A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE EVALUATION (Sophie Avci)

QUESTION THREE

After showing our completed music video to our A2 media class, they filled in some audience feedback sheets (posted in previous blog posts) giving us their opinion on our video and the strengths and weaknesses that we can work on. Our class does contain mixed genders, meaning the audience feedback sheets were not all done by our target audience of females.

Below is a Wordle of their feedback. From this wordle we can see that the most common comments we have received are that our video is suitable, works well with the song, and we have good lip synching.




Our Variety of Camera Angles



Although the majority of the comments received were positive, one feedback sheet had a lot of negative comments such as 'it was difficult to watch'. We know that our music video will not be perfect as we are not professionals however we did make sure we had a lot of variety in the video, from camera angles to narrative ideas, so I think that our video was simply not enjoyed because the person does not like Kimya Dawson's music and anti-folk is not a genre he/she particularly likes.

'I'll show you who's the best'

During the actual making of the video we did ask for some audience feedback so we could alter some of the video to meet audience's needs. One section where we did this was on the princess bit where Rosa is on the bed saying 'I'll show you who's the best'. Originally we were going to have the sound down on this part and sync it so it fit with the soundtrack, however when we played it to a group of people with the sound up, they said they much preferred it with Rosa actually speaking over the soundtrack. By getting people's opinions during the production process we can alter our music video to make it more suitable for the audience.

 

Overall, I feel we had fairly positive feedback and I am pleased with the outcome. I think, however, if we had gathered audience feedback from a more wider unknown audience then we would receive more critical opinions as they would give their honest thoughts to the video.

Music Video Evaluation Question 3

For feedback we asked everyone in the class to fill out an audience feedback sheet so we could review the strengths and weaknesses of our production, we then put the comments into a wordle page.
A couple of examples of the feedback and the wordle...

Reading through these sheets and looking at the wordle we were able to see that most people enjoyed the video, only few issues were raised but we believe them to be minor. Getting positive feedback from both males and females in the room filled us with confidence too as we are aware it is a very female orientated video. The males gave just as good feedback as the girls, despite the song not being their cup of tea, they said it was appropriate.

The only real issue raised in the feedback was that the shots were pehaps too long which we probably could have worked on however the nature of the song doesnt demand the normal quick shots of a music video so we thought it alright, we see what they mean as in this shot...

theres a 9 second clip which is very long even for our genre and is possibly a weakness to our video.

The latter example of the feedback sheet we recieved stated it wasn't attention grabbing and that it was over the top but in our opinion, though we take on board the comments, that it was just a matter of opinion in song choice and as it was the only bad feedback in six, we chose to dismiss it, it did never the less say it fit with the song and it had no syncing mistakes which was nice. To target a wider audience we could of maybe used more shot variety, maybe a more accessable narrative but to be honest if the audience dont like the song theres not a lot that can be done 

During the filming stages we made several decisions based on audience feedback also for instance in the clip where she hits one of the girls in the face with a paper we asked a variety of passing spectators whether we should keep the sound on the clip or not and with a landslide vote saying we should - we did.

We did the same sort of voting technique when creating the website and CD cover too. For the website we asked numerous individuals whether a particular font worked well with our theme or not, on this occasion it didnt work so well and we scrapped it for another more popular font. For the CD cover we asked where we should put the track listings, again we went with our findings and it turned out to be better.

In many ways audience feedback was used right back in the planning stages of our production too as when we pitched our idea to the class we found out that they liked the idea of the main character riding a bike and singing like in our clip of Corinne Bailey Rae's Put Your Records On but they also like stop motion in Us by Regina Specktor, we incorporated both into our final video as these just boosted our already set minds.

A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE EVALUATION (Sophie Avci)

QUESTION TWO

Above are our completed Webpage and Digipak.

One thing we made sure we did when creating our project was keeping a continuous theme throughout. The choice of colours (beiges and sepia tones) has stayed the same throughout each section, for example:

-CD COVER: Brown wood on acoustic guitar. The beige colour on the doodled background. Natural colours in the photograph.

-WEBSITE: Natural colours in photograph (plants, Rosa's hair). Beige doodled background. Brown coloured font.
-VIDEO: Sepia on the narration parts. Countryside looking locations.

There are a lot of things that are present in more than one of our three products, some of these being:
-Rosa - as she is the artist we wanted to have her in all three products so the audience recognises the artist straight away.

SAME LOCATION AS CD COVER

-Costume - we decided in every photograph to have Rosa in the same costume to show continuity, however we did have a different costume for part of the video to show another day in Kimya Dawson's life.

-The location - same location on the CD Cover, the website and the ending of the music video. We decided to repeat the location to show that its a personal place of Kimya Dawson's where she likes to hang out.

DOODLE

- The doodle - which Jacques and I drew ourselves, has appeared on both the CD Cover and the Website. By doing this it looks more professional and shows that Kimya Dawson has a specific look that makes her unique. When looking at Kimya Dawsons website, there is also animated images so we have kept Kimya Dawson's personality in our products.

 

 

 When creating each product, we wanted to make sure they interrelated so on the Webpage we had a section that mentioned the CD album and also 'The Competition'. By using synergy, it helps promote the music video through other media but is seen by the same target audience which is even better. All three products which we have created have the same purpose in the sense that they're all wanting the target audience to listen to the music video. We have done this by telling the audience to watch the music video (WEBPAGE), having the track on the album (CD COVER) and when the audience see our music video hopefully they'll become interested in the artist therefore frequently revisit the Webpage

and listen to all the tracks on the CD. As well as in our own products, we have also used synergy in our music video when the youtube section comes up with all the comments. Although we didn't intentionally have this section to help promote youtube, it shows that some of Kimya Dawson's videos are on youtube for people to see.



Handwritten Font



I think overall, our Webpage, CD Cover and Music Video will definitely be liked by our target audience of teenage females. We have done various thing to aim our products to this audience such as keeping the theme quite feminine with the doodled background and having the main character as a girl so its easy to relate to. More technical aspects such as the main font (Beautiful Every Time) and our handwritten font on the Webpage are very curly and girly, and slightly animated like the font seen on Kimya Dawson's albums. Although the costume is pretty much the same throughout the video (it's the same on Webpage and CD Cover) there are a few different costumes such as the princess outfit. This costume was used, along with fitting to the lyrics, to suit our target audience of females. By having these sort of costumes, it expresses Kimya Dawson as quirky and girly which is what her music is usually described as.

Princess Outift

 

 



We had the same location in the CD Cover, Webpage and Music Video - shows Kimya's personal favourite space



This is Regina Spektor's webpage. In similarity to ours, its simple and unique. Although anti-folk artists are not all similar and infact dwell on the fact that they are individual, they all share one thing which is: they express their uniqueness through their image. From looking at Regina Spektor's webpage we can see how although she has displayed her individuality differently to Kimya Dawson, there are still some similarities. There is a picture of Regina on the homepage which shows the audience who's fanpage it is and makes it more personal. Also, similar to our music video, Regina Spektor's website promotes her album at the top of the page to catch the audience's attention first.



This is Regina Spektor's album. Like our album, it is continuous with colours as it has stayed with the blue and grey colour scheme on both Regina Spektor's Webpage and CD. Like ours, it has the artist and their instrument, however Regina's is in animation whereas ours wasn't because we wanted the audience to recognise the artist at first glance.



This is Kate Nash's CD and I think it's very much similar to ours. It has a countryside looking location, like ours and also has the artist on the front cover. To keep with quirky theme, the font used is very child like which also suits the target audience of female teenagers. The image is the main foreground which makes it more interesting to look at, however I think that the artists name should have been slightly bigger like ours to show the audience who the artist is straight away.



Unlike our webpage and CD Cover, there seems to be no continuity in the theme apart from the font used on the artists name. I don't like this idea, as when I first clicked on the website I wasn't sure whether I was on the official page or not. I think by having a continuous theme, whether its the same background or the same colour scheme like Regina Spektor's, it makes the artist more recognisable to the audience.



This is Kimya Dawson's album 'Alphabutt'. Compared to our Kimya Dawson CD, this is very dissimilar as our CD cover was a photograph rather than a drawing. The 'cute' handwritten effect on the font is very much like ours as it adds a feminine personal effect to the CD cover. When we originally looked at this album in the beginning, we liked how the title was written in the sky,  so when we created our own CD cover, we did the same.  It prevents an overcrowded look that can be too busy to look at.

 



After Kimya Dawson's original website got hacked, a new one was created. Although this means we cant compare our webpage to the original one we were using for inspiration, we can compare it with the updated version. Similar to ours, it has an animated background which represents Kimya as a fun and carefree artist which is what we were going for. Although this webpage is much brighter than ours, it's simple and easy to navigate round like ours with the links at the top of the page. We also had the name of the artist at the top of the webpage so the audience knew immediately who's wepbage we were on.



The internet has been a big input in our project and we have used it mainly for promoting our products, such as using youtube to display the video and obviously a webpage would be shown on the internet. Without the internet, it would be difficult to get people tosee our music video as we have used youtube as well as social networking sites to pass on the URL. In addition to this, we have used Blogger to keep all our thoughts and ideas in the process in an organised way.

THERE IS FURTHER ANALYSIS INTO CD COVER ANALYSIS EARLIER ON IN MY BLOG POSTS. - http://a2blockbbecysophiejacques.blogspot.com/2011/12/a2-advanced-portfolio-reflective.html

Saving our skin

I was a bit aprehensive at first, being on my own i was unsure that i could direct, film and instruct my mom all at the same time.
Despite my queries however it went pretty smoothly, the weather seemed to hold up, at least the period we needed and Rosa was prepared and granted was a lot of help by learning her lines. Having got the 47 secs we had on the storyboard in no time i thought it a good idea to get a little extra...be it a pedalling of the bike or an extreme close up of the newspaper flying throught the air.
I did face difficulties however for example the cycling of the bike pedals as in it was physically hard to film while she was moving. Determined not to go back and let Becy and Sophie down though i worked it out and resulted in lying half out of the back of the car, sweating out my own body weight, holding the tripod and camera to get just the right shot.
All in all the filming went really well though and we completed the film in plenty (a day) of time. Each of us think it will score highly. Hopefully.

Saving our skin

With the music video being handed in on Thursday the 26th and having 47 seconds of it missing at the weekend before things were looking bad for us, especially as we were all really busy the coming week.
Knowing the girls had deadlines to reach by Tuesday it seemed as though it was up to me.
When Sunday came around and no plans had been made me and Becy in particular were really worried for our final mark so it was this point that I cancelled my driving lesson and put everything else off on Monday so that i could just go out and do it by myself using my mom as transport. It had to be Monday even without the girls as it was the only time my mom could do it, plus we had to have enough time to edit.

A2 ADVANCED PORTFOLIO: REFLECTIVE EVALUATION (Sophie Avci)

QUESTION ONE







The three videos above are:
- Our completed music video of The Competition by Kimya Dawson
- The official music video of ‘Us’ by Regina Spektor
- The official music video of ‘Foundations’ by Kate Nash
As there are no official videos for Kimya Dawson, I will be comparing our completed music video with two videos from the same genre which is anti-folk. Some of Kimya Dawson's music is actually on the soundtrack for the film 'Juno' by Jason Reitman. This means that the film was most likely aimed at the same audience as we are trying to aim for.










Although Kimya Dawson is a unique music artist, there are some similarities between our video and the official music videos of other artists from the same genre. The use of stop motion is in all three videos although its used differently in our video compared to the others. We decided to use stop motion twice, once where Rosa was looking in the mirror and the words ‘fat’ ‘ugly’ and ‘stupid’ appear on the mirror and then straight after this section when the false tears are on her face. We did this by filming three separate parts, each for 3 seconds so we had enough footage to crop when editing. The first part said ‘fat’ on the mirror, the second part said ‘ugly’ on the mirror and the third said ‘stupid. To make it look effective we had to make sure Rosa stayed in the same place otherwise it would jump and the focus would then be on Rosa rather than the mirror. The stop motion in ‘Us’ had a slightly different effect as it was meant to look unrealistic and slightly animated whereas ours needed to look fairly realistic but still quirky. We felt this technique went well, however my personal opinion on the tear section was that if we had more clips in this part so they were shorter in length, it would have looked much better and less amateur.

'US' - ANIMATED STOP MOTION

'FOUNDATIONS' - CLOSE UP OF HANDS

After watching many videos from the anti-folk genre, we noticed that a variety of shot types were used, from long shots to close ups. When creating our own music video, we decided we also wanted to follow this convention to make the video more interesting to watch and to prevent repetition. In the music video 'Foundations' we really liked the close ups (for example, when the two characters hold hands) so we tried to incorporate a few close ups of Kimya Dawson such as when she closes the door right at the beginning. In the official music video of 'Us' by Regina Spektor, we really liked the high angle shot of Regina playing the piano (PICTURE ABOVE LABELED 'US - ANIMATED STOP MOTION) so we decided we wanted to experiment with a range of angles in our video. We also noticed that in the majority of Regina Spektor's music videos she would play the piano when a piano was actually heard in the music. We found both of these techniques interesting so combined the two, for example when Rosa is on the bed, we included an instrument (acoustic guitar) and took the shot from various angles to make this section more visually exciting.

OUR VIDEO - CLOSING DOOR

OUR VIDEO - ANGLES ON BED

OUR VIDEO - NEWSPAPERS IN FACE

Although the anti-folk genre doesn't apparently have any specific conventions as it is more about the individual artist expressing themselves as unique and rebelling against ideologies and major labels, there are many aspects of the anti-folk artist that are seen in practically all of the music videos in this genre. Usually there is some form of instrument, and as Kimya Dawson is always seen with her guitar, especially at her concerts, we thought it was appropriate to have an acoustic guitar in the music video. The lyrics of an anti-folk song are usually very narrative, so many of the videos (especially Kate Nash) centre on a story that is expressed in the lyrics. As we had chosen a song with a strong narration, we decided to portray the story, for example when the line ‘when I worked in retail they said I was a slob’ was heard, we showed Kimya Dawson (Rosa) working in ASDA. The main thing found in anti-folk music videos is experimentation. I find that no anti-folk music video is difficult to watch or gets boring. We made sure we followed this convention by incorporating new and exciting ideas such as Kimya (Rosa) throwing newspapers and hitting people in the face.

OUR VIDEO - CUSTOMIZED VANS

When creating the video, we had a few ‘accidents’ which turned out really well that we could use to our advantage, for example one day when filming, Rosa forgot to put the original brown boots on which were part of the costume, and instead wore some customized Vans. Although this wasn’t the original costume, we found these very suitable to the music video as they seemed like the sort of shoes the real Kimya Dawson would wear as they were cute and personalized. The biggest ‘accident’ that happened was the walking sections where the camera was really wobbly. Although we originally was going to have it smooth, we ended up using a monopod which meant it was fairly jerky when we watched it back. I do however really like this, and it works well as it makes you feel as if you are part of the scene, like you’re actually walking a couple of steps in front of Rosa.

'FOUNDATIONS' - PERFORMING IN NARRATIVE
Similar to Kate Nash, we have merged both narrative and performance together in our music video by having Kimya Dawson as the main character like Kate Nash is the main character of the ’Foundations’ narrative. We also had Kimya Dawson performing whilst expressing the story, for example when she is on the bed with the guitar she is also performing. This is similar to Kate Nash’s video ‘Foundations’ as she does the same, for example Kate performs when she is at the table playing cards with her boyfriend. We decided to follow this convention as Kimya Dawson’s lyrics are very personal to her and often have a lot of narrative to them so we felt it was common sense to have Kimya Dawson as part of the narrative in the video.

Problems with uploading

This week, our music video was uploaded to youtube, however it seemed as if it was an incomplete video as the sound on the video clip was turned up in some places and a few random white clips were flashing halfway through. After going to the teacher to ask whether they had uploaded the correct video, we watched the video back on their computer and these problems were not visible and the white flashes occured in a different place instead. As our teacher had already seen the completed video where these problems do not exist we have just left it as we think it's a problem with the file rather than what we have actually created.