weekly reflection of my client project

1. Production Reflection

2. Week 1
Tuesday- I began by downloading all of the footage
I had filmed on Monday onto my computer.
Unfortunately my artist is ill so I could only film all
the B-roll that I needed. Instead of editing my
footage I decided that I would save this for when I
had filmed everything I needed. I started creating
a piece of music in garage-band for my work.
Because I had only used garage band once it took
me a while to become comfortable working on it
so I spent most of my lessons today finding out
which instruments would suit the style I was
aiming to replicate. All while listening to Lo-Fi
music so that when I played notes and instruments
I could use the music I was listening to as a
reference point to find the instruments that
sounded the most similar in style. Tomorrow I
want to create a melody and a drum loop for my
song so that I have a structure to my music.

3. Week 1
Thursday – I spent today working on my music again and I’ve realized that it’s a
lot more difficult to create good sounding music than I thought it was. I did
manage to achieve my goal from yesterday of creating a drum loop and melody
for my song however there were lot’s of failed attempts and experiments which
didn't help me progress and used up my time but I was quickly learning how to
properly use garage band again so I was improving my skills even if I only
progressed a little bit. Towards the end of the day I realized that to get the Lo-Fi
sound that I wanted I could add in some static sound to add a nostalgic sounding
element to the music.

4. Week 1
Friday – I spent todays lesson further progressing my music. I erased the drum
beat I made yesterday and created an entirely new one that better suited the
style I was aiming for as I wanted to create something a lot more subtle. Once
I made a new beat I then reworked my guitar melody and started creating a
piano melody to accompany it. So far I really like the sound of my music and I
think the style really fits for what I want my video to turn out like. Next week I
will have (hopefully) filmed my video by Thursday and I will complete my
music as soon as possible so I can begin editing my footage.

5. Week 2
Wednesday – Today I filmed my project and it inspired me to change a lot of the decisions that I made in my
plan. Instead of creating a more stylistic video I have decided to give the video a more comforting atmosphere
without all the footage of nature and flashy editing and effects. The reason I’ve decided to strip back my plan is
so that the viewer can focus more on Holly’s experience with depression as I feel like this approach is tasteful
as it shows more respect for Holly’s thoughts and opinions on mental health. We set up my living room so that
we had sheets covering the floor and wall so that if Holly spilt any paint then it wouldn't matter much. We set
up two cameras to film the painting and Holly. Oliver set up a tripod with a recorder so that we could record
clean audio. We set up a lamp behind the camera that was recording Holly so that it would light up her face
however it was also a fairly bright day so we mostly used natural lighting. I feel like the filming went well, we
managed to record a lot of footage and the painting also looks really good. I can’t wait to start editing however
I do want to finish my music first as I think it would take less time to work on if I finish it tomorrow .

6. Week 2
Thursday- After filming my video yesterday I have downloaded all of my footage onto my mac
however I spent the day finishing off my music instead so I could move onto editing tomorrow.
After re-hearing what my music sounded like I realized that it wasn’t as subtle as it needed to be
in order to work well with the video so I started over however I kept the drum loop and created a
much more atmospheric piece with much fewer instruments in mind and managed to make a
cleaner and nicer song in a lot less time. I think that filming my video was what opened my eyes
to how the music should really sound like and now I’m much happier with the result. I will loop
the track depending on how long my video will be. I’m aiming to make it 10 minutes long which is
longer than I initially planned however I did film more than I expected.
before after

7. Week 2
Friday - today I exported my music after looping it to reach about twelve minutes as I wanted to
make sure that if I had a lot of good footage I wouldn’t need to go back to my music. I started
editing the footage I got on Wednesday and realized that we had managed to film approximately
an hour and a half of footage so I spent a while going through the footage too see which clips
would be useful and what I could either delete or shorten. I created the intro to my video by
speeding up the footage of Holly mixing up her paints which had the purpose of being a relaxing
introduction to a video that I have the intention of being just as comforting. I’m happy with how
the intro turned out especially the colour grading as it makes the footage look warm and cozy. I
want the video to feel comforting through its music and colour scheme as I feel like it would make
the topic feel natural. I decided to do this instead of my idea of making the colour scheme suit
the painting as I think that it would distract the viewer from the subject matter and it wouldn't be
very tasteful.

8. Week 3
Tuesday – I spent my lesson today working on arranging the clips in my video so that the footage and
audio matched as I had two cameras filming at the same time so I needed the footage from both
cameras to match so I could cut between both. It’s taken a while to do this though and it’s something I’ll
need to do on Thursday as well. It’s taking so long because both cameras started filming at different
times. As I had fully edited the opening couple of questions in the interview I continued working on the
colour grading for that sequence. For the colour grading I only adjusted certain elements slightly such as
the warmth, the contrast, exposure and shadows this created a grade that was subtle however I believe
that it improved the footage as it looks more comforting due to it’s slightly more warm look. I also made
a separate colour grade for the shots of the painting where I slightly increased the vibrancy of the
footage so that the colours would be more vivid.

9. Week 3
Thursday – as I finished editing the first few parts of my video yesterday I began editing the other sections of
my video, making sure that the audio matched the footage and that the volume. I did this for all of the
remaining footage that I had and I cut some of the pauses and unnecessary answers so that the video would be
shorter overall. This took up most of the day however it meant that all I needed to do now was edit the colour
grade for these clips and put them into the right order in the video and then I can export it. Because we were
using natural lighting some of the shots later in the video got darker as the weather outside changed so I had
to grade these shots differently to make them brighter so unfortunately these shots looked slightly different
compared to the rest of the video so an element of consistency was lost here.

10. Week 4
Tuesday – I used this lesson to get all the clips into the right order so I finally had a full
video. I made some final adjustments to the video through colour grading and
checking that the sound was good. The video is a total length of approximately 11
minutes which is longer than my target of 10 minutes however this doesn’t matter too
much to me as the video feels shorter than this when watching it. I watched the whole
video to make sure there was nothing major that I had missed or any big mistakes that
I needed to fix and everything was fine so on Thursday I will export the video. I like
how the video has turned out and I feel like the time I spent making my music paid off
in the end as it sets the comforting tone I wanted from the beginning to the end.

11. Week 4
Thursday – As I was about to export my video I realized that I needed add credits so I quickly made
some and added them on to the end. I chose a font that would fit the tone of the video and after re-
watching the end of the video with the credits on this time it definitely looked a lot better as there was
no longer a such a sudden conclusion. I also added my production company title clip onto the front of
my video and exported it. Next week I will try to create my art installation however I can’t guarantee
that I will have the time to film or edit it as this is meant to be my last day of production so I don’t really
want to eat away into the time I should be working on my evaluation but I will try my best to get it done.
I really like my video, it’s calm in the way that I wanted it to be and although it’s not got any flashy
editing I think that it’s a good think as the simplistic style allows the audience to focus more on Holly’s
answers and I think the music also accompanies the video really well. My only issue I had with the video
is that sometimes you can see where I had cut things that Holly had said as you can see her hand cut
from one position to another as she’s painting.