Benjamin Lawrenson evaluated the effectiveness of his research for his final major project. His research into existing videos provided inspiration, but finding directly relevant products was difficult since his concept was unique. Researching rotoscoping and greenscreen techniques was useful, but he struggled to find new information about rotoscoping since he had experience with it. He realized he could have researched greenscreen more thoroughly. In planning, he created timetables and character details but could have added more production planning details. His final concept of multiple characters played by one actor making beats was improved from his initial single-shot idea. Production challenges included lengthy setup times and needing multiple reshoots. Post-production issues included recreating the music and losing all

1. EVALUATION
Benjamin Lawrenson

2. EFFECTIVENESS OF RESEARCH
-WHAT WENT WELL
■ The good thing about product research is that it allows you too look at products that
have already been made to give me inspiration. The bad thing is that I must make it
different to how products already are so that it isn’t copy right.
■ EXSISTING VIDEOS- I found that the best things about researching about existing
products what I got to see what my idea might look like when its done. With this I
wanted to look at products that specified in rotoscoping and ones in greenscreen.
This gave me an understanding of how realistic I needed to make it to make it look
professional. Found that the biggest thing that went well for this step was the
inspiration. While looking at already made products related to what I wanted to make
it allowed me to fully see what parts I liked most such as the green screening from
the Rudy Mancuso videos.
■ ROTOSCOPING- Following the existing products and knowing I wanted to investigate
into rotoscoping. What went well with this was that I started to see different types of
rotoscoping and the different methods that I could try out in my experiments. I found
that to have been good as I didn’t need to try think of different solutions when I got
stuck with rotoscoping further down the line. I found that finding these different
methods was very effective and allowed me to get on with production smoother. I
found that my past projects of using rotoscoping helped with this research as I
already had some idea of this effect
■ GREENSCREEN- My last bit of research for the product was for greenscreen. I found
this to be effective and useful as I got to understand, like rotoscoping, the different
methods and techniques that I could use to do this process. Within this I learnt
about the main method of chroma key which I used in postproduction. Learning
about this was helpful as I understood what I was doing more. As well as learning
about chroma key I also found out more about spill. This is something else that I'm
glad I found out as It helped me to locate this spill.

3. EFFECTIVENESS OF RESEARCH
- WHAT COULD HAVE GONE BETTER
■ I found that looking back now I could have looked into certain parts of my research
more to creative a smoother flow later.
■ EXSISTING VIDEOS- Although most the existing products I found did fit well with my
product idea, I did struggle to find products that I could relate to as it is fairly unique.
The main existing product was the elevator music by Rudy Mancuso which worked
well but also only gave me a limited about of information. In terms of other products, I
looked at ones specifically on just greenscreen and rotoscoping as I struggled to find
similar products. This is something I would have wish went different I changed my
initial idea slightly then I might have found products easier. This process of getting
products was very time consuming.
■ ROTOSCOPING- With rotoscoping I knew what was doing as I had done it before in a
previous project. That made research a little difficult for this as I was wanting to find
out new things so that I could try out different techniques. As I had already done
research on this technique, I struggled to find new methods. I also wish I did look
more into quick ways to rotoscope as that would have helped me to include
rotoscoping with the short time that I had at the end. Although I didn’t use
rotoscoping I think that looking at quicker ways would have allowed me to include
some rotoscoping in certain parts.
■ GREENSCREEN- Greenscreen was new to me, so I struggled to find specific thing
about it. Looking back, I only found a minimal amount about this which is something I
would have liked to have done differently if I did this again. By doing this I might have
been able to get rid of more of the greenscreen. For example, with the old man in all
grey there is some weird lines coming from his legs in result to a crease in the
greenscreen. Finally, as greenscreen was new to me I should have spent more time
researching about that rather than the rotoscoping as I already knew a bit about that.

4. PLANNING
■ To me, planning is one of the most important parts of the Final Major Project. Without the process of the planning
stage, the music video would not have been able to be made. The planning for my FMP included many different
things that I needed to plan out before I started production. The planning stage is when I decided all the
characters, costumes and props, the filming story board and the location setting background.
■ It was a lot of work to plan out everything that I needed for my production, and I mostly think that I did it well. I
think that my timetable, character details and props lists were all good. The fact that I had planned out the props
and music before hand made it easier to film as that was something I had to make from scratch and helped
speed up the process of filming. If I had not planned out the music, it would have taken a lot longer. I think that
my timetable wasn’t very descriptive on what exactly to do, but it helped me visualize each of the stages that I
wanted to film. I am also happy with the music, props and special effects that I found in my planning stage. I
spent quite a long time during the planning stage of my project looking for music instrument inspiration to use for
the props. This saved me a lot of time during production, because I had already looked for them. Another thing
that I did during the planning stage was plan out when I was filming. This was very useful because it was another
thing that I did not need to worry about during production. Unfortunately, I was not able to fully stick to this
schedule due to not doing it quick enough.
■ However, now that my project is finished, I have realized that there are parts of my planning that I should have put
more effort into. One of these things was the timetable. I am happy with the one that I already made but that was
very limited and didn’t give me much to go off. I could have therefore added more detail such as the specific
amount of time I hade to film each character so that I could stick to that. I could have also added another
timetable for the postproduction. As post was the main and most difficult part of this whole project, I think I would
have really benefited from making a timetable for editing. This would have allowed me to know how much time to
use for recreating the music, for getting rid of the greenscreen on all characters and adjust their colour grading
and to then create all the special effects and transitions.

5. FINAL CONCEPT
■ Originally the idea for my film was quite basic. I just wanted to have a music video that entirely took
place in one shot and one angle. Essentially the story would start in the room and the characters
would start making a beat with the given props. After I finished it and watched it back, I realised quite
quickly that it was extremely one dimensional and quite lazy. There was no major editing apart from
the green screen. I then expanded on the idea.
■ I feel happy with the change to the final idea for my music video. Thinking of the concept for my film
took quite a long time and I put a lot of thought into what I will include in each scene. The concept of
my film was making something unique, which I had to add the different angles later one. I also wanted
to introduce five different characters all played by the same actor which I thought made it different
and interesting.
■ In my final music video, I think I did a good job of introducing the who the characters are and showing
the props that they use to create the beat. However, I do not think I did a very good job of think why
they would be there together originally, this is something that I produced in postproduction when
making the background.
■ I think that the final concept is fine. There’s nothing that jumps out as an error, and I think the idea
behind the idea is relatively strong. However, I think I was not particularly successful at telling the
story for why the characters where there. I feel that to add more to that I could have added some
speaking parts before the characters started to making the beats. I think one of the big things that I
shouldn’t have done was the use of rotoscoping. This initial idea was good, but the amount that
needed to be done would have been very hard and time pressured. If I left this out to begin with then I
feel that I could have made a better project as I wouldn’t have spent load of time researching it and I
would have also focused more on other editing.

6. PRODUCTION
■ The production stage of my project was the stage in which I encountered the least of my problems.
Filming my final major project didn’t as smooth as I planned. However, I still created a music video that
I am very happy with, and I think it meet the original idea that I was going for. There are multiple
reasons why production did not go very well. The first reason is that it took a long time to organize the
scene. When I found a day to film the scenes, I had to star by setting up the studio with the
greenscreen and then get the lights in places and do tests to make sure that It looked good before
filming. This process was difficult to do on my own and took a fair bit of time. This also made me rush
the filming to be able to fit in the characters for that filming time. This means that the footage ended
up being not as good as I wanted it to, with mess ups from the character.
■ In addition to this, I had to re-shoot all the characters multiple times due to the greenscreen not
working properly, the character messing up making me must start over or people coming into the
studio and disrupting me, and this would have distracted the audience if it didn’t look real, so I had to
re-shoot the scene. When I re-shot the scenes, the shots were much better. I fixed the problem of
things being in shot that wasn’t need and for the mess ups that would have made the video look
unprofessional, and I also improved the look of the scene by making the shots darker. However, there
were still problems with these shots.
■ Because the scene was so dark, it created some noise which I couldn’t see on the cameras built in
screen. I feel that if I made sure to fully light up my character and get them in focus then this might
have recorrected that. I went back and re shot any character that had too much noise due to this
problem and left the rest. I found that this worked and allowed the character to look better.
■ In total I found that production wasn’t too difficult or time consuming. It wasn’t ideal that I had to go
back and re shoot some characters multiple times. I think I could have gotten more idea of how to do
this stage if I explored it in the experiments.

7. PRODUCTION (2)
■ Greenscreen positioning- This was
important to find a big enough location
to fit a large greenscreen. This was done
in the college studio as it provided
enough space for all props and
equipment I needed.
■ Lighting- As well as a large are for the
greenscreen I also need to fit the lights.
This was the setup I used so that the
characters get clearly and evenly lit.
■ The final part of the set up was
positioning the chair into place. This was
to make sure there wasn’t any
background shadowing that could affect
the green screen later.

8. ■ Post-production was the most challenging part and had the most problems. The first small problem
wasn’t too much of a big deal, I had to waste a lot of time recreating the piano for the music. I hadn’t
planned the exact rhythm that I would play the piano so created my own tune on the spot. This made
my first issue reveal itself. I was in need to go back and change the music to the beat and correct any
wrong notes to make it all sound natural. It was a good exercise learning to manage my time more,
although this took up a lot of the editing time. Once I had all the music created then I was a bit
smoother sailing for a bit.
■ There was a few times where I got stuck, for example with the greenscreen. To begin with these was
some scuffs in the greenscreen which was a bit difficult to get out. The ways that I got this out was
with cropping it out but on the old man's legs this couldn’t be done. To fix that I tried to lower the
opacity of the effect but increase contrast and feather to decrease the mark. Unfortunately, I couldn’t
fully get it out but made it less noticeable.
■ When finishing the first draft I luckily exported it to see how it would look. I found a few things wrong
with this first draft. Firstly, I found that It was very one dimensional and didn’t have much too it. This is
something I thought I could improve on by adding different angles. I also found that on the first draft
the characters didn’t fully match up towards the end. I had some problems later where I lost all the
footage. This was a big deal as I also lost all the effects and changes that I had made to the first draft.
Luckily, I had the exported first draft which I was able to edit. Unfortunately, this meant I didn’t have
everything in separate layers which made it difficult to do the editing techniques I was planning to do. I
feel that next time I need to make copies of my work in case this happens again. It was a big learning
curve for me and made me more aware of what I was doing. All this made me loose a lot of time which
led to me having to rush the post-production which is not ideal.
POSTPRODUCTION

9. POSTPRODUCTION (2)
■ In post-production, I think I edited my music video well. This is because I spent a lot of time editing my
video and refining it. The post-production stage was very successful, because I was able to go back and
visually edit anything that I didn’t like during the production stage. For example, I thought the shots
looked a bit bland, so I was able to apply a colour grade. The best example of colour grading is with the
main character in the middle. This particular character was re shot on his own and had a more rushed
set up. When editing, the shot was a lot brighter than the rest. I was able to fix this by decreasing the
whites and exposure and bring up shadows. I colour graded every single shot, and spent a lot of time
trying to make them look both, as natural as possible and as similar to each other to show continuity in
the shots. The purpose of the colour grading is to make them look similar so that the audience doesn’t
think that it is all different shots. The whole point is to make it look like all one scene.
■ Another major part I was dedicated to was the transitions in the middle section of the song. As I thought
that the first draft was for one dimensional I added close ups and some extra moving parts which
corallines to the beat of the song. This was made difficult due to the loss of footage meant that the
video I had to edit was all one layer. This was challenging to do but solved by duplicating the footage four
time to create a layer for each characters close up. I really like the added close ups and moving sections
as it helps break up the visuals more. The only problem with this was that I had to zoom into all the
characters which decreased their quality. I tried recorrecting this by increasing the sharpness.
■ Post-production was the part of the project that I enjoyed the most, and I think that I am better at post
production than actually filming footage. I used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit my sequence together, colour
grade my footage, add music and change the audio levels. I also used After Effects to make some of the
special effects in my film. These special effects was the some of the transitions where I wanted a bit
more added detail to make sure it was done properly. Overall I am very happy about how post-production
went. If I didn’t have any of the problems I believe my work wouldn’t have been as rushed and would
have been better.

10. POSTPRODUCTION (3)
■ This is a screenshot of the
editing process. In this I have
the layout of how it looks. For
example, you can see where I
have cut up the sequence for the
middle section for the transitions
■ You can also see the adjustment
layer that I added on for the final
colours grade. I use this as it
effects all the layers evenly

11. Before and after colour grading

14. TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
■ During my final major project, I had to deal with a few different type of problems. The biggest
problems that occurred during this project were technical problems. One example of a technical
problem that I encountered was losing all my footage. As I mentioned earlier, I lost all the footage
that I needed to edit the video. As I was very close to finishing the SD card corrupted and I lost the
footage. I eventually solved this problem by using an earlier made project that I did as a test at the
start of the editing. Although the footage wasn’t the best and that I was permanently one layer,
there was another problem this time. The music of the main character was a different rhythm. I had
to go back and try edit the existing audio I had to fit in with the character but had to leave it partially
done due to the time.
■ The acting and the general look of the scene was exactly how I wanted it. The piano audio was my
only problem. In addition to this, I could have taken time to re-shoot but I didn’t have enough time
to start again from scratch. However, I now regret not re-shooting it, because the piano is very
prominent, and you can tell that the audio doesn’t match at points making my film look a lot less
professional. This was the only problem in my final major project that I did not end up solving.
■ One more technical problem that I had with my project was a greenscreen error with the legs of the
old man and the characters chairs. As I mentioned earlier, I dealt with this greenscreen error by
lowering the opacity of the effect but increase contrast and feather to decrease the mark that was
causing the error. Although this problem is not caused by any of the equipment, I would still
consider it a technical problem because I had to solve it using premiere pro

15. MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS
■ Overall, I think I managed my project well. There was only one major management problem that
occurred during my project. This problem was that I was not able to find a day to shoot the shots
I had to reshoot. I also found it hard to get the equipment I needed in the studio for the times I
wanted to film, for example the keyboard for the main character. I eventually dealt with this
problem and found suitable times to have the equipment and location to film, but the
conditions were not ideal. There was was a class next door blaring music for dance rehearsals
and had people distracting me, and I had to rush the scene in between each song change
where I wasn’t being distracted. I think that I could have been more effective in solving this
problem.
■ I feel that the way I organised all my filming was not the best as I could have pre booked out the
studio and found a time where I would be least distracted. This could have been done on a day
that I wasn’t at college so that I had more time without having to go back to class or have
classmates need my help for their F.M.P projects. This is something I wish I did and will take into
consideration for my projects at university.

16. COVID
■ The effects of the global pandemic Covid 19 made me have to change my project in a few different
ways. Firstly, when I started this project, I was currently in lockdown and did not have any of colleges
equipment or people to help with the filming of the project. This led me to create a project that only
needed one actor and one crew member. This was the biggest impact that Covid 19 had on my
project. Because of covid I had to think about what project that I could make with resources that I had
at home. I came to this project idea. As It was just going to be me acting and filming, I thought that it
would be difficult to do it in a outside location. I thought that if I set up the camera and record with a
greenscreen it will allow me to use myself in the scene multiple times.
■ Covid 19 also had a big effect on motivation. As I was at home for most of this project, I found it
difficult to focus on the tasks. Having to stay at home and work mace it so easy to just stay in bed and
work. Although this was enjoyable, I found that I would do some work then stop and end up going on
my phone or watching tv. I also had people in my house distracting me with days out or spending time
with them when I should be working. This had a big impact on my schedules which is something I
found as a learning curve to take to university as I will have flat mates distracting me.
■ Finally, the last impact that covid had was going back to college. This was a good impact as it resolved
most the problems that I have just talked about. I was back around people who was also working had
with their projects which made me motivated to work hard again. I also had my teacher who kept an
eye on us so that we didn’t procrastinate with our phones or by chatting too much. Coming back to
college also gave me the big studio where I could set up my camera, use the multiple lights whereas I
only had one at home, and I was able to use the greenscreen which was set up a lot better to the one I
was going to use
■ Covid 19 has made this the most challenging project yet. At the stage where I was back at college, I
could have changed my plan to have more people help. After all the hard work I had already done I
needed to stick to the initial plan.

17. EMOTIONAL PROBLEMS
■ During my project, I also came across some emotional problems which was crucial I dealt with.
The biggest problem was stress. Towards the end of the project, I started to feel the effects of
stress and panic even though I had it all nearly done. One of these points was when I had
recorrected the disaster of loosing the footage, and all I had to do was to edit the middle part
and add a colour grade overt the project. All of this was in the short time span of one week. I
managed to successful get past this stress by just working one day at a time and trying not to
panic about what I had left to do.
■ I also felt stressed whilst filming in the studio, because to had set myself one week to film it all
so that I had as much time as possible to edit the project. I was also operating the camera as
well as directing, and I found this quite hard to do. This is one of the reasons why I did not notice
any visual noise in some of the shots whilst I was filming it. I was too distracted by the
distractions of other people. I believe that music video would have been a lot better if I got a
classmate to help with the filming or the acting so that I didn’t have all the jobs to do. This
would have allowed multiple people to have contribution which would have allowed me to have
more attention on specific bit such as the visual noise.

18. EXPECTATIONS AND REALITY OF
PROPOSAL
■ When I first thought of the idea for my project, I wanted to create something unique with heavy amounts
of editing. I wanted it to be set in a random public location. Nearly all the initial things that I wanted in
my project has been included, and more. I have five characters on the scene all being played by the
same actor which brings something different and unique. I also managed to use them five characters
movements to create a song which was the whole point of this music video/ short film.
■ Overall, I am very happy with how my product has turned out. However, of course, the video has a few
changes from the expectation and some problems with it. For example, my plan was to have
rotoscoping throughout the whole project. This was something that I thought would help bring in the
unique aspect. This was cut out of the final idea as I didn’t have enough time to be able to go through
the whole video and edit in. Because of this cut, I changed my mind about the one angle approach. In
the last bit of time I had to edit. I included the closeups and moving parts in the middle section and
creating some instrument harmonies to add some extra depth and to make up for the lack of the
rotoscoping.
■ There are some problems that I also did not intend in my expectations. The major one for this is visual
noise and loss of quality. This is due to the cameras focus and for zooming in during the middle section.
I tried to edit these out as best as I could, but I couldn’t get rid of them. This was not how I wanted my
video to look but its now the reality of it.
■ I didn’t have much expectation of where I was going to set my video other than a location which allows
all characters to have a good reason to being there. I believe that the location of a bank fits well with
this and I am very happy about how this idea turned out..

19. PEER FEEDBACK 1.
Name – Ruby Hilton
■ What did you like about my film?
“I enjoyed the middle section where he has used all five characters in close ups. The bit I enjoy
the most is that he set the changing transition to the beat. I enjoy the changing f the rhythm
between the first ,second and third parts. The increase in tempo works and shows a change in
sections”.
■ What could be improved? “
“in the middle section of the project where there is closeups of the characters, I have found that
most the characters have lost some quality. This does distract me a little bit and makes it look a
bit less professional. If he had more time, he could go back and change this by re shooting the
shot.”.

20. PEER FEEDBACK 2.
Name – Sebastian Harvey
■ What did you like about my film?
“I like the whole idea and concept of this project. I feel that he has been mostly successful with
the greenscreen and that the characters have been colour graded well so that they all fit in well
together. Adding the harmony instrumental at the end worked really well as it slowed down a lot
and think that this helped to add another element to focus on”.
■ What could be improved?
“for the most part I think ben has done a really great job but has some room for improvement. I
I can see some graininess on the middle characters top which looks like that character wasn’t
lit up enough. He could have possible tried to increase the exposure in postproduction but
might have made everything to bright.”