



However, if we were to gain audience feedback in various stages and formats throughout the whole project, this would allow us to reflect and re-evaluate our product at each stage, ensuring we end up creating the best overall product that we possibly could have done. It would also serve to highlight to us any minor flaws or blips in the products that we missed, allowing us to make any appropriate amendments in suitable time before the finished products must be handed in, fine tuning it to create overall professional real media products.
One of the first ways in which we gained feedback was through the initial target audience questionnaire at the beginning of the project. This allowed us to pitch our rough ideas for our video to our target audience, and to receive feedback in terms of their opinions on our plans. Receiving feedback at this stage let us sample how successful the concept would be in theory, giving us plenty of time to refine the idea before we began filming. Luckily, most of the feedback we received at this stage was fairly positive. This told us that we were on the right track with our products, and allowed us to continue developing our ideas safe in the knowledge that the basic premise would be relatively successful and well received.
One piece of negative feedback that we received for the music video at this stage was that the plot line seemed quite unclear so far. We felt this was a fair enough comment, as we were not entirely sure what we were aiming for or hoping to achieve at that point, so we took this on board as constructive criticism, ironing out a basic comprehensible plot line and and narrative to make the video easier to follow.
We were constantly asking members of our media group for feedback throughout the entire editing process of our video - for example asking their opinions on certain shots, transitions or effects, which we could then reflect upon and take on board on the spot. This active involvement with the target audience allowed us to constantly be working to improve our products throughout the whole process. Once we had finished a rough cut of our final music video, we devised a shot questionnaire to assess the success of our product. We asked a number of participants from different age ranges and genders to feedback their opinions of the product, which allowed us to see if there were any final improvements we could make to ensure we created the best product we could. Some of the positive feedback we received at this stage included liking the way the representations of the conventions of the genre, as well as a certain level of empathy with the characters. This showed us that we had the right ideas in the creation of our video, and had succeeded in the representations we had hoped to convey.
In addition to the feedback for the music video, we thought it would be beneficial to gain a number of feedback concerning the ancillary texts. Initially, we showed rough sketches of our ideas to members of our target audience, who pointed out sections they liked - including the fact that the cover defied conventions by being from behind, and the cohesion of the costume and mise-en-scene in line with the musical genre. This showed us that we did not have to change anything in this respect as we were clearly on track with conveying the ideas about our genre and impressions.
Some negative feedback we received at this stage was that they did not seem to like the writing on the arm that we intended to use as the text style on our CD cover. We took this on board and started to plan different styles in which we could incorporate this onto our CD cover in a more visually pleasing manner.
These are some of the questions we asked for the evaluation of these products:
The sepia effect also proved to come in useful in the earlier flashback scenes of the Scrabble playing, as it made the lighting seem more natural and overall enhanced the poor lighting. This also allowed us to slightly increase the brightness and contrast of these clips, making them more visible and defined, whilst not causing any suffering to the overall visual quality of the images.
We additionally wanted to represent the flashbacks in a more obvious way, in order to create cohesion between our product and the audience, as we found that this could often be confusing when we showed the video in various stages of completion to members of our target audience. We had hoped to do this in the conventional way of a short, clear flash effect, however, when experimenting with this effect on iMovie, we found that our clips were to sure to apply the effect to, and therefore had to find an alternative. We experimented with the overlapping effect, blending the two images together in one frame, however again as the clip was fairly short, it created a freeze frame at the end of the transition, which disrupted the smooth, flowing visuals of the video and created a really obvious jarring in the comfortable reception a sleeker style allows. Eventually, we decided on the 'White In' effect, which is basically a fade in from a whit background as opposed to black. We feel this effectively represented the 'flash' idea that we were hoping to achieve but in a more effective, and smoother style, synonymous with the pace of the song.
We showed the video to one of our media teachers, who provided us with some useful feedback. She picked up on the section toward the beginning that we had been concerned about - the scene leading in to the flashback. She felt that it would perhaps be worthwhile trying to find a substitute clip to replace the short and abrupt clips that we had been left with. We took this on board and found a discarded shot of a pan across the Scrabble box. We removed the rapid shot-reverse-shot that showed her reaction to the box, and instead replaced it with a clip of this shot, which served to act as a point of view shot. This clip slotted perfectly into the timings of the previous succession of clips, thereby not creating any dramatic effect on the timings of the rest of the video, and allowing a much smoother and more comfortable transition into the flashback scenes.
We added a long fade out effect at the end of the video to keep in line with the more conventional aspect of the image we wanted to portray, and also to heighten the stereotypical generic feature of the 'happy ending', as a fade implies much more gentle and softened connotations than perhaps an abrupt cut at the end may signify. We additionally added a short fade to the beginning of our video primarily in order to contain the titles that we were required to included on our video, but iMovie would not allow us to use these two effects simultaneously. We overcame this slightly by dragging and dropping the title effect onto the opening clip, which added the titles - we decided to keep these basic and simplistic, with the artist and track names being the only information we chose to include, in order to best represent the more simplistic style of the artist and indeed the music itself. We decided to keep the fade in at the beginning anyway, as it created a much gentler beginning to the start of the video, in line with the soft instrumental beginnings of the start of the song.
Now we have finished our video, we will next save it onto the external hard drive for backup purposes, and burn it onto a DVD for the examiners.