Music Video Evaluation

This task was one of the ones that I wasn't looking forward to due to being fairly new to camera work. I knew that I could never make a beautiful looking music video that features great locations and expensive props due to my lack of budget and camera crew. I decided rather than try to produce one of these beautiful looking videos and be upset with its inability to reach the standard of a professional one that I would embrace the skills and location I did have. I had considered doing found footage that related to my songs message of love and positivity however I didn't know how to fill the entire video with just this idea. I then thought of the idea of basing the theme of love around family and how they play together. I decided to use my little brother as he was the only young boy I knew well enough and had time with to film. I asked his dad before I asked him and they both said yes. I was originally going to just have my brother in the video playing his fake guitar and trying to be Ed Sheeran as well as having a couple of shots of him playing with his sister in the garden. However I then came up with the idea of using my sister as well and showing the idea of sibling conflict and then resolve the conflict just as the songs message is "Love can change the world in a moment."

My original idea was to film Saturday afternoon and get all of my filming done on that day, however unknown family plans happened which meant that I had to delay the filming to Saturday evening. This meant that when I started filming outside I had to adjust the aperture and ISO on my camera past the ideal settings that I would have had if it was earlier in the day. I had to set my ISO to auto after trying for a while to get the ISO to stay at the right one as every time I moved the camera the exposure kept changing so by putting it on auto I resolved that issue. This meant that some of my footage was grainy, I could have re done my grainy footage but the main idea of my music video was that it was a child filming himself trying to become the image of a pop star however he can't live up to that quality.

I had to continue filming on the Sunday due to the lack of time on Saturday. The biggest difference that is visible in the video is the lighting difference inside the house from the Saturday evening with the artificial light on to Sunday afternoon without the artificial light on. This means that some of my footage is more yellow looking, from the artificial light. I couldn't have fixed this by filming in the evening due to my actors having to go back to their mum's house. I could have filmed it on another date but it would have been too close to the deadline and more awkward to ask them both to wear the exact same clothing as they were before. I managed to fix the issue with the ISO that I was experiencing the night before and managed to get my ISO down to 100 when I was filming inside the house and the outside. Whilst filming inside my aperture was 4 and was perfectly exposed. Due to filming earlier in the day on the second filming session it was a lot brighter than before this meant that I had to put my aperture on the maximum it could go on my lens ,18, to ensure that my exposure was correct.

Another issue I have noticed while I have been editing is that there are some continuity errors. The main error is that the female actor changed how she had her hair. In the start of the video her hair is in a ponytail and it changes halfway through to a bun. At some points of the video it could be argued that she changed while her character was off screen however towards the end of the video it changes between shots. This happened due to me filming some of my exterior shots on the Saturday and the rest on the Sunday. If I had been aware of this issue during the filming I would have asked her to change her hair back to a ponytail and filmed again but I only noticed this error during editing. In my personal opinion the hair change is only noticeable to me because I knew we filmed on separate days. most of the exterior footage is made up of long shots, and due to this I don't think people who watch the video will notice this.

One problem that I was concerned with about doing my original idea was that I wouldn't get the consent to include my little brother in the video or that he wouldn't want to do it at all. However I got parental consent from his dad and my brother was really excited to do the video. This enabled me to film everything as soon as possible without having to delay and come up with new ideas. Due to this I was able to stay on schedule and complete the filming and editing of the video within a couple of days. This resulted in the task being a lot less stressful.

Editing Log

                                                    Editing Session One
After my first filming session I wasn't confident that I could save my footage because of the lighting problems I had suffered and everything being so overexposed. However I experimented with a colour corrector and it worked which meant that I didn't have to scrap everything I had filmed so far. This meant that I could continue editing and piecing together the interiors of the cars and some of the exterior shots, because of this I managed to get through two minutes of my promotional video.

I continued trying to make my two minutes of footage even more professional looking so I added a stabiliser to my footage so that it was less jumpy and looked smoother.

Evaluation

Overall this unit has gone well for me and any problems I had was rectified quickly. The final video was finished to a standard that my client said was 'brilliant', the video was successful in promoting all of the cars Grooms On Time have on offer to hire. The feedback I received was mainly positive with the one criticism being that we could have filmed at a nicer location, which I would do if I redid the video.  I completed everything the client asked for during our original meeting: the voiceover, the branding on the Jaguars, the subtitles showing the cars names and the use of customer testimonials.

If I was to do the video again I would try and film in a nicer location, perhaps at one of the buildings that their customers regularly use. I would also go back and get more of the detail from inside a few of the Jaguars as I struggled with these whilst originally filming due to the exposure. However I think my video was a good quality promotional video considering it was the first one I have done, there were a couple of parts that I am not happy with, however there are a couple of parts that I think are really nice, the pull focus onto the bottle of champagne as well as the go pro footage I used. During this unit I applied a lot of techniques that I had learnt this year: pull focus, voiceovers and the use of the slider.

I chose to use the camera slider to get a professional finish on the virtual tour of the cars interior. The slider enabled me to slide the camera into the car, on a tripod, smoothly. I also used the slider to glide the camera along the back seats, for when I was going to describe the leather seats; this meant that this piece of footage wasn’t shaky or jumpy.  However there were points where I wanted to use the slider but couldn’t due to the slider being unable to reach where I wanted it to. My original plan was to have the camera slide from the back seat to the front of the car and to then focus on the details in the front of the car. I managed to do my idea once however it looked messy so I came up with the idea of not using the slider but of taking the risk and doing it handheld. The result of this was that my footage was a little shaky but this was easily fixed during editing when I put a stabilizer on the footage.

I chose to include some of my favourite camera techniques in my promotional video that I had learnt and developed over this year. I played around with using the dolly and tripod; I ended up using these to show the cars driving onto the locations drive.  I also experimented with the camera’s focus because I like how the pull focus draws attention to the subject of the camera. I used the pull focus a couple of times in my video to pull the attention onto the most important things that I wanted to promote, these were the Jaguar hubcap and the bottle of champagne. I wanted to focus on the Jaguar brand itself as this was the biggest selling point of the business as people want to buy into a well-known and classic brand.

The first problem I encountered was having to reschedule my first filming session due to the weather. The rain meant that I was unable to film the cars because the owner didn't want to uncover them all and get them wet, this also would have affected my exterior car shots as the rain drops would have made the shots look messy. I quickly resolved this issue by rescheduling to another date. This second date was where I encountered my second problem. The second problem I faced was also due to the weather, however this time it was due to the sun. I still went ahead with the filming despite the sun meaning that no matter how many times I changed the ISO and the aperture of the camera it was still ridiculously overexposed however I focused on the interiors of the cars instead. I still got a few bits of exterior footage and fixed them in editing with a colour corrector.

One issue I thought I was going to face was getting the permission or having to pay to film outside of Coombe Abbey. However because I am not a professional and it was my clients Go Pro I avoided having to do either of these which meant I didn't have to spend any money or waste time waiting for permission. At the start and end of my promotional video I used an image of all of the cars owned by the 'Grooms on Time' company in front of one of the locations that is regularly used as a wedding venue, I didn't need to get permission from the owners of the building themselves because they had already given permission for the image to be on my clients website and whatever the clients wanted to use the photos for.

Promotional Video

Editing to audio- 4 hour challenge

Four hour film challenge- The Door

New Wave film evaluation

For my new wave film I decided to experiment with my editing to reflect the New Wave techniques such as colour overlays and jump cuts. I have focused on the French New Wave for my work. I edited my footage on Premiere Pro as this enabled me to be able to edit quicker and it helped me edit my jump cuts in more detail. Using Premiere enabled me to experiment with different techniques. I decided to add a golden toned overlay to some of my footage. I filmed on location in Birmingham as filming on location is another convention of the New Wave. In Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows' they filmed on location around Paris. I only used natural lighting to maintain the sense of verisimilitude of the film as the French New Wave was about documentary style films that were personal to the director. I kept the ISO at 100 or as close to 100 as possible to ensure that my footage was not grainy or overexposed.

Editing Techniques

New Wave design brief

I have studied a range of New Wave movements and I have decided to focus on the French New Wave because of its influence on cinema. I am researching and analysing three French New Wave texts. I have decided to apply some of the characteristics from the New Wave and these texts to my own New Wave film. Some of the techniques I will be using in my film are: Jump cuts, lack of narrative, colour overlays and a handheld camera. These techniques were used in the French New Wave in order to break the rules of film. Jump cuts were introduced as a way to save time watching characters doing things that were unimportant to the overall narrative.

New Wave draft

Editing

The cut/cutting technique was used to splice the film together into scenes and sequences. The actual cutting of the film meant that any remaining film would have to be thrown away and none of the lost footage can be stored or seen again.
The Moviola was the first machine to edit motion pictures. Iwan Serrurier's  original concept, in 1917, for his machine was to sell home movie projectors. However this project failed due to the cost of the machine being too expensive for the public to buy, the machine was priced at $600, which is the equivalent of over $20,000 in today's money. This led to very few sales of the machine and ultimately its failure. However an editor from Douglas Fairbanks Studios advised Iwan Serrurier to develop his original idea and adapt the machine for film editors to use to help them edit films easier. Iwan Serrurier invented the Moviola in 1924. The Moviola enables the editors to be able to view the film as they edit it which makes the editing process a lot easier for the editors as they can view individual shots and therefore could be a lot more precise with the editing. Some of the most well known film studios then started using the Moviola to edit their films including: Universal Studios, Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Moviola was the standard way to edit films up until the 70's when Flatbed editing became available. However some films are still edited using the Moviola, In 2005 Steven Spielberg's  'Munich'  was nominated for the 'Best Film Editing' Academy Award after the editor Micheal Kahn's use of the Moviola to edit the film.

 The Flatbed editor is a machine used to edit film. The machine loads picture and sound on separate plates which move forward and backwards. The picture is reflected onto a viewing screen through a prism and at the same time a magnetic playback head reads the audio track. The image is shot on film and the sound is recorded separately and then loaded onto a magnetic track.The editor then has to synchronise the sound and picture by loading one picture roll onto a plate and a corresponding magnetic roll onto a sound plate. The editor then finds the frame where the clapperboard come together and repeats this with the magnetic roll. the editor then marks the frame on both rolls and that is the synchronisation point. Interlock mode then ensures that the picture and sound maintain synchronisation. To actually edit the film the editor has to mark it on both the picture and sound rolls and cuts the film and then splice in the next shot. The flatbed became popular in the 1970's due to its high speed which the Moviola lacked. However flatbed editors were increasingly being replaced by non-linear editing software. One of the most famous brands of flatbed editors is the Steenbeck.

Contextual Studies

The scene begins with a wide shot of two men and women sat around smoking and drinking. One of the men is wearing brown suede trousers with a matching jacket. The mise en scene of his clothing is important because it looks like the clothing the native Americans used to wear. This is important because Wyatt and Billy, the two protagonists, are seeking peace but are rejected by bigoted small town Americans which is also what happened to the native Americans. The native Americans were hunted down and driven away from their homes because of their different culture and beliefs. The mise en scene of the girl dressed in a black veil could represent the death of American society. Black veils are commonly worn by widows or women in mourning so the fact that she is wearing the black veil shows she is has lost something or someone. The mise en scene of the graveyard that the protagonists are sat in The iconography of alcohol and cigarettes are commonly used as a symbol of escapism from the everyday world and society itself. These characters have no sense of belonging in the world they live in. Through the mise en scene of the protagonists taking drugs it shows how they are yet again just looking to escape and be happy for a while. This is also shown when the non diegetic sound in the scene grows louder after the protagonists take the drugs and gradually drowns out the diegetic dialogue which shows how the drugs block out the noise of the rest of the world. A non diegetic voice over is used as the scene cuts between the Protagonists drinking and a derelict building. The shot reverse shot of the derelict building and the male protagonist is suggesting that the two are very similar and that the male is also broken and doesnt fit in with his surroundings. The voice over dialogue is telling the story of Jesus's crucifixion and mentions "descending into hell" as there is a wide shot of three of the protagonists which suggests that they will go to hell due to their way of living and involvement with drugs. However when the building is shown again soft high key lighting is used to show the suns beams on the building as the voice over talks about Jesus's ascension to heaven the camera then pans to a clear blue sky before a jump cut to one of the young women, who is revealed to be the one reading the passage from the voice over. She says that she "believes in God" as it then cuts to the sun in the sky. A zoom in is then used until the sun becomes a blur. A close up of one of the males shows him sat on a statue with his eyes closed as he says "shut up". A vignette is then used as a montage of moving images are shown. The vignette represents the point of view of the male protagonist dreaming.One of the last things we see in the montage is the statue of Jesus on the cross. This scene contains a lot of religious symbolism and messages as the protagonists are shown as sinners through the acts of drinking, smoking and taking drugs. A zoom out is then used to reveal the sun yet again. A handheld camera is used to show us the point of view of one of the protagonists as it spins around in circles. The use of the handheld camera gives a sense of verisimilitude and puts the audience in the protagonists shoes as he feels lost and is going in circles.