Audience Reception

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stagES?

                      For the primary stage of my production piece, I looked into a variety of optional song choices. I needed something seemingly simplistic in it's rhythm and inclusive of lyrics in order to promote the main character. This was done so by using BBC Radio 1's chart singles and also by scanning through popular songs on Youtube. 

THE OFFICIAL UK TOP 40 SINGLES CHART

          After spending a few hours finding preferable song choices, I narrowed my search down to five choices and then my final choice 'Ed Sheeran - Drunk'. I chose this song because it would be easy to incorporate slow changing shots to match the flow of the song. I also enjoyed the song at the start of my project (I can't say the same thing now after repeatedly listening to it) so thought it would be best to chose a song i liked.

For the process of planning my storyboard, the only media technology I used was Google Maps. This was done so to find ideal filming locations nearby me.





          After collecting all the footage, came the editing process. Throughout the entire process, three editing programmes were used. These were: Adobe AfterEffects CS3, iMovie, and Adobe Photoshop CS3. 


          The editing programme I used most was Adobe AfterEffects CS3, purely because of the fact that I was new to using it and it is quite complex. AE was used solely for making the overall video look more professional and for creating effects on certain shots, mostly to help the audience understand when a flashback is happening onscreen. I spent a lot of time just messing around with the features available, trying to get used to what I had access to. After spending over four hours, I had probably only touched about 10% of AfterEffect's resources. The effect that I repeatedly used was one to do with the colouring, Tritone. This was one of the more simplistic effects available but it made a big difference nonetheless. This is the effects i used to show when a flashback was happening, along with messing with the opacity of the core video so that the two layered each other. Overall, I was unable to fully explore the full potential of AfterEffects because there was no need. As my song choice is quite saddening and slow, I felt that any drastic changes might make the final product look less professional and quite childish.

         The second editing product that I used, which I already had some minor previous experience using, was Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop wasn't used to edit any of the footage, however, it was possibly the editing programme I used the most throughout. Photoshop was used to create a lot of the advertisement products used, such as the Poster for the song release and the Album Cover. Both of these were very time consuming as a lot of editing techniques were used (too many to name) and also I tried to keep a common theme between the poster and album cover. Adobe Photoshop was also used to create the small effects on the character bios to make them seem more professionally shot.



The final editing product, used to put together all of my footage and create simple edits, was iMovie. My previous AS media production piece was also created using iMovie, making the editing process much easier and faster as I already had a good understanding of all of the effects and how everything worked. One of the issues I found when using iMovie is that the effects that are available are few in number and I was quite restricted in this aspect. Luckily enough, my understanding of Adobe AfterEffects helped to create the required effects at a later editing stage. Another fault that I found was that the stabilisation feature can sometimes cause a jittery effect.

Audience Questionnaire

Conventions of a Rock/Alternative Music Video

        The album which the song 'Drunk' was released in has been placed in a number of music genre categories as the album focuses on variety, the only trait kept the same throughout being vocal style. The song has been placed within the Rock / Adult Alternative category.

Conventions

• Use of predominantly deep / dark colours
• Displays multiple shots the band performing in one location
• 'Untraditional' style of video 
• Contains no narrative
• Hand held shots
• Few to no special effects
• Close-ups of band and musical equipment

Even though the song has been classified as Rock / Alternative, it is very loosely held within these genres as it does not follow conventional trends. Therefore, only a few conventional aspects are explored in my music video.

Even though a lot of darkly lit shots are used, for example, a lot of the footage was shot during the night-time, this has more-so been done to show the relationship between lyrics and visuals as the lyrics can be analysed to be seen as depressing and the darkly-lit shots are used to explore this sense of emotion for the audience.

My music video also does not follow the convention of a Rock video containing no narrative. Instead, I followed a completely opposite path and my video piece tells a chronological story. This has been done to help show progression and change over time.

A lot of special effects were used throughout the editing process, however, nothing overly drastic was used to make the shots seem unrealistic (editing was predominantly used to help the audience understand that what is being shown onscreen is a flashback). One editing technique i used repeatedly for a number of shots was the 'Hard Light' video effect in iMovie. This effect was used to represent the idea of being drunk, as if the viewer was seeing things similar to the perspective of the main character.

One convention used in most Rock videos, that was repeated in my production piece, is close-ups of the main character. This is done for two reasons: the first being that it helps to show that the narrative is based on this person, the second being that a lot of used where the main characters is singing the lyrics in time with the music.

Audience Reception

Cast Photos

Drunk 1

Side Character 1

Side Character 2

Drunk Girl

Character Profile

Callum Caspar

Name               :              Callum Caspar

Gender             :              Male

DOB                :              3^rd December 1991

Occupation         :              Unemployed

Contact Address    :              8 Mollison Drive                                                                                                   

                                  Wallington

                                  Surrey

                                  SM6 9JW      
                                                                    

Contact Number     :              0796060981

Guardian           :              None (Lives with housemates)

Bio: Callum grew up in a very distressed household as his parents were constantly fighting and they eventually divorced when he was just 7. This caused a lot of stress for Callum as he grew up, having to deal with constant arguments. The young adult moved out of the house when he was 18 to share a house with half a dozen of his old school friends. Callum’s housemate’s are happy living with him. However, they have a few issues with him: Most months he is unable to pay his part of the rent as he has no source of income and there are often concerns about how often he goes out drinking. Callum is a very laid back person who tries his best to avoid confrontations or stressful situations, and refuses to concern himself with other people’s problems. As pointed out by Callum’s housemates, he focuses on having a fun time and is always going out partying, drinking and smoking.