Peer Assessment 2

We conducted another peer evaluation in class today and here are the results. We plan to take action upon the criticism given. 

CD Cover font inspirations

I researched few fonts that might work with our genre and style of music video. Although the 'Bizon handmade' font does not suit our style and genre, I have checked few projects that had used this font which gave me few ideas on our own cd cover design.



The Paniq project has replaced and illustrated few of the letters into objects which I found quite creative and interesting therefore, we decided to experiment with using our artist, Kanye West as the letter I in Dimension.







Though we could not download this font on our computer, we found a similar font on photoshop that worked just fine and had worked better with our style. The boldness, thickness and the colour had worked better with the font 'Bebas neue'. In fact, we have used that font throughout our coursework in A2 to predominate our style and genre.

Shooting - Dalston

This is an update post in which we have followed our schedule. We went to shoot on the 13th of March 2015 in daytime to get clearer image and to ensure that the exposure. saturation and the highlights of the shots are in high quality to meet our intended message that we are trying to communicate to our audience.

Scheduling

As shown in figure 1.1, we have successfully met our targets and tasks from the 6th of March 2015 to the 15th of March 2015. This scheduling system is very effective in terms of organising and planning the next task for our project. This schedule doesn't only include new shooting dates, we have also scheduled when to post and update our blogs, making of props, contacting our models and location research. 

This weeks schedule is going to help us to getting closer to completing our mysic video and lead into self evaluation, improvements and possible additions to achieve our potential. 

Update - Shooting

The impact of editing

This is a presentation that justifies our editing style and purpose; why we chose to use a fast speed, cuts, effects, different transitions and the timing of the shots. We have also shown the before and after results of an original footage to the edited version to highlight the difference and the impact of editing in the production.

Filming - Piccadilly Circus

On Friday the 6th of March we went to do some more filming. After the intense editing we discovered that we needed some more footage which was convenient because we have not been to shoot at all of our selected locations yet. We went to get a shot of the over all busy atmosphere in hope of creating an effective time lapse as well as capturing some unexpected shots that fit perfectly with the meaning of our video. Once the footage is imported and we begin editing an update will be posted.

March Schedule

Reflecting on the amount of work we did last month we realised that making a schedule helped us stay on track, therefore we have made another one for the month of March and the next week and a half is pretty jam packed. Though we are little bit behind we hope to pick things up soon.

Class evaluation of our current work

As a class, we decided to watch each others work to give them feedback, criticism and give few suggestions on how to make their work better or perhaps more appealing. As we did this, we worked against the marking scheme to ensure that we are working amongst the requirements of the examiner. We have ticked the box that we thought was most appropriate to the current work. Here are the results of our work, marked by our class:

By looking at figure 1.1, I am actually very satisfying and pleased with the results that was given by our class, bearing in mind that our music video is incomplete at the moment.

We have been categorised on the 'Excellent Ability: Level 4' for the following skills:

- Framing a shot
- variety of shot distances
- shooting material appropriate to the task set.
- manipulating video as appropriate to the context for presentation, cropping and resizing
- accuratel using Mode of Address and performance
- appropriately integrating performance and narrative
- understanding of generic conventions
AND
- Using ICT appropriately.

This suggests that we are working really well on the rise-en-scene, understanding and portraying the context of our music video, understanding the conventions of a music video and expressing originality through manipulation and appropriate ICT skills to enhance our ideas. As part of the group, I am very pleased with the given feedback because it has ensured that we as two A2 Media Studies students are working excellently towards the mark scheme that we will eventually get marked against on. To self evaluate, I am quite surprised that we have managed to get to Level 4 when our work is still incomplete therefore I would majoritaly put our work into Level 3/4 as I do think we have parts that we are going to refer back to edit more, improve and make clearer. However, in the eyes of the audience, our current work successfully comes across as aesthetically pleasing, original and political in which meets our specification.

However, as seen in figure 1.1 and 1.2, some of our friends have ticked Level 3 for some of our skills like:

- Manipulating video
- Mode of address
AND
-Integrating performance and narrative

We as a group, are open to criticism as we do believe that it will help us to improve further and meet our potential. I partly agree with this level given because we are currently working on clarifying our intentions, context and storyline so I would personally put myself on Level 3 for Narrative for now, but I do believe that we can secure Level 4 after adding our new footage for clarification.

However, I do not agree with the manipulation of our video and mode of address because we have clearly identified and highlighted our interaction with our audience in our current work. For example, the rhetorical question that we have used, 'How many MP's have bought houses with your taxes?' this is a way of involving and engaging with the audience to get them to become more active rather than passive which is one of our aims to meet by the end of this production. In addition, we have used a lot of Mode of Address to alienate and awaken the audience about the political injustice that some of us are facing in our society. For instance, at the beginning of our video the following models; Ilan, Kayode and Janat directly look at the audience with different facial expressions to suggest how they feel about the social system. Ilhan had a very dominating and define facial expression to suggest that she is part of the higher hierarchy that is dominating our society and is benefited from capitalism. Whereas, Kayode smiles at the audience to show false consciousness. Lastly, Janat is neutral to show the passiveness of our society towards fighting for our beliefs and rights, therefore she is not expressive and is accepting.

Overall, we have been given 31/36 which is a great mark bearing in mind that our work is still incomplete. We are hoping and willing to get 36/36 by the end of our media product.

Editing style & analysis

Editing style & analysis of our work

Our group has a specific editing style to communicate our intentions and message to our target audience. The style we chose to go for is abstract, innovative and dimensional therefore we experimented with different effects, transitions, speed, cuts and colour adjustments to ensure that the effect is appropriate, blends well with the rest of the video and portray our message clearly. Although our music video is designed in the style of montage collaborating; glamour, scenery, distortion and subversion of society, political references, sexual exploitation and the outcome of living in a capitalist society, we wanted to make sure that the audience follows the video without confusion therefore we watched our extracts more than once to examine the speed to reassure that it's fast enough for them to understand the concept of the video and the specific shot.



We chose not to use very obvious transitions in our music video as it can make our product look unprofessional and give an impression of excessive amount of editing techniques being used in the media product therefore we chose to use a transition that would blend really effectively with the previous and the upcoming shot. In result of that, we chose to use 'Bloom' because it transits into the next shot with a mixture of flashes and distortion which suits our video really successfully as we have subtle flashes and slight tilts and shakes in our shots through the use of 'Earthquake' that distorts the shot. Therefore this tranisition has worked really well with our video as it blended in perfectly and fitted in with the fast beat of our chosen song.



As our song has a very fast tempo and rhythm, we chose to fasten our shots to fit the beat. The fast speed also makes the shots look more interesting and prevents the video from looking dull and too long as this song has 10 chorous so long shots would have made the video boring. Also long shots would have appeared inappropriate because it kwukdnt have looked complete with the pace of the beats. Therefore, we experimented with different paces for our shots but we have came t a conclusions that 'X4' generally works the best because it's fast enough to see and understand what is happening in the shot and it generally fit perfectly with the beat. However, for longer shot like a time lapse, we used x20 to give the same duration as the x4. It fastens the shot, does not ruin the beauty of shot and clearly highlights the change that a time lapse does.

Audio adjustment