The process of pre-production through to filming and then latterly editing was a long and laborious one. A number of obstacles were thrown in our way and lengthy delays ensued at pivotal times in each production stage. Upon completing the music video recently we felt disappointed with many aspects of it but also conceded that there was little else we could have done in the difficult circumstances we found ourselves in.
From the very beginning we encountered issues in regards to our availability. After forming our group and deciding that doing a music video for 'Hey Ya' (and then later combining it with 'Roses' to form a mashup) we tried to create a schedule. It became clear very quickly that this wasn't going to be easy because of the way our Media A-Level timetables had been constructed. Safiye, who alongside myself was identified as one of the main people to feature in the video, was timetabled in such a way that meant she missed two of the 3 hours we have on every other Wednesday morning. This was a large chunk of potential filming time that she would be missing out on and because she was set to play a starring role it meant we needed to reorganise everything. We could therefore only ever film when Safiye was in and that ruled out almost a quarter of our fortnightly lesson time. Coming up with a contingency plan to counteract this problem was tough but eventually we completed our storyboards/camera shots and were in a position where we could begin filming.
By this stage we were in November and time was already beginning to slip away from us. We decided to do all out internal filming using the green screen first and then move on to all external shooting afterwards. With hindsight I wish we had chosen to do it the other way around because circumstances conspired against us. We were happy with a lot of our internal filming and got enough footage to fill most of our video, which was great, so by mid-December we were ready to film all our other footage. However, we were hit with extreme ice and snow which scuppered our plans massively. All 4 of us found it difficult to travel when the weather was at its worst and the environment was simply not conducive to filming. Primarily it would have been unsafe and the setting was too colourless for us to get shots that related to our bright, groovy video. The only option we had at this stage was to delay filming until after we had returned from the Christmas holidays and extend the deadline we set ourselves to film. We were disappointed but utterly powerless in trying to prevent it. Our hope was that by early/mid-January the weather won't be quite so bad.
Unfortunately it was just as extreme and by the time we actually got around to being able to film we were rapidly running out of time and that forced us to reconsider how much external filming we did. When we finally decided upon how much we were going to do we began to upload it to the computers in college. We then discovered that we had to export from iMovie and re-open in Final Cut Pro in order to access a better programme for editing. We were riddled with problems on the computers because the servers at our college are ridiculously slow and on occasions we were having to wait 60 minutes to open and load our video. This was clearly unmanageable from our perspective and we were told by the IT technicians that our servers are located a fair way from the room in which our computers are situated and therefore every time we tried to edit the computer was trying to access content from a different location. It came to light that if the files were stored individually on each computer the whole process would be a lot slicker and workable, which is what we expect from a college server. The technicians refused to change to this because it would reduce their control over privacy around the entire school and they were not willing to compromise student safety online. Despite our protestations at how it was hindering our progress we were told we would have to work around it.
We cobbled together a video from the footage we managed to capture but there are several issues with it, including the synching of music and footage. We have been unable to include any backgrounds for our white screen footage and that seriously detracts from the video's quality but we've not had any opportunity to improve it with the computer issues and lack of time. The feedback we've received from our peers highlight the same issues and it gives us a clear idea of where we could have improved.
We were disappointed to end on such a low point as we really enjoyed the process of creating our own music video but it really is poor. I'm most pleased with the two ancillary tasks I completed independently and hope they retain the themes and identity of the band that may be lacking from the video. I hope the problems we've had can be taken in to account when the video is analysed.
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