Music Video: Evaluation

For this evaluation of the process for my music video, I have referred to Gibbs Reflective Cycle.

To begin, I knew going into a project on music videos that I wanted to be more original and not reference an existing music video. Therefore, I chose a song that I hold quite close to me as it is relatable to myself and other people of my generation and, as it is a song from 2021 (Optimism by Rachel Wells) it isn’t too well known and a music video for it doesn’t already exist. I first heard of the song through my brother as Rachel used to be at the same university to him so it peaked my interest. Another reason why I wanted to use the song was due to its genre, being an indie pop song. This is the sort of music I prefer and, due to my poll, I realised that this is most common in teenagers generally. In my mind, the best audience for music videos are teenagers as they like the visual element to tell a story and assist their favourite songs. Luckily, I managed to get in contact with Rachel about the song and she was more than happy to help me out which I was very grateful for. However, although her answering some questions for me was great, if I could do the process again, I may have tried to have a call with her and record that as my evidence of research. Even better than that, in an ideal world, I would ask her if she’d be able to record her singing the song in a studio as that is a very common trend that would fit with the video well.

Next, it was time to process my planning notes and images to direct me towards a look for my video. I knew as of choosing the song that I wanted one of my best mates, Sienna, to act in it as she is studying drama, and this is great experience for both of us. I also spoke to my singing teacher about the video, and she gave me a few pieces of advice and asked if I wanted to use the dance company Trinity that we are both associated with. This was an excellent idea and I wish I had thought of it first. The four girls who were put forward for it were amazing given the short two-day time frame I gave them to learn a dance with the singing teacher. With the rest of planning, I was happy with my mood board at the time as I wanted a juxtaposition of vibrant and cold colours to suit the theme of the song. I had Sienna’s house in mind for shooting and an open school field for the dancers. I had to draw up my schedule on a tight time schedule as I was very busy with other events while the assignment was live. This meant that I had a total of two and a half hours filming across the dancers and Sienna.

During production I had to make a few changes of plans which, luckily, I had planned back up plans for. To begin, on the shooting day for the dancers, I couldn’t use the full field as there were sports events on and the girls were unable to wear a variety of coloured t-shirts to suit the theme. Instead, I ended up with a smaller patch of grass still on the school premises and the dancers just wore their Trinity uniforms which both worked well as alternatives. Additionally, the dancers weren’t able to fully put together a routine until the day of the shoot which cut into filming time, so I had to rush it as I had other commitments later that day.  In the future, to fix problems like this, I will make sure to give them more time to rehearse and the location is available at a time I want. I think the communication between myself and Trinity could’ve also been stronger.

For the day of Sienna’s shoot, the shots went almost exactly to plan. The only difficulty I had was that I wasn’t too familiar with practically using the camera so I changed some of the settings halfway through the day which, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have done because it ruins the consistency of the shoot and tones. I was able to somewhat fix this in post with colour correction, but it would’ve looked cleaner if I’d simply made those corrections when filming. Another thing I found was that I wasn’t particularly confident with the exact shots I wanted so I left zooming until post. The problem with this was that some of the shots are grainy or have blocks on them. A simple solve to this is to make sure I’m happy with a precise plan so I don’t need to second guess my shots.

In editing, I realised that my mood board of my colour palette wasn’t working so I found Rachel’s album cover for the song and decided to correct the tones to fit with that, drawing a close connection between the song and my video. Overall, I believe the concept of my story was interesting and I would definitely go with it if I were making It now, but I should’ve thought longer and harder regarding the colour palette and execution of shots.