Draft 2 reflection
Here is the second draft of our music video. As we are ploughing forward getting more stuck in to editing and finalising both the performance and narrative footage, we gathered together a draft 2 containing some fx, filling half of the song’s four minute run time. (ignore after the 2:11 mark).
I completed a self assessment to evaluate both my progress and my feelings towards the music video as of yet. Comparing my work so far to the assessment criteria acted like a checklist and all areas that aren’t proficient or excellent need retouching and looking at.
Self assessment
What went well
- The quick paced editing at the beginning I feel really helps to convey that our star has entered fame and is getting used to it. The quick flashes and cuts act like a kind of montage. The microphone is there to make it appear as if our star performer is being interviewed on the red carpet whilst being bombarded with paparazzi and I feel this was very successful and fulfilled our aim.
- I like how the narrative is introduced, tying in perfectly with the lyrics in the song
“Coming up behind youAlways coming and you’d never have a clueI never look behind all the timeI will wait foreverAlways looking straightThinking, counting all the hours you wait”. Because although she doesn’t know it yet, the girl on the bench is waiting for a partner.
- like the effect we used where the performance clip fades out to become completely opaque and the bright contrasting narrative clip fades in over it nicely to create a smooth blending transition between our two different shoots performance to narrative.
- The mise en scene in the both shoots worked great to communicate the genre of indie grunge. Our star represents the genre through her dark tone of clothing, the use of layering in her outfits and dark makeup and jewellery.
What needs work, targets on feedback
- When editing we need to be cautious on how long each clip plays for without being cut. As one of the Specsavers creative professionals so rightly said to us, “A shot goes without a cut in a movie or tv show for a reason, most commonly to create tension and suspense”. We realised that some shots didn’t need to play for as long as they were, that what we were trying to communicate could be communicated in far less time. We came to the understanding that we had some serious rethinking to do in terms of pacing and transitions to build energy behind the music video utilising clips from both the narrative and performance shoots.
- I have some feelings that the setting appears too basic. Wether this needs to be addressed in the edit or a reshoot it will definitely be considered that the setting could use uplifting. Maybe by adding more sfx, or maybe more props.
- I’m worried that we didn’t get enough close ups of the pair in the narrative shoot. The close up is a very intimate shot and the intimacy between the two during the narrative may not be conveyed because of this.
- Another problem is that we aren’t using the beat to our best ability. I feel we should be using as many beats as possible to cut on. Although this will take time, I feel as if it will be worth it for the final result.
Teacher feedback
- Remove weird head bopping.
- Narrative drags on too much
- Use the close up shots more to have a range of angles and shot sizes.
Focusing forward
I see a good future for our music video. Our progress, although we haven’t made it as far by this point as I anticipated is strong. The music video has a definite story. It now is just required that we use our feedback to improve the weak areas whilst retaining our other goals of tying our music video in with genre accurately as well as also creating an entertaining piece of media for an audience to watch.