Music Video Evaluation
Pre Production
Our initial brief was to create a music video for a song that did not previously have one and then release it to the world. For our video we chose the song 'She Wants To Be Me' by Busted. The idea of our video was to create a comedic music video based on the lyrics of the song that was in keeping with the style of Busted's previous work. When it came to pre-production work, the biggest thing that I learnt was the importance of developing a contingency plan. Originally we had chosen to work with a new band based at college but we started to have some reliability issues with the band. Fearing the worst, we decided that it would be a good idea to make a back up plan. If we had not decided to do this then I believe that we would not have been able to meet the deadline and we would not have made a video to the same standard of this one. Overall our planning was very good especially considering that our idea required us to film a large number of shots. I think that because we did a very detailed lyric analysis it allowed us to have a clear vision of how we wanted the video to look. This meant that when we came to storyboarding we could plan each shot exactly how we wanted it and it meant that we didn't need to take up a lot of time for filming. One thing that I feel we could have done better with is location recces. We did not spend enough time trying to find interesting locations which meant that a lot of the video was filmed in college. Our feedback from the first showing of the video also suggested that this was an area we needed to improve on.
Health & safety
The safety of the cast and crew was a key priority for us when filming this music video and it was important that we completed risk assessments as we filmed over several locations, some of which were in public areas. One of the biggest hazards was the tungsten lights that we used when filming in college. There are two big risks to using these lights, the first being the heat that they give off and the possibility of someone burning them self. To prevent this we ensured that anyone who operated the lights wore heavy duty gloves. The other hazard is the possibility of someone tripping over the cables from the lights. To get around this we set the lights up in a way that people could not walk over the cables and made people aware of the locations of the cables.
Production
Production went fairly well, like pre production, however there were a few more issues that we encountered. The main issue we had was consistency in terms of lighting and camera positioning. There were a number of shots that were set in the same place however due to scheduling we were forced to film them over a series of days. This meant that the lighting was never the same and there was slight changes to the position of the camera. In order to create as much consistency as we could, we decided to mark the position of the camera and other props with tape on the floor. We also used a mix of tungsten and LED lights to try and recreate the lighting conditions for each shot. Both of these decisions made it easier to match shots when editing and give the video a more seamless look. Another challenge we encountred was with shots that required the actor to lip sync and getting the timing right. This meant that the actor had to know the song and lyrics extremely well as well as remembering positioning and movement. To help the actor get it right we decided that, seeing as we didn't need audio, we should play the song on a speaker so that they could sing along. As it turned out this method meant we had to shoot a reasonable number of takes but it also lead to an effective finished video. I think that in my next project I would like to keep a number of techniques from ths project as well as experiment with some different shot types and angles.
Post Production
I learnt a number of things in the post production side of things tat weren't just technical skills. The biggest aspect of post production I learnt was to edit on the go. I think that when you have a project such as a music video where you already know the song you need to work with then it makes things a lot quicker and easier to edit a series of shots as soon as they have been filmed. This way of working also meant that the video could be finished within a day of filming being wrapped up. In addition to editing on the go, I learnt the importance of editing with a group of people. For this project three of us worked on post production and this allowed us to learn from each other and bring in a mix of styles that have allowed us all to develop. A new skill that we tried was working with a green screen which none of the group had done before. From a production point of view it wasn't too challenging but when it came to post production it was slightly more difficult and took a bit of trial and error but in the end it we figured out how to do it and it added to the overall look of the video. In general I think the quality of our editing was to a fairly high standard and showed a good range of skills. Because of the way the video was edited it created a really good pace which allowed the story to stand out. We also used some fairly advanced skills like that used with the green screen and the luma keying for the scene when both characters are arguing with each other.