Evaluation
Looking back on my proposal for this project I think I have achieved my aims of making a professional looking music video, which shows techniques the media uses to achieve an unrealistic and unachievable beauty standard. I researched examples of how Photoshop is used in the media and linked it to the amount of sexualisation we come across on a daily basis. I also found out what my peers and tutors thought of my chosen topics and how they felt about the use of Photoshop. I also had to experiment with potential makeup looks, so the video would convey a modern tone, and practice makeup application of other people. However, I didn't manage to achieve my aim of making the model sing in reverse. When I started experimenting with this technique I quickly realised that if I wanted to use it I would have to dedicate a lot of time and work to perfecting it with the model. This would have not worked anyway as just before filming she wasn't sure if she could do it or not, so I had to ask someone else to be in the video. In retrospect of this, it's probably a good thing that I abandoned the idea early on as I would have wasted lots of time on it. I also found that I would get ahead of myself in terms of practical work and forget about my written work. I think in the second year of Creative Media Production, I will spend more time effectively planning my time and motivating myself to spending more time on and finishing written work earlier.
From this project I have learnt that my workflow tends to be more practical based as thats what I enjoy the most. I would dedicate lots of my time on experiments and practicing the video, and not really plan out my shots or put enough effort into my Blog The Week's or research posts. However, because I finished my FMP early on I had enough time to go back and make changes and add more work to them. Producing a large scale video like this has been a really interesting and useful project for me as I have had to learn to really take my time on everything to make sure each blog post or shot is as best as it can be. I have also learnt that I need extra help when filming and executing my video for it to turn out well, as I usually like doing everything myself to ensure the video turns out exactly the way I planned. This way of making videos really doesn't work as when you do a large scale video like this there are just too many things to do at once.
The way I divided up my time at the start of the project ended up being mostly too condensed so I had to remake my time planner to add in more time for experiments and practice videos as well as researching and planning the video. I think the project scope for my project was not ambitious enough for me as I finished the majority of the project very early on, if I made my ideas more complex I could have used up all of the allocated time for the project. On reflection, I could have made more of an effort to create perhaps a longer video or researched other techniques and topics to include in my final piece. However, at the start of the project the idea I had was more complex and over time I changed it a bit and found the parts which wouldn't work or I thought didn't I didn't have enough time for.
In terms of my aims for this project I feel I have met or exceeded most of them. There are one or two which I wasn't able to achieve but this is mainly due to a technique not working how I imagined or problems that are out of my control. One aim that I feel I really achieved was the way the makeup was applied. I didn't want the audience to get the message that makeup and Photoshop is bad or deceiving, rather, I wanted to show that the media mainly controls our ideas of beauty and how we think we should look. I showed this in my final piece by showing that the makeup and hair was being done by someone else and it was out of the models control what she ended up looking like. I feel this reflects the way the media influences our perception of our own bodies.
I think I have gained many skills from this experience, technical and non technical. I feel I have improved my knowledge of photoshop and can now use it confidently to create a range of different images using both drawing and existing photos. I also think I am continuing to progress on Premier Pro as I experiment with different editing and audio techniques which I have shown in my experiments and in my final piece. In terms of non technical skills I think I have improved at managing my time as well as other people. One thing I think I particularly struggle with is translating my thoughts and ideas from my head into actual words. I have a really crisp idea of what I need in my head but if I need someone else to do something in a particular way (i.e. move the camera in a certain way, position themselves differently) I cant exactly find the right way to tell them so It looks the way I want it to. I think this is why I generally like doing everything myself but in this project I really struggled to do that because there was so much to do.
The research post that was most influential to my final piece was probably the new makeup and hair trends as this was the most vital to the end video. I spent lots of time looking at different videos and articles about potential trends, I then selected a few that I wanted to focus on and kept experimenting with different makeup techniques to perfect my look. The main problem I had to over come was the fact I had one less person to help me with filming and lighting the video as one had dropped out. Like I have said before, this meant I had to do everything myself and I think if I had another person there to help me with the technical side of it the video would have turned out better.