Final Evaluation

For my final project of my media course, I decided to create a music video. I had created one of
these the previous year but decided to focus on different elements to show how I had improved in
my final evaluation, especially with editing. My aim was to use Adobe After Effects, mainly, to edit
the video together and focus on props, costume and location in the production phase. Although
faced with many problems during this project, I feel that I have created something I can be proud of.

Ideas Development

For the unit before I commenced my final project, I had to write an essay on a specialist study. In my
specialist study, I research and spoke about visual effects in a music video as well as music videos
recreating films. As I had chosen these two ideas for my specialist study, I wanted to focus on them
for my idea. After deciding on a main theme of nostalgia, I started to brainstorm ideas for my final
project. I really wanted to re-create films in a big-scale for my music video, which meant a variety of
locations as well as cast members. To start with, I thought of locations for certain movies, as well as
costumes, how many cast members I would need and props. The first problem I came across was
trying to link all these ideas together. Without a storyline, all of the movies seemed to just be there
and have no purpose. For this reason, I struggled to think of a good enough storyline to be recreating
movies in a music video. After a few days of thinking, I re-watched Ferris Bueller’s day off and really
appealed to the opening of the film, where he speaks to the camera. I thought this would be a good
and short way to open up the music video and create an introduction that could explain a storyline.
With this, I also thought the ‘day off’ element was quite fun which is how I established a storyline.

Research

After coming up with my final idea, I had to research into everything. Because of my problem with
idea development, I researched into 80s and 90s films a lot before I came up with my final idea, this
was so I could get inspiration. I decided what to research based on what I had looked into on my
specialist study and how I could further this into a lot more detail. My researched was sustained
throughout my whole project as I was constantly looking at films and scenes for inspiration as well as
getting constant feedback. I found that I was still adding research to my Weebly website during the
last few weeks of the whole project so that I could constantly gain an understanding of how
successful my project was going to be.

Secondary research was a huge part of my project as I had to make sure that I got the costumes and
other elements of the 80s and 90s movies right. My secondary research mainly influenced the
editing and the style of the music video. However, with my primary research, it influenced the
content more. This was because it was feedback and statistics I got from my audience. The questions
I asked my audience were always about the content of the music video, i.e. costumes and song
choice. This made primary research the most important part of pre-production because I had to
make sure it appealed to my audience.

My research allowed me to add things to my music video that I hadn’t thought of before. For
example, I added Cher from Clueless to my music video as it was the most popular character from
my survey, and I hadn’t thought of using that film. As well, my secondary research gave me
inspiration to add a VHS style to the whole edit from looking at different existing products.

Covid-19
The biggest problem I faced this whole project was the obvious global pandemic. The whole country
was put in lockdown a week or two before the pre-production phase so I had to modify my idea so
that I could still achieve my aim (bringing nostalgia to my audience and creating a product I was
proud of). Throughout my week-by-week evaluations, I spoke about many of the issues that I came
across now that we were in lockdown. I had to scrap my main idea completely because I couldn’t use
other cast members or other locations for my final project. However, I kept the main structure and
storyline of my original idea because I thought I could adapt it into a different music video.

I managed to come over my biggest problem (covid-19) by deciding to film it on my own in my

bedroom and tie it into the on-going situation so that it made sense and related to the audience.
This would make it easier to write a script to the Ferris Bueller scenes as I had a clear topic to
discuss.

Pre-Production

When it came to my pre-production, the only issue I came across was the storyboarding. This was
because I didn’t have specific shots I wanted in specific places. The camera would mostly be in one
angle and a lot of the dancing would be improvised. For that reason, I didn’t know what would go
where until it came to the editing. The most successful and helpful pre-production documents for
me, however, were the script (for the Ferris Bueller part as I mostly used the actual film as a
storyboard) and the lyrics I annotated. Usually, on set, I have a script and a storyboard, however for
the dancing part, I kept the lyrics with me the whole time and kept referring back to the annotations.
I think my planning was thorough as I knew just what I needed to do. However, the part I know I
didn’t plan well enough was checking the weather, which caused problems for production.

Production

When it came to filming, I planned to finish it all in one day. However, I didn’t take into account how
long it would take to film the song 3 or 4 times in each outfit, as well as change from outfit to outfit
and have a few breaks. When I successfully finished the first day of filming, I decided to do the
second shoot (Ferris Bueller scenes) the next day, however from lack of planning, I didn’t realise that
it would be raining the rest of the week. I ended up having to wait until the end of the week to
continue my filming. In the future, when I film, I need to make sure I check the weather on the shoot
date so that this doesn’t occur again. Apart from this large set-back, production ran quite smoothly,
and I was still left with lots of time to edit.

Post-Production

I tried to use my production set-back to my own advantage, so begun to edit for the 3 days I wasted
because of the weather. This was very successful for me to do because I was able to make a rough
cut of the dancing scene, sync up all the audio and then import it into After Effects. I had time to add
the VHS effect and style the video how I wanted to before I began my second shoot. Although I was
set-back by the weather, I successful got around the issue by filling my time with editing. I think this
was very successful as I could’ve just waited until after I shot the second scene to begin editing, as
planned.

I had more than one stage of editing this final film together. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the
Ferris Bueller scene as well as to put the whole film together. However, as well as using Adobe
Premiere Pro, I also used Adobe After Effects to edit the dance scene with visual effects. I wanted to
be able to put all of my After Effects skills that I had learnt over the past year together and create an
edit I was proud of.

Something I came across during my editing was the timecode on the VHS effect in Adobe After
Effects. I wanted to have the time cut with every new shot, however, as I had added the VHS effect
in an adjustment layer, I would have to re-edit the whole edit completely because I would need to
set a time to every single individual layer. This would’ve lost me a lot of time and made me
potentially not finish in time. For this reason, I kept it in how it was, but I unfortunately later got
audience and lecturer feedback pointing this out. In the future, I will make sure I think about small
details of an edit before I start to avoid issues like this.

Presentation

For presentation, I created a few small Instagram promotional posts to lead up to the release date of
my final film. This meant I was able to create a small hype before my film was even watchable. These
posts were successful because I managed to draw in over 100 people by posting countdowns and
posters. To improve in the future, I may promote my final film on other social media platforms as
well as just Instagram as that will gain a wider audience as different age ranges use different
platforms more than others. Promoting my film was something I had not done before in this much
detail, and I think it is a really crucial step now that I have achieved this.

When I published my final film, I had a shortened version to post on Instagram first because this
would appeal to Blanks’ fans more than the extended version. I also released a version on Instagram,
which is where I’ve got the most views because I promoted it there.

Audience Feedback

When I got audience feedback, it was mostly positive, and my audience generally really enjoyed my
final film. One criticism was that sometimes I repeated the same dance in the slower sections of the
song, and it seemed like I was just waiting for it to pick up again. This was actually true, as I’m not a
professional dancer, nor am I a good dancer either! It was difficult for me to feel comfortable in front
of the camera to do so much dancing, so an improvement in the future will be to cast someone who
is confident enough to do that. As well, another negative was the VHS timecode not cutting, which I
spoke about in post-production. This shows that even little thing’s I have picked out previously still
effects the audience and the final product. From this feedback, in the future I will make sure to
change all things I am not happy with, even if it sets me back.

As a whole, however, the audience really enjoyed my music video, especially the animated effects in
the background (which was something I was really keen to try in this project).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think my final project was really successful, considering the circumstances I was
under. The audience seemed to really enjoy the music video and I was left with a lot of positive
feedback and hardly any negatives. As well, I successfully managed to create a visual effect on Adobe
After Effects, which is something I really wanted to do as I spoke about it in specialist study. I was
also able to focus on costumes to recreate characters that the audience easily knew who it was
supposed to be. I have got past many problems in this project and, despite them, still made a music
video I am proud of.