Task 9 - Evaluation

Evaluation

As part of this unit we were asked to produce a music video, first we were assigned a song by our tutor which was ‘Schools Out’ by Alice Cooper however after discussing ideas for the video we decided we would decide on a song for ourselves and after checking this was ok with the tutor we decided on the song ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas.

Ideas and Planning

As a group we came up with ideas of where we could shoot the video, and discussed the idea of videoing in a local dojo and planned some of the moves which we wanted to use in the video. When coming up with initial ideas we created an A3 mindmap, I was part of the group that came up with the initial ideas and the choosing of the location and suggesting people we could use in the video. However in the later stages of planning we came across some problems because in most sessions the whole group was not present which meant we had to agree to certain ideas by text or e-mail which delayed the work slightly. Overall I think we worked well as a group however the work could have been shared more evenly if each member had been in every session.

Pre-Production

Before filming we had some pre-production documents to complete including; storyboards, risk assessments and permission forms for the people in the videos. Demi was assigned the task of creating the images for the storyboards which she did digitally using Paint, me and Gemma then wrote the information to go into the boxes to explain each image. Risk assessments were filled out for using the studio as well as for filming outside of college, I have not including the risk assessment for the filming outside of college as I was absent and was not part of this filming process. Two members of the group created a PowerPoint which was used to present our ideas to our peers. We encountered no problems in the pre-production of this music video, however I think if all members of the group were able to contribute to the presentation then it would have contained more ideas and would not have put as much responsibility on only two members.

Production

The first and last scenes of our video went to plan, as we only needed the studio and each member was responsible for providing certain items such as clothes and make-up. I was in charge of filming in the studio and I believe I incorporated a variety of techniques which the group wanted to use, it took a couple of takes to get right, but once we had it right we were happy with the final outcome and it was as we had first planned. However the production of the rest of the video did not go as planned as the dojo we wanted to use was not available at the times we could film and there were too many risks involved in filming children in a karate class. We used our peers to create two pieces of film, one out on location and another inside on a stage. Despite this not being planned the scenes worked well and we were able to incorporate the karate moves we had initially thought of. Gemma was given the responsibility of filming the scenes on location and she did this to a high standard using different techniques throughout.

Editing

In our initial plan we had decided to use a green screen and edit in a background image. Gemma did the majority of the editing which input from the team and overall this took about three sessions. Once the editing was finished we realised that the video was not long enough to fill the whole song and so some clips had to be repeated and others slowed down to make it longer, we also added in signs to introduce the characters in the video which added some extra time to the video and made it the same length as the song. There were no major problems with the editing, however if we were to complete the task again we would take more time in the editing to make sure each scene was the best it could be as the green screen editing was very difficult.

Summary

From this project I have learnt a lot of new skills as I had no prior experience of filming or editing. I think if I were to do this project again I would come up with a more realistic goal, as our location did not work out, and make sure everything was available for the time of the shoot and if not have a back-up plan in place so that no time was wasted. Finally I think that we could have shared the work out more fairly, as not everyone had chance to participate in each part of the process and so missed out on gaining experience across all areas.