A2 Music Video: My Opinion

Was the video appropriate for the song?
I personally feel that we captured the erratic, fun, fast paced music well with a character to match this style. However, Chris was quite slow paced in some places and it would have worked better if he had physically moved the pace we had sped him up to. For example, I think it would have been more entertaining at the scene where he brushes his teeth if he was physically moving that speed and becoming messier. Also, I think that if we had more people available to us then we could have included a band performance. This would have maybe promoted the band more successfully. Despite this, the name "Cousins" reminds me of family and presenting this small idea of the song with a family man has worked quite well.

Was it entertaining?
I definitely think so. Freddie and I have very similar senses of humor so the events that happened made us laugh and we enjoyed watching them back. It has been very rewarding to receive positive feedback to this question as it is quite difficult to make something funny and entertaining. It is easy to fall into thinking something is funny because one person enjoyed it. For example, a friend breaking into a laughing fit during filming is funny to us at the time, but no one else would enjoy watching that.

Was the balance of Story and Performance right?
This was one part that I wold maybe change, I am really pleased with the results of the music video considering we had a limited amount of actors. However, if we had more actors and a lot more time (and a longer song) I would try to include a band appearance/performance. This would tie the video together nicely and fit more with a typical music video convention. Although, I also like the secrecy of not knowing the artist, this is typical of the artist Bob Synclair.

Good choice of props, locations and costume?
I am very pleased with these elements. A lot of care went into selecting them and our idea relied on these to tell the story. However, it would have been good find an actual office for the office scene. Peterborough is not the greatest location offices, nor could we find anywhere in time.

Were the camera angles and movements interesting?
The tracking shots are the shots I am most pleased with! It was great fun to experiment with a range of angles such as the tracking despite our dolly not working. Our shot list was planned knowing that music videos include lots of cuts and we wanted to make these cuts interesting. There is no point cutting to another shot filmed exactly the same way.

Was it a success?
I am very pleased with the outcome. We had no issues editing and I feel the tie changing as he goes down stairs had a high standard outcome. We were very lucky for our storyboarding and shot planning to have worked out so well. We have definitely improved in our organisation skills since AS.
There is a shot, however, where Chris' singing looks as though it is out of sync. Unfortunately, no matter how much we edited this, it always looked this way. We have come to the conclusion that it is the way that Chris sang along to this part. If we had more time, I would have maybe re-shot this part. This and the lack of a band appearance is the only thing I would change.
Another mistake was that Chris was not wearing his tie in the running shots, this has worked to our advantage as I feel that the shot where Chris' tie comes off works better. It is entertaining and ties the running to the house exit nicely.
Our extensive planning, good actors, several filming sessions and improved editing skills have meant that our final music video has worked out better than planned. Our target audience has proved to like the music video. I feel that overall, the music video was a definite success.

A2 Music Video: Feedback Analysis

50% of survey takers were male, and they were all part of our target audience. This means that we have opinions from mixed genders and all of the response will be valid. As well as this, then people means there is enough data to analyse.

75% agreed that the music video was appropriate for the song with the other 25% feeling that it was only appropriate sometimes. No one said no, this means that we have overall, succeeded with choosing the action for our music video. Perhaps we needed to create a questionnaire that would have found out what people wanted from the song "Cousins."

100% of people agreed that the pace of the music video was appropriate for the song. This means that we have succeeded in fulfilling this audiences needs with this particular element.

75% of people found the music video very entertaining whereas the remaining 25% found it interesting enough. I feel that this is a very good reaction as no one found it uninteresting. Not everyone is pleased by the same things so having the majority of our target audience enjoy the video, is satisfying.

We were unsure whether the guitar solo performance at the end of the song would be enough of a balance between story and performance. Surprisingly enough, 100% of our survey takers thought it was. which means we planned the right amount of each element.

75% of our survey takers thought that our choice of props, costumes and locations successfully portrayed a married man experiencing a hectic morning and work day. I am pleased by this result as planning these elements took a long time. It is good to know that our worked had payed off and the majority of our audience could understand the story.

A surprising result of 100% of people said that they could see our music video on TV. This suggests that some viewers think that it is a god quality music video. It also is good considering that our brief was to make a promotional video. Television reaches millions of viewers and seeing it on TV as opposed to just a video sharing website would be an incredible opportunity for the band. MTV and Kerrang were voted the most likely channels to show the music video.

50% of our survey takers would check out "vampire Weekend" after seeing this video. Unfortunately, this isn't as much as we would have liked, however, ten people do not make up the target of teenagers and young adults. We'd like to hope more positive results from a far larger surveyed group. It also suggests that something in our music video is not successful in promoting the song, perhaps a band appearance would have been needed.

The reactions of the Music video from this survey, show that the product, overall, was a success. Despite a few responses, the majority of people gave the best answer possible which we are very pleased about.

A2 Music Video: YouTube Demographics

Insight is new to YouTube. It is a feature that allows us to see what kinds of people are looking at our music video. The results are presented in the form of graphs and charts as shown below:

The bar chart on the left demonstrates the age group of our viewers. All of our viewers are within the target audience. The majority of people represented through these charts are paged 13 - 17 making up 60% of our viewers.

The pie chart on the right displays an almost equal ratio of male to female viewers. It could be argued that our music video is doing very well by appealing to people over the age group, within the age group and applying to both genders.

A2 Music Video: Feedback Survey Results

First of all, we retrieved our feedback from YouTube. W have only received four comments, however, it has gained a fair number of views meaning that people have seen it. It also suggests that advertising it on Facebook has worked.

We also received a total of ten responses from Zoomerang:

A2 Music Video: Feedback Survey

Firstly, we asked what the persons age and gender was. This is so that we can look at the results knowing what kind of audience has taken it. Our target age group was teenagers and young adults so responses from them are most useful. The majority of our feedback questions are a reflection of the questions that we asked at the beginning of the year. This included questions such as;

Was the video appropriate for the song?
This question will give us an overall idea whether we made the right choice with our idea of a busy, office man.


Was the pace of the video appropriate for the song?
The song "Cousins" is fast paced so we wanted the music video to have a pace to match it. The question will enable us to discover whether we had achieved this successfully and if it was the correct move. Our audience also initially wanted a video to be in pace with the song.


Was the video entertaining?
Our audience wanted a funny, entertaining music video. We included events such as the orange juice spill and pushing a school girl over to create humour and entertainment. This question should let us know if we achieved this. We hoped that it wouldn't look amateurish and that our audience were entertained by our ideas.


Was the balance of Story and Performance right?
Our audience proved to want a combination of both these elements so we tried to achieve this by having the story of the man and his guitar performance towards the end. Hopefully, this has been enough for our audience to enjoy.

We wanted to convey a busy, married man. Was this achieved through our choice of costume, location and props?
We had carefully planned all of these elements with reference to existing products in hope to make our video convincing. This question will let us know if we did things correctly or whether we needed to do more.

Were the camera movements and angles interesting?
We included a range of shots such as the tracking shots for whilst he was running, wide shots, closes ups and high angles. We would like to know that we had successfully combined a good range of angles and movements.


Could you see this music video on TV?
We have asked this question so that we can know whether our product could challenge existing media products. If people could see it on TV, then we know that it is worthy of national views and air time.


What music channel?
This question has been asked to discover where it would be seen, this would create a more narrowed audience. For example, if our target select music channels popular with its age group, then we have been successful.


Are you more likely to check out the band "Vampire Weekend" after seeing this?
Our brief was to create a promotional video for an artist so this is an important question. Hopefully our music video will persuade viewers to take interest in the band.


We distributed this survey via social networking site Facebook and video sharing website YouTube. Both of these are very popular with our target audience so we hope to receive more valid feedback.

A2 Music Video: Feedback Survey

For the original Music video questionnaire we used survey website Zoomerang. We decided to use this again to create a feedback survey as we were familiar with it. The purpose of a feedback survey was to find out whether our music video had been successful with our target audience. Here is the survey:

A2 Music Video: Upload to Youtube

In order for us to recieve feedback we have decided to upload our music video to video sharing website, "YouTube." We have chosen this site because it is used widely by our target audience and is easily accessible. Here is our music video:

A2 Music Video: Editing; Part Two

This time we uploaded the new footage; entering the school, the tie coming off, the office scene and the part where Chris walks from the stairs and exits the house. Gain, we removed the bad takes from the rushes and chose our favourite takes.

Because we have gotten rid of the garden scene, we had to re-sync some of our edited footage to the music. This didn't take long though. We replaced the shots where Chris left the house and added the shots of his tie coming off. Then we matched the tracking shots to the music it had been moved to. We feel that it has worked out better than before and seems look more natural at the place of song it is at. This was done using the cut tool.

Editing the office scene was a little more challenging, once we had placed all the shots to the music and had him enter the office. We were faced with making the CCTV look real. To help us, we had a look at some existing CCTV footage:

From these two images, it is noticeable that a typical convention is the date and time along either the top or bottom. So we decided to superimpose a date over the action. (Chris walking into the office and at his desk.) We also liked the fact that the image on the left was in black and white, but they both also looked a bit grainy. To achieve this, we added the effects of Black and White, but also increased the noise in the images. We feel that this has worked effectively. The reason for using a CCTV was to catch Chris enjoying the music he was listening to for added humour.

The next part we edited was the paper transition. Using the cut tool we placed together the show to Chris throwing the paper with the shot of him playing the guitar. To make the paper fall over the lens smoothly, we placed a cut as son as the screen was covered in the paper throw part then deleted the end of it. Then we place a cut just as soon as the paper leaves the lens on the guitar part. This meant when it played, it looked as though the paper had fallen.

The final parts we edited were simple cuts and matching the action to the music. We inter cut the singing with the guitar playing. We also inter cut our special appearances with the final guitar parts. We then made sure that everything was as perfectly synced as possible.

For the finishing touches, we selected a default title from the programme and adjusted its positioning and length of appearance. We also added the transition fade from black at the beginning, and fade to black at the end. This finishes up the music video nicely.

We then exported the music video. :)

A2 Music Video: Editing; Garden Scene

Last time we edited, we noticed that we had too much footage in comparison to the length of the song. To resolve this, we have decided to remove the garden scene. As much as we like it, the music video doesn't suffer or lose quality without it.

Because we had got rid of the garden scene, we had to rearrange the footage, the music video is now ordered: wake up, get ready, breakfast, clothes montage, mirror, tie change, leave house,tie comes off, street and office scene.

Here is the deleted garden scene:

A2 Music Video: Re-shoot Day

Today we filmed four parts:

Office Scene: This was filmed exactly as before, he only difference being that the lighting was much better.

Tie Coming Off:
This went really well, just as we had planned, we used a mid shot of Chris standing like a cartoon character. We then changed to a wide shot of him in the same position as he ran off-screen. We threaded a piece of white thread through the end of the tie, this is almost un-noticeable so it doesn't look as though someone has pulled it away from him. He was not wearing it properly.
Unfortunately, the tie we used for when Chris exits the house was left an another location so we had to re-shoot the scene where he leaves the house.

Leaving the House:
Just as before, we used a pan to follow Chris from the stairs to the front door, followed by a closeup of a tap on the shoulder. We used my hand this time though as Gabriella wasn't available. Because Chris' shirt and tie isn't vi sable in the "Kiss" shot, we didn't need to re-shoot this.

Entering the School:
This was the final part we filmed today, using the automatic doors at Stanground College, we used a static, establishing shot to see Chris enter the "office", which is in fact, my bedroom. This shot is needed to provide that illusion.

Overall, filming was successful today and we had a lot of fun as a group. This hopefully is filming fully finished.

A2 Music Video: Re-Shoot Plan

After realising several issues during the editing process, we need to re-shoot the following:

Tie Coming Off: Although this isn't a re-shoot as such, we need to film it for continuity in our music video.

Office Scene: We will shoot this exactly the same as last time, the footage was previously too dark.

Entering the "Office": Again, this isn't a re-shoot, the school was closed during half term so we are going to be doing it then.

We have scheduled the re shoot day for the 10/11/09. It is on a Tuesday which is the only day that Chris is free. We should hopefully get everything we need as we know what needs to be done for the Office scene and the other parts we need are short.

A2 Music Video: New Plan

During the first part of the editing process, we realised that Chris was not wearing his tie for the tracking shot. To remedy this, we have come up with a new idea so that action is matched.

Similarly to cartoons, we thought it would be entertaining for Chris to run. His tie would come off as he takes off. We also thought that this would connect leaving the house, with the street run nicely. This will maintain the continuity that was broken when Chris wasn't wearing his tie.

The camera angles we plan to use for this is a mid shot of Chris standing outside the front of the house. He will lift his arms as though he is about to run, then we will cut to a wide shot of his whole body in that position. As he takes off, his tie will be left behind. We plan to achieve this by attaching some string to the bottom of the tie, and pulling it as he runs. (He will not be wearing the tie properly.)

A2 Music Video: Editing; Part One

For the editing process, we used the post production software Adobe Elements 7. It is an editing programme for moving images as well as photography.
The first part of the editing process was to upload our footage to the programme then get rid of all the bad shots in the rushes. This included bad takes, mistakes and inappropriate behaviour from the actors.

The tools we used for editing were as follow:

Cut Tool: This tool cuts the footage meaning we can separate parts of the footage.

Delete Tool: This does as it is titled; deletes any footage/cuts.

Horizontal Flip Tool: This tool enabled us to reverse the footage, almost like a rewind effect.

Timescale Tool: This enabled us to speed up or slow down the footage.

After deleting the bad footage from the rushes, we were left with several good takes from each scene. From these, we selected our favourite shots and deleted the rest.

To make the process easier, we placed the footage in chronological order in correspondence to our storyboard and shot list. This left with our favourite shots in order. In order to refine the music video, we uploaded the song "Cousins" to the programme.

Editing the first nine shots were pretty straight forward, we simply cut the shots and placed them together in time with the music. For example, the bedroom light comes on at the same time as a guitar strums, the next strum is accompanied by Chris sitting up.

After these, there was the shower scene. First of all, the footage needed to be sped up because Chris is quite slow moving which isn't good considering we wanted a fast paced action to match the music. We used the timescale tool for this and shrank the footage so that it played faster. An issue we came across was lighting. Unfortunately, whilst Chris was getting changed into his work clothes, the lighting had changed so that it was clear where we had paused the camera. To resolve this we decided to apply the colour correction effect. There is still a slight vi sable change, but it is a vast improvement to what it had been before.

The next shot that required more than cutting and matching to the song was the breakfast scene. Within this we had the watch zoom. In filming, we shot the watch with a zoom out due to the camera not being able to focus with a zoom in. This is why we reversed it. There is less of a lens focus and the original idea is achieved. Then there is the orange juice spill. Luckily, whilst we were filming we decided to shoot some close ups of Chris spilling the drink because he laughed during the wide shot. We had planned jump cuts of the spill so we decided to mix the wide shot with the several close ups, matching it to the fast drums in the song. This has worked successfully.

The clothes montage was quite simple to edit. After selecting our favourite takes we matched each outfit change to every other click during that particular verse. Each shot of an outfit lasted roughly the same time and similarly to the orange juice spill. We cut short snippets of the takes together to match to the drums. This created a fast cycle through the outfits which I personally feel has worked well.

For the shot with many hands whilst Chris is brushing his teeth, we used the time scale tool. Shrinking the footage made the whole event much quicker which is funnier and fits with the crazy, fast paced guitars.

The most challenging part to edit was the part where Chris comes down the stairs and his tie changed on each step. We had filmed him walking down the stairs in five ties. We decided to cut up each tie placing the cuts at the point in which Chris landed on a step. This meant that the cuts were in exactly the same place on each tie.

From there, we took the first snippet from tie one, then the second section from tie two. the third from tie three, the fourth from tie four, the fifth from tie five , the six from tie one and so on.. The result was that each step was Chris in a different tie working exactly to plan. However, it wasn't the speed we wanted so we had to apply the timescale tool exactly the same to each section. This made each part the same and a faster speed making the whole part where Chris walks down the stairs, faster and more energetic.

The next part we edited was the garden scene, for match on action we joined him disappearing through the gate from one side, with him entering it on the other. It was a challenge editing the part where Chris runs through the clothes on a washing line. This is because we had to cut together a tracking shot, a POV shot and wide shot. Because of the movement of the shots, we found it difficult joining them together so that it flowed smoothly. It took a lot of time but eventually, we found the best combination. The other shots in the garden were quite simple to edit; cut and match to the music.

For the running, tracking shots we removed the beginning and end of each take. This was so that we had a consistent speed. Again, we matched it to the music. Unfortunately, at this time in editing, we realised that Chris was not wearing his tie! This dilemma meant that we should either re shoot the tracking shots or create an explanation. Because of the time and success of our tracking shots, we have decided to insert something new.

As well as this issue, we have realised that the amount of footage lasts longer than the song, we need to condense the music video somehow.

Finally, when we began editing the office scene, we realised that the footage was far too dark in comparison to the rest of the music video, we have decided that we will re-shoot this entire scene on our scheduled re-shoot day.