Peer Assessment - SMART Target

Today, myself and Kirstie viewed Becky and Stevie's version of our edited music video. Once we had watched, one pair gave feedback in regards to the following S.M.A.R.T Targets:

• Specific - Part of the footage, part of the video to improve?
• Measurable - Can we tell when they have done it?
• Achievable - Make sure that each piece of advice/adjustment is achievable?
• Realistic - Not filming new stuff, no explosions, etc.?
• Time bound - Can these targets be done within this lesson?

For our music video in its current state, we were given the following targets for feedback:

1. For certain clips that we have used, try and line them up so they fall on the syllables of the lyrics rather than the beat of the soundtrack (in certain cases, however).

2. In regards to effects that we have used already, try and use them on parts of the soundtrack that will be rememberable, e.g. on the chorus. 

3. Don't over-use a particular effect and keep it to a certain part of the soundtrack so it doesn't get over-repetitive through its constant use. Effects such as the blue colour filter we have used, we were suggested, should be confined to one section of the video.

Initial Editing Problems

In the beginning parts of our editing phase of our music video, we have already encountered a few problems, mainly in the ordering of shots and dealing with jump cuts between the different shots we have used., meaning that the music video doesn't really flow properly without visibly seeing the jump within the footage. To fix this problem, we have decided to put in other clips from our footage so the jump cuts are not as obviously visible. For example, the door is opened up by one of the actors but in the next shot, as the door is closing, the camera positioning jumps. So to fix this, we put a clip of the room's lights turning on and then put the footage of the next person coming through the door. We will not be able to use this method every time, however, so we will have to find another alternative of fixing this problem.

Another problem we had was with the brightness adjustment of the clips. Upon looking back on the the footage we filmed, a number of the shots were slightly too dark to possibly use in the final music video. Because of this, we tried to adjust the brightness of the clips to see if it made thing any better. A 'before' (left) and 'after' (right) still of this change shows the difference made. As you can see, the light from behind the actor shines directly in the lens of the camera, creating the 'silhouette-like' figure of our actor instead. The brightness effect does make a difference, you can now see the actor's face in the footage as well as other features, however it does now make the clip look like it has unnatural light, something that we have decided doesn't work, which has led to the decision not to use it at all
on any of our clips.

Post-Christmas Update

For our first lesson back, we decided to split into pairs within our group of four to make two separate versions of our music video, each with the same footage. This was decided as it  gives us all an equal amount of time to edit on Final Cut. Myself and Kirstie are working together on one version, whilst Stevie and Becky are working on the other. We will be uploading the footage to two different Macs this  lesson ready to start the editing phase in our next double period.

As a group, we checked that all our footage had been captured before being uploaded to Final Cut. Without this check, we would have to just edit any parts that are missing instead of going out and re-filming different parts and losing valuable editing time for our music video.

From our editing, we want to stick as close to the main conventions of our music genre as possible, and, if we can, keep the synergy between the music video, the webpage and the digipack in line with each other. We know that to do this, we would have to combine both my ideas for the artist's representation as well as Kirstie's representation, which will be tricky.