The Current Situation

At the moment we are just steadily working through our evaluations. Before we put each individual evaluation up we are uploading some sections, bit-by-bit. 

Whilst we are doing this, we are rendering and exporting the video to put onto a DVD. We are having some trouble as the final versions seem to be quite blurry, so we are just troubleshooting at the moment.

Video Feedback

Recently we completed the music video, and we are extremely happy with it. We have shown it to a couple of groups of people, and they were all very positive towards it. One of our Media Studies teachers showed our video to a group of Media specialists. They gave some mixed feedback, but all in all they were surprised with the quality of the camerawork.

One thing they did mention was that the video was slightly unclear. For us in the group we know what is going on in the video as we came up with the idea, but for other viewers, it could be slightly random. Also, in the scene where Richard is running to the car we had to do a slight cut to speed up the shot, and unfortunately there is a slight glitch in the trees. When we showed the video to younger audiences they didn't notice it, but apparently the Media group noticed it during the 3rd or 4th playing. They mentioned that it isn't as bad as we think and it isn't too noticeable. The only reason that some of them noticed it was because that their jobs are to find and rectify slight glitches in videos and video games, so they are very professional.

We have also completed the Digipack, we've burnt a video into Quicktime which is almost like a slideshow, showing the front cover, the back cover, 3 CD inlays and the promotional poster. We are having some troubles with the quality of the video after we exported it, so we are trying out all the different possibilities. One of the main troubles that we had on the dvd was that when we went to play the video, it came up the size of a stamp on the screen, and even though we filmed it on a HD camera, it came up very blurry. We are currently sorting these problems out and we should be finished quite soon.

Once we've completed this, we can show it to different sections of our target audience. We also feel that it would be a good idea to show it to the original band "Yellow Garage" to get their feedback, as in a sense, the video is for them.

Evaluation of progress and Ideas that have come through

As we have finished putting our final piece on the DVD i feel this will be a good time to evaluate the progress that we made through the project.

As a group i feel we worked well together and all coming up with very good ideas for our media project. I feel that we seemed very professional with our approach to study and came up with artistic ideas, especially with our front cover. The other day we finished producing our pictures for the front cover, in lay and back cover. Our one goal was to produce a video that looked like it hadn't been done by four teenage media students, therefore we had to make our artistic pictures look professional and fit with the personalities that are portrayed in the Animal House video.

Personally i was pleased with how the project has come out, looking at many other media projects i didn't want to make a video that seemed half hearted and unprofessional. 

Feedback

Miss Mapp took our music video to a bunch of media specialists (one of which worked on some of the new Call of Duty game) and she got some feedback.

The one thing that they picked up on which I'm a little disappointed with is that there is a small glitch in one of our shots where we have added a jump cut in. The leaves on the trees in the background change position due to the wind and they also become a bit darker as there was a shadow covering them a bit it is nothing that can be helped! But, with the audience testing i have done, none of the people have seen this until i slowed it down and showed them myself. So, all in all, it is harly noticable. Maybe its just because that these media people do this sort of thing for a living!

Another thing that was picked up on was the fact that the plot was a little unclear and they couldn't understand what we were running for. I think this a good thing because we wanted the video to be slightly unclear so that is in keeping with similar music videos and bands within the same genre. It also make the video repeatable. Basically, the audience will have to watch it over and over to understand what is going on.

Video finished!

We finished editing on Thursday of last week as we had a day off timetable to it! We also took some photographs for our CD cover, our back cover and an inset for the inside on the CD.

Before we took these photos, we had a look at other CD covers in the same genre as Animal House. One that stood out was the Arctic Monkeys debut album. It is a picture of a man smoking as cigerette. We also searched 'indie CD covers' on google images and it came up with Baby Shambles - Schofflers Nation and The Killers - Day and Age. These covers include fairly random props and images including half a naked woman (Baby Shambles) so we thought we would use this information and research in our our CD cover. But seeing as this is the bands debut album, we thought that we would include the band members in the CD cover so that audience can see what the members of the band look like.

We went back to the long road shot in the video to take the pictures and decided that we would also use the television that in also in the video as a random prop. Using both the scenery of the road and the TV would related the video to the CD cover and vice versa.

The Bag

Unfortunately due to none of us actually owning a briefcase that we wanted to put in a swimming pool, we had to use a different, and less smart, recyclable holdel bag.

Even though we had to make this change, the new bag does actually add to the comedic aspects of the film as the audience may be expecting a smart briefcase full of money, when actually it's a 'Tesco Bag for Life".

Obviously nobody knows what is actually in the bag, and we intend for nobody to find out.

Filming

On Sunday we filmed the final pool scene, overall it went 'swimmingly'. I acquired a contact from one of my friends who cleans a small-time swimschool for children's pool and I managed to get in contact with him. He left a message on my answerphone giving us permission to use his pool for 2 hours, free of charge. We also received written permission from him of which a copy of will be uploaded soon.

Last Thursday we also filmed some more 'running' shots of Charlie and Emiel as in comparison to the amount of shots Richard is in, there are a lot less. Unfortunately there was a tiny part missing on the tripod meaning that we had to film all of the shots handheld. Even though handheld shots can be quite effective when used to impression pace and adrenaline, we are hoping that it won't look tacky as there is too much 'wobble'. Unfortunately, due to timing constraints we were unable to come back to school, get a new tripod and then go and re-film. This has helped me realise that even when in a rush, it's always best to thoroughly check all of the equipment before going on-set, even such small details like where the tripod connects to the camera.

Today is Monday and we now have until Thursday to complete the editing. This seems very do-able, but as a group we must make sure that we don't rush it, we need to take our time and look at every single detail with such scrutiny to maintain professionalism and quality within our music video.

What we did in the lesson

In yesterdays lesson Richard and Emiel took charge of the editing and came up with some good ideas and ended up with 36 seconds of our video fully edited to how we wanted it. Our video so far is running very smoothly and our ideas that we have had from the start have not been interrupted in any way so we are all very pleased.