After five months of pre-production including storyboards, risk assessments, and scriptwriting, the filmmaker spent a month editing a music video for the drum and bass song "Empire" by Spor. Post-production was challenging as the filmmaker worked to find the best shot sequence and deal with some unprofessional camera movements and blurry shots. While the letterbox format and black and white style enhanced the dark, cinematic feel, the filmmaker wishes to improve camera equipment and balancing of the letterbox for future projects. Overall the experience provided insight into the music industry and opportunities to further develop filmmaking skills.

1. So after the five and a half months of preparation for the
video with the storyboards, risk assessments and the script
all for pre-production. The filming and trying to get actors
ready and to arrive on time and stop messing around for
the filming and a month of editing, trying out new effects
and styles to suit the music video to get the best out of it,
the final edit is ready and released and my has it been a
journey. It’s been a really frustrating time but it has been a
really fun time as music is a big part of my life and I’ve
always enjoyed music videos for their creativity and their expression and what they leave behind
for the artist. I was really excited for when i was told that I was able to create a music video as I
had loads of ideas that I could be able to play out. Though as for the song, I had a few ideas on
what i could choose from, all of them ranging from genres such as Drum and Bass (The song i
had chosen) to a genre like alternative, but I chose the song Empire by Spor because It was a
song I was listening to very frequently and a song that I love, I also chose it for the originality,
there are rarely any music videos for drum and bass now and I decided to try and change that
by creating this video, and hopefully the video plays out how I intended it to and feel like a real
drum and bass video. In this evaluation, I will be talking mostly about the experience of Post-
Production with the final edit and the strengths and weaknesses I faced while filming, I will also
be talking about the things I enjoyed and the things I did not enjoy.
Firstly the post-production, the post-production process was one of the longest parts of the
whole topic, trying to find what shot well next to the previous shot and so on. This was quite
difficult in trying to find what was the next effective shot and what wasn’t, I had a guideline on
what I was doing due to the Pre-Production (Script mostly) and that i had filmed them in the right
order. Though sometimes, a shot I had filmed previous to the one I was using. It was all
dependant on what went well together, it is better to have the shots that work well together than
not at all, and this is what I did. In my opinion, they all worked very well together and I’m proud
of the final edit. Though there is alot of things I did not like, as there are things I do like. I am
going to start with the things I did not like then counter it with the things I did like to balance out
the argument.
Firstly the things I did not like was the panning motion, though due to the camera equipment
that was not at a professional level, it was hard for me to do a panning shot without the tripod
stopping or looking jagged. This was due to the tripods stiffness, no matter how loose and free
the tripods setting was, it always ended up being jagged which makes the style of the
production lower and overall makes it look unprofessional. It’s a shame as I was not able to do
anything to solve this as it would delay filming even longer and would make me run the risk of
missing the deadline, so unfortunately to what seemed like faulty equipment caused an
unprofessional shot. If i was able to redo the assignment, this would be the first thing that I
would improve on and focus on trying to get it to a professional standard. This next thing is one
thing I don’t hate, it’s just something i’m having second thoughts on and that is the letterbox
effect (I.E the black bars at the top to add to the effect and set it in the aspect ratio 21:9). I think
it was a good addition and that it adds to the cinematic feel, though the reason i’m having

2. second thoughts about it is that I think that the bars are too big, I don’t want them to be too
small so it’s trying to get them balanced out and that they don’t fill up too much of the screen.
They are balanced out so that one is not bigger than the other which would definitely make the
video seem unprofessional, I’m lucky that the the letterbox effect has paid off well. Lastly is the
fact after post-production and trying to fix up some of the shots, that some of the shots still
appear blurry or bright, after the post production process there is nothing that I can unfortunately
do to fix it, the shots are viewable and you are able to know what is exactly happening in the
scene. They just don’t look as good as some of the shots and I didn’t like that it happened
though I had left it too
long to try and reshoot
the scenes.
The photo on the left is
the scene where only one
of the few jagged
panning shots takes
place.
Now i’m going to get into what I think worked well and what I pulled off the most from the post-
production Process. The best thing that worked out was how good some of the shots were, I
love the quality of the shots are, the detail in some of them is amazing. Like with the last
paragraph on how I mention about the letterbox effect, the reason I added it was to add to a
cinematic effect since the video style is narrative. If the video style was performance or concept
then I would have never decided to add it it but since it follows a story, It makes the use
effective and adds to the professional standard. Another thing I like was that the video was in
black and white, the music genre drum and bass is a dark genre, like urban music. So having
the setting location/environment , the colour (Being dark) and the music all urban makes it work
so well. It’s the best to have them all matching so it makes it more professional and shows that
you researched the best locations for filming.
Overall, I enjoyed the topic for majority of the reasons. Though the best thing for me was
definitely the filming as it is one of my career aspiration and it gives me a little hindsight into
both what the music and video industry is like. If i had the chance to do the topic again then I
definitely would, though maybe change the style of the music with a Performance & Narrative
and maybe a different music genre with something completely different. Though overall there
were many mistakes that I made during filming that I will admit and that there were things that

3. went well and with that, hopefully with the next time i can improve on these and make it much
better with planning and production.