SELF EVALUATION

PRE-PRODUCTION

WHAT WENT WELL?

During Pre-production, I was not the director. That change happened partway into production, thus my role during pre-production was to complete tasks efficiently and on the deadline. I think I worked very quickly, and did well to advise to group on particularly difficult tasks. Instead of just working on one task each at the time, I suggested that all members of the group should look over each piece of work, and possibly add more to it, leading to every task we did to be a little longer and more packed with relevant content, due to each member of the group having a different way of thinking and access to different information and different strengths. I think I did well in situations in which more literary and articulate writing was needed, as well as use of cinematography, such as the first and second draft of the script, the writing of the email to ensure we had the rights to use the song, or the photo storyboard we created. I was also in charge of receiving the rights to film in all our locations, specifically the graveyard, though it was Omer who managed to get in contact eventually. I think the writing of the script, that was mostly influenced by me and Talia, is emotional and suits the song well

IMPROVEMENTS

I think that while our quality of work was good, I may have looked over certain tasks, dismissing them as “easier” than the others. For instance, our risks page came out a lower quality than the rest of our works simply because we assumed it would take less effort. We put it off and it never got done properly. Perhaps this was partly due to how I decided it would be better to go over previous works as opposed to starting new ones, this meant towards the end we were rushed for time, and certain pieces of work got overlooked. I think improvement I could have made would be putting more faith in my group, I tended to hawk over them to make sure things were going right, or overly explaining something to someone. If I had more confidence in their ability’s, I would have let them work knowing I would have got a good end result, and thus everyone would have got more work done. I also think I made some serious mistakes during the creation of the storyboard, which I was in charge off. I did not of the facts

we may not have certain props or locations during production, as well as certain shots being impossible, and it led to a music video that was very different to the original storyboard in all but script. I also think I made a mistake in not letting Omer and Filipa have more baring on the main script, as an outside perspective could help with the eventual problem we had with clarity.

PRODUCTION

WHAT WENT WELL?

I think the production was the point in which I had the most responsibility. I was put as director as the previous director was having trouble. I felt I did a very good job in organizing the group, and choosing good times and locations for everyone to film, not easy as everyone has busy schedules, and finding a several good dates to film for each location proved challenging. Inside of the actual filming I mostly had final say in what angles and shots we should use in the case of those on the storyboard not being possible (which they often proved to be). My decisions mostly went well in this regard, and we ended up with several interesting shots throughout our music video. I was especially proud of the lighting and framing of the tracking shot early in the video, which I planned on the fly. Though I did make many decisions, I never overruled my group, and everyone got to vote on what shots they thought would be best, several of the production decisions made, such as costumes or shots and angles where things I originally did not want, but took the common vote of the group on, leading to more variety and some easier to use and stable shots. One example of this is the Tea scene, I originally wanted it to be a pure tracking shot, but after ten unsuccessful takes due to the shots difficulty in movement, Omer suggested we instead make a cut halfway through the shot when I sit down. I really wanted to get the tracking shot right, but we redid it as two separate shots, and found it to be much easier and provided a greater variety of shots, leading to a likely higher grading for the scene. I think listing to my group during production lead to a better music video. Everyone had a chance to film and while Omer was in charge of filming, both I and Filipa got many chances to film through various scenes. (Though Talia did some have troubles, as she made up a majority of the video, we managed to get her to film every

scene that did not directly include her). As well as this, thanks to our continuity manager (Omer) and some fantastic makeup and costumes by Filipa, we had very few continuity errors throughout the video, though I can take no credit for it.

IMPROVEMENTS

I think most of the problems we had in production stem from a serious time constrained. If we had the time, I would have spent an entire day filming one scene (we actually did this the first filming session, to perfect the first and last shot). But we only had a few weeks to film, and generally only one day a week that everyone was available. Each person had to be home by a certain time, and we only asked for certain locations for a day, meaning we had to film all the scenes in that location on a single day. While I would like to blame this for the numerous errors we had during production, I think my direction was a large cause of these problems. While very few continuity errors are present, and none are all too noticeable, we had trouble creating variety of shots. In order to get a long shot right, we spent most of our time redoing it, and thus had little time for the mid shot that it should have cut into. So when it came time to get to post production, we had to zoom in via the editing software, meaning a noticeable loss of quality, as shown to the right. I feel I did not take heed in the advice of doing multiple shots from multiple angles, and used to many long takes, leading to the music videos current snail pace. There was simply a lack of shots, we thought we would be fine with the amount, but in reality we should have shot nearly twice as many, and cut twice as much. I also felt, while I did well organizing, I should have asked my group for more days, as this would have allowed us to shoot more.

POST PRODUCTION

WHAT WENT WELL

Editing was really my strong point, I felt like a made a big impact (perhaps too big, but more of that later) on the editing style of the video and the way we chose to cut and fade throughout the video. I learnt how to use final cut quickly, and helped my friends get better at using it too, teaching them the ins and outs of the software. Being director I ended up making most of the final decisions, and resolved several arguments about how a certain scene should go. I was especially proud of some of the creative editing ideas that I came up with to get over the fact some shots last too long. For instance, I cut a stationary talking shot into four, and made it so each shot got progressively darker to show the passing of time. Turning a boring shot into an interesting implication of a long and drawn out argument. Other such creative editing decisions from me and the rest of the group resulted in (in my opinion) the salvaging of an otherwise problematic video that might have got an otherwise bad grade.

IMRPROVEMENTS

While this became less of a problem in the last few weeks, I definitely ended up editing too much overall. I do not think I did it due to any particular hubris, but simply because oftentimes my group would not understand a certain function on final cut, and I would guide them through it, only to find it’s just quicker to do it myself, and then 10 minutes later I’m still doing it. The editing overall went very well, but I found my background in music actually was more of a hindrance than a help. As we found out, oftentimes it is preferable to cut to the words as opposed to the music, but I could not do it, only really being able to cut to the beat. Luckily the rest of my group had better ears and took over for that process, leading to my sitting back for the latter half of the editing process and advising instead of controlling. Thus most of the improvements that could have been made ended up happening anyway