Music video evaluation

Music Video Evaluation 

This project was a chance for us to get practice with the equipment that we will be using in the next year of our a-levels and understand the conventions of a music videos structure, this is the reason for the quality of the film that was produced and the timing that wasn't matched correctly while editing.

As Andrew Goodwin states in his music video theory, there are three types of music videos; narrative, performance and concept videos. The type of video we decided to make was mainly a performance video along side some narrative. We also could say that we used a tiny bit of concept because we used some narrative that only matched the lyrics but didn't explain the true meaning behind what they are describing in the song.
The song we were given tedit into each chorus o do was 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' which was released in 1992 by  Sophie B. Hawkins. The music video that she shot was nearly a complete performance music video shot in black and white, so we tried to incorporate both her style (which fit with her husky but adventurous voice) while also going in a different direction (very obvious narrative, which almost sarcastically lacked in metaphors).

The skills I gained and how it was constructed

Preproduction
When we began our project I had never made a music video in any shape or form, whether it was miming or not, so this experience was completely new to me. I used my pears to figure out the best way for us to make the music video, especially how we were going to lip-sync to the song at the correct time. We all decided to break down the song into manageable chunks and learn the lyrics to each part, then find the props we needed before any real filming went under-way. Once we had the props we got the song on one of our smart phones because this allowed us to know our queues to lip-sync to. Plus, like Andrew Goodwin states in his music video theory we instantly thought we should try and keep to a specific style/ iconographic style, so each time we filmed I wore the same clothing for each shot, which you can see is quite 1900's with the jeans and plain casual shoulder cropped t-shirt (converse or no shoes). Plus the costume used in this video signifies quite a relaxed image and reflects the genre of the music; indie, soft rock because they are casual and the idea of no shoes is quite a 'hippy' look.  

Production
When we began to film we focused on the chorus and decided to get large pieces of film that could be edited in a slow pace and cut where we felt adequate. We decided to use props to express a lot of the lyrics in the verses: we used toys to express the lyrics metaphors but instead of using the toys/ other props as a way of connoting another meaning of the lyrics we went in the opposite direction and made the props take away the metaphors or deeper meaning and present the audience with the literal image of the lyrics. For example we took the lyrics "gonna' fill you up, gonna' make you cry" and simply filmed a water bottle being opened and filled. This was partly for humorous purposes and secondly to experiment with the conventions of a music video; normally the image is signifying the lyrics by using props in a serious matter or colours to express them, while we used a comical form which wasn't expected. 

Post Production

In post production we used the software Premier Pro which we all got a go on, but I feel I need a lot more practice at it to be confident enough to edit my own music video. We used this program to edit in the black and white for each clip, and also to slow it down using the slow motion tool. Sadly there are no clips of our editing timeline due to the drives being wiped in the editing suite at college. We honestly didn't have enough different shots to make the editing very varied with fast paced editing and slow paced editing to be included and this put us in a disadvantaged place due to our film affecting the quality of the editing. Also I think the lack of film affected the accuracy of the image being in-time with the beat and therefore produced a video that can be recognised easily as an amateur level of technological understanding.  

Improvements
I feel that the editing was at very low quality, not anybodies fault, but it just takes practice to gain a good sense of the program you are using. It didn't help that we didn't get enough film needed to make fast pace editing by cutting to lots of different shots and because of the lack of practice our slow motion editing wasn't as close to the beat as it needed to be. Therefore I will practice more with random pieces of footage until I am satisfied with my capability of editing and the amount of film I will need for a certain amount of time.

 Also the planning wasn't fully complete before we shot the video, so I feel I need to get a good amount of film and the right amount of close-ups of the artist/actor and a general variety of shots such as tracking shot to show movement and different angles to make sure the music video doesn't become boring to the viewer.

The camera work was not terrible, but far from the standard I would like to have on my final video, so as well as taking advantage of tripods more, I will practice different shots to find the best way to capture images I want. Lastly I will make sure that there is more continuity; clothing, props, lighting. The clothing in this video wasn't as tied in with the genre of music: indie, soft rock enough because as well as not researching enough into the general style of the sub-cultures that are tied with these genres we didn't pay much attention to it when filming, although I tried to make mine as close to it as possible.
Most recently another problem with the actual quality of the film was the framing we used, because characters aren't all framed correctly and are coming into camera and then disappearing again, which doesn't look very professional and also take the attention away from the performance. So when I film my music video I will make sure I test the sizeof the frame and cues for my actors/artists.
Finally I have realised that the chorus of this music video was lacking in any form of excitement because of the long shots that were edited at a slow pace, and again put in 'slow' motion. Which means the audience get tired of the video and will most likely stop viewing it. And that if I rush my filming for my music video and miss out on something I could use when editing it could interrupt any further production, therefore my planning must be detailed and I must allow a realistic amount of time for my plan, and make a realistic plan.