Evaluation
The Final Video and Behind The Scenes
Proposal & Research
For the first part of the project, I created the concept for my music video with a rationale and then I created a presentation to pitch to Paul, my tutor. I had been thinking about the idea of my FMP since the middle of January so that made it a bit easier as I had an idea to start expanding. After this, I had to do lots of research into my topic including the artist (iann dior), types of music videos, conventions and editing techniques used in music videos. This part of the project took around 5 weeks to complete with the first 2 being more towards the pitch and initial ideas and then the next 3 or so weeks were spent researching.
At the time I felt that this went quite well and I enjoyed researching iann dior and the music video analysis. I used my pad a lot in this section to help with mind maps for the analysis as well as a place to put all of my research on artists and directors. Looking back, I feel that this section could have been done a bit quicker which would've allowed me to start pre-production a bit quicker.
I think the part that went the best in this section was the pitch as I am really happy with the look of the presentation and was the most confident I have been within a pitch, over the 2 years. I also think the music video analysis went well as spent a while before each writing the final analysis creating a page of notes which allowed me to get my full thoughts across. I think something that could've gone better was the filmmaker research section. I really struggled at first to find 3 that inspired me and had a large enough portfolio and style to talk about. I found a few directors I ended up looking at that were really unknown like Anthony Scaramucci Jr. (also known as Mooch) who is the main music video director for iann dior and Juice WLRD's music videos. At the end of the day, I think it worked well in the end with the 3 that I chose.
Planning & Pre-Production
This part of the project was where I prepared to film my music video by scouting out locations, making risk assessments, finding talent and crew as well as creating a storyboard, call sheet and experimenting with ideas and effects for the final video. This took way longer than expected with the Easter break and juggling additional research and according to my production schedule took around 5 weeks to complete. I would also say that the scale of the music video also lead to the increased time spent on pre-production as I had to do recces and risk assessments for 5 locations which are far more than what I have done for a project before. After looking back at my vlogs to give myself a reminder of what happened, I have realised that I spent a lot of time, within this 5 week period, going through the brief and ensuring everything was done to a high standard with many checklists being made to ensure I did everything. It's not a problem why I did it like this but it sidetracked me from completing the pre-production quicker which is why it seemed like such a long time to be completed.
I don't really remember having any major feelings about this part of the project other than the excitement of filming just being around the corner at that point. This acted as an inspiration to get a lot of the work before production was completed and I would say, other than easter break, I spent the most time doing work during this time. This made the postponement of filming quite difficult for me as I was really excited to film but it allowed me time to not rush any of the work.
I am most proud of the mood board. This is because I put a lot of effort into making the presentation look good and still show my initial ideas. I am also proud of the call sheet as I haven't made one before and I thought mine worked well. I think it felt quite professional sending it out to everyone, as well. Arranging the talent could have gone better as I had to change the date of filming and because of exams being around the corner too. This meant that a few people, some not even mentioned in my blog weren't able to be part of the video in any way.
Overall, I would say this part of the project went well, other than the duration of it. This is probably the most amount of work that I have put into pre-production which makes me proud and was vital to ensure that the rest of the project went well.
Production
The production phase of my project was obviously the part where I filmed the footage for the final video as well as getting the photos for the promotional images. I filmed on Friday 6th May with Sam and Hope playing the on screen characters and Reece helped film Behind The Scenes With Sam and Adriano helped with filming and carrying equipment. We filmed in 4 locations including my house (interior and exterior), Sandler Crescent, William Heelas Way and Langborough Rec.
I was feeling quite nervous going into filming, knowing that it had to go well otherwise I didn't know what I was going to do, I had no contingency plans. I definitely felt those nerves from the night before until shooting with the gimbal at Sandler Crescent when I realised it was going to plan. I think that I grew in confidence through the day and I felt quite confident with the footage that I got. I think now that I was probably too nervous as I had all the ideas and resources to film well. I think it was because it is the final piece of work which my grade depends on.
I think that the gimbal shots worked really well considering it was my first attempt at using it properly. I was lucky that because I postponed filming by a week that the gimbals arrived at college 3 days before filming so if I had filmed on the original date the shots would have been a lot more wobbly. Maybe if I had more time I would have been able to practice using the gimbal and possibly learn how to focus the shots a bit more to blur the background if that was possible. One of the main things that went wrong was that I forgot to get the props. This wasn't a major problem as it was fine without them but I thought that it would have made the video stand out more with the mic and amp. Another problem we experienced was the timing as people had school and had to leave at certain time which lead to heavy changes in the schedule and a change in location. To save time, we decided to film the argument at my house rather than at Elliott's house as Elliott lives quite far away from the rest of the filming locations. One of my original ideas had a shot of Sam leaving my house in the music video which would have had a continuity error he was then filmed walking up to my house, pretending to be Hope's house too. That was the reasoning behind filming at Elliott's but as that shot of Sam leaving his house never happened it made sense to film the argument at my house. Ultimately, the scheduling issue comes down to me and I should have sent an initial draft to everyone got feedback to then send a final copy which would have incorporated everyone. We also encountered a focusing problem on the Nikon cameras but this wasn't picked up on till after filming. I wish that I would have realised this to try and get a few more shots that were in focus. This impacted Behind The Scenes With Sam more which is a shame as everything was filmed once so I have had to use that footage.
Filming was very fun especially with my mates outside of college and I am really proud of the majority of the footage that I got. Not everything went to plan but I got everything that I wanted and needed to create my music video.
Post-Production
Post-production was the final part of my project where I edited the music video and Behind The Scenes With Sam. I also created promotional material to go with the video to post on Instagram. The whole section of the project took from the 9th to the 25th with the final music video taking the first 10 days from the 9th to the 19th.
Editing the music video went pretty well and I was really motivated after getting the first draft completed, I was able to get a draft finished most days of editing. Once I got the video edited and got to a point where I was adding transitions I did struggle a bit with what I was going to do. This is because I was planning to do the paper effect which I heavily documented my experimentation with, but it didn't look as good as I was expecting with my music video, after talking to my friends we thought it looked gimmicky so I decided against it. I also struggled with editing the Behind The Scenes With Sam video as I feel, looking back, I was overthinking the whole video and once I rewatched my previous videos I was able to create a video that I am proud of. Sadly, the Nikon camera was on autofocus which meant quite a few of the shots struggled to stay in focus which was a shame. The sound wasn't great too as it was very windy and that is the reason I added subtitles to the whole video. If I went back and filmed and edited it again, I probably would have filmed on my phone and added a voice-over maybe more like an interview where I'm talking and the shots from the day were cutaway shots.
To conclude, I think that post-production went well this is mainly due to the fact I was able to get a few drafts out quite quickly which allowed me to get sufficient feedback from my tutor to improve the video. This video has allowed me to improve on editing with multiple shots to pick out the best from each angle and location. I also added subtitles to both videos which is something I haven’t done before and I thought worked really well.
Final Video
First of all, I want to say that I am really happy with my music video. It has taken 3 months of research, planning, filming and editing to get to this point and I think it was all worth it for my final video.
One of the best parts of the video I think is Sam, he was so good at being the leading character in the video. He really puts his personality into the performance. I gave him some ideas on things to do in the performance but most of it was him doing stuff on the spot. He also knew the song very well which meant we could film whole verses and the whole song in some instances to give me a bit of variation when editing as well as speed up the filming process as he didn't need to look at the lyrics. If you watch some of his work you will know it's not a one-off he is great at this stuff so big thanks to him for being part of my video.
I also really like the cut between shots at 00:39 where Sam looks away and then the shot cuts and he's moving back into the shot. This wasn't planned but it works so well, I would say it's my favourite shot, to be honest. In addition, I think the font works really well for the text-based logo at the end as well as the lyrics as I think it fits the song and iann dior's style nicely. The last thing, I really like the VHS effect which was technically the "plan B" as the whole idea was to do the paper effect, as mentioned previously, but I think the VHS effect worked great and could’ve been even better if I planned it originally.
I think the main criticism I have of my video is the lack of colour correction. I am not confident with colour correction to a point that I didn’t even try it on this video and you can tell that a few of the shots are overexposed. The closest I got to that was decreasing the saturation for the narrative shots. Another smaller problem was the focusing issue which meant some shots had to be cut earlier than expected, if you watch the first draft you can see where the focusing issues areas most of them are in that version. I also could’ve done the gimbal shots better, if I had more practice and an idea of what I was doing with them but it was quite a last-minute decision and works decently well.