Lisa Rogers-A2 Media Studies: April 2011

In the production stages for our music video I worked in a group with Taslima. We looked at different music videos and films of the ‘heartbreak’ subgenre to see what conventional features are included and should be used for our own video. We began by researching the history of music videos to see the development and change over time.

Music videos began as a series of still images of a live performance, before Vitaphone shorts (short films) were produced by the Warner Bros. In 1926. This consisted of art-dec-style animations and a short film of the performer singing, and lasted for six minutes.

However, in the 1950s, performance clips emerged, as the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France. At this point, many short films were made by French artists, and the popularity of this idea began to spread to America and the rest of the world. Directors everywhere after this began producing short films combined with music. One of the first performance clips was of the band ‘The Animals’ singing ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ in 1964, and was filmed in a studio with a specially built set showing the band lip-synching.

In the late 70s the BBC show ‘Top Of The Pops’ was introduced, playing popular music videos. At this time, the pop group ‘Devo’ began creating their own self-produced videos, and their single ‘The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprise’ was one of the first to use computer and traditional animation, showing how the world was progressing into a postmodern society.

We then looked at the theories of production, narrative, and representation. Tim O’ Sullivan argued in 1998 that all media texts tell us some kind of story, and that they are not direct references to us individually, but as a culture or set of cultures. He said that narrative theory is designed to show us that when we ‘read’ a story, we are understanding a set of conventions, and that it is vital to know how these conventions are put together. This is a key feature for us in our video, as we wanted to make a construct that was clear to the audience, shown from the perspective of the artist who sings in the video. At this point, we began making mind maps of different narrative themes we could follow for our video. We wanted to base our story around a couple, one of them being the artist in the video, to personalise the narrative to them and allow us to see it from their point of view, in order to gain empathy from the audience, and to direct the lyrics to one central character. We had the idea based on what we recalled seeing in past music videos of the central woman featured singing wanting her boyfriend back, after being in a split. Our ideas from this point included the story of a love-triangle between the couple, and the idea that the central figure had been cheated on or replaced with another woman. We also thought about the story emerging where the couple are already separated, giving the chance for a narrative to develop throughout the video and allowing the audience to see the process of them growing apart. We decided to choose this idea, as it would form a personal bond from the audience to the characters, giving greater empathy and allowing them to look deeper into the characters’ relationship. We knew that this was a feature that was appealing to the audience, as many people now watch Soap operas on television such as ‘Coronation Street’ and ‘Eastenders’, where the audience get a chance to look into peoples’ lives through a ‘keyhole’ perspective.

We then had to decide upon a definite narrative structure for the story, therefore I began researching heartbreak videos to get an idea of the conventions used.

We then looked at Todorov’s narrative theory, which states that all narratives go through a series of stages. This is the order he suggested;
Stage 1- shows a point of stability and equilibrium, where everything is satisfied and calm
Stage 2- stability is disrupted by some kind of force, which creates disequilibrium
Stage 3- some form of recognition that the disruption has taken place
Stage 4- the only way to restore the equilibrium is through action directed against the disruption
Stage 5- Restoration of a new state of equilibrium. The consequences of the action are to change the world of the narrative and/or characters so that the final state is not the same as the initial state.

We believed that this was an interesting concept, therefore thought about the stages of progression and change between the characters and what the state would be at the end. To help me get a better idea of the narrative structure used in heartbreak videos, I began researching them on Youtube, a video sharing site that allows you to quickly browse and stream videos to your computer at your convenience, making a quick process of research for our group. I started by looking at the video ‘Hero’ by Enrique Iglesias (released 2001). The narrative concept in this video is based around a couple escaping with stolen money from a man who was trying to track them down. The conventions in this video show a non-linear narrative structure, cutting back from the couple to slow motion footage of the woman Enrique is with, isolated in a bright field or background, enhancing her beauty to show that he is in love and idolises her. There are also cuts to the man that is chasing the couple, the antagonist of the plot. He is shown from many low angle shots to show dominance, and as he draws closer to the couple the cuts become more fast paced to show the action is building and that something is about to happen. The location of the video is a desert, representing the ideology of a western film with a ‘showdown’ at the end between rivals, which is what happens at the end of the video. During the end as Enrique dies, the couple are shown together in the rain in a street with police cars behind them. Although this is a tragic ending, the lights and darkness with the rain combined all make a very romantic outlook to the audience, and a big impact at the end of the video, as it pulls the audience’s emotional heartstrings and makes them feel great empathy for the couple.

The next video that I looked at was the Goo Goo Dolls’ ‘Before It’s Too Late’ (released 2007), which was a combination of band promotion shots and footage from the new film ‘Transformers’, of which the song was part of on the soundtrack. This video showed two different worlds, cutting from different promotional shots of the band playing and singing, back to the action within the film, showing a couple that were escaping the war of the Transformers as the male character fought alongside the protagonist army. This video has lots of breathtaking sights because of its high-impact action based structure, showing skyscrapers that the Transformer armies are walking over to fight each other, and pieces of houses and buildings they are demolishing. In the middle of the video, the male rescues the female who is holding onto a skyscraper, and pulls her into his helicopter. The cuts show fast-paced action as multiple things are happening, and flashbacks are also brought into the Transformers narrative to show the romantic aspect of how the couple met. We liked the idea of using flashbacks, which helped us progress further with our narrative construct. We decided to have the couple already split at the start of the video, showing a series of flashbacks of their past throughout, to show how their relationship was constructed and then began to deteriorate, allowing emotional connection between the audience and characters.

I then began studying my chosen subgenre in more detail, looking at videos that contain the flashback conventions we wanted, and seeing how they were portrayed in a realistic and believable way to allow the audience to read this and believe they are going back to a memory of the past with the characters.

I next looked at The Script’s ‘Breakeven’, (released 2009) similar to ‘Hero’, which showed several flashbacks of a woman in a bright field to enhance her beauty and focus all attention to her, showing this is how the central male character saw her when he looked at her. There are then many shots of the present as he sings the video, shown in black and white, a convention to represent how everything is dark and lifeless without the female character he misses. This video starts with the couple separated as we wanted to show, however there is no resolution at the end of the video, which we wanted to have to grasp the audience’s emotions right at the end. Therefore, we decided to have a resolution at the end of our video, showing the couple reuniting in some way. We began doing further mind map ideas of the narrative, looking at the concept of a journey throughout the narrative towards the restoration of equilibrium at the end. In The Script’s ‘Breakeven’, the male is shown to be looking at pictures of the female on his phone. This gave us the idea of using a phone as the main point of connection through our narrative, establishing both characters in an easy way that the audience can read as a modern text used in society today. This postmodern feature helps us to establish the time the characters are living in, and the axis of action through the dialogue on the phone. However, we were still stuck for ideas on this, so kept on looking at heartbreak style videos.
The next video I looked at was Adele’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’, showing only her character throughout, allowing the subjectively imagine what the male looks like she is singing about. The video shows her in a dark room alone, through many long shots to make her look small and distant, perhaps embodying the male through these shots to show he is far away from her. High angle shots are used in certain lines to match the lyrics and show her vulnerability and loneliness. She also sits in a vulnerable position with her arms folded, emphasising her loneliness. Her flat is designed to look gloomy and isolated, and there are a series of tissues and ‘messy’ props scattered in her room. She uses her phone as the main device for connection to the male character in this video, texting him at the start from a point of view shot asking ‘Can we meet?’

This whole video gave us inspiration for our narrative ideas, as we now knew how to use the phone. We would reference Adele texting the male in our own video, and establish a meeting is going to happen between the couple. We then decided that Lisa would then begin a journey to meet the male, having several flashbacks on her way, allowing the couples’ past to be introduced to the audience, stating how they got to the point they are at, before the restoration of equilibrium at the end. We also decided at this point that this would be the song we would use, as it fitted our video as it was a direct reference of Adele’s, and contained many romantic lyrics that we thought would appeal to the audience and fit our chosen genre.

We then began planning our location and setting. For this point in our production, we referred back to genre theory, and looked at Rick Altman’s theory of the ‘set of pleasures’ an audience experiences when seeing a short film. He states there are three types of pleasures; emotional pleasures, visceral pleasures, and intellectual puzzles. We wanted to focus on giving the audience emotional pleasures, placing effective conventional features from similar videos of the same genre into our product to create a strong audience response. We also kept in mind the idea in genre theory that the characteristics across all similar texts share similar elements of mise-en scene, narrative, and generic types. This is a way of stereotyping the props used, using the same thing across the style as a whole to allow the audience to see what is used and read it as a convention of that style. This meant we had to think about what we would use to allow the audience to read it.

We came up with a prop list, stating what we wanted in which scene. For the outdoor scenes of Lisa walking on her journey to meet Jacob, we wanted her to wear a scarf and coat, a stereotypical costume designed in films for outdoor scenes, distinguishing the setting further. At the beginning of the video, we wanted to show her room in a mess as in Adele’s original version, showing the state her life had got to since the breakup. Therefore we decided to have tissues and clothes scattered, and a teddy on the floor, a prop symbolising Jacob, suggesting she has discarded their relationship. We also planned to have a laptop in the video, a postmodern feature, showing a wallpaper of the couple looking happy together, another sign of a past memory in contrast to the miserable present Lisa is in.
The next thing that we did was to think about locations for each scene based on our research and how the verses in the song are broken down. We decided to start in Taslima’s bedroom for the opening, however this later changed as the location was too small and did not contain the right conventional elements, having posters that did not fit the genre, and not enough space to place props in. We also had a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ street based on the wording of the middle verses that I would be walking down, and a romantic big impact location for the end scene as the couple meet for restoration of equilibrium. For the final location, we wanted a place that would pull the audience’s heartstrings and make them feel the emotional attachment to the characters we wanted. I had an idea from two films I had watched previously; ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ (1993), and ‘Love Actually’ (2003). I looked up both of these on Youtube, as I remembered from watching them that they had lots of romantic settings, full of bright lights and romantic views over buildings and of snowy surroundings, another convention of heartbreak videos audience recognise. From this, we had the idea of going somewhere easily accessible and romantic. We originally thought of queen’s gardens where there was a water fountain with lights, however the space in this location was awkward to film in, therefore we changed our idea to the Marina, overlooking the sea and the lights of the city in the distance. We believed this was a perfect romantic location that would create a big impact at the end of our video.

We then made our storyboard ideas based on our notes and mind maps, all of which we posted regularly onto our Blogger addresses. Blogger is an online file hosting site that allowed us to conveniently post work we had done and imagery collected quickly and easily, meaning we did not have to carry lots of printed work around all the time. The problem with our storyboards, however, was that we timed the shots wrong so that shots were sometimes 8 seconds at a time. This meant that lines would look out of time, as we did not time based on the timing of the lines in the video. This meant that when we came to filming, timing had to be rearranged and re-written into our plans and new storyboards had to be created. The main problems that occurred during filming were small things, such as being able to get through the intimate scenes without laughing, as Jacob and I were in close proximity of each other and it was difficult to keep the timing whilst doing this as we began to lose focus. Therefore, we had to have several attempts, which meant filming one scene took longer than expected. Other obvious problems that we experienced were things involving the weather conditions, for example the servere wind and rain at the Marina due to being close to the sea meant the camera became shakey and looked unprofessional. The lighting of outside areas was also problematic, as when I was walking through an area with many lights around, the lighting on my face kept distorting, making it hard to see expressions. This also made the camera go in and out of focus, so we therefore had to film in a different location. This made a chain, however, as we originally planned to film scenes in streets close to each other, and have me walking into the next space that would be shown in the next scene. Therefore, we had to completely re-design our area, and choose a place where the lighting was more controlled. We decided to use a light over the camera, borrowed from my teacher, to control this better, which did make a big difference, seen in my videos of our attempts which I posted on my blog. I uploaded the videos from our camera onto Youtube, where we made our own account by signing up, which was quick and easy and literally took seconds, and named it ‘TisaMedia’, which is our names combined. From there we used the embed code on the site to paste our videos into blog posts on Blogger. This was very convenient, as it meant that videos could be quickly uploaded in minutes with the click of a button, again another postmodern feature used to progress in our production stages.

As we continued to film, we had the idea of me singing the song myself, as singing is a hobby I enjoy. This meant that we had to book sessions in the college recording studio, and begin to plot scenes to be filmed there. We began arranging our sessions and drew up additional storyboard sheets to file between the action scenes, therefore giving a postmodern aspect of there being two different worlds in the video, as in the Goo Goo Dolls video I researched, showing features of artist promotion. Whilst doing this, I also began to research digipak designs by other established artists using Google, which was a quick and easy way to search in seconds by using the google search bad. I looked at Mariah Carey, Rihanna and The Script. All of the digipaks were designed in a similar format, with six panels and a main central image on the digipak front cover for audience attraction to them when first looking at the design. Inside was information about the artist and their music in the past, followed by personalised thankyou messages to the production company and members of their family for their support. I thought that this was a really good idea, as the artist makes a personal message to the audience, making them feel closer to the artist, and also more persuaded to listen to their music. The digipaks all had a main colour scheme, with either a soft white light across the whole design with imagery placed over this, or imagery as the actual background itself of a room featured in the hit track of the album, making a connection to the music and continuity of design. From this research, I began designing my own individual panels using Photoshop CS3, taking into consideration the colour schemes, placement of text and text type, and the position of imagery to attract the audience. These are all selling points that are conventions used in all digipak designs. Photoshop is a programme which allows you to edit imagery and text, editing the contrast, colours, font styles and breaking the image into layers to use and discard as you wish. This is a quick and easy feature to use, as before this was invented, design was very basic, using the same font types and imagery for designing all the time. Using Photoshop, I imported my CD template design and used the fill tool to apply cover over the top. I then used the text tool to select and apply a font type, referencing my research as I progressed, and experimented with effects by right clicking and adding drop shadows and outer glows, also experimenting with the brightness and opacity of the effects. Photoshop is an easy programme to use, allowing endless experimentation with image and text, with a huge range of tools to experiment with. I also used the same features and the polyganol tool to select and cut parts of the images I used, such as removing unwanted backgrounds from the image to be left with just the person in it. I found Photoshop a great help, and do not know what I would have done with such a quick and easy resource of experimentation. After I had chosen my final designs, I then imported a digipak template which I found on Google into Photoshop, and simply opened my CD designs, resized them using the Ctrl+T buttons, and then dragged them onto the template with my mouse.

The next step was researching magazine advertisements. I did this in the exact same way as my digipak, studying other artists’ advertisements, such as Ellie Goulding and Lady Gaga. These adverts contained bright colours and large text in order to gain attraction from the audience when first viewing, as from a distance the text needed a convention to enable it to be seen by the audience. I used these features in my own designs using Photoshop again. I applied large text and imagery, keeping the thought about it being seen from a distance in my mind. When I had created my final design, I looked again at my research, but realised that the black light effect behind my main image I had used using the brush tool looked too dark, making text harder to read and absorbing the image. Therefore, I changed the colour to white by simply changing the colour and applying the brush over my image again. I also realised after going back into my research that I had not included promotional elements such as a link to an online music site where the song could be bought. Therefore, I found the Itunes logo on Google and copied this into Photoshop, placing it at the bottom of my design so that the audience would recognise this as an element of synergy, combining and promoting other media to profit in all areas. I also referenced the Stone Roses poster which I had looked at, which contained quotes of people’s opinions on the album. I thought this was a great way to give a personal response from memebers of the public back to other members, as they are more likely to buy the music when it has good references.

When I had finally created and selected my design, I Photoshopped it onto a bus stop board, to show how it could still work as an enlarged public advertisement. I am happy with the result, as the text and imagery throughout is large enough to be seen from a distance, and the colours used are bright and eye-catching to people passing by, making them want to stop and read the advertisement. I again posted this onto my blog so that people could see the impact it had as a public campaign.
On the filming side of the production, we used our new storyboards which we ensured we timed in accordance to the length of the lines, which we tested by playing the track on Itunes and looking at the time in certain parts of the song. Itunes is a great feature that allows music to be played and moved onto Ipod music players by simply plugging the device into the computer and dragging the files into the Ipod folder. This meant that we could easily put our recorded version of the song onto a disc in seconds using this programme, as we simply imported the track from a memory stick into the programme, before putting a CD into the computer and dragging the file into the ‘Blank CD’ folder, double clicking on the folder title to rename it ‘Lisa Rogers-Make You Feel My Love’.

During the time in the studio, the actual recording of the track was simple and easy. We were aided by Adam, head of the music department, who showed us the quick and easy features of recording software, and how there were buttons that did almost everything you needed to record. I put the backing track of the song onto a CD at home, from which I bought online from ‘Www.Karaokeversion.com’. The CD was then put into the computer in the studio and the music file was imported into Cubase, a simple and free accessible editing software that allows you to mix and cut your own music from your own home. This device is a key development in our postmodern world, as before this and the invention of multitrack, things such as the harmonies included in our track, which literally took seconds to record and multitrack over the original, would have taken hours, even days to create. Cubase allows the cutting down and editing of a music file in seconds, allowing users to edit their music without complication at the click of a mouse.

The complications in the recording of our music video footage were the lighting. As we could only get into the studio at different times of the day, the lighting from the outside was constantly changing, meaning we were getting a different shadow over the face everytime we filmed. This caused real problems, as the shadows looked dull over the face, making parts lost in the dark patches of light, meaning that the narrative conveyed through the lyrics was lost to the audience. We therefore had to discuss times to go into the studio with Adam so that daytime sessions were available, when it was light outside, giving a natural light over the face and leaving a delicate, soft effect, a big contrast to the dark gloomy outside scenes that we shot at night for the streets. We did these in the dark for contrast, and because we wanted to show isolation of the character when walking alone, and also for romance to allow the night lights of the city to be lit at the end during the last scene, to resemble our previous video research of ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’
The digital camera that we used was very good, as it had a big space for storage, and was created to show footage in high definition. The camera was also useful because of its capacity to store without running out of space, where as before digital cameras were invented, footage was recorded onto many tapes, where footage could not be edited once it was placed there.

We filmed different scenes at different times, and ended up not having a direct shooting schedule because of this. The reason for this was either the weather conditions, or appropriate times when we could film, as we were using mine and Taslima’s house, with other members of our family living there. During the opening scene of me sat on my own, we developed our idea from the bedroom to me watching the television instead, which was not shown in the shot but I was placed in a way that gave this impression to the audience, on a chair looking out away from the camera, my phone on the arm to show it was a prop I would be using in the scene. We got the idea of the television from romantic films, where we recognised the convention of a woman sat alone eating a large tub of icecream for comic value. We decided not to use this aspect, but the television was a good way of showing that I had become passive since the split, and that I did not have anything to do with my life, and no energy to go out. During the filming, the problems we experienced were things like the light from the camera being reflected onto the phone in an over shoulder shot when I was looking at the message I received from Jacob. To solve this problem, Taslima had to experiment with where she placed herself behind me so that this would not be seen. We also had probems with the stillness of the camera whilst filming from a low angle point of view shot as I looked up to see the time on the clock. This was as Taz was stood at an awkward angle, therefore there is still slightly shakey movement seen even in our final version of our video. During this scene, however, we used a previously printed picture of me and Jacob at our school prom in reality, and placed this into a photo frame on a table that could be seen in the shot just behind the chair, linking past memories of us in with the present day, showing that Lisa has still not let go of their relationship. We knew that the audience would recognise this, and many have commented on how it is a good technique to use whilst watching the video. We did experience minor continuity issues, however, though we did not notice these until the very last editing stage of our video, as we were watching the opening scene many times. Others did not notice until we told them, meaning it was not a major problem, however the chocolates placed on my knee disappear through the following shots, and then reappear again during the end of the scene. This is due to use experimenting with shots many times, however we did not notice that we disregarded the prop at any time, therefore this is a small yet important feature I would improve on if given the chance to film this again.
We also had to re-shoot our flashback and end scenes due to discontinuous shots throughout and bad weather conditions, meaning things looked jumpy when watching the scene the whole way through with the shots combined as one. This is something I am glad we did again, as if we did not have time, we would have distinctly noticeable discontinuous footage which would have made the video unrealistic and make the audience disconnect from what was happening.

At this stage, we made a first whole version of our music video. Small parts were still missing, such as the space during the instrumental as we did not know how to combine the action and the studio scenes, however I created audience feedback using Microsoft Word, and gave it to people to see what they thought so far. The target audience that I was focusing on were teenagers and young adults, as they are the people that watch music channel and keep up to date with charts more than any other age group. I asked how continuous the video was from shot to shot, outlining below what defines each option the audience could select (e.g- ‘Very Continuous-Cuts fit perfectly in time with the music and shot smooth transition of action taking place to make it appear it is happening in real time). The second question I asked is how successful the audience thought the combination of the action and studio scenes were, and their reason why. The final question was what could be changed in their opinion to make the video more successful.

I then did the same with my CD designs, again using Word and pasting the images in from blogger, which I previously uploaded as I progressed with my work. For this feedback, I asked people which design was their favourite and why, and also what elements could be changed from their favourite design to make it more eye-catching to the audience.

I then did exactly the same with my magazine advertisement designs with the same questions.

The final feedback sheet that I created featured the final digipak design and my two ancillary texts, followed by a print screen of me in the recording studio, representing our music video as it cannot be watched on paper. I asked ‘After seeing the digipak, how effective do you think it is in terms of artist promotion (1 being poor and 10 being very effective)’. Below this, I asked ‘How effective is the main product (music video) and ancillary texts?’, also asking their reasons why and any other comments.

When our shots and scenes were finalised and were ready to be edited, we used Premier Pro, an editing suite designed for easy use and to quickly and effectively edit media clips, making it possible to add effects and titles to create an attractive composition. We had to time the distance from where one clip ended and the next started so that we could work out how much time in between there was to cut or use. This was made easy by the timer below the video, which could be viewed constantly and could me moved back and forth between clips with the edit bar, which could be dragged over clips with the mouse. We also used effects in Premier Pro, including fades and crossfades over the start and end of two clips to create an illusion of one scene fading into the other, a convention also featured in my research video 'Hero' to show time passing. We added black and white effects over our flashback scenes to show the past, a code used in The Script's video 'Breakeven' that I looked at. This was all simply done, as there was a bar of effects beside the editing section where clips were cut and changed, and effects could simply be clicked and dragged onto the desired clip. We could also add a title at the beginning and end of our video using Premier Pro, by clicking on the 'Add title' button on 'Tools'. This was a simple screen showing a selection of texts and text sizes that could be chosen and moved around the screen. This was again a simple technique that we found easy to use. As people that had never used the program before, we found it incredibly simple, quick and effective, giving a professional look to all of our scenes. Without this use of quick and easy technology, the editing process would have taken much longer and would have been much more complicated.
During our editing process, we found problems with the footage, such as the clips were too short in some places, meaning we had to replace it with longer clips or put an effect over the two to cover the mistake. An example of this is at the end of our video, where me and Jacob walk into the scene. The problem with this is that during filming of this we lost the timing, so ended up miming too late into the scene, even though we had walked in at the right time. To fix this to line up with the audio track, we tried to edit out the middle section of the clip where there is too much time where we are stood still. However this looked jumpy, as we both slightly moved whilst stood opposite each other as I prepared to sing. To solve this problem, we put a cross fade on the previous scene of the argument to cover the mistake and bridge the gap as the fade expired. However, this meant that by the time the fade had faded from the end scene, we were seen stood opposite each other at a still point again instead of walking into the scene. This was something that we found could not be avoided unless we filmed the scene again, but due to lack of time during the approaching deadline to edit, this was not possible, however this is something we would change if given the chance in the future.

At the end of the editing, we simply saved the file and selected the embed code on the options menu that allowed us to paste this into a blog post to show the audience. This took seconds and was so much quicker than in previous times before similar technology emerged, where footage had to be stored on several tapes. Premier Pro allows you to export the file onto Youtube and other devices such as DVDs, giving freedom of use and a quick saving process. We are very glad that we used this, as it greatly helped us speed up our editing process, and aided us well as we did not know how to edit clips previous to this.

The last thing I did on my blog at this point was post my finished music video, and showed the audience the final version, giving them back the same audience feedback on the music video to see how effective it was now that everything was done. This time, people said that the video was very effective in terms of continuity, and that the combination of the recording studio and action scenes made the video on whole look more professional and more generic of a heartbreak music video. The audience believed it made the video more aesthetically pleasing, giving more variety and making the narrative structure more interesting. Finally, people said that the video looked more believable with the two worlds, one representing reality in the studio, and one being a fictional world based around a central character. They also said that the idea of me actually singing on the track made the miming and video as a whole more believable. The criticism that the audience gave was that the final scenes in the dark could have been made to be more visually clear, which we could improved by filming near more controlled lights, however there would still be the same risk that the lighting would affect the expression on the face because of shadows. They also said in feedback that the embrace between the couple could’ve been longer to make the union at the end more believable.

During my time producing the music video, I have learnt that every small detail must be planned carefully in accordance to the weather and appropriation of filming and other elements in order for continuity of shooting. I have learnt to use the editing suite, which I never knew how to use previous to this, and how to place transitions and effects onto shots. I have learnt that audience read theories more than they realise when looking at a text, and that without following genre and narrative theory, and placing clues and links to the characters in the video, some of the emotion and significance is lost, and pieces of the story are missing. In a video, everything matters, from the lighting to the props and positioning of the props and characters within the scene. The way the camera is held is vital, and the duration that the camera continues to film for is vital. I have learned that a key tip when filming is to always leave excess time on the end of shots, so that if needed they can be used to ensure you are not left with a clip that is too short. To convey a certain genre, much research is needed, and understanding of the codes and conventions constructed for the audience to read is vital. New media such as a digital camera, Photoshop, Premier Pro and Blogger are all great and helpful features of our postmodern society, and without these, production would take far longer. Overall, I have found the production a challenge, as everything needs much detailed thought, and every aspect of the genre must be explored and covered in every area of filming in order to make a successful product. I have thoroughly enjoyed producing my video, and am very glad that I could use something that I enjoy doing to create it. Given the chance to film again, however, I would change the steadiness of the camera, the quality of the lighting in outdoor areas, and make greater planning into each scene that we planned to film, doing more mind maps, including the advantage and disadvantages of each, in order to gain a better perspective of the possibility of filming there before going and having to re-film multiple times after. I have enjoyed this project, and would not rule it out as something I would explore again in the future.