It's the end of our project and the end of the group, for good! Sad times! However, it's been awesome awesome working together & our hard work has definitely paid off! Thanks to all the teachers for being fab & helping us through all the song-changes and reshoots and problems : )

Goodbye!

Love, Group 4 xx

-THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED-

Evaluation Question Four

Evaluation Question Three

Evaluation Question Two

Evaluation Question One

Questionnaire

We had our screening yesterday and we had a good turnout and it went very well as we got lots of feedback. Here is a sample of the questionnaire we handed out.

Age:
Gender:
What genre of music do you usually listen to?
How do you usually purchase music?



What genre would you associate this music video with?

What do you think the video is about?

What are the main themes you would associate with the music video?

Does this video remind you of any other music videos? If so, which ones?

Did you like the video?

What was your favourite aspect or part?

What could be improved?

Would you want to watch the video again?

Would you buy the album it is featured on?

Forum Feedback

So I asked people on my favourite writing site if they'd watch the video and comment. The feedback can be found here:

http://www.protagonize.com/group/protagonize/topic/704

Curiously, most of them seemed to think Selina was a man. Other than that, the overall feedback seems to be dislike for the song but like for the video. They seemed to like the ideas and concepts, and Faltarego in particular praised the editing a lot. So, seems to have been mostly a positive response. ^^

You can click on the username of each person to visit their profile, if you're looking for age/gender, etc.

Let me know if you have any problems with the links or anything.

~Mary

Audience Screening!

Today we held the screening of our finished video to get some feedback from members of our target audience and our potential reach. It went really well! We've got some good feedback from our questionnaire (we'll post it up soon) which should really help us for the evaluation!

Technology

The wonderful Group 4 with the equipment we used during the project!

Technology:

• 
  
  [Video camera we had?]
  
  
  
• Canon Still Camera
• Microphone
• HD Mini DV Tapes
• Blogger.com
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4
• Pag Lights
• Other small lights
• HTML Code
• Internet
• Google.com
• YouTube.com
• Photobucket.com
• Horsesmouth.co.uk
• Protagonize.com
• Myspace.com

Screening

Hey guys, I've made an event on Facebook for our screening - it's tomorrow at 12.30 right? So yeah... join and I'll make you admins and you can invite more people, wooh.
Click Here
Mia xx

Class Screening Feedback

We screened our final music video in front of our media class today. Generally the feedback we recieved was positive. Here is a summary of our feedback:

Positive
Liked the variety of shots and camerawork
In particular, they liked the shots with sunlight streaming through trees
Thought Mia's performance was really good and very convincing
Thought it was really creepy, creates a sense of confusion and disorientation
Really liked the fire-spinning

Negative
The ECU shot of the main girl's eyes was slightly out of time
Disliked a blurry shot of Mia near the beginning

Mia's thoughts:

Can we change the apostrophe at the beginning of 'Girl, Afraid' please? Erm, I don't think it should be exactly the same as the actual album cover but I don't know if I like the effect on the second one... Maybe just having it in black and white or something... but it might not stand out enough. Je ne sais pas!
Mia xx

Myspace Banner

Hey guys, I'm just in the middle of making a banner for the Myspace page and I'm a little stuck....

Which one, in your opinion, looks better?

 

I kinda like the second one, just 'cause it's a little different, but yeah...thoughts, please..?

-Selina-

Copyright Clearance

When we decided on our track, Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation, it had already been released as a single. Because we didn't want to get into any copyright infringement trouble, we emailed the band to ask permission.

We haven't yet had a response, so we went ahead with our music video.

When we uploaded the video to YouTube, we received an email saying that although we had used products owned by Universal, we didn't have to do anything.

Album Cover

This was our first album cover:

but Misses B & D said the inside cover was boring and would be a disappointment after the front cover. As we only wanted some sort of graphic and it was too late to take photos anyway, we used a picture from one of our test shoots of a tree with some crazy colourful wool over it (it's on the blog elsewhere) and made it match the colour scheme of the cover. New cover is below!

Record Label Logo

Staple Records

Album Inside Cover

New cover in yellow...

Album Art - Inside Cover Graphics

Hoping you guys like it.

I'm officially ill from stress and will probably collapse at some point within the next couple of days. Fingers crossed it won't be before the deadline.

Mary

Album Cover inspired by Alice in Wonderland

I really like the image you've put up and it fits as we have had a running theme of Alice in Wonderland throughout the project. I think if had a shot like that and made it look like you were trapped in a box it would look really quirky and so tie in with the image of our artist and our music video. I definitely think we should go with this idea.

We have our name!

Evie

www.myspace.com/eviemusicuk

www.twitter.com/eviemusic

Album Inspiration (Inside Cover)

Album Cover

I was thinking about Alice in Wonderland (yet again!) for inspiration for our album cover and found this picture, and we thought something very similar to this would work really well.

Artist Name

Going back to the list of possible names, I've just picked out a few I like.

Violet

January
May
Autumn
The three names above all really tie in with the imagery we have been thinking about using with nature and trees etc. Of course they also tie in with the visuals of the video not that they need to.

Dawn
Although on second thoughts maybe the connatations for this are too warm, as you associate it with the sun and warmer colours...

Aurora
I like the sound of this...it's probably is my favourite one.

Kaya

Mia says:

I added a few more to that, you might wanna look again :)
but yeah I know haha that's the only thing... but it's the title of a song by The Smiths who are apparently one of our influences... :)

Mary says:

I can create that sort of thing, but I need to know exactly what we want first.

I still love the name Freya August, but I also like Girl Afraid (though it does remind me of Boy Interrupted). xD

Mia thinks:

Mary, I quite like it, it looks pretty cool, but not really as an album cover... Although if you want to do something like that, like, silhouettey stuff, I was looking at some art earlier by an artist called Jan Pienkowski that I thought about when we talked about these kinds of ideas for the cover, so I'm just gonna post a few good images I found that I really like. Just this type of thing, I don't know, not sure how much it actually fits with our artist... general album art... but I just think they're so beautiful. So enjoy!

...you get the picture(s)!

Mia xx

More on names...

 I was going to suggest Shakespeare's Sister but looked it up and it's already a band...
so thought I'd post the suggestions we were thinking about yesterday.

...yeah sorry, scanner not working, had to take a photograaaph.
But yeah, thinking about other ones, what do people think of any of these:

• Violet
• Silver
• Magenta
• Malice
• January
• May
• June
• Winter Fall
• Autumn (Frost)
• Hail
• Dawn
• Aurora (Latin for Dawn)
• Kaya
• Eden
• Eve
• The Tiger's Bride
• Girl Afraid  ?

Mr Ninkovic gave me a few - Cassandra (Greek, Κασσάνδρα, "she who entangles men") who saw the fall of Troy coming but no one believed her because of a curse; Circe; Calypso (but it sounds a bit happy), a sea nymph who imprisons Odysseus; Alcyone, who threw herself into the sea after her husband was killed but was then turned into a bird along with him; Pasiphae who "took pleasure in becoming an adulteress with a bull" (I reckon steer clear of that one : ]) or Persephone (a.k.a. Kore or Cora), Queen of the Underworld and embodiment of the Earth's fertility - the one who got kidnapped by Hades and ate the pomegranate seeds... Could also be shortened to Sephy?

Mia xx

Graphics

So this is what I've been up to:

Like/dislike/hate/don't care?

Shot Lists & Planning Things

These are just photos I took of some of the planning we did when we were writing things down as we discussed them in the group... plus some lovely doodles, of course! There are a few bits from our Fences planning too, like the bit on the left in the pic below, and some of the things in the last picture.

MySpace

We've made the MySpace and we've also a Twitter account for The Cold Ones. Progress :) Haven't really done anything to it yet seeing as we're probably not going to actually use this name, but it's good to actually have a MySpace done and experiment with what we can do a bit...
www.myspace.com/thecoldonesuk 
http://twitter.com/thecoldonesuk
Mia & Selina xx

Artist Name!

We're thinking of The Cold Ones as the name of our artist!
We can always change this...

Possible Name Research: Freya

I like the sound of the name Freya. I did some research and now I like it even more because I think it fits with the image of our artist.

Research

Freya is a goddess in Norse Paganism.
She is portrayed as the goddess of love, beauty and fertility.
She was also associated with war, battle, death, magic, prophecy and wealth.
She also appears in many myths.

I really like this as as she seems to be associated with mystical, out-of-this world elements. The fact that Freya is a goddess adds to her power and strength, which really ties in with our interpretation of 'Eyes on Fire' as we thought it was about the artist overcoming 'the other' and possibly winning.

Still not well

I'm still not feeling well so I'm not going to be able to make it to the shoot.

Good luck! And I hope it stops raining

Bhavika xx

Artist Name

Violent Desires is very cool but I'm not sure if it would work as the name for the artist. Maybe a track on the album? It's good inspiration too...

Mary says:

Hrmm, not sure I like Violent Desires as a name. It sounds too much like a band. If we lean towards a 'normal(ish)' name, I quite like Freya - also ties in with mythology,etc.

If we're going for a name-that's-not-a-name, I like Doll. Connotations of beauty but in a sort of superstitious, not-quite-human way. Maybe that's just me.

Yeah. Probably just me.

LOL, you're riDICulous sometimes =P 
I guess we can just try out all the things we discussed. We'll basically be drowning in rain anyway. [Insert more whinging here.] It's gonna come not that long after our DZZZZ moment (for anyone who doesn't speak Mia, the masked figure & girl mirroring each other and the spark and the hands and the blaaah) so I dunno. Also, wasn't that supposed to be representing some sort of change? In which case, we need to work with that more... Like, wasn't it originally going to be the moment they switch/join character or something? But we changed things round a bit. So like, just the girl becoming aware of her alter-ego and taking the steps to do something about it. Apologies, I'm just thinking in-type. Umumum. Maybe she could take the mask off of her and push her to the ground or something... oh but they've already fallen on the ground. I don't know...
And what about the whole going backwards thing?
Yeah, you're just living your life, there's nuffin' crazy 'bout you :)
Ooh that's interesting... any halls of mirrors we have access to? That'd be THE BOMB. But actually when I think about it it would be crap. Ignore. Something to do with the duality of the self.
I think quirky casual but sort of dressy casual, if you know what I mean. I've had style inspirations, I'll fill you in tomorrow :)
Miaaaa xx

Ending

This is actually killing me. Fer sure. Thinkthinkthink...Lol right now, I'm up for the strangling ball of DEATH! I don't know...do we go for dramatic and risk making it look riDICulous, or do we leave it with such a cliffhanger it makes people want to chew their heads off?! [I fear I may have to edit this post in the future] How about something simple with me laying on the ground, smothered in leaves as you walk off...or something? I'm clearly not in the right frame of mind, atm...I just think I'm free :)
How about something to do with mirrors as a cover..? I dunno, I think the whole reflection-of-oneself could play a big part in it...we can still have a looksee. And I think we wanted costume to be kinda casual. I think. Something representative of the genre, with a dash of her unique element. I'm not sure. GREAT.


-Selina-

[Don't] Bet your bottom dollar...!

12 it is.
Indeed. She did say something about setting up a shoot in school, which we can do, but what are we doing with the background then? If we find the time, which we won't, we could just find other random places if we have a theme of some kind pour le album - and we have to come up with something vaguely related to the tunnel thing if we're using that for the back cover - which can be as tenuous as it's possible to be, really... as long as there's some connection I think...
So yeah, we need to find a time to do that and costuuume.
AND. ENDING. ANYONE???
Mia xx

The sun'll come out tomo-oh who am I kidding..?!

OKAY, this is probably going to be our most difficult shoot to date, HURRAY, illness is just on the horizon!
I think we should meet at Oakwood station, just in case...at 12; the sooner we get it done, the sooner we can get out of there!
Ummm, you raise an excellent point Mia; the whole thing about the albumy stuff is that it's not supposed to be in the same location as the music vid, right? Which means ANOTHER LOCATION is needed...didn't Miss B say something about setting up a shoot in school, with a green-screen thing..? I might be making that bit up, but it's always an option...
Is anyone else completely confused, or is it just me? No? GOOD.
BRING ON THE FUN.

P.s. I should be at yours around half eleven, Mia :)

-Selina-

Weather tomorrow...

Little bit more detail - so it'll be raining on and off when we start.... Also it's heavy rain at 6am tomorrow so it's probably gonna be really nice and muddy and wet - bring umbrellas & maybe someone could bring some sort of sheet to leave all our stuff on.
Also, guess what? The max. temperature has gone up by a whole degree to 13! Yaaay!
Aaanyway. Got more name ideas, and I don't think you actually do have to choose the URL when you sign up for a MySpace, just the name which I'm guessing you can change, and if you can't never mind. Hope no one minds if I set one up now using my email address. I'll just put Group 4 for now or something.
Mia xx

update: you do have to choose a URL.

Tomorrow

Also actually, I'm not gonna be wearing the same dress in the promotional shots am I..? So are we actually going to do them tomorrow, and if so where?
Mia xx

Names

Thanks Miss B & Mrs D! Yeah, I'd like to use a character name, I was thinking about old Greek myths and stuff, but yeah, I'll have another little brainstorm and then we can all pool our ideas together and come up with something SPECTACULAR.
And about the Violent Delights thing - before Mary gets all annoyed about New Moon, it's Romeo and Juliet! But yeah, Violent Desires... That probably also means there are other good things like that we could take from old Shakespeare. It would go with our artist....
ALSO, for tomorrow:

• GROUP PICTURE
• ending (which we need to decide precisely on!)
• promotional shots for ALBUM COVER and MySpace
• maybe a bit of a video diary thing in character to put on the MySpace or something?
• RAIN. If it's going to be raining - which it is for most of the day it seems - we need to utilise this; might just be light rain though which will just be a nuisance, although a little less likely to give us pneumonia

Are we meeting at 12 or 12.30, and at the location or at Oakwood Station?
Mia xx

Name Ideas

Ooh, that's quite helpful actually, thanks Miss B and Miss D! :)

While watching New Moon today [I know, we're keenos :)] we came across the name Violent Delights, which we thought was pretty cool...but THEN, we had an even better idea to change it to Violent Desires

It doesn't have to be the band name, we were thinking more album name....what do you guys think??

-Selina-

Ideas from Miss B and Mrs D

Name ideas - what about a character from a novel or something from myths and legends, say nordic myths

Use your English and History sources for this challenge girls!

Not in today

Hey guys, I'm not going to be in today because i'm not feeling well...so that means someone will have to take home more equipment. Sorry!

Are we still on for the shoot on sunday? If so, I'll try and make it but if I can't I'll let you know.

Bhavika xx

Editing

We're about halfway through the post-production stage of our project and, surprisingly, things are running rather smoothly! We've managed to piece together a rough video structure, with only a few gaps here and there, but we're making good progress. The main focus of the feedback we've been given is:

• The cross-cutting between the forest and the tunnel, when the girl wakes up, is not entirely matched correctly [angles are ever-so-slightly different..!]

• The shots of the girl lip syncing in the tunnel are too long - we need to tighten the frames up a tad

• Some shots are confusing/don't work well together e.g. the CU of the hand on the tree cut to the girl circling the masked fuguuu on the stump [like, wth is that all about, man?!]

• Make all the shots in the tunnel the same colour; apparently the dingy look is aesthetically awesome [it's not YOUR video, Ryan!]

• THE FIRE-SPINNING IS GOOD. HURRAH. MORE FIRE-SPINNING, PLEASE.

So yeah, we've received pretty constructive stuff from teachers, media students and royalty alike which is no doubt only going to help us through the rest of our editing. We may have to reshoot a few things [the waking up sequence] and we DEFINITELY need to shoot an ENDING of some sort, but let's save that for another post :)

Safari, so good...

*Three cheers for Group 4*

-Selina-

Mia wishes to announce:

I'm not going to be here on Friday because I'm going to a lovely posh school for Latin lectures and so won't be in :( Don't miss me too much! Hohoho xxx

Someone, call the doctor....

Hey guys, you probably are all well aware that I'm rather poorly atm and I just wanted to let you know that I won't be in for the rest of the week... :(
I hope that doesn't put much of a dent in our plans; we're pretty much editing 'til the cows come home, right?!
But yeah, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THERE'S ANYTHING I CAN DO - knowing I can be of assistance even when I'm away from the edit suite is somewhat comforting :) plus it'll help with the boredom! [If I can muster the energy to do so, of course!]

Sorry for the inconvenience, but this evil, masked-genius will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in no time [I hope!] :)

-Selina-

Project Progress

We really need to start thinking more about the band website and the album cover; I suggest a BRAINSTORM SESH to that effect, yeah, YEAH!
Also, as we had to cut the song down from about 5 minutes (we've got it to about 3.35), I thought it would be a good idea to do another lyrics breakdown with all the timecodes ammended, as well as some of the lyrics we've now removed so I've done that... Hopefully it'll make things a bit easier :)
Mia xxx

P-P-P-Pictures

REAL TUNNEL SHOOT NUMBER TWO

Selina bringing out the shot list!

"I can put my whole fist in my mouth... wanna see?"

Trying to get to Diagon Alley...

EYES ON FIRE. YEAH.

Loving the temperature.

(Trying to be) keeping warm with tealights...

Selina is an old woman.

Bhavika is thinking about me running in slo-mo...

Mary is perturbed.

Mia is crazy.

Mmm, lovely tunnel walls... if I could use one word to describe them, it would definitely be clean. (Sarcasm, btw.)