Category: Music Video

 

This is Draft four of our music video.

What has changed since Draft 3?

• One new thing to draft 4 is a brand new scene of another couple including a band member handing his girlfriend some flowers and Jess rolling her eyes to demonstrate that she is jealous and wishes she was given flowers by her crush. The next shot is Josh picking a flower for her. We added this for more context and also for more interaction with other characters including Jess.
• We have also added new footage of the locker scene as the original footage was not working at all it now flows smoother and it is clear what is happening. We felt this was important as a lot of our feedback was based on reworking this part of the video.
• Another new attribute is the gif graphic hearts at the beginning surrounding the notebook. We added these as we felt those shots were static and boring. These hearts add a pop to our shots and are more interactive and ensure the audience's attention.
• We have also spent a lot of our editing time colour-correcting almost every clip so that they match not only our genre but each other. One of the places that needed the most colour correction was our lighthouse sequence as the shots were very underexposed and connoted a stormy setting when we wanted the scene to connote love.
• We also repositioned the lighthouse clips as our horizon was wonky.
• The final clip has also been adjusted so that it jump cuts to add effect as it is one of the longer clips, we also did this so that the skip is in line with the "hey" at the end.
• We also changed the way that the message shots looked as we felt that it was not working as well as it could have worked.

 

What is left to change?

• We are going to make any additional colour corrections that we would like to be made as we have not done as much as we would have liked to have done. This includes changing the saturation and exposure of some clips.
• I feel as though we should also add some extra transitions to our video particularly at the end as it gets a little difficult to watch as not a whole lot is happening.
• Another thing we are going to change is the locker scene we want to possibly speed it up or change how the opening of the locker looks.
• Draft 4 still has some clips that may be too long so we are going to see to this and either add effects or shorten them.

Reflection

Overall, this draft is the one that we are the most happy with and the video has made a vast improvement since Draft three. Our video definitely shows this improvement and also has a few things left to configure but in conclusion we are very happy with our draft four. The amount of feedback that we were given on our draft three has really helped our video take shape and has given it a push in the right direction.

 

This is the final draft of our music video that has been uploaded to youtube.

Reflection-

If we were to start again and make a completely new music video, there are a couple of things that I would change or that I wish I knew before starting this particular project. One particular thing I would change about the narrative in our music video is the relationship between the other band member and one of the popular girls friends. Emphasising this relationship I feel would have left more Barthes enigma codes and maintain the audience's interest as they will be engaged and want to know whether our main characters end up together. I think that utilising this method would have improved our video.

One thing that I wish I had known before starting this project was how much dedication it takes to construct a large project like this to the best of our ability. Organisation was a key concept for the video being successful as well as communication. Having a group chat to remind our actors as well as our team members regarding the pieces of mise en scene they needed on the day, without a doubt ensured our shoots and ultimately our video was successful.

The last piece of feedback we have been given is from a fellow media student in a different class.  This was in feedback given on our draft 3.

This is what they said;

Good Points

• the zooms in to the different members of the band are brilliant and match the beat
• the tracking shot is good
• When the band appears on the beat
• good pans
• slow-mo is effective

Points to improve

• Improve the bit where she is receiving the text
• The shot of the main singer needs to be shorter
• The lighthouse shot needs to be straightened
• Maybe add some more narrative in the middle as it kind of gets lost

Reflection

The feedback we have been given throughout have all had similar points. One of our biggest next steps is to get the last little section of our footage into our video as we have now got a rather big gap due to some shots beng to long. Having a fellow media student that has not seen our music video has helped us get a few valid points of feedback.

Here is a screencastify of feedback we have been given by our teacher.

Feedback

• Our main piece of feedback from our teacher was similar to that of specsavers and we have been told that two shots in particular are too long and put the interest of the audience in jeopardy.
• We also now working on colour correcting our video as some shots do not have correct exposure and brightness that will allow the video to sync up better
• Adjusting some of our shots is another piece of feedback we were given. All of our lighthouse shots were filmed on a slight angle that is noticeable in the video. We are going to re position these.
• Our last key point of feedback is to rearrange and have a think about the order of some of our clips to make more sense and to also help the audience understand the narrative a little better.

Focus Forward

Our next steps are to make the improvements above or atleast experiment with them to improve our video further. Feedback from all three sources have been incredibly helpful as in my opinion when you have been editing for so long it is useful to have somebody who is experienced bit new to our video in particular.

 

Fortunately, we were given feedback on our third draft by professionals in this field of work.  During the 30 minutes we had with Elliot from Specsavers, we showed him our most recent draft and explained the rest of the video and the changes we have yet to make.

Feedback

One of the most important things Elliot fed back to us was that some of our clips lasted too long and either needed to be cut down or have a camera movement to maintain interest. He did however compliment us on our ability to cut on the beat and was impressed by the use of some of our effects. Another takeaway from our feedback was that our footage from the lighthouse was under-exposed and didn't match the aesthetics of our romance narrative. Therefore, Elliot helped us change this so it was clearer and less stormy looking. He did this by using colour correct which we have used before but he showed us how to make the correct colour more effective and a quicker way of doing it by adding adjustment layers which can be applied to multiple clips at once.

Focus Forward

The next steps for our video are to experiment with colour correct in particular and to make more improvements and act upon our feedback. We found this feedback very useful as Elliot and Lennie are both experienced and therefore have a good understanding of what a good music video looks like. This has aided us to now know what we need to do to make our music video better.

This is Draft 3 of our music video.

What has changed:

• We have made our transitions and cuts more smooth.
• We have added some extra camera movements to make shots seem less static and more interactive
• We have also colour corrected a few of our shots as they were a little to dark and seemed out of place in our video
• Another thing that has changed was our sunglasses sequence of shots, in our previous draft the sequence seems jumpy and not well blended but in our third draft we have smoothed this.

What's Next?

• Next we need to cut some clips as a few of them are too long.
• We also need to re order some of our narrative clips at the beginning as they are not working as well as they could.
• Lastly we are going to readjust and colour correct our lighthouse shots to be less wonky and to fit the genre.

 

Four things that went well:

• We were able to sufficiently shoot all our footage in focus and with good framing using the rule of thirds.
• We also filmed to edit successfully keeping in mind the 180 degree rule and our ideas to therefore make the editing process an increasing amount easier.
• Our mise-en-scene clearly reflects the narrative of our video this communicates to the audience our genre and helps them understand the narrative of our video.
• Another thing that went well is the way that our video flows, despite the odd jumpy part our video does cut on beat and cuts between performance to narrative well.

Four things to improve

• As previously stated the next step for our music video is to smooth the flow of our video and find a way to transition between shots smoother.
• We also are going to heighten the saturation and colour correct a few of our shots as they are a little to dark and seem out of place in our video
• Our lighthouse shots also need improving as the tripod was at an angle due to the uneven cobbles therefore, some shots seem wonky.
• Our last improvement to be made is our locker section in which our main character is faced with the locker as his crush opens it, at the moment the shot we took is to low and does not have the correct height to be a realistic POV shot.

Focus Forward

Our next steps for our music video is to add more effects to allow it to flow smoother. We are going to do this by using transitions in premier pro. Another next step for us is to edit some of our longer shots by breaking up the frame of group shots to focus in on different band members. This will impact our video as it will be more visually engaging due to one shot not lasting a long time. This also gives us a further variety of shot types and teaches us how to “push into” different characters whilst remaining out points of interest in frame.

 

Reflection:

During the summer holidays we also had a chance to shoot our lighthouse footage for the end of our video. This was initially our chosen location and we had a very successful shoot. One challenge of this shoot was once again the weather. Due to the time of day we wanted to shoot. It is not clear from the photos above but whilst we were filming the wind picked up. This resulted in us having to pack away one of our cameras as keeping watch of both at the same time was proving difficult. Another challenge was ensuring we were organised and had everything that we needed. More so, we wanted high tide therefore we could only shoot on a few days where the water was the height we wanted it to be. We also had trouble getting the tripod to be steady and level as the cobblestones were not a stable surface. We were able to stabilize this by extending the legs of the tripod.

 

Reflection:

Unfortunately due to the weather during our first performance shoot our shots were not to the standard we wanted them to be therefore we decided to reshoot during the summer holidays. In my opinion our first performance shoot helped us gain experience and aided us to have some practice shots and to practice using both of our DSLR cameras simultaneously. In the time period between our first performance shoot and our reshoot we decided to change multiple things such as;

• we added bright red braces to our lead singers costume to ensure  the audience know that he is a geek.
• One of the biggest changes we made was our location of the performance shoot. We changed this as we thought that our new location, sumerez park, had more shot opportunities and was a better fit for our music video.
• Another big change was our band changing, we replaced one of our band members who was also a team member so that we had more hands behind the camera and also to communicate to the audience that the band is made of his friends. As a group we decided that this was the best decision to make for our video and to ensure we had a variety of shot types.

Focus forward:

For future shoots we are going to be more prepared by making sure that our camera equipment is set up at the correct angle with everything in the frame and in focus. This may have prevented us from having to reshoot however, our second shoot did lead to decisions that we would not have made otherwise.

Behind the scenes 

This is a small collage of some behind the scene photos that were taken during our narrative shoot.

Reflection

I think that our narrative shoot went well. We had all of our props that we needed and we were able to take all the shots we wanted to on our shot list. We specifically found our cake in the face shot the hardest as we are unable to do this more than once so the pressure was on for this shot. Overall I think our narrative shoot went extremely well.

Focus forward

Once we have a chance to look back at our footage we will be able to determine whether we are required to do an additional shoot but if we are going to reshoot I would ensure that we communicated more as a group as I think this will make the shoot run a little smoother.