Music Video . . . .

Evaluation

This is the finished article of our music video project, our song was called Imagine us although the song was predominantly written by Jessica, I did help add some lyrics and I also sung on the recording. We all came up with the actual idea and style for the music video, it was a very organic process and it is hard to say if any one person had more influence on it and put more ideas forward.

I also did all my own per-production although it was corroborative and team work when it came to things such as the storyboard to ensure we all had the same kind of ideas and pace.

What I did take a big role in was filming and actual camera work, I did almost all forest panning shots and location shots, and a lot of the shots that made it into the final edit were my work. I also set up a lot of the group shots, this was mainly because Jessica and Lucy were the main people in our video and it would have been difficult to get back into shot where they were placed, looking back although it might have been better to have two other people playing the leads as it meant the couldn't do much filming, even though I did enjoy getting shots and experimenting. I think I did do the camera work rather well, I particularly like the first panning shot you see in the video after the sunrise, it was supposed to be a straight shot but I just thought the tilting upwards just lead though into the music quite well and it did. We did use a some different footage techniques in our video, such as the Quick time capture (still edited together very quickly) a lot of the thanks for that go to Lucy as she was much more skilled at photography or though she did help and show me and Jessica how to shoot the shots, it was also her initial idea to use this technique. I also took a strong role in editing, I logged and captured all of our two tapes worth of footage and then happily worked together with the rest of my group to edit and put the video together, however further in when it became necessary that there where other things needed to be done and my partners went to go do them while I finished edited, then they would come back and we would discuss what I had done and if changes and tweets were needed. I think it worked well in the system because it meant we weren't getting in each others way and we always had a fresh pare of eyes on the edit.

Apart from how to use quick time capture I learnt how to create a stripboard successfully, this I created for our group. I was also able to refresh my memory on how to compress and upload a video, in truth I wasn't happy in the quality of the video once it was compressed but it was more a matter of time and file size, because of the footage techniques and camera we used for the stills the music video's file size was enormous and had to be compressed quite a lot for it to be upload able to YouTube and even then it took a significant time for me to upload. It is a shame but thankfully it didn't effect the sound or music to much.

The storyline was of the love between two woodland creatures and the narrative followed a day in the life of the woodland creatures who are celebrating the love between the main characters. Although our original idea was the typical love song video, set on a beach with two people in love and so on, we ended up specifically not wanting to go down that route, so inspired by Florance and the Machine's music video to the song 'dog days' even though we new it was going to be harder. Looking back I still think the idea we went with was the best and most interesting but if we could I think we should have done a little more planing. For example because our location was outside, reasonably remote, only accessible by foot and as we shot over several days it was hard to control lighting it was hard not break the continuity of the final video. Also we had carry all of our equipment and props to the location, although this was a bit of a pain we all agreed it was worth it for how it would look on camera.

When we finally aired what would be the final edit to an audience of our class the feedback we received was surprisingly good and encouraging. Many said they thought the Mise-En-Scene worked well and that the costumes and they way in which the creatures moved helped the to identify the creatures a such and how they felt about one another. They also said that they found the direction we went with the unusual love song music video worked and was 'unique', which is what we were trying to achieve. A lot of people also respected our decision to sing in our music video task as everyone else rapped in theirs, this reassured me and Lucy as we both did not like the way in which we sounded. Our class also helped us decided on a genre for our song and it video as we couldn't decide. Most said it remained them of a Snow Patrol song because of its backing track and that the sings was a good mix between pop and alternative. The three of us were very happy with the classes suggestions, help and feedback over all.

I was happy with the end result of our music video, although we could have done better planing and taken more footage, as a lack of became a problem in editing, I think we successfully created a good, well put together Music video that achieved the goals we set our selves.