Fish eye lens...

In our AS production we used a fish eye lens for some of our shots and we found from our feedback that this was very effective and added something different to our production, so we decided to try and incorporate it into our A2 music video. We decided to use the fish eye lens to illustrate a point of view shot and make our audiences see what our main artist sees. We found that the most effective place to use this was when our artist was at the edge of the decking about to jump into the water, this was not only one of our favourite shots but has also been very popular with our audience.

  

Finished music video...

We have finally finished our music video and are immensely proud of all our hard work.

Digi-pak research 3...

The final digi-pak I analysed was The Killers - ' Sam's Town'. This album had similar features to the Arctic Monkeys album with the use of abstract images and dull colours however on The Killers album it does feature an image of the band. This promotes their star image and will make the band more recognisable to audiences, increasing their fame. 

Digi-pak research 2...

The second digi-pak I analysed was Arctic Monkeys - 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not'. I decided to analyse the Arctic Monkeys as they are also from the indie rock genre, therefore they will have the same conventions and will provide me with a good example and possibly inspiration for my own digi-pak.  

The band decided to only use black and white colours on their album, this isn't unusual for the indie rock genre and is a style the majority of bands choose to follow. The black and white colours create a very dull, lifeless mood which reflects some of the music on the album and the image the band wants to create.

Showcase night...

Now that our music video is complete we held a Media Showcase evening at our school to present our classes final music videos to our friends, family and fellow media students. We were immencly proud of our final product and couldn't wait to see it on the big screen! On each chair we put a pack with 4 pages, 1 for each A2 video with the same 5 questions on each:

1. What do you think is the intended demographic for this music video?
2. Does the track fit the editing style? - please give reasons why/why not
3. What did you understand to be the narrative of this music video?
4. Are there any specific camera angles/shots that stood out?
5. Any suggestions for improvements if we were to shoot this again?

Before showing our music video we asked the audience to fill out the sheet as best they could as it would be extremely beneficial for our audience feedback. We also found that compared to last year, by using sheets instead of filming the audience one by one, this was an easier and quicker way for us to gather feedback.

We are currently in the process of going through our feedback sheets and so far the audiences comments have been extremely positive with a few suggestions for improvements.

Audience feedback...

I created a questionnaire with 12 questions to gather feedback from audiences on our music video and on music videos in general. I gave some of the questionnaires out in person and some through social media sites such as twitter so that I could reach larger audiences. 

Audience feedback questionnaire...

Th images above are screen shots form the questionnaire I created which I collected feedback from on platforms such as Twitter, Whatsapp, iMessage and in person.

Steve Archers Narrative and Performance theory...

After researching into different media theorists I came across Steve Archers 'Narrative and Performance' theory. He quoted:

"Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Additionally, a carefully choreographed dance might be a part of the artist's performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the 'repeatability' factor. Sometimes, the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same time. But it is the lip-syncing close-up and the miming of the playing instruments that remains at the heart of the music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it."

It is clear that we have conformed to Archers 'Narrative and Performance' theory as we have used our artist in both the narrative elements of the story and in the performance side as if she is a part of the story. We have also included close-ups of our artist lip syncing which we feel, like Archer stated, "remains at the heart of the music video".

Storyboarding...

Now that we have our idea in place we needed to create a storyboard so that we can easily and clearly plan our shots frame by frame, which will make the filming process faster and more efficient. We all spoke about the type of shots we would like and where we wanted to place them, and we already had a few locations in mind before our planning so we tried to incorporate as many of them as we could.

Mood board...

Below is a mood board I created with a selection of images that I felt would work well in our music video and helped us while we were on shoot.