Below is our 4th draft of our music video

In this draft we were making small refinements and correcting earlier mistakes we made in our video. We also leaned more into a stylised, slightly more abstract look to our video by utilising overlays.

Feedback on our second draft from specsavers

• Adjust colours and contrast with lumetri colour
• Utilise warp stabilising on narrative shots to eliminate shaky footage
• Use key framing to break up boring long shots
• Multi layered shots using opacity

Draft 3 

What went well

• We incorporated warp stabilising to utilise some narrative shots
• We included more visually interesting shots using key framing
• Added colour correction to some shots
• Added some shots using letter beads

What we need to improve:

• Lacking a number of narrative shots
• Fix the ending
• Add special effects

Teachers Feedback

• Don’t cut straight to Fran singing
• Break the longer shots up
• Add in more visual metaphors
• Add in more shots that connect the audience to Fran
• Less midshots
• Use more outdoor shots
• Remove swearwords
• More closer shots
• Slowly pan into pool shot of them holding hands
• More letter effects sooner in the video
• ‘I still wanna be your favourite boy’ change that shot because he looks away/add something to it
•  On the overlay near the end make sure he isn’t singing
• Make ther holding hands at the end slo-mo
• Move the running shot to the end of the video

What went well:

• All shots are visually effective and convey our genre
• Shots were easy to edit as we stuck to the 180 degree rule
• The narrative is clear and works well with the song chosen
• We included a variety of shot angles

What we can improve:

• We need slightly more narrative, this will require another shoot
• The lipsyncing at parts is slightly off, we will need to fix this for our 3rd draft
• Limited use of transitions and effects
• Some shots are quite long and need to broken up with slightly more narrative

Upon reflection our draft 2 is a vast improvement over our rough cut however there are clear flaws in the video that we need to fix in our upcoming drafts before we produce our final video, in particular, our narrative is quite brief at the moment and another shoot will be required within the next week.

Teacher feedback

Focusing forward, our next step is to film more narrative and come up with more ways to represent our storyline. We will use the white studio in order to film some shots needed to fill in the gaps. We need to add more narrative into the start and end of the video. We also need to work on the transitions in our video along with effects and mise-en-scene.

For our narrative shoot we found a great location with Izzy’s Nans garden. The location had lots of interesting places that we used to create the backbone of our narrative, these included a pool, a greenhouse  and a stack of firewood.  These locations were well lit and had features like flowers and trees to match the soft and pleasant feel of our song and video. We were well organised with the planning of this shoot, bringing all the eqipment and props neccessary, and our actor and actress were well informed of what they had to do to make our video look conventional and authentic.

What went well:

• Izzy and i contributed equally to the filming of the shots, this allowed to us to explore different ideas that we wouldnt visualise on our own
• We used a broad variety of locations to keep the narrative interesting
• The actors were well informed of what they had to do
• The light was perfect
• We mangaged our time well, allowing us to film more perfomance as some of our previous close ups werent the best
• The location in general allowed us to be creative with the shots we produced

What we could improve:

• We could have chosen some more diverse angles
• We could have had more shots in the pool
• We could have produced a physical shot list
• We could have experimented with more off-the-tripod shots.

Although our first shoot was succesful, we believe that this narrative shoot was much more effective as we had taken the things we had learned from the first shoot and implemented them into this one creating a much more conventional look rather than the last one.

A risk assesment is neccessary when going on location for a shoot. With me and Izzy wanting to incorporate shots of one of our actress Cerys on the water in an inflatable rubber ring, we must have the presence of a trained lifeguard which we had to source ourselves. Once all the potential risks were identified and evaluated, we got our teacher to sign our risk assesment to make sure she understands what we will be up to when filming.

Me and Izzy created a Production Meeting Agenda to help plan and visualise what we want to happen during our afternoon of shooting. It is important for us to bring the correct props and outfits to make sure our video is conventional to our genre and to illustrate our storyline perfectly.

We created this narrative storyboard to consolidate our ideas on the direction we are heading with our narrative, we managed to bullet point ideas giving us a clear list of goals needing to be achieved in preparation and during our shoot. Our shot list will act as a tick sheet during our shoot and we will not leave the shooting site until all of our shots are completed.

Looking forward, the meticulous planning we have put into our narrative shoot will pay dividends in when we come to editing our video as we will already have a clear structure we will be looking to achieve.

What went well

• Incorporated the tape recorder effect for more authenticism
• We incorporated all the shots with the different coloured lighting when editing
• The mise-en-scene was effetive
• We portrayed the indie genre well

What to improve

• No long shots used
• Some shots using the couloured lamp did not work well on camera
• Variety of locations
• Need a larger variety of close-ups

Upon reflection our rough cut went well but is obviously lacking in some areas, we hope that when we record and implement our narrative the video will improve and seem more coherent

For mine and Izzy’s performance we used her garden shed and decorated it with tapestries and abstract lighting, The shoot went smoothly as we had prepared well in advance however, we did have to correct the lighting by blocking out the sun using fabric as we did not anticipate it to come through the window.  Fran knew the lyrics to the song, therefore the lip syncing was at the right pace and due to his experience being a singer looked natural and real.

What went well:

• All of our equipment was available and working
• Fran performed well and knew the song
• The lighting matched the genre of our video
• The location chosen was conventional for the genre
• All filming was completed to a good standard within a reasonable timeframe
• A variety of shots are available to use in our video

What we could improve::

• The set up was difficult as we had unanticipated obstacles
• Some shots were not as effective of portraying the artist in the way we desire as others
• The close up shots were not perfectly focused
• Low and high angle shots were not used
• Some colours from the lighting did not show up well on camera
• There are occasional errors in the filming