Looking back onto our first cut.

After looking back onto our first cut of our music video we have realized that in some areas of the footage our variety of shot distances and angles are not always in the appropriate place or do not convey the right image.  For example at 0:14, there is a shot of the guitarist strumming one note on his guitar. This is the first shot that the audience see of the band preforming the song and we feel this shot can be improved. As we have used Final Cut Pro to zoom in on this shot in post-production the shot is grainy, which ruins the quality of the video as other shots do not have this. We also used a straight on camera angle which doesn't look very dramatic and powerful, which is what we wanted. If we are able to re-shoot this clip we will use a lower angle to make the subject appear more dominant. This is also true for most of the band preforming shoots at 0:17, 0:23, 0:53, 1:00, 1:04, 1:13, 1:17, 1:37 and 2:06. At 0:39 the angle is okay, however it again has been zoomed in on in post production and this makes it too blurry. By re-shooting these shots we can make the music video more professional as a convention on metal music videos is to make the band look powerful and strong, which will be accomplished by changing some of the camera angles we have used to lower ones looking up at the band as this makes them appear bigger.

Another aspect we have chosen to focus on in more depth is the framing of shots, including and excluding elements as appropriate.Our main filming location was a car park. We used this location because of the stone walls and harsh lighting which created a desolate, disorientating effect. However through filming it was hard to keep out cars in the surrounding area out of the shot. This ruined the overall effect of the video as it looks like a low-budget film and the cars do not fit with the theme of the rest of the music video. So, at 0:49, 1:25 and 1:28 we have to re-shoot to make sure these cars are not included. Also at 1:06 there is a reflection of the cars in the bass drum, which is not obvious as the other car shots but ideally we would still re-film this as it is these small details that will make our video look professional.

In post production we also need to work on our mise-en-scene including colour, figure, lighting, props and setting. The main point that we need to focus on is the lighting. Due to filming at different times the lighting changes between shots and this makes it look jarring and draws the eye to the inaccuracies in colour instead of the shot itself, such as from 0:32-0:33 and 0:51-0:52. To change this we will edit it using Final Cut Pro. We will do this by using the colour corrector wheel and finding a suitable lighting level for all the shots, we will then transfer this over to all the performance aspects of the video so that all the shots have the same lighting and colour tones. This ill improve on the flow of the video and stop it from looking so displaced.

We also feel that we could improve using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set. This is because our song is of a heavy metal/metalcore genre and there are certain expectations that are to be met to attract a similar audience for similar products and as well as meeting the codes and conventions of this genre. Some of our shots, such as at 2:33, where there is a mushroom in harsh lighting and 2:34 where there is a teddy bear, don't match these conventions and expectations. Whilst originally we used theses shots for the narrative of our video we can now see that with the whole music video put together they do not match up with the rest of the mise-en-scene and this makes the audience confused and ask the wrong kind of questions. As they disrupt the flow of the video we have decided to simple remove them all together. But to do this we need to make sure we film more scenes to replace them.

Using a variety of shot transitions, captions and other effects selectively and appropriately for the brief of this task is something that, overall we have done quite well. However we feel that we can still improve our music video by using these aspects even better. For example at 1:38 we use the effect 'blink' to create an almost strobe light effect on the video and we have decided to cut down on the length of this, from 2:05 onwards as we thought it was a bit too disorientating and took away the focus from the actual shots we were using. Finally we have also decided to us captions at the start or end of the music video saying the band name, song title and distributor as this will make it look more professional and will attract more audience viewings.