Practical Skills Evaluation

 The Final

Practical and Professional skills I've covered but it's time to see how well I covered them.

Looking at camera and lighting I feel that I have covered everything necessary here, I have gone into good detail about the various areas such as what lighting is best for the right situations when filming providing decent advice into what lighting products work best for the right circumstances. When discussing DSLR basics and ISO usage I feel that I covered the right details and gave good advice based off of it, while providing examples of what I talk about to demonstrate points and show what happens when talking about the various settings and other accessories when doing so.

However I do feel that I had some weakness to in the work that I did for this area, for example when discussing standard lighting for photography studios, I only covered the basics of what the area had and only really covered the basic idea behind each lighting type rather than discussing not only that but real world application of these techniques.

In future I need to remember that while analysing and providing examples of what each technique can do is good showing and giving real life applications and effectiveness is also necessary as that's where they'll be used more than how they have been used in the past.

The next area to cover is legal and health. I covered this exceptionally well as I gave some strong real world examples and scenarios as well as relating them to the current project.

In relation to health I covered all applicable situations that could arise from doing certain pieces of work or projects, it covers damages to camera operators, actors and others around the area while the project is underway and how best to cover them from these incidents should they occur. However it's not just damages to people directly but indirectly like having something wet around electrical sockets etc.

When covering the idea of legal I feel like this was my biggest strength. I covered all possible legal conflicts or ideas when making a production from copyright to fair usage and actor regulation. I made sure that every aspect showed what each part does and more importantly how these aspects would impact the production and how I would help move it along from there.

The next time I do a project like this the improvements would be based on the lesser amount of detail that I gave to the health aspect of productions as while the multiple posts gave them good coverage I feel that there was still aspects I could have given more details to or maybe instead of giving a great focus to the real world part of the development I could instead have provided more considerations that might not be known to most but still give importance to the production as a whole.

Lastly would be planning and how effective I was at doing so. In the first project I covered planning to a heavy degree, talking about shot lists and equipment as well as budgeting and other such necessities for a large scale production.

For the promotional video I feel that this was my strongest area as I gave great detail to every important area within it and showed how each of these details impacted my decision. I feel that my strongest piece in this was discussing the budgeting as I provided greater detail from this and demonstrated how these details would impact the choices I make for my project.

The music video was weaker I didn't give as much detailed analysis of the same areas as before and what I did cover was flimsy and didn't capture what I discussed to the same effect as in previous projects. I only gave small pieces of what each was alongside what I was using them for.

For future projects and other such ideas I need to dedicate the same amount of time to the each area in order to make sure that they're all as effective as each other to give me the best result for my project which helps me to ensure that I'm getting a quality product by the end. 

Editing Review

 Review overall

With the end of the units I feel that it's important to cover everything that I have done that involves editing, from things I've made to assessing other works.

Starting with how I have assessed other works, when I looked at Jaws I assessed how the edits were put together in order to give greater meaning for the scenes. I felt that I covered this area well, I covered all the camera shots alongside how they were edited in place in order to seem sequential or how those edits created meaning. An example of this is found when I covered the edits between the characters talking and how the edit of jumpcutting to the protagonist showed the isolation compared to his peers.

Now this is not to say that I couldn't improve, for example I could have gone into more detail about why there was such little editing within that scene and how that helped to boost the impact of the scene as there was a primay focus on the two around the table or how the simple cuts were used more than others that were too.

Easy Rider was a less than strong argument about how editing was used. For a start there was little to no assessing of the actual edits themselves but more of a recap in what was used, I also only referenced them in a proper light when refereeing to them in the context of other pieces of the scene meaning that there was no cohesion in how I looked at the topic.

For next time when I look at this idea, I should have more dedicated to the editing techniques, what they are, how effectively they're used but most importantly the impact they have on the scene and the audience overall as this will give me not only better detail when assessing these edits but gives me more of an idea of how that could impact the scene later on.

When I discussed the rules of cinematography in talking about shots, I mentioned how these were edited together (should they need it) in order to create a strong scene. As this mention was only breif however I feel that I gave the detail necessary to be understood about how it relates to the largeer set as a whole.

I could have given more detail about why these shots needed to be edited together for the scenes to achieve their effect, for example in the shot reverse shot, which would have made my point on why its important to the set-up stronger but I feel that I achieved what I needed to for this are despite this.

For the music videos I'll give a brief summary of each below:

In the Katy Perry video I covered the impact some of the chosen edits had on the video as a whole and more importantly how that gave an extra layer of meaning and depth to the song overall. I feel that my coverage explained how impactful these edits were to a basic level and gave a brief explanation as to why it had this impact.

I could have given some better inclusion to these edits and talked about them in more detail such as explaining an idea of why certain ones are used the way they are. I also didn't cover them in the right way, it was in the context of talking about the narrative of the video itself rather than dedicating its own section to make my points clear and just giving the context of the shot.

For the Tenacious D video I briefly go over what's needed but it's in no way detailed and barely covers what happens in the video for the edits to be effective enough to cover the true effect of the edits within the video itself and therefore any detailed analysis or results that I could have gained from it which would impact my own work.

In future I should remember to give explicit details about the editing as a whole and relate it back to my own work to assess the impact it could have on my own production.

Onto my own productions:

The first is my new wave film. Within this I feel that I managed to achieve some goals, for example I gained meaning from edits by having them demonstrate certain effects and impacts that I wanted my production to have, for example using a disorientating transition in order to demonstrate a passage of time but also to show the characters dizziness and confusion in a literal sense but using this method also gave the audience the same feeling of confusion. The sequence in which its edited together does show a clear story narrative in a focused order and everything was put into the place for it and worked well with each piece within it.

Improvements I could have made are to maybe make it a bit more clear about the story arc or given it a bit more of a clear focus to the actual thing itself. The transitions could've been a lot smoother too between scenes and making sure that each one had a clear purpose for being used.

For next time I think stronger plannign would give me a better result and clearer focus and structure to what I had to make, but it would also give me something to proof my final product against to see how it compares to what I had envisioned over a guide of what I want done.

The last is the music video. This was my worst, the edits emphasized the idea I wanted but were sloppy in use and placement, contrary to typical music videos the edits that I used here did nothing to amplify the lyrics of the song or the visuals themselves of the video. The use of them was bad too, it seemed to be just for the use of that changing from one scene to the next.

In  future I need a better dedicated structure for what I want to get out of the video and how well what I've chosen to do goes with the lyrics of the song which gives strong amplification of the song used in order to hghlight more meaning to it. 

Evaluation Part 1-The Plan

 Where Did I Go Wrong?

So now we come to the bit which all artists fear. The evaluation. Now this will be in two parts the first being my plan and strategy and the next will be of the final product that has come out of the plan.

With that lets get to it, so I'll break down each section of the plan like I did in its dedicated post and discuss the good and bad points about it and where I could improve.

First I'll cover the legal and health concerns and how I worked around them. Overall I think that in terms of the considerations I looked at all the necessary bases that I needed to in order to make sure that the final video is successful but that more importantly if there's any legal problems in regards to distribution. The first point I made was about royalties, now looking back at it I can see that while it was important and necessary to cover I won't be making money off of this however looking in a broader perspective it will be good to go over at least once. The other consideration that I feel was covered well was the fact of legal ownership and rights to the intellectual property and the consequences thereof.

Now onto what I consider to be the worst parts of the plan, as I'm sure that you can tell my planning was not great from the get-go it wasn't detailed at all in the right places and was all too brief for the scale of project that I was working on, going backwards from how I structured it in the post.

So other logistics I needed to spread it out more and give better detail into each one even if I didn't to clarify what each section was due to it being covered in a separate section, looking at it now the other significant logistics are all but non-existent and the only good thing was the look at the equipment for the production.

The second part would be the idea portion of the plan, while I feel it was good to scrap the original plan and use something I felt confident with I shouldn't have ditched the first project entirely as it had a somewhat planned out back-up incase things didn't workout and that should have carried over to the project that I am currently doing. In future what I or whoever does a similar project need to cover is the idea that a back-up is necessary for when things don't go right and make sure that it's viable for the project at large and work it into the plan.

The Evaluation 2-The Video

 

 Here we go the be all end all. The fruits of my labors and I have to say that it's rather plain and a bit dull.

So before I get into what went horribly wrong lets go through what was actually okay. For a start I felt that the transitions were okay, they worked well with the effect theme that I was going for in terms of a VHS style by using static to signify the change in what the primary visual is on the screen. On this area I like the overlay that I managed to put together for this as it helped to achieve the goal of home made that I wanted to achieve when planning out this video. There's not much to break down for the audio so I won't cover it as it's just the unedited band audio.

Back to the video and I think that the live video shots were alright. They weren't perfect or what I thought I could get out of it but for the purposes that I needed it worked well.

Now we get to the worst and where it went bad boogle, starting with where I left off above with the real time cinematography. The quality of the recordings was awful, the lighting wasn't anywhere near as consistent or developed as it should have been and the angle wasn't symmetric enough for the effect to fully work, now what was captured failed as well as the video files weren't originally compatible with what I was doing so there was no proofing on what settings the camera therefore it made an inferior product.

The synchronicity of how the visuals were aligned is really off as well, when you look at a typical music video you look at one of the examples that we've used for this area ordinarily the artist pre-records the audio then the visuals are aligned in time with the right balance between the audio and what's being shown on screen to get the full effect of the song as it were. It's not just this that caused big problems but matching the beat is way off too. Generally using the beat to mark where certain points go is vital as it can make or break the flow and unfortunately that's where I dropped the obvious ball for this area. 

Another point is that there's no general story or narrative behind the images I've used in order to reach any of the two ideas that I have discussed previously or the theory behind the original video that made it so successful.

Music Video Analysis 3-Human by Rag'n'Bone Man

What's Over Here?

 Alright now we come to a more recent number in that it was produced in 2016 and breaks up what we've seen so far in quite a few ways. In the past few posts we've spoken about star iconography and how this is used to sell the song more than the song itself and how its the brand of what the celebrity is sells the song. 

So if we look at this first there's a bit of it but it's not as explicit and in your face as some of the other songs that we've looked at so far it's just the artist stood however its more of a narrative message than any of the other videos we've seen. It's equality. Think about the lyrics and the visuals that accompany them, "I'm only human after all." followed by a blur shot of various different people and singular focus before going back to the artist once again which demonstrates a deeper meaning behind the visuals of the video itself.

This video works on a deep level as it tries to demonstrate an idea that we're all people and it uses interesting techniques to make sure that we understand this, I have spoken about Illustration before in this area and it does apply here as it does show a true visual of the lyrics but it has more of an impact behind it as it accompanies what's being said.

This does help to become further impacted by the environment brought by seemingly filmed in location at an abandoned warehouse helping to give this idea that we are all one in the same but isolated giving the song extra layers of depth and meaning.

Looking at this we can see a lot of inspiration from the ideas of Andrew Goodwin, in short one of his ideas comes from the thought of the visuals are more important than the audio of the song and that it should appeal to everyone and this is an idea that's represented within the video itself. The visuals are more definite to see this idea forward by having the main visual of the video being the change of person with certain audio cues.  

The Legal

 Why No Health?

So now get onto the big and the juicy bit again the Legal problems faced with making a video like this but first lets address something.

There's a limit to the amount of health concerns in this type of production. This is down to two primary reasons the first of which being restrictions, due to the COVID restrictions that have been presented and passed I'm not able to utilize as many resources as I would do normally which brings down the health and safety risks a bit. The second thing is limiting the use of original footage which come with it and doing that means that I limit the amount of people involved in this project which helps in terms of keeping things narrow.

I have spoken about legal and health in a previous post (See Promotional Video Tag) however this is an entirely different circumstance with new rules and methods of achieving the end goal for the entire project as a whole.

Now the big and the bad, the legal that hangs over every project and with something like this there's a few big doozies that need to be covered. In a video project like this there's an obvious thing to cover and that's the legality and licensing behind the music/audio used in this video. Since any and all music is licensed and protected in its own way is fully protected by copyright it means that how I proceed will need to be careful as there is no protections that I have which will make this claimable for profit.

Two stages would need to be completed before I could do this the first giving a portion to the official owners of the song and its rights in this case would be the band 'Tenacious D' and the production company there of as they own all the rights to anything made off of it as royalties.

A Royalty is a small portion of profit to be paid out to any owning company for the song or material used when in being used for monetized purposes, it works in a similar way to when you buy a song off of a platform like Spotify. You can pay a predetermined amount of cash for the track, some of that will end up with the platform company while some will go to whoever gets paid the royalty amount which is ordinarily the band or the record company depending on the owner for the rights.

The second is actually talking about the rights themselves, see when you hear in a private establishment a piece of established music like say 'OOPS! I DID IT AGAIN' by Britney Spears there's a license that the company or organization has submitted in order to be able to play and use that set of music within a commercial setting as its copyrighted and protected against usage through an unlawful or 'unlicensed' manner. This helps to protect the owner of the rights and ensures that they get a return and that their intellectual property is protected proceeding but it also helps to protect the companies using it from any unnecessary legal preceding's.

Obviously there's a work around from this and that's use royalty free music. This is free to use and doesn't require all of this technical jargon, but for argument sake its necessary to mention and learn as it's important especially to this project.

Now as I do not have any of this in anyway as the standard cost for a license like this can be anywhere between £300-£400 and this wouldn't help with a second condition of this project and that's the fact that I plan to post this on big social platform so unless I indicate in someway that I am legally covered I do not get the chance to use this in a financial way and posting it onto sites like YouTube mean that the end product will be placed on an unlisted method until this is sorted and it will also block me from being able to possibly monetize it.

Neither of this is a problem as I have no intention of gaining profit and I will share the link elsewhere meaning that the final product will still have reach and impact it will just be in a more indirect manner than before. 

The Plan

 What do I wanna do?

This is a reiteration of what I wanted to do for my last project (the promotional video) as such I won't go into too much depth with these as I covered them to a greater extent in a set of previous posts but I will still cover all of the necessary bases that are required so you get a good idea of what I'm thinking.

Mood Board

So we'll start with the basics of any good production plan and that's the mood board. Now all of you know what a mood board is from a previous post that I made from the last project that involved it, so I won't cover it to much but in essence it's a stage of the plan where you take inspiration from evidence around you and make sure that everything you have is relevant to the project that you wanna make and develop it to make some sense and have it as almost like a proof of concept.

Having the board is essentially like saying "Hey this technique or idea is interesting, I think it could be applied to X through my video and it'll add the layer I'm looking for." so you draw from it in order to get yours to be as unique as possible from outside sources.

So this would be my board, four videos to demonstrate where I took my ideas from. 3 out of 4 of them feature the main artist stationary in some way and one follows a narrative in some way.

This I thought would be a good way to start having some thoughts about what I wanted to get out of it. Given my small amount of resources I decided that making a video using this trend would be a good idea, with the thought of making sure it had a comedic edge to it as this would suit the type of song well.

Taking the idea of a narrative worked well too, this would enable some good planning and projections to make sure that I more control over what I could produce and more importantly will help me to make sure that and it would be great in helping to create a structure making sure I match videos to the beat of the audio.

 Examining the existing video

As this is essentially a remake of an existing video I need to look at what ideas are present inside it as well as what techniques are used to ensure that I make sure to not step on anyone's toes and avoid some serious bite back. This examination has already been written about in a post previously, titled Music Video analysis 2 where I break the video down and talk about some of the ideas techniques and images that they use.

What's the idea?

So now I have looked at the video and thought about some ideas from other ones too and have decided that making my video will be making it in a more comedic sense of things as this will be a good idea to make sure it gets a more wider appeal. It also follows in with the theme idea of the original video itself as much as it is a serious rock type it lets itself be silly with some cheesy effects and ideas itself so I was going to play off the basic of the comedic element from the footage I have in order to make sure that I get it to look bad but work it so that it becomes almost the point.

So after talking to a few people in the form of surveys and a focus group I got a clearer idea of what direction would be best in order to make this project a success. A suggestion that came out of the focus group was to have the footage to look like an old VHS style using an overlay which was a great idea to play the minimalist and to get the full effect of the minimal that I was looking for.

So using the feedback from those areas I can now develop it a bit more, so using the idea of minimal but adding to it by making it seem like a home movie using static for transition from time to time to make sure to keep up this aesthetic. The main purpose behind me doing this is to have the video match the lyrics in a narration form whilst keeping in with the idea of star iconography and other such things.

The Times

So as I have discussed previously discussed setting up a schedule in order to keep up with times and keeping an orderly production is key. Now in the last project I already discussed what a Gantt Chart is and why they're important so I'll keep the summary quick and light, so this helps to give a quick showing of how long the project will take in a more visual style and helps to show a client or team how long you want to spend on each section of the project.

Here is my schedule blocked out into different sections based on the different stages of the production. I kept it to the same style of my previous project as when I was structuring out the various sections for this one the structure of where time was dedicated felt good and that each section had enough of its own dedicated time which lets me ensure this project gets the full quality that the final product deserves.

Now on the face you might think that the various considerations that I made from the last project (see Promotional Video Tag) would just factor in, while this is true not every part is the same for example the filming section links within the planning more, I have spoken in previous posts about how different a music video is to the standard type of video that everyone is used to as it follows different patterns like iconography or choreography which means that you need to plan around it to have an idea on the basic structure to make sure that all of that is incorporated to the best level possible and to a capacity that means the goals are fulfilled (which more often than not is selling the artist and their brand.)

Remaining Logistics

So with all of these ideas and other plans coming together there's still a lot to talk about so I'm going to quickly go over what's left of the planning stage here before moving. 

In essence there is little to no storyboarding related to this type of project as much as it is a recreation of an original music video it almost becomes a fan-made tribute so there wasn't as much planning behind many of the shots in the production but it also helped to keep in with the idea of this to make it as corny and home-made looking as possible so using  minimalist planning and structure helps to achieve that goal.

Equipment list is small too, I've summarized everything I'll need in the production below:

• Camera-Standard DSLR with a basic rig- Free
• Tripod-Normal and used for stability when filming- Free
• Inflatable Guitar-Prop for great usage in filming to help provide the sense of a guitar as back-up incase main prop gets lost or damaged- Free
• Microphone-To help in an emphasis of singing and mark a shift within the edit- Free
• Book-This will help me to mark beginning and end points on the video but also provide a good point of reference for the calmer bits of the song- Free

Everything here has a reason for its involvement as I have stated above and everything that has been used in this production is free as I have it on hand in one capacity or another.

The Idea Generator

 Coming Up With an Idea

So in a previous post I was talking about planning stages and one of them was the biggun, coming up with an idea. Since I didn't cover this in enough or decent detail in that post here's full stage planning of the video that got turned out at the end of this process.

Looking back at that post in particular there was a few ideas that were brought up. Mainly the initial one which was producing a video to the song 'Shoot To Thrill' by ACDC and this was a good idea as there wasn't technically a current or existing official video for the song to work alongside it meaning that whatever ideas I came up with for this would be their own.

Obviously the first thought is to do something big dumb and crazy as that's what would be good and generally considered the norm for a video like this as it plays well into the idea of the song itself, but that wasn't the angle that I wanted, I wanted something unique and different to work alongside the lyrics and maybe not create a master piece but somethig
n that was fun for the viewer. To that end I ended up participating in a focus group in order to get a wider range of opinions from a bigger body rather thna my own brain.

I collaborated with other craetors who were working in a similar field to me and were bouncing ideas off of one another to get the crowd reactions and get the best possible outcome for our projects, when I presented my mood-board to the group at large and what my thoughts were based off other sources from around the same area as examples and with what I had planned originally for a back-up should the main faulter.

A lot of really great ideas came from this session, my new idea came from a spur of the moment decision made at 3AM where the back-up and primary ideas got scrapped due to a number of reasons. The main main one being a complete lacking of application or resources in order to achieve the best effect possible for the chosen song, the continegncy/back-up plan for the video wasn't particularly great either as it wasn't fully fleshed out and was a mess of ideas that weren't fully coherent.

Upon realising this and other short-comings of the idea due to limited resources and timings I couldn't make it so I made the choice to change track and video idea, but I took some feedback that was brought up from that focus group and from it I got the main idea that I have been working with.

The contingency plan was to make a live action version of the video, so it would still be a remake of sorts but the drive behind was to incorporate some of the original music video as well as remake some more of the other elements in order to achieve a great effect. Using this would also help to achieve my goal of making it appear to be a homemade video in the style of a VHS tape as live-action is typical of this method of video production and as such there comes certain conventions, like there has to be noise on the screen and slightly diluted colours.

I was listening to 'Tribute' by Tenacious D and a load of ideas came through my head and I began to wirte out and think about what I could do with this and I settled on the idea to remake the original video of the song but with a home film appela to it while keeping the idea of the original cheesy humourus visuals to go with the song.

So that's the full length story of how I went from an original plan of using ACDC to off piece cheesy home movie humour within Tenacious D.  

The Plan

 The Video Plan

So I started planning my idea for the video and I wanted to keep it brief for here, so I started with generating a shot list.

My idea is to recreate the original video to Tenacious D Tribute but with a more creative twist. Instead of using live action as the subject for the video I have chosen to use stop-motion figures and models and more visualization of what's going on with the song. The type of live action I would go for is to use stop motion similar to that of Wallace and Gromit (Seen Below) but the change would be if the creator was on acid so as much as the graphics would be crude and rough around the edges there would also be some more manic images or ideas present an idea of how this would look is below the source image. This would help to achieve a point of visualization of the lyrics to an emphatic degree but also would help me to achieve one of my goals of providing a bit of humor with stop-motion animation and these little icon transitions.

Shot 1-Angle up looking at a stage with two models on it one of whom has a small guitar shape the other has a microphone in front of him. First two lines of the song.

Shot 2-Bird’s eye view of the two models moving down the desk pan down to them moving away from the camera. Match to the second and third.

Shot 3-Low-angle shot of a shelf with a new model on it, one with hons and a backlight to it. Illustration of lyrics, match the 4 lines. Transition jump cut pop (so nothing initially then jump to it being there)

Shot 4-Medium shot of model, floating symbols to demonstrate the next set of lyrics following an illustration theme of the lyrics. Ninth line set for this shot.

Shot 5-Close-up shot of two models on the desk. Have actions match the next set of lyrics. Up to line thirteen. Jump cut transition.

Shot 6-Repeat style of angle for Shot 1 for two lines, have camera move back showing more of the stage and an audience. Have a globe spinning behind in accordance of the next two lines.

Shot 7-Extreme close up on the eyes for the next line closely followed by;

Shot 8-Have a mid-shot of two models both with a 1 above, have them meet and become a single one with 2 above before separating out into a bigger and smaller model with 2 and 1 above them before remerging into a singular with 3 above it.

Shot 9-Pan up to the sky shooting star across it for the line after.

Shot 10-Back to the stage with images of a sun and moon both shining behind

Shot 11-Return to the low-angle shot of the shelf of the demon model with the back light with exclamation mark above his head before a tail move out to the right vicious swipe. Halo and a question mark above head

Shot 12-High-angle shot of two models shaking there heads one of them slamming something down. Following the next line have one of the models point to the other.

Shot 13-Close-up low angle of the two models with bright backlight on for the line “Ah, ah, ah, oh, wo, a-yo” with a quick cut to the demon model with a bright light on it making it turn away before going back to the two models on the desk.

Shot 14-For the next few lines of the song have some small strobe like lights going off. Mimicking shot 1.

 

This is what I drafted, here we can see the brief of the idea itself using ambiguous language as I hadn't decided the final method of visualization. However there's a structure outside of the numbering for the shots I have listed on screen now, which is to follow the flow of the lyrics to the song itself and using those to help me come up with ideas for what to have on screen.

The reason behind me using the lyrics to generate ideas is a two fold way to structure the video, it follows the flow of the video which means that synchronizing the visuals to the song is easier in the end and not only that but each shot works in tandem with what's being said to help boost the amplification of the lyrics to audio being played. The second is that the ideas came from the song itself which means that I can follow the rule of illustration that most music videos follow these days, but not just that however but a narrative for the song even though the song itself follows a narrative so it has to follow it in some way.

The next step is to work out the schedule. Now I followed a similar schedule structure to that of the previous project as it was an effective method with the right amount of dedication that can be set to each section and it also allows for suitable time during the production to make contingency plan or a bit of filming for the contingency in order to make sure that wouldn't start on the back-pedal for making the contingency.

The last planning section that I had to make was for the storyboard. Below you can see a sample of what I decided to go with for this production, it doesn't follow the usual format but as this production isn't typical I felt that I should try and capture the idea of what I was going for. Ordinarily on a storyboard you would have the motion that the characters and actors would follow while filming but as my characters are going to be done in stop-motion I felt that instead of showing the path and the motion of the characters I decided to make sure that you can see and tell the general positioning of the models/characters as I feel this provides a more accurate idea for the production more than others.

Questionnaires Pt 2

 The Results

Briefly before we get onto the results of the questionnaire I thought I'd give a bit of background behind the questionnaire itself. I sent it out to around thirty anonymous participants who also had a small sample of what ideas I had already in order for them to get a clearer picture of what I was asking about.

The goal was to help me narrow down before pulling together a focus group to help me iron out the final details, the main overarching idea for me to be able to make a few samples for the next stage. Below you can see an example of the general responses to some of the things that I asked in my questions:

The reasoning behind having a chart in this manner is that it clearly lays out each section that I asked after for a viewer, each section has a number and the thought process was the numbers that follow the labels are who voted in favour of having or using the previously stated.

Each section follows a question that I asked on the questionnaire relevant to the production so I broke the questions down in order to get me these categories.

As you can see there are some clear responses such as the choice between edited audio and unedited for the video, as well as stop motion over live action. This has helped to influence what I want to get out of this production as now I have a clear direction for the primary way of the production and it has also given me the chance of getting a decent back-up should the other flop.

In a more detailed format of specifics i.e. what I asked in terms of questions and how they were responded to, here's a few graphs that break it down: 

As you can see here this was a close divide when you actually look at the data. This helps me to determine that while another form of video is preferred I can still make the project a success even with it as a live-action.

This helps me in decision-making as well as allocation because it A) shows that if I were to get a live action video done then I need to dedicate the same amount of time to it as I would the other choice and B) Not to focus on certain parts of it but rather ensure that I give more thoughtful time to each shot if you will as this will effect the quality of what I put out.

Now this area has a much different result to it than any of the others because there's a clear majority over one than the others. 

As you can see on the left there was a small response in favour of this technique however the vast majority decided against it.

I didn't include a development box because I didn't feel that it wasn't necessary to the questionnaire at the time. This wasn't the best method for getting data as for a question like this as I might have missed out on something vital that could help the production.

Focus Group Pt 2

 The Findings

Armed with some feedback from the questionnaire I decided to take what was said into account and begin to make a video based around it. Soon enough I had a small draft sample ready and together to present to the focus group. I'll present the key points below separated out by each section discussed:

Generic Information

There were 3-4 people who participated within this focus group. It took place on Teams and lasted for around 12mins out of a 1hr 5mins video chat where I gave input to other creators as well. We held this on Thursday 6th May.

The Objective of the time

In this focus group I had a main goal of seeking guidance with how to proceed further in making my video. I had a few paths to go down and I wasn't sure which one would be the most effective choice to make this project a success, but my secondary goal was to see what edits would work with the song and the visuals in order to get everything put together in an effective manner.

The Main Q+A

Here you can see an example of the questions that I wanted to ask the group during our time. I'll go through them in brief:

I had two different versions of the same video ready to play and played both for this first part, for the first piece about the audio they liked a first option that I had available with a bit of diluted colour but a VHS overlay.

The second fell in line with what I expected from due to previous reference from the questionnaire where the original audio won out over an edited piece that had been made. This came from the fact that the group felt it made the audio quality seem of a lower quality and that any additional input over what's there already would distract from the song itself. 

The last question that I feel is important to address from this questionnaire is on the subject of lyrics on screen to follow along with the audio. The reason why I feel this is the final important one is because it could be done a lot of ways and figuring out what to do early on before the production goes into a lot of factors; some including tracking or making sure that the lyrics aren't covering any major pieces of the screen. The focus group decided against this as there would be too much information on screen and would distract from the main visuals on the screen itself meaning that there was a high chance of confusion of what the focus was.

Issues and Resolution

A few issues were brought up about the draft video that was shown during this, the top being the best way to execute the video. As I was vague in the questioning and the draft videos didn't demonstrate the idea well there was a discussion about them in order for me to explain my ideas for the group to understand and for us to proceed.

The second was concerning the audio, I made a big point about how the edited audio was good and that it related well to the topic of the video that I wanted to make. However they advised me against it because the sound while different seems poor and that could impact the audience enjoyment but also there could be disassociation between what the audience is hearing and what they're seeing. 

Research Techniques- The Review

 Evaluation

Let's start with the what I use and how effectively I did it.

When discussing questionnaires I think that the information I provided about what a questionnaire is was good, I covered both sources of information that you can get from using this method. Discussing primary and secondary sources of this was one of my stronger points of this section as it was easy to discuss and explain with justification on the good and bad points about it. 

However I do feel that there are areas where I could improve, such as providing better examples of where each method would be more useful for what type of thing being done but over all I think that Questionnaires were my strongest point.

Onto Focus groups, this one is a bit weaker as I couldn't really find a lot to discuss in essence because they're self explanatory really. We go through life doing focus groups when we work in a team so this becomes something that you know and just gets narrowed to specifics of what the discussion is.

There is room for improvement for example I could have discussed differentiation more when it came to how focus groups impact different decisions of a production, maybe gave some real world examples to back up my points too but overall I think that while a bit more wobbly this section was still okay.

The final section, live research where I carried out my own stuff. 

Starting with questionnaires, now I definitely had a lot to improve here for example instead of asking broad open-ended questions I should have had a more narrowed approach to get better results that could have helped me more in my production. The way a pulled together the data could have been smoother too and instead of loosing results by including a middle option I should have stuck to simple Yes/No formula to achieve the best possible result.

The focus group, this was definitely a luck one. I had no back-up group ready in case this was cancelled or people couldn't make it and with a group as small as it was that would've ended up hurting my production badly, not to mention the fact that I had no back-up questions or development points which would have been extremely beneficial to me and my research.

In summary I felt that I did better with the background of the techniques rather than putting them into practice themselves. 

Focus Groups: What are they?

The Breakdown

So Focus groups, I'm sure that we've all heard of them or maybe have been in one at some point but how effective can they be? All they seem to be is annoying and boring as a way of gathering information but as a way of getting opinions and the chance to talk about the product itself as well as being able to discuss further details about the product itself . It provides the opportunity for companies to get a better idea of how well the public will react to a new product or advert they're going to put out there, and you're able to get some better opinions from the idea than possibly from a questionnaire as you can actually see peoples expressions and body language.

The Good

So we know about what a focus group is so why is this a better preference than a questionnaire and as a good source of information for a project, well for a start as I mentioned earlier they are great for finding out more information as there's only so much a questionnaire can tell you. This comes from the fact that if you work with a focus group you can show a draft or demo of the production and gauge reactions from that but, it also gives the unique opportunity to speak with people to figure out their reasoning for the points given as generally with a questionnaire explanations are generally optional so the chance to get a more detailed response to what has been said is invaluable.

However it's not just the detail above questionnaires that makes this the superior but it also gives you a good point of reference when it comes to the development of the project, by this point it's good to have a demo or draft of what product your producing. Typically this would be when the product was till in its early development phase as it might not be as good within a week of the products end or launch but it's still useful to have as a marker for the making of the product.

  

The Bad

Now onto the bad, the first of whom is inherent bias. Now bias isn't a typical word used for things like research methods or within what's technically the preproduction planning stage but everything has it in one form or another so what about focus groups, how can they be bias? Well there's a few ways that I didn't even know, the first one is obvious when you think about and that's down to the fact of interest in the product itself.

When it comes to the interest of what's being made there's obviously a bit that can play a factor in this that would impact the results from the group as the people speaking have a pre-existing interest in what's being discussed whether it be good or negative there's always the chance that an opinion on the products being looked at making any results gained from it questionable.

Now a last thing to consider is the idea of getting opinions, it's the thought that a small number of opinions from this focus group represent the majority of people when that's not strictly true. In fact having a small sample size could potentially do more damage to the product than good hence why this technique is a follow-up on what has been changed based on what was given from a questionnaire and then convene a smaller group in order to get a final input. So this is an important point to consider that while similar to the topic I mentioned earlier in general but at this level it has a different outcome.

The Secondary

This is where it differs to the questionnaires and other types of research methods too, sure you can find evidence in the form of videos online for a focus group but they won't have the specifics that you're looking for so while you can get some secondary data, it won't give you any particulars that you need.

Instead the best form is to make up your own version of a focus group to get the best data possible, and it's not just at the start of a production either when putting an edit together there's a 'draft' video that can be put together based off of the material gathered earlier and then use that as a baseline for the group.

Reference List

OCR Business Studies for GCSE, 2nd edition (Paraphrase of Information)

Revise Btec National Creative Media Production-Revision Guide

The Pros and Cons of Focus Groups | Bloom Ads

The use of focus group discussion methodology: Insights from two decades of application in conservation - O.Nyumba - 2018 - Methods in Ecology and Evolution - Wiley Online Library paragraph of (179)

Music Video Analysis 2-Tribute by Tenacious D

Who and the what? 

So far we've seen Katy Perry and looked at what genres that her video would fit into so what about this song? Well for a start this isn't a typical music video and more to the pioint its not a normal song as it has to follow its own narrative structure.

When looking at this video a few things are identifyable easily, the first thing being a studio performance. We literally see them walking into a studio for most parts of the song, however this is not the only indication fo this idea, if we look at later in the song when they talk about the demon it's on a greenscreen with flooring to match the setting meaning that mosty things we would normally consider when looking at these songs wouldn't be as effective to apply here.

Going back to the idea of the video itself, trying to identify the genre is again quite easily identifiable and is seemingly related to Roar, it follows a narrative granted its preset and embedded into the song itself. So what makes this structure significant compared to another song liek Roar and more importantly why would this way be different to Roar? Well lets look at the video again, throughout we can see a lot of Artists Close-Ups the idea came from a man called Andrew Goodwin (who will be covered in a seperate post) who observed that any music video should several close ups of the artist(s) in the video itself in order to properly succeed in what it attepmts to do. There's an awful lot in this clip of that very idea whether it be in the booth, on the road or out in what we can assume is a shop and this brings us to a new idea.

Its something that companies all over the world use and that's selling the brand. It's not the product that they want to sell you but the brand which is exactly what's done here, now I'm not just singling out thgis video for it but this video does show the point pretty clearly by making sure that the more iconic member of the group (Jack Black) is always in the front of the shot set-up and the guitarist (Kyle Gass) still within the frame but in a not too prominent position compared to his co-star making it easy to identify who is meant to be used to sell the band through two ideas within the close up and that's the Branding and the Vulture of celebrities.   

Music Video Analysis 1-Roar by Katy Perry

 What's here?

So in music videos we see an awful lot of stuff but what does it all have to do with the lyrics we can hear behind them,  and more to the point why are most of them so gripping?

Well that all comes from the idea of the emphasis. Most of the time there are certain aspects of either the artist or the song itself, Katy Perry is a good way to show off this idea. One thing that's prominent throughout the video is the artist herself and that comes from the idea of star iconography where the artist shows in the video in order to sell the artist themselves as well as the song in order to generate traffic and profits .

 In this video there's a lot of visuals to do with the jungle which reinforces the visuals of the actual lyrics themselves. This comes from the idea of Illustration which plays a big part in the what I have called "The Big 3" of music video production where you make a choice while making the visuals to go alongside the song, the more general one is called Illustration that I have mentioned earlier where you do roughly no more than show a visual interpretation of the lyrics to the song. This can help in planning as you can make a better structure as you have clear point of reference when creating as you can match a change in scene to the beat.

Now as I mentioned earlier there is a big thing in this type of video called star iconography but this idea plays into a bigger one that's used an awful lot with femlae artists called the male gaze, I think I have spoken about it in a previous post (Mulvey And The Media) but I'll give a quick summary, its the basic idea that showing women in suggestive positions gives more attention to the piece being viewed.

Here may not be an obvious example of the idea of the male gaze but it does give a good look at what I mean, now at first the idea looks to be drawing attention to the monkey holding the piece of fruit but that's before the artist comes on screen.

The POV of the shot is the tiger which gives us further emphaisis that who weire meant to be looking st is the artist herself, one of the signature parts of a woman that men look at is their legs. This has been portrayed in the media to a large amount but it leads to a good point hat while we exepect that there's a lot of revealing clothing but this seems to follow more the actual tracking of the gaze itself rather than the simple stereotype of the idea.

Now there's not just theories behind the idea but genres too, and for this there could be a few that you might think of but for music videos the idea is different, you apply it more in terms for a music artist so if you think it could be a stadium for a concert that gets used or it could be on location such as a performance on the Empire Stadium. Following that we can tell that ebyond the song there's actually a story behind what we can see therefore this video becomes a narrative, which emans that while we can get the base enjoyment of the fun of the video there's also a clear structure that helps to connect the visuals on screen to the audience as they then subtly become invested behinf the story that the cideo is telling.

There's more surrounding the video itself and that's a narrative, specifically a performance narrative. This tells a story through the performance of the artist, if you listen to the lyrics there's a contrast between the performance of the star and the actual song itself. Using this in the video is a way of amplifying the lyrics in a different method as having the star acting brings your attention to certain points of the song. This links into a further amplification of the songs lyrics through having the artists face open at all times so we can see the lip sync which helps to give the song a strong point, this use of emphasis is reinforced by the use of edits between scenes.

There are parts of this video too that show exploration and have both characters in the beginning dressed is a stereotype explorer outfit while they move through the jungle exploring, this could be an intertextual reference to Indiana Jones. Looking at the male character seen on the screenshot to the left bares a resembelence to the popular character in his costume style and the environment around Katy Perry as the video goes on and she begins to discover more and more about where she is. However as much as there's an intertextual reference to the character Indiana Jones during the start of the video sequence the rest of the video has a similar thread to Lara Croft for the lead, her outfit and overall personality are similar to that of the character which help to bring together the idea of the cideo being about exploration and survival.

Carol Vernallis-The Conventions

 The what done right

Carol Vernallis is a media theorist who works in discovering meaning and depth behind music and music videos, she has a number of works about this topic.

She looks at a variety of factors when analysing a music video some of which we have looked at before in different contexts such as continuity and relationships between sound and video, meaning of editing etc.

A lot of ideas that she uses come from four categories that we look at when not only creating a music video but when we analyse one too. I'll cover her ideas briefly and what we can take away from these ideas when we make our own music video.

The first one of the ideas to discuss is her thoughts on camera work. Vernallis theorised the primary reason of having close-up shots of artists or the bands with in videos at the frequency in which it becomes almost common enough for a cliché is because it highlights the importance of the artists themselves but also it draws more attention to the way that they look in the video itself.

From this we can take and understand that camera work shows a bigger significance to music videos and the ideas presented from them, it highlights that stars play a big role in music video production as they are the USP for the production. It also helps for the audience to connect with the video as it's closer to the artist themselves and draws them in more as who their viewign is able to relate to the period of whenever its set as there's that additional layer of connectivity.

One of the big theories of everything media is continuity editing, now what this is is the idea that most videos will have smooth transitions or something to that in order to keep the audience involved with the narrative of the visuals on screen so that the audience avoids disassociation.

Carol Vernallis actually covered this idea in her writing ‘The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing'​ where she talks about the idea of why there's limited to no continuity editing for music videos, and I think this quote demonstrates this point: "Perhaps music videos avoid continuity editing because such techniques would give the visual track too strong a forward trajectory the image might seem to overtake the song" (The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing Page 3, line 5) I think this is a good argument as mst forms of media such as videos have what's called encoded information which the audience decodes inorder to get the meaning of what's been seen, understanding this point helps us for we come around to making our own video. It tells us from a quite reliable source that we need to be careful about the type of edits and transitions that we use as the amount of information being directed at the audience, but also that t can take away from the main purpose of the video which is to promote the song.

So this along with other points that Vernallis makes are almost like a tutorial in helping people to develop their own videos in a better way. From edits and how camera works to an idea of star iconography referenced in the same work it helps us to get a bigger and better understanding of what goes into the production of a music video and how we then interpret the visuals that we have seen.
The article was originally released back in 2001 which means that some of its ideas may be old, such as actually the idea of avoiding continuity edits. Before we saw that Vernallis spoke about makers employing them rarely as their use could lead to an overwhelming amount of information for the audience and instead stated this "Unlike films, music videos frequently intentional disjunctive cuts."  (The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing Page 5, Paragraph 3, Line 1) We know that this is interpretation is considered outdated as both film and music videos employ the opposite when it suits thr right purpose of the media product a good example of this in film is from Inception (seen below) the editing technique may be used to a different effect but the sharpness of the cuts to vastly different paces of scenes does show a form of disjunctive cuts can lead to audience disassociation with the scene as it breaks a traditional rule of continuity as there's no smoothness between each cut.

​ 

Here's a second case disproving the idea, in this music video from Duke Dumont we can see that actually there's a large amount of continuity within this video and actually it's not all that overwhelming for the audience as every shot matches well to a lyric and work well together to create an all around good music video. There are cuts within this yes but they are a part of the scene being played out and all it does is change the position of the camera in order to give the audience developed meanings behind the intentions of the artisit and song therefore making a strong case for this argument being an outdated point as there are more examples of this idea of continuity editing through the industry in the past 15 or so years.

 

References

functions-and-meanings-of-music-video-editing.pdf (wordpress.com)

Carol Vernallis- Functions and meanings of music video editing (slideshare.net) for camera work.

Carol Vernallis (slideshare.net) Scan readign for any details missed.

Questionnaires-The Breakdown

 The What and how

What is a questionnaire?

Answering this will give a better understanding of what they are and how important they can be when making any type of product. So what are they? Questionnaires work like this, you have a set amount of questions relating to the topic being covered (for example employee health) in order to get an idea of a wider margin of effects that something has had or to gauge opinion on a product or production depending on the situation.

What information can be gained?

There are two different types of data that you can get from this type of survey/questionnaire and when you begin to make or design one you need to think of when thinking up of one. The first one is Quantitative, this type mainly deals with measurements and numbers such as lengths or angles but it can be applied to media as well, we need to know the shot angles and locations not to mention timings too but how does that help us now? Well not only does it help when working out the camera work and setting but it can do a lot of work when it comes to pricing and sourcing, one of the best ways to get the data such as pricing or other data relating to this is through Secondary Research or Second-hand from existing sources such as the internet or newspaper.

Next is Qualitative which is less of a measure on more about what the characteristics then stats like its counter part, what can we get from this? Well if continue with our media example we can find out what people are looking for in a product promotion such as within an advert with it's visuals or persuasiveness, or maybe to get information on the product itself (if that's what your promoting) but they can also help to figure out what you want to make and how effective it will be once production is done.

Different Types

Now as with many other things within the world there are different types of questionnaire however there isn't as many different types as you think there are. The different types include:

Computer: This is where the questionnaire is sent out in an email and the receiver has to respond either through a link or document that attached to said email. As a method of distribution and response this is a good type to use as it gives people more freedom and time to respond. However there could be issues relating to inboxes such as spam folders etc. or the more likely outcome which is that people who get sent them will ignore what's sent through.

Phone: This type of questionnaire is more problematic than others mainly due to the fact that it has fewer methods of response. For example trying to gauge a full group response will be more difficult than a face-to-face or on the web type but the main thing is expense as more often than not companies calling out could be charged large sums if calls are made to multiple people over large extended periods. This is not including reception, possible language barriers and other such things that could have an effect. 

Face-to-face: This is almost self descriptive as it's done during the initial interview stage at the end of the talk, but this has many different forms such as being in someone's home or place of work which can make them feel uncomfortable given the circumstances but it's yet again more expensive for the company as they would have to pay for the copies of the questionnaire and the time spent outside of the office (and possible travel too).

Post: Now we've all had mail ballots and this works on a similar principle and can actually give some good results as people sent can reply to them in their spare time which means that data gathered could be more accurate. However again costs are a considerable thing to consider as it's a lot of pre-paid resources that could end up being put into the bin by the responder.

Strengths and effectiveness:

 So as a technique for collecting data how good is a questionnaire? Well if we look at it from a statistical stand point then we can see that it's certainly very helpful in getting a baseline for what's being tested, if different groups are being evaluated then it can triangulate the areas in which the groups come from or help find the groups that found it more useful than others. They can help with getting a general percentage for certain products/services or to help provide an idea of how it works for them (the consumer) and maybe an idea from a larger audience on what the company/organization can do to help improve it for next time.

These types of research methods used are easy to make and send then simple to fill out for the responder making it a much smoother process than some other methods out there. It helps to give companies a guidance for focus groups to talk about or to get information from even if it's verbal.

Weaknesses and limitations:

As with most things there isn't perfection coming out of this by any means there are a few pitfalls that come with using them. I mentioned previously throughout this response about company costings and this is a big limitation that changes depending on which type is used, if it's a physical copy that can go in the post then you have to think about printing costs and envelopes to send to them that also include a return on them. Linking there's also the possibility of phone costs as most phone numbers will charge whoever rings first which is more often than not the company who made it.

Yet it's not just costs that have an effect on it but the information gained, for example in a survey of 100 people there could be 12% positive response, a 20% negative response and then there could be an undetermined result of 68% which isn't exactly helpful data to use when collaborating all the data together which makes this a big weakness when it comes to getting the data together.

Conclusion:

When using a questionnaire be careful, making sure that all the information that you get is justified in how effective it will be to you and the business/product being made. There are some fairly big negatives against this, such as funding and the amount of data that's collected at the end of this compared to how useful it is compared to other methods. However for a founding baseline in the development stage of the production to help guide your ideas and the flow of how it then develops it becomes a better value of research than others.

Reference Link:

Questionnaires (research-methodology.net)

Understanding Qualitative, Quantitative, Attribute, Discrete, and Continuous Data Types (minitab.com)

OCR Business Studies for GCSE, 2nd edition (paraphrase knowledge given) 

  

Evaluation- How does it all come together?

 How did we do?

Well like all things we must now come to a conclusion on this saga of planning for creation. Now throughout this project I have had to work in the way as if COVID didn't exist which has been fun but it has meant that I cannot create or work with real-world clients for this production.

However this does not mean that the work is useless and I can still show how well and effective this production would have been. So lets get to it, we'll breakdown bit by bit before giving an overall on how well and effective the production would have been.

Lets start with the Gantt charts. As ugly as they can be they're quite effective as I spoke about in the post, my Gantt chart is effective in getting the timescale of the production done with detail available and accurate scales based form the time that the production is given right to the deadline. My Gantt chart demonstrates a good portion of how time would be dedicated to each section of the production and has some great colour coding to identify what section covers what in terms of what the main ideas and how the contingency plans would be factored in.

So while this has good what would work better would be a better structure when it comes to the filming portion of the chart as it is a bit of a mess and doesn't have that much of a clear structure so a better and more refined block would be helpful and key to getting it put together.

Budgeting was one of the more in-depth factors that I covered in this project it helped me to get a clear idea of everything in my head and got a better structure from them as it allowed me to better plan for timing when it comes to a structure. I got more out it when it came to the idea too as it got me to think on my feet when it came to contingencies and getting ideas together for the whole production itself while putting forward.

However when it comes to detail I feel as though I missed out on some extra details such as covering travel, extra equipment and other things like this.

Scripts are another story, because this is only roughly a page long I can't exactly pass a fatal judgement in regards to what it contains or how well it would work out in a professional production but what I can do is say that having the edits embedded within the script works well as it highlights where you want certain points to be changed and helps to show where you want certain things placed.

But where it falls apart is its length too, for a production of the scale that the client was looking for a singular page dedicated to a script may not reach what exactly the client was looking for in the promotional video.

Now onto the storyboard, this is where I both had great and flat moments in regards to how it came together. The detailing on what I wanted to get out of the shots I felt was good, it showed clearly and concisely what I needed to get out of each frame and how I wanted it structured to fit the vision. The drawings highlight this and the movements of not only the camera but the actors too.

Yet the converse to this is also that the drawings are a bit muddled and don't necessarily show exactly whose moving whether its the actor or the camera itself which when directing could confuse the directions and cause something to happen that could have a negative impact.

It's time to slay the big boy and talk about legal, now in terms of coverage I feel that I covered a great deal in its own dedicated post and mentioned a few different times across different posts. It had a lot of detail and I made sure to mention that we had everything put together to cover ourselves in the event of legal backlash and medical issues.

Of course in balance to this I'm sure that I didn't go over everything that's necessary or would be required for a production or that might have some good or bad impacts to it being made and that could be a problem for the future.

The equipment list was put together after pricing was done so we could make sure that we didn't need to tack onto the end so we made sure that we had everything possible together in one place for the client and for insurance to protect ourselves and claim back on damages done during the production.

Nonetheless I probably missed something when it comes to listing everything together like mis-en-scene or extra props or maybe some more important equipment for filming but I feel that everything was covered as extensively as possible.

Last but not least is the location recces, now here is where I would flop in terms of detail how well it was covered in terms of the first place location and then falling back on the contingency. This means that the client doesn't have a lot of evidence when it comes to the consideration of areas and ultimately means that if they decide its not to their liking because we don't have the evidence to back our claim that we have considered multiple locals then we could lose the commission as it places doubt in their mind as to our reliability.

Overall I feel that if I were given the opportunity to make this commission it would go well, there are a few things that could definitely be ironed out to get it to a high standard of quality for the client but I have high confidence that if given the chance, budget and time this commission would work out well.

Have a great day!         

Location Recce-Scout before you shoot

 What and where?

When we look at a location there's a lot that goes into the where of a production like legal problems (which we covered in the Legal post) not to mention thinking about the actual possibility of the production being actually viable in that area and whether it's necessary to use somewhere else.

Now depending on what production your doing you'll need to think about the location itself. If you're making a drama then maybe have a setting that can help establish the feel of the scene and better cement what you want the audience to take from the surroundings not just the characters.

For now though lets stick in the context of our production and the promo video. Now for the tone and general feel we aimed to get a strong up beat tone focused around discovery and learning so a hot contender for our location was a public park in a local town.

However this didn't pan out too well as there were a number of concerns and issues that were raised with the area itself such as its location means that its used an awful lot by people as a path in-between places like jobs or the high street etc. which meant that we unfortunately had to scrap that idea upon further inspection.

Luckily however we had a back-up location we could use for the video that we had waiting on incase something like this was going to happen. This is where our contingency plan comes into place, thinking about where things can go wrong allows for better coverage in the case that things do go wrong or what we plan for originally becomes unavailable. In this case we made sure to cover our location to ensure that we can still film but we don't have to lose anything.

The area that we have chosen for filming is known as Burbage Common, it's mainly used by people who go on longer walks and dog-owners but it's a large public space with a lot of areas that we were looking for when planning out our storyboard and reaches most of the marks that we needed. There's an additional benefit to this to in that the type of location it is allows for us to control more, I know that sounds strange but don't forget that earlier I said environment can help to set the theme or feeling of the video/scene therefore making sure that we can get the most control over the scene we can get and having this type of an area used for filming lets us control the message we want the audience to get.

The main reason behind picking this area is to make sure that we have that extra element of control behind what we want our audience to get from the production to make sure that our message is clear from the video about what the app is and what we want the audience to get from it.

Well hopefully this has given you a clearer idea of how location recces are used within a production and how a setting for a video will impact its setting.

Have a great day!