For this assignment I was required to create and produce four individual videos surrounding a given subject matter. The subjects of my video's are as follows: Transport, Fashion, Architecture and Entertainment. After creating these four videos, I was to combine them in order to create one final video to showcase the different aspects of London. Essentially, videos that would be suitable to broadcast on a professional platform. Also, along with this unit I was to complete a set of pre-production documents for each video. These documents included a pre-production log, location reports, risk assessments, storyboards and shot lists. This was in order to help better my understanding in what I was expected to do for this unit, it also helped the planning of how we wanted the end result of our videos to be.
It is important to evaluate the work we have completed in order to see if the finished products were what we first intended it to be. It also allows us to to discover our strengths and weaknesses in order to improve on them in our future projects.
My final videos do compare with my original ideas, as I have not achieved producing, what I believe, are high quality videos. My original ideas for each video were nearly, or completely different from what my end result looked like.
When it came to planning for the making of my videos, I did have a few problems. The first issue being cost. Due to having to film in various locations across London, I knew the cost of travelling would be high.Therefore I had to plan my trips in a more practical way that would initially cost me less instead of more. When the first topic of Transport was given to us, I focused too much of my time on the planning and did not leave enough time to film, and mainly edit. I realised I should have left more time to edit as I was unfamiliar with the software. When preparing for my next video on Fashion, I made sure to start planning in advance in order to have more time to film and edit the video, which helped the outcome of my video a great deal.
In regard to the technical side of this unit, I believe most of the image quality was good, however I could have inserted different shots and movements into my videos in order to make them more interesting to watch. I could have also used it as a way to show London in different perspectives. On the other hand, I believe that most of the shots that I did film did portray London in the light I wanted to convey. I had very little problems using the Canon 700D, as I had previously used it before, however it did take me a little while to remember all of its functions once again. For all the video's, I filmed without a tripod or monopod, and after looking back on the footage I had taken, I realized that that was not a good idea. However, most of the shots I had taken by free hand did work well for most of the video's such as Fashion. My Fashion video was upbeat and a tad funky and therefore it worked very well. Whereas for my Architecture video, I wish I had used a tripod in order to make it more formal and structured. This was the first time that I had used Premier in order to edit my video's, it is also the reason why I believe, my first video on Transport was very poorly edited. I believe I could have done a much more thorough piece of work if I had known how to use the software. However, as I got further into this unit, I familiarized myself with the software and became a little more comfortable with using it.
In terms of mise-en-scene, I was lucky that when I was out filming, the weather was not as bad as it could have been, therefore the lighting for mostly all of my shots for all the videos were quite well lit. I did however face a problem with the first two videos, Travel and Fashion, which was, when filming in different locations, the lighting would be very different in each shot. This meant that the footage didn't flow very well, however this was easily fixable when editing with Premier, to change the brightness and colors to how I wished it to be. When it came to settings, I realised that I had used one setting (Covent Garden) in almost three of my video's and therefore meant it was a little repetitive. Therefore, if I was ever to do a project like this one again, I would not make the same mistake again.
My final video, the mash up video, is a combination of all the four videos together. Sadly, I did not leave enough time in this unit to create a mash-up video that I could be proud of. If I could do this project again, I would do it completely different in terms of the planning and editing. I can however say that I have I learned a lot from the mistakes I have made on this project. Including leaving a plenty of time to plan a proper narrative as this helps a lot when filming and editing your final work. To make sure to always carry the right equipment, in order to achieve a high standard video. I have made quite a few mistake on this project, however I will take it as good experience of knowing what not to do in my future tasks.
