EVALUATION Q4: HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Unfortunately, this would not embed so I had to place it as a link instead. It is my evaluation Q4.
Evaluation Q4 Link.

EVALUATION Q3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

We got the class to watch our video and fill out a form with positive and negative feedback to our music video.

This was one of the feedback forms we received back, they rated our video 4 out of 5 stars which we were pleased with. The criticism from this group was to possibly include different shots from the one's we used. This was something that me and Emily found helpful, as we filmed we were unsure whether our range of shots were enough for the criteria. However, they complimented our transitions throughout the video which was reassuring as we were also concerned about the smoothness of it, as we didn't want it to be wobbly or uneven.
  
















This is the next feedback form we got back.
These people felt that our opening shot was a little too long and should have been cut into several different shots instead of one long shot. Looking back and evaluating our video, I understand their opinion on the first shot as it may seem to last a long time. However, the decision to keep the shot for a lengthy amount of time was intentional as it reinforced the genre of soul. Normally, with soul singers the lead singer has shots focused on them for long periods of time, therefore, we felt reinforcing this would be good to show our understanding of the genre of the song. However, these people did think our lip syncing was good, which again is reassuring to know.












This is another feedback form we received.
This person gave us 5 stars overall which is really, really positive and nice for us to know. This makes us believe that all our hard work paid off as we have produced something that we're proud of and something that people really enjoy too. These people left no critical feedback for us, which is really motivating for us as it makes us feel like we have done our job properly.

From this feedback, I have discovered that the opening shot may seem a little over used to some people but the underlying message behind it outshines that for me and Emily as the producers. A lot of people like the transitions and the lip syncing which is great to know as we were most  concerned about these two elements in particular so it allows us to know that people have enjoyed our music video just as much as we do.

After speaking to several people when they have watched our video, the majority mentioned the emotion it brought them. They said that the narrative within made them feel emotional due to the real pictures of the family growing older together etc. I feel this links to the use of gratifications theory. For some audience members, they could watch our video for escapism. However, the most common reason to watch our music video would be for pleasure. This allows the audience to feel emotional satisfaction which is an outcome suggested in the gratifications theory. Our music video aimed to upset people in a positive way to make them appreciate their lives. Therefore, if the audience watched our video and felt the emotion intended, they will indeed feel the emotional satisfaction that we as the producers and directors wanted, making our video a success.

From all of the feedback we as a group received, I noticed that a lot of positive comments were about the narrative, the shot types and the lip syncing. This is very important for us to know that our finished product had the effect on the audience we wanted it to e.g. reinforcing the gratifications theory about emotional pleasure was an achievement for us as this is what we intended to do and we adhered to it. The negative feedback is useful, it's critical and depicts the more specific moments within our video. An example of this is, the long shot used at the beginning of our video. Although, we can justify our reasons for using this long shot, some audience members may react differently to it, see it as boring or not see the importance of the shot. This feedback although, not as positive is still essential so that next time we were to create a video we know what not to do and what to exceed in without boring our target audience.

EVALUATION Q2: HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TASK?

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EVALUATION Q1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Our finished album cover and insert booklet.

Here is our finished album cover, front and back and the insert booklet to go inside the CD case. I have included several pictures to show it from different angles. There is synergy between my video, my CD case and my website which is another reason as to why I have included the amount of photos as I have. It allows you to see the similarities to the other two finished products.

Our finished music video.

Unfortunately, due to copyright reasons, our music video has been blocked on Youtube due to Adele's copyright's. We will send the video to the examiner through a different format to ensure that they see it.

Our official Adele website.

Here is the link to our official Adele website, this includes images from her recent music video, Youtube clips and upcoming tour dates around the world. http://adeleofficialwebsite.weebly.com/

Editing our film/photos from editing.

This is a photo from editing that we took. As you can see the main picture is the lead singer (Adele) but over lapping the photo is a shot of a variety of pictures. We did this by turning the opacity down so that it enabled the shot to fade over the image but not too much that it took the attention away from the singer. This was useful as it challenged our editing ability but also made our video more effective and look more professional.

Our risk assessment.

We had to fill out a risk assessment to ensure that where we were filming would not be a hazard to us or anyone taking part in our A2 music video.

Our shooting schedule.

Here is a photograph of our shooting schedule for our A2 media production.

Analysing Adele's website.

When you first go to Adele's website, you go to this page and it gives you several options to select from. Offering her tour dates, Cd's, Vinyl's and video footage etc.
Obviously, this will make the viewer of the website intrigued to find out more about Adele and her recent performances etc.





This was the next page I was faced with, this gives Adele an authentic feel to it, but it also shows Adele's new and updated style of to her fans. It allows you to click to view the full photos from her Vogue shoot.





If you scroll further down the page you see Adele's performance of the song that we intend to do for our music video. This video link is useful for viewers as it gives them direct access to her video's and new songs.




If you scroll further down the page, there is a letter from Adele to the audience discussing her new album and her inspiration for the songs and the album overall. This is effective as it gives an insight of Adele's true opinion (word for word) of how she feels about her career and clears up any rumours that may have been spreading prior to the album release,

When thinking about our own website, it is essential to look at our singers website to see what kind of style they go for themselves. It is clear from the images shown that Adele's website seems very old fashioned and gives a 'rustic' feel to it. However, we obviously want to make our website and album cover very unique to make it grab the listeners attention and make them want to buy the album and visit the website etc. 

Letter for copyright.

Dear Sir/Madam, 


I am writing to you to request to use 'When We Were Young' by Adele for my A2 Media Studies coursework production. 


Our task is to make a music video to an existing song. The song will be for non-profit educational purposes and only used for the purpose of educational assessment and will be transformative in that no copyrighted material (other than the song) will feature in the final music video. Furthermore, it will be clearly labelled as a production for this purpose. 


I hope that this request will be viewed by yourselves as fair and proper use under existing copyright guidelines. If you have any further questions regarding its purpose, please contact my teacher at welchch@tuptonhall.derbyshire.sch.uk 


Yours sincerely, 

Charlotte Howes.

Deciding on our audience.

This explains how we narrowed our target audience down and how we feel it's the most appropriate selection of people without being stereotypical or offending anyone by our decision.

Style of our video.

We originally decided to do an Ella Henderson song, 'Beautiful Unfinished'. We were undecided about the style of video with this, we knew we wanted it black and white but apart from that we were completely unaware of how we would style the video.

However, we changed the song to Adele's, 'When We Were Young'. This gave us a huge range of ideas for the mise en scene and camera angles especially. We felt, as the song was about memories and love we should reinforce this within our video. We knew we wanted to create an old fashioned style to our video, including footage of an older couple and a young couple showing the footage/memories they've made together.

This meant we could turn some footage sepia if we wanted to, to make it more effective for an audience to watch. The film would look something like this picture below. It shows the couple are in love and reinforces the idea of the footage being old even if it was actually new footage. To give this effect we will use Premier Pro or Photoshop giving it a vintage look to it.

The song and our ideas.

The song we have decided to do for our music video is When We Were Young by Adele. Obviously, we understand how popular Adele is which could make it harder to reach the standard of Adele's previous music videos but as of yet, Adele is still to make a video for this song so we have nothing to feed off for ideas which is useful as the mise en scene won't be influenced and our ideas will be our own and not based on her original ideas. She has one live recorded studio video which some may class as the music video but is still only footage of Adele singing on her own and nothing to work with again which is useful for us as it gives us chance to be creative with our song.

We feel that the song is all about remembering the past and capturing moments that you'd like to hold onto forever. To create an effective video we feel it's all about angles and shots to make the audience feel emotional. We have incorporated my nan and grandad to look at old photos of each other and used over the shoulder shots to show them looking at each other. We also feel that the mise en scene for this will be good as it's filmed in their home which will generally have an old fashioned theme running through it which also links into the idea of them looking to at the past and re-living.

We decided to include some photo projections, to give it an old photo feel this includes cracks within the pictures and sepia look to the pictures, it also makes the audience again feel involved within the family and feel as if they are included within the photos, looking back together.

We have decided to use Emily within our video in addition to this to show how it's a new generation and how time has passed. It could be interpreted that Emily is a younger representation of my nan within the video which would link well to the whole idea of love and relationships.

Here is the live version of Adele's - When We Were Young.

Storyboards.

At first we began to story board our music video and our ideas. We knew that we wanted the opening to be filled with photographs and memories to highlight how important to message of our video is, to always value the memories you have with someone. However, we knew that we wanted a singing spot for 15 bars of the music and it would be similar shots throughout so we were hesitant to draw this as it would be similar drawings throughout.

We knew the amount of time we wanted for each section. We want the performance to be near the beginning and occasional shots within and footage of memories and photos throughout the video will keep occurring. However, as we didn't know exactly what this would look like we were reluctant to drawing/writing it down so that if it didn't look exactly alike we at least knew in words what we wanted to do.

As Adele is yet to create a music video for 'When We Were Young' it is easy to create our own ideas without 'copying' her ideas and her style. There is one live recording/video of Adele at the studios. We don't intend to 'steal' this idea but we do feel it's important to include some lip syncing moments within the video, because of this we are including some performance clips where Emily will take on the roll as Adele and lip sync some of the song. This will take place mostly at the beginning of the song.





As of yet, this is the most storyboarding we feel necessary as we ourselves are still unsure of what we are filming. We know we would like over the shoulder camera angles focusing on old images and footage. We also know that we would like to film in an older generations home so the mise en scene shows an old fashioned look. However, we are still unsure exactly where and who we are filming.

Inside Booklets for CD's.

We looked through several CD booklets to see what was included i.e. pictures, messages from the artist, lyrics and more.
These examples could inspire mine and Emily's CD booklets depending on the theme and genre we go for, for our booklet. Our singer is simple and plain so we don't want anything that's lacking in uniqueness we want something unusual and hopefully shocking for the artist and the songs featured on the album. This way it allows the buyer to see that although the music is quite acoustic and plain the meaning and the way the singer wants to be presented is deeper and more intense than originally thought.