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This was some feedback from my peers

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I used the high and low waves in the music to match the beat with my cuts.

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After adding an adjustment layer I used the three way colour correct on all gym scenes to try and match each other.

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After adding an adjustment layer I used the three way colour correct on all gym scenes to try and match each other.

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This is after I used the crop tool.

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I used the crop tool to only show half of the image to add some change and increase the intrest of th audience.

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I used the crop tool to only show half of the image to add some change and increase the intrest of th audience.

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I used the crop tool to only show half of the image to add some change and increase the intrest of th audience.

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This is the three way colour corrector I used to help decrease the over exposure and add a blue/green tint to the gym scenes to suit the mood.

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Being camera operator and Editor.

So far I've loved filming and editing, my first day of being camera operator was successful because i got such a wide variety of shots all that i had planned i wanted and more i created on the day. I also white balanced the camera which helped the lighting situation as we had to use all natural light as no lights were available for us to book out on our filming days. 

Editing however i feel very new to but i am quickly picking up new tricks and learning how to put special effects. My aim of the music video was for the montage to be fast pace and match with the beats and changes in the music. Firstly with the lyrics ‘that that don't kill me will only make me stronger’ i got a shot of ben directly looking at the camera and punching towards the audience to create a intense mode of address. I then slowed this clip down to 50% and matched it to the lyrics to create a dramatic drop on the lyrics. 

I am in the fourth week now of this project and i am finding the biggest problem is that my partner isn't contributing. I have directed the project whilst he acted and obviously was unable to direct as it was my idea and i was behind the camera able to give directions. I have obviously also done one hundred percent of the camera work and now due to his unfinished work i have completly edited the whole music video myself. This has put more pressure and work on me than i was prepared for but coping with this has been perfect practice for what the real work environment would be like.  

On our last day of filming ben was two hours late so i had to think on my feet and quickly adapted by finding another actor who was available immediately. I realised that using another actor would have to change the story line so i used jack my new actor to do the work and studying side of the video that Ben was meant to do and then when Ben turned up i filmed the two actors together so it would make sense and tie them both into the video. 

To evaluate as I work on my project I looked at the footage we had from our second day of filming in the mechanics classroom and realized quickly, as ben wasn't aloud near the operating equipment, the footage did not make sense or fit in with our video. So due to this I added another day of filming to our schedule and looked online for inspiration for what our new footage could be. This is where I came up with the studying and learning idea. I got the inspiration from legally blonde because she wants to prove everyone wrong that she can be smarter and ace all her exams. So then I researched into this film and saw that it was made in 2001 and the morals of the story are that Elle Woods (main character played by Reese Witherspoon) learns to be independent and the value of education.

Throughout this project I have learnt from scratch how to edit and direct. I had never done one of these roles completely on my own so this gave me a chance to really learn. With the editing I feel that if I had co edited with ben so had his  help the final project would be better as I would of had a second opinion and simply a second pair of eyes to notice errors and have a fresh view on things. However as I have edited on my own I have learnt how to color correct, cut certain parts of the screen to black half of it to black and  show the other half. Ive also  learnt how to change the speed and reverse the clips.

I feel as my biggest problem has been that I didn't have enough footage because after a while the clips began to all look the same. So I asked Julian to sit down and help me work around this problem, he showed me how to use similar clips but make them look different and unique by putting effects on them. This helped me feel motivated again because I could make the video more interesting. However when evaluating I feel as if my video is boring and not got enough change in it because I was limited by the actor refusing to act scenes planned as he didn't want to look uncool which p`ut me at a big disadvantage and if I could of known this before I would have chosen a different actor who would take the project seriously.

When filming our gym scenes we had to way of blocking out the light that was over exposing the shots because of the high windows and white walls. So when it came to editing I struggled with matching the lighting and when color correcting as much as I tried to take out the over exposure it was still oblivious so Julian taught me that I should use it to my advantage and add a effect over it to make it look stylish.

i have also took inspiration from the scene in Batman vs Superman where Batman is working out and the lighting has a dark green tint to it, this scene gave me ideas because it was a montage set to a male song.

Evaluation-

My role was Director, camera operator and editor. In these roles I had to plan the narrative, each camera shot and the order of the scenes. I feel the project could have been better because the footage I had wasn’t as varied as it could have been and began to look repeated; this also was because the song is over four minutes long which I found hard to fill all the time. However I feel the project went well because being all the roles meant I had an excessive amount of work to do but coped with that well and I had never edited by myself before or directed before so this gave me the opportunity to learn more about each role. With the editing I learnt how to use all the effects and how to three way colour correct. If I could change anything in the project I would change the gym location because the lighting was so over exposed because of the high windows not being able to be covered. I would also use after effects to make the project more professional but as this was the first time I learnt to use the basic effects I wasn’t able to learn after effects as well.

I feel my research influenced my work a lot because i loved the style of them all and wanted to recreate the determination and productivity in the videos and i also tried to re-create the colour tint to it with the three way colour wheel.  I know my project was well planned and prepared the problems i found were when i was filming.

The finished project disappoints me compared to my planned version because if the actor had done all the scenes i had asked and acted seriously then the project would look more professional as planned and i would of had all the footage i had planned for. However i still managed to work to my schedule except that i had to add on one extra day of filming to try and resolve the lack of footage issue. However this was cut short because my actor didn't turn up all morning so i had to try and find someone to stand in for him. 

From a technical point of view the weaknesses are the over exposure and the repeating clips. However also from a technical point of view the strengths are the use of effects and the fades and cuts of the clips working to the exact beat of the song.

I feel i worked well as i thought quick on my feet to resolve problems and took on a lot of work, more than anyone else had which was unplanned and not by choice but i dealt with it well and also learnt how to use premier pro as when i began i barely new the basics of it. However i feel my weaknesses were creativity and lack of new ideas. 

The feedback I got from the class was that my work was up to a merit standard and they thought the variation of shots were good and the style of the video was really suited to the song which was good. However they had the same opinions as I did about the lighting needed to be less over exposed and the shots began to look repetitive.

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Stronger

stronger (2007) (music video) Kanye West. USA: Roc-A-fella Productions

"Stronger" is a song by American rapper Kanye West, released as the second single from his third studio album, Graduation. Kanye West's use of shutter shades in the music video became a signature of his in the late 2000s.

When watching the music video we immediately noticed the Japanese influence on the style with the mis-en-scene all featuring Japanese fashion and look a like locations. I feel this created a unique video straight away as I have never seen a successful music video the same style. It gave off the impression of a new and ahead of the game trend setting by Kanye.

This influenced our style because we wanted our video to be a cool and fresh style also. However the main influence we took was from Rocky Balboa the 2006 film starring Sylvester Stallone. This film to me expressed the determination and fight inside of the Rocky character I wanted our character to create.

For research during the first week of filming, I watched Rocky Balboa which gave me so many ideas I wanted to recreate from the movie. I was particularly influenced by the close up camera shots as they were so powerful in showing the characters fierceness and determination. 

Our filming days were Tuesday and Wednesday which i thought went really well as i got a good variety of shots and multiple versions of each shot i wanted. i loved the large amount of props we had to play around and make as many different shots with. Being in the gym gave us so many opportunities to use different equipment and get different angled shots such as the mirror reflection shot, as my first time as camera operator i loved how much i could use my on the spot initiative. 

Problem solving; so after our successful filming days we had a problem, our footage was not saved properly and was no where to be found so we thought we had lost all of our days work. To overcome this problem we had a back up plan to re film our footage on the monday when we were planning to begin editing. However our initial plan was to search all mac computers to check if any saved to the computers or possibly in the trash can but nothing was there. So we checked all the hardrives but none of the footage was saved on them so our last resort was to check if the sd card in the camera we used had been cleared which thankfully it hadn't so we were able to re-download and save safely again.

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interactive video

Using flash and after effects we made ben disappear at the click of his fingers. We looked up a tutorial on youtube of how to do this and we took a video of the plain background and of ben in front of it so when he disappeared we had the background to fill in the empty space. Theres actually two videos on the timeline over layered, one was edited and one with the original footage so to make the effect disappear we had to code it in. Once coded we checked it worked so we could code the other video, which meant doing the same process as before.  The last thing we had to do was export it as a swf file. 

What went well was the was how simple after effects was to use because of the tutorial, however the flash coding was complicated and new to me however i improved my skills on coding. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MedMDDWXdtw link to the tutorial we followed. 

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filming our heathens music video.