Final Production

Feedback

Mr Kerrigan: "I like the idea behind your narrative; there is a clear sense of progression, and it ties-in well with the song. The idea of a literal journey that parallels an emotional journal is a well-established convention of story-telling, and it works well here. I particularly like the night-time shots; they match the tone and mood of the song. There is a nice transition between the day-time and night-time scenes; the use of speeding up the footage in post-production editing works well and is an effective way of time-shifting. I like that there is a sense repeatability in your video; whilst the story makes sense after the first viewing, subsequent viewings allow the viewer to pick up on subtle details, which allow for a more developed understanding."

Phoebe: "I think the girls have made this video look really cool! The corrections which were needed after the first and second drafts have been made, the final product looks really refined the concept is definitely there."

James: "The quality of the final product is understandably a lot higher than the first two drafts. I really like the transitions used and the reversed sequences. I like the fact they've gone off path from their plans in order to avoid continuity issues as I think is shows how versatile they are as a group."

Alex: "This is still completely different to the storyboard but it works. The girls have obviously worked hard and spent time on fixing the issues and I like that they kept putting new ideas in there. I really understand the concept and storyline of the music video and it fits well with the song."

Scarlett: "It was a promising first draft and an even better second draft, this final product is an even better outcome. The audio goes with the visuals and you can see that links are being made. I am really glad the jumpy cuts have been fixed and the music video is more visually enjoyable now."

Ben: "I really love the emotions Phoebe is portraying in the music video and it goes really well with the song. The whole concept works really well and I can easily understand what is going on. I like the use of different shots and angles to portray different messages and meanings and I really like the underlying messages which have connections with the song."

Personal reflection: "I am really proud of our final production. I think that despite the numerous changes we had to make  I think  they were all for the better and the production now looks better than expected. I am also confident that after showing the music video to our focus group that our target audience will understand the story in which we are trying to portray. If there was one thing I would change about the entire process of making our music video, it would be our planning. I think that as a group if we organised ourselves better and had access to all of our planning blogs in physical form I feel like our music video would have been more effective. We might have even been able to film all the footage on one day instead of two."

Second Edit & Feedback

Feedback

Phoebe: "I think the girls have made this video look really cool and it is getting better and better! The corrections which were needed after the first draft have been made, there is some refining to go but the concept is definitely there."

James: "The quality of the second draft is a lot higher than the first. I really like the transitions used and the reversed sequences. I like the fact they've gone off path from their plans in order to avoid continuity issues as I think is shows how versatile they are as a group."

Alex: "This is still completely different to the storyboard but it works. The girls have obviously worked hard and spent time on fixing the issues and I like that they keep putting new ideas in there. I think it is almost at completion but will look even better with refinement."

Scarlett: "It was a promising first draft and an even better second draft. The audio goes with the visuals and you can see that links are being made. I am really glad the jumpy cuts have been fixed and the music video is more visually enjoyable now."

Ben: "I really love the emotions Phoebe is portraying in the music video and it goes really well with the song. The whole concept works really well and I really look forward to seeing how the final product turns out."

First Edit & Feedback

Feedback

Phoebe: "I think the girls have made this video look really cool and as it's a first draft there are obviously corrections which need to be made and the shots are al quite jumpy but you can see the concept is coming together."

James: "You can tell it is still only a draft as there is a lot of refining to be done. None the less I think the sequencing is cool and works. The lighting also works well and I like the fact they've gone off path from their plans."

Alex: "This is completely different to the storyboard but it works. It is obvious the girls ran into a few problems and have solved them well. I like that they have new ideas in there and I think it is coming together nicely and will look even better with refinement."

Scarlett: "It is a promising first draft. The audio goes with the visuals and you can see that links are trying to be made. As the work progresses hopefully you will be able to see them more clearly and hopefully the jump cuts will be fixed."

Ben: "Phoebe looks awesome as the actress in this music video and I think that the instruction from the group during filming has really played off because it has resulted in a strong product. There is more to be done which is quite clear but none the less it looks awesome so far!"

Editing Journal: Part 2

This is when the actual editing process started to take place and the final product was beginning to come together. We mainly worked on placing the footage we had in time with the music, e.g. lip-syncing and linking the direct visuals with the music to show how well thought out our music video is. We started to cut each clip so that any loose ends of the individual clips were erased and that the exact timings could be calculated. This took some time as we had a lot of clips to get through and a lot of clips to watch so that we knew we had chosen the best ones that we had.

Our group faced huge challenges in that fact that we did not like the way the footage was placed and how it flowed. It looked dull and we found it boring to watch and we knew our target audience would as well. We would have also had to cut clips incredibly short in order to link the intended visuals with the audio, meaning we would have to get rid of some great footage we took and also we would have encountered timing issues if we did that. It took us a while (almost two hours) to figure out what we could do to solve this problem. We experimented with a number of different openings from the car scene to trying to make our original idea work by swapping clips around but none of these worked. In the end we managed to use a sequence of footage (the forest scenes) at the beginning of the music video instead of at the end and we all agreed that in fact we preferred this idea to our original storyboard. Therefore, we went completely against our storyboard idea and where the original footage was supposed to be and changed our music video completely.

Lip-syncing process

Once we were comfortable with the changes we had made we went on to trying to match the lip-syncing clip we had taken in the forest up with the audio. As a group we decided it was a good idea to make sure that we include lyrics to visuals so that it conforms with the traditional conventions of music videos. It also proved to be popular with our focus group and target audience, meaning we have followed the brief.

Creating the time lapse

After completing the lip-syncing process of editing our music video we decided it would be a good idea to sort the time lapse out. Fortunately we filmed enough footage (two minutes worth) of Phoebe putting on her make-up in her bedroom and so we managed to create a time lapse of multiple different shots of her applying it. To create a time lapse in Premiere Pro we just sped up the footage to a much faster speed than the rest of the clips so it was obvious what we had done but not so fast that important details were lost. The only difficulty we faced was we needed to make sure that the main part of the song where the beat drops needed to match the fast pace time lapse as this is what we had intended form the outset as the pace of the time lapse would look so effective with the fast pace music.

We then saved our first draft and spoke to one of our media teachers about what she thought and to give us some feedback on how to improve.

Miss Pearce said: "The bench shot cutting straight to the car didn't make sense to her so therefore won't make sense in your music video". She went on to say how this could be improved by including a shot of the bench with Phoebe not within the shot to show how she is leaving that location and going into her car from the bench. This will then look more effective and realistic. Miss Pearce also said "I like the way the music matches each shot and that the lyrics and visuals work well together. I also like the underpass clips because to me it shows as if someone is watching Phoebe throughout the music video and that Phoebe is unaware of this happening." This is exactly what we has intended and so we are happy with the way our music video is coming together.

Editing Journal: Part 1

As a group we discussed the editing process together in our first media lesson back after the filming process had been completed.

We had previously had a tutorial on how to convert footage and how to use Adobe Premiere Pro so we did not have any concerns about timing or deadlines for editing because we knew this process would not take long and in the past we knew the Internet was an excellent resource for instructions as were the IT technicians at school.

Example of editing process

1. Imported footage from SD card onto the iMacs.
2. Dragged footage once it had finished importing onto Premiere Pro and started to place them in the correct order in which we believed they were going to go in - following our storyboard. This was just the generalised version of our music video which had no editing involved. It was to just give us some sort of idea on average length and timings etc.
3. Having placed all the clips onto Premier Pro we cut all of the audio which came with them as we did not need it because this was a music video and downloaded the audio = 'New York City' by The Chainsmokers. We did discuss the idea of including diegetic sound and whether or not this would be effective, particularly for the forest scenes. But we decided for now that it would be best to save this idea for when we have the final draft and see what it looks like then instead of trying to combine hundreds of unplanned ideas into one music video.