Final Evaluation

Throughout this unit I was faced with lots of complications and problems that affected the
way I could work and my Final production quality. The first and one of the biggest issues
with the unit was that a lot of time was spent in quarantine because of Covid-19. This
limited me as I couldn’t do work in a workplace environment. I found myself easily getting
distracted and not having the motivation to sit down ang get work done. To fix this issue to
the best of my ability, I created a timetable of what days and hours I would do my work to
get what needed to be done in time and with the most concentration. I found this extremely
difficult but managed to get everything up to date when it needed to be. I also got a team
zoom meeting with my tutor to discuss what we had to do in the coming week and an
opportunity for me to ask any questions I had about the unit. Another big issue I came
across was during my filming week. Although I had confirmations from all my actors, only
two were available on the
day of filming in London.
There as also one missing
during the wood’s scene.
These were last minute
dropouts, so I didn’t have
much time to fix it. I could
have possibly avoided this
by getting back-up actors,
but it wouldn’t work with
the story I was producing as
it had to be the same people
in each scene. To fix this
issue to the best of my
ability I had to change my
storyboards and script to fit
the number of actors on that day. I found this not too challenging but the time lost set me
back a day or two.
 Deciding my
three initial
ideas took
me a day to
come up
with but I
felt they
were strong
as I had
range and
diversity to
them all. I
chose to do a short film idea and two music video ideas. The
reason I chose these are because throughout my previous units I felt that I produced better
music videos than anything else. This would allow me to use the most skills and knowledge
into this category. Music videos would also allow me to expand my knowledge and skills the
furthest as I fell that music videos rely a lot on visuals and editing, which I thought was the
strongest assets I had learnt throughout my two years doing my course. I also got feedback
from a survey I sent out and idea 3 was the most popular, this being the music video about
teens leaving college and doing things in summer. This helped me choose my final idea. One
problem I came across was the song choice. I wanted to have an up-beat summer song but
there are so many, so I sent out a survey to help me choose. Most people chose ‘its my life by
bon jovi’ but I felt as though my target audience were a bit too young and wouldn’t know the song.
For this reason I chose ‘Runaway by galantis’.

When choosing my competition I wanted to choose one with few rules and conditions so I had
freedom with how long I wanted my video to be, what to include and what song I could use. This
would allow me to have a broad range of what I wanted my music video to be like. After looking for
some time I found london music video festival. This was convinient as the deadlines for each were
close and very few rules.

I found the research part of the unit not too hard as I initially wrote up subheadings of what I needed
to research and also added things on along the way. Through researching music videos in my genre I
found lots of useful information about lighting, camera work
and cutting to the beat. All of this would be essential to
research for a music video. By researching this I could also do
further research on the things that stood out to me that I
wanted to learn more about or even learn new skills. I did a lot
of research into lighting as most of my scenes were dark or
required a certain typre of ISO or I would have to get my own
lighting to make mthe scene how I planned. I found researching my locations easy as well, as I had
planned out in my head where all the scenes would take place due to their scenery or culture.

Moving on to my planning and pre-production, I found this section quite challenging. I found my
actors fairly easy as my production reflected my current state, being teens about to leave college.
Knowing this information I chose a few people in my class to be my actors. I chose the people that I
knew could partly act as a music video doesn’t require a lot of skills in acting, unless telling an in-
depth story. The problems started when I came to writing my script and storyboards. I spent a lot of
time on both of these as I wanted to get them perfect. After spendiong a lot of time on these I found
out a few days before filming that some of my actors couldn’t majke certain scenes. This meant I
would have to re-write most of the script and storyboards. This meant they would have to be slightly
rushed as I needed the script and scenes to know what to film on the day.

Moving on to my filming and editing process, I found this challenging but manageable. Filming my
neon scene turned out as I planned and looked good in the final edit. The only issue I came across
was not having enough different typres of shots. I was limited to a certain space as I didn’t have
enough foliage or black douvet covers. This would be too much money to spend on a 30 second
segment as I had already spent a lot on
the lights and descorations. Something
I would do next time is to spend more
time testing with the lights and plan to
start collecting unwanted folliage from
people so I could make the scene
bigger. This was also hard due to covid
so what I had in the scene was all I
could get. Overall the colours came
out well and clear as I intended and
the choice of colours and clothing I felt
was perfect.

Filming is London was challenging as it was hard to film without having someone walk into the scene
or some sort of disturbance happening. Filming in camden market weas the most challenging as it is
a hotspot for tourists and people in general. It also has small alleyways that were hard to film in but I
felt the footage that I got was better than expected. I found an alley with umbrellas on the roof with
the sun shining through them. This was perfect as the music vieo is meant to be happy and bringt
yellow and red umbrellas make the scene very happy. Moving on to filming in london at night, this
was less challenging as most of the shots weren’t of my actors but mostly of the big light-up signs. I
got the shots I wanted from this location without any real challege. Through this I have learn’t that I
should plan for extra days of filming in London. This would allow more time to film certain shots or
re-take some shots that didn’t turn out well.

Filming in the woods was a lot more

challenging than expected. After walking
around to find suitable locations for where I
wanted my scenes to be shot the footage
didn’t come out as I wanted. I planned for it to be more happy and better quality from my camera to
capture all the colours of the woods and also have lots of detail but my footage, despite being in
focus and on the right settings, just didn’t come out in the quality I wanted. I also struggled to find
the camera angles I wanted when getting to the location as I felt like none of the angles I was filming
was smooth. To fix the issue of not finding the locations in the woods I should have visited the
woods before filming to scout out the locations I planned to use in person.

Overall, I felt as most my shots were bad focus or not what I wanted the scene to look like. I
also dint have enough time to re-shoot scenes as all my actors are also doing their FMP, so
they had no more time free to film for my production. To fix this for next time I will choose
actors that have a more diverse calendar to suit for my filming and re-shoots if needed.

I found my editing process straight forward as all I needed to do was cut and match clips, as
well as colour correct the shots. Colour correcting was simple as I added pre-sets to most of
my clips that I found would make the shot look a lot better. Then I manually colour
corrected the scenes one-by-one to get the look I was after.

Next I sent out a survey to see what my peers and audience felt about my production…
Q1. Firstly, I asked people how they found the video in general. All my responses were
positive. Some saying they enjoyed the neon scene and some just generally enjoying the
video. There was one comment that stood out top me, being ‘I quite liked it, but wasn’t sure
of the actual theme’. I fully agree with this comment as I felt the same. My overall theme
was a bit of narrative and conceptual music video. This came off confusing to some people
because my production was lacking in both themes and was confusing at times of what the
story was telling or going on in certain scenes. I tried making the video mostly conceptual
but found that adding a storyline to it made it more all over the place. For next time I will
either need to stick to one theme or have a strong storyline and think about the scenes I
want to include after then make them conceptual.

Q2. In question two I asked if anything stood out to them for example, lighting, song choice,
camera work ext. I got a variety of answers from my viewers ranging from, lighting in the
neon section to music and camera work. This is good to hear as I spent a lot of time figuring
out the right lighting for the neon scene as I wanted to get it perfectly lit. On the other hand,
I felt like my camera work skills were lacking in this production as every camera angle or
shot I tried using just didn’t look right. I tried multiple shot types and camera angles to film
the scenes the best I could. Some scenes like the neon scene and the scene in the college
classroom I felt came out good, but the scenes in London and the woods could have been
improved. To improve them I feel like I could have spent more time thinking through shot
types in my planning stage so that I had cleaner and more planned out shots in case the
ones I wanted dint turn out well.

Q3. What would you do to improve the production? As two of the people stated, a better
story line or a better understanding of what was going on. As previously mentioned, this will
be worked on if I ever get the opportunity to create a music video again. Another
mentioned that instead of cutting the scene back and forward, maybe add different effects
like fading in and out. I feel like I could have improved this if given more time as I always
planned to have the shot going forward and backwards but eventually throughout editing, I
found it quite repetitive as well. Maybe I could have shot the scenes better to fit the rhythm
and beat of the song or play around with editing to make it fit the chorus but use a variety
of effects so that it became less repetitive.

Q4. In question four I asked people what emotions they felt while watching my music video.
I asked this because I focused on serotonin and making people feel happy and wanted to
see if I achieved this effect. This was very successful as someone said, ‘I wanted to dance’
and two others saying they felt ‘happy’. This feedback was very positive as I feel as though I
reached the emotions that I was aiming for. It is also a good overall reaction as someone is
feeling happy while watching my music video.

Q5. In question five I asked people for an overall rating for my music video. This was a lot
more positive than I was expecting with an overall rating of 9.3/10. Personally, I wouldn’t
have rated my production this high but after viewing the responses from this I feel like I
might be a little to harsh on myself. This feedback is very positive and good to hear.

Client
I felt like I work very well with my competition guidelines and rules.

Rules & Terms

Important:
The London Music Video Festival jury studies all submitted works in detail. Therefore, it is sufficient for
this festival that entrants fill out only the required fields in the project and submission forms.

Music videos can be of any length and from any year.

The festival is open to submissions for people from anywhere in the world.

Participants can submit one or several music videos and must choose which category they want their
video(s) to compete in.

Being selected means that the music video is nominated for an award. It does not guarantee that the music
video will be screened at the evening event in London.

All music videos submitted will be reviewed, nominated and scored by the jury. Based on these scores the
winners will be selected.

The final selection will be announced on the notification date.

Music videos must be available for screening on the day of the festival.

All entrants warrant and undertake that they have obtained all relevant rights and permission from
individuals featured in their entry.

All participants warrant that their music videos do not violate applicable laws.

By registering for this festival, the entrant grants the organisers of the festival the standard non-exclusive
rights that would be granted to a music video broadcaster, as well as the right to make videos available on
the festival’s website, and to make copies available to broadcasters for promotional purposes.

By submitting the music video the participant permits that the organisers can use the video as well as
pictures and names attached to the music video for advertising and public relations purposes in connection
with marketing the festival.

By submitting the material, the applicant hereby agrees to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend the
organisers and their employees from any liability, claims, and damages in connection with the submission
and from any fees and expenses, including but not limited to reasonable attorneys' fees, that any of them
may incur in connection therewith.

The organisers will not accept responsibility for any technical computer, network, hardware or software
failures of any kind, which may restrict or delay the sending or receipt of your entry. Incomplete entries
and entries which do not satisfy the requirements of these rules and terms can be disqualified.

Failure to adhere to these rules and terms will result in disqualification and forfeiture of entry fee.

The organisers may also use the details you give to contact you about their products and services. By
entering work in this festival you are indicating your agreement to this unless you tell the promoter
otherwise.

The organisers reserve the right to verify the eligibility of entrants and check their identity.

The organisers reserve the right to amend these terms and conditions at any point.

The organisers reserve the right to change submission categories, awards and prizes at their discretion.

The organisers do not guarantee in any way that the submitted video will be selected for the festival or
used for promotional purposes. This decision is at the discretion of the organisers.

These are my rules and guidelines I had to follow for my

music video. I purposely chose a competition that had very
few limitations so I could use as many of my skills and
knowledge as possible. This also made it easy to stick to the
rules as there were no limitations on the length of the video
or who enters. The dates and deadlines also lined up with
my deadlines for the unit, so it all worked out well.

Genre
I believe I followed the genre and style to the music video I chose well overall. I found it
challenging to mix a conceptual and a narrative themed music video as I couldn’t find a way
to make them both flow. Looking back at my planning I should have planned my music video
as a narrative then added in the aspect of a conceptual video so while my storyline is solid, I
could make the scenes as spectacular and eye catching as possible. To research into my
genre, I found the top ten genres and researched them so I could look out for what makes
electronic dance music unique and different to all the other genres. I also researched into
the top artists and videos for EDM to have more of an understanding of the genre and get
key aspects to focus on while making my music video. I found lots of useful information to
help me on what things to include and not include to make the video stick to the genre and
theme I was aiming for. This research was useful as I planned to use the techniques and
skills in my own production. Researching this would allow me to expand my knowledge of
things to include in an EDM music video to make it suit the genre and style.

Topic
My general topic was coming of age. My production is about teens who are leaving college
and going into the adult world. The main message of my production is to make the most of
your teenage years and the people you spend them with as they go fast and the memories
will last a lifetime. I wanted to focus on this topic as it is what I and my friends are going
through at the moment and making it relatable to others as many people around the world
are going through the same situation and it being more important than ever this year as it is
ending early because of Covid-19. Meaning lots of people have been in lockdown their
teenage years and should make the most of summer while the world is coming out of
lockdown. This is one reason why I chose to do this production as it is reflecting on what
many people are feeling. I feel like I successfully showed my message through my
production and hope others can see that too.

Characters
My main character is a teenage boy who is leaving college and wants to spend the summer
with his mates. I felt this role was fitting as it was the exact same situation that my actor was
going through. This would make it a lot easier for him to be in the mindset of the character
he was playing. I chose troy as I felt he was the best actor out of all my available actors. The
other characters in my production were also going through the same situation as their
character, overall making it relatable as possible to them. Therefore, I chose the people I did
as I felt that their roles would be strong, and they wouldn’t need to adapt to any moods or
feelings for their characters. Therefore, I feel I have developed my characters to suit my
story.

Problems
I came across a lot of problems throughout this unit ranging from minor to big. The first big
problem I came across was Covid-19. Throughout the first few weeks of this unit, we were
all set into lockdown across the UK. Meaning that we could only leave our homes for
essential things, such as shopping or hospital. This meant staying at home to do our work
with our own resources and having a call with our tutors once a week to catch us up with
the oncoming weeks and for us to ask any questions if we had any. I found this challenging
as I found it hard to work outside of a workplace environment for the first time when doing
a college course. I am fortunate enough to have a PC at my home so I could continue to do
work and not have any issues with keeping my website up to date. Covid-19 made me
demotivated to get anything done as college work was all I had in my day. It was hard to
focus on the task at hand and I would easily get side-tracked. Despite these difficulties I was
able to keep close to my production schedule with me only being a few days behind when
coming out of lockdown.

Another big problem came when a few days before filming, that some of my actors couldn’t
make the dates planned, due to personal issues. This was extremely challenging for me as it
meant re-doing my script and storyboards to fit the actors I could have on the day. This
would not only alter what I planned months for but would take time. This time could have
been spent doing more work or going back through old work and improving it. When
coming to re-write my script it wasn’t the hardest thing as I could still do the scenes I
planned but with less people. This was lucky as I wouldn’t need to re-plan my whole concept
or change a whole scene. To fix this problem I could have had backup actors, but I feel as
though this would be ineffective as all the other scenes would have the same actors but one
and it wouldn’t work with the narrative. I sent out an email to all my actors for them to
confirm the date and they all said they could make it.

The next issue I came across was constant. This was the issue of time management. Covid
set me back through this whole unit and I was always behind on work. This was challenging
as I wanted to do everything in order, so I was always ready for the next week and tasks. But
as I was behind, I had to do some things late or didn’t have time to complete to the bast of
my ability. An example of this is my storyboards. I planned to do this a week or two before
filming but found myself doing them a few days away. I then had to redo them in the end,
but I feel as though if this problem didn’t occur then my storyboards would have been a
little rushed. This also happened with some of my research as the dates I had planned for
filming was coming up, but I still had some research to do. This meant me having to go back
after filming to complete some research that should have been done earlier.

My next problem was during editing as the clips I had filmed didn’t come out in the quality I
was expecting. Some shots were out of focus and some just didn’t have to sharpness and
detail that I was aiming for. I dint have time to reshoot my scenes as it would cost more
money and my actors were also busy. This led to me trying to fix these issues in editing by
spending more time on colour correction and editing the shot to make it look the best
quality it can with what I filmed. This was a let down for me as I made sure my camera was
in focus before filming and in the right lighting settings to fit the scene but looking back
through the footage it just dint turn out the way I wanted it to. This may have been resulted
by filming more clips on the day of the same shot and checking straight onto a computer
and I will keep this in mind for next time.

Skills
I have used and learnt a lot of skills in this unit and have also learnt new ones like lighting,
filming at night and using neon and UV in a production. The skills I have used that I already
knew consisted of, camera shots, locations, editing and more. I felt like my use of camera
shots was overall good but I came across the odd challenge with not being able to find a
certain angle that looked good and worked to make the video as smooth as possible. But
through my knowledge of camera skills I was able to display a variety of different shot types
in my production. Another skill I have used is locations. I felt my choice of locations for the
scenes I needed was very relevant and worked out better than expected. The choice of
going to London and Camden market worked out well as I could get the shots I needed and
had a range of shots I could do. Lastly, I found my editing skills played a big role in my
production as it pulled everything together. By using my knowledge of certain pre-sets and
colour grading I was able to get the scenes the perfect colour I was aiming for. I found some
pre-sets online before filming and tested them out on a clip. This gave me further
knowledge of what pre-set I would use for each scene and further enhance my skills of
editing. Editing also played a part in making the clips cut and move how I planned. When the
chorus hits, I edited it so the clip goes in reverse then back forward. This was important I
focused on this as it needed to be cut to the beat and flow with the music.

A new skill I have learnt is lighting. In my previous units I haven’t focused on lighting as
much as I did for this one. Lighting is a big part of a production and I felt I was lacking
previously in my past units. To learn this new skill, I firstly researched into music videos in
my genre to get a general idea of how to use different lighting skills to get different
outcomes. I then further researched into lighting itself by finding a video on YouTube talking
about how to use natural lighting, including lighting from shop signs, street lights and more,
and manual lights. I would need to learn this skill for London and my neon scene especially
as these would require more lighting skills than my other scenes. After researching what are
good and bad attributes of lighting I further researched into using coloured lights for my
neon scene as there was a UV light which lets of a blue glow but enhances neon colours.
This helped me understand more on what I was to include or not include in my production
to get the perfect lighting.
Another new skill was filming at night. This skill was one of the simpler ones as it focused on
the ISO and through editing. I learnt that using a high ISO would give you a brighter image
but make the shot hazier, meaning it wasn’t good quality. I did some test shoots at night
before filming to get an idea of what different ISO’s do to the image. I would then use my
previous knowledge of lighting through editing and make the image the brightness I wanted.

These skills will be very useful in my future jobs and projects as I now know most advanced
skills in film making. By researching and using these new skills I am able to show and impress
my employers and show them all the skills and techniques I know.

Comparison
In comparison to the music videos I looked at in my research I can see that I have still more
to learn about film making but I have the general and slightly advanced knowledge of skills
and techniques to bring to the table.

The first video I looked at was ‘In the name of love’. I researched into this video as it was the
genre of my production but I also felt it used a lot of skills I wanted to improve on. In this
video they used red and green to
reflect on the personality of the
character and this is something I
wanted to include in my
production. In my production I
tried to use bright colours as
clothing or scenery to reflect the
whole mood of the video to be
happy. Even though I used different aspects to reflect mood, both videos you can see how
the colours reflect the characters mood. As a viewer you focus on the colours used and can
give you a sense of what is going on or what the message of the story is trying to tell you.
This technique has been used many years but is still very effective to this day and is used in
most music videos now.

Another thing I would compare to with my production is the weather. In the video of ‘In the
name of love’ you can see the
weather is grey and builds up to a
storm near the end. In my video I
wanted to do the opposite by having
it be really sunny to boost the
viewers mood of happiness. I feel
like the video above used this skill
better as it is also emphasised my
editing in some enraged clouds and
making the water splash vigorously. I
didn’t feel the need to emphasis the weather in my production as I felt it would take away
the feeling on the natural sunlight and I didn’t want to over saturate my shots either.

Next, I looked at the overall quality of the videos. In ‘In the name of love’ you can see
throughout that the quality stays perfect and consistent. This is where my production lacks,
as I felt that where some of my shots were shot in good focus and quality, others lacked
this. This may be because of the quality of camera but I still feel like my shots could have
turned out better with the equipment I had.

What I would do next time?

If it came to me doing this again I feel like I would do a lot differently to make my unit of a
better quality. Starting with my schedule. The first few weeks of this unit were spent in an
unexpected lockdown which affected me in terms of keeping up to date and not getting
distracted easily. For next time I will write a detailed production schedule to plan what days
and hours I would work so I wouldn’t get easily distracted or find myself being behind on
work. I had an initial production schedule I planned to stick to but it was vague and wasn’t
specific enough for me to know what needs to be done in that week and what I would need
to do to prepare for the next.

Another thing I would do differently is to plan re-shoots. In my production I feel like it lacked
quality in some areas and would have liked to re-shoot some shots but due to time and
actor’s availability this wasn’t an option. Next time I would plan for my actors to have at
least two days spare in their calendar if the need for re-shoots was to occur again. I would
also need to find suitable backup actors in case some couldn’t make it. Due to my theme
and story of my music video this wouldn’t be the most effective way as it would be different
people playing the same character. This could be solved by not including as many people in
my production, meaning less people to rely on and I can focus on availability of one person
instead of five to make a day to shoot when everyone is available.