Reflection

Having completed our edit of the music video, we proceeded to screen the video to a group of students in order to recieve constructive criticism.
One student explained that he did not enjoy the black and white, he preferred the colour edit as he believed it was more versitle. Despite the fact that our preferrance was greyscale, we changed the lighting and contrast on less interesting visual shots in order to visually appeal more to the audience.
During the editing process, we strayed away from the original editing plan when watching Lady Gaga's music video for 'Judas' which heavily influenced us. The smooth dip to blacks alongside the drum beat, we found very effective for her video therefore decided to incorporate it. She also used black and white in this section of her video, it appealed to our target audience since it is unique and focus' on visiual stimuli's like many indie-pop genre music videos.

The group's favourite shot was that of the lights flashing at the same time. This may of been because the extremity of the black and white contrast at the beginning is the boldest contrast we use in the video. It may also be because we used one of these shots to open the music video alongside the drum beat, therefore it is the audience's first impression of the characters/mise-en-scene/video as a whole. The young girl is in the middle of the shot, staring directly at the camera suggesting to the audience that this is a unique video as the audience are watching through a window of her life. This would appeal to our target audience since indie-pop fans usually like to see creative, thought-provoking concepts within videos - more than purely entertaining videos. However whilst editing it was difficult to get the lights to turn off at the exact same time as the drum beat as it was completely obvious if it was not in time.

Personally one of my favourite shots/transitions is when Ellie's character pushes the camera away from her and then when her hand is taken away, the camera and her character is in a different location. I think it's firstly because it's as if she's had enough of the audience learning about her life and she's fed up, needing to be alone. Yet she takes her hand away far more softly, emphasising her lonliness and how in fact she is grateful of any company. For a moment in the fast-pace, fast-edit of the music video it slows the pace down for a second. It also acts as a smooth transition from one part of the narrative to the next, which just overall makes the music video flow suitably and makes it easy to watch.

Most successful shots:

• The flashing lights
• The outside shots (natural bright lighting and black and white works well)
• The hand on camera transition
• The opening sequence, cut to the beat

Problems we had:

• Extreme weather
• The barking dog shot
• Cutting quickly and keeping an interesting narrative
• Keeping the fire at the same size, always reflecting the same light on Ellie

How we dealt with this:

• We used the blustery weather and captured it as a reflection of the girl's state of mind
• We protected the camera with umbrellas
• We changed the concept to having the dog looking at the camera sadly, in a similar manner to the girl in order to create sympathy for both characters
• If we used a shot that was important to the narrative in the beginning sequence where it was the quickest edit, we'd reuse them later and edit them by rotating etc. in order for the shot not to seem repetitive and boring
• We repeated quickly shooting, then refuelling the fire; and trying to angle the character so we could sort the fire out without getting another person in the shot.