Feedback from Year 10 - Yagmur

As our music video is aimed at a niche audience, we knew that it wouldn't be to everyone's taste or that some people may not even understand the deeper meaning/symbols in the video. Our media teacher suggested showing our video (which is almost finished) to a year 10 group to see their reactions and what they thought of the video. Even though they're not our target audience, it was interesting to hear their opinions which is beneficial to us as we can make some minor changes.

Person 1 - They found the song boring and the video slow pace and that they prefer Pop/R&B.

Person 2 - It's not for our age group.

Person 3 - The part of the song that says "Back in 1991" has the reverse shot of the friends jumping which is quite good.

Person 4 - The video is about two best friends.

Person 5 - The girl lost her friend because some shots shows them together whereas others show the girl by herself.

Person 6 - The friend died because of the shots of her walking into a graveyard.

Person 7 - There was a book of memories.

Person 8 - There is no friend and that she is actually imaginary.

Person 9 - The scrapbook is left in the graveyard, which must mean that she died.

Person 10 - The shadow/silhouette of the guy singing is really good.

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Below are some post it notes which the students wrote their initial ideas of the video before they gave the feedback in the video.

Framing, composition and lighting - Yagmur

This shot is framed quite well as we used the rule of thirds. The two friends aren't directly on the right and are closer to the middle so we still focus on them.

The lighting in this shot is quite dull and we may need to adjust this because it's hard to tell what is actually going on in the shot.

Similarly, the lighting also needs to be slightly brighter in this shot because as we filmed it at night, it's quite grainy and dull so it needs to be brighter.

This is one of our favourite shots because of how it fits in the frame. The windows are directly in the centre with the protagonist on the side and a plane flying out of the shot on the right.

This is also a good shot because of how it's framed. The trees/flowers all around the frame make us focus on the two friends more because they're directly in the middle.

Filming update/Location - Yagmur

As we decided we wanted some performance in our video, we decided to film the artists silhouette while he was lip singing.

We filmed in the drama studio in our school as there's a lot of studio lights which are perfect for casting shadows on the blank screen. After we set up the lights, tripod and camera, we played around with the composition of the shots and found that the rule of thirds was the best. This is because when we edit our video, there's going to be shots in the background at the same time as the artist singing, so there needs to be some space for the audience to see that.

The person we chose wasn't familiar with the song so we printed out the lyrics sheet and played the song at the same time so he knew exactly how it sounded and knew how to lip sing it perfectly.

We found that it worked really well as you can clearly see what the artist is lip singing (once we put the audio over it, it became even more clear). We found that on final cut pro it also looked really good when we put footage behind it and decreased the opacity so it was faint in the background.

Peer Assessment - Safwana and Yagmur

In today's lesson, we did peer assesment on our music videos. We went around our class and looked at other blogs and videos and filled out a sheet which had different mark bands on it. Specifically, we gave them feedback on composition, editing, shots etc. The group that assessed ours will comment below with their feedback.

Filming update - Yagmur and Safwana

As we're coming to the end of completing our music video, we realised that we still had gaps in our timeline in final cut pro and we decided we would do some more filming. We needed more shots of the two friends together so that they can be used as flashbacks and makes it more nostalgic.

Experimenting with sihouettes - Safwana and Yagmur

As we decided to add some performance in our video of the 'artist' lip syncing, after getting feedback from our class, we wanted to be more creative with it and make it more interesting. Indie rock/pop music videos tend to have artistic and creative elements to them so they're more unique and quirky.

We first decided and planned that we will take footage of our male model in a park and have him lip syncing and walking around at the same time. A lot of indie music videos tend to have the male artist doing this, but as mentioned before, we wanted it to be more creative and add something more visually exciting to look at. We were originally relying on shooting on a sunny day so we can get that shadow/silhouette look, but then we looked at a lot of videos on youtube and found that it was easier to create silhouettes indoors with high key lighting and a plain background. 

This is the opening credits of a TV show and we thought that the silhouettes of the heads with the images on them looked quite impressive and generally more interesting than looking at a black silhouette.

This video inspired us to add our initial idea of the silhouettes as well as playing around with editing techniques. In the example above we can see that they have used projectors to add an affect on the silhouettes and have moving images on the silhouette, with this we were thinking to have footage of the friend and the protagonist. However instead we decided to use the double exposure technique which gives the solid shape, which in this case is the shape of the artists face, some more depth. The internal solid shape has the footage, instead of it being black, and the external area is completely white.

These are some screenshots of how we used this video as an inspiration and in cooperated it to out own music video.

We used the drama studio to create the silhouettes. There was a white screen and I stood in front of it to cast a shadow which we then took a video of. We tried to see if it would be clear when lip syncing and it was because we put the music on top and it was clear - as if the artist was really singing. We also played around with the exposure/contract and we made the silhouette even darker.

We put two copies of the same video on top of each other and then another video such as the protagonist sitting down drawing. We found that this gave a really nice effect and we thought we could put all the videos together of the friend in black and white to make it even more nostalgic.