Florence and the Machine

Florence and the Machine
Florence And The Machine

Thursday, 9 February 2012

Question 3 - What have you learned from your Audience feedback?


From our Audience Feedback weve leanrt many things. The things people liked was our bird and narrative we choose. We thought that this was one of the aspects that made our video quirky and glad that others managed to understand where we were coming from and what we tried to do. They alos liked some aspects of our lighting. This is something that we got inspiration form Florence adn the Machines existing videos. Another thing was the costumes that were used for our actress some comments include: 'The costume is very Florence and the machine. Our audience also thought that our actress herslef was good and acted exactly like Florence would act a some comments were: 'She is Florence and the Machine' ' Great actress'. Lastly another positive that we recieved was for our setting. Most people said they really liked our forest setting.

From ther audience feedback not only have we had positives but also negatives. Because most people liked our forest setting they said we should have used more of it so it became a negative as well as a posititve. Most of the feedback forms suggested that we didnt take advantage of our great first setting and it would have been nice to use it for soe of the dancing sequence. Both me and Conor feel the same. Another negative was that many people thought that the second half of our music video was boring and they found some of the variety of the shots repetative.

We feel that we could have added more variety of shots and because of the song we choose we had 1 minuete and 30 seconds of music that was repetative and had the same line 'From my mouth' and only the start of the song with all the narrative in it. Reflecting back on it we know where we could have made it better and probvebly choosen another song due to it's faults.

From our Audience feedback we also got marks on what hey thought our music video would get. I have created a wordle cloud to show it:
The wordle cloud shows the bigger the number the more people gave us that score. So here you can see that 30 was our most popular mark. We think that this mark is fair considering both our positives and negitives. It also shows that 28 was our next most popular mark which is also our average for our overall marks. 

Question one - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge formas and conventions of real media products?

Throughout of Video there were many conventions we wanted to use; differnt settings, lighting and costumes. We thought that by using these that it wouold be passable as a Florence and the Machines video as she uses all these things in her own videos. For example we were influenced by many video's of Florence and the machine, 'Rabbit Heart', 'Dog Days' (Both versions), Cosmic love and from her new album 'Shake it out' and 'No Light' . We were influenced by these in particular as they showed two very different themes and sides to Florence.





For Rabbit Heart we liked the shots and the fades and cross disolves in them. here was also alot of lighting that we liked especially when it reflects off the sequins back into the camera.
In 'Dog Days' we likedd the different settings and how she used a woods as a party scene. We tried to usse this aspect in our own video by having two diffrent locations. A problem we had was that in our Audience Feedback we found that we didint use the forest scene as much as they would have liked to see.





What we liked about 'Cosmic love' was again the lighting ansd shadows that it created we tried also to use this in oyur own music video , this was something that our udience feedback said they liked about it and resembled Florence ansd the Machines past videos.

























In 'No Light no light' and 'Shake it out' we wanted to incoperate both the elegant theme into our video and the darker shadows in it. We used them in what we describe as our Dream sequence. This also showed aspects of 'Cosmic love' with the costume change to sow a different side to her. We felt that by changing the costume and lighting could show the change into a bird in our own video. 'You've got the love' is also shown through the lighting anf shadows of our dream sequence adn where initially we got our idea from of having some kind of bright light coming from behind to create a black figure.
We think that that the effects we liked form Florencs and the Machines videos we managed to show in our own. We also folleowed the narrative convention of Florence and the machine and many like her. Mirina and the Diamond also uses narrative as a form of convetion which conveys the Genre of Florence and the Machine through our own video.  Because of the Song we choose, 'Bird Song' we straight away found a narrative that we could use and tell a story like many of Florence and the Machines other videos. Even if the narrative is confusing at times there is always one. She also uses performance with alot of close ups of her singing and dancing, this is also something that is a convention of that genre of music. 





Of the Dancing aspects



The close up singing aspects.

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Wordle Cloud - Mark


People who did our feedback we also asked to give a rough mark out of 40 whilst using a marking criteria sheet as well, most people gave us 30, but our average was 28. So a high level 3.

Evaluation Question Three

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

For gaining audience feedback, we screen our music video to people around our college and asked them to fill out an feedback form. After getting many of the forms back we realized that one main issue was that some people found some of the shots boring, For example they thought some of the performance shots were too long and there wasn't enough narrative. 

I do agree with the audience feedback, as looking back on this as a whole project i see many things i would change, different shots i would use, new locations we could film at, more idea's for narrative, as one of out main problems was picking a song that had 1 min 30 secs of 'From My Mouth'

Evaluation Question One

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products?


One of our main conventions was having a natural aspect e.g filming our opening in a forest, or having a bird in the video. We got this idea from one of Florence’s first videos ‘Rabbit Heart’.




In this video we can see her outside, with nature and having an animal part of the song name, which is the same with out song being called the bird song. But we didn’t want the whole thing to be outside, as we wanted the lyrics to match what you see for example ‘I invited him in just to reason with him’ so we showed the bird going into a house meaning the whole thing could not be done outside if we wanted out narrative to match the lyrics.


We didn’t really change many conventions expect from straying from the nature theme to match out narrative and having the actual animal in the song, as in ‘Rabbit Heart’ we don’t see a rabbit so we thought it would be good to show an actual bird.


We didn't want to challenge any convention of Florence as the conevetnions she already had/have work really well and we thought if we change them they may not look as good as what we had hoped for or people may not recognize it as a Florence video.

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


 Our finished product. We decided to keep a constant theme throughout our video, Digi Pak and our website as Florence and the machine does this in her products. Our theme was natural and nature as this went with the bird for the song. On the front of the Digi Pak you can see our front photo, it's of our actress in a woods with leaves and trees in the background. We chose this one out of 50 different photos as we thought that the pose was similar to poses that Florence and the machine would do in her past CD covers. For the back of the CD we found a photo of some Lungs in a biology book. We thought that turning them upside down would give our own spin on it as 'Lungs' is one of Florence and the Machines existing albums, and it continued our nature theme as it looked like a tree. For the inside cover we choose a close up of our actress again as Florence and the machine would do. She alsways has a closeup either on the front or inside the CD. We choose not to edit this photo like the other one on the front as we thought it could show our natural theme and we liked the mist in the background with a colour on it like the front photo.


During this time Florence realesed a new albumn called 'Cerimonials' becasue this was so different from her other album 'Lungs' we decided we could incorperate the both of them into all aspects of our work.  In our CD above we added a photoframe to the front of the CD to give it that more elegant theme that is shown in 'Cerimonials'. For our website it had more aspects of 'Cerimonials' so we added curls in the top and bottom of the website. These curls and waves were found in art deco book but consist of leaves so again this would incorperate our nature aspect.
By incorperating these two defferent themes we feel that it would target a wider audience. Instead of just having one theme that wouldnt appeal to all of Florence and the Machines fans we went with her two most iconic looks and themes. You can see them in these two videos of hers, both the elegant theme and the nature one.




These two videos are also the two most popular ones that come up on google and youtube when you type in Florence and the machine.


On Florence and the machines website she uses amny different ays to promote her and her image. She uses the same image of herslef that is on her CD, posters and merchandise. She also has a page before getting onto the website which promotes her CD:
This promotes her album as you have to go through it everytime you want to go on her website and also gives you different ways to buy her single and album at the bottom of the page. Another way in which Florence and the machine promotes herself is by having a Florence and the machine club. It's where you can join by submitting your name email and address and it either sends your information by post or by email. I myself have joined so I would know about any other realeases that she was planning. On the website it also has a news feed from Flroence broadcasting any details about her tours and again resease dates of her single sor albums. She also gives details of her twitter account and any performances she has done and the link for them, like the one she did on X Facter. 

Because of the two differnt themes that Florence had we were first unsure whether they would work. We believe they have because we used simular things in our own products to Florence and the Mahcines. We had her as the focal point in both our website and our CD cover like she does in hers, we also had her in different costumes in our music video as she does in hers. She likes ot change adn express differnt sides to the theme she is conveying. We also used simular formats to Florence on our website by having all the ways she promotes herslef on ours.