criticalanalysisangushough

[criticalanalysisangushough]

Critical Analysis and Reflection Angus Hough S3854628

Throughout the process or this project there where a variety of roles Liam and myself had to undertake to complete the music video. Firstly, the structure, instrumentation and overall ideas for the song itself had to be refined and finalised before bringing it into the studio. Liam being the writer of the track undertook majority of the song writing then brought it to myself and Ethan Barry our bassist who helped with small details and working out our parts before heading into the studio. After the song was finished, we then had to organise a producer, mixing and mastering.

Firstly, in terms of the music, we contacted our friend Ben Irawan to produce and record the track at his studio in Collingwood. We then organised rates and locked in a date and time for recording. After we had the track recorded, we then got in contacted with Natashia Newling a Sydney based mixer and audio engineer, as we were working to a deadline it was important to us that we got Natashia in as mixer because we know that she is quick and reliable. She then got back to us about 3 weeks after sending it off. Lastly, we then send off the track to Tim Paterson of Satori Mastering who got the track done in a quick and timely manner. During the recording process we ran into an issue with our original drummer who pulled out 2 days before we were meant to go into the studio, so we then reached out to a friend of ours who luckily said he’d be happy to drum on the track.

Regarding the film side of the project, Liam and I brainstormed the initial idea then draw up a story board and a visual treatment which would help us convey the idea to others. We then reached out to a few friends who were willing to help in pre-production and the production phases. Firstly, we contacted our friend Jack who help with creating the props for the film such as the parody movies posters and the set design. After that we got in contact with Sarah Jones who is well versed in film production, Sarah helped us out with organising a camera as we only had access to basic dslr’s so she managed to get hold of a Blackmagic camera which help us greatly with having a more professional style to the film, Sarah also help with shot choices and the practice side of shooting on the day. Additional crew we had on set was Radha who help with hair and makeup and Ethan who operated lighting and helped on set. During the phase of pre-production, we ran into an issue with the original actor who due to time scheduling and logistics was unable to make it to the shoot, so we decided to change the actor to myself. Due to it being me as the protagonist we rewrote the character slightly to match with my demographic as we originally wrote the character to be much older than I am.

During the shoot days we organised that everyone would show up to location for 2 days which went smoothly, we shot all day on both days with only one other location we had to travel to. Throughout the days of shooting, I expected that I would be able to help direct and help with cinematography, but I found that it was very difficult to act and stay in character, so I decided to leave most of that to Sarah and Liam so I could focus on the acting side of shooting. The issues we ran into when during the shoot days were that the makeup we had didn’t match my skin tone so had to compromises and decided that I would go for a fake tan look and the other issue was that we defiantly could’ve shot more as I found that we didn’t quite have enough variety in shots during the editing phases.

Lastly, we had to edit the film, Liam and I are still relatively new to video editing with a minimal amount of experience with premiere pro, so I had to learn as I went. I initially came up with a rough edit on my laptop but due to my being old it was a very slow process when doing it at home, so then once I had the idea down as much as I could Liam and I headed into Uni where we could edit together and much more efficiently. During this process we found that colouring was a lot more difficult that we initially had thought, so we decided to outsource a colour grader, as we left this part a little to late it was very difficult to find someone cheap who would do it with a very tight time frame, we managed to find someone on Fiverr but we had to pay a little more than we initially thought, in hindsight we should’ve made the decision to outsource much early in the editing phase as it was quite stressful organising this with such short notice. Overall, I was very pleased with the results of the colour.

Overall, I am very proud of both Liam and I in what we achieved this semester. I have learned a great deal when it comes to music video production. I would say if I was to do this again, I would defiantly organise dates, location and crew as early as possible to avoid time schedule and reliability issues, I would also have filmed much more than we did just so I would’ve giving us more to work with. But in the end, it all come out the way we liked, and we were happy with the result and very thankful to all those that helped us out. After completing this project, I now feel confident in my ability to undertake another similar project in the future.