. I did this as the feedback I was given in the screening stated that I needed to get rid of the garage door in the shots of Sophie. To ensure that the quality of the footage remained high I re-filmed it to avoid cropping and distorting the current images. I also filmed the extra clips that I was missing in the first edit as I had gaps in my music video. I will proceed to re-edit my music video and create a second draft.

First Screening

I screened my music video in order to gain feedback from a range of audience members - predominantly my target audience. To gain a wider perspective I screened the video at college, where a mixture of students and teachers came to watch, and online where audience members answered a short survey. I collected the results and came to some conclusions based on the questions I asked:

As I am currently still waiting for feedback from Emily Denton, I will begin to act upon some of the advice already given. I plan to re-film some of the scenes with Sophie to cut out the garage door and have a wider range of shots. What's more, there are a couple of additional shots I plan to film in order to make the narrative slightly more understandable. 

Focus Group Feedback

Today I had a focus group discussion with Lilly - someone who fits the audience profile that I am looking to make my music video for. I began by showing her the video for the first time and recording her initial reactions. I then asked for her opinions on different aspects of the music video, allowing me to get first-hand, raw feedback. I will add her feedback to the bits I got from the screening and survey results to get a good understanding of what to alter in my music video.

Overall Project Schedule

Screening: Preparation

In preparation for the screening of my first edit on Tuesday I have created a poster to advertise it around college. By advertising the screening I will have more varied people attending and therefore get a wider opinion on my music video first draft. I used this screen shot of my music video for the poster as it could make people wonder why Heather is laying on the floor and what my music video is about. I added in all the necessary details and put them up around college in places where people would see them.

The next thing I did to prepare for my music video screening is create a questionnaire hand-out. I did this in paper format as it would be impractical to get each audience member to log in and fill out an online survey. I ask quantitative and qualitative questions in order to get different forms of feedback and gauge the appropriateness of my music video for the genre I am doing. This also gives me opportunity to get feedback on specific parts of the video that I'm unsure of and get general feedback from the audience. I will hand these out prior to the screening and collect them in after so I can collate the results and make improvements.

EDITING PROCESS: DRAFT 1

The first draft of my music video is now finished and I am ready to screen it to an audience in order to receive feedback. Once I had imported all of my clips I sorted them into bins (left) so it was easier to find clips when editing. There was a slight technical problem where some of my clips imported twice (hence why I have so many). After I sorted them into bins I began editing the narrative parts of the video:

This is my timeline with the narrative parts edited. It took a few hours edit down and line the clips up exactly to where I had planned for them to go. There were a few parts I had to swap around or cut due to timing issues. I had to make the part where Heather is getting ready slightly shorter as there wasn't enough time to include the full duration of every shot. I'm particularly pleased with how the shots turned out where the still image converts to a moving image. I used a cross dissolve transition effect which blurs and blends the picture into the video well. To make this transition more visually appealing I had to increase the brightness of some of the still images as they were quite dark after filming outside. I'm also pleased with how the ending turned out, especially the birds eye view shot of Heather laying on the ground. I added a fade to black at the end after the tablets as I thought this looked better than the video suddenly ending. This fade has also been seen in many of the music videos that I analysed when I was doing my music video research. 

Once the narrative parts were finished I added a new video track for the performance parts. Essentially, I decided to have a performance part to my video as many artists with a similar genre included a narrative and performance aspect to their video. I spent another few hours lining up the audio of the clips and the music so the lip syncing looked correct. Overall, I'm happy with how these shots turned out once edited but I will be gaining some audience feedback as to which video overlay to add onto them. Currently I think the jump between the narrative clips and the performance clips is too different and looks odd, so I think adding an overlay will help this jump.

Before I gain audience feedback I will construct a questionnaire for people to fill out as they watch it.

FILMING: DAY 3 // FINAL FOOTAGE REVIEW

I originally planned to film my music video over 2 days, however due to the weather conditions and actor availability I had to extend it to 3 days. I also had to make some changes to the location of my video and revert back to my original plan of filming in front of a brick wall. This is because each time I attempted to film the lighting wasn't correct or the weather was bad and I wanted to ensure that the visual aesthetics were correct. I decided to film in Sophie's garage as the single spot light was effective and the wall was almost like a stage. I included parts of the metallic garage door and got her to sit on a short stepladder in some scenes as I felt that this added to the rustic appearance of the shots. I kept the varied shot types the same as these were common for the genre of music video that I am creating.
Below are some stills from the footage of Sophie:

Music Video: Footage Review 2

After reviewing the footage I am happy with most of it. There are some shots which are slightly dark because the lighting I was using outside wasn't the best, however this can be rectified when I begin editing by changing the lighting on Final Cut. I also noted a mistake with the pictures I printed to go into the moving images as I realised I did a couple of the wrong ones. However, this isn't a big issue and I can still use the ones I did instead. Below are the screen shots of footage I got:

FILMING: DAY 2

The second day of my filming went to plan - I had to film the parts where Heather gets the memory box and when she lays outside on the grass. I began to set up the shots at 5:00pm and Heather came round at 5:30pm. Filming took a total of 2 hours and I managed to get all the bits I needed filmed. I can now begin editing the narrative bits of the music video after reviewing the footage to ensure it's okay.

Final Proposal: Pulling Ideas Together

As a summary of my music video ideas and concepts I have decided to produce a final proposal. 

Synopsis
The idea for my music video centers around a female with an illness who slowly deteriorates throughout the video. At the outset she is seen to be getting ready for a party but she is unsteady on her feet and not sure that she wants to go. Nevertheless, she goes to leave her house but suddenly decides to return home shortly after leaving as she doesn't think she's ready: "Even thinking about going out alone makes me wan't to say/ No I'm going to stay home". She rushes back upstairs, at which point we see a flashback to her making the decision to miss a crucial hospital appointment in order to go to the party. It then flashes forwards to her getting a box of old memories and going to sit outside with them. She opens the box, lights the candles and looks at the pictures. It cuts to a scene where she is sprawled on the grass, candles still lit and photos around her. There's a pan up her arm and an empty pill bottle is shown near her hand with only a couple of pills scattered on the floor. The video ends on a cliffhanger. 

Performance
I have chosen to break the video up by including a performance aspect. Sophie will be playing Emily; playing the guitar and 'singing' along to the track. I will film her when the sun is setting to ensure the light works well. The location I am using for this is on a bridge, my reason for this is because it's a metaphor for Heather's character: she is crossing the bridge from illness to possible death due to the decisions she's making. 

Camera Angles and Editing
Although not explicit, I am using the camera angles to signal Heather's deterioration in the music video. The shots of her passed out on the grass are all high angled which makes her seem inferior and weak (due to her illness). The shots of her during the narrative are also positioned at a slightly higher angle and they gradually look down on her more to represent her character's decline. The cuts are mostly straight jump cuts but there are a few transitions (see shot list for extended information on transitions). 

Music Video: Footage Review 1

Today I imported my footage onto iMovie in order to screen shot the still images I need for the second half of my filming. I reviewed the footage as I imported it in order to know which, if any, parts needed re-filming. There are a couple of continuity and filming errors that I noticed whilst reviewing my footage - I will come up with solutions in order to fix these. Above I have put together a short section of some of my clips for a particular scene to gauge whether the continuity flows smoothly. I noticed that Heather's jumper is slightly raised at the back in one scene and lower in the next - this could be problematic but I added the shot of the diary in between them to disguise this fact. What's more, I noticed that my arm was visible in the mirror of two of the shots - I shall crop the side of the shot to rectify this. As well as simply putting the shots into an order I added a blue overlay and altered the contrast and exposure to experiment with the appearance of the colours for when I edit the final thing on Final Cut. 

I am planning to film the second half of my music video within the next couple of weeks so I can begin editing my first draft. In the mean time I will begin working on my digipak and continue finding the last few props I need for the ending. 

Below are some stills from the footage I have so far: