Professional Documents
Culture Documents
For our final major project I teamed up with John Warwick to produce a
music video. We wanted to make the video as controversial as possible
in order to make our production creative and different to other music
videos. The aim was to bring more attention to the fact that 40% of the
time domestic violence victims are male. We wanted to show the other
side of domestic abuse that people don’t think about, there isn’t enough
clarity brought to this issue and this is what we wanted to achieve.
We chose to use the song ’Reason’ by Spooky Black. We chose this
due to the fact that the song is upsetting and heart wrenching when you
listen to the lyrics. We wanted to provide visuals that suited the song and
kept the Lo-Fi vibe. In the production John played the role of the
cameraman and I played the part of the editor. We also decided to use
Emma Johnson as the female actor in our production due to the fact that
she has experience in acting and we thought because at the time Emma
and I were in a relationship so the footage didn’t look awkward or forced
at all, it made the video look more authentic.
Throughout the year I have chosen to do editing as my specialism as it’s
what interests me the most and it’s also
the part of productions that I like the
best. I needed to make sure that for our
final major project this was the best
piece of editing that I could possibly
produce. We needed the final edit to
look as professional as possible in order
for the issue in our video to be put
across right so that audiences become
more aware. I
spent a lot of time
in the editing
process, using
the techniques that id learnt, e.g. strobe and
colour correction effects.
Before we started our final major project we sent out a survey asking the
opinions of the audience to see what they think about our idea. We gave
a brief synopsis of our production idea just to see straight away if people
like our idea and think it will work. 66.67% of the survey population said
that the idea would work which lead us to go ahead with the idea and try
to make it the best we could as the majority of the people who answered
our survey said it would work. Although some of our audience thought
that the idea wouldn’t work we still went ahead with it as its an issue that
John and I care strongly about and we thought more attention should be
brought to the issue of domestic violence.
Another question that we asked straight away was ‘How do you think we
could improve our idea?’. We asked this so that we could find out from
our audience themselves how they think our production could be better
already. We received a few comments from this question that mentioned
that the video should be as realistic as possible. We took this into great
consideration when producing the footage. We tried to make it as
realistic as possible by using make up for some of the scenes which
makes it look like whats happening to me is real. For example in the
scenes when I have a black eye and blood on my face, this conveys
whats happening to the viewer better than it would of if we didn’t use
make up. Due to the fact that the viewers can see whats happening in
detail to me they can empathise with me and it makes the video more
powerful.
People also asked us to include lots of effects and colour, we did this to
the best of our ability to make the video as professional as possible.
Genre and style
We chose to look into and research the Lo-Fi Hip hop genre due to the
fact that it’s the genre of music that John and I are really into and we felt
that if we made a production within our favoured genre we would enjoy it
a lot more. It also gave us the opportunity to be as creative as we could
be. The fact that we both are into the genre means that we found it easy
to bounce ideas off each other for editing techniques and shot types.
The part that helped us a lot was the time that we spent doing secondary
research on the lo-fi genre and the artists and production techniques
within it. It helped us greatly as it gave us the opportunity to learn what
makes a lo-fi music video. We were able to look at artists that inspired
us from that genre, this lead us to understand how to create a lo-fi music
video. We tried to stick to the genre the best we could in different ways.
For example some of the editing techniques that I used suit the genre
well, e.g. where I overlay different clips but put them as boxes on
screen.
I used this clip near the ending of the music video. The clip is cut to the
beat well as during the outro of the song you can hear multiple claps at
the end of each bar, this clip shows up on one of the claps which
demonstrates that I can cut my clips to the beat without much struggle.
As part of the feedback for our production I decided to ask the survey
participants if they thought that the production suits the lo-fi genre of
music and why. By doing this I was able to see what people think of our
production and if we did it right. 100% of the survey participants said that
the video did suit the genre of music due to its editing, camera angles
and the narrative within the video. This allows me to gather that the
people who have seen the video think that it’s a lo-fi video which was the
goal that we set ourselves. By getting this feedback from the survey
population we are able to say that our video is part of the Lo-fi genre.
At the start of the project we sent out a survey to start us off with ideas
for our production. We asked the survey population what they would
expect to see in a Lo-fi music video so that we could find out the
techniques that we needed to incorporate into our production in order for
it to suit the genre. Unfortunately most of the responses that we received
weren’t very helpful. One of the comments was to use ‘wavy’ editing so
we took this into deep consideration as our production commenced. We
used lots of different editing techniques that suit the Lo-fi hip hop genre
so that our video doesn’t look out of place. We needed to make sure that
the footage matched the style of music in order for it to look as
professional as possible.
When doing our research we looked into different artists like I mentioned
before but we looked into different styles of music videos within the
genre. We wanted to look at how different music videos within the genre
have different styles. Here are the examples that we found…
We looked at the music video for ‘Again’ by Louis Culture which
demonstrates a style of music video. In this you can see the different
techniques that the producers used for example you can see how they
overlaid shots and used boxes to give each clip something extra to make
it more visually appealing for the audience. The box effect is used
throughout the Lo-fi genre and lots of artists use it in their songs. This
isn’t an example of a narrative music video as there isn’t a storyline
that’s easy to follow. I would also say that this music video isn’t a
performance video, although there are shots of the artist lip syncing
there isn’t a live or band performance.
We took this into consideration when producing our final major project as
we decided to include multiple different lip-syncing shots as well as the
story line to make sure our video is a good mix of both types of music
video.
We also looked at the music video for the song ‘crazy dream’ by Tom
Misch and Loyle Carner because the style is different to the ‘Again’
video and we wanted to see which style of video we preferred. Each
video has its own style of editing and camera work. The aim of this was
to see which styles we preferred and wanted to put into our production.
From this screenshot you can see how the video for ‘crazy dream’ is
different to ‘Again’ in many ways. This is a performance music video due
to the fact that throughout the video there are shots of Tom playing the
guitar, singing and there are multiple shots of loyle Carner. We wanted
to use a lot of the same techniques that you can see in the video for
‘crazy dream’ as the editing style is one that we wanted to achieve for
our production. We took some elements from this video and
incorporated it into our own e.g. this video is visually appealing, due to
the fact that it’s a performance video the visuals to match the song need
to keep the audience happy which is why we used a lot of colourful
editing and strong visual effects.
This music video displays Adobe after Effects very well and it was
something that we wanted to add into our production but due to the lack
of editing knowledge and time we weren’t able to toy with these effects
which could have let our production down.
After looking into both videos we decided that we preffered the style of
the video ‘Again’ by Louis Culture due to its simplicity. The box effects
and the slow motion we thought would work a lot better for us due to the
factthat our song is slow and depressing. We thought that if we added
too much colour and effects it would take the viewers attention away
from the issue within our video.
Techniques
After looking into style it leads me on to talk about the techniques that
we used. Throughout the video John and I experiment with lots of
different production techniques. John’s specialism was Camerawork
which meant that he researched into and played with different
techniques such as focus pulls and dolly zooms.
This is one of the shots that demonstrate an example of john using the
focus pull technique. In this shot the camera is focused on me standing
in the field and the focus then pulls away onto a shot of me standing by
the bypass bridge. This technique worked well for us as it draws the
viewers’ eye from one thing in shot to the other smoothly. It made the
production look more professional as john did this multiple times.
These are the shots that demonstrate this specific technique. It shows
the audience how the abuse and fighting is progressing and getting
worse over time. It’s at the point when she has me on the ground and
carries on to hit and kick me. This conveys to the audience the extent
that it has got to. It’s not just an argument, its abuse.
Another technique that I researched into and played with was the strobe
effect. I also completed test shoots on this technique so that I could
demonstrate how I’ve learnt how to do it and that I’ve practised it
multiple times before incorporating it into our production. Researching
into it helped me a lot to learn the technique as I learnt about setting the
strobe period to a longer time than the strobe duration so that flashes
faster. By setting the strobe duration to 0.03 seconds and the strobe
period to 0.10 seconds means that the strobe effect is fast paced and it
works well with the clap sounds in the song.
This shot is where the clip of Emma grabbing me is strobed behind the
shot of me lip-syncing. This worked well as it meant that the clips fade
well together and it makes it more visually appealing, it also gives those
few shots a much more professional vibe. This shot gives the chorus of
the song a much stronger effect due to the fact that the strobe plays
when the bass and the main beat of the song drops after the pre chorus
build-up of Emma looking through my phone. This worked well as it
shows the audience how the violence starts and they then see a shot of
me screaming the lyrics which makes the scenes more believable as it
looks like it’s me who’s saying it and who is affected by it.
From researching how to do this effect by watching YouTube tutorial
videos I was able to learn that you can play with the strobe effect in
different ways, for example if you set the ‘strobe’ from ‘operates on
colour only’ to ‘Makes Layer Transparent’ it makes the clip that you
place above transparent so when the strobe plays instead of it just being
flashes of light it flashes the clip above it. By putting an additive dissolve
on the end of that clip as well meant that after the strobe it fades into the
‘transparent’ clip. This gives it more of a music video vibe and it makes
the video less boring for the audience as there are effects to keep them
engaged.
I also looked into colour grading a bit, I previously knew how to do some
of this but by watching tutorials on how to
do it properly I was able to incorporate this
technique into the editing process. I leant
from a YouTube tutorial video how to play
with the mid tones and shadows etc of a
clip which makes a massive difference as
you can add vibrancy to any clip to make it
look warm or colder depending on what
you’re trying to convey.
Our music video is based off the conflict between a male and a female in
an intimate relationship. We wanted to show both sides of the argument
so we decided to show me talking to someone else on the phone and we
also show how Emma’s effected by what’s happening as well as how the
abuse is effecting me. By showing both sides of the conflict we were
able to show the audience that what’s going on in the video is effecting
both of the characters in different ways.
This is the shot in the opening scenes
of the video where you can see Emma
crying over a blurred shot of me in the
field. This clip shows that Emma’s
upset about what’s happening and
she’s thinking about me due to the fact
that the clips are overlaid. This
technique gives implies to the audience that Emma’s thinking about me
and is very upset.
Characters
The characters in the production played a massive role as they had to
be right so that they would suit the role the best. We went through
audition processes in order to find the right actors for the production. We
auditioned Joe for the role of the male in the video but he couldn’t take
the lip-syncing seriously so we decided that I would audition myself. I
was auditioned by lip syncing the opening few lines of the song, I took
this part seriously and put my all into it so it meant that I was the right
person for the job as it looked a lot more believable. I had an interview
with John where I discussed how I think I’m best suited to the role due to
my knowledge of the song and the genre of music.
I had to play the role of a young man who is insecure and is very
vulnerable due to the abuse that he’s being put through. I think that I
suited this role well due to the fact that because it was our production I
knew exactly what emotions I wanted to put across and I knew how I
wanted to portray them for different shots.
For the role of the female in the production we had to find someone
that’s loud and overpowering. We felt that Emma was the best option for
this role due to the fact that she has experience in acting and she knew
the song so she knew how she wanted to play her role as well as
guidance from us. The fact that Emma and I at the time were in a
relationship made it better as we weren’t awkward around each other
when filming which helped a lot due to the fact that it meant that we
could act normal and just have a chat when filming the scenes where we
are looking like a good functioning couple. Emma had to play the role of
a girl who’s insecure but feisty at the same time. Emma suited this well
as she has both of those quality’s so the acting part for her wasn’t that
hard. Especially for the scenes where she’s beating me up.
Throughout the production there are different qualities that I think are
really good and really bad. They include technical qualities, aesthetic
qualities and creative qualities.
Some of the technical qualities that I really like and I think that went well
were mostly in the editing process, for example by me learning how to
use the strobe effect I was able to demonstrate how the technical side of
our production has improved and adapted over time. The qualities link
together, for example I think that the technical and aesthetic side of the
production links well as due to the technical work that I put in during the
editing process payed off and made the aesthetic of the whole video a
lot better and made it more visually appealing. Other technical qualities
were the camera shots and angles. A lot of the time the shots focus
pulled but sometimes that effect wasn’t wanted, I think to improve next
time we need to take the camera setting up into deeper consideration.
The aesthetic qualities of the video was how it all came together to
produce a final piece of work. I think that it went really well due to the
fact that although at some points the shots weren’t focussed, a lot of the
time this worked well as it made the clips flow better. When some of the
clip transitions went from out of focus to a focus pull this works well and
is aesthetically pleasing. The makeup also gave off good aesthetic
qualities as it made it look professional and added to how the music
video looked, it’s
more aesthetically
pleasing than the
first draft.
We then asked the survey if they thought the editing was good and
which parts they liked the best. This helps us have a better
understanding of the aesthetic qualities within our music video. A lot of
the feedback was helpful as it mentioned how the colour grading was
good and the transitions which boosts the aesthetic of our production
and the feedback also gave us the opportunity to improve the
productions aesthetic as we were told by one survey participant that the
effects and colour grading was a bit random at times so after this we
were able to make corrections to our work by making the effects,
transitions and colour grading less random by making a lot of the colours
and transitions the same. I think next time to improve this we should of
sent out a survey earlier in order to gain feedback faster and less near to
the deadline date.
Comparisons
This is another song by spooky black which also lays in the Lo-Fi genre
the video is an example of something that is similar and also different to
our production. The similarities are. The way that their editied, for
example in this music video you can see how spooky black has used the
overlaying effect for a lot of shots, there will be a shot of him in two
different places but within the same shot.
I think that now after completing my Final Major project I am much more
suited to the industry than I was before due to the fact that from doing
this project I’ve learnt and mastered techniques that are a vital part of
music videos and media production. By doing this project I’ve been able
to gather that editing is what I want to do in the future and I would love to
go into the media industry. I have learnt camera skills through working
with John and working in a pair helped me a lot and I know that
teamwork in the media industry is crucial to complete professional well-
polished productions. After doing this project I feel like I am way more
suited to the industry than I was before and I want to pursue a career in
film making thanks to the Final Major Project.