It's come to the end of the whole project, but there are so many improvements I would make for future reference. Fortunately, I have still made several accomplishments during this whole journey that I am quite proud of.
- PLANNING: In terms of quality planning, I do feel I have been much more detailed than in last years coursework. I had ideas before but they were vaguely explained and this meant I went straight in to filming without feeling prepared. In this A2 coursework I have taken the planning stage much more seriously, for example, I really felt it was necessary to do some basic research to help me with not just the content of the music video, but also the way in which the content was delivered; I carried this out by doing some research on various filming techniques, i.e. stop-motion and tried to practise them myself. This was actually very beneficial; the problem was, I left a lot of this crucial planning a bit too late so some of the quality in the scenes of my video may have suffered as a result.
- EXPERIMENTING: I feel I've come a long way since AS, where I would often try and 'play it safe' as it was and just stick to what I've learnt in class to aid me in my coursework, but this coursework has inspired me to think outside of the box in terms of editing and problem solving.
For example, in terms of problem solving, having problems of availability (with the cast) would have affected me before and I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to not stick to my initial plan, but in this coursework I managed to overcome these problems, even if it meant certain cast members were not available I decided to use the people available, i.e. getting two friends who were not specifically in the allocated roles to play the boy and girl for the short hug scene. It was so simple and easy yet I probably wouldn't have thought of it before.
- Have A sharper eye for DETAIL: Some of the most major mistakes in my coursework have been caused by my lack of attention to detail. This can be evidenced by mistakes in the filming stage. For instance, simple mistakes such as not looking at the way in which the main character was lip syncing for a certain part and allowing objects in the mise-en-scene of some scenes which may be distracting, to be filmed.
- OVERTHINKING: I have the tendency to other think things and one of my friends has even told me this. During this project, one of my main obstacles was trying to convey meaning without going overboard. At one point I wanted to have lots of little added scenes and props to have in the filming, my friend could only describe me as being incredibly 'cheesy' when she found out I'd bought heart shaped wedding confetti and was planning on buying love heart lights for certain scenes! What I learnt is that sometimes keeping things simple is best from my peers. I have seen some fantastic music videos within my group and they are all kept pretty simple but effective, allowing easy viewing for the audience. Perhaps this is what works best. If I had to do this project again I would definitely go easy on the extra things that I had in mind and stay focused more on being able to master the basics.
