Post-Production
Initial editing
For the initial editing, I was experimenting with things such as effects and transitions. One challenge I faced was the lip-synching of my actors, it was unclear and hard to edit with the audio, which was partly my fault for not directing them to make sure that each word is pronounced clearly. Another main aspect of editing was to ensure that all my videos were horizontal as it was pretty hard to zoom in without losing the actual scene and lose track of the concept. Other obstacles I faced while editing the first draft was that there were a lot of scenes where even though the audio of the song was playing in the background the actors' lip-synching was still off and so at times I had to go off of the movement of their lips. Overall, it was not easy to edit and match the videos with the song and the acting.
1st draft of the music video
Feedback from peers
In here I will be inserting the feedback I have gotten from my peers who have also been doing the same assignment:
- I think the close-ups work really well and the lighting was amazing, the transitions worked really well too, they kept the pace of the song
- The video did get a bit low on frames at certain points , and the eyes in certain shots were fully white, that was about the only problems
- I liked the transitions between scenes, they were really smooth and the panning was nice. I liked the camera movement as well. I also liked the lighting
- However, your male actor could've put more emotion in his lip-syncing
- The transitions where good and at the beat drop it was really good. The background scene was good. the lighting in the dark was really good and is hard to get right
- The lighting worked very well with all of your scenes and the camera movement was very smooth
- Had really good lighting and good contrasts. There was a range of shot types
- The lip-syncing was accurate and the lighting in your female's actor's face was really effective
Personally, putting together the clips and videos together was not easy and at times frustrating. Things like the colours of the actor's eyes were very difficult to edit or remove the red eyes as it would have taken much longer and the time I had would have not been enough and other things such as lip-synching were the most difficult to edit with the song and the audio. After looking at my first draft and looking at other peers' music video and getting some inspiration I know that there are multiple things that I may want to edit or remove, things such as the flashbacks with the brighter colours may need some color correction to make it feel warmer or perhaps adding onto it a filter would make the narrative cleaner and clearer as I would also edit the darker scenes to make the scenes colder and so the contrast would make the narrative more understandable. I will be using my feedback and going back to edit my final music video ensuring I have considered all the main factors. Filming was not particularly easy either where I had to film everything in 1 day seen as my cast would have not been available any other time. Also, due to corona virus there were certain locations and timings that were closed or banned due to things such as lockdowns or restrictions.
Final editing
With the final editing, I worked on the feedback I had received. The main thing I focused on when editing the video for the second time was color correction and making the contrast between the dark and cold colors where the actors were lip-synching to the warm, bright and fuzzy colours where the scenes flashback giving the audience a sense of clarity in terms of narrative and also in terms of emotions and what the actors would have been feeling. The other thing I had attempted to do was to add more transitions and almost experiment with them and see what worked well where and what didn't. Another thing I considered when editing the music video was the lighting and how I could play around with things such as saturation and different levels of whites and blacks to make the lighting seem more effective and the scenes cleaner and clearer.
Final music video
Review
In this section I will be analyzing and reviewing my final edit.
Finished product:
To begin with I will be comparing it with the original proposal. With my initial proposal my main narrative was to have 2 couples who broke up and are now reminiscing on the days where they were happily together, 'the good days' where the colours would be warm, bright and fuzzy and in the scenes I would have the actors lip-synching the atmosphere would be dull and almost uncomfortable and perhaps tense. I also aimed to have multiple locations for each scene so that the narrative would be clear. Finally, an integral part in my initial proposal was that the actors that I would have chosen would be authentic and natural and aiming to have no awkward scenes. Overall, with my final video I think that I have achieved most of what I had planned in my proposal. However, one part that did not quite work out as I had planned was the lip-synching and that was where I got the most constructive feedback.
Next I will be talking about the appropriateness to the audience. In terms of visuals and lyric wise, I believe that it is appropriate for children to watch however, in terms or narrative, children under the age of 13 may have trouble understanding the idea and that does not impose a huge problem as my target audience is 13+.
Looking at qualities, I think I have included a lot of shots where the aesthetics were very clear in terms of the happy scenes where warm colours such as yellow from the natural sunlight was dominating and in other dark scenes other cold colors such as blues and blacks were apparent and overall the aesthetics were pretty pleasing to my audience. With technical qualities with things such as transitions and certain shots of angles, I feel like I had included a wide variety of them with multiple angles and shots such as close-ups and full shots and so on. For content, looking at the amount of scenes I included and what the meaning behind them were decent as I had intentionally done things such as include shots or scenes to match the lyrics and what was being said, for example in the chorus in 'before you go' I had included either my actors on the beat and so I think that was effective. With the amount of scenes and shots I had included, I think I did not go overboard yet not too little, in other words, balanced. I have tried to carry a consistent style within my music video and it was to have a dark moody style with the lip-synching and a bright, happy style where the couple were together. Furthermore, looking at team contribution, I feel that there was overall great team work, for example when I had asked my actors to show more emotion they did especially Natalya towards the end and also when the actors were not under the camera they would be helping me film behind in things such as lighting and movements especially with Chirag and so I feel like there was great team contribution and teamwork.
Production process:
Pre-production was the main initial stage to get my idea started. To start, I had to chose the audio which would be used and base upon my choice I chose the narrative and that depended on things such as the lyrics and the background of the song, where it is from, why was it written and so on, and also deciding on things such as locations. So overall pre-production is what got the ideas starting. Production, on the other hand is where the ideas agreed on came to live, this part was probably the hardest within this whole project, getting the shots right and the filming at the right time and being able to find common grounds in terms of when the video would be shot. Overall producing the actual video was not easy however, to be fair it was the most fun part as I got to see my idea come to life. Finally post-production was where I put all my filming together and using the filming I had done in production. Again this process was not easy either yet it was the most crucial part as there were multiple aspects to take into account such as color correction, audio matching the lip-synching and scenes and locations. With this assignment, I felt like my time-management to begin with was weak and getting started with the actual video was very slow in terms of producing the ideas however, when I got on with the filming, I really focused on my time and how I managed it and balanced it and I believe that I had done that well. In my opinion, when editing my music video the technical side of it was very successful in terms of options on Premier Pro and all the options on there that I was able to fiddle around with, experiment and use and I think that this goes back to me watching lessons on creative live on how to use Premier Pro effectively where this also linked to creative abilities, as watching those lessons even before filming gave me an idea of what I needed to film to get a certain look or mood.
Sources of information:
I mostly got my information from things such as meetings where I would often text my cast and actors and at times meet up with them within school and make notes of things such as timings and clothing and so on. Equally, I looked at things such as production logs and filming diaries when doing my second edit as I knew or had an idea of what challenges I faced and why I faced them and what I intended to do when editing that I may have not quiet done. Lastly, I used feedback and comments on not only the first edit when doing my second edit but also the little feedback I go here and there when looking at he clips and scenes I had filmed and those comments and feedback from my audience, peers, teacher and also my actors helped me and inspired me to do a second edit and gave me things to work on.
Overall, I really enjoyed making this video, I found it fun, entertaining and successful!
Finished product:
To begin with I will be comparing it with the original proposal. With my initial proposal my main narrative was to have 2 couples who broke up and are now reminiscing on the days where they were happily together, 'the good days' where the colours would be warm, bright and fuzzy and in the scenes I would have the actors lip-synching the atmosphere would be dull and almost uncomfortable and perhaps tense. I also aimed to have multiple locations for each scene so that the narrative would be clear. Finally, an integral part in my initial proposal was that the actors that I would have chosen would be authentic and natural and aiming to have no awkward scenes. Overall, with my final video I think that I have achieved most of what I had planned in my proposal. However, one part that did not quite work out as I had planned was the lip-synching and that was where I got the most constructive feedback.
Next I will be talking about the appropriateness to the audience. In terms of visuals and lyric wise, I believe that it is appropriate for children to watch however, in terms or narrative, children under the age of 13 may have trouble understanding the idea and that does not impose a huge problem as my target audience is 13+.
Looking at qualities, I think I have included a lot of shots where the aesthetics were very clear in terms of the happy scenes where warm colours such as yellow from the natural sunlight was dominating and in other dark scenes other cold colors such as blues and blacks were apparent and overall the aesthetics were pretty pleasing to my audience. With technical qualities with things such as transitions and certain shots of angles, I feel like I had included a wide variety of them with multiple angles and shots such as close-ups and full shots and so on. For content, looking at the amount of scenes I included and what the meaning behind them were decent as I had intentionally done things such as include shots or scenes to match the lyrics and what was being said, for example in the chorus in 'before you go' I had included either my actors on the beat and so I think that was effective. With the amount of scenes and shots I had included, I think I did not go overboard yet not too little, in other words, balanced. I have tried to carry a consistent style within my music video and it was to have a dark moody style with the lip-synching and a bright, happy style where the couple were together. Furthermore, looking at team contribution, I feel that there was overall great team work, for example when I had asked my actors to show more emotion they did especially Natalya towards the end and also when the actors were not under the camera they would be helping me film behind in things such as lighting and movements especially with Chirag and so I feel like there was great team contribution and teamwork.
Production process:
Pre-production was the main initial stage to get my idea started. To start, I had to chose the audio which would be used and base upon my choice I chose the narrative and that depended on things such as the lyrics and the background of the song, where it is from, why was it written and so on, and also deciding on things such as locations. So overall pre-production is what got the ideas starting. Production, on the other hand is where the ideas agreed on came to live, this part was probably the hardest within this whole project, getting the shots right and the filming at the right time and being able to find common grounds in terms of when the video would be shot. Overall producing the actual video was not easy however, to be fair it was the most fun part as I got to see my idea come to life. Finally post-production was where I put all my filming together and using the filming I had done in production. Again this process was not easy either yet it was the most crucial part as there were multiple aspects to take into account such as color correction, audio matching the lip-synching and scenes and locations. With this assignment, I felt like my time-management to begin with was weak and getting started with the actual video was very slow in terms of producing the ideas however, when I got on with the filming, I really focused on my time and how I managed it and balanced it and I believe that I had done that well. In my opinion, when editing my music video the technical side of it was very successful in terms of options on Premier Pro and all the options on there that I was able to fiddle around with, experiment and use and I think that this goes back to me watching lessons on creative live on how to use Premier Pro effectively where this also linked to creative abilities, as watching those lessons even before filming gave me an idea of what I needed to film to get a certain look or mood.
Sources of information:
I mostly got my information from things such as meetings where I would often text my cast and actors and at times meet up with them within school and make notes of things such as timings and clothing and so on. Equally, I looked at things such as production logs and filming diaries when doing my second edit as I knew or had an idea of what challenges I faced and why I faced them and what I intended to do when editing that I may have not quiet done. Lastly, I used feedback and comments on not only the first edit when doing my second edit but also the little feedback I go here and there when looking at he clips and scenes I had filmed and those comments and feedback from my audience, peers, teacher and also my actors helped me and inspired me to do a second edit and gave me things to work on.
Overall, I really enjoyed making this video, I found it fun, entertaining and successful!