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Evaluation Of Unit 8
Pre Production
Through research I found a video with nice looking transitions which make someone look like they have teleported from one place to another, as a result we want to try it in our project. We originally hoped that we could slowly cut this edit but we decided that between the questionnaire and making a final decision on the song we would be using, as the song was upbeat and about dreaming which meant that we wanted a happier feel to the project so it seemed more fitting to use a fast, cut to the beat style of music video than a slower one. Although we still had some slow shots we made sure the video felt fast and cut well. I believe I did a good amount of research, I would like to have done some more on other music videos as well as I would like to have researched more secondary research about how to make films look professional and well produced so that our final product could look finished and polished by the end of the project.
At the start of the project it wasn’t that well organised: we didn’t have a solid idea to work off of, we didn’t know what type of project we wanted to make but we decided to spend a day brainstorming and over the next couple days we managed to get a solid plan together, which included location we needed to film (St Botolphs and at the college itself), the idea and what we needed to do to make the project do-able including all our roles.
I believe that the idea needed to be planned better in our group, after we had one idea the group was told we had to many people so we were split into separate groups and told we could make a behind the footage film or our own film. We decided it would be a better learning experience to create our own product. After this it took another 2 weeks to come up with a solid idea that our group was happy about doing, because of this we lost time in planning and preproduction, meaning we had already set ourselves behind for the coming weeks. We managed to get the paperwork done by smashing it out but we needed to get permissions from places to film. This was another point where I could have planned better because some of our location had fell through and I didn’t realise until the last minute because we were behind and catching up on the things we needed to do in order to be able to start to film, to come around this we took about an hour on the internet looking at locations around the area which suited our video or in general were nice places to film so we could at least have a plan B. at the start we planned at filming at college, Southend and Clacton including both piers but both of the permissions for the piers fell through. In order to fix this, we quickly contacted Swinburne hall on the campus for one of our locations and we found a beautiful place called St Botolphs, unfortunately the Swinburne hall fell through again but we got St Botolphs and was able to rest knowing we had at least one location to film at.
I believe the strongest part of our planning was the paper work, I was able to make sure all the paper work was done on time and handed to me to check over multiple time to make sure nothing was wrong with it, for example Chris (The editor) handed me his paper work for the folder and it had the wrong postcodes and dates for the call sheets. If I didn’t check through our paper work then we could have handed in paperwork with wrong information all over it, this would be extremely bad as it would look very unprofessional and would null and void the paper work. I believe I intended to make only film on the two days so I had only completed two risk assessments which was another surprise as we ended up filming on four separate occasions which meant we had to do more paperwork than expected but our group handled it well and didn’t think twice about double checking and making sure our paperwork was up to scratch before submitting it.
Production
I believe overall, we managed our time well but this is a part we need to improve on. We organised the dates and what we were going to filming on what day e.g. we were going to go on the first day of filming our first off campus location (St Botolphs) and we knew the next week we were going to be filming in the college, meaning only two days of filming would be able to get us enough footage for the whole music video. We were wrong. When planning our time, we forgot to account for things going wrong, meaning we lost time and started to fall behind on the filming aspect. For example, when filming at the first location (St botolphs) we fell into some trouble when we found out on the day that getting cast and crew into one small car was harder than expected and took about 25 minutes to figure out how to get the equipment into the car safely and crew in safely. Another point which made us loose time was getting to the car park on set and realising we had to pay and display but we only had enough change on us for up to 70 minutes when we wanted to spend at least 2 hours in this location. Small things like this our unexpected which could have been avoided if we spent time and looked up locations and planned better ahead of time but from this we now learn that we should double check everything including car parks we will be using, how much equipment and crew we need to get to set and plan how we will do it efficiently.
I believe this project was managed very well as we ended up with a finished product that looks professionally made and paper work done and handed into a folder even with all our setbacks. I believe it has been managed well because I mentioned these setbacks, one of them was the first two weeks of filming we had to swap the dates around, as the day we wanted to film off campus it was rainy and looked horrible which is the complete opposite of what we wanted the scene to look like so we had to sit and think how to overcome this, the solution was to film what we were going to do in college next week on the day and film at the off college location next week and look at the weather forecast this time to make sure we were not just winging it because this could cause us more problems. Other setbacks included the that we had as before mentioned not planned enough e.g. carparks and equipment so this set us back in time which overall forced us to have to film more footage over two more separate days. Which one was interrupted as a part of the crew had to leave early meaning we had to wrap up our shoot about 2 hours earlier than we had liked. Looking back on this I am proud of how the group managed to get around multiple issues which came up including locations mention before and the mentioned above setbacks because it showed that we could think and problem solve in the moment and make sure things got done even if some things were not going to plan. I will take a lot from this project and the experience has helped me grow in my problem-solving skills and making sure when things go wrong not to panic and to take a bit of time and think about a solution which would work out best.
In our group people understood what roles they were doing but I don’t think they understood what they needed to do or what was expected of them. For example, our camera operator had troubles with understanding how the shots were supposed to be shot so we had to take time to explain what we wanted and how it was supposed to look. Overall after the first couple of weeks we started to understand what was expected of us and started to get on with it but as the director I made sure that everyone was keeping up with everything for the project e.g. paperwork, blogs and other things which would help us achieve the best we could in this project. Looking back on my project next time I will make sure that people understand as the director what I would like them to do in their specific role.
Unfortunately, we didn’t because of the problems with times mention before we started to go along with a system which was after we filmed one part we would start the post production on it so that if we did fall behind we would know how much footage we are missing and how much we needed to fill it in and where we would go from there onwards. Looking back on this project I would like to have planned an in-depth schedule and stuck to it because I believe that we would not have panicked and would not have got confused about filming and editing but I believe we didn’t have enough in depth ideas at the start to plan a very thorough schedule.
I believe I worked well in this project but I also had my down falls. I organised the group well and got everyone to understand the idea we were filming and what we needed to do to achieve the final product we wanted, for example, I would make sure every spare moment we had was filled with doing something productive and I would encourage the other crew to keep up to date with blogs and keep doing what we were doing as it was working and our work was getting done well. As much as I felt I did well at this project I also should mention I had my down points where sometimes I found it very hard to get them to do their work and it made me annoyed which in turn made it hard me to keep completely calm and sometimes made me a pain to work with but sitting down and talking with the crew helped me understand what they were doing and what I wanted them doing and that normally sorted it out but everything I was making them do that they didn’t want to e.g. paperwork or specific ways I wanted to film to go was all for the greater good of the project not just to annoy people but to make sure we could get the best out of each other and make this project one of our best.
As a group, I believe that we worked well and we worked well off each other’s strengths and weaknesses, since I had never directed before and Chris has directed before he helped me out and since I had used the cameras before I helped Liam (Camera operator), we worked well in a group for example when filming for the day we all chipped in ideas about little extra bits and the other crew talked about how we could improve the scene by doing it at a different part of the location and I helped out with camera angles so really as a team we worked well together but we don’t work well sometimes as the group could get pretty lazy at points I remember one filming day that we scrapped as we got 5 seconds of footage and it just felt like what we were doing wasn’t correct so we all looked off didn’t really communicate on that day and after 2 hours we decided to give up and try again a different time, giving us time to calm down and re-evaluate the situation we were in. over all from this project I have learnt that this group has potential to do great things it is just getting our heads down and stuck into our work.
Post Production
In post-production, we didn’t really manage time that well near the end but at the start of it we managed time very well. We used a system where we would film, come back and start to piece the work together in premier pro. It went very well for the first 3 weeks of filming, we were ahead of schedule but near the last 2 weeks we fell off the editing side and started to use time less wisely meaning we would take longer breaks which looking back on was a bad idea because it meant near the end we had to rush the product and got it out to the best of our ability at the time but there were still little buts I would like to have added to it. Some of the people in the group managed time better than others, I believe from what I saw that I was in college most days missing one and coming in late for another one which did effect the group a bit but from my point of view we all had times when we were late and it effected the group but sometimes we can’t help being late because of other reasons so we decided to let it go and keep up editing and making the product the best we could. If I could go back I would like to have spent more time on the edit, maybe instead of doing it in a way where we edit as we went along more of a film everything and make sure we had all the footage so we could spend two or three weeks solid editing making sure we could get the best product we could out of this group.
In editing our project was managed well at first as we made a very good start after two weeks having a minute and a half of footage edited and looking really good but as the time went on it came apparent that we started to fall off the editing and started to procrastinate it a bit because we were worried about how it was going to tur out, so our management went bad there and it wasn’t until about a week and a half before we had to show it to people we decided to get ourselves in gear and finish off the editing. Looking back on this I would like to do a couple things differently, I would like to make sure we edited it in the correct time and not leave it to the last minute, I would also like to make sure that I didn’t end up editing the last minute off it which ended up happening even though I am not the editor.
Unfortunately not everything went to plan, when first editing it we were so happy with how it was looking and we decided to play around with a couple things in the edit, not realising it actually effect some of the rest of the editing we had done an it took us an hour to fix the problem because we cut everything to the beat, when editing a small section before it and deleting the blank spaces between footage it actually moved the other footage out of place completely meaning we had to go back, move the footage and make sure it was back on beat, this took about 45 minutes to complete correctly. This was the downfall of our editing. We were so happy with how it started to look but after the mishap there we kind of made little mistakes along the way e.g. we attempted a after affects edit where we had to of me on the screen at the same time playing the guitar but it took so long to start with that we realised it was stressful and time consuming for something so little that we decided to scrap the idea, this started to get annoying and then we put the editing off and it was the wrong decision, if I could go back I would remember that not everything goes to plan, to take it on the chin and keep going with it.
I believe most people knew what was going on and they understood their roles in editing, unfortunately I don’t believe that the editor understood what I wanted to be edited as I wanted a very cut to the beat music video as it fitted the song but there were a lot of times it felt that he wanted to take the edit off to a different direction, I had to remind him multiple times that we were doing it this way and this way only, I was open to suggestions but would not let someone take over as the idea. Looking back on this I would like to have made it very clear from the start about what people needed to know when it came to editing because there was time when the editor got confused as he didn’t know what I wanted from the shots and what I wanted it to look at.
In post-production, we didn’t use a schedule which really set us back as mentioned before it made it so that we forgot about the edit and got behind on the editing process. I believe a schedule was needed because it would have meant that we would have had set times for taking breaks and how long we would be on those breaks for, when in reality we went for breaks when we wanted and it took a toll on our editing time because we would go for more than 2/3 breaks each time and it would mean we would get a little bit of editing done then spend more time out of editing when it should have been little break then edit for an hour or so then another little break and so on. If I were to go back I would make sure we got a schedule in place and that I enforced it on the editor and the other crew that needed to be there.
In the editing phase I think I worked very well but probably came across as annoying a knit picky. An example of this is I would sit in the editing suit and the editor would say ‘That looks good enough’ and as the director I stepped in to say that it ‘good enough’ isn’t enough, we wanted to aim for something bigger and better than average so we had to knit pick and touch up the rough edges but with this I think I came across as annoying and as if I had intentionally trying to make it hard for the others but it was all to make sure we get the best out of ourselves. I was annoying to work with sometimes as I would need to take breaks sometimes because I would get very annoyed at people not listening when I’d ask them to do something and they wouldn’t, this meant instead of facing the problem head on I wasted some time getting fresh air to clear my head. If I could go back I would like to explain to the group that me being annoying was to make sure we get the best out of the ability we had in the group. As well as this I would like to have instead of taking breaks when getting annoyed made sure that I get my point across to the crew of why I was annoyed instead of running away from it face it front up and explain and sot the situation out.
Overall the group work ok when it came to the post production stage but this is where we did fall apart slowly. It was hard because everyone had different ideas of how they thought the music video should work but as the director I had the final say, which meant I was bound to annoy someone or upset someone if I agreed with one person over the other and vice versa. In editing, again is where I started to clash with the editor but overall, he did agree and do the wok he was asked to do, to the best of his abilities.
Final overall Evaluation
Compared to my project proposal the film we have made is quite similar, the story line we used is very much the same of a guy bored in class falling asleep into a dream state. We could keep the as live scenes we wanted from the start of the project and not much went astray other than we only used two locations when we ideally wanted to use three to give it more of a variety and the ending changed because we couldn’t use the actor on the last day meaning the ending changed from him seeing the guy from his dream in real life to him talking to his friend and making a little joke about the song name.
From the beginning of the project we planned a short drama and unfortunately our groups were split, when making our project we changed the original music video idea extremely, we had two ideas one for “Heard it all before – Illy” and for a different song, “Solo Dance – Martin Jensen”. Both music videos were the same idea but different songs. They had no narrative to them, was more of a summery feel video were people went out trying to get people to hold up cardboard with words of the lyrics on ad very much felt like you were there along with them on this little day out adventure. Now the video is a completely different song and concept, which isn’t bad at all as we love the new idea we used and we really enjoyed making the film. Two very different music video ideas but both songs were still upbeat so we still could use some ideas from the old music video to the new one.
Overall I believe that the final product we produced looked professional and a good product. We used multiple shot types including mid shots and close shots. We also used techniques like panning the camera and tracking. We wanted to get as much out of this video as possible, we didn’t want a boring just stuck on a tripod looking video we wanted movement and upbeat feeling, something energetic. I believe the way we shot the first shots in the classroom really was a way of setting the scene, gave the feel of where he was and the shots helped establish where he was and how he was feeling. The one thing we are proud of technically is the two transition shots in the video where the main character falls through the table, we researched the original music video and saw they used transitions like this in their video and really loved the way they worked so we decided to take it in our stride to attempt to make it ourselves. We considered their video and saw some of their transitions frame by frame and broke down how they managed to make a transition like this work in a way where it doesn’t look dysfunctional and unorganised. We saw it wasn’t anything that we couldn’t do because we found out it all we had to do to make the transition work was position the people correctly in the frame and shoot two scenes where you do the same thing and then cut the two at the exact point you want and it works. Other things we used was a lot of overlaying and changing the blend mode to soft light so it seemed confusing like when you are dreaming and it gets weird yet doesn’t seem it at the time, really trying to make it feel like they were in an abstract place and things were happening out of the ordinary. When using the soft light over some of the footage it did look weird as the colour could look off so this was a problem but overcoming it by bringing the opacity down and making the colours balance out again. It does have its weaknesses. When editing we found out that we coudln’t do something we really wanted to do because it would take so long ins aftereffects. We wanted to cut around the person playing guitar at one point and overlay it perfectly onto another clip of him playing guitar in the same place. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out because we would have had to spent hours and hours a day for about a month to get a good 10-15 second clip. This would have set us back so far that it wasn’t worth not finishing the rest of the video to a high standard just for 10 seconds of amazing footage, we felt that 3 minutes of good footage is better than 10 seconds of amazing footage and 2:30 minutes of bad footage. Going onto the cinematography side the shots we great, I loved the locations we filmed out and I think they really helped the outcome of this film. We got multiple shots of each place but unfortunately, we had to recycle old shots because we ran out near the end, when we reused them we added them in a creative way using the overlays to make sure that just because we reused them doesn’t mean we couldn’t do anything different or better with them. The things I would like to change about this overall product is possible add some cinematic black bars (letterboxing) to the footage to make it look even more professional. I would also like to colour correct the footage as we didn’t get around to doing this, not much needs to be done to it other than some shots were a little bit over exposed and some shots the lighting was just a little bit off but if I could have another shot at it I would change them. As well as this I would like to use more location to get the most out of the idea proposed.
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Production Diary
Filming Day 1 - 3/5/17
Filming Day 1 - 3/5/17
Today was the first day of the filming. We planned to go to our first location which was off of the college campus at St. Botolph's Priory. Unfortunately we didn't look at the wether before hand, it turned out to be a rainy day which meant we had to postpone our filming at this location unit the next week which set us back in filming. To overcome this issue we did the recording at the college location we were going to do the week after instead, meaning we didn't loose to much time but still got work done and were able to start editing on the day and piece the first 30 seconds of the music video together.
When collecting the equipment we found out we didn't have an LED lights available which meant we had to deal with the original lighting of the room we were going to use, this wasn't to much of a problem but the colour did come out looking bit off but we decided to use the extra time from not having to go out to a different location to colour grade the footage and make sure we got the footage looking the way we wanted it to.
Over all filming on the first day was good, unfortunately we didn't shoot as much as we liked but on the other hand it gave us more time to start the edit as we went along to make sure we didn't get behind. On to the next filming day!
Filming Day 2 - 10/5/17
Filming Day 2 - 10/5/17
Today we went off the college campus to the first location we were meant to film at last time but unfortunately we didn't go the first day because the weather was bad. Today the wether was very good so we headed down to the location. We had some problems getting down as we only had one car with very limited space, The boot was already full and had no space so we had to fit all the equipment into one car as well as getting the crew to the location, we deliberated wether or not to take two trips but we knew if we did this it would limit us with time and would possible interrupt the shoot. We took a chance and managed to fit the stuff in the car and were able to get the cast and crew in as well.
When we arrived at the location we realised that we had to pay for the car park and it cut our time short as we didn't have enough change for the whole duration of our shoot, instead of 3 hours we only had up to 2 hours. This meant we really did need another day to film the last of our shots to complete our video properly. In the time we had we got most of the footage we needed, including the shots for the transition parts of the video and the other B roll footage we needed to film a lot of the video up although we did still need to go back to the location to re film the end parts of our video.
We once again had free time on our hand after not being able to film for the full length of time so when we got back to college we decided to go into the editing suits and start piecing the footage together, cutting it to the beat and making sure the footage looked correct and was shot the way we envisaged it looking at the start of the day. With the set backs that had happened we were happy with the product we have started to assemble in the edit suit and were looking forward to our final day of filming to make sure that everything would piece together and we would have a final product ready in time to evaluate it ourself and show it to other people on our course and ask for feed back then go back and make changed based on opinions and ideas from both ourself and classmates.
Filming Day 3 - 17/5/17
Filming Day 3 - 17/5/17
Today we aimed to film the as live part of our video, this included The main character playing the guitar in the college room we used for the first day of filming. Unfortunately our time was cut short because other classes and people needed to use the room which limited our time. the limited time effected us today as it meant that we couldn't do multiple takes of the scene. To get past this we had to add one extra day of filming to go to back to the last location so we can film as live scenes there.
On the day when traveling to college i realised that i accidentally brought the wrong guitar in which set us back as i had to take an hour to drive back and get the other guitar, this set us back for recording but we were able to get enough time to film the what we needed in St Botolphs for the last time. we recored everything we some ease but members of the crew had to leave early and which meant filming was cut short.
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Unit 8 - Secondary Research
Secondary Research
The first lot of secondary research I looked for was editing help with how to make the video look good and cinematic. This is because I want the finished product to look as professional as possible. I don't want the feeling that people just stuck shots onto a timeline in premiere pro, slapped a music track underneath and exported it. I want to be able to have the editor able to bring the music video to life by adding effects to it wether it is thought online resources or made in After Effects by the editor himself.
Firstly i looked at this video which helped me understand some new ideas about making the video look cinematic:
youtube
"How To Achieve Cinematic Film Look With Premiere Pro". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 June 2017.
From this video i have found ways of making normal shots into very good looking shots that have depth and high quality. This is useful to me because it means i can now advise the editor into how i want the video to look and can show him the quality of editing I want from him.
When making my small edit i also added a glitch affect which i found from this video tutorial:
youtube
"How To Make Glitch Video Effects In Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 Tutorial (VCR VHS Glitch Art Edit)". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 June 2017.
Here is my attempt after watching this tutorial:
youtube
When researching music videos and looking at the ideas of videos i wanted to make i stumbled across this video. they video was off the song we ended up using and had really nicely done editing in it.
i created a small video compilation of the footage i liked and wanted to attempt to create my own version of.
youtube
"Smallpools Dreaming Transistions". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 June 2017.
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Unit 8 - Primary Research
Primary Research
When choosing the camera, I looked at two cameras, The Cannon 650D and The Panasonic AC90 .
To make sure we got the best footage possible i decided to take both cameras out and give them a test, here are some of the results:
Cannon 650D Footage + Photos
The quality in the photo is very high which I like but getting the correct camera settings is something i am worried about, I want to make sure that the footage I produce is clear and very high quality so that when it is blown up on the big screen it does not loose quality or look noisy but looks good.
Test Footage 1:
youtube
When looking at footage it did occur to me that the footage was actually a worse quality than I thought it would turn out to be which has made me feel like this may not be the right choice in camera to use for the filming because when it will be blown up and used on bigger screens it will loose the quality making the film look less professionally made
Edited test footage:
youtube
This is an edited video with the kind of style I would like to use in the actual final video, I want to make it feel like a summer feel so i would like to bring out an orange vintage feel but also have like blue in the sea and the sky. I would need to look up how to do this is post production because if on the day it does not work out i can still salvage the footage and make it presentable with the correct colour correction and effects.
After using the Cannon EOS 650D the thoughts I have been having are that it is excellent for pictures but when it comes to video, to get the quality I want, I would need to buy a different lens as well as editing a lot because it can’t really be blown up without loosing quality.
Questionnaire
When doing my research I made a survey and asked multiple people to complete it for me, the results of the survey are as follows:
The results show that over 60% of people who answered the survey used smartphones to listen to music nowadays, this is a change from older times as smartphone have only recently come about into society. This information is useful for us making a music video as it shows us the average size of the screen the user will be watching it on, smartphone screens are a lot smaller than laptops so having very far shots will not work with getting the attention of the viewer. I have adapted this into our music video by using close up shots to get a lot of detail out of each shot making sure that if the viewer is watching on a smartphone that they can see the action happening on the screen.
An interesting statistic is that just under 10% of people still use Mp3 players which would mean there is still a certain amount of people we could not reach, even if they were part of our target audience. This information is important because then we can presume that only 90% of our target audience would be more like to view our music video as they use devices which have screens and the avaibilblity to view videos. This means that if we widen our demographic we can potentially reach more people, and through reaching more people we have a better chance of possibly reaching new people who haven't seen the video who may be shown by friends and family who have seen the video.
The question is to find out how likely it is that people are to actually watch music videos. It shows that the potential to watch music videos is actually quite low. Music videos are normally found on the website ‘Youtube’, And above we are shown that exactly 25% of people who answered the survey listen to their music through Youtube. This means only 1/4 of the people we surveyed would potentially watch the video when listening to the music. This once again is another thing to consider about how wide of an audience we should be trying to reach. If we want our video to reach more people we need to be able for it to appeal to more than just one type of person as we are shown that the amount of people who could possibly be watching is lower than expected.
Another thing to mention is that Spotify is the most used with just under 60% of the people surveyed saying it is their main streaming platform. This is actually useful information because with Spotify we can reach a wider audience because advertisements in Spotify allow video advertisement on the homepage of the application. This means that even though it is meant to be a streaming platform purely for music, we can reach different audiences through.
This again is another question trying to widen our understanding of how wide our audience is nowadays. From the results you can see above that the time spent watch music videos when actually listening to the music is actually very low. when asked out of 10 how often the watch the videos you can clearly see that on average the score was just over 3/10 (10 being always watching the videos and 0 being never watching videos). this would mean that in order to get people to watch my music video I would need something eye catching and something out of the ordinary.
Question 4 was a interesting question and actually shaped the way the music video was played out and how we filmed the music video.
In this chart you can see that just under 60% of people preferred story lines in there music videos. This is important and relevant information because it tells us what the audience wants to see from a music video and what the best course of action to make a finished product which falls into what audiences are looking for in videos. We took this into our stride and structured a narrative around the song we had chosen.
An interesting factor of this is 25% of people like as live performances. I originally wanted an abstract video with some as live parts in it. With this information from the survey I have decided to change the video from an abstract video with some as live parts to a story line which is slightly abstract in its story with as live parts, this is because it fits with what the audience prefer to see and makes the video more suited for its purpose.
This question was kind of important to the music video making process but was more to find out how known the band was, if there was any specific target we would be shooting for, if the band was well known we could then structure the music video around the groups of people who follow the band the most to satisfy the needs of the consumer.
The 6th Question in my questionnaire consists of me trying to understand the target audience I was approaching, as the director I am trying to refine it to small groups so I can find a way to satisfy as many groups in one go as I could, this means i could make a music video that is good quality and also reach many people on different interests.
The interesting thing about this survey is the no one actually liked Rock music, this struck me as indie rock is on the list (The music video is being made on a band of the indie rock genre), I expected more people to like rock music than other genres such as grime or alternative rock. As the director I have to make sure I make sure I can meet the requirements of the customer, finding out this information helps me be able to do this by informing me about things i hadn't thought about before, this has changed my view about the target audience I am actually dealing with compared to the one I thought i would be dealing with. This means possibilities of having to rethink some of the ideas put forward already and some of the parts of the music video so that we produce a piece of work that is the desired product and not something that is irrelevant and unprofessional.
The results of question 8 show that people like more fast and cut to the beat music videos. As the director it means I have to think about the shots I go and film so that when it comes to editing I can make sure the editor knows how the edit should be made. It also shows which was I should be thinking about composing this video, since more people like the quick fast tempo videos I should incorporate this into my idea because it would help make the final product reach the target audience I am aiming for.
The 10th and final question on the questionnaire was trying to find out the target audiences age. This was important to me because as the director I need to understand what the structure my video around and target audience is big as it shows me the type of ideas i can use in my music video which will cater to the main viewers of the music video.
From this graph you can see that the main demographic will be Teenagers and Young Adults (14-21) and I will have to change the music video around them so that we can produce something which will be professionally produced and meets the target audience. I will do this by having a relatable story to do with the video (This is why I chose to make him sleepy in school as many teenagers can relate to feeling tired in school).
I decided to leave out questions 7 and 9 because they didn't have relevance to the music video itself more general surveying.
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Unit 8: Music video - “Dreaming - Smallpools”
The Idea!
The idea is about a guy at school, he looks bored and sleepy/tired as if he was struggling to stay awake. You see him put his head in his arms as if he was taking a nap put then wakes up in multiple locations confused about where he is, what is happening around him and why he is there. Every now and then things happen which get weirder and weirder and inevitably he gets woken up by the school bell to find out it was all a dream, as he leaves his class room he sees one of the people from his dream run out the door, leaving it a mystery to whether it was all a dream or not.
Research
Primary Research
When choosing the camera, I looked at two cameras, The Cannon 650D and The Panasonic AC90 .
To make sure we got the best footage possible i decided to take both cameras out and give them a test, here are some of the results:
Cannon 650D Footage + Photos
The quality in the photo is very high which I like but getting the correct camera settings is something i am worried about, I want to make sure that the footage I produce is clear and very high quality so that when it is blown up on the big screen it does not loose quality or look noisy but looks good.
Test Footage 1:
youtube
When looking at footage it did occur to me that the footage was actually a worse quality than I thought it would turn out to be which has made me feel like this may not be the right choice in camera to use for the filming because when it will be blown up and used on bigger screens it will loose the quality making the film look less professionally made
Edited test footage:
youtube
This is an edited video with the kind of style I would like to use in the actual final video, I want to make it feel like a summer feel so i would like to bring out an orange vintage feel but also have like blue in the sea and the sky. I would need to look up how to do this is post production because if on the day it does not work out i can still salvage the footage and make it presentable with the correct colour correction and effects.
After using the Cannon EOS 650D the thoughts I have been having are that it is excellent for pictures but when it comes to video, to get the quality I want, I would need to buy a different lens as well as editing a lot because it can't really be blown up without loosing quality.
Secondary Research
The first lot of secondary research I looked for was editing help with how to make the video look good and cinematic. This is because I want the finished product to look as professional as possible. I don't want the feeling that people just stuck shots onto a timeline in premiere pro, slapped a music track underneath and exported it. I want to be able to have the editor able to bring the music video to life by adding effects to it wether it is thought online resources or made in After Effects by the editor himself.
Firstly i looked at this video which helped me understand some new ideas about making the video look cinematic:
youtube
From this video i have found ways of making normal shots into very good looking shots that have depth and high quality. This is useful to me because it means i can now advise the editor into how i want the video to look and can show him the quality of editing I want from him.
When making my small edit i also added a glitch affect which i found from this video tutorial:
youtube
Here is my attempt after watching this tutorial:
youtube
After editing these clips together i saw the original video for the song we are planning to make a video for. after watching the video I noticed that they have 3/4 amazing transition which i would like to replicate in our music video. i compiled a video of the transition in the video which where used here:
Production Diary
3/5/17 - First day of filming
Today we filmed the first couple of shots we needed for our music video. Unfortunately we could not use the exact room we wanted to at our college but we found a room which suited the part nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mSh2Bhtcy0
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Unit 7 Interactive media
The task we have been given is to use flash to creative an interactive video which a user can click or mouse over and the nature of the video. this video should able to be embedded into a website.
When attempting to do this project I researched some tutorials to familiarise myself with flash:
youtube
After this i looked into code snippets, code snippets are preset codes which you can drag on drag onto videos which make life easier because you can make high end products without actually needing to learn how to code like a professional:
youtube
When learning about flash we were given handouts to help develop our skills. These helped me because they guided you through the process and let you expand on the basic tutorial they had showed you what to do, opening you up to learning by yourself and expanding your knowledge on your own.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/code_snippets_panel.html
Here are some screenshots:
This Screenshot shows us making the video with the background in Premiere Pro, we used ultra key to get rid of the green screen which can be seen in the third screen shot. This is something we have learned to do which can help us in the future as we now know how to effectively use effects with green screens on them now.
This is a screenshot of the of the code snippets we used, including mouse over snippet. This code snippet is very useful as it helps us get the video to have the desired outcome without having to go away and spend hours learning programming code. It also explains hat the code is doing which helps you learn at the same time.
This last screenshot is of the flash program and the editing screen showing us putting the original video in ready to make the interactive media work.
The final video can be found by scrolling down on the my work page of my website
http://itsrob.weebly.com/my-work.html
Overall i am a small bit disappointed in the interactive media we made as we could have done more and made the media look nice and over better quality than what we did produce. if i could go back i would like to change the background to a video of sorts, instead of a still background of war maybe have a video which would relate to what he is saying. as well as this i would have liked to add more such as buttons to possibly choose the background instead of having just one background. this has been a very good learning experience as Interactive media can possibly help me in my unit 8 project as well as giving me the knowledge to be able to implement it in websites if i ever need to in the future.
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Contextual analysis
Quantitative Research is research which gathers data in numerical form which can be organised into different categories, ranked order or units of measurement. Graphs can be made form this type of data.
Qualitative Research is research that gathers information in non numerical form. For example, diary accounts, worded questionnaires ,interviews and observations.
Music video analysation
youtube
Homesick by catfish and the battlement is a very nicely made video, it is a stop motion of a actual video so it makes it feel. it is made as an alive performance. The target audience is Teenagers between the ages of 13-21+, the unique selling point of this video is that the lyrics and the catchy music relates to the teens.
Media theories
Hypodermic Needle theory - The theory suggests that media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.
Semiotic theory – a theory when signs are connected to a meaning or object, so if you were to see a sign it would remind the interpreter of something.
Passive and active audiences – passive audiences are audiences who take in information but do not respond to the information which is shown to them, while an active audience are a audience who take in the information and respond to it.
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Professional practise
In unit 3 we researched job roles for different types of productions; One for music videos and one for Advertisment videos.
When researching the advertisement role i found out producers assistant is the role:
Skills needed: Be well organised, Be highly flexible, Have good planning and organisational skills, Have good communication skills, Be good at time management, Be confident and enthusiastic, Have excellent clerical skills, Have a good work ethic, Have a strong sense of loyalty and responsibility·, Be highly computer literate, Have a keen interest in the business of filmmaking, Have some understanding of the film production process, Have some experience of script reading.
Responsibilities: Writing coverage on scripts, drafting letters and making phone calls, Run an office, Interview personnel, Co-ordinate the fundraising process and assist with duties on and off set, Liaise between the Producer and the post production team, Help prepare publicity materials.
For the music video i researched a different role as a Editor, some of the skills needed are: Be good at editing, a willing to learn, creativity, a can do attitude, soft skills are being able to communicate with people, Hard skills such as knowing how to use premier pro, knowing how to use other programs which are to do with the profession.
Responsibilities: To make sure they meet the deadline, make sure the product meets to the standards that of customer. Make sure there is no blips in the music video.
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Research
Advertisement - Selling the dream
We have learnt that there is two different types of research:
Primary research - Research that the person has found out and collect themselves such as information about the company and ideas you think of yourself
and then there is Secondary research - Research that has already been collected for you and that you analysis and compare with your own research
Comparing two different adverts
First advert - 2016
youtube
This advert is effective in many ways and uses great animation. The advert tells a story about where vans started and the life of vans from birth to now, this is effective as it engages the viewer and tells you a lot of information about the shoe at the same time as advertising it. the use of the minimal amount of colours is good swell as it makes it feel chilled out and not too flashy which is the vibe that vans choose to sell.
Second advert - 2011
youtube
This advert is older of the two but incorporates a big target audience of vans shoe; skateboarders. Vans shoes were originally worn by surfers but over the generations they have been adopted by skateboarders around the world as their comfy feel and sturdy build makes them ideal for skaters everywhere, so vans pounced on this and made an advert based around a lot of skateboarders doing tricks. its a lot shorter than the proviso one meaning it is more suited for television as slots for adverts are normally about 30 seconds. it also has some funny moments with the actors in the advert laughing and having fun and this is good as it makes the viewer associate vans with fun good times.
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Production + Evaluations
Advertisement - Selling the dream
For the selling the Dream assignment we decided to look at the iconic cadburys advert which included a drumming gorilla on a purple background, we thought this idea was great as it made the advert stick into peoples heads and make them remember the brand and the product. we thought about the brand we could use and make a version of our own. The way that the video was made so that through out the video the brand was not exposed so that the viewer was left thinking “what is this?” and “whats this advert for?” when at the end all is revealed that it is cadburys, this was effective as it made the user remember the advert and associate with the company.
When planning the advert we were deciding on the brand we would use, when looking into other companies such as McDonalds, BurgerKing and Galaxy Chocolate, we found that none of them have an iconic figure which we would like to use for reasons such as budget or the fact that we didn't think that it would fit the video and catch the attention of the viewer. When we thought of KFC we thought of the idea about using a chicken suit as it is very simplistic and is in the budget we have. Also when we thought about idea a green screen being used as the background so we had a vast choice of backgrounds to use, but due to budget, space and it being hard getting the correct lighting to make full use of the green screen, we decided instead to stick to the theme of red, which is one of the primary colours of KFC.
Just before filming we made a list of possible venues to film at and one of the places which was new the top of the list was at The Electric Palace in harwich, which we ended up using. The Red old vintage look an feel of the place really got our attention and knew it would get the attention of the people viewed it as well. the lighting in the venue was not the best but useable and better than other locations, if i were to film at this location again i would take more time in planning the lighting and making sure that the video looked good pre editing to save time when we colour corrected it to make it look better. After selecting the venue we went on to book out the equipment; we brought a camera and a dolly which we loaned from the institute but also brought a drum kit which we one of our team already had at his house and a DLSR which another member of our team owned (This was so we could get two different looking shots, so we had a variety of choices when it came to editing and making it look nice and well cut).
on the day we only had 2 hours to film and set up, taking away 30 minutes of setting up and putting everything away, we only had an hour and a half to film with, this made the production a bit harder as we would have liked longer to make sure we got everything filmed in time and still have tim to look at shots and think about maybe filming extra shots or retaking shots because they weren't up to the standard that we would have liked them to be at. With the time limit we manages to get more than enough shots, but if we would have had more time i would have liked to film a rough cut of the shots, looked them over on a computer and possibly re shoot shots that could have been done better.
when editing the problem did arise that we had to edit the pre-recorded music to the person in the person playing the drums, we had to sync up the music so that it fit and didn't look like the chicken was just aimlessly swinging at the drum kit but looked like it was playing the drums, this didn't take too long but with some of the shots being taken at different times making the video smoothly transition between some shots was a hard thing to do and took some time a practise. with the final edit we decided to take out some of the cuts and use the take where we filmed it all in one shot, this made the video look better because it was more of a simplistic idea than having so any cuts and so much happening. I feel that changing the final edit to the one shot was a very good idea.
Over all the whole project went really well in my opinion, our finished product was neat and tidy, if possible i would have liked to improved upon making the length of the video shorter as it was bit too long for advertisement standards. as well as this i would have liked to improve the lighting so that the video didn't need to have colour correction as the final edit visibly looked bit too red because we had to make them more bright which in turn made the video quality a bit worse. Also when going to a place possibly finding out when we could get to use it for more time to get some back up shots and more variety of shots would be a good idea in the future.
Assignment - Top of the Pops
In this assignment we as a group had to make a music video which was around 3:30 minutes in length. In the beginning we had to research different music videos and how the music video fit the genre of the music and the band/ artist themselves, this helped because it gave us an idea about how music videos work - abstract video which didn't actually fit the meaning of the music but made the viewer think about the videos meaning, whereas on the other hand there where videos where there was a story line and you could see a story being told (A narative video). These videos are very good when the music video actually tells a story, such as a lot of love songs, because it helps the viewer link the song and the video together which can actually make the viewer engaged with the video and sometimes put them into situations which could actually be familiar to life. A band i looked at a lot was catfish and the battlement because i enjoy their music a lot, A lot of there music videos are things they call ‘Live from the studio’ which shows them on tour recording their albums and going to places to promote their tour and other things just going around and having fun, this type of music video is goof as it shows the viewer and fans of the band can see them instead of celebrities but as human being living a life which they are still trying to get their heads around.
After the research we decided idea on what we could do for a music video, i presented my idea which was of a slow acoustic song. In this idea i would have had a person busking on the road playing the song we hear in time, no one is watching or listening. through the video he closes his eyes and we see flashbacks of going to the airport and send away a girl we see in his flash backs, it becomes clear he is so into the song as it has meaning to him, by the time he has remembered everything and the song is finishing it fades back to reality and there is a crowd around him listening to his song. i believed this would be a good idea for a music video because it would fit the tempo of the song, and in a narrative point of view it would fit the song lyrics with the flashbacks creating a backstory but leaving enough vague area so that the viewer can think of the missing in-between points and make up in their head what happened. I also like this idea because it would be simple to produce, only a couple of shots would be needed such as an airport scene, a kitchen scene, a busking scene. it would not bee complex and would be shootable in about 3-4 days of filming including B Roll footage so that if any of the footage was to have messed up or did not fit we could cover ourselves and use the B Roll footage.
After presenting our ideas, the ones people wanted to produce where chosen, Unfortunately mine was not chosen but i will produce it separately soon. After the projects where chosen we decided groups and set on out way. On this project i was chosen to be the editor of the group as i have not edited before and wanted to give it a try and get stuck in trying my best to produce a finished product. For other reason i had to be the main actor of the film as we could not get the actors for the first day of filming. This was weird because it gave me a new perspective of filming and the procedure, i never had tried acting before so i had to learn on the job basically, i had to stop myself from looking into the camera and making mistakes in the video so that in the end we could produce a professional final product. If i was to do another project and have to help acting as well i would look up some help online and research what helps to be an actor because it will increase the final product in terms of looks and quality if i am able to act correctly.
In the pre production process we sat down together and filled out all the appropriate paper work for our roles. As the editor i had to fill out the production schedule and the Budget sheet. this was the first time for me doing these two pieces of paper work on my own. i found this very interesting and it helped me learn more about doing paper work because i had to research prices online and around in local places which let you hire equipment. As well as helping me become better in research it has helped me in my organisational skills because the production schedule made me have to really think about what times we would be at the locations, when we would leave and how long it would take to get from A to B. I normally struggle with organisation and i feel that even thought i slipped up bit it helped that i got this piece of paper work as now i am a little better.
After we had got the pre production paper work sorted out we set off on our filming days. We used 3 days to film, which was an extra day to the 2 days we planned to film as the actors did not show up on the second day which left us to have a day of filming other content for the video. The first day of filming was hard because there was a divide in the group into what we should be filming and how we should be filming the video. the camera man had other ideas than the director and refused to change the way they filmed to fit the directors needs and wants. This was hard as some shots which should have taken less than 20 minutes to film ended up taking about 45+ minutes until the situation was solved and the filming could be done correctly. What I've learnt from this is that the director is the person in charge and trying to change the directors mind and fighting them about their ideas is bad because it wastes time and ultimately gives you a bad reputation as we did not want to work with the person after they wasted time and nearly ruined the project.
After the 2 days of normal filming we filmed the last scenes of bullying with the actors. The actors we got hold of were students of Braintree college who study drama and acting. These people where great people to work with! They did what they asked when needed and were nice people as well. this made the last day of filming enjoyable but at this point the who caused the problems in filming had left our group and had left us with only 2 people in our group for the filming and editing. Even though the the actors where good and the filming went well it was still hard as 2 people where taking on the work of 3, especially as the editor I was already acting so now the Director had to Film and Direct which put his
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1) A long shot. From underneath of the character, He is above the person chasing showing that he is superior in ability to him. The glass roof looks almost like prison bars, like he is out of reach and unable to get to him that way.
2) A mid shot. the power in the scene is in the focus of the character as he stops the shield. the blurriness of the shield shows its lack of power and significacne to the power of the character.
3) A close up. This shows the emotion in the face of the character, as well as showing the detail in his face which is needed as a reminder to who he is. the blurry background helps make the character the subject if the shot so that the viewers attention is kept on the character.
4) Long shot of the street. looking down over captain america. shows the failed chase he has tried.
5) Long shot from behind. from behind shows captain america, shows the object that is about to be smashed through in light but the rest is very dark, almost as if the path he needs to follow is lit for him.
6) Long shot, shows captain american in the back ground and in the foreground you can see the smashed wall. the wall and door show the power that captain america has.
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