Evaluation

At the start of this project, I thought back to what I've done previously throughout the course, and what things I wanted to achieve throughout. For the first project this year I made a 30 second perfume advert along with 3 print adverts. For the second project I made a documentary on mental health, a radio drama about a kidnapping and a website advertising machines that my dad makes. Whilst I enjoyed most of these projects and the challenges they presented me with, I always felt like I stayed in my comfort zone too much and played it too safe. I knew that for my final major project needed to do something I've never done before, and something that would push me to do something that I'd find challenging. This is when I came to the conclusion to make a music video; it's something completely different to what I've done before and would allow me to try something I've never even attempted before. 

To begin with, I wanted to make a music video to a song from the musical "21 Chump Street" by Lin-Manual Miranda. The song I chose was called "What the heck I gotta do" and would've included 6 cast members; 1 female student/undercover cop, 1 male presenter/interrogation officer, 1 male lead/student and 3 male students/backing dancers and singers. I had thought a lot about the video and how I was going to make it, but in the end decided against the idea as I couldn't find enough people that were willing to participate. After this, I went away and thought about a few possible songs I could potentially use and thought about using the song "One foot" by the band Fun. Once I started to plan this video, I was struggling a lot to form an actual idea for it; I knew a few things I wanted to include, such as certain scenes and shot types but as hard as I tried I couldn't think if an overall idea for my piece so decided to change my idea once more. This time, I chose the song "A sadness runs through him" by The Hoosiers, and this is the song I chose to do for the project. 

Unfortunately, I lost quite a bit of time during this project due to me changing my idea so many times. This caused me to have less time than anticipated so I needed to be a lot smarter about managing my time to make sure I was on target and was at the stage I needed to be at in order to get all my work completed on time and to a good standard. I'm glad I changed my idea to The Hoosiers music video as I was happy with the way it turned out and preferred it to the other ideas I had, but I wish I would've done it a bit sooner on in the project so that I'd have a bit more time to complete everything, such as having more time to do research etc.  I now know that in the future, I need to spend more time thinking of an idea and planning it out so that I have a solid, working idea from the start so I can just get on with it and not have to worry about time so much as it did hold me back a lot, preventing me from maybe presenting my best work. 

A problem that did occur was the fact that I wasn't regularly updating my target sheet and reflecting on it; this meant that most days I wasn't 100% sure what I should've been doing which meant that I went off task a lot and wasn't producing work at a good enough rate. If i had made regular targets i would've stayed on task as well as

To begin my new idea, I listened to the song I chose as well as looked up what the lyrics meant to people to help give me some idea of what I could potentially use in my video. The more I listened to it and read up the lyrics, I decided to make a music video about someone’s friend committing suicide and the affect that it has on them as they think about all the memories they shared together. They blamed them self for what happened and you see them getting gradually more distressed as the piece goes on. In the end, the video stops with him passing out on the couch; the audience is left to wonder whether or not he's alive or not, leaving a lasting impact on the audience and making them wonder what happens to him. I think this worked well and I was happy with the way it turned out; the video has a clear narrative, thus making it an interesting and effective piece that people will remember because of how different it is to other videos.

When I was planning this video, I originally wanted to use two male characters as the song is about a male, but due to having a lack of interest from people I had to use one male and one female for my piece. This didn't really change anything about the video, as it was clear they were friends, and that the male missed his friend and was having continuous flashbacks. If I did have the chance to do this again, I would promote my video idea better so that people would fully understand what I want them to do and allow more time for test shoots, as I feel as though I didn't have enough time to fully prepare for my final video and it would allow me to see what I needed to change to improve my overall piece.

During the actual filming for my piece, we closely followed my storyboard which meant that I was able to easily direct my actors and tell them exactly what I needed them to do for me. They also gave me some of their own input and gave me some ideas that made it into the final copy; they recommended things that I hadn't even considered which made my piece better than intended. I also changed my ideas a bit due to some of the locations as I thought that something better would work for that setting, such as the scene where the two are arguing. The male actor walks into the light whilst the female, who commits suicide, walks into the dark, representing that she's not in a good place mentally and is in a literal and mental dark place and needs help. 

I was really happy with the way this scene cut turned out; before the cut, he looks worried and scared, and after he is clearly upset and distressed. His face is in pretty much the same place swell and the continuity in the shots shows a lot of different emotion, just by looking at the setting and his facial expressions. 

This scene at the end shows the friend on the couch drinking alcohol; the camera is fading in and out of focus to show that he is drinking and losing consciousness. I like the way this turned out, although does look a bit dark due to the time of day I filmed it so it is a little hard to see properly what's going on, but I still like the idea and wish that it would've been brighter to see clearer.

This clip shows the clear difference between the lighting and colours used to convey different emotions; the scenes with the friend alone are blue and dark, whereas the scenes with them both are yellow, well lit and just overall a lot happier

The weather on the days I filmed wasn't that good, it was raining and it was very cloudy which meant a lot of shots looked dark and dull, so I had to fix a lot of them in post-production by fixing the light balance and colours. I was also using a camera I was unfamiliar with which meant I didn't know how to fix the white balance etc.; for future project I know that I need to use a camera I understand or get a better understanding with the one I was using to ensure that all my shots look okay whilst filming. 

Another problem I faced during filming was the fact that I had to film on 2 separate days which meant one of my actors wasn't wearing the same thing as the previous day; this caused the beginning to have some inconsistencies as he was wearing a different shirt and had 2 different hairstyles. I didn't check my previous footage before filming again or else I would've spotted it, so unfortunately the scene has been ruined due to this. I now know to check back on what people are wearing etc. to make sure that my piece is consistent throughout. The rest of the piece didn't matter as much as it shows different days and different memories, so for that fact it worked quite well, but it definitely affected the way the audience views the start of the piece. I definitely need to be more mindful in future projects to prevent this from happening again.

Whilst I'm aware there are a few things I could've changed about the piece, I'm happy with the overall video. It has a clear narrative and portrays a story of a grieving friend and his guilt for his friend who committed suicide. The shots mostly line up to the beat of the song and I'm happy with the length of the shots, they're long enough to get a clear idea of the narrative but not so long that it's boring or too much. In post-production, I played with the colours a bit and made the flashbacks a bit brighter with a slightly yellow tinge over the top as yellow represents happiness, showing that this was a happier and more joyful time. The scenes with the man by himself thinking about his friend have a blue tint over the top to represent sadness and grief as he is blaming himself for the death of his friend. My research into colour theory helped a lot with this as it showed me how to use colour to set certain moods in a piece like this. I already had some idea anyway from watching films and seeing how they use colour to convey different emotions and feelings, but this research gave me some better ideas and understanding of it. 

My research proved to be mostly helpful throughout my project; I was able to think back to the videos I had looked at and think about what they used and what I could take from that to use in my own. I also took on board a lot of my primary research and thought about what would make my target audience more likely to watch it. I think that for future projects I should probably do more research into the band's style as I don't feel as though my video fits in with the normal style that they use for theirs; by following their style it would feel like video made by them which is what I wanted it to look/feel like, but I unfortunately don't think I achieved that all too well. 

At the start of the project, I was worried about not having enough time to complete everything that needed to be done, such as filming, editing, research and planning but I'm glad that I managed to produce a video as well as having research and planning to back it all up. As I previously said, I know that in the future I need to give myself more time to complete everything as I was cutting it quite close to the deadline but overall, I'm happy with what I have achieved in this project and I would like to recreate this one day to make it even better than it is. There are things I would definitely change about all aspects of the project; post and pre-production, planning, idea making etc. but I feel as though I have done what I set out to achieve and I'm happy with my overall result.