D1 Task

                                                        D1 Production techniques

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Improvements 

the filming schedule took place over different hours of different days. for example the scenes filmed in the alleyway took place in the morning, around 11AM whilst the scenes where James is walking home were filmed later on, at around 4PM, meaning that the lighting was dimmer in certain shots, so to fix this i adjusted the exposure on each shot so that the scenes roughly look the same. 

Not enough detail for a D task – this is a question about post-production.  Basically what did you do in post-production to create meaning in your video. How do music videos create meaning to their audience? 

Continuity

For every shot we captured we tried to make sure that continuity carried on. For example, whilst filming different angles of James we tried to make sure that all the actors where in the same position in when filming. in the section of the music video where the bully confronts James, there are 2 shots that show James walking down the stairs, one from behind him, and one in front of him. when the shots change we can see that James remains in the same position. unfortunately its plainly visible to see James leave school without his jacket on, we only noticed this after filming was completed and we were on to the editing stage and there was nothing we could've done. so as much as we had tried, a few mistakes slipped through the cracks. 

There are several scenes that we’re filmed towards the end of the day, meaning that the lighting was dimmer in certain shots, so to fix this i adjusted the exposure on each shot so that all shots roughly look the same 

Mise en scene

the locations we used was our school, James' bedroom and an alleyway 2 minutes walk away from school

Alleyway

we used the alleyway as we felt it could be used as a metaphor: alleyways are almost always depicted as dank, dirty and smelly, somewhere the lowest forms of life reside, so its only logical that James' bully would be there. this helps convey the message that James is the victim here and that the audience should feel sorry for him. Alleyways are also known to be shady places, where people cannot see the actions going on, this could help convey the message that James is alone and cannot be helped by anyone and so he must defend himself. 

School

the school was used as its helped convey james weakness. its not really apparent in the final cut of the video but there was a shot in which the camera pans down from a shot of a clock, which shows the time to be around 4.30 pm. showing that the protagonist has decided to stay at school studying, rather than going home. this helps build up the character that James is playing, a weak nerd who finds shelter in an academic institute rather then, say, a gym which is viewed as a more masculine building.

House

we used james' house to help convey his redemption. there's a shot of James lying on his bed after the beating. its a close up which helps the audience see James' emotions. he wears a sad expression, presumably due to the beating he just went through. this is James' at his lowest point. he then sees a cat poster with the words "hang in there" below it. this inspires James to rise up and take revenge on the bully. On james’ bed there is a union jack pillow present, this implies that james’  

Target audience 

our target audience for the msic video was 2 kinds of people, those who remember aand have watched the original karate kid from 1984, and teenagers. these 2 groups may overlap.

i believe that the music video is suitable for the target audience as it is clearly reminiscent of the original karate kid film. it shows a cohesive story which is mirrored is the music video. it has all the elements included which the original film had: a innocent victim, a typical bully and an ending where the victim prevails over the bully.

camera work and what we were trying to achieve

our camera work could be labelled as average, and id have no objection to that. there is nothing special about how we set up each shot, we just decided to shoot where was possible. after we received feedback about our camera shots we noticed there was a lack of close ups shots. so we added them in for when James opens the door at the beginning of the video and when james goes home after being beaten up.

Editing choices

I decided to keep the visuals the same, we didn't tweak the colour correction as i felt it would detract from the message and story of the music video. looking back however, it may have bee

What we could've done better

Its safe to say that the final cut didn't come out as i (and i assume the rest of my group) would've liked. The acting was atrocious, the story was laughable. but we did follow the brief. the video had no copyright problems, the music video length matched the songs length, the videos live action and it appeals to the target audience.