Evaluation

 

Description

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For my final major project, I decided I would create a music video because I have previously made a music video for the course. I contacted multiple professional artists and received many replies. I also liked working on the previous music video because it gave me the opportunity to do a more creative concept along with creative editing so I decided to do a music video for my final major because it is something I felt I can become passionate about it. I decide to go with the band losers. And the song oblivion. The song starts off slow, builds up rhythm and then becomes slow near the end. My original idea was to do a narrative around the song.  I originally wanted to do this because of the song feeling very much like a break up song. I thought showing a narrative around a relationship failing but them still becoming friends. This would go with it being slow at the start and the ending of the relationship would be the faster bits of the song and when they are friends it would go back to being slow. I decided to write a script and get in contact with a number of people who are studying acting. I asked them if they would like to help me out by performing within my music video. A number of people said they were interested about being in my music video but they would need information about timings and dates. After going over my idea to my lecturer Julian. I decided that a narrative wouldn’t be the best idea for my music video. This reason I came to this conclusion is because of my last video I made I used a lot of experimenting for along with different editing techniques. Which I enjoyed making heavily. So, I decided to create something similarly to what I have done before. While I was coming up with a new concept I decided I would watch other experimental music videos with the artist’s song in the background so I can understand if it suits the feeling and look I am good for. After I found a number of different footage such as Maroon 5 love somebody. I then used the videos I’ve found to create a sizzle reel for my music videos which I followed heavily while filming. However, the sizzle reel looked like a number of different clips put together. This is when I started to look into a look for my music videos to give the video something which ties all of the footage together. I then look the paint poring over someone’s head, stop motion paint and someone being a part of the background and then become slowly more visible as they cover themselves in paint which is aspects which will make it in my final version of my final major project. I then went to test ideas for a concept. I tried ultra-keying put everything except the coloured paint. However, this didn’t work correctly because everything o frame was a different colour and shade so after repeatable nesting and ultra-keying the footage gave it a pixelated look. This didn’t work anywhere near to how I wanted it to work. I also spent most of that time mixing paint to attempt to do an ultra-keying such as green screening. However this didn’t work the way I wanted as well. After this failed I found out how to do the editing technique to get the look I wanted by doing more test shots. I found if I use green paint I could ultra-key the colour of green out and then use the alpha channel to get the look I wanted. I then experimented with colours and inverts to get the look I wanted because I wanted to introduce colours into the video. I used inverts; normal inverts and inverts saturation to get the look I will use within my final product. I then found out that lighting would be a major problem for my final major because if there was too much light it would create a white patch on the footage and wouldn’t be ultra-key able. Also if there was no light used there would be shadow which will also create a problem while filming so I needed to plan my lighting to get around both of these issues. So I would need even lighting so I tried to use a soft box while filming to get this even light. However I did use a red light for the scenes with small amount of movement. The reason this is because red lights are used to create shadows so scenes with a large amount of movement will cast more shadows so scenes with small amount of movement cast less shadows’. The red head was also easier to get a hold of as well. While I was editing I used Maroon 5’s love somebody which I looked at while researching as well as coming up with the concept. I decided I used their music videos as inspiration while making mine. I used their editing technique of ultra-keying out a colour and then use the alpha channel. A number of the scenes within my music video were inspired by this music video. However I didn’t want to copy their music video so I decided I would use colour within my music video along with a number of radically different shots and other editing techniques to differ this videos. While filming I had issues with actors how they candled on me so I had to use class mates instead and change the ideas to show less people. I also had to change the paint I was using because I was using green paint to green screen out however the green paint caused yellow pigmentation on people skin. I then changed the colour to blue. This helped a lot more because if the green was too light premier pro would get confused while editing with peoples skin. Making the footage unusable. I would also have to be careful using the paint so I got bed sheets to cover the floor so it would help while I was cleaning up and because of the ultra key the sheets weren’t in the final footage. After I would record a part of my music video I would then edit the part in a different premier pro. An example of this is when I filmed the paint going over the mannequin head. I would then upload the footage into premier pro and edit it with that premier pro. I would then export it and add it into my final major premier pro. The reason I did this is because of all of the edits I had to do to a single piece of footage. I would need to ultra-key, use the alpha channel, then inverts and then depending on the footage I would need to alter the speed duration. I also created a survey to get feedback from the public about how they felt about my music video. I put the survey on Facebook in a media group. I did this because I felt it would get more feedback with reliable answers from my peers and lecturers. I asked the viewer what were their first impressions on the video. Whether or not the audience believed the genre was well suited, I asked how I could’ve improved so I can lean my weaker points, I asked them what they liked and why so I can lean my strengths, I asked them if the video makes you want to listen to more from the artist and I asked the audience how does it make them feel. I did this because throughout my final major I tried to get the audience to feel emotions and I wanted to know if I succeeded and to what extent this got across. In also published the video on YouTube and got a lot of good feedback. One bit of feedback is from TIkiKiti which is another YouTube channel which rate music videos out of 5. They commented on the music video saying that my music video was in their top 5  because of, creativity, creative editing, cinematography just to name a few. After I finished gathering the feedback and evaluation it. I then decided to make a number of promotional materials. Such as T-shirts and Posters. I use what I learned making an AR poster earlier in the course to make a promotional poster for the song oblivion. I researched music video posters and made a number of posters to test this skill. Before making the final version. The target audience for my music video is the same as the bands target audience because I made it for them and their audience, the target audience for my video is young adults aged 18 to 20's. I used other techniques which from other music video posters to improve my version. I was also planning to make T-shirt design earlier in production. Started to create shirt design with different colours and different images. One of my class mates have created shirt designs before so I was able to create shirt designs using the website Teespring. When I was creating the shirts using the design I went with the design that my class mates liked best. This was beneficial because the website only allows a small area of the shirt to be altered.

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Feeling

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 At the beginning of my project I was originally going to create a narrative music video instead of a concept. However I felt that this would be too dull and wouldn’t allow me to be as creative as I wanted to.  So I decided to restart my project because it was only at the beginning of the project during the time I was planning on restarting. However this made me unsure and un-confident because I had already stated planning my music video and restarting would involve scrapping all of my ideas I had at the time. However even though this was inconvenient and made me un-confident moving forward I was confident in the fact I was making the right idea. I felt that a concept based music video would allow me to be as creative as I wanted and allowed me to be more free with coming up with imagery more than a narrative would allow me to be. So while I was un-confident at the beginning of restarting m project. I quickly gained more confidence as I went on because I was feeling confident about how the project was getting along and how the concept was started to be made and gain its look. In knew what I wanted the final product to look like by watching other music videos with the song playing over them. By doing this I knew I wanted paint to have a big impact in my music video. I also started taking inspiration from maroon 5’s love somebody to create the look of the video I wanted. I then started testing these ideas. I tried to create the look of the video. My original idea was to have a bright colour of paint and ultra-key out everything except that colour to give off the look that the person the paint is on is invisible except where the paint is. However this didn’t work because not everything was a single colour this made the ultra key have a pixelated look which I didn’t want. Because of this I thought I would have to change the concept to glow in the dark paint instead. However I quickly found out a way around this. An example of this is using the alpha channel to get the look I wanted. This is how I created the look. I quickly grew fond of the look and decided to base my music video around this look. I then tested the look in multiple different ways making things disappear and reappear. The reason I replied so heavily on paint was because I wanted to have the music video resemble a painting. I originally stated while coming up with the concept that I wanted the viewer to be able to pause the video at any time and it would resemble a painting. This shows how I wanted the music video top look and feel. I also felt that I ended up pulling this look off with a number of scenes. While filming I didn’t feel as confident as I did while editing. This could be because I feel more in control while editing rather than filming. However because when I would use the green paint is was incredibly stressful making sure the lighting, colour of the paint, colours in frame and the cinematography were all correct. Rather than editing which all I knew the effects I had to use and it quickly became muscle memory. However when I started using blue paint is dialled down the stress incredible because premier pro the editing software wouldn’t get it confused with the actors skin. I got feedback in multiple different ways. An example of this is the survey I made and got peoples feedback on my music video. A lot of the feedback was positive and most of the issues I was aware of. When Tikikiti rated me their top 5 music video I felt that the majority enjoyed my video which I am extremely proud of. I also created posters designs and T-shirts designs as well. I did this because I felt it would help promote my work and allows me summarise the feeling of my music video with a design. I felt that I managed to show this within my work to the extent I wanted. 

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Evaluation: what was good?

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When I was deciding to change the concept it originally started as a negative for my project however coming up with a new concept and deciding to do a concept instead of a narrative. I made a sizzlereel to visualise what I was originally imaging and helped me to create similar material with a different style for my project. How coming up with a new concept started as a negative it quickly became a positive as the concept started to grow. To use the similar style as maroon 5’s love somebody but with a heavy rely on paint to make the footage look like a painting. I also used black as the background and white in the fourth ground to show a more metaphorical meaning. No matter how dark anything is there is always light. I also made it resemble a break up with the items I used and what I did with them. The test footage was also extremely positive. Even though a number of tests did fail. It did teach me the editing technique I would be using throughout along with the lighting and the importance of light especially because the lighting would create shadows and this would mess with the ultra key. But this did allow me to use colour creatively while testing and allowed me to visualise the idea of the video more as I went on. The editing techniques worked well and I was extremely happy with how I ended up editing the video. I would edit all of the footage separately because of the amount of effects I would have to add. I would use green/ blue paint to ultra-key out, and then I would use the alpha channel in the editing settings for the ultra key. I would then invert it to get the black with white on it however sometimes I would invert using saturation to get the white with red on and to get the blue with red on I would then inverted it red to get this look which I used a lot at the end of my footage. Depending on the footage I would alter the speed duration. I had many good points happen while filming. Some good examples of what went well while filming is that I swapped from green paint to blue paint. This stopped the actors from getting yellow pigmentation on their skins from the paint and premier pro wouldn’t get confused between the actors skin colour and the green paint. I also was able to find ways around the lighting issues by using any light for scenes which involved very little movement. I was also very proud of the cinematography and the use of stop motion. Each scene had a purpose within my music video. An example of this is the stop motion being used for the audience to know what the imagery they are looking at is meant to represent and the images to do with love would slowly disappear. This was because it shows the love dying because the song resembles a break up song. I also got a number of filler footage which made me confident that I wouldn’t need to do re-shoot. While editing the footage resembles what I was imaging more than I was expecting which made me heavily confident moving forwards. While getting feedback from viewers I found that a number of people enjoyed the editing, which a lot of people said was the videos strongest point. This was good because of the amount of focus I put on to editing while doing this project. Even the negative feedback was good because I learnt what I can do better next time. I also created posters and T-shirts to promote the video. I was confident while designing the T-shirts because I felt made multiple different designs. However while I was creating the T-shirts the website I was using had many different issues such as the pricing changes not working, the design wasn’t correct on the women’s shirt and hoodies along with multiple other reasons. However I the uni-sex shirts which I was originally planning on making were the way I wanted them to look. But I did wish I changed the design to one of the others which I felt represented my video. The posters were the opposite. I didn’t feel confident with the base designs but I felt that the final design did represent the feel of my music video more than the test posters did. I took inspiration from other fine art music video posters and used the thumb nail of the video to take as inspiration.

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Evaluation: what was bad?

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At the beginning I was creating a narrative music video instead of concept. I wrote the script and got actors to be in the music video. However after going over this idea and comparing it to my last music video I felt that this wasn’t the best I could make and wouldn’t let me be as creative as I would like. So I decided I would restart and do a concept music video instead. While this was good for my work, having to throw away all of my previous work was stressful and damaged my confidence moving forward. I chose not to do a narrative because a single story is dull and wouldn’t suit my previous work. I also chose not t do a performance because of a lack of concept and actors to perform. So I decided to do a concept music video. This also allows me to create a more creative concept as well. I also had multiple blunders while creating the test footage. Such as when I came to the idea of having someone blended into the background but slowly becomes more visible as the paint goes onto the actor but I originally tried to put this by using multiple different ultra-keys but this wouldn’t work and would pixilate the background. However I did manage to fix the visuals for my video. I also had many problems with the lighting. Such as if I didn’t use the correct lighting it would cause a light patch over the paint or created shadows. This could be seen as a positive though because it allows me to experiment with lighting and taught me the importance of lighting during this project. I was also very unhappy with multiple different looks for the final footage such as ultra key out the background or the paint and then put a colour mat under the footage so anything can be any colour I wanted them to be but I decided not to go with these looks because of the reliability of the colour mat being the same shade. Many problems while creating the test footage would also happen while crating the final result. I also struggled with actors because all of the actors I got to agree to the previous idea wouldn’t agree to the new music video concept so I had to cut out a number of scenes which involved actors. I also had a lot of problems while filming that the paint would get on the floor and make a mess. I fixed this by filming in the showers so I could clean up easier. I also had a problem with the green paint causing yellow patches to appear on the actors which means I had to change the colour of the paint. I also had a problem while editing where I struggled to cut up footage and to add into filler and cut away. I felt that the footage were better suited for the video but the cut down footage I would use were about 5 to 8 seconds without any extra effects which makes these bits of the footage would be more boring and dull to watch. So I understand the complaints about these scenes however I believe these bits of footage are the best for the scenes and make more meaning and make the audience have more of an emotional impact. As I mentioned earlier people didn’t like the long drawn out scenes. A lot of people couldn’t understand what some of the imagery I was showing was. Such as they couldn’t understand the imagery I was showing them were two hands rubbing against each other. I added the stop motion into the video for this reason but it didn’t work because this was a common problem. When I was creating the T-shirts for my music video I was originally very confident because I had the shirt designs pre-made and I knew someone who have created shirts using the website I used and they had a good experiences with it. However I went with the design that my classmates liked but the public didn’t seem to like it as much as others. The pricing also wouldn’t change and I couldn’t figure out how to correct it. The design also wasn’t correct for the women’s shirt and hoodie and I couldn’t figure out why this is. Showing that there is room for improvement Even though the posters design would end up being a success, the test posters were extremely odd and it didn’t resemble the posters I were researching.

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Conclusion 

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My final thoughts of this project are very positive. The fact that my peers, friends, family and other YouTube channels I have never interacted with before are saying very positive thoughts about the music video. The band that the music video is made for are also extremely happy with how the music video looks and feels. From the beginning I stated that I wanted the music video that resembles a painting during any frame of the video. However I Believe I did manage to pull this off to an extent. The scenes with the light blue as the background with red in the forth ground. These scenes I believe look like a painting no matter when you pause it. I also believe even though the rest of the video doesn’t look like a painting I believe it still does have a very fine arts approach to it. Which I am extremely proud of. My thoughts on the pre-production I have done for the final version of the music video I thought were well made. I researched into types of art such as minimalism, abstract and narrative. I did a number of test footage as well along with research into other video music video with the titles of experimental music video, paint music videos and experimental paint music videos. To understand what they have done and to see what I can use for my music video. I used a number of concepts such as similar look to maroon 5’s love somebody along with using stop motion and paint together and having paint poured down someone’s head in reversed. I took these ideas and changed them to suit my music video and my concept. I also planned out multiple different scenes by using the mood board, story board and sizzle reel. I followed these very closely. I also write multiple different notes in my note book so I feel that every scene in my video is planned through. I wrote mind maps down, shots lists and another story board along with a prop list. This made me feel very confident while filming, a role I am not always as confident at. I also wrote about colour theory, lighting, mise en scene along with multiple different metaphorical meanings I have planned out from the very beginning. These are all very important because the song is an emotional roller coaster and I want the video to suit the song so I used mise en scene, colour theory along with multiple other techniques to create emotions so the audience will feel the emotions I want them to.  This is also the reason I decided to use minimalism for my music video. This is because I can show a complex point with a small amount of content. Also having very few things on screen the audience will only pay attention to what I want them to. This helps to create emotions.  While I was filming and editing a number of things were positive and negative, however I felt very confident with how it went. Because of the amount of planning I did before hand I was very prepared for filming. However I did have problems with lighting and the use of colours and the paint on the actor’s skin. These problems were fixable however and didn’t impact the work negatively enough for the footage to be unusable. I felt very confident while filming and because of the amount of testing and experimenting I did I felt confident while editing because I have perfected the look as best as I could make it. I also decided the colours I would use throughout my video. Such as by putting a colour mat under black and white footage with a colour balance under it with the footage above had the blend mode as pin light. This would have the sides change colour. I thought this worked well because it introduces colour into the video but it’s in a small way and isn’t too flashy and blends well. My final thoughts on the post production for my final major. I wasn’t happy with the T-shirt because of the problems with the website I was using. The results for the T-shirt designs weren’t positive anyways. This gives me plenty of room to improve. The poster design didn’t start well but it ended well which I am proud of. The feedback was mostly positive or was constructive criticism which I either understand or agree with. This is incredible positive and makes me feel confident moving forward.

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Action

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Even though I am extremely happy with how my music video went, there are still multiple different things I could have done better if I have done the opportunity again. If I did have the opportunity again I would rely less on inspiration from maroon 5. Even though I did use it to create the look and feel for my music video. However I did take inspirations from other music video and other sources of inspiration. So I could’ve used less inspiration from maroon 5 and use other music video as inspiration, such as how I was originally planning to at the beginning of this concept. I would also like to experiment more. Even though I did a number of experiments with colours, editing and the concept. But similarly to how I used stop motion in my music video I would’ve enjoyed doing similar techniques to this to make my music video as experimental as I could. This would add a lot more to my music video and make it more interesting to watch. Even though a lot of footage I did feel were too long in the final edit and because of this was less interesting to watch and more dull. I also would experiment with the cinematography more as well. Such as doing whit cuts and whit pans. This I feel would work well because the background was the same colour to blend the cut better and mask it effectively. I also felt the cinematography was lacking during my video and the angles could’ve been used to create emotions more effectively. It could’ve been experimented with more to make the video more interesting to watch which would’ve helped the video especially during the more dull scenes. Next time I create shirts to promote my work I will make each one individual so that the shirt designs wouldn’t be messed up such as they did with the hoodies and women’s shirts I also wouldn’t sell the shirts until I made sure I correctly changed the pricing. I would also make a public survey so I can have the best shirt design shown. This means I get a wide arrange of people’s opinions on the shirt designs before selling them. Final if I had the opportunity to re edit and film I would use a wider range of footage as well so I wouldn’t have long dull pieces of footage so that the final video would be more interesting to watch. I would be able to take inspiration from other experimental music video where someone in a suit is throwing power into this face with clay. I would’ve liked to replicate this. I would’ve also used coloured water and clay more because it can allow me to be creative It would also have helped me with affording multiple props. Which the pricing of the paint came to over £90 because the paint was unusable after it’s been used and then I had to get rid of the green paint because it wasn’t healthy for the actor’s skin. As a conclusion I was extremely happy and proud of the music video and how it came out. I am aware there are room for improvement but I believe I did the best of my ability.