Friday, 12 October 2012

A2 Media - Florence and The Machine - deconstruction - Final




Evaluation of our Florence and The Machine video producing
For this task we had many different choices to decide from, each video had to be between 30 seconds and a minute, these short videos included choice between a music video, a short film trailer and an advertisement. As every member in our group is each doing a music video for our A2 coursework, we thought it would be the best idea to create a music video together, as this can prepare all of us for the real thing.
We got together as a group in the class. Originally we were only allowed to be in groups of three or four. However, our group were having a few problems with some of the members as they weren’t turning up for the filming or editing sessions, another group in our media class also had this problem, so therefore we joined as on big group, amazingly the video turned out really well and each member of the group had their own role to fulfil.
The planning process involved in each member of the group to produce a 30second storyboard of any video of their choice. When each member had done this we then go together as a whole and decided on which we want to reconstruct. We finally came to the decision that we were going to use the Florence and The Machine – Rabbit Heart story board. We chose this particular storyboard as it looked possible and simple enough to recreate.  
After this we then decided whereabouts we could film the short music video. Me and Toni went on a tour around the outside of the college buildings and found two possible locations. The first location was the back of the field. However, there were a few problems with this location as in the background you could see the resident’s houses in whatever shot you wanted to take. We came across the pond area near the Wilson building. There was only one problem with this area and it was that there were bright yellow warning signs, but then we realised that this didn’t affect us because we were shooting about a metre away from the signs. This area was perfect as it had lots of grass and trees surrounding the performance area. This location related in image to the actual music video. Whilst we were looking at these locations I took a camera around with me and took several images of each place, this was so that I could use them for evidence on my blog.
When shooting the video we were very lucky as the weather stayed bright for the two days we spent on the filming of the video. It was unfortunate for the group that Han didn’t know the song but when she was in front of the camera you would never have guessed that she didn’t as when she was reading the lyrics it just came naturally to her. Some members of the group brought in costumes for the cast to wear, this was very helpful as we needed quite a few outfits.  The cast got into character very quickly and were changed into their outfits within a matter of 2 minutes, therefore not wasting huge amounts of time getting ready to perform.
However, whilst filming this video reconstruction we had a few minor problems, but which were all solved in the end. On our first day of shooting we didn’t realise that we were missing a line of lyrics until Han (the main act) started to mime to the music whilst reading the lyric sheet. At first we couldn’t figure out what was going wrong, until we came together as a group and analysed the lyric sheet. So changing this cut us back by a few minutes, these minutes were also crucial to us as we didn’t have a lot of time to film. Another problem that we came across was that it took a while for each member of the cast to get into character and figure out what they were meant to be doing whilst the camera was rolling. We should’ve maybe made up a routine for the backing performers to do, but the again this would waste time, so therefore whilst the main act was doing her solo part the backing performers came up with a short routine for the end shots. We noticed when it came to the editing process that we had spent too much time on the beginning of the video (the lace part) and could’ve spent a little more time on the group part, although the lace scene came out very good and also looked effective to the audience.
Overall I don’t think we did too badly on the task, although I have learnt a lot from it. When producing my actual media text I know that I am going to need a lot of patience and time on planning and getting it right. I need to be certain about my idea before I start to film as I don’t want to get half way through filming then change my mind.

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