As producer for this project, I feel like I have significantly improved from working on other shoots. I have really enjoyed planning and developing a music video together with Rufus and have found the theoretical lectures interesting. I feel like I have more confidence in planning a filming process together and sorting different things out quickly like camera gear and carrying out risk assessments and location reece’s before filming.
The strengths of this project was that Rufus and I both had the same kind of idea in mind and we both wanted to achieve something very similar. We also had a great filming location which gave us some really nice visual shots in the final video which worked really well and a great friend of Rufus’s did an absolutely excellent job at such short notice being in our product. The shots we achieved I thought were brilliant; the scenic colours in the shots we were told were impressive by lectures and shots portraying loneliness worked really well.
Their was a brief moment before we were supposed to go and film where we weren’t 100% sure who we were going to use, as our original actor was unable to make any filming sessions in the week and myself being unavailable every weekend because of work made it difficult for us to find the time when we were going to get together. I realized in the end that I was going to have to try and get the time off work to enable us to film which I was successful with. The morning of the 17th November, Rufus’s friend Ryan came and we filmed the whole video in one day which was very successful. One weakness I felt was some of the filming planning before going out to shoot. I felt that when we went out to film, some of our shots weren’t really planned and that It was more of a case of trying out different shots on the day of the filming. This didn’t effect the day of the filming but I think for future projects a clear photographic storyboard needs to be present and shown to the camera operator before the filming day.
I feel like we both have met our target audience well. I’ve found that a lot of people the same age range as us like listening to the song (The Scientist by Coldplay) and the main feedback I have received from people is that the overall video is good. Reflecting on this project, I want to make sure that in my Short Film or FMP that everything is planned thoroughly and not all a bit last minute. I want to make sure that any actors I use are all reliable and that a date or multiple dates are set well in advanced to ensure that everyone who is part of the project can attended without any disruption. I also want the planning process to be very thorough and the photographic storyboard to very detailed and that what is shown will be exactly the same that is used in the final piece.
Rufus and I maintained professionalism by making sure that we were using our given college time to continue to work and develop our idea of our music video. The original planning process of the project took a while for the main idea to come together and take off, but after a good week it finally came together. Throughout the whole project, things have been changed at last minute which were out of our own control however we managed to overcome this as a distraction to our progress in the project. For example, when we realised our actor couldn’t make our main filming session, we re-scheduled a different filming time and quickly got another person to step in rather than it all taking a while and having to go back and rethink what we were going to do.
Jack Smith 