Episode 3 trailer promotion

While talking to Matt about my idea of a teaser trailer from the end of the episode, he agreed to do the trailer at home on After Effects so that we could promote it before Monday and get some interest in the third episode.

I think that this will work very well in promoting some interest and should help us with advertising and promotion in terms of episode 3 of Lines. Below are some pictures showing me promoting the teaser trailer, and the trailer itself to watch. There are also screengrabs of me uploading the video to Facebook to add interest too.

The biggest tweet shown is the one I posted promoting episode 2 and trailer for episode 3 of Lines.

Plans for Monday 1st Feb

For plans for Monday the 1st of Feb, in my opinion and in terms of group work I think we will generally be getting ready for the launch of episode 3 at 7PM Monday night, which means promoting it further, getting the editing done and finished and completing a quicktime to upload to Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and link to on Myspace and Twitter.

In terms of individual work, I think I will be promoting the third episode launch, so therefore this could mean making one final poster for episode 3 and distributing it. Matt also wants us all to watch the rough edit of episode 3 which we have ready already to check over and suggest improvements, such as music etc - so I will be watching this too.

I think a good idea also would be to promote episode 3 by getting the end of episode 2, showing the next time part and releasing this as our trailer for episode 3 maybe - which means cutting this into a separate video entirely, but in my opinion this should build up some more interest. As when I watched episode 2, after the credits came up I stopped watching the episode as I do not normally watch the credits, I fear most people will do this also which means they will not see the next time preview for episode 3. Perhaps creating this as a seperate trailer would be better, therefore I may do this on Monday with Tim or Matt etc.

Below are some screenshots of the next time footage I was referring to at the end of our episode 2.

I will also be letting fans of Lines know our progress by updating Twitter, Myspace and Facebook. Overall I will be doing various things tomorrow getting ready for the launch at 7PM, which we are well on deadline for due to filming early and having plenty of time to edit.

Blog Wordle

Here is a wordle for my blog, a mix of all the words I use in my blog posts, the biggest are the most frequent words and so on.

Lines Episode 2

Our second episode was released today (29th) at 7pm.

Overall, I felt that this episode was a lot better than the first in terms of visual style, editing and camera work. There were more cut aways, and generally more cuts to keep the audience entertained, as well as a little bit more humour.

I especially liked the next time bit on the end of the episode, as I felt this will keep viewers interested with the show and show previews of episode 3, out Monday 1st Feb. Overall I think we did a good job and again met the deadline successfully.

Jan 28th - Reminder Email and Posters

I also sent a reminder email to the Facebook event for the launch, reminding every one about the second episode. This should help with advertising and remind people about the second launch. Tim and I also put up our second advertisement poster, shown below, around college - we handed around 18 posters in total so this should help with advertisement and marketing methods.

Below are some pictures of Tim and I putting up the posters around college.

Jan 28th Progress

Today I researched some more music for our web series episode 2, I started by looking on the hotmail messages that we had, which led me to myspace. I then started to look through our myspace mail through each band who had given us permission to use their music or had asked to be used in our web series. There were quite a few, I looked through about 10 myspace profiles and listened to about 4 songs of each band providing they had 4 songs. Most had atleast two songs which I listened to throughout. Below are some screenshots of the bands music I listened to on Myspace. I also filled out another request form for doing the voiceover we needed for episode 2.

Overall, in my opinion I liked the other songs by 'Kids Love Lies' whose music we had used for our title sequence. I thought they were the most upbeat songs but also contained some quieter ones too. The too songs I liked were called 'Under my bed' and 'How big is your house'. I suggested this to Matt and he liked the idea, also Mike has emailed the band asking for some MP3 versions of their songs, screenshot shown below.

wednesday 27th Jan

Today Tim and I printed out some of the posters advertising the second episode, then were told we had to ask at reception to put them up at Coleridge. We left 3 with reception for them to put up, and printed another load off to put up around Long Road tomorrow. We then created another request form, and e-mail Steve to ask if we could use D7 again.

Lines episode one - numerical progress day 5

Here is the progress for day 5 of the Lines episode one launch. After 5 days since the launch, we now have 586 views which is more than yesterday - which is averagely 100 views a day. This is going really well and the advertisement posters for the episode 2 which Tim and I made, will help advertisement too.

Lines - numerical progress day 4

Today as you can see, we have received even more views on Youtube and are now at a total of 535 views, which is pretty good as it means views are still rising - which in my opinion is still the advertising we are using to promote the series, mainly on Facebook and twitter, but could also be due to word of mouth. We also have 16 comments which is 4 more than yesterday, so everything seems to be rising - a good sign.

For the second episode and with the advertisement posters Tim and I posted today, we hope for even more views, and a good idea would also perhaps be to post it as a video response to the first episode if this is possible. Therefore there would be a direct link between the first and second episode on Youtube - which may also attract more viewers.

Improvements after Feedback 25th Jan

Here are some notes Kirk made on the feedback we received in today's lesson.

We have received feedback on our 1st episode for or web series 'lines'

Here is a list of the peer feedback we received from the class:

• Sound levels need improving (some bits louder than others)(Mentioned 5 times)
• CD films logo to long (Mentioned 4 times)
• Credits are to fast at the end (Mentioned 3 times)
• Poor acting
• Opening sequence is to repetitive
• Editing of the video is good & works well
• Nice logos, they look well made and effective to the audience
• Poorly recorded narration
• Inappropriate music used throughout the video (including the opening sequence)
• Camera work could be better
• Too many cuts
• Script is too basic
• Poor cuts used
• Poorly planned
• The actors need rehearsals before acting in next video as they don't seem very confident in the first episode (Mentioned 3 times)
• Catchy song works well (Mentioned 3 times)
• The stereotypes are not clearly shown in the 1st episode
• Need more close ups
• Need more core content
• Visual gags of skeleton work well
• Need more comedy rather than drama to make it more comedic
• Continuity issues need improving (Mentioned 3 times)

Here is the feedback we received from Pete (Teacher):

• When the character is holding the polos, there could of been a close up
• While I was watching the 1st episode, it felt as if I was in a theater, there needs to be more use of close ups and shot changes
• Voice over explaining each character works well, needs to be more narration
• Cut to show different characters
• More planning is needed prior to next shoot (rehearsals etc) to avoid bad acting
• High angle show works well, but panning shot doesn't work within the same shot
• Sound levels need improving / editing

My personal opinion is that from the first episode we can see that clear improvements need to be made, mainly do to with the shots, the sound and the actors in general - just simply making sure everything is prepared. Hopefully with these improvements episode 2 will be better than episode 1 in terms of editing and everything, although the second episode is now limited to 90 seconds after a class letter, this should be fine as we had a short script for episode 2 anyway.

New advertisement poster - episode 2 - progress 25th Jan

Today Tim and I mainly worked on creating the second episode poster. Here is the second advertisement poster for our Lines webisode, this poster is for episode 2 - made personally by Tim and I. Below are some pictures that show us in the process of making the poster.

Overall I think the poster works well, and will attract an audience as well as the first advertisement poster we created if not better - as we hope to put the posters around college too this time as opposed to just online. Tim and I are maybe hoping to do this tomorrow or wednesday, ensuring plenty of people see them for the new launch of Friday 29th Jan.

Lines - numerical progress day 3

In terms of progress for day 3 after the launch, (including the launch night) we have received in total 418 views, and only yesterday night at 6pm we received 300, so the views are going up as we'd hoped - not as rapidly as the main Youtube videos but we did not expect this to happen. We still have the same amount of comments, so we will see if we receive any more as the series progresses.

At the top in the pictures you can also see we have 6 Youtube subscribers, who will be the first to know when a new video will get uploaded to chamner designs, which will obviously be episode 2 of Lines. This is excellent as it means people are generally interested and want to watch the next one. I will keep updating the numerical progress as it happens in terms of views, ratings and comments etc.

Overview - project progress evaluation

In terms of the whole project, throughout I think we have had some differences between our group but this was inevitable working in such a small group with lots of work to do. When we cut the whole class in half, this inevitably meant more work for everyone, not that this was a problem for me because I'm used to lots of work but for others it either got too much or they have just not bothered as well as they wanted to.

Concerning jobs for the project, I have taken up quite a few, trying to help people while they was either away or trying to complete all the other tasks. I have taken the role of casting, emailing the cast and texting them to arrange free times, as well as ensuring they learn their lines and look through the script while Mike was away. I have also taken a directorial role to help Kirk, when people were not doing their jobs properly or just not bothering as well as they needed to to ensure everything was progressing as it should.

I also helped in the shoot for episode 1, helping Tim with the camera work and showing him the storyboard, telling him what to do next in terms of shots and angles etc. However, despite these alterations, my main role throughout the whole project was to be production manager and to help advertise and market the web series the best I could. In terms of these roles, I think I have done as well as I could. For production manager, I had to ensure risk assessments and request forms for equipment were ready before we could shoot or anything, which I have done well but this is mainly due to good organisation.

For the marketing aspect of my job also, I have promoted the web series as well as I could have done, creating posters, events on Facebook and updating Myspace, Facebook and Twitter as often as I could or felt appropriate. This has resulted in almost 420 views for our web series in the space of 3 days - which in my opinion, is excellent. Although I have taken quite a few different roles in this project than anticipated, I was only trying to help out so that we got all the jobs done that were needed, however this caused conflict in the group when I did not mean it to - after a big group talk we resolved this though and are now on to working fully as a group, with the roles in our group much clearer now meaning we can successfully get more done. Below you can see the marketing and advertising i have done myself including tweets, facebook updates, facebook events and myspace updates.

In terms of the project progress as a whole, overall we have progressed very well and met the deadline for the first launch sucessfully. We are now working hard to ensure we film Monday, edit Monday night and have the second episode ready Tuesday 7PM, for the second episode launch. As you can see I have also posted an email to all the attendees of the launch to remind them about the second episode of Lines.

These pictures to the left and below all show marketing techniques I have used in order to promote our web series. You can see twitter updates, facebook updates and events, emails etc.

Lines episode 1 progress

This has also led to other places promoting our web series, most primarily the band we used in our first episode, Centrefolds. From the top picture you can see them promoting our web series on their own facebook page - which is excellent and just the result we were hoping for.

The amount of views may also be due to the facebook event for the actual launch, but after observations both yesterday and today the members 'attending' the web launch has rose considerably, which is again a great outcome and means people are still interested even after the launch.

In terms of progress after the launch yesterday at 7pm, I have recorded the numerical progress in terms of views watched etc.

Approximately two hours after the launch, baring in mind we had created an event for the launch specifically and had promoted and advertised it well, we had 150 Youtube views and 6 comments in the space of 2 hours.

Today at 6pm, our views seem to have doubled in the space of less than 24 hours with almost 300 Youtube views. Whether this is due to the event still happening, (we scheduled it to end on feb 2nd when the third episode of Lines premieres) or just due to general interest it is still in my opinion, a great result.

We have also had 12 comments, therefore these have also doubled since yesterday at 9pm. This is therefore going really well, and I am happy with the amount of views we are getting, I think this is consequently de to the amount of advertisement and marketing we have put towards the episode launch as well as the Lines group itself.