Britney Evaluation

•       How faithful to the original were you in your re-creation? Did you make any changes? Why? Did this improve the overall video in your opinion?

We were quite faithful to the original video as we shot it in the setting of a school like Britney, our costumes were quite close and even our actress looked similar to Britney Spears. Some of the changes were to the choreography as we could not dance the same routine as the dancers in the video, but our own version was fun and entertaining. In my opinion I don't think our video was better because the song was an original hit and nothing could compare it.

•       What problems did you encounter while filming and editing your video? Would you change any aspects of your planning or production in light of this?

We found that the locations we picked were random and were'nt planned as well as they could have been, we didn't get to improve this unfortunately but spoke about it in our evaluations.
Another problem we faced was time management the schedules of everyone were very scattered, because we had to film in school people still had lesson to go to. How we overcame this issue is by organisation. We arranged for students to be let out of lessons to film and dos as much as we could with the time that everyone had. It was quite late that we finished our filming so the time management had already been wasted however we did try to fix the issue.

•       Would you change anything about your video?

I would change the dancers in my video to people that were more motivated to learn the dance.
I would organise to book out specific locations in the school so that there will be no background interruptions

Final music video

After completing my Alicia Keys music video i realised that i came across quite a few problems in the process. One of them was having to consider the outfit changes every time i filmed. While filming my music video there are several different outfits, but when having to re film certain scenes we had dress our actress back into the clothes she was wearing before in order for us to have more footage. This didn't become a problem till half way through our editing process when we noticed we needed to go back and get more film.
 Another example of a problem that i faced was trying to edit the video to the beat of the music. I came up with the idea of syncing the clip and the video, but it proved to be very hard. I had to constantly cut and move clips without any sign of improvement for a while and after constant trying i managed to get the result i wanted.

The final music video has been posted to YouTube and here is the link for it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8nj0yGOBBU

First experiences of shooting

My partner and i have thought a lot about our music video and all the planning and organisation, finally started to get put into action as we have started our filming. Before we filmed we organised a schedule for filming times that we planned together. The two comments i have on the beginning of film are www and ebi.

www (what went well) 

• The fact that we had story boarded previously what was meant to be happening helped a lot with the flow of filming, we already knew what needed to be where and what the angles were.
• The song wasn't dance based so i did not have to choreograph any routines 
• My actress fit the artist very well 
• We shot all the footage we needed 

ebi (even better if)

• The camera we used did not have a tripod so trying to get an angle that looked as straight as possible was a struggle.
• Due to the weather being outside was very cold for the actors so maybe next time we could film on a warmer day 
• We could not include random people in our video so waiting for a time when it was empty or very little people took up a lot of the time we were meant to be filming.
• We had a more committed male actor 

Evaluation question 1

Above is a grid that has 9 pictures that represent different aspects such as setting, genre, etc.

Frame 1
In this frame i am supposed to be representing setting and location. I chose this image because their location is a well known supermarket called Sainsbury's. Many criticise us for using such basic locations, however it was deliberate as most music videos show outrageous settings. We wanted to use a familiar setting so that it is more relatable to our target audience. The two main characters are in an aisle shopping, this innocent act is done by many people hourly but we all know of that one time that we saw someone that looked good who's attention we wanted. Girls or women tend to bump into their ideal men in social places all the time so this helps us to make our video realistic. We definitely challenged the stereotype here so that we could please our audience.

Frame 2
This frame was to show costume and props. Marina's costume is not completely visible however its just the right camera angle for this scene. We wanted themes of innocence in this shot as it is a very natural shot, thanks to the flowers. This is a contrast to her other outfits throughout the video, they are all black outfits with the exception of a few to show how upset she is that this guy doesn't know her name. The white in this shot shows that her emotions are pure and that she truly feels for him. The props in this scene were very simple. This again was deliberate because the simplest changes to a shot are always the most effective. This image was used in Digipak and placed very well in the whole layout. We did not challenge the stereotype because it is common for the woman to feel deeply for her crush but we maybe toned down the dramatic props to show how well simple props can be used for bigger meaning.

If you look at this image taken from the official Alicia Keys music video for You Don't Know My Name, her costume is clearly quite natural. Her image is used as inspiration in our video and we wanted to use the artist herself as our example.

Frame 3 and 4
The next two frames are both to show the camera work and editing. In all genres in music it is a convention to have a variety of camera angles. We were not going to go against this stereotype because doing so would mean less success in our production. The two images are two different angles of the same scene. Doing this really allows the audience to see what is going and to feel like it is happening right before their eyes. The two shots are place a nice distance away from the actresses so that we can see their costumes and the setting.

Frame 5
This image was to represent the story. The story is of a girl lusting after a male that doesn't know her name. This story happens to everyone out there, and what better way to represent this than with a  image of just how good they could be. The image is shot at the exact moment she they see each other. This gaze is in many music videos and we have managed to recreate this ourself. there is not love but attraction as the two glimpse one another, the stereotype is usually that they fall in love in the video but in our story they never meet. We challenged the stereotype because it was too common, it is still a good story because it portrays hope however we leave it up to the audience to decide what happens next.

Frame 6
In this frame i was trying to show my genre and how my video suggests it. Our genre was RnB and i chose that image because it represents the stereotype. There's a girl on the front, which is common for female RnB artist, and she's standing in front of many flowers. The prop in the background was to show the feminine feel of RnB, flowers are always a good thing to use because of what they symbolise. When many were young they used flowers to try and figure out if someone liked them or not and while very ancient it is still used. "he loves me, he loves me not." Is what would be repeated and as she does this action in this scene she is wondering the same. The symbol is embedded into our heads and is easy to pick up when looking at it. Her soft facial expression and beautiful hair gives her the goddess like image a RnB artist should have.

Frame 7
In this shot i am representing how my character/ artist is presented. My artist Marina is presented as a normal teenager (maybe older) having a crush. Her costume while very stylish is nothing extravagant like most teenagers around. Our aim was to represent her in a very normal way, while she is the artist we didn't want her to appear as a celebrity. This is because it challenges the story, why wouldn't a male fall in love with this amazing celebrity following him around and dreaming about him. They are both regular people going through a common problem. The stereotype is to have the artist the most attractive woman ever and to dress her up in designer everything, however its not realistic. Its the norm on today's society but it is not the most desirable thing for some people. Our audience was very happy to see how normal our artist was and this was the reaction we expected, sometimes trying to imitate you end up making it a joke rather than serious.

Frame 8 and 9
These two frames are supposed to be representing special effects. The two images are two different kinds of effects, frame 8 is a filter called 'Dream'. I used this filter because at that point she was dreaming about her crush. It seemed appropriate, given her situation. The second frame is a transition called 'Bloom' it simply causes the content on the screen to flash brightly and i used it to show flashbacks that Marina was having. There is huge range of effects used in the music industry so i wouldn't say that there is a specific stereotype for special effects however i followed the correct convention which is to use special effects to help tell a story. Before adding these effects the feedback i received was that the story wasn't clear, after making some adjustments it helped massively.

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 3

After showing my video to some people some of the feedback i received was:
www

"Good editing at the start" 

A few people said the same comment and i was pleased to here this because during post production i struggled with the beginning of my music video. Whilst editing i would often ask for feedback on the changes i made, and although the feedback was never negative i wasn't satisfied with the mediocre reactions. My aim was to surprise the audience with my ability to be different with the tools i was given.

"The fast motion was very effective"

In editing the fast motion was a skill i learnt away from class and i remembered it when trying to figure out how i could start from the beginning but show the end. The fats motion was purely experimental but turned out to be very effective.

"The ending was nice"

The video started with the ending clip, so throughout my editing process i had to constantly remember i had to edit the video to lead up to the mysterious ending. Putting the ending first takes away the expectation of a bad ending and focuses more on how Marina (Alicia) has that outcome. The surprise was then the main video and how well i created a story.

"There is a clear story"

Some feedback i received very early in post production was that my story wasn't coming together. The lack of specific scenes made it hard to show a story that never existed  the concept of the story was that she imagined most of it and whilst proving difficult to show that the story wasn't all true, i had to also think about the audience and how they would see it. Overall i managed to use tools to show the difference between real life and her imagination.

"Nice rewind effect"

In my own research of the artist Alicia Keys i noticed that this was common behaviour of her own, so to show how true we were to our artist i replicated her work. Again this was a skill i learnt out of class so it took me a few tries before actually getting to use it well. What proved difficult was reversing different clips and speeding them up because i then had to pt them in order backwards. There were a few times i changed the order of the scenes so i had to constantly go back and re order the clips that were meant to go backwards.

"Slow motion was effective"

The clip that i put a slow motion effect on was considered 'extra footage'. This is when we had a few extra scenes that could be used anywhere in the video to fill any gaps. This scene was synced with the words "he doesn't know what he's doing to me". This was deliberate to show he affects her so much her mind is spinning out of control. 

"Camera angles were good"

Using good camera angles was apart of the criteria for our music video, it was always considered when shooting a scene. We often had once scene shot in different angles so that we had a variety. For example in Sainsbury's we shot the same thing more than once from different angles so that it we could show a variety of shots in one scene. 

"Lip-syncing was edited good to the song"

Lip-syncing was practised when we did our earlier task for Britney Spears' music video  so it was familiar ground in post production. However there were times she said background comments that we had to tell Marina to mime also. Marina did a good job in mouthing very clear words so it made it easier to edit to the song.

"Its different to what is expected"

Our genre has a specific way to show their music videos, you would get the odd video that was outside of the stereotype and i wanted to be one of those odd videos. This is because its easier to be remembered when you create something different. Also we wanted a realistic video. We obviously did not have as many recourses as a professional would so we had to work with what we had; this is what inspired me to want a different video as trying to imitate something so good can only result in comparison. Sometimes comparing is good but more times it isn't. Having something different means the judgment is on what they can see rather than using outside examples.

"The dream was very clear because of the edit used"

Whilst pitching the idea of a dream i was faced with the question how could you make that clear, i didn't have the answer at the time but later i stumbled upon the a area in Final Cut called 'Video Effects'. In this area there was various effects  that could be placed on top of clips to make them appear different. I looked through and found a few but the best fit was the effect called Dream. Like the name suggests it made the  scene appear as a dream. 

"Special effects were well used"

There was quite a few options and i wanted to show my use of the tools on Final Cut. I wasn't happy with the cuts between the video, i felt like it was such a jump between each one and this was especially bad as the song flowed smoothly. The special effects helped me to transition between each scene as smoothly as the song was.

EBI

"Change font for ‘a few days ago’"

This comment is very much appreciated but the simplicity of the font helps not make the video seem more than it is. I have to think about everyone in my audience and a simple text is easy for everyone to both understand and appreciate.

"The sound at the start was lower"

The sound at the beginning did not seem as loud when editing my video, i thought that increased volume was a result of the headphone volume so i left it as it was. Of all the feedback i was given during editing, this was not one of them so i was not aware of the problem.

"Unsteady at times"

At the beginning of our filming we did not use a tripod, we weren't concentrating on all of the criteria for our video but as soon as we were aware that it was a problem we re filmed a majority. However, due to problems with one of our main characters we were not able to re film some scenes. 

This information was very effective for my evaluation because it was a range of views that are from our target audience. Due to the fact that there was more positive comments than negative ones, this showed that i was successful in trying to please my audience.