Category: Music Video

For my final music video I am very pleased with what I have produced. I believe that the tone and mood of the music video matches that of the song itself, as well as the MES, effects and overall atmosphere are done to fit the conventional dirty, rebelious nature of the genre.

 

Here are two batches of peer feedback from two different people. I had them watch the video and then fill out the boxes to show us what we’ve done well, alright or poorly although no one said we did anything poorly / not at all. At the bottom they included personal comments on what we can precisely do next in order to improve our video.

What we can improve upon:

• The performance shoots could be redone as they can appear as a contrast to the music itself.
• Make sure all shots of the performance are on beat to the music.
• See if we can include any more transitions.

These critiques are fairly general and we found that people seemed to be a bit too generous with some things that we thought we could improve upon such as the money shots so a better way to get feedback could be for each student to mark and grade an anonymous music video rather than telling them whose it is to avoid any potential biases, with this according to a set mark scheme. I also believe that the teachers should try to encourage complete honesty in the comments and grades given.

In future I will make sure to use peer feedback as it allows for us to see any imperfections in the product that we may not be able to see as well as a regular viewer and then get the proper advice we need on how to tackle these issues in order to create an overall better product.

Here is my draft 4 for my music video, which will be the final draft before my finished product.

What’s new?:

• Added more images to the gif overlay in order to diversify the longer segments of the band in the black room.
• Made every No Recess bigger, with some of them also changing positionings.
• Faded out to white at the end of the song to further solidify it as the ending, as well as to show the exit as a place greater than where he is now.
• Flipped some of the images so that they make more sense within the narrative

Thinking forward, I’ll make sure to properly prepare my drafts for any future media works so that they can all culminate in a final product that shares the same vision as the original idea, whilst expanding upon it further with each draft.

Here is a screencastify from my teacher to give my group some advice on what we did well and how to improve from our 3rd drafts.

What could be improved:

• Text for No Recess should be bigger and take up majority of the screen
• Change the gif graphic so it feels less repetitive
• Flip some of the scenes horizontally to help with continuity within the narrative
• Add a fade to white at the end
• Lengthen the two shot
• Try to alter the vertical hold for the band on the instrumental

In future I’ll look back at this feedback when creating my 4th draft in order to improve the quality of my video as well as also going to other people for advice on what to improve later on in future media projects that I do, both within and out of school.

Here is my third draft for my music video. In this draft we mainly focused on perfecting the sequencing and then using after effects to better portray the genre of grunge and punk rock.

What’s Changed:

• Colour corrected different shots to make them look cleaner or convey meaning (e.g the monochrome scenes are done to try and make them look lifeless and dull)
• Altered some of the placement for scenes to better fit the narrative
• Added overlays to the scenes of the band in the dark room in order to help portray the genre better and to make them less static and boring
• Added the text ‘NO RECESS’ everytime they say no recess to add emphasis to the song
• Added a camera blur and motion at the start of the song as if the cameras are focusing

 

For our lesson today, some people from Specsavers came in to give us some feedback and advice on our music videos. For ours we were struggling with two problems: to include any overlay effects and to add movement to the static shots of the band. For our first issue, we were shown how to put images into premiere pro, shorten them down from around 1-3 frames long, how to nest them together and then how to edit the opacity and overlay them onto the video to create a video effect / gif if repeated. This added an effect over the video similar to the effects in the music video shown below:

The second struggle we had was fixed by going into the effects menu on premiere pro, and then using video effects to add some movement to the frame. This movement then made it seem like some kind of old film, which was an effect we thought was quite fitting with the static on the screen.

In future, I will try to ask others around me for feedback or advice if there are any other effects or tricks that I’m unsure of, in order to both learn from my failures as well as to make my project fit my original intention for it.

Here is the second draft of my music video. This is the first complete draft as it contains shots from both my performance shoot, as well as my narrative shoot. For this we had a few issues when sequencing the shots as we had accidentally missed out on some for the reshoots, however we used other shots resourcefully in order to help fill out these gaps.

Below is a sheet that details some of the assessment criteria. Based on this I’ve rewatched my music video and evaluated it based upon these criteria.

Here are some of the things I believe I have done well in this draft:

• The camera was steady in basically every shot as we used a tripod for every shot, with movement only being used when necessary, for example, the movement between rooms to signify the song moving over from just the band to a mix of the band and the narrative.
• The shots have been made at a variety of distances and angles to help provide depth to the edit. One example of this is showing the drummer from a front angle, a side angle and from an angle over the cymbal.
• The edit makes sense of the narrative by sequencing it with a clear beginning, middle and end
• The MES used reflects the Grunge genre as well as also fitting the school setting

For my next draft here are some things I believe I need to do to improve upon this draft:

• Start to add more video effects via premiere pro. This includes things such as colour correction, graphics and transitions.
• Try to match the pace of the edit to the pace of the music. Parts such as the instrumental starting at 1:20 are edited fairly slowly despite the song speeding up then.
• Certain parts of the edit are strange and slightly break the continuity such as the main character walking from one hallway into a different hallway, just to end up back in the first hallway to slam the locker shut.

Thinking forward I will take all of the issues I have found with my music video and work on them to improve my video as a whole in order to make the video to the best of my ability.

For our shoot 2 we stayed at the school to shoot through different rooms and corridors. We did this as it was the most convient school for us to shoot in. Below is one of the shots that I made for my video, where we show my blazer dropping to the floor and then me walking off and kicking it out of the way. This close up and low positioning helps to convey that the main character is too cool for school and thinks that it’s beneath him.

Overall, I believe that the shoot was a success, however it wasn’t without it’s flaws. These can be found below:

What Went Well:

• Still shots were done with high quality, being stable and in focus.
• Variety of shots from different angles, distances that occasionally use different movements such as pans and tracks for example, there’s a low angle on the main character walking up the stairs in the link, showing how he’s now in control of himself.
• The shots done fit into our original plan, meaning there were no sudden, major changes to the story or sequencing of the narrative.

Even Better If:

• Our original drummer and main character were unavailable so we had to replace them and for the main character we had to reshoot the shots we did with him.
• Moving the band’s equipment was hard and time consuming, which meant we weren’t able to do it as much as we had planned.
• Due to different shots needing reshooting, certain errors in continuity were made.
• Some shots had fairly poor lighting which needed to be fixed through premiere pro itself.

In future, I will learn from the mistakes I made during my music video and try to be more organised with the planning of my music videos in order to further meet my original vision and to avoid any sudden changes that could disrupt my work in any way.

For my second shoot (the narrative shoot), I’ve made a production meeting agenda to outline the different areas of the shoot that we’ll need to know beforehand in order to gain a greater understanding of what the final product will look like. Some of these aspects of the recording include the Location, Models and Costumes. We’ve also taken the oppourtunity to add the numbers of our teachers in case something goes wrong and considered potential issues regarding the shoot due to it being set within a school.

In future, I will make sure to use production meeting agendas to collect ideas with my group in order to gain a greater understanding on what to do on my shoot to try and meet the original vision of the project.