Evaluation

For our Music Video Assignment we had to create our own song using Garage-Band and then design and film a pop promo for our song.

My responsibilities during the project were to draw the storyboard for our final group idea, prepare a call sheet, and write out a risk assessment for one of the locations which we filmed at, to get permission from the church which we filmed at to make sure they would let us film inside. I was also camera woman for the whole of the project which meant that I had to shoot a variety of shots form different heights and angles under the direction of Mark who was directing and being filmed in our promo.

Overall I think I did my jobs well and was organised and punctual to both days of our shoot. I also think that the shots I filmed on camera were of a good quality and contain a good amount of varied shots. If we were to do this project again I would like to keep the same high level of effort and organisation because this combined with teamwork was what made our pop promo successful.

From this project I have learnt how to set up lights and use a camera effectively. I am pleased about this as at the start of the assignment I wasn’t very confident about using a camera but as we progressed through the shoot I became more confident and started varying the shots I filmed a lot more. I also learnt how to do a proper risk assessment and call sheet which I wasn’t sure about at the start of the project. I also learnt how to use final cut properly and was able to edit our work well which I wouldn’t of been able to do before the project as my video editing skills weren’t very strong at the start of the project. On the whole, I think that my editing and camera skills have improved dramatically since the start of the project as I have been more hands on with the production work and got to grips more with the equipment and technology.

The final edit of our video is of a good quality as the images are very clear and the audio can be heard clearly. However, when we compressed our video to upload it to YouTube several frames of our video were skipped due to frames being dropped on Final Cut. This meant that some shots in our video were cut out making the narrative seen inconsistent. If we were to do the project again we would make sure that we batch captured our work properly so that frames didn’t drop on final cut so that our video would be uploaded to YouTube in full.

Our use of editing was very effective as we used a variety of jump cuts during the fight scene to make the fight seem realistic. Also, our editing was very quick throughout the whole promo as we had to keep the pace of the video at the same speed as the music. We used a wide variety of camera shots including close ups, extreme close ups, establishing shots, long shots, mid shots, POV shots and tracking shots which made our promo successful as were able to capture the audience’s attention by doing this. We used five locations during the filming of our promo which were; St Mary At Stoke Church, The Abandoned Railway near Cineworld, Chantry Park, Alexandra Park and Ipswich Docks. These all fitted in with the genre of our promo as we wanted our video to look gothic so used places where there would be a lot of shadows and dark areas. These locations looked quite effective in our final edit as we desaturated our video so that the picture wasn’t fully black and white but so it wasn’t in colour either. Our soundtrack was techno/rock and worked quite effectively with our video as we kept our editing fast paced so that people wouldn’t lose interest. However, because none of us in our group were musical, our vocals weren’t of a very good quality which meant that the lyrics seems inconsistent in some places. After reviewing our promo we discovered that the narrative of our video wasn’t very clear as there didn’t seem to be a reason for the guy in our video to be chased although it seemed clear that he was mourning the loss of someone when he laid the picture down at the grave.

I think that my ideas came across well in the finished piece as I wanted to have close up of the church tower and church which would be cut to the beat of the church bells at the start, which we used in our promo and it was very effective. During our brainstorm for our individual ideas for the pop promo we all designed storyboards which contained a church and a chase scene which was used in the final project. The only difference between my original indivual idea and the final group idea was that i had initially put zombies into my synopsis but when we discussed this as a group we realized that we would need to get some extras and buy costumes etc which would have been more complicated and expensive than the simple chase we decided to do.
If we were to do this assignment again we would make sure that the narrative is clearer so that people would understand what is going on in the video.

During the editing week, we shew the rest fo our class our final edit in order to get their responses to our work as our intended target audience was media student and teenagers.
Overall they liked the video and were impressed with the variety of camera shots and fast editing techniques we had used. However, some members of our class were a bit unsure about the narrative of our promo and didnt why our character was being chased. This wasnt helped by the fact that some shots had been skipped due to Final Cut and compressor because of dropped frames during the editing process. However they did think that the music and the visulas related to each other and that the lyrics were relevant although sometimes they were a bit unclear on the track. I think that we intended our video to be compressed and shown on youtube as this means that a larger audience would be able to view our work so we could get a wider variety of feedback.

Overall, i think the pop promo went very well as we got a large amount of footage and were able to edit it the way we wanted to. However, I am slightly disappointed that the narrative of our promo wasnt as clear as we wanted it to be however i think this was due to errors in the editing process.

When comparing our promo to professional music video's, i think that we did quite well considering we had no budget and only one camera to film with. I also think we kept in with the techno/rock style as most video's of that style are very random and abstract.

Finally, i think our pop promo was a success and that my group worked well as a team, however, if we were to do it agian i would make sure that our narrative was clearer and that our video was able to be compressed without dropping frames.