Evaluation

When we were first told we were going to be producing a music video for this project, I was really looking forward to it as I am interested in the process of making music videos and have often considered pursuing this more after I have graduated. However when we were given the song we had to use, I became a little bit concerned because the lyrics to the song seemed completely random and didn't make much sense, which meant it was going to be difficult to create a music video that was relevant to the song.

I listened to the 30 second clip a couple of times to see if any visuals would pop into my head and luckily they did. When listening to the style of the song, the idea of using the pixelation technique crept into my mind. I knew that with only 3 and a half weeks to produce the video I needed to work quickly and develop ideas sooner rather than later, so I decided to go with the pixelation technique. The next step was deciding what I was going to do with the technique to make it more interesting and to hold the audiences attention, as a simple 30 seconds of pixelation could quickly become boring. I therefore decided I would play with colour, changing the colour throughout the video to keep things interesting. I decided to begin with a black and white colour effect, then add in a colour tint, then in the last 30 seconds add several colour tints so the visuals were always changing.

With the technique and style of my video decided, the difficult bit came, deciding what to physically have in front of the camera. As I said previously this was difficult because the lyrics gave no indication about the meaning of the song, so it was therefore impossible to connect the meaning of the song with the visuals in the video. After listening to the song more and reading the lyrics, I decided to shoot a sort of dance routine using some of my male friends as the band members. The lyrics frequently mention nature, so I wanted to shoot the video outdoors in a natural environment. I decided to use a park with a farely open foreground and trees/bushes in the background. When thinking about the styling for the video I thought that it would be an interesting contrast to the environment for the group members to be wearing suits.

I wrote a list of choreography for the members to perform. It was really basic, moving one body part at a time, but I was hoping that when all 5 of them were doing it in sync, with the pixelation technique, it would look good. I also decided to feature pieces of 'artwork' for the group to hold in the video. This was mainly to add a bit more colour and creativity and to add some interesting shapes to the footage.
I managed to get everything planned quite quickly which I was please with, as I am learning more and more how important it is to be able to develop ideas and produce work quickly. Once I had everything planned I just needed my group members to do the shoot.

This was a bit more difficult to negotiate as a number of the friends I was using have jobs or university so trying to find a couple of hours where all 6 of us were free was tricky and I ended up doing the shoot almost a week later than was planned. This put pressure on me because I knew I didn't have much time to edit. I therefore decided that while I was waiting for the day of the shoot to come I would use some old pixelation footage to practice the editing technique I was going to use, so when it came to the real footage I would know exactly what to do. This was really helpful because it allowed me to experiment a little bit with the colour tints without wasting any time.

The day of the shoot was really good. I managed to get everything that I wanted shot and it didn't take too long (around 45 minutes). I was really pleased that my friends were able to help me and that they did everything I asked. When I uploaded the images and had a look, I was thrilled with the photos as I thought they looked quite professional.

Because I had already had a trial run of the edit, editing the real material was quick and easy and I even added a few extra effects to make it really stand out, including a cartoon effect which transformed the video into something I hadn't considered, but was really happy with.

In conclusion I am pleased with my music video. I managed to achieve everything I set out to and the finished piece looks better than I had pictured in my head. I think it was more difficult to generate ideas than it perhaps could have been because of the song choice and I think that if we had been given a song with a clearer message, I would have been able to create something better. But as we are learning throughout this course, you can't always choose the media you have to work with and you just have to do the best you can with what you've got, which I think is a really important message.