Preliminary Task

this clip is a short 40 second clip allowing us to practice using the programme and getting the conventions and techniques that are needed in our genre of music to be put into a music video.
The song we used was Ben Howard- Keep Your Head Up, this song is in the genre of indie pop, however this song is more upbeat and happier than what we are planning to use for our final project. 


We found this task easy as we already have learnt the skills and techniques using the camera, and the certain shots and camera movement needed to be in a music video, there was a few problems when filming due to weather conditions as we wanted the shoot to look sunny and warm and unfortunately for a full week it rained and we were unable to use the location we wanted as it would of been too muddy and wouldn't get the effect we wanted to achieve for the music video fitting with the song. Luckily the day we decided to film it was sunny and was perfect for the type of setting and scenery we wanted to achieve. 
We wanted the video to look very natural, we tried the effect of home videoing. Some of the shots were simply shot when walking in-between the different location we were travelling too ( 0.10-0.16) trying to make the effect more realistic and making it more natural, as this technique was used in music videos that we were researching e.g. Ellie Goulding- Your Song. 
The first thing that stands out of this video is the colour and the contrasts of the picture, we wanted to create a summery and bright image on the screen we thought by changing the colour wheel and brightness it would create this effect, however I don't think this has worked as it is too bright and off balanced and I thought a sepia colour effect would have worked better to create a more golden and warm effect on the screen. I think the colours on the screen in our video are more cold colours of blues, purples which is the complete opposite effect to the song and the tune and atmosphere it creates. 
We kept with the conventions of the genres typical music videos of nature and outside locations, and I think our locations of a corn field and woods fits well with the conventions. Using the pan shots and long shots to show the setting of our location, showing the natural scenery. 
I think the two shot of me and Sarah running through the cornfield (0.22- 0.25) is really effective showing a happy and summery mood and shot to the music video, and I think this shot should be incorrupt into our final project somehow. 
Because of the research we did we learnt that there was alot of closeup shots and landscape pannings showing the setting of the video and the close-ups to focus of the artist. We thought this was an essential convention of indie pop music video that we needed to include. 
The close up shot of the poppy (0.36) we used the same contrasting settings as the previous shots however we wanted to make the poppy stay red as it would be eye catching and stand out against the purple screen behind it, we used an effect which allowed us to trace the outline of the poppy and create a wall around it to make the colour of the petals stay red rather than the colour settings behind, we thought this was really effective and would like to use this again in our final project as it makes object stand out and can symbolize important objects in videos. However because the poppy is moving in the wind the colour of the poppy fades into the background colour, so if using it in our final project we need to make sure if the object is moving we trace round each movement it does so it doesn't change colour and fade into the background. 
The shooting went well, we managed to get all the shots needed and wanted, we used all the necessary shots needed in a typical indie pop music video, I think the location we used was perfect for the song and fitted with the tune and melody of it, also the costumes of everyone in the shots we wanted to have a festival and summery feel to the video, wearing shorts and dresses show a warm and fun atmosphere.  
We did have over 20 shots to use giving us plenty of choices to put into this short clip, this is something we need to also remember in our final project as by having a numerous amount of shots allow us to have more choices to find out what shots work where and if shots are good enough to be put into our video. 
When editing we had problems with the saving which meant we had to keep redoing clips and effects that we had done which didn't save numerous times, however apart from this the editing went well we mainly used jump cuts which were typically used in the research of videos we saw, because we have used the programme before it was easy enough to use the video clips on the timeline and put all the clips together using the transitions and effects.