1. Director’s Commentary
Lydia: We’re here to present a directors commentary on Evaluation Task 4. We decided to
use ‘Mardy Bum’ by the Arctic Monkeys as it linked with our initial idea of a dolls house
concept and we liked the indie rock genre it came under. We liked how the lyrics to the
song sounded like a narrative, influencing our idea to include a narrative along with our
band performance.
Alice: We started out by drawing out the storyboards and filming it to create an animatic.
This was beneficial as it allowed us to see how long we would need for the shots, and
practice cutting to the beat and see whether or not our sequence of shots worked or
needed changing. We filmed the animatic using a Sony NX5 and cut it using Final Cut Pro.
We realised when cutting the animatic that some shots were too long and were not
interesting enough and some were too short and were not understandable. We also learnt
that we needed to vary our type of shot so that it was not too repetitive and boring for the
viewer. We then preceded to upload our animatic onto YouTube.
Annabel: On the shoot day we shot using a Sony FS100, which is a professional camera
and helped to give us a near industry standard product, created to the best of our ability.
The prime lens we used was the 18mm used for the wide shots, the lens for the medium
shots was 35mm and the lens for the close ups was 50mm. We used all of the lens’
equally as we used the wide lens for the establishing shots, the medium shots for the band
performance and the close ups for the actors faces in the narrative and the bands faces.
Francesca: One constant theme in our narrative was the idea of a perfect world fitting with
the concept that it is set in a dolls house. We wanted our narrative to demonstrate the idea
of a perfect suburban 50’s marriage, where everything is perfect, demonstrated through
the dolls house. This was interpreted in many ways by our target audience, for example it
was interpreted in a ‘big brother’ way where everything was being controlled and also as
the idea that as the perfect world was in a dolls house then it is all fake and does not
actually exist.
Lydia: We edited our music video using Final Cut Pro, a non-linear editing programme.
Firstly, we uploaded our footage into the programme and organised our shots into a rush
bin and separate categories within that, titles by each scene. After this we used the
timeline and uploaded our chosen song onto it, where we synced the shots by finding the
beat of the song and the point of filming which matched it. This enabled us to perfect the
lip-syncing, which is crucial to the coursework so the music video looked as professional
as possible. Lip-syncing enables the song to appear as if it was performed live at the time
of recording.
Alice: We made sure to layer the clips on the timeline so we could edit and change the
clips as much as we wanted without having to move the work we had already done. During
editing we decided to cut out the idea of having our props turn into cardboard, our original
concept. This was because the idea was too difficult and we did not want to confuse our
target audience and would rather have them appreciate the song and the video, rather
than be confused by it.
Annabel: We had a time-lapse recorded of the day to be able to watch back and remember
everything we did. The time-lapse took pictures every 40 seconds to allow us to get the
general idea of the set-up we did. We lit the set with hanging LED batons, strobe lights and
strip lights attached along the top of the studio, shining down on the set which we were
able to modify and give the appearance of different times of the day.
Something that was a key element in our post-production and evaluation process was
digital technology as we used a variety of online technology to collect our audience
feedback. We filmed our focus group on an iPhone 5 which enabled our audience to
extend their answers to our questions and specify which parts of our campaign they did or
did not like. It also enabled us to re-watch the footage and evaluate what our target
audience had said and how this made an impact on our campaign.
2. Francesca: We used Survey Monkey, an online website to receive feedback. This was a
good method as it enabled us to design the questions easily and send the survey round to
many people at the same time. From this we gained some beneficial feedback on how to
improve our campaign and what people liked the best. We also used the demographics
from YouTube to receive feedback but also to allow our video to be viewed worldwide. This
could not have been done without the advanced technology available today.
Lydia: We used professional editing software to create a professional product and a
campaign. Without this new media technology it would have taken much longer to create
our music video and it would not have been of the same quality, showing that new media
technology is extremely beneficial.