Here is our Draft 4 music video and a screen castify of targets our teacher has done below.

Targets For Improvement –

• Get rid of the boarders – Not meant to be there
• Sound effects odd if there isn’t more
• Likes dissolves transitions
• Not the twirl transition – looks cliché
•  Likes cutting mid sentence
• Likes neon flash transition
• Likes the mirror effect – Do it somewhere else?
• Some nature shots in black and white and some in colour need continuity
• Make ghoshting bigger front 1min 30 ish
• Weird nature shot of grass 1 min 30 ish
• 1 min 40 ish create a similar ghosting on same vid but for other side
• 2 min sunset get frame dissolved as too sharp
• 2 min cut to scale in shot after she lifts her head up
• Nature needs to be dissolved in and out so they arn’t harsh
• 2 min 30 weird transition CHANGE
• 2 min 32 slow down the nature as it can dissolve in n out
• 2 min 47 not sure of shot as naturalistic moment
• 2 min 50 doesn’t like black and white clips
• 3 min 10 ghost her both sides
• 3 min 15 change nature shot from sky to something specific
• 3 min 20 ish fade harsh boarder on frame
• Likes flowers in eye at the end
• Make the eye clip longer and play with it more
• Really look at transitions and speed
• Last clip – should stay with her not the other clip.

Comments from Audience –

After listening to the feedback from our teacher in the screen castify, we made and improvements to our music video to help make it more flowing and more interesting for the audience.

Changes –

• We blurred the edges of the rectangle of colour in our first water scene to help the black and white of the background fade smoothly into colour.
• We cropped out the studio scenes of the model because they didn’t fit in well with the narrative and the model didn’t have as much charisma in them.
• We took more nature clips, such as close-ups of flowers, and embedded them into our music video to help portray the narrative of the character being happy alone in nature.
• We also involved new footage that we had taken which helped to further illustrate our narrative.

Targets –

• We still need more videos of nature and wildlife.
• We need to add in transitions between clips.
• Put together more effects on some of the clips.
• Acting need to be more exaggerated by the performer.

Some peers gave some comments from watching our Draft 3 which will be good to have an outside point of view for improvement and what is good.

First of all i really like some of the effects you have used from the mirror effect on Alice to the one on the flower 15 seconds in. I also think you have used a nice variety of locations. I especially enjoyed the one of Alice laying down on the glass and her in front of the quote board thing in town. A few areas where I would aim to improve are the section in the video where it is just a black screen I feel you could utilize that space more effectively with possibly some more shots of the landscape or even to add a section of narrative in there. As well as this I feel you could possibly use a wider variety of shot distances especially at the start of the video. And finally I loved the shot of the dandelion. Maybe at the end she could blow it out or something or light it, I just feel like it’s quite an interesting shot and I feel like you could include it multiple times.

Targets for improvement –

• Still need to check and change scale in some of the clips
• Still need more footage
• Add in more nature clips
• Try to get more angels or distance of shots
• Maybe add in some more mirror or duplicating effects

We were sent feedback in the form of a screen castify by our teacher so that we could identify what we needed to work on in our video and what to add.

• Dissolve the edges of the panel that shows the seawater
• More close ups of eyes opening
• Make the clip of the leaves falling longer or delete it
• Close up after model starts singing
• Leave the second clip of long shot of model in path till later
• Really good close up of first graffiti clip- shows intimacy
• Zoom in on the midshot of the graffiti wall. Have the model bigger on the left hand side.
• Don’t repeat pathway clips.
• put narrative in instead of whoas
• crop the graffiti wall shots closer
• cut out some of the sitting clips
• cut out a lot of the studio-based ones
• Don’t repeat shots
• Center the car park clip closer
• More close ups
• keep nature for narrative

 

Some people came in who work in media and came to watch our videos and give tips and feedback. 

I started off by filling her in on where we were and explaining that we want to get more footage of our performer singing, some more narrative clips and more nature shots. I then went on to tell her how we filled some clips wrong so when we put it onto the video there’s black screen on the sides of some clips.

She then gave some feedback –

• Changing the scale/position of some clips
• Agreeing that more footage is needed
• Liked the nature clips
• Suggested could make some of the singing clips longer as the pace of the song is slow genuinely
• Introduced us to an effect called Gaussian Blur which made it easier to sort our dodgy footage out
• Play with colour, lighting, contrast ect

This will be helpful when editing the clips as we are able to use some of our not as good footage and change it to grab the audience attention and add something new to our video.

Here is draft 2 of our music video, below is some positive and negative feedback, we gave ourselves when watching the clip a few times. We immediately noticed some things we need to change and some things that were good.

Reflection –

• We need more footage – actual performing footage, nature clips, narrative, as from putting it together we feel as if we don’t have enough to convey the message we want to and feel as if we are repeating the same clips
• We need to get more various angles like high and low so we can convey her emotion clearly
• When we go to edit we need to play with the clips;

-colour, contrast, lighting

-Transitions to make them smoother and more like one clip

-Scale, and position as some have black screens on them

• Close ups were nice and showed a connection from performer to audience, and her emotion
• Nature clips helps display narrative

On our second shoot, we revisited the Bowling alley and went into town to take more footage:

• We explored further around the bowling alley and found a graffiti wall which was perfect for our narrative where the star is distressed and confused.
• We also shot footage in the paths in the area to add a nature theme to our video, for example shooting grass and the sky to fill in spaces where there was no singing to lip-sync in the video.
• Next we went into town where we used the rainbow steps to take some more seemingly candid shots of our model being happy and carefree, in addition to the steps we visited a colorful and positive graffiti wall which was really good as the brightness and happy vibe of the wall added another level of positive energy to the shoot.

However, there were some things we need to take into account for our next shoot:

• We did’t get enough footage so we will have to take more lip-syncing videos in the future so that we have enough footage.
• We took some really good videos of nature but on our phones and so when we uploaded them to edit the scale was wrong which takes a lot of time to edit into the correct frame.
• We didn’t take as many narrative shots as we could have meaning there are many gaps still in the video.

 

Here is our storyboard, we have kept it simple with minimal scenes as we feel that we don’t need lots. We have included a image of our scene with some description and how we aim to take the shot.

We will use shots such as pan, tracking as well as high and low angle shots for when the model is moving around and walking through nature and high and low angle shots to reinforce her emotion throughout the video We will also take close-ups to give an abstract feel and zoom in on the model’s emotion.

This is a risk assessment to ensure the safety within our group.

So we are able to see what to bring we have written a PMA this gives each person there own details of what to bring, where to go, and at what time. It ensures that our shoot will go to plan including the correct MES.

This task made it clear for us to consider our narrative, this means, however abstract and thematic the video might be, we can show narrative development and characters progression. Through looking at the different ways we could portray it we chose amplified. Also by doing this exercise it was obvious what themes we are wanting to include and what else we need to take the time to go and do.

When doing a narrative it’s actually best to leave them incomplete because it then makes your audience want to watch it again whereas if you complete it they have seen it and won’t want to watch it again.