Bi-Weekly log

Week 1 – October
After being given my brief I wrote down some initial ideas with my partner. After this we decided upon our song ‘Enough For Now’ by The Fray and began planning our ideas for our video. We quickly decided on a narrative and performance based video typical of the Indie-Rock genre. This is when we found people wanting to take part within our music video and then decided on our location for filming. We carried out our first filming session, focusing on the narrative side of the video. To finish of the week we uploaded our first set of posts to our blog.

Week 2 – October
After screening our initial rushes to our focus group (consisting of my media class and teacher) we found that the audience were taking the aberrant reading to our media text due to its complexity, this was disastrous because if our audience takes the worst possible meaning from our text, completely not getting it we were in trouble. This is where my teacher said that it would be easier to start again without such a highly complex song and idea. This week we basically just decided on a new song choice ‘Hot Air Balloon’ by Owl City and our initial ideas for the song.

Week 3 – November
After deciding on our plan of action filming took place, I spent a whole day at my boyfriend’s house, using his little 5 year old sister’s bedroom to film the majority of my music video, to create the childlike paradigm. After the filming took place I uploaded all my footage on to my laptop to begin the editing. I also uploaded more research and planning onto my blog.

Week 4 – November
I had the first 40 seconds of my song edited and in place, looking good. This week I just focused on continuing with more editing and finishing the research section of my blog

Week 5 – November
1.05 min of editing completed, I showed this to my focus group (media class) and all took the dominant reading, so my video at the moment appears to be a success, they did however give me feedback on some of my filming saying it was too dark and sometimes a bit shaky so this week I went back to my filming location to re-shoot some scenes and also to take some more long shots as that had also been criticised.

Week 6 – November
Still 1.05 min of editing but all the filming I re shot is now up and loaded on to my laptop to begin changing some scenes and making any improvements. I also began on the finishing touches of my planning section of my blog.

Week 7 – December
My video was now up to almost 2 minutes of film and screened this to my focus group to see if what they criticised in week 5 has been improved and made any difference to their viewing. It was all positive feedback so this week I carried on with editing. I also started thinking of my ancillary texts but only in rough ideas. At the end of the week I finished off the planning section of my blog.

Week 8 – December
My editing is almost finished with my film at 3.00 min only about 20 more seconds to go. I began research into previous CD covers by Owl City and other CD magazine adverts. I draw up 3 designs for a CD cover and 3 designs for my magazine advert and put these on my blog.

Week 9 – DecemberI finished my editing on my music video and began making notes on 2 of my evaluation questions. I also took the photos for my chosen design of CD cover and magazine ad. I created ‘pages’ on my blog with different headings such as ‘research’ and ‘home’ to make it easier to navigate my blog and find particular sections.

Week 10 – December
I screened my finished music video to a new focus group comprising of my main target audience to see if their understanding of my music video was the same as my media class. They all took the dominant reading and I received positive feedback on my product. I began creating my CD cover on CorelDraw and wrote up my first evaluation question and put it on my blog.

Week 11 – January
I made finishing touches to my CD cover and began creating my magazine advert. I also wrote up my 3rd and 4th evaluation questions and put them on to my blog. I also read through my research and planning section and made some adjustments.

Week 12 – January
I finished both my CD cover and my magazine advert and put these up on to my blog. I also started writing my 2nd evaluation question.

Week 13 – January
I had given my work to my media teacher to assess and see what could do with improving. I had a couple of shots within my music video that were still too dark so I changed these. I also had to improve my magazine advert, one of my evaluation questions and my target audience post needed some adjustments.

Week 14 – January
Finished up the points I was told to improve on.

My class had previously been working on the same blog but uploading our own individual work but my teacher wanted separate blogs so I was in the process of uploading everything from my old blog onto my new blog.

Results from audience feedback questionnaire

After handing out my questionnaires I made some pie chart graphs of some of the questions to make it easy to see how many people had said what, and what effect this had on my media product.

I wanted my focus group to reflect my real target audience seeing as my main target audience were mainly females aged between 14-25 i choose of my focus group to fit this criteria, even though it is aimed mainly at females Owl City do have some male fans so I had 3 males to give me a better idea of thoughts.




This graph shows what type of genre my focus group mainly listened to, from the graph its clear that not all of my focus group listen majorly to electropop music, this is good because if they still take the dominant reading from my text but don't normally watch these sort of videos I will know that my media product has been recieved well by people outside of my typical target audience.

This graph shows how people understood the relationship between music and visuals, I created this question to suggest the 4 types of reading in the encoder/decoder model, from this graph I can tell that all but one of my focus group took the dominant meaning from the relationship between visuals and music and that the other person took the negociated view, which is really good. I also asked if people understood the relationship between visuals and lyrics and this got 100% of my focus group saying the completley understood, again showing that all my focus group took the dominant reading of my media text.


I asked this question to see what people found most entertaining from a music video to see if this particular section of my music video worked well,61% of my focus group found the setting really important to a successful music video. I found that from my previous focus groups that feedback on my mise-en-scene was extremely positive and helped me reach the dominant reading from the decoder.

I also asked if my focus group if they thought my media text fulfiled its purpose as a successful music video, all of my focus group answered yes to this,so im glad that people who would be within my target audience all took the dominant reading of my media text and felt it worked well as a successful music video

Audience feedback questionnaire

1. Age: [ ] 14-17 [ ] 18-21 [ ] 22- 25 [ ] 26+

2. Sex: [ ]Female [ ]Male

3.What genre of music do you most often listen to?

[ ]Indie [ ]Rock [ ]Pop [ ]R’n’B [ ]Electropop [ ]D‘n’B

[ ]Other (Please state)............................

4. What is your favourite music video?

.......................................................

5. Why does this one stand out to you?

.......................................................

6. Having watched our music video for Hot Air Balloon – Owl City, what did you like about?

........................................................

7. To what extent did you understand the relationship between the music and the visual?

1 – Completely understand [ ]
2 – Partly understand [ ]
3 – Understand a tiny amount [ ]
4 – Haven’t a clue [ ]

8. To what extent did you understand the relationship between the lyrics and visuals?

1 – Completely understand [ ]
2 – Partly understand [ ]
3 – Understand a tiny amount [ ]
4 – Haven’t a clue [ ]

9. When watching music videos, what grabs your attention the most?

Editing [ ]
Setting [ ]
Lighting [ ]
Special Effects [ ]
Combonation between visuals and song [ ]
Other [ ]
(please state) ....................................................

10. Do you feel our production fulfils its purpose as a music video?

1 – Yes [ ]
2 – Almost [ ]
3 – A little bit [ ]
4 – Not at all [ ]

Final focus group

Here I showed my focus group (media class and teacher) the final screening of my music video.

They were all really impressed with my use of montage and mise-en-scene and found this successful, again they all took the dominant reading of my text, showing that the understand what I am trying to portray.

After this I then showed another focus group my video. This group comprised of 10 of my friends that would fit into my target audience for my product. I did this to see if my media product gave decoders in my target audience the dominant reading or because they hadnt seen my video develop over time like my other focus group they may not get it and could possibly take the aberant meaning to my text.

I showed my video and then handed out a questionnaire. I ask them to do this in silence and told them they were annoymous so that I would get more of an honest answer. My questionnaire and my results are shown in the posts above.

2nd focus group

In my 2nd focus group I screened some of my editing, It was only about 40 seconds long but I wanted to get an early opinion on how the decoder was reading my text and if there was any improvements to be made.

They commented on how the shots were much steadier and brighter since they last saw my filming, so im glad that I have improved on the quality of my shots. Everyone took the dominant reading of my text, which meant they all understood and agreed with what I was portraying

Points to work on:

* Use more cuts - as video is purely concept based it needs a lot of cuts to make it effective (Mr Morris)
* Use more of lyrics being visually spelt out, when in time with music looks very effective (Jake and Mr Morris)

2nd filming session

After carrying out my first focus group on my initial filming, they found a few problems:

* Some shots were too dark
* Some shots were unsteady
* Not enough long shots to establish the scene

After hearing this I knew I needed to go back and re-shoot some scenes that were too dark and unsteady - I used extra lighting and a monopod to capture steady shots, so these looked much better.

I also took the opportunity to do some more filming so I had more footage to work with,I shot some long shots and then focused on some more dynamtic and creative shots to really make my video look good.

1st focus group

After my first filming session I screened my early rushes to my focus group (comprised of my media class and teacher Mr Morris)

Points to work on:

* Some of the shots were too dark and fuzzy (bonnie,Mr Morris)
* A lot of the shots shaky and unsteady (jake)
* Not enough long shots to establish the scene (Mr Morris)

However they all commented on how well I had created the mise-en-scene to fit the child-like paradigm.

After hearing this feedback I went back to do some more filming, this time bringing a tripod to hold the camera steady and using some extra lighting to make the shots brighter and more of a high quality picture

First filming session

I spent the whole day filming my first load of footage for my 'Hot Air Balloon' video by Owl City. I went to my boyfriends house at about 9 in the morning and literally camped out in his little sisters room till about 5pm.

Setting up the room took quite a long time as I had to move her toys around to get the right look I wanted and then I had to add the rest of my toys such as the racetrack etc. After that was done I spent the rest of the day filming the majority of my video, concentrating a lot on good close ups and getting a feel for the atmosphere.

Technology needed

I comprised a list of all the technology I would need when filming to make sure I didn't forget anything:

• Video camera

• Video camera charger

• Clean tape

• Tripod

• IPod speakers

• IPod

• Extra lights – brighten shots

• Digital camera for pictures for the blog

• Laptop

• Firewire cable to upload filming