Evaluation of Skills Development

In preparing for our next film task we’ve been developing skills for a summer-themed music video or in my case more of a summery montage. It hasn’t been my best work and I certainly feel it’s lacked any real drive but I’ve tried a few new techniques which will never-the-less be useful later on.

Speed- Slow-motion and sped up clips are pretty simple but when experimenting with them I wanted to make sure we put them to good use. For example when we were trying out slow-motion I experimented with using several angles and cutting between them with a slight over-lap rather than perfect match-on-action which made the situation (James falling) seem more dramatic and significant.

Reverse- Reversing film is actually something that I’ve played around with a lot, often when people use it, it can look tacky and I wanted to avoid that and make sure it had real purpose. In one of my previous short films I used reversed film in a few shots to make it appear that my sister was a witch who could summon objects with surprising success. This time I tried something similar aiming to make it appear that James was summoning paper and pen.

Focus- Manual focus is something a lot of student film-makers tend to avoid but actually once you’ve worked out where it’s hidden away on your camera focus shifts are pretty simple as well as highly effective. I experimented with various plants switching between foreground and background then I tried improving my shots generally by bringing very specific objects into focus and playing about with the exposure which also helped give the shots that essential summery feel.

The concept for the music video- In trying and make it slightly more interesting I decided to combine the various shots I’d got in Knebworth with some a filmed at home with more of a story to it, where my sister’s responses to the sun portrayed it as a monster she wanted to shut out. Mixing the shots in editing and with the edition of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ playing all the while gives it a faint irony although I can’t pretend I completely understand what my intentions were behind it and I’m not especially happy with the finished video.

Editing to music- This was actually a really useful skill to develop and not something I’d really tried before. First I played the song through marking all the major changes in the music to make sure I made a change in tone in the images whether this was the move from the shots of my sister retreating into the shade to a montage of flowers both in and out of focus or something subtler. In particular though I wanted the shots to cut with the words which meant speeding up shots in several places. It comes across in the final cut and I’m very happy with it in this respect.