Critical responses to our Viral piece and how they help get an idea of what its general repsponse will be like:

23/12/10

To get a general feel of how our piece would be received by a wider audience and to find out what could have maybe been improved, I set up a small ‘focus group’ of people who would potentially watch it. I gave some general background information before I played it, but only as much as someone searching for/coming across the video would know. The video gives all background information into its themes in its description anyway, so no real bias was given to the focus group that wouldn’t be already referenced in the video description.

To get the best results from the focus group of the four people (aged 14, 18, 19 and 51) I decided to let them watch the video in it’s entirety, allow them to comment, ask questions and point out any flaws they felt the video had, and then ask them a series of general, non biased questions while showing them the relevant sections again. These are my findings:

 

Comments/Queries/Criticisms:

‘As a whole it’s very bleak, everything looks really dreary and dull so it’s clearly all very negative, which is perfect for what you’re trying to get across. The song’s really nice and works well with it too. My only criticism is that, if he’s so poor, how can he afford possibly the most expensive phone out at the moment (iPhone)?’ – 51

- My response to this would be that the use of an iPhone to receive and send a text was more of a tool to represent student social life and the most practical and distinguishable way of portraying text messaging. But this is definitely something to be taken into account and if we were to re-do the video, this is definitely a factor to be revised.

 

‘It’s really relevant to what’s going on in politics at the moment. I reckon that’ll end up giving it a load of views.’ – 19

- This was our intention and it was good to hear this coming from someone within our target audience.

 

‘I liked it a lot, especially the song and colours. Only thing that confused me is where he goes outside and then comes right back in. You kind of expect something to happen outside.’ – 18

- This was a good point and I feel that if we had more time or were to do it again, we could definitely develop on this part. An idea suggested by my course lecturer was to maybe he could go to the bus stop but not be able to afford bus fare due to his financial situation. This could be portrayed through another literally signifier (sign) at the bus stop, and him having to walk to his destination in the cold.

 

Questions I asked and their responses:

• How did you feel about the overall look and style of the piece? Do you feel it served its purpose?

‘You can tell its meant to be bleak, there’s a big lack of colour and so it looks very cold, in both senses of the word. When you know it’s a negative view of the future it works really well’ – 51

‘It looks really good, when he opens the curtains you expect it to be bright but its not.’ – 14

• What did the bedroom scene make you think?

‘It’s so bare, there’s hardly any furniture you can tell he’s got no money because there’s barely anything in his room’ – 18

‘I noticed the rack on the radiator all bent; it all looks really dilapidated. Then as soon as you see the sign you realise why, and that he has hardly any money’ – 51

‘Straight away you know it’s a student, first bit of footage and he’s lying in bed. Typical.’ – 19

• What did the first kitchen scene make you think?

‘Typical student kitchen isn’t it? Rubbish and plates everywhere. Then there’s his cupboard, which is practically empty.’ – 51

‘The big bag of cereal was funny. It looks so shit.’ – 14

‘That pile of washing up is such a student cliché and the ‘Smartprice’ lager at the end was hilarious (laughs)’ – 19

 

• Do you feel it portrays its political message successfully?

‘I really think it does; the pieces of paper help to show what the video’s trying to put across and then his house and everything in it just make is seem even more dismal and depressing.’ – 51

‘I would say I does too, reading the description definitely helps it though’ – 19

 

These were all very helpful insights, which as a whole showed that what we wanted to portray in the video had been (as a majority) successful.

 

As further critical research though, I also emailed the video to a few people who are strongly against the new changes and asked for their opinions; this was one of the responses:

Richard Freeman – 22 December 2010 at 23:54

‘Hey Al,

Thanks for the link. I think it’s really nicely shot and edited. Who’s the music by? It has a good pace and is simple.

My only, erm, quibble might be that I’m not sure how sympathetic I feel towards a student who can’t afford ‘luxuries’ – quite an important part of university is learning how to be resourceful.

Nice piece though. Be interested to see any others.

Rx’

- My response to this would be that the point of that signifier was to emphasise the fact that his cupboards are completely void of decent foods and that the word ‘luxuries’ seemed to be the most effective way of portraying this. However, I definitely appreciate where Richard was coming from and this may definitely be something to be revised if we were planning on re-doing the piece.

 

These critical responses gave us a good idea of how the video would be widely received and, how if we were to re-do the video, what we would change. One idea that was suggested to us is that due to a majority of the problem being the debt students will face when they graduate, maybe another video to focus on next is the life of a graduate in 2017: ‘An interesting thing might be to focus on the ‘Graduate in 2017′ who wants to try and start a family, or get a mortgage…’. This would be slightly more relevant to the current political issues and thus would probably get a much wider viewing. This is definitely something to consider as a future video project.

Our ‘Viral’ Video:

19/12/10

Best quality (Vimeo):

http://player.vimeo.com/video/18378092

Attempted Viral Version (YouTube):

The description on the above video, describing everything about it and its purpose:

‘This video is a portrayal of student life once the already finalised government plans for student loans and grants take effect.

The conservative government plan to not only remove the price cap for tuition fees for university courses, but also lower or remove maintenance grants for any students whose family income is higher than £25,000 a year and significantly lower maintenance loans to a flat rate for all. This is the primary focus of our video: A bleak representation of student life for an average person. The average annual wage for a family in the UK is currently higher than £25,000. Due to this only a small percentage of students will receive any maintenance grant at all, leaving only them able to live in relative comfort along with the small minority of those whose families choose/can afford to support them.

Our film follows a short day in the life of the average 2012 student whose parents cannot afford to support him through university, yet also do not fall into the annual wage criteria for him to receive any maintenance grant. Leaving him with very little money to get by and afford things many take for granted.

To learn a little more about these changes check these links (more to be added soon):

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/finance/2012/

Enjoy, and if you liked the video, spread the word!

Thank you for watching.

- Al Hodgson, Declan Murphy and Adam Mew.

Song: ‘Man In The Moose Suit’ – Andrew Collberg. From the album ‘On The Wreath’

 

To attempt to make it reach its target audience we plan to post it on as many of the relevant facebook pages as we can, and post it to people who it is relevant too. We have also heavily tagged it with current and relevant tags:

• Student
• 2012
• 2010
• government
• plans
• tuition
• fee
• loan
• maintenance
• grant
• conservative
• tory
• david
• cameron
• nick
• clegg
• poor
• money
• protest
• riots
• london
• unfair
• AUCB
• arts
• university
• college
• bournemouth
• education
• change
• bad
• smartprice
• food
• short
• film
• video

Hopefully this will gain us a fair amount of views.

Setting up a specific and relevant YouTube account for our Viral:

18/12/10

We decided to set up a YouTube channel to host our Viral piece using a relevant name that is specific to it’s subject matter, this is it:

http://www.youtube.com/user/The2012Student

The editing process of our Viral Piece:

16/12/10

We wanted to use the editing stage to primarily enhance the look and feel of the video whilst keeping it fairly simplistic. Once we’d found the perfect song to use that was both melodic yet slightly melancholic the initial cutting stage could begin, cutting the clips in time to the music in their narrative order and making sure they fit well with the song. I also cut the song down to fit to the length of the video. This is the final cut timeline of the video:

Once this part was done I began focusing on the aesthetic side, which proved slightly more intricate than the initial cutting stage. As a group we wanted the piece to have a quite melancholic, cold, glum feel, so I felt that colour correction tools and certain filters could help in this.  To achieve the final aesthetic that the piece has, firstly I used the ‘Colour Corrector’ to bring down the saturation hugely, increase blacks and raise the blues, which in turn makes the footage look much colder, a reference to the cold house through lack of heating. These are some screen grabs of the general Colour Correction I used on a lot of the clips:

This clip’s exposure had to be altered (like a lot of others in this part of the piece) in order for the footage not to be too dark:

This is an example of ‘Before and After’ colour correction on a clip which had two very different lighting levels. This was one of the most difficult clips to colour correct as I had to keyframe strong changes at the point where the curtains open due to the dramatic colour/light shift. It had to be kept looking melancholy to work well with the rest of the piece:

This is the keyframing that had to be done:

I then went on to add the ‘Vignette’ filter to all the clips and alter all of their settings and attributes to add to the aesthetic of the piece. This is an example of the settings on two different filters:

Once all the editing in Final Cut Pro was basically done, the only thing left to do was the masking of the paper onto the wall in Adobe After Effects. Luckily I had a fair idea how to mask, so during shooting we were fairly prepared for what we would need to do. We shot the radiator sequence 4 times, twice with the paper on the wall and twice without. From this I could then pick out the best paper (shot) to mask onto one without paper as he walks by. Masking is done through masks, layering and the pen tool and keyframing a clip in or out depending on what is desired. This is a good tutorial for those unfamiliar with it (all that needs to be taken into account is you must set a motion path keyframes and have a layer beneath the masked one with other footage, etc):

And these are some screen grabs of the masking process in After Effects:

Overall, I am very happy with how the editing of the piece came out and I think it enhances the desired feel through its aesthetic nature. However, theres a few issues I have with it. Firstly, I feel the low lighting shots near the end (despite my best grading efforts) still are a bit too dark and/or grainy. This could only be fully rectified by re-shooting that scene in a slightly better lit place or using a camera that could handle the amount of light more adequately but for this piece it will do ok. Secondly, the masking stage became fairly difficult, as the lighting in the clip with the paper was slightly different to the one without. This meant that the paper looked slightly out of place towards the cut to the next shot. I tried making the paper into a still frame but then the light alteration in the shot it was placed on made it look even more out of place as its lighting stayed the same. Maybe grading the clips slightly beforehand (despite it probably being fairly tricky) would have avoided this. Despite this, I feel the fairly brisk cut to the next shot covers it up slightly so I am not too unhappy with it. Finally, I have only just realised that the time on the iPhone says 16:05 where it should say 19:05, this is a small continuity error and hopefully minimal people will notice it. Overall, these are all issues I plan to take into account in any future projects.

Viral Shoot Evaluation:

11/12/10

After having shot the piece I am very happy with how the day of shooting went. I feel we pretty much stuck to the schedule allowing us time to film every piece when it needed to be and to finish shooting in one day.

If I were to do anything differently however, in an ideal world a camera that was slightly better in low-light would have been preferred as in the evening clips the footage is ever so slightly grainy. But hopefully this can be corrected in grading. Shooting in high definition would have also been a bonus too.

Another thing I would have done to improve the efficiency of shooting is prepare/brief Adam (the actor in the group) the night before, with an exact idea of what and how he would be playing out the student and his ‘stage-directions’ as a fair amount of time was spent explain the exact motions he would have to do. However, we still managed to stay on schedule so this was not a major issue.

Plans for shooting our Viral piece:

8/12/10

In order for our shoot to be successful we must try to have a shooting plan and schedule to follow to utilise all the time we have. We also have a rough storyboard to follow to make sure our shots are directed successfully. These are some of the shot frames:

(To be added in once scanned)

As for a rough shooting schedule, this is what we intend to stick to depending on our efficiency during the day:

• 9:30 A.M – Organise sets for shoot.
• 10:30 A.M – Meet production team/Actor.
• 10:35 A.M – Begin shooting introductory bedroom/stairs scenes.
• 12:30 P.M – Begin shooting breakfast/first kitchen scenes.
• 2:00 P.M – Shoot walking out of house shot.
• 2:15 P.M – Lunch – wait until it gets darker to shoot evening scenes.
• 4:30 P.M – Shoot walking into house shot.
• 4:45 P.M – Shoot Evening kitchen/text/final shots.
• 6:00 P.M – Begin capturing footage in order to see if additional filming needs doing.

Hopefully if we stick to this plan we will manage to get all our filming done in one day without having to compromise the standard of the piece.

Prop List/Things to buy for our Viral piece:

3/12/10

• Smartprice Lager
• Smartprice Cornflakes
• Smartprice Powder Soup
• Milk
• Blank Paper

Further Development of our Viral Idea – How to portray the message most effectively:

17/11/10

In order for our piece to portray it’s message in the most efficient way and to the widest audience possible, a good idea would be to use obvious signifiers to represent aspects and issues that our student faces due to the political changes. This means that instead of the viewer having to work out the themes and contexts of the video, certain things are brought into the narrative and scene that portray them much more evidently.

- Ways we plan to do demonstrate that he has no money and what this entails using narrative:

• A text asking if our student wants to go out, a response saying he has no money to do so.
• A huge lack of furniture, bedroom will look very bare.
• Food selection will be very limited; cupboards practically empty.
• Food will be obviously cheap – ‘Smartprice’.
• Him touching the radiator for warmth but the heating being off.

- Ways we plan to show he has no money and why this is using blatant signifiers:

• A sign after him touching the radiator referencing how without a grant, he cannot afford paying for heating. Maybe simplified to ‘No Grant, No Heating’.
• Another sign afterwards referencing the quality/lack of decent food saying how without a grant, money will be low leading to a lack of good food. Maybe simply ‘No Money, Worse Food’ or ‘No Money, No Luxuries’.
• A final sign at the end possibly referencing the fact that with a worsening of student standards of living due to a lack of money and an alteration in the loans system, there will be a smaller amount of people willing to partake in student life.

We may decide to add other signs, but it depends whether it is necessary. These factors may be the most significant and adding more may take away any subtlety in them. Hopefully though, if successful, all these signifiers will portray the video’s desired message in an effective yet still fairly subtle way.

My course YouTube account:

25/11/10

I have decided to set up a new YouTube channel for all my University unit work and test uploads. This is it:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Alhodgson

Developing my Viral idea further.

7/11/10

To develop this idea even further I felt I should research the political plans for the changes in detail in order to reference in more directly within our viral:

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/undergraduate/finance/2012/

Due to the topic, the video potentially has a fairly good chance of going viral. The theme would have many supporters and through the countless Facebook groups, etc could be spread around easily to its target audience.

In order to interest the viewer even more, we plan to make the video fairly stylistic, using colour correction and shot composition to enhance the portrayed message. Another idea we had was to maybe not use any dialogue and focus on other audio or heavily on a soundtrack. We are still deciding on the theme of the video and whether it should be comedic or serious. If it were the latter it may be taken more seriously, but if it were comedic then the student’s situation/lack of money could be played upon much more, creating more ridiculous scenarios to push the concept further. The comedic nature of the piece would also help it reach a wider audience, appealing not only to the previous target audience, but also people looking for humorous videos. The only issue with making the theme comedic is that it is a fair amount harder to pull off successfully. It would have to be funny to the target audience else its purpose is not achieved, and doing this successfully can prove fairly difficult. I will try to research some videos that portray an important message whilst managing to be comedic to see if they can shed some light on how we can achieve it successfully.