Month: September 2021

Here is a screen castify addressing what has worked well in our music video and other things we need to improve on or change, it will also help us in what we are missing and what would help make our next draft of our music video better.

What went well: 

• The beginning of the music video works well, it is a good mid shot which breaks the forth rule and shows our performer coming out of character.
• The first tilt of the therapist performs well however it jolts and needs to be stabled.
• There is a good variety of shots including close ups, mid shot, long shots, low angles and extreme close ups.
• The angle of Aimee in the mirror shows off her emotions well and you cannot see the reflection of the camera.
• Our editing on beat is done effectively and shows a good energy towards the music.
• Our recent performance shots of the two performers together have improved from our last shoot and shows a good relationship between the two.
• There is good cutting back and forth between the scenes in therapy and the scenes of the two together.
• Our close ups are working well as the audience can now see emotion through them.

Targets for improvement:

• We need to do more shots where we break the forth rule to show are performer coming out of character.
• More close ups in the therapy session to show the grief Aimee is experiencing  and the emotion.
• We have to re do our performance shots as the ones we have done in a room with led lights aren’t exciting enough and you can see light coming through the window. We would like to do more of our lip sync at the abandoned bus as they will be more thrilling for the audience to watch and will make our music video more interesting.
• With our long shot of Lukash lip syncing on a hill sat on a chair we need to crop it down to get rid of the bushes and maybe colour change the sky to a white or blue.
• We need to become better at stabilising our shots and always make sure they are focused.
• When shooting our performance we need to get Lukash in interesting positions to show more of a variation and not just him stuck in the middle.
• Play with angles and framing to make it more exciting.

Below is our draft 2 for our music video:

Here is previous students work which I am going to analyses and figure out specific and  measurable features which make a good music video. Below is a music video called You know you like it.

3 things that have been done well within this music video:

• Throughout the entirety of the video the camera is focused and stabilised, this helped in conveying the correct narrative and allowing a good performance.
• There is a variety of shots that have been used, I felt this kept me engaged with the music video.
• The narrative of the music video reflected well on the genre that was chosen and showed a clear meaning of what was happening in the mist en scene.

Our teacher is now going to do a screen castify of our second draft so we know what to work on next. This draft does have a few gaps in it, we are going to complete another shoot with more lip syncing from Lukash and narrative of the two teenagers together.

Targets for improvement:

• Re do performance shoot- get more angles of the lip syncing and a more interesting place to film.
• Film more narrative- we would like to do more stories of the friendship within the music video.
• Try new editing techniques for different clips to keep the audience engaged.
•  Re do some clips that jolt.
• Colour correct clips that have bad colouring.

During our filing process for our music video we where lucky enough to have Specsavers come in and help us on making sure our music video is working to the best of our abilities and show us little details we can add in from Premiere Pro to allow this.

What we have learnt from talking to Specsavers:

• Curves– Curves on Premiere Pro is an editing technique which will allow us to blend colour into different shots. We could use this in our clips where the girl is reminiscing on how their friendship used to be, this would help our audience understand the narrative more.
• Photoshop– Photoshop can be used  to create different drawings onto of our Premiere Pro footage. For example by using the opacity layer we will be able to create our own filter by exporting our photoshop drawing into Premiere Pro.
• Key frame– Key frame allows our image from photoshop to cut in and out of our clips. By making key frame ‘hard’ this will allow us to show a red dot in the corner of the screen flashing as if its a cam recorder. This makes our clips look more realistic and as if they are from the past.
• Colour– Colour can change the filter on clips which have been selected, we can then use this filter and copy and paste it onto other shots at the same time. This will make it easier to distinguish the difference between performance and narrative clips.
• Adjustment layer– We can use this to apply the same effect to multiple clips on the timeline. Effects applied to the adjustment layer will then be applied to all clips below.

Targets for improvement:

• Organization– Create a general shot this before going out to film. For example the basic shots for lip syncing such as close up, mid shots and long shots, then if we have extra time get some more detailed shots of the singing. It will also help us to create a story board so we not only know what angles we need but also what is going on in the clip, this will make sure we don’t waste time.
• Confusion of narrative– We where told that our narrative isn’t always clear therefore we need to create mini stories within our narrative to extenuate the point their friendship used to be so strong.
• Get a variety of shots and more transitions – by making a storyboard and shot list this will help us.

Below are some videos for us to look back on – 

Our narrative shoot took place in various places to show off the two teenagers friendship. For example we filmed in places such as in a field, in a garden and on the cliffs. We felt these where good places to film to show the two had a good connection together. During this we collectively decided what we would like to film and brought our ideas together to get the best clips we could, although we have realized after filming we haven’t been able to get enough angles and that on our next shoot we need to make that a priority and get angles such as close ups.    This will allow us to make sure our narrative makes complete sense to our target audience.

Focusing forward we all know what mistakes we have made and what we can do to fix them. We know that we need to make sure to get a lot more angles and clips to allow the narrative to flow. We also need to make sure were adding a lot more detail to our narrative to make it fun and exciting for the audience to watch. Furthermore we need to make sure to plan ahead of schedule, our shoots have become rushed and therefore aren’t working as well as we’d like to. We have worked on this already by organizing a third shoot with a list of various shots we would like to take, because of this we will be prepared in getting the right shots to allow our narrative to make perfect sense.

What went well:

• We were able to combine our ideas to enable better shots.
• We were prepared with costume and location.
• We could work together to understand what wasn’t working for us and what would help in making our shoot better.

What we could fix:

• As a group we need to make sure we fix the issue of being unorganised with when our shoot is and what clips we would like to film.
• We need to make sure were getting all the angles we can such as high angle, low angle, close ups and mid shots to make sure our audience feel connected to the music video.
• Finally we have to be able to re film some performance clips to show clear pronunciation of the lyrics.

Here is our rough cut of our shoot for our music video. For this draft we combined clips from our shoot one and two as we felt majority of our clips from shoot one weren’t what we wanted, therefore we did a second shoot to add into this draft. Our shoot locations where a great place for us to shoot so we are going to make sure to go back and get lots of different angles.

Self assessment:

• When editing we could all agree on what clips we liked and where to place them in our rough cut.
• When filming together we came up with good ideas and we made sure everyone had a go at using the camera and contributing what clips we would like to film.
• Our model had good facial expressions and knew how to act in front of the camera.
• We where able to shoot a lot of clips for the chorus in different locations.

Targets for improvement:

• We have come to the conclusion that we need to be a lot more organised when it comes to shooting.
• We need to make sure were we are getting all the correct shots, our narrative story board will help us do this in the future.
• Next time filming we will make sure our model knows all the correct words so the filming process is a lot smoother.

As a group we have come to a conclusion that we are going to have a second and final change in our narrative. Our old narrative turned out to be too complexed and wouldn’t be easy to show throughout a music video.  We where also having trouble in filming the two children who where going to perform as the younger teenagers, therefore we have decided that to keep on track and allow the best music video possible we have changed to a simple narrative.

The new narrative change is now a women who is looking back on her younger self, where she had no worries , no stress, was content with the life around her and had a very good best friend. Within our clips we will show the women at a therapists talking about all the troubles she has in life now compared to when she was younger. We will then flash back to her younger life in summer where she was happy, during this we will show off her summer with one of her closest friends.