Evaluation

For my final major project, I wanted to demonstrate all the techniques that I
have learnt throughout the year. I wanted to create a production that showed
improvement and the way I tackled this was by finding out what I had achieved
well throughout the year and where I needed to get better at I did this by
looked at my previous units and found the main things that I had done right as
well as the parts of the process that I didn’t know. I wanted to introduce more
into my production without making it feel forced.

The main production processes that I believed I was strong in were my ability
to my edit and my camera work, so I made sure that when I was thinking about
my production I chose a form of media that would allow me to show my
improved skill with editing and camera work, this lead me to deciding to
choose a music video for my final major project This was mainly because a
music video would let me try camera angles and editing techniques as there is
a track of music that you can interpret as a story and I didn’t have to think
about diegetic audio too much. If I had chosen a short film it would have been
harder as there would be parts that could make the audio feel pressured, this
would cause the short film to have broken speech as well as an uneven balance
between diegetic audio and non-diegetic audio

With a music video I’m able to be a lot more creative, not only can I be more
expressive with unique styles and techniques but I can show the music’s lyrics
in a visual representation. At my time at collage I still hadn’t had a proper go at
a music video and I really wanted to show that I can change the way I work
depending on the style of my medium. I chose rock because it has a strong
beat that lets me cut to the music, as well as this I regularly listen to rock so I
have a strong relationship with rock music videos, and I know a lot of the
conventions going into it. For example, having band members shown playing
the song.

When starting this project, I thought that I would be able to create it with a
couple of people but then I looked at me previous work and found that some
of my best work was achieved by doing it alone. I’m not sure why this is but
because I wanted this to be my best work, I decided it was more of a thought-
out decision to go it alone. This worked out well because I didn’t have to rely
on other people for work. Therefore I had to take on all the roles that are
needed to make a music video. I had to work as the camera man, the lighting
operator and act. This was hard for as I need to think about all things I had to
do and plan it all out very well to make sure I got it all done.
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I feel as though I have met the requirement of the rock genre. I believe this
because I heavily researched it and found a lot of the genre conventions of
rock and found that a lot of them cut to the beat of the song. I found that
there were parts in a lot of music videos that showed the band playing their
instrument, so I did that, and I made those scenes black and white to show
that they were separate from the other story-based scenes. The song I chose
talked about the unknown and this one was one of the main things that I
wanted to convey with this genre so to do this I added black bars over the eyes
of the band members. This was also used to hide their souls. As Thomas Phaer
said, “the eyes are the window to the soul”. I liked this quote and as the song is
about hiding a soul I wanted to block out the eyes to represent the soul not
being able to be seen.

I wanted to make sure that the style of my music was very unique, so I set out
to find what many rock music videos had as parts of their makeup One of the
main things that saw was that they added subliminal messages that normally
were just images of things, for example in one music video that I watched and
liked, the video started with scenes from a tv with subliminal messaging as well
as old videos of products and advertisements
This really inspired me to make a music video with this feel and as you can see
I made sure that my style was loosely based on this music video “mantra-bring
me the horizon”. I found this art form to be very eye catching. For my music
video there was a bunch of stuff that I could do to it to make it feel unique and
special in comparison to other rock music videos.

The narrative was one of the hardest things that I had to do, this was mainly
because I have never been really good at creating stories, or making them
interesting, simple and easy to understand. This definitely comes out as one of
the thing I could have improved in the end product as many people told me
that it was really hard to understand as well as a bit complicated.

In addition to the production having a complicated narrative it was extremely

hard for me to think of a story that would really work well with the music as
well as the lyrics to the song. The song I chose talks about a man’s heavy dirty
soul, so I wanted to make sure that the audience felt as though at the end of
the video they had misjudged him throughout the story. I achieved this by
making the audience think that he was carrying drugs by making him look
suspicious through the shots I used, however in reality the package it was
really a toy for his daughter, who he not able to see any more .
As part of my research I looked into the legal process and what can happen in a
family breakup and found that often one of the repercussions is that normally
a man that doesn’t get custody of the children. To improve on this part of the
story I feel like I could have made it so that at the start of the music video he
was on the phone with the mother talking about the fact that he’s not allowed
to be in the house or see the daughter. This causing him to do the things that
he’s doing. This is one of those things that I feel would have made the
production a lot more understanding and this was supported by my survey

There were three main characters in this music video, the drummers job was
to play the drums in time with the music. The singer had to sing the music in
time and in sync with drummer and the track as well as preform the song in
different places. The main protagonist of the story, was the father and he was
played by Toby Parbery, I felt that the character that was conveying in the
story was really believable. As people doing my survey told me they watched
him carefully

For this music video I made sure that I would add as many techniques as
possible, one of my best decisions was making the band footage black and
white as it cleanly separated the band away from the story.

I think that my production has definitely shown that I have a large amount of
creative quality, for example I could have chosen a topic for the music video
that used a specific technique e.g action with a shaky cam but I chose a track
that I could add in as many techniques associated with rock as possible.
Although I could see all of this was in my mind as I was creating the music
video not everything went to plan and there was a lot that I could have
improved.
 I took a number of shortcuts when it came to the story and this was mainly
because I really wanted it to have a minimal cast but that didn’t work because
it made It feel rushed and it looked like we weren’t able to get another actor
but that wasn’t the case. What I could have done was put a section in the
beginning of the music video with the protagonist talking to the mother of his
daughter over the phone about why he isn’t allowed to be near his child so
making it easier to understand, I think because this bit of the story is missing it
makes the music video look a bit unfinished

The editing I feel was really good and it definitely fitted the same style of
music, the music video turned out well and as I expected it to. By making sure
that I had shot a lot of film while working to my production schedule I gathered
more videos than I needed making it easier to make the final edit as I didn’t
need to reshoot anything.

I gathered feedback through survey monkey and asking specific qualified

people working in media and television as below

One of the main thinks that I got from my feedback is that I used Simon Firths
music video theory and I’m not too sure what that is so I think that next year it
would be good to explore this to get the best results out of my music videos.
I believe I have improved from when I started this coarse, at the start of the
course my productions looked, really bad and had a lot of things wrong with
them, for example with my unit 4 production One of the main problems was
the fact that the lighting was really poor for the advert I made making it feel
rushed.
In my music video the lighting techniques have greatly improved, with my use
of natural lighting and using editing software to make the transition from
inside to outside smooth the result is that the appearance of the filming has
greatly improved from what I had done previously, and it is really easy to see
this.

In this final major project my editing has improved and I have enjoyed
exploring new ways to tackle editing situations, as an example of this a shot at
the start of the music video shows the text disappearing behind the character.
It was suggested that I shouldn’t do this because it would take a long time to
to do. I challenged this idea and produced it in in half the time by finding ways
to edit that don’t follow the norm and by working outside of college time.
While working on this project I found a new love for media as well as a new
respect for music videos and I believe that with a little more practise and
exploration I could one day be filming/editing music videos for actual artist.
With this skill with filming and editing I feel I could definitely be a contender in
this industry. I have the ability to change my creative flow depending on
whether or not the genre demands it and with feedback from peers I feel that
what I have created looks professional with such low budget.