Final Cut

The Killers- Shadowplay from Megan Painter on Vimeo.

Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once we had completed our rough cut we organised a viewing of our video to a group of young adults (our target audience). We received this feedback which cumulated ultimately to a few major points which led us to make the following changes;

Re-filming sequences in order to improve lighting and framing:

We decided to re-film the strings section and the section where Harry is trying to fall asleep, as we felt the lighting was too dark and affected the quality and over all look of our video:

Rough Cut --> Final Cut

Change of Mise en scene for first alleyway scene and final scene:

From the feedback we also discovered that our audiences felt the alleyway scene did not fit into the over all look of our video and made it look amateur. We decided to re-film this sequence in the woods as it was a location used through out the video and therefore maintained continuity and professionalism.

We also changed Harry's costume for this section and the final section as the black hooded jacket made the video look slightly amateur and cliche.

Improvement of editing in the lip singing sequence:

One point that was raised in all of the feedback was that the lip singing sequence was too long. We decided to break it up with images of the clown between the lyrics, when Harry's lips aren't actually moving. This made it more interesting and exciting and effectively portrayed the idea of the clown taunting Harry.

Once we had completed our final cut we posted the video onto Facebook which is a social networking site targeted at young adults, who are ultimately our target audience. This is the feedback we received:

As a form of feedback most commonly used in the media industry we also decided to interview our target audience on their responses to our video. From this we learnt some of the main factors in our video that had appealed to our audiences and also what we could have improved...

Untitled from Megan Painter on Vimeo.

CD Pack Final

Front of our CD:

Back of our CD:

Digipack Final - Magazine

Digipack Final - CD cover

Digi Pack Plan

Whilst editing our video we also began the process of designing our digipack for our ancillary tasks in order to use our time effciently. After researching other Killer's designs for their products we began to barin storm ideas for our own design. We felt we had to vary some of the conventions in order to portray our story and idea of shadowplay and unlike most Killer's album covers we used a prominant image, rather than just a low key background they tend to use. This made our work more unique and striking. We did however comply with the font conventions as it kept in with the uniform style. Here our the drafts and initial barinstorm ideas:

We really liked the effect of an overlay as it successfully conveyed the idea of the boy's entrapment in his nightmare, represented by the clown. We also wanted to use our uniform colours of black, white and yellow which represent the shadows and lack of light in his life/nightmare, whilst the yellow is a striking colour for details such as text that we want to stand out.

On set we began taking photos on Aisha's camera for our magazine and digipack. Here is a link to all the original photos we took as ideas for our final ancillary products.

With a good idea of the look we wanted to achieve we began manipulating images in Photoshop:

We took this image using a torch underneath the camera, facing up towards Harry’s face. This provided bright lighting and a slighting menacing look we wanted to achieve. We then desaturated the image and increased the saturation of the image. We also erased the background with a faded brush, so that the edges were not too harsh. We then used the circular shape tool to draw a circle around the image, and inverted the image so that we could erase the outer shape. This was the image use for the CD.

This image was used to overlay over Harry for both the cd cover and magazine poster. Editing the puppet posed some difficulties due to the puppets hair, and the original lighting. To produce the image on the left, we had to increase both the contrast and brightness of the image. We also added a faint lighting effect (spotlight) in the bottom left corner of the image. We also erased the background of the image with a faded rubber, to ensure the edges were not too hard. We then placed the image on a black background.

This image above, was eventually used for the back cover of our digipack as we decided a less overpowering image would be the most effective and this was also a convetion we found when doing our research. The image was taken in the woods, where some of the footage was filmed. To create the image to the right, we had to reduce the fill and opacity of the original and place it on top a black background. We also imputted an extremely faint image of Harry in the bottom right corner. We achieved this effect by manipulating the opacity and fill are both to around 20%, so it is extremely faint. We decided to incorporate this because it is unnoticeable, similarly to how the puppet was unnoticeable to Harry.

Audience Feedback

Once we had completed our rough cut we had a group viewing with members of our target audience; young adults who enjoy Indie rock music. We presented our video to the group and received both positive and constructive written feedback once they had seen the video.

The main responses we received were:

• The editing matched the pace of the music well and that there was a good distinct change between the beginning and where the music builds in the instrumental.
• Angry scene (instrumental) was effective and lighting and pace of editing helped achieve this
• The alleyway however did not match editing and most people felt the pace of cuts needed to be faster
• Some shots, such as the strings coming down, were too dark
• There were extra clips in the switch between shadows and no shadows (chorus)
• The pace of editing in the forest could be slowed down
• The clip with lip-singing was too long and needed cuts between
• overall people really liked the idea and concept

In response to this feedback our group have made some vital decisions. We have decided to re-film the alleyway and end sequence as we felt it didn't fit into the uniform look of our video but looked quite amateur. We also decided to re-film the strings section and other parts due to poor,dim lighting. We are also in the process of tightening our editing in some areas, such as the chorus and the forest. We also decided cuts between the lip-singing section would look very effective.


The feedback session was very useful and important to our project as ultimately our target audience's opinion is the most important and helped us look at our video from a different perspective.