Band Merchandise

 












This is our band merchandise and has come in the form of a band t-shirt, using the theme colour blue of our company logo and the wanted poster of our music video of the cookie monster i have created a t-shirt to with our album and advert It will be on a white and black t-shirts so its a variety. It will go on sale shortly and will be disputed to the UK from 1st March, it is a leading song from the Automatic's recent album 'Monster' which is called Monster to co-inside with the album and music video. This is only a release of the t-shirt and only will be on sale for a limited time only.

Evaluation Question 3 Script

What have you learnt from you audience feedback?


Feedback from our target audience has had a great impact on the final edit of the music video. After uploading our second rough cut in November, we received feedback from peers in the class. The aim of this task was to find out what improvements could be made when it comes to making our final video. The feedback we got was...


1. Some shots were too dark - This was a big issue as the wanted poster was hard to read, and if the audience couldn't understand what it was, they probably wouldn't understand the rest of our narrative, thus effecting the rest of the music video. We resolved this by re-shooting this part of the video with better lighting and a new wanted poster that was clearer and easier to read, as well as looking more realistic.
2. Some shots are too long - Some of the songs lasted too long and seemed to drag as they were not cut to every beat. We resolved this by including more of the performance shots and cutting between them more often, also using thought beat to improve the effect of the performance.
3. A lot of shots seem quite repetitive - We had not included enough variety in our performance shots and this was noticeable to our target audience. We resolved this for our final edit by including more of the band shots that hadn't been used much in the rough cuts.


Stuart Hall came up with the reception theory, he stated that meanings and products are encoded by the producer, and decoded by the audience. There is a lack of fit between the two and there is four possible readings that can be made; dominant, negotiated, oppositional and aberrant. Within our text, we aimed to encode one possible meaning. We aimed to create a humorous narrative that would reflect the lyrics of the song. We found through our audience feedback that our audience agreed with our dominant reading, for example, we received comments on our final edit from members of our target audience. We did this by posting the video on social networking site facebook, where the highest percentage of users are teenagers (our target audience) we requested constructive feedback and hopes for positive comments as well as areas for improvement.

Kieran Morris said that the variety of shots works well within the genre, that the narrative is clear, well thought out and engaging, and that the instrument syncing is done well. He said that he really liked the elliptical edit at 2:06, and the shots that go from 2:38 to 3:05 as they work very well with the music and look nice. He finished by saying that the final shot (p.o.v of the cookie monster getting caught in the net) was unique, well thought out and a good way of ending the song.

Andy Naisbitt said that the video was great, although the lip syncing was off at the start, all of the instruments were synced; this shows that you have to make sure your lead singer is good at singing/mouthing the words at the correct pace, as well as making sure you can edit the footage perfectly to the music. Being successful at both of these can prove difficult. He also said that the cookie monster was great; this shows that he enjoyed the costume and the humorous side of the narrative that this particular character brought out.

Helen Dawber said that the lip syncing is of a good standard and has been edited in time with the song (this contrasts with our last piece of feedback, which shows that it is always good to gain feedback from more than one person, this will improve the validity.) There is alot of meat shots of the lead singer (this was intentional and i'm glad that it has been noticed by an audience member as it is a convention of most music videos.) However, she also pointed out that the camera lacks movement and can make the video seem quite dull. After looking back at our footage, we realised that this was an issue, however we did not have time to book out more cameras and do it again, so we decided to make the best of the shots available.

Daniel Scott said that there was a good use of thought beat within the intro of the song. This was something we worked hard on Perfecting and i am glad that it is a part that stands out to our audience members. He said that we had a good storyline that kept him intrigued throughout, this shows again that our narrative was amusing and gripped the audience. However, he also said that the shot of the cookie monster running away was too long and could be broken down with some band shots which is a fair point as that is the longest shot in the video. He finished by saying that the effects used are really good; this could refer to the thought beats used and the speech bubble that has been edited onto the video.

Daman Dixon said that there was good syncing on the instruments; this point has been brought up before, meaning that the good instrument syncing must be a part of the video that stands out. He also said that there was an effective use of shot reverse shot at 2:52, aswell as matching some jump cuts at 2:06. He said that the narrative was very amusing and suited the song well, this was the intention we made the video with, so it's good that the audience definitely agree with our dominant reading.

Lois Burke said that there is a wide range of shots and you can tell a lot of time and effort has gone into making it, yet the end result looks effortless. This means that the video has been well-received by the audience and looks professional. By saying that the video is amusing and kept her attention again supports the fact that the audience agree with our dominant reading by understanding the humorous narrative that connects with the song lyrics. Her one criticism is that the shots of us preparing to ambush the cookie monster are too dark. This shows that we could have re-shot more shots than we did to improve the audience viewing pleasure.


The feedback shows that most of the audience members enjoyed the video and therefore agree with our dominant reading, however, there are some improvements that could be made. Getting feedback from our target audience has improved our knowledge on producing music videos and what is expected from this particular genre; it has came to my attention that the key aspects people look out for are costume, props, setting, and lip and instrument syncing.

Final Wanted Poster

This is the wanted poster we will be using our narrative. We used a handmade one in our second rough cut, but have decided the footage is too dark and it is hard to read the poster; this is why we have designed one in photoshop using a black and white image of the cookie monster, added text and put an effect over the top to make it look old and worn. This will have a positive impact on our Mise en Scene and make it easier for the audience to understand the storyline. After printing the image off, i have also crumpled it up to give it even more of a creased effect and to look more realistic.

Editing the music video 2

This is our work space within final cut express HD, this is our footage left and below and as you can see you have 2 lines of footage of which are performance shots shown in our first rough cut and narrative shots. I froze the performance footage, so it cant be tampered or changed, so we could just simply put our narrative in the top row as the top row is played first and where there is gaps, it will play the below footage. This was a very good technique as we could establish where the narrative fits best and to fit it all of the narrative in and in order, so it flows better. We have left gaps in the narrative so the band shots aren't totally lost and so the music video doesn't get to boring. Our second rough cut is much more advanced than our first as we have included our narrative shots so it has a story to follow within the song but with the band shots also; this is key as we don't want our audience to get bored of the video but we want it to have added meaning and humour influences in our music video and i think we have through the footage we have produced in our second rough cut. Here is a link to our second rough cut which is of good quality and hopefully become a very high quality final cut of the song 'Monster' by The Automatic. The tabs in our work space [as shown above] separates our footage so we know where our footage is, this really helps as it makes the editing process very organized and more structured. So all in all i think our editing of our music video is going very well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKSDWMSSoNc

Rough Cut Feedback

We have showed our peers our second rough cut in order to gain some feedback. This is what they said:

Some shots need more lighting - There is some shots of the narrative where it is hard to see some of the props, making it difficult tick depict the storyline. We are going to resolve this by re-shooting the scenes that are too dark and replace them with the new shots. Some shots are too long - Some of the shots in the second rough cut last too long and on screen it really makes the video drag. We are going to resolve this problem by editing more shots into the video so that it picks up the pace and cuts to the beat.

Some shots are too similar - Alot of the performance shots included in the rough cut are at the same angle and look very similar. The issue with this is mainly timing, we ran out of time to add more various shots into the video before the deadline. In our final edit we plan to include alot more of the footage that we shot in the video.

The Automatic - Monster Rough Cut 2

This is our second rough cut and we have improved it significantly as we have included most of our narrative footage with the addition of some band shots.  We have structured the narrative around the band shots and we think it flows very well, plus the storyline that we prepared through our storyboard, we have changed it slightly to enhance the viewing pleasure of watching our music video. All in all i think the second rough cut is very good and much better to watch than the first one because of the added features.

Final Company Logo

This is our final company logo. As we found out it would be included on our digipak, we thought it best to edit the colours to suit the package design we plan to use. There was also a few rough edges that needed neatening up and editing in order to make the logo look more professional, and something that would actually be used in the music industry, we have chosen the colour blue to suit the cookie monster theme as its the colour of the cookie monster and this blue, white and black colour scheme will be used throughout to show consistency within the products and will be considered professional in the music industry.