Here are our replies...

We asked 7 questions to find out what the typical fan likes and dislikes about Florence + the Machine. We asked two fans, one male, aged 17, and one female also aged 17. We tried to get a range of replies so that is why we asked to people of two different genders.

Matthew Aged 17Rachel Aged 17

CommentsOn Facebook we posted a link to our video on YouTube and asked our friends to give feedback. One post in particular was very detailed and we gained and lots of positive feedback. We also gained some constructive criticism about how we could improve the video.

• From our audience feedback we discovered that many people liked our make-up and costume designs. We was happy to hear this as we looked at many of Florence’s costumes and designed our own trying to make them as colourful and flamboyant as we could within our budget.

After posting our video on to YouTube we encouraged our viewers to leave any comments that they may have. Once again we would be able to learn form them and discover what other people thought of our video.

Comments

“I like the shakycam at the beginning and the fast cutting during the forest sequence. It's a good interpretation of

the song.!” Natnoo93 6 days ago

“like the video good interpretation of the song!who edited it at 2.37 to 3.00 fantastic edit on those 20

seconds!”icedjelly1993 3 weeks ago

So far we have not received a large number of comments but our views have now reached over 100. We feel this is good amount as our video has only been released 26 days.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation

stages?

4

ResearchAfter our first discussion group we decided that we would split up the planning stages and each research a different area so that we didn’t have to waste time all researching the same thing. It was decided amongst the group that I would research Florence + the machine and their song “Dog Days Are Over” ,as I knew the most about the group and was had already heard and liked most of her songs on her album lungs. I decided to uses the internet to find any information that I could on the band. I Choose to use the website www.wikipedia.org. I found Wikipedia very useful in my research stages as I gained lots of useful information on the website including the early life of Florence Welsh, information on the band and information on the song Dog days are Over.

Collaborating information about Florence + the machine gave us a feel of how Florence is influenced and how she applies that influence into her music. For example, Florence “was inspired by a giant text instalment titled "Dog Days Are Over" by artist Ugo Rondinone, which Welch used to see every day, riding her bike over Waterloo Bridge.” (Wikipedia). With this knowledge we were able to research Ugo Rondinone and discover more about his art work, and how we could interpret him into our own work.

Youtube has been a useful asset throughout this whole production of this topic. In researching in particular Youtube could be used to watch videos to gain inspiration. We were also able to watch both the “Dog Days Are Over” videos that Florence has released. We all ready most of our ideas at this stage and only watched the videos to see what we needed to include to make the video work dynamically. It was after watching Florence's first video that we realised that on of the central themes was clowns. At first we thought about changing our idea, but instead we adapted our idea so it had a different narrative and different concepts that made the two fundamentally different. We also used Youtube after we had finished our video as a means of broadcasting our video. By doing this we hoped to gain feedback which would help us to realise what other people thought of our video.

Planning When planning our music videos we used a range or technologies to help to be fully prepared for

our production stages. One technology that particularly came in use was the use of Microsoft office. That way were able to produce detailed plans and shooting schedules that we were able to use.

Detailed Storyline

1. Begin to play edited circus theme. Girl in bed, falling to sleep with a clown toy beside her. Door opens as if someone is watching her and the camera tracks towards her. 2. When the girl blinks, images of clowns pop up (cut to) on screen, applying make-up in a barn. (Close up) 3. Cut back to girl in bed again, still falling to sleep with the clown toy beside her. Camera begins to focus in on her face and the toy (zoom and pan) as she begins to fall asleep. When she shuts her eyes, cut to next shot and begin Dog Days Are Over. 4. In a barn on top of some hay bails, clowns (as seen previously) appear applying make-up. (ELS) 5. Cut to POV of clowns looking at each other.. then they turn to the right and see a door being kicked open to reveal a ringmaster looking angry towards the clown.. He then begins to walk towards the clowns (towards the camera). 6. Shot from over the shoulder of the ringmaster as he is signalling towards the clowns, directing out of the barn as a show is about to start. ELS of clowns. 7. Two-shot of the clowns being forced out of the barn and down an alley. Panning shot. Clowns walk away from the camera.8. ELS of clowns walking towards a field being led by the ringmaster in front. He walks up to the gate and attempts to open it.9. Cut to a CU of the ringleader’s hands trying to prise open a lock. Ect......................

Using Word I was able to process all my typed research and planning so that I was easily able to place the work on to my Blog on Tumblr.

ExcelWe used excel so that we could easily and effectively create a shooting schedule that we were able to stick to. We were able to print this out and give each member of the cast and crew a copy so they knew exactly when they were needed and at what times. We also included emergency contact numbers at the top of the schedule so we could contact each other if we needed to. We also knew at what location we would need to be at a certain time and what resources we would need to take with us. Using this technology really proved to be useful, being able to carry a shooting schedule around with us at all times kept us organised but also on track at all times. We also accounted for any extra time we would need and spread the filming out over two days so we knew that we would have plenty of time.

Digital Photography

Whilst filming we carried around a small digital camera so that were able to take a number of photos so we could take snapshots of our surrounding area. Many of these pictures were used in our digipack.

All the pictures on the digipack were taken through the two days of filming. The Second image in from the left is a collage of pictures from the forest we filmed in. We thought this would give a flavour of what is to appear in our music video.

Production:

Video Camera We borrow a video camera from the college and purchased our

own tapes so we had plenty of storage for any footage that we wanted to gain. Our song is only 4 minutes, yet we attained over 3 hours of footage. We knew that we would have more footage to edit but we thought the more footage we had the more clips we would be able to use.

Mobile PhonesWe also used mobile phone that we were able to keep in contact with each other at all times in the planning stages and when we were filming. Keeping in touch helped us to easily organise and arrange where were going to meet and when.

We uploaded all of our clips onto premier, we then looked through all the clips we had. At the same time we re-named all the clips with appropriate headings, we did this so we would know where each clip could be found. It was at this stage that we got rid of any footage that we deemed unnecessary. We then put all the clips in chronological order. Adam downloaded the audio track (with special effects)on to audio layer. We then cut down clips in time to the music.

• Opacity - We changed the opacity on individual clips so that we could layer them above the main video layer.

• Cross- dissolve – We did to create effective transitions between certain shots.

• Simple cuts – Cutting the shot in a specific place, we did this with the slice tool.

• Cut-away - This Juxtaposing of two images in different locations to was to link the different sections of the narrative together in the same sequence.

• Time Alterations –Reversing the speed on certain clips to give the effect of going back in time. We also sped up and slowed down a number of shots.

Construction: Premier

AdvertOpacityEdited pictueFont

We searched for a font that we thought look like the one Florence + the Machine used on their album advert

We also burned this image like those on the digipak to show continuity

We also used a black background like Florence + the Machine used on their album advert, this makes the central images stand out and catch our target audience’s eye

We creatively made ribbons to add to the background. These ribbons related to the mise en scene we used when decorating the forest. This effect was created by changing the opacity to make the ribbons appear mystical and almost transparent

Once again we saturated the Image to fit with our circus Theme.

What we did with Photoshop

We used Photoshop in the construction of our ancillary texts.

Digipak

Burn tool – Used to make the pictures appear more gothic (Relating to one of the original themes)

Rotate tool – Used to place organise the pictures correctly to how they would appear on the actual digipak

Clone tool – We used this tool to reduplicate the balloons in the bottom left hand cover. We also used this tool remove a telegraph pole from the background

Saturation – Made the pictures stand out and look gothic and appear circus themedSmudge – We used this after using the clone tool to make the sky look realistic once

again

Tumblr acting as an online diary where we could post all of our audience research, all the planning including schedules storyboards and plot outlines, but also our evaluation of the filming days. This digital technology was a fantastic resource to have, not only can we access the online diary at any time we could also follow group members and look at each others work and compare valuable notes. Online blogging also made it easy for our teachers to leave comments so we could improve on work

Research Planning

Evaluation

Construction

And Finally…

PowerPoint has been very useful in the evaluation process as it is easy to post on my blog and you can easily upload images, videos and text all on slide. This way the text isn’t overpowering and my work looks more aesthetically pleasing.

PowerPoint

Images

Video