Evaluation

 

 

Responding to the brief

 When being told about the music video unit in the brief, I was excited and nervous at the same time because it would be something I had never done before. I really looked forward to researching music videos that have had a huge impact on today’s music videos and finding out about their impacts, budgets and ideas. I was quite concerned about making my own video in regards to the filming and editing as I am a bit of a perfectionist and I want all my work to be of high standard. At first, I was hoping for the hip-hop/grime genre as I personally knew I could work with that theme better than any other, so my ideas involved filming my friends raping to the music. However, when I picked the genre out of the bag I ended up with dance. At first me and my group struggled to even pick a song as none of us really listen to dance as a genre, I then suggested “you want me” by Tom Zanetti as I have heard this song being played at parties before so therefore it would help me with ideas. We then watched the video and decided to follow the same party theme, however when we analysed the lyrics we noticed that there was a bit of a love story going on so we wanted to make that more noticeable in our video.

 

We decided that our video would be about a bunch of college kids breaking into college to have a party but there should also be a love element to the narrative. We decided that this would be our final idea when we started to plan for our pitch as we kept on going back and forward with what we wanted to do as our main struggle and set back was that we needed a lot of people to be in our video and we wasn’t sure where they were going to come from. Our idea was inspired by the original video in regards to the party element however we did want to change it a bit as in the comments on Youtube it was clear that the audience did not really like that. When doing our pitch the class seemed to like our idea and they asked us a few questions about the video such as “what is your budget?” all the questions was something we could easily answer. The only changes we made was taking out a lot of the dialogue as not everyone would want to hear that and it would make the video long and boring.

We hoped to achieve a great video that could be filmed in 2-3 days that could be edited in 1-2 days.

 

Research

The research I did was huge I was constantly watching dance music videos to understand the codes and conventions of them and reading Youtube comments to see if audience responded well or not as I knew this would help me with my video.

I also made a survey which I posted on Facebook, whatsapp and snapchat asking people if they often watch music videos and if so how often. Through doing this research I had learnt a lot and not just about the dance genre but about other genres and what people mainly prefer. I would say that the most significant and effective research that I undertook was my primary research as it taught me that not many people watch music videos anymore and if they do it is usually only because there is a specific music video that is being talked about by everyone. I would say that the least effective research method was the secondary research as I didn’t really learn much from it. I would say that my research portfolio could be

improved if I had had more responses to my survey as even though I did learn a lot from it I would have had more to write about if I had been given more responses.

 

 

 

Pre-production, production and post-production

In pre-production I learnt that there was so much more to a music video then I had ever realised such as paperwork that has to be done with so much detail such as storyboards, talent release forms and location reeces. In production which was definitely the most busy week by far. Especially as in my group we were a member down which meant that there was so much to do. Nico and I had to go round the college asking people to be in our video as we needed people to make the video look like it was a massive party. Post-production was the most stressful for me personally as I am not the most confident when it comes to editing, we were also given a checklist to make sure that everything was on our websites and there was a few things that I wanted to improve on such as my bibliography and I had a few production meetings missing. In each stage I learnt that I do need to be more organised and that in a future project when I know that there is going to be some editing involved I should have a practise run so that my work can be of higher standard.

 

I found the editing the most challenging however it was also the thing I enjoyed the most as I was learning as I was doing it and all my peers were helping me though the process. I was not sure how to cut to the beat even though I had watched some tutorials I still struggled with it. I managed to overcome this by watching how my peers were doing it and trying it for myself.

My time management I would say was better than it has been in the past however I did still struggle with getting everything done on time I manged to hit the deadline but literally by the skin of my teeth.  I tried to set myself time limits for example I wanted to have my video on my website by 10:30 then start on sorting out the missing documents on my website.

 

 

Product  

The video does meet my initial intentions as I was the Producer the ideas that I had in my head had were portrayed in the video which I am very happy with. However the only issue is that my editing is not looking how I wanted it to.

Our target audience is 18-24 mainstreamers as theses would be the types of people that enjoy this genre of music and would also be able to relate to going to parties with friends. I believe that the needs of our target audience have been met in the music video as we included a love interest, and a party scene these are normally the codes and conventions you see in a dance music video. I would say that the strengths of the video would be that everyone was really helpful and listened to what we were telling them to do and this made production run really smoothly. I would say that the areas of improvement would be if the characters in the video weren’t so awkward and didn’t look at the camera as some shots do look quite forced. I have learnt how to organise people in different circumstances and how to ask people to do something for me instead of just telling them. I wouldn’t say that my video is as good as industry standards however I am still very proud of what I have managed to achieve in such short time. I believe that sometimes I am my worst critic and that I tell myself that I am doing worse than I actually am, therefore I do believe that sometimes I do set the bar way too high for myself. I do think I achieved what I set out to do which was make a music video and that was what I did it may not be as good as others but for me it is an achievement and I am very proud of myself. I have noticed that I do need to spend some more time practising how to edit and how to cut to the beat so that my next project is of higher standard. Over the half term I am going to try and practise some of these skills that I have noticed I am missing. I have really enjoyed this project and I cant wait to find out wat the next project is going to be like.