My partner and I have now produced the final version of our music video, as seen below. We feel that our music video is able to provide entertainment for our audience with the use of both performance and narrative aspects. It is clear that our video follows most of the common technical conventions that can be found within our chosen genres of R&B, Pop and Electronica, along with this there is a clear focus on the repetoire of elements (Altman) such as, lip syncing, narrative and performance, a variety of shot distances and angles, and editing to the beat. All of these elements combined together are used to help our target audience accept the text.

However, we felt that is was important that we did not  directly follow these conventions, we wanted to challenge them so that our audience found our product interesting and informative. A common theme that is often found within pop music videos is lust, love and heartbreak.  We focused on these themes for our own storyline, developing them to show our character as heartbroken and grief-stricken at the loss of her boyfriend and unable to focus on the happiness and people surrounding her. Our star is shown to be extraordinary (Dyer), as she is seen wearing a classy, timeless black dress, creating a sophisticated, mature and elegant image. There is a focus on the use of performance and how our star is portrayed, emotion is an important signifier (De Saussure) throughout our video as without it would not be possible to accurately portray our narrative.

(Please Note – Unfortunately we experienced uploading issues with our video, meaning that some areas of our video are out of sync, whereas the original video on premier pro is in time.)

Changes Made Since Draft is 4:

• We have made sure that we have successfully edited to the beat and correctly timed our lip syncing.
• Some of the clips used have been changed to fit more appropriately with the style of our video.
• To have a more personal effect, we have increased the use of close ups for emotional effect.
• We have adapted the lighting and exposure within some of the clips to improve their quality and effectiveness.

Overall, myself and my partner are extremely happy with the final outcome of our music video. We believe that our video follows the crucial assessment criteria that was placed before us at the beginning of production and that we have done our best to fulfil this. WE believe that there is a clear and concise use of MES as well as a variety of shot distances and angles such as framing shots, close ups, high angles and low angles. All of these elements combined together have helped us in production to produce a music video that follows the typical conventions and the assessment criteria, as well as creating a video that is ‘the same but different’ within our genre.

As we have now produced our fourth draft, it is crucial that my partner and I receive more feedback this time from our peers, this will be the final set of feedback we receive as we go on to our final draft, this will help us to grasp any aspects that work and don’t and on what we could still improve in our video. During this draft, we began to finalise any effect and filters that we want to use, as well as any transitions that we want to make the final cut. Throughout the whole process of creating our video, my partner and I have become a lot more confident with the use of the Premier Pro software which has helped to enjoy creating our music video.

Draft 4 –

There is still some things that could be improved upon such as, the exporting issue that causes our video to go out of sync and some editing to the beat which has continued to be improved in every draft. Hopefully with two fresh sets of eyes viewing our video we will be able to move on to our final draft with a clear and constructive plan.

Peer Feedback –

Below is the feedback that my partner and I have received on our fourth draft of our music video. We have received two sets of feedback from two different people as to help us improve our video further as we near our final draft as well as what we’ve done well. We will take all of this feedback onboard when it comes to finalising our final video.

Peer Feedback 1 – 

Our first set of feedback suggests that we use more close up shots throughout the video to engage more with our audience. They also suggest that we look at some of the lip syncing aspects of our video as some parts seem to be out of time. My partner and I know about this issue and have recently discovered that it is an uploading issue that needs to be fixed. Finally, they have suggested that we use a longer clip of the ‘in loving memory’ card, this could benefit the emotion side of our video and help our audience to connect on a more personal level.

The feedback that we have received from this person is overall very good and that there is not too much that can be improved upon in our video. It shows that our narrative storyline is easy to follow and become engaged with and that there is an effective variety of shots and special effects throughout.

Peer Feedback 2 –

The second set of feedback received gives the same point of improvement as the first on the lip syncing aspect of the video. They have also said that we could improve how we edit to the beat as well as using more money shots (close ups). They have also noticed that some of our clips are over exposed. This is an easy correction to make our video through the use of the effects and editing panels in premier pro.

This feedback has show that we have a good balance between our performance and narrative aspects as well as our mise en scene fitting in well with the story. They have also said that there is a good use of transitions and other special fx that have helped to make a clear cut sequence.

Focusing forward to our final product, my partner and I will take on board all of the feedback that we have received to ensure that we have a high quality final product. This feedback has allowed us to have specific areas that need to be focused on in the time that we have left to edit to ensure that our audience receive the best video possible.

As we now have a third draft of our music video on our blogs, we were able to receive feedback from our teacher on what we need to improve upon in our next draft. This will help us reflect upon what we can continue to improve in our next drafts.

Screencastify – 

Targets for Improvement –

• At the beginning of performance aspect we need to have a close up of our star. This is so that our audience feels involved from the start of the video.
• The dip to white transition that is used when the curtains are opened, needs to be longer.
• We need to create more of a connection to the audience during our performance scenes, we could do this through the use of close ups.
• When uploading our video, there is a recurrent issue which in turn causes our lip syncing aspect to go out of time. We need to correct this issue with the guidance of the creative team from specsavers.
• We need to ensure that we edit to the beat more frequently.
• When the gown is thrown at the camera, the transition needs to be longer than it currently is for better effect.
• During our party scene we need to look at canting some of the images for more excitement.
• More variety is needed during the flashing scenes, to do this we need to alter the colours in the effects panel.
• We need to add a clip of our actor arriving home as well as including a close up of her lighting the candle.
• Slow down the fade out on the ending so it doesn’t feel as rushed.

We have continued to improve and add new elements to our video, meaning we have now produced a third draft. During the editing of this draft, we began to add and experiment with more special effects on certain parts of our narrative and performance. These effects included dissolve transitions, colour filters and distortions effects. By adding these effects to the video, because we are more comfortable with using premier pro, has helped us to produce a much higher quality draft.

Draft 3 –

What we have Changed and Improved –

• We have began to add effects to our party scene, however these effects are not final and we will continue to play around with different effects.
• In some parts we have edited to the beat very well, however in other parts of the video it could be better so we will continue to improve this.
• We have begun to include footage from a shoot that we completed during the summer holidays. This footage has allowed us to have a wider variety of shot angles and distances.
• With many of our shots, we have started to change the framing and positioning for more variety throughout the video.
• We have also begun to create continuity throughout our performance shots as during some she has a microphone and others she does not, this was found to be quite confusing.

Our teacher will now record a screencastify of our third draft and give us feedback which we will need to reflect upon. This feedback will be extremely important at this stage of our post-production as we are nearing our final drafts and would like to produce the best outcome possible.

My partner and I were given the opportunity to meet with a professional from specsavers to discuss what we have produced so far and receive feedback on what could be done to improve our music video. The feedback that we received helped my group to use wide variety of effects and tools within premier pro. We were shown how to use effects such as echo in order to create a Narrative with a prominent meaning. This effect has now been used on our party scene to help create meaning and atmosphere within the scene. We were also shown how to use Key Frames, this will help us to jump or zoom during clips which helps us to use a wider range of shots and angles. Finally we were also shown how to add transitions between clips to help the video keep moving. By allowing specsavers to view our video, we have been able to fix tiny mistakes that we as a group have missed as well as being able to gain an insight into what works and what doesn’t work within our music video. Through having this session with Specsavers, my partner and I have been able to create three targets to focus on.

• The use of Key Framing for movement throughout clips.
• Adding certain effects to create atmosphere during specific narrative scenes.
• Use a variety of transitions between scenes/clips to keep the video engaging and interesting.

The guidance and feedback that we have received has been very helpful and has allowed us to make improvements that have bettered the quality of our video. As we continue into our next drafts, we will consider these targets and keep improving our music video.

Over the summer holidays, we were able to gather all the footage that we needed to be able to complete our music video. In order to complete our five shoots during the summer, our group as a whole had to be organised, knowing when and where we were filming and what was required for them to bring. Due to our prior organisation we were able to have multiple successful shoots.

As we have now gathered all of ur footage, we have split our group into two pairs to ensure that editing is split fairly and that we are all able to contribute our editing skills equally. Embedded below is the second draft of our music video which now includes our narrative aspect as well as our performance aspect. Our second draft is nowhere near completion, however it is important at this stage of editing to grasp an idea of what we need to improve upon to move forward with our video and anything extra that my partner and I want to add, this includes any extra features we want to incorporate such as transitions, colour effects and other filters.

Our Second Draft:

Now that we have created a rough edit of our performance and narrative, we now need to go through the assessment criteria to ensure that we include everything and anything that has not yet been included is thought about later on in our next drafts. In order to keep our audience engaged throughout the video, we need to use a variety of shot distances and angles. Thankfully whilst collecting our footage, we thought to film from a variety of different distances and angles which allows us to have variety throughout our music video helping to make it visually pleasing and exciting to keep our audience engaged.

Self Assessment Sheet:

What Went Well:

• Our narrative and performance footage blends well together, and there is no confusion between the two parts.
• There is a clear, well planned storyline which minimises confusion.
• Most of our performance footage is synced up to the soundtrack.
• The variety of shot distances and angles helps to portray a clear star image and keeps the video exciting.
• Mise en scene helps to portray our storyline and keep it moving whilst not having it being the only feature of the video.

What We Could Improve:

• We need to edit to the beat more as we continue to edit our video.
• Some of our performance aspect is out of sync with the soundtrack, so that will need to be fixed.
• We need to think about adding effects such as filters or colour correction to improve the quality of our video.
• One of our performance shoots is yet to be included in the video. In doing this we will be able to use performance footage that matches the feel of parts of our narrative footage.
• My partner and I need to add a strong beginning and ending to our video to draw in our audience and leave them feeling satisfied.
• We need to consider parts of our party scene and see what works within our video.

Teacher Feedback:

Now that we have submitted our first draft to our subject teacher, we have been given feedback on what could be improved within our video.

• Add some close ups of our performer instead of just midshots.
• We need to not jump between the footage of our performer with a mic and without a mic for consistency.
• When our actor opens the curtains, flash to a white screen to add to this part of the video.
• Consider if some elements of our party scene are completely necessary as some parts seem comical.
• Improve upon some of the lip syncing elements and make sure they’re all in time.

Now that we have been able to reflect on the progress we have made. We are able to begin to focus forward to the improvements that need to be made to fulfill the assessment criteria. Our rough draft above has allowed us to focus on what we need to include and has given my partner and I time to focus on the tiny details that improve our video and help to it work.

When the day of our narrative shoot arrived, we were able to have a day that ran smoothly and quickly. This is down to our prior planning through the use of a narrative photo board and well as a production meeting agenda. During this shoot we were able to gather a wide variety of  shots that were composed using different angles and distances. In doing this we were able to get the ‘money shots’ that we had aimed and planned for on out shot list. During this shoot, we were all able to constructively contribute ideas to the video, and we were all able to have a go at filming and demonstrate our skills using a DSLR camera, apart from Destiny as she was our actor. Included below are some images from our second shoot.

What Went Well:

• We were able to follow our narrative photoboard and shot list which made sure filmed all essential shots.
• Our prior planning allowed us to use our time wisely and collect all footage.
• As a group we all contributed ideas as to how things could be done during the shoot.
• Our model was confident and showed a mature attitude throughout, portraying her character well.
• The workload throughout the shoot was shared effectively allowing for the day to be a smooth process.
• The use of both natural and artificial lighting during our shoot allowed our footage to have a sense of professionalism and fit well with our narrative.

Improvements To Be Made:

• We need to gather a wide variety of shot distances such as extreme close-ups and close-up to help portray the emotion of the narrative more effectively.
• We need to ensure that when filming there is not equipment such as lighting and tripods in the background of our footage to save time on reshooting.
• We would like to gather more movement shots of our model, such as her walking out the door as we were unable to film this at our current location.
•  In our next location shoot, we will need our actor to show a wider range of emotion as to help portray our narrative more effectively.
• To ensure that all shots on our narrative list are filmed, in order to help us during editing with things such as continuity and to help our video flow.

Exactly like our first shoot, we had to create a risk assessment so that we are able to carry out our shoot safely as well as being aware of any possible risks that could occur. It is extremely important to that we created this risk assessment as a production groups so that everyone is aware of all outcomes so that our shoot can run smoothly. We have identified one hazard of wires on the floor which could cause people to trip, so we will make sure to take extra care when filming. Included below is our risk assessment for our narrative shoot, each of us have signed it and our teacher is also aware.

Please click on the image to view the PDF

To have a clear plan and to be organised within our group, we need to create another production meeting agenda but this time for our narrative shoot. By planning through the use of a PMA, we will have a clear idea of what each person will be responsible for, which will allow us to have a productive shoot. Attached below is our groups agenda:

Please click on the image to view the PDF

In this document we have included the props and costumes needed, the dates and times of the shoot, and the location of our shoot. It includes a clear plan of what everyone is responsible for. I am responsible for providing the camera and batteries as well as the tripod.

By giving everyone a specific role within the group, everything is shared equally between us, and it makes sure that the responsibility is not on only one person’s shoulder. Having a production meeting agenda allows us to be thoroughly prepared before our shoot, this means that we are able to have a productive and professional shoot.

In order to create narrative sense and structure throughout our video, it is important as a group that we created a detailed plan to follow during our shoot. Together we created a shot list and photo board that includes every variety of shot we intend on filming, it also includes the locations that we are going to film at as part of our narrative. By creating this, we will be able to focus on the MES and other important aspects of our shoot.

The idea of creating a narrative photo board it to help when it comes to editing. By listing what variety of shot angles and distances we need to film, we will be able to compile our footage together much more easily. A shot list will also help to ensure that we get multiple “money shots” of our actor in all our filming locations.

Our music video will be made up of four different narrative elements: a bedroom scene, a party scene, a car scene and a kitchen scene. When filming in these locations, we will focus on getting the main shots on our list and if we have time get any other shots that may be useful such as reaction shots, high angles, close ups and tracking shots. In doing this we are able to focus on the conventions and elements within pop that need to be portrayed throughout our music video. By having a wide variety of footage we will be able to follow our narrative structure during post production.

Focusing forward, we will be doing the majority of filming during the summer holiday, we will refer to our shot list to ensure that we have all the footage required when we return to school in september which will help to produce us to produce a music video of professional quality.