Reflection and Evaluation [My Process]

Within the process of making this music video I have tried to improve upon the weaknesses I showed in the creation of my AS media product. I feel that I gave myself a good foundation for the start of the process. The reason I felt the start was so important is because I wanted to become more fluent and professional in my process. To begin with I researched loads of music video to get a sense of style and genre I wanted to work in. Furthermore I had over the summer already got permission to use an artists song, which allowed me to work on what I wanted to do visually a lot quicker because I had already established a genre of music. However I did have to do further research on the different sub-genres within music videos and the variation of hybridisation of these genres. Compared to the previous time I had to research I felt that I improved within the amount of it I did and the depth that I went into. To further understand the conventions of a music videos I looked into specific features such as: smoke, location and lights. I felt that these were essential were creating the professional look within my Mise en Scene. Instead of looking at purely professional music videos I diverted to more unaccepted forms of music videos. I felt that this built a greater understanding of media I am working in and this help set a standard for what I want to achieve.

However planning was a different story because although I can draw at storyboard up from the foundations I laid earlier in the year, I felt that my ambitions have overcomplicated my approach to this. I wanted to make something extraordinary for this final product but didn't realise the time that I had to make it, furthermore I much preferred working in a group because although this does create challenges through disagreements, it means that the product was always becoming stronger. In addition to this, having to explain my ideas to other people forced me to write in detail about everything so that they would understand, without that I am finding it a challenge to get everything to paper in enough depth. An example of this is the storyboard, which is all done however the annotations on the storyboard aren't in enough detail to explain or post on my blog meaning that I am unable to make an animatic because the camera movements aren't definite. Another problem is now I am on my own, I am relying on opinions of people who aren't creating it, this means that although the feedback I get is critical I fear that my ideas are far to extravagant for one person to make, especially in the time scale. This means that I am skipping important parts of planning so that I can actually get the filming done in time, but these parts of planning are essential to making the shoots less stressful and overall making a better product. The fact that I have to perform the song as well makes the shoots even more challenging because my camera man is not part of the production process with me, which means I have to explain it to him instead of him knowing what I want to achieve. I am fine when it comes to the album cover task because I am confident in my photoshop capabilities and it will not take me too long. Overall I have done everything to some extent but it is not on my blog or it is not to the standard that I want. I need help with finding a suitable location to achieve a low key lit room, where I can have a black background.