Music Video - Evaluation

Evaluation

Here is the final cut of our music video finished by Myself and Leah, we are both extremely happy with how it turned out and proud that we managed to complete a full music video after working round a few unplanned obstacles. I shall note here that a key member of our group decided to not finish what we had started and therefore work alone for the final part of the project, for that reason I shall be evaluating the choices that only myself and Leah made and the steps we took to produce this narrative piece of work.

At the beginning of the process one thing that quickly needed to be established was the genre of music video we wanted to work within. I was particularly keen on choosing the narrative genre because it is the genre that I enjoy watching the most and personally feel is the most fun to explore. My argument was that by choosing to produce a music video that had a plot, we could create characters and a really solid beginning and end that all together told a story and connected with an audience. Although I was routing strongly for the narrative genre Leah was leaning more towards an experimental/abstract piece. Leah, as a former photography student, completely resinates with a strong aesthetic and has a keen eye for visuals. Because of this she felt that she would be more passionate about an abstract film that focused on stunning locations, colours and movements. After many discussions regarding the genre, we decided that creating mind maps for each idea we had which was a great way of getting everything that was in our heads down on paper. This really helped us visualise each idea and therefore come to a unanimous decision for what genre we would pick. 

The decision was set on narrative and from there we chose an idea based around the life of a miserable monster who struggles to find inner happiness. The story was hugely inspired by the lyrics in the song that we chose; 'I only wear black' by The Wombats. The lyrics are massively pessimistic which is what we wanted our protagonist to embody. From here we then went on to draw out a storyboard so that visualising our ideas would be easier. I began to create a storyboard by listening to the song bit by bit and imagining how the narrative would play out, at the start I found it quite easy to picture how our story would flow but towards the end it became more apparent that deciding on a climatic ending was challenging. The way we worked around this was by getting inspired by a focus group. The focus group was made up by members of our HNC class which was great because it meant that we were comfortable and confident when sharing ideas. Leah and I presented the plan we had for our music video by playing the song to the class followed by a brief treatment of the plot, overall our focus group was enthusiastic and positive about our ideas but agreed that it would benefit from a stronger ending, something that triggers the sad monster to becoming happy. The concepts that they came up with were; the monster finding a colourful item of clothing that motivates him to move away from his inner darkness, the monster finding a note that cheers him up and allows him to be happy again, and the monster finding love which changes his pessimistic attitude. We took all of these proposals into considerate and landed on the idea of having the monster find some kind of note that encourages change in his life. 

The research that took place before we even picked up a camera was extremely helpful and necessary. By analysing existing music videos of all genres we were able to get inspired which also motivated decision making as we learnt more and more about the different types of music videos and how they are executed. Every aspect of this process was researched to a good extent before practical skills were applied, for example moodboards were created to help visualise the aesthetic we wanted our monster to adopt and shot lists and storyboards aided us in piecing together the music video mentally before doing it physically. A weakness that I found within the research towards our music video was in regards to the making of the mask and the editing. If I had personally spent more time researching mask construction and how to make a mask that can be used practically for long periods of time then the mask would have ben safer and therefore easier to use. Because of the lack of holes in the mask it was quite constricting and claustrophobic, this could have been avoided had I watched more tutorials on creating breathable masks. The research surrounding editing could also have been improved, this is because before going into the editing process I took the approach of 'learn as you go'. Although this approach did work I feel that it was a more difficult and time consuming route to take. I found that if I ran into an issue on Premier Pro then I has to stop editing and research how to fix it, this became quite frustrating prevented the process from going smoothly. I could have avoided this by watching tutorials on common problems related to Premier Pro and how to overcome them before starting to edit. I could have also practiced using the software more to familiarise myself with it. I feel like this would have helped massively in building my confidence towards editing and therefore made it easier. 

In regards to location scouting for the video we had brief discussions as a group about where would be best suited as a shoot location but it was Leah who elaborated on these ideas and gathered the information needed to make an informed and confident decision. She decided that the areas in Nuneaton would fit nicely with the narrative because of the mundane, dull and tiresome life that the monster lives. Nuneaton is not a particularly special or exciting town which circumstantially worked in our favour. The town reflects the monotonous life being lived out by our trite protagonist. Another benefit of using Nuneaton town as our location is that it is easy to get to, our college is in Nuneaton and so is my house meaning that neither myself or Leah ever had directional issues or a lack of ideas regarding places in the town that would be suitable to film in. We decided to use my house as the monster's house as it is a 15 minute walk away from our college and a 5 minute walk from Riversley park, the local park which we also used as an area to film. Neither the park or my house ever presented us with any setbacks and we were able to used them responsibly and positively.

Researching so heavily into location worked in our favour to a great extent, we knew exactly what areas were suitable to film in and were confident and comfortable that we knew how to get there. This is shown in the outcome of our finished product, no issues were risen in regards to the location meaning that continuity stayed intact and we avoided and hindrances. This was all due to the amount of thorough research done towards location, Leah did an excellent at finding places that were available, not too busy and fit in with the aesthetic we wanted. She did this by googling images of parks in the Nuneaton/ Athestone area, checking their accessibility and already having a mediocre knowledge of the  environment. An aspect of our research that was not executed as well as the location scouting was in regards to the weather. We had to postpone filming a few times due to the weather, this could have been avoided with regular forecast checks which should have been carried out before scheduling in filming days. If this had been done, the filming process would have been completed a lot sooner. 

The next step was actually making the monster costume, we wanted this to be handmade and have that kind of unrefined look to it because one of our inspirations in regards to aesthetic and the monster himself was 80s horror. The premature special effects used to create werewolves, gore and other props used in horror films around the 80s were defiantly something that I gravitated towards when designing the costume. Films such as Fright Night (1985), Gremlins (1984) and An American Werewolf in London (1981) all have the 'handmade horror' visuals that I wanted to adopt in our own work. Leah and I visited a few of the charity shops that Nuneaton has to offer in search of materials or other inspirations for the construction of our monster's outfit. We found an array of scarves, hats and jumpers all varying in texture and shades of brown, we then took pictures of everything we found that we thought could be useful and kept them as a mental log in preparation for when it came to actually buying material. I then sketched out what I wanted the mask, arms and feet to look like before purchasing selected item from the pictures taken and starting to create. By scouting out materials before making a costume plan I was able to get a good idea of what materials were available to me and how this would effect the pre existing ideas I had for the costume. 

The actual making of the mask proved to be very time consuming and slightly more tedious than predicted however I did still enjoy creating and the time I got to spend with a bit more artistic freedom. While I proud of the visual aspect of the mask, there are many things I would have done differently had there been more time and a higher budget to work with; I would focus more on the back of the mask and making it more structured so that it sat on our actor's face a bit more realistically. I would have also used gloves as the hands instead of making them from scratch and having to paint the fingers just to save time while filming. If we had a larger budget to spend on materials and more time dedicated to the construction of this costume  I would have made/bought a stronger foundation to build the mask on top on, the brown face mask that was used was flimsy and only has a thin, weak elastic strap to hold it to a face. I would have liked it if this mask was stronger (or given extra time I would have reinforced the strap this something thicker). I would have also put more thought into placement of eyes/nose/mouth and make breathing/seeing holes. Because the mask does not have holes, it is very difficult for our monster to navigate around spaces and being under the mask for too long made her short of breath. I defiantly would have changed this and given the mask better wearability as this would have aided us in the time consuming filming process and made acting easier as well as ensuring health and safety was maintained to a high standard. With the shoes I would have liked to have more time to secure the fabric on better or even make toes to fit on the end to make them more gruesome looking. We ran into issues with the fabric falling off the shoes the more our monster walked in them. This was only a minor problem, however, as the shoes underneath were also brown and fury and the difference is not massively visible from the film. I liked how the arms/ hands came out as they are practical and tie in with the whole 'homemade/quirky' aesthetic we want to achieve even with the acrylic paint scratching off and needing retouching every hour. 

Another issue that came up in regards to the costume also involved the weather. Of course the weather is out of our control and so whatever it decides to do, we found we had to just work around it. On the 19th of April the sun came out and gave us highs of 21degrees, while this was brilliantly exciting for most of Britain, it was just a regular filming day for us. The reason why this beautiful weather presented an problem was because we had already filmed the first minute of the song with our monster wearing a black jumper; but with outside being so hot and our actor already finding the mask constricting we decided to allow them to wear a t-shirt instead. Admittedly this does bother me as it defies the rules of continuity and just looks a little odd on screen. However, my feelings aside, I am glad that we did not force our actor to wear a jumper that potentially could have caused overheating or any form of uncomfortableness and instead we put health and safety first. 

In relation to the weather I feel as though we may have slightly shot ourselves in the foot by taking the opportunity to film on a very sunny day. This is because once we had started filming on a sunny day we then had to wait for the sun to come out again before getting anymore outdoor shots, in order to keep continuity to a good standard. It just so happens that the chances to film outside on another sunny day came few and far between meaning that we spent a lot of time waiting instead of filming which  became frustrating. Aside from these frustrations, we did manage to work around the weather by getting the scenes shot inside out of the way and catching up on blog work, making sure that the entire process was being well documented via blogger. 

For the most part the filming process went well with the main hindrance being finding spare time in three individuals schedules. We all work park time jobs and have other commitments outside f college that sometimes got in the way or cut filming short. Regardless of this we were given plenty of time to get the film finished and always kept each other up to date with work rotas and availability to ensure we were kept on the same page. One thing that may not have worked so well in the filming process was overestimating how long the song was and the time frame we had to work in. We had so many ideas and wanted to cram everything in but the reality was that quite a lot of footage collected had to be scrapped because of the length of the song. We had got a few shots and scenes that I personally thought were brilliant, funny and completely relevant to our narrative but unfortunately just did not make the cut. This was more of a shame than a hindrance as the finial edit does not reflect a busy overly complicated piece of work and this was due to us being harsh and cutting things out that perhaps were not as great as other shots. 

While on the topic of editing; I found that this was the most rewarding task of the whole process because it allowed me to gradually see our vision come to time. I thoroughly enjoyed editing because it is challenging for me, I am not the most confident with Premier Pro but I like getting stuck and having to work out solutions for myself.  YouTube tutorials and articles on common Premier Pro issues were my holy grail! I had to do a lot of research in order to overcome technical problems such as relocating lost media, scaling the frame size to fit and learning keyboard shortcuts to make editing quicker. Although I did have to scrap a fair amount of filming to keep the piece in the constrains of a strict time limit, I did find that altering the speed duration of clips to 125% or 150% instead of 100% did make the clips shorter meaning that more could be put in. Because of the song only lasting 3 minutes and us collecting hours worth of footage, I found labelling bins to be a great way of knowing a clips content without having to watch it. Overall I enjoyed editing and seeing and idea come to life! There was not any overly complicated techniques used to create this film, simply editing to the beat of the song and changing the duration of a few clips. Other than this my job was pretty straight forward and all I really had to do was cut clios then place them in chronological order. I was also able to keep my team members up to date with each stage I was on via our group chat. Every time a new sequence was added to the final piece I would video it and send it to my group to keep everyone on the same page and focused on the consensus of producing a solid piece of work that we were all proud of. 

After the final edit was complete, exported and uploaded to YouTube, Leah and I could sit back and enjoy what we had created. I feel that we both found this process to be challenging at times but, for the most part, very rewarding. I am over the moon with our finished music video and although I would have done things differently during the process, given this opportunity again, I really am extremely proud of the outcome.