Evaluation

Originally we looked at Vanessa by Grimes, Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana and If You Wanna by The Vaccines. All three videos would have been good to do but we decided to choose The Vaccines’ video  because the concept was simple – a live band video. The video was in the same format as the Nirvana one but The Vaccines one didn’t have a large crowd, which would be hard to replicate. We chose  the first minute of The Vaccines video, which finished right at the end of the first chorus. Another reason for choosing this video was due to the fact we had all of the facilities within the college for producing this video. The theatre had a selection of coloured lights that were needed. We booked the theatre but could only get it for one session. This meant that we didn’t have enough time to shoot the whole video. We managed to get 15 seconds of useable footage from that session and were unable get anymore footage before the deadline. We decided it would be a good idea to choose a different video that could be done in the remaining 5 days of the project. Therefore, we chose Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars because it could be done fairly quickly around the city centre, making it easy to go back and re shoot any parts that needed to be done again. Chasing cars only had one actor in the video which made it easy to set a shooting schedule. Trying to get 4 people, a drum kit, 3 guitars and a theater is much harder than originally thought. Chasing cars also only has 8 shots in the 60 seconds that we chose. The Vaccines one had around 20 individual shots with 44 cuts.

Even though we decided to choose a second video, we thought it would be a good idea to keep the first video because it served as some valuable experience for producing a video. We learnt a lot about teamwork and organization – specifically planning ahead. We also learnt about framing shots, editing and improvisation out in the field. The problems we faced as a reminder of the importance of forward planning.

I have really enjoyed the transition project and I am proud of the work we have produced. I feel I have learnt a lot about production that I can take on to next year not only in Media studies, but Film studies as well.