After completing our first full draft of our music video, we collected some feedback. We filmed another A2 Media Studies student and he provided some feedback for our video.

Music Video Feedback:

Likes:

• Video in general very good
• POV shots are very effective
• Chorus section has very good pace

Suggestions:

• Some low quality shots
• Lack of energy in certain areas

Feedback:

He mentioned how certain shot are low resolution and that they take away from the effect of the video. He also stated that the start of the video needs more energy, to match the second half of the video.

Analysis:

• More energy
• Get rid of low resolution shots
• Refine editing

We will now resume editing our music video. We will apply these suggestions to our draft 2. Hopefully our draft 2 will be of superior quality to draft 1. Receiving this feedback was very helpful as it has put us in the right direction for editing our video. One note to add would be that the first half of the video is deliberately less energetic. We wanted the build up to the chorus to not be massively energetic as we are reserving the real energy for when the chorus drops.

Here is our first draft for our music video ‘Down To Earth’. The video includes both the narrative and the performance.

Video:

Overall: 

I am pleased with our first draft, we still need to add a few more shots and refine the editing but overall I feel this is a strong start. I am particularly happy with the pace of editing throughout the chorus, although this could be improved. In this draft we also applied certain suggested features that were suggested in the feedback of the performance/narrative drafts. This first draft is also important as whilst we were editing, we made a firm decision on how long the music video will be (3:08).

After completing our rough cut, we began collecting some feedback. I sent my rough draft to an associate of mine and he provided some constructive feedback.

Feedback:

“I feel there is a clear representation of a narrative, in the man playing and improving at football. I feel the football aspect and the DJ are edited together well. I think that the changes between the DJ and the footballer need to be faster in order to create a more energetic feeling. I did enjoy the chorus when it became more lively l. I would however implement more colour as this would help to make the video more attractive and engaging. Overall I believe that this is a good rough draft, but there is certainly room for improvement.” – Tom Porter

Screenshot:

Analysis:

Positives:

• Clear representation of a narrative
• Performance and Narrative are edited together effectively
• Enjoyed when the chorus became more likely
• Good rough draft

Suggestions:

• Implement more colour to become more appealing
• Increase pace of editing
• Faster cuts between footballer and DJ

My thoughts:

I am pleased with this feedback as it matched my expectations. I am aware that there is still more work to be done. The suggestion to implement more colour is particularly good as we were planning on doing that anyway. I am also happy that there is an understanding of the narrative, but I still feel that it can be made clearer. So I will strive to add more clips that progress and display the intended narrative. As a group we are also seeking to make the transitions between clips smoother and faster.

In this draft, we combine the narrative and the performance. Since it is only the rough draft, we have not added a lot of certain features. We still need to film particular aspects of the narrative. In this draft we have not added effects in the relevant areas yet. We will add colour correction and adjust the sharpness (as well as other things).

Rough Draft:

Click the video below to view the rough draft.

Overview:

We are pleased with our rough draft and we feel that this is a good starting point for our video. We do acknowledge that there is still a lot of work to be done. Our aims now are to add the needed effects to the video, as well as adding the crucial bits of narrative, that will really help the audience understand the progression the protagonist is making.

After we published our Narrative Draft we began collecting feedback. Below is some feedback collected from the comment section of the YouTube video.

Feedback:

Overview:

• Shots are good
• Clear identifiable narrative
• Progress within narrative is effective

Targets:

• Shot of James shaking his head are blurry, alter them
• Add an energetic and lively performance aspect

We were tasked with creating a draft of our music video including only the narrative. In this video there is no performance aspect. There are parts of the video that are just black, in these areas we will insert the performance.

Narrative Draft:

Analysis:

As a group we are happy with our narrative draft. We do recognize that the narrative alone is not enough for our music video, we will be editing in our performance and narrative together to create a fast and entertaining video.

As we are approaching the final stages of editing our video, we realized that certain sections of our video needed to be enhanced or added to. Prior to our second set of narrative shoots, our video was missing certain key narrative components. For example, there was a sense of progression, but no real indication as to what was progressing and why. We needed to shoot more narrative-based aspect for our music video.

Brief overview of shots:

• Man finding a poster for football trails.
• Man meeting with a player from the Football Club.
• Player looking disappointing
• Player looking impressed
• Player rejects man from club
• Player accepts man into club
• Shots of calendar being completed, illustrating that he is progressing

Here are some of the shots we gathered.

Analysis:

The shoots were successful in total, we now have a much needed addition to the narrative. There is a definite sense of narrative, much more than there was previously. We are now in a position to solely edit. Unless we receive serious suggestions otherwise, we will not be filming anymore clips.

First Shoot:

For our very first shoot, Matthew and I went to our primary filming location, Memorial fields. The fields were ideal for our narrative as we required a location with a large grassed area and football nets. We brought a GoPro with us as the majority of our shots are from the point of view (POV) of the main character. We needed a variety of shots, all of which I performed actions with a football, including, taking penalties, free-kicks, dribbling, running and juggling. We were successful in acquiring a variety of shots of me performing both well and poorly. We also filmed some POV shots from Matthew’s angle. Matthew was the goal keeper which I was against in some of the shots. We have good clips of Matthew saving/failing to save my shots. Due to the nature of our filming (All POV shots), we managed to film all we wanted in a very small amount of time.

Below is a snapshot from one of our clips, this is an example of a POV shot. In this snapshot I am adjusting the GoPro so that my feet and the ball are included in the shot.

One problem that occurred would be the minor issue we had with our camera. In order to film the POV shots we had to use a GoPro, which is a camera specifically designed to film wide angles. The camera had very limited memory (8 GB) so we were restricted to a maximum of around 40 mins of footage before the memory was full. We managed this issue when I brought my laptop to our shoot. This allowed me to transfer the footage onto my laptop, clearing up space on the GoPro.

I purchased a GoPro head-mount to assist us in achieving these shots, it was extremely helpful as it allowed us to film POV shots with ease.

I believe that we have a good amount of shots to work with so far, however we are always brainstorming new ideas for shots. With this in mind, it is more than likely that we will need to have several more shooting sessions.

Overall:

• Successful first shoot.
• More shoots required

Feedback: We have received feedback on our Performance Draft 1. We have received feedback from a current A2 Media Studies student (Katie) and an ex-Media Studies student who is now a professional editor (Benjamin).

Katie’s Feedback:

 Good:    

• ‘strong star image’
• ‘costume is done well’
• Use of fast edits and colours
• Conventional to genre

Advise: 

• ‘Shot 0:31-0:35 is slightly out of focus’
• Shot of keyboard is quite long
• Keyboard shot could be emphasized more
• A crowd could be dancing to the DJ

Benjamin’s Feedback:

Good:

• Good use of lighting
• Editing speed good from 2:05
• ‘out of focus shots are nice’
• ‘final shot where it moves out of focus and pans to black is a nice ending’
• Dark but colorful shots are very effective

Advice:

• Should have people dancing or in a club environment
• More rapid editing the entire video
• ‘an effect I like to use sometimes which would work well here is to speed up a bit of movement on a beat and then slow it down again on the next beat or a few beats after’

Summary:

The fast paced shots were very good and the use of colours is very effective and conventional to the electronic genre. Slower and longer shots are not as effective so we will aim to keep the video as lively as possible. A common suggestion that occurred in both pieces of feedback is to have a crowd or group of people listening and dancing to the music. I feel as if a crowd would be effective but as a group we are fairly limited in our resources and our ability to get a convincing crowd of people to film. Overall I found the feedback very useful and we will most certainly act on a lot of the advice and implement it to our music video.

Task – Performance aspect only:

We were tasked with producing a draft of our performance. The video only includes shots from the performance. The draft is not final. We will add the narrative to the performance for the rough draft of the music video. I believe the draft is a fairly good start, however there is still much work to be done and we will act on any useful feedback and amend our video if needs be. 

Performance draft 1:

Click the video below to view our first draft.

Analysis:

My group has put a lot of effort into our first performance draft and I feel it is a strong start, however there is still more work to be done. For instance I personally want the transitions between clips to be more rapid and create a more energetic feeling. I am also intending on applying more colour-correction effects on certain clips, especially during the chorus.