Audience Feedback

From the edited parts i already had done, which were the black part (30 seconds) and the white part (30 seconds) Mr wallis sent them to some of his collegues who gave some very useful feedback, here are some of the emails that and comments he got back.

These comments were really usefull as people liked both parts of the music video the white and the black when i was afraid that the majority would prefer the black as that was where i found that my editing was most strong as i had had more time on the computer after editing the white sequence. It's constructive comments about the nightclub was quite usefull as one of my conception ideas was to film in a nightclub but in the end i couldn't do it as i wouldn't have been aloud to film everyone in a nightclub and also get my uinderage lead singer in one aswell. However overall it is really a confidence boost to see that people are saying i am going in the right direction and after the majority prefering the black part i shal probably look at re editing some of the white part as i now feel my skills have developed further with editing on adobe Premier pro.

Filming shoot 2

For my second shoot I wanted to get the black background so I decided to film in the drama studio of our school which is really useful as within the drama studio it has its own lighting rig with theatre lights if I wanted to use them. It turns out I didn’t need them as the problem was that the light they gave off was to warm and didn’t define Effie enough when she was moving so I used the lights from media which were photographic bulbs so they were much brighter, however that was where I encountered a problem. Out of the three lights that we have two of the bulbs had broken so I ended up with just one light left, and this took up a lot of time as I had to then test to see if the actual lights were broken rather than the bulbs which ended up digging into the little time I had with Effie. With one light, I then had to start filming the shots I needed with only side lighting however this added a really great effect as it made it feel as though she was enticing you in as you want to see more of her face and body when she dances into the light.

 Another problem I encountered was that even though the drama studio was black there were still a lot of scratches on the wall where the paint had come off and also the ceiling was not painted black at all so this limited the amount of low angle shots I could get as it meant you would see the white ceiling in the background, and this would be even more noticeable when it came to editing as the contrast would be put up to keep in likeness with the white section. So I really had to think about where I could move with the camera to get the best shots yet still not get any plug sockets or shafts of light from the fire exit coming into shot. However one thing did occur to me was that if I got just a little of the ceiling in view it won’t matter as when it came to editing I could just scale the size of the shot up so I would still have the angle of the shot but cut out the ceiling as it would have zoomed in slightly.

In this shoot Effie is wearing the white dress as I really wanted to give a strong contrast from her tight restricted movements in the photography and the tight black dress, compared to the freedom of movement she has in her white dress but still with the element of the black trapping her like the black dress restricted her movement in the white area the black space restricts the area in which she can move around but with what space she has got she can move much more freely as if she is trying to break out. The reason for having this feel to it is because I find it suits the electro pop genre of music and again those types of dance movements and acting vulnerable really play to capturing an audience which obviously would be a main point to focus when creating my music video.

The cage idea was slightly influenced by the music video Atari teenage riots song blood in my eyes as a cage is featured in that along with some grimy scenes, it inspired me to really go for the vulnerable girl theme whilst at the same time being very seductive and having the cage allowed me to express that by giving Effie the direction to reach out of the cage towards the camera so it would feel as if she was reaching out to you as an audience member to help her yet at the same time I would have some high angle shots to then bring out the feeling of the audience in power which would then emphasise Effie’s seductive facial expressions. The aim was that at no point would the audience loose interest or stop looking at her and hopefully wanting her as it Is proven to be successful by appearing to the male gaze theory as that is half your audience covered along with the fact that some women could watch and be influenced to be like her, therefore covering both sexes of my audience.

Editing the white part

So after having shot all the white footage in the photography studio and importing it into Adobe premiere pro I started to sort through my footage and play about with the contrasting and the and the effects. Straight away I changed all the pieces of footage (which turned out to be 12 minutes) to black and white and changed the contrast levels to get the optimum shades of black and white without compromising her facial expressions and her body being to blocky and sharp with the colours. As you can see in the picture here the whites and blacks are definitely more defined but the main reason for this was that you would then focus on the performer much more and therefore sticking to the voyeurism of Goodwin’s theory getting more attention for the artist.

Some complications that have arisen so far from editing the white part is that it is tricky with some of my lower angle shots to keep her in the frame when I scale the size down, the reason I had to scale the size down was because when getting the low angle shots I needed the ceiling comes into shot and it is in a bit of a state so to overcome that I scaled up the shots which also gave me a range of more close up shots. This was useful as it gave the white sequence a more diverse feel as there was now a larger variety of shots to keep the audience interested.

After having this first draft done I think I might change the editing slightly as to me it seems very similar in the fact that between each of the lines of song the sharp editing is the same pace and it seems as though it goes on a bit too long, and I am worried the audience might feel that as well and seeming that this is the opening I don’t want people to get bored straight away so I might play around with the shots and add in some longer connecting shots.