2. I got feedback from my peers in my class at all stages
of the project from rough cut to final cut to digipak
ideas to initial digipak to fonts and to the advert- even if
this was just asking their opinion whether they thought
I was on the right track or not. When getting feedback,
lots of it I agreed with so had no troubles addressing,
but other things I disagreed with and this caused
difficulties when deciding whether to make some
changes or to stick with how I liked it as sometimes I
don’t think the people understood how I intended the
products to be and therefore disagreed on how they
should be made in minor ways.
3. I generally would make the changes suggested by
the feedback if it had been picked up on by more
than one person as this shows it is something
obvious and I went with the general consensus,
however if just one person had sad I should do
something that I disagreed with I didn’t change all
of these things as although feedback is good I
wanted to conserve my creativity not somebody
else and went with my initial gut instinct and
overruled the changes as producers in the medial
world often do.
4. Getting feedback on my rough cut was really helpful as it gave
me some direction and ideas to use to improve where I
perhaps might not have been able to had I been solely doing
my own thing. I also got very positive feedback on my rough
cut and most people in my class really liked it already.
Some good things people picked up on often:
• Good use of unique camera transitions like the camera spin and the
zoom in shots
• Like the use of the black and white filter
• The lip syncing is well edited
• The stop motion in the instrumental is really effective
Some things that more than one person said I should address:
• End of a stronger image
• Add footage in a different location- everything is in the same house
• Perhaps include a girl somewhere to link to the lyrics
5. I did some rough sketches of 3 different digipak
designs and asked people in my target market
group of 14-25 year olds to the pick their favourite
one. The one using the hats was the most popular
but I produced one of other designs to give people
choice again to pick their favourite. Again nearly
everybody selected the thumbnail photo album
cover instead of the pub photographic cover.
I used Photoshop Elements to create all of my
covers and advert and I found the software very
professional to use and it produced nice graphics.
6. Lots of people said they really liked the album cover and
wouldn’t do anything to change it, but some people did have
some comments. One of the main pieces of feedback I got
from people was to try and put a grainy filter over the whole of
the album cover- I tried this and showed them the result and
most of them said that on reflection they preferred the original
so I reverted back to this version. Somebody else told me that
the neutral and brown colour scheme definitely did not work
and I should change the whole thing to greyscale. I did this
and compared the two, I liked the greyscale and the black and
white theme matches with the indie conventions but I decided
to stick with the brown theme as it was more retro and harked
back the bands influences and sound- especially since the 70s
style font was still there in the bland and white but the colours
weren’t-this did not look quite right.
7. My personal opinion is that the final cut is better in
concept than the rough cut but because of the weather
and camera problems it wasn’t as good as it could
have been- whereas the rough cut was good
compared to how it was intended and the final cut
would have been very good if I could have filmed in
better conditions. I like how well the band image and
theme translates between the video digipak and advert
as there is no mistaking that they are all for the same
band and album. I personally think the colour scheme
really works as it links to the bands The Byrds-like
melodies and retro sound and back to their influential
roots.
8. Overall getting peoples feedback was very
useful as it helped highlight some things that I
would never have noticed because I was
approaching something from one angle and
somebody else came in with a fresh outlook
and noticed something I hadn’t. This is one of
the main reasons why rough cuts are made in
industry is to show to people to proof it before
it gets finalised and published in case one
person has missed something.
