A2 Music Video Project

This year we have been given the task of creating a music video for a particular track. I will be working alone this year as i feel it will be a challenge, however it also interests me to see what i can achieve when it's just me working on it. I will be investigating the use of cameras, filters , lenses and various techniques used in other videos of this genre and similar style genres to gain some insiration.

Audience Feedback.

Once we had completed our media product and so had the rest of the class. We spent some time watching each others films to provide feedback, we were told by a few differnet groups that we had some good shots and angles however some of the cuts were too jumpy, with this feedback we were able to correct these editing errors. We obtained feedback from comments on youtube, for example, Mr Kirk provided us with this feedback, "Loved the opening titles and the lighting along with the washed out colours".

Finished product

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? on Prezi

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Due to the historical nature of our film, no  social groups are directly respresented by our film. However, the actions of our main character show how the responsibility for the actions taking place rest on this one man's shoulders. The idea of this main charachter may be relatable to by older audiences, or perhaps if we developed more of the film we could explore the idea of him going though a transitional period of having no responsibilities to a position where lives are at risk. The older end of our target audience, generally those 25+ would be able to relate to our characters struggle.The representation in the film is also primarily male, suggesting a similar pattern in the groups represented.

Finally, the military style of the film may be representative of both present day and retired military personnel, and could help show to the audience the struggles faced by those fighting in current wars, and the decisions they need to make in order to keep themselves and thie team safe from harm.

Although not strictly a social group, we felt this film could act as something to inform people about the events of WWI, especially as it is an important part of the UK's history. This representation could cause the film to have success in other European nations, as it represents groups from bygone days in these countries.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that from the beginning to end I have learnt a lot about how to produce a film effectively and efficiently. Most of what I have learned I feel i have learned from making mistakes, much of the filming process was shot twice because of simple mistakes we made the first time round.

Filming; we made many mistakes whilst filming, many of which just didn’t cross our mind till it came to editing. Examples of our mistakes include, filming many of shots without planning on how they would flow smoothly into the next one, we completely forgot to do this in some cases because we were so caught up in getting our main, vital shots not taking into account the linking shots that actually make the production work. This mistake highlighted other issues, like for example we did not get all the filming done on the same day and because of this we found we could not get the actors again when we needed to film again and nor could we ensure the weather was correct. My final problem with filming was maybe expecting to highly of shots before filming without taking into consideration of the props and equipment that we would need to actually pull these shots off, I think next time I will be thinking a lot more realistically of what’s possible and what is not. So I feel next time I will make sure that I address these problems properly to ensure that my project goes a lot more smoothly.

Editing; in the process from my preliminary task to my film opening I have learnt a lot about how to use the editing software. I learnt a lot through Mr. Wallis and also trial and error.

With editing for our film opening we found that we came faced with lots of continuity problems that we firstly did not notice during filming.  Apart from this editing went fairly well, and I found I learnt many new tricks with premier pro for the opening that I did not pick up from the preliminary task. This was because the editing involved in the opening sequence was slightly more complex and so demanded a more advance knowledge of the editing software. For example color grading and proper sound editing.

To conclude I feel that I have learnt a lot since the original preliminary task, I feel i have learnt a better way to approach my tasks, through more through planning and being realistic I will be able to achieve a better finished product with fewer difficulties along the way.

           

What did we learn about technology from the process of constructing our product?

In the process of using a wide variety of both new and old technologies in our media production, we have learnt a great deal. It has given us insight into how we would do things differently if we were asked to produce a similar product again.
We encountered many peoblems with technology, that we solved in different ways to ensure a good end result.

Use of Macs and PCs
One of our biggest problems was that we started off using both Macs and Pcs. The way different editting programs saved files differed between the two devices, meaning that when we tried to transffer different sections from one to the other, the files would not open. We overcame this problem by transferring different shots and editing from the macs onto the PC. This took a lot of time, but helped, as we finally had all our ost production happening on the same style computers. If asked to do again in the future, i would definitely make sure we only used Pc's as it simplifies post procuction an enourmous amount considering we had three people working on the same thing.

The programs we used for our post production where:

• Adobe Flash - For animation of the title sequences and animation of text withing the title sequence.
• Adobe Photoshop - To produce the logo, and moving images in the title sequences
• Adobe Premier Pro - For our editing
• Final cut express - We tried using this for editing, but stopped due to its incompatability with PC's
• iMovie - To convert files and veiwraw footage

The compatability of Adobe programsd with eachother really helped in our production, as we could transfer  different parts of our production from one platform to another (this may have used the program Adobe Bridge)
How we used new and old internet technologies


Internet resources we used were:

• YouTube - To research music and similar films
• Slideshare - To produce animatimatic and storyboard.
• A Microsoft Silverlight slideshow - Another animatic and storyboard program.

Youtube was such a valuable tool for our proudction, saving an enourmous amount of time in finding music for the film as all the music was readily avaliable and searchable. If asked to proudce4 a media product again, i would definetly use YouTube again, as it's the best resource for internet video research in my opinion.

Filming technlogies
Our choice of camera was essential, as our film involved a wide variety of shots used in different ways. We chose a light, small handicam that shot in reasonably high definition. The camera was especially useful in the tracking shot, resulting in a product that looked authentic. 
 We did have a problem with one of the tripods, resulting in slightly choppy panning shots, but this was replaced for different shots in order to keep them stable. We also used a steady cam to keep our camera steady when we did the over the shoulder shots following the main character.
 steady cam
In conclusion, technology played a massive role in our film opening production, and we learnt a agreat deal about it. There are definitely things we would do differently if asked to produce a similar film, but we are happy with the result achieved.