I had various responsibilities in the project such as in the pre-production I planned the storyboards, wrote the synopsis and treatment, wrote the call sheets and scheduled when shots would happen; I also was the director and the main camera and lighting man. I think my contribution to the project was quite effective but I could have planned out all of the shots more effectively in the Lecture Theatre, as we filmed for an hour and we had a lot of very good shots but I think that would have made me feel better about the project if I’d planned the shots better and quite a few of them were rather shaky. I also could have been a better producer as the Lecture Theatre bits were supposed to feature Ella and Rob; the actual performers, but they didn’t turn up on the day, so I could have phoned ahead earlier and made sure we were more prepared for that eventuality, or at least reschedule it for a different day, but we ran out of shooting time so, I think we did quite a good job. Also when Ella didn’t turn up, we should have reshot the town sequences with Laura and Marc in to improve continuity, as in the finished product you do somewhat wonder who Ella is and why is she there, so in hindsight we should have reshot that.
I’ve learned that stress makes me very productive, and I am quite a good organiser if the things that are out of my control are fine. Throughout the project we had to reschedule some things several times and on our first pitch we were no where near ready and the song wasn’t complete or anything, but in the following week we did everything and on to our finished project. I’ve also learned that I need to be more articulate sometimes as strangely sometimes I have a hard time describing what’s happening in my head and putting that on paper but at least I can work on that one for next time. Also I feel quite proficient on the Apple Mac’s now, and I much prefer them to Microsoft PCs, as they’re so much more useful and straightforward.
I also now understand lighting and the impact that has on what the audience feel and think. These compare to the limited technical skills I had at the start quite majorly as I only had a slight idea of how all the technical things work and have pretty much learned quite a lot now.
I also strangely notice shots and angles and different things in the picture when I watch TV now and I find that rather good.
The technical quality of our finished video is quite high I feel and we recorded the song with an accomplished singer and guitarist so that made our song as good as possible as it always helps to have a good song because otherwise you can’t do much for the video, we also recorded it in a proper recording booth, with the proper technicians that helped us get it to the best quality as possible. The images could be better as I find a HD camera would have worked better and sometimes the images get quite grainy and sloppy, which really brings the feel of the video lower than it should be, it also did some strange 3D thing with Laura in a few shots because of the camera, which wasn’t so bad because it was quite interesting. The editing I feel is quite good, there’s room for improvement however, as some things needed sharpening up and others needed to be reshot but I feel somewhat that I am just nitpicking a bit but I don’t know. Laura did a magnificent job of Lip-Syncing which really helped in the editing stage, and Ella’s voice I feel suits her so you can believe it. Marc also did a good job pretending to play guitar because a lot of people might just have ignored where the strumming was and just strum at random points but because he put that added effort in I think it actually looks like they are performing in a bar or club. I think the lighting was quite good even though it was so simple; just two lights with a blue and red Gel over the top, we also then associated the character with that colour, Laura was always red and Marc was always blue no matter their position on the stage.
I think the effectiveness of the editing was quite good as it was in the same rhythm as the music, and shots of Ella in town interspersed in between, definitely if we had the time I would have reshot the sequences in town with Laura replacing Ella as it just confuses the viewer as they don’t realise why there is a random girl in there. I also would have either made the black and white town bits either more frequent or at least a bit more sequenced as it does seem a bit randomly placed. I think our cinematography was good as there are plenty of different shots and the lighting scheme, I feel suits the song. Our use of Mise-en-scene I feel was quite good, maybe we could have found some more locations to give it a bit more character but I think that if we added any more, it would just seem cramped and crowded.
In the original proposal we had planned much more Narrative to the video and the performance aspect to take a back seat but because our cast didn’t turn up and we ran out of time we had to put that on the back-burner and make the performance side much more prevalent. I also feel that it represents the music quite well as there’s not much to do with such a Open-Mic-Night type of song then have it as a performance; although naturally there is more we could have done.
The ideas for the music video probably took a bit of a back seat in pre-production for too long while we were waiting for the song to be finished, but once we had the demo of the song, we could work on it much better, now to me it seems quite like a different project although it seems to have evolved nicely into the current one and somehow it feels right to have Laura and Marc performing it even though she’s miming along to one of my best friend’s voices, even I think that she suits it. One of the main idea’s we had for it was that the video was about a girl searching for her hand, but very much during shooting and post-production we realised that was just a bit too surreal and also we never did make a false hand and on the day when we were shooting in town, Ella was being quite un-cooperative and I think we were lucky to get quite a lot of that footage as she was complaining and refusing to do a lot of it as it was rather cold and I think she was quite tired.
As I look back on the Synopsis I see that as I have previously said, the narrative side definitely disappeared during the shooting stage but I somehow think that the video is somewhat better for it, and maybe if the bits in town were of Laura it wouldn’t seem so odd that suddenly she was in town. The positioning of the Singer and the Guitarist in the Performance is the same as what I had envisioned apart from we did move them around a bit to make filming easier but clever editing shows that you would never know. The treatment isn’t too much different apart from the narrative has been removed a lot, and yet I find the video almost better of it as I think it would have complicated it a lot to have it with the narrative at the start because then the audience may have thought “If she’s looking for her hand, why is she suddenly singing in a bar?” which is something we’d never thought of in the pre-production stage as we were awfully unorganised. We also used about a third of the planned locations but that was because Ella didn’t much want to do it, which she could have mentioned to me before we had planned it all out so we could have just had Laura from the start. We also decided to make the outside bits black-and-white instead of my previous idea to make it a bit “overexposed and glary”
And in hindsight I find it a good idea we decided not to do that to it.
The target audience I think is probably the same if not a little bit older, maybe now it’s 14 and up instead of 12 and up. So I guess we didn’t much cater for the entire target audience but until we had the finished song I guess we didn’t know, so we made a good guess of it.
The audience responses of the music video, I feel is very interesting as more people like it than I thought they would, unless they were lying as they were saying it in front of the class. The initial impressions of it were that the lip-syncing was fantastic, the lighting was good and that the outside shots were good. Also that it had a “nice feel” and that there was a nice mixture of shots and good performing.
The initial impressions of the weak areas were that the bit at the end looks like a mistake as if we were going more for that sort of “look they aren’t really performing” thing and that if that’s what we were doing we should have but more of those types of shots in. The audience also felt that the Character Narrative bits were overused and unnecessary as the bits of Ella didn’t make sense in continuity and it was quite confusing as to why she was there. The audience felt out use of Cinematography and Mise-en-scene was good as there were lot’s of different shots and good lighting and that it was nice to see the odd bit of equipment as it made it look like they genuinely were performing in a pub or bar, also they felt we could have found more interesting locations for the narrative aspect. They felt that the footage was cut well to the music and went to the pace of the song. They also felt that there were a few issues with sloppiness and the end shot is a big no-no. But overall, the suitability of the visuals and music, the suitability to the Genre and Suitability of representation were all good and worked well. However they felt that it was only somewhat suitable for the target audience.
The things that went wrong in the production were many; Ella was quite unreliable as an actress, I didn’t consult her to make sure that she could meet and attend the necessary things so we had to reschedule a lot. We also started working on out track far too late because we didn’t realise we should have started yet and it was only finished and recorded the day before we started filming and about 20 minutes before the secondary mini-pitch. The organisation was quite an issue as I wrote the call-sheets hoping that the TV studio would be free on the right day and then we found out that it wasn’t free anytime in that week so we had to use the Lecture Theatre instead which actually worked much better as it was a bigger space, we also had to flip the schedules over so we had to film the Tuesday stuff on the Wednesday and the Wednesday stuff on the Tuesday. Apart from a lot of disorganisation during pre-production the rest went alright, the first day of filming was stressful as our actress was unresponsive and we weren’t too sure of what needed to be done. The second day went so much better even though Ella and Rob didn’t turn up, but apart from that it was fine. The post-production was the best, as it was so straightforward; as we’d filmed it so many times all the way through the song from various angles we just had to chop 3 minutes chunks out and lip-sync them and then decide which bits were best, we finished all of the basics in opine day and polished it off in about an hour of another day; so I was very happy with how that went. The Narrative aspect of the video didn’t go quite as well as I had expected because Ella wasn’t available as much as I had thought; and she hadn’t told us that until after she was needed. The Narrative was the only disappointment to me really as the Performance aspect is fantastic and makes me really proud of Laura and Marc, and I think as that’s the main bit, I feel we can forgive the narrative aspects.
I don’t really know how our project compares to other examples of the genre of music video’s as the Genre is a bit iffy, it’s like a big cross between Pop, Country, Pub and Folk music, and I haven’t really seen another song like it, which make me really happy as it’s practically a new genre of music altogether, so maybe people will look to our music video as an example of how to do it, in future. But I feel that if it was a proper genre, they would be a lot like this, just a good fun music video that’s quite basic and plain just like the song.
My overall opinion of the project is positive, although I do feel as if we could have done some pieces a bit better but Laura tells me I am just nitpicking and that I’m fussy so; who knows. If we’d done it again I would have shifted everything we had done, so we had done it a week earlier so we had the song finished before we’d started the storyboards and call sheets so we could have polished that off well before the start of filming, I would also have made sure I was a bit firmer to Ella to make sure she would do it, I feel I could have been a bit more lovingly manipulative, but she brought her girlfriend who I feel distracted her as she felt silly in front of her, however Tasha was quite helpful as she persuaded her somewhat to do what we were saying, but I think Ella just felt a bit embarrassed so maybe I should have told her not to bring Tasha. I can’t quite decide if I would have made it so Ella wasn’t in it at all and Laura had done it all, or if I would have made sure Ella would have turned up and made it her in the performing bit, I just don’t know. If I could, now I would go back and reshoot the narrative with Laura in it just to add to the continuity, but overall I think we did quite a good job, we were just rather unorganised but when we pulled it around and got our heads into what we needed to do, it was fine.
I still feel that it could be a bit better though, but I guess it’s good that I haven’t made the best thing I could just yet because then I wouldn’t have anywhere else to move in the course. And it was a brilliant learning process, I just wish we were more organised and had a HD camera.
Monday, 14 December 2009
Sunday, 13 December 2009
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