Wednesday 5 December 2012

Peer Assessment

Once my music video was finished and had been exported it was time to watch my own video back with the rest of my class, as well as watching everyone else's videos too. 
Before we watched the videos we looked at the grading criteria for the assignment so that whilst watching the videos we were able to give our thoughts and a predicted grade. 

I found this task very good and helpful to me as it allowed me to get other people's opinions on my video and to see what kind of grade I could achieve, it also gave me feedback on what I could improve next time. I was also able to give my opinion on others videos and watch what they had spent two weeks creating and editing. 

The feedback from my video indicated that I should be able to at least achieve a Merit grade for this assignment, I was pleased with this result and I was also given tips on how I could bring it up to the distinction grade in future. 
There were two main things I could improve on in future, the first being that the majority of my lip sync shots were taken in my house against a white wall, due to the fact that my first idea was to put myself onto a black background during editing. However this idea changed and the background was left as white, but you could easily see that it was just a white wall in a house due to the darkness and marks on the wall. I did edit the shots to make them brighter and warmer so this did help. But most people did say these shots let my video down slightly as I used such strong locations throughout the rest of the video then these simple shots were placed in between, I will learn from this mistake during a task like this in future! 
My other piece of negative feedback was that during my lip sync shots I could have been more involved and enthusiastic when singing a long to the track, to make the video look more professional and realistic. I held back slightly when singing to the track so in future I will ensure to blast the song out very loud and sing as loud and as enthusiastic as possible.
Apart from these two problems my video was successful and my class seemed to like it!

Receiving feedback from my class mates and teacher has definitely been a good part of this assignment, it has given me feedback that I can use in the future to improve my work and positive hope on getting the grade I would like to achieve in this assignment. 

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Capturing Rushes

I have now completed one editing session where I managed to capture all of my rushes onto the computer ready for editing. It took quite a while for the capturing to complete due to the fact that I had so much footage, the process works in real time therefore it took around sixty to seventy minutes to capture all of the rushes. However during this time I was able to watch through all of the footage I had taken and review each shot individually giving me an idea on the best bits I had and what I'd like to use.

Although it was good to get to see all of my footage on the computer it did take quite a lot of time and unfortunately I came across many errors throughout the capturing rushes process. Some rushes that were captured appeared to error causing the program to crash and leaving no option but to close the program and continue from where the error occured. This became quite frustrating after a while as it appeared to happen on a lot of the rushes therefore the process took a lot longer than I had wished. I think the main problem that was causing the errors was the fact that I had very short second shots that were so short they was causing the program to crash. When capturing my rushes I did notice a few rushes that I could have missed out and a few that I didn't really need which would have made my footage shorter but I think it is good to have a lot of footage as I have so much to work from and I have so many different angles and shots to use.

Therefore capturing my rushes has been successful and I can now begin the editing process however next time I will try to ensure I am only recording shots that are long enough and to not cause as many errors as it has this time.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Production Reflection

I have now completed principle photography fully and successfully gained around sixty to seventy minutes of footage all together.

I am pleased with the outcome of the shots I have gained and feel I have managed to capture more than enough footage which I will now use in post production to create my music video, however there were a few hiccups that caused production to be slowed down along the way.

When I came to my first day of recording, my main cast member wasn't able to attend due to being ill therefore I had no option but to become my main character myself and appear in my own music video, this meant I wouldnt be able to film the majority of the video but at least allowed me to stick to my main idea.
However I was able to still film location shots and shots that I wasnt involved in, I also filmed a large portion of Andrew's video to make up for the lack of filming my own shots.

As well as this problem there were other smaller problems that I came across during the production process like the fact that the weather was quite bad on the days I was filming, I had to try and fit all my shots in when it wasn't raining which proved to be quite difficult with it being Autumn at the moment. Also it appeared to become dark by around 4pm each day I was filming therefore it was vital to ensure I captured all of my shots before it got dark to ensure the lighting was generally the same throughout all of my footage.

These were the only few things that I found made the production stage more difficult than it could have been but I felt that everything else went well, my team all worked well together and we managed to get each others done before the deadline successfully. I also managed to gain great costumes easily including a real soldiers outfit which worked very well with the theme of war in my video. It was also a great time to shoot my video due to it being in November and all of the remembrance events occuring as well as the sale of poppies, meaning I was able to use all of these in my video making it more realistic and interesting.

Problems:

- Main cast member wasn't able to attend on the day meaning left with no main character to film
- Weather was quite bad and was regularly raining
- Sun set quite early meaning didn't get as much time to film as wished

Success:

- Team worked very well together
- Had permission to shoot at all of my locations including a repatriation service
- Easy access to the locations

Things I'd do differently:

- Find a more reliable main cast member
- Ensure I film on good weather days, check the forecast for the best day

Therefore I am pleased with the outcome of my principle photography and I looking forward to capturing my rushes ready to edit it together to create my music video.