Final Video and evaluation- Smile

 

This is my final video for my smile campaign and i am happy with the final outcome of my product.

The Video:

The purpose of my video was to show that my target audience can go from being down, sad or stuck in their own head with different thoughts, to then being outside and feel more free within themselves and more content with their thoughts. I chose this idea as over the past 2 years with the current pandemic we have all been effected by it but mostly young people in education, as it was a large change from being in classrooms with a teacher to being remote at home. With lockdown everyone was stuck in their houses with nothing to do which caused a big surge in mental health problems. For many, their daily walk was their only escape from all the constant bad news and school work that was going on in the world and helped people get through the situation.

The sequences in my video are full with camera movement to help keep a constant flow throughout my video and to allow my audience to keep engaged. In my video i wanted to make my audience feel as though they were watching from a far to make them feel as though they are with the character of the video. I also included one sequence where it was a POV shot to make the audience feel like they were the one in the product for a small amount of time as i waned to keep the focus on the main character of the video, i did this as i wanted my audience to feel more sympathetic but also uncomfortable and question what they would do in this situation. By having the camera follow the character fro the majority of the video it allows my audience to sense the serious tone that i was trying to show throughout the video.

I feel like through the process of making my own video advertisement my initial research and looking into the codes and conventions within video advertisements, as I always had the codes and conventions in the back of my mind when creating my final product. My initial research into video advisements really helped me as it allowed me to see what my final product should generally look like. It also allows me to see what products will target their products to their audience and what codes and conventions they have used to meet that audience. When considering other people’s work, I believe that it has helped me to have a visual representation on how my work should look in the final stages. When planning for my project I believe that I planned thoroughly, from planning the location, dates of filming and who was going to be in my video. However, when planning on who was in my video when it came to filming for my video, the actors that I had originally wanted in my video unfortunately became unavailable for filming. Planning the location and the dates of filming were also important as I could plan ahead with my job and around college. When experimenting with different hardware and software it allowed me to become more familiar with different equipment and other software’s like premier pro that would become important later in the process.

Experimentation

A way that I experimented with premier pro was I created a short western showdown video which allowed me to become more familiar with the software. This also allowed me to become more familiar with filming videos rather than taking pictures. For me this experimentation helped me as it allowed for me to gain better knowledge of the essential software and hardware that we would be using for the campaign. During the process of making my final product I used a few different clips from filming to see what the better outcome for my video would be and what would fit my idea for the project the best. After close consideration of my drafts, I decided on my third draft which then became my final product as I believe that it met my idea the best and overall looked better. The experimentation stage was the most important for me as it helped me have more visual representations on what would work for the campaign and what wouldn’t work. Most importantly experimenting with premier pro helped me a lot as I have said previously before starting this project, I had no experience with premier pro and when I first started using it I found it very difficult to understand. This helped me with my final product as I was able to edit my video more efficiently and experiment with some of the tools on premier pro that I may have never used before. As said before it also helped me by having visual representations on what I think would meet the brief and what I don’t think would fit the brief or the idea I had originally planned for the video. My reasoning for the original idea for my video is, when I feel stressed or anxious, I go on a walk to help clear my head and I mostly go for a walk at night. I believe that it’s the best time to go for a walk as it is normally quiet with no one around or any vehicles so its calmer.  For the video my reason of the choice of music called ‘tomorrow’ from Bensounds is because it gives a calm but also sad atmosphere to my video which is what kind of atmosphere I wanted to create for my video. For the angles of the scenes, I chose to keep the camera quite low to the floor or at shoulder/ waist height, when having the camera low to the floor I wanted to create more of a dramatic effect to the video. When having the camera at the actor’s waist level I wanted to make the audience feel like they were watching it from the actors POV or that they were there with the actor walking along the route.

Developing Skills

Throughout this project I have developed many skills with both hardware and software. When I first started initially filming for the western showdown and my final product, I had never filmed a video before and had a small experience with a camera as I hadn’t used once for a long time and had to re learn how to use the different functions on the camera. With software I believe this is the area I have developed the most skills in, with premier pro I had never even heard of it before I started this project so when it came to using it, I found it difficult for the first time. To ensure I became familiar with all the tools and how to use premier pro I used the tutorials that are already built in to premier to help me learn the basics like how to import videos and sounds to my video files. Once I had got the basics down, I then went to YouTube to learn how to use more of the tools and how I could edit the colour, add transitions and other elements to make my video better. By the time I had finished my drafts of the product I was very confident with how to use the basics of premier pro and how to add different transitions to my video. Different elements of my video have been improving by me changing the order of the clips, changing the transitions and taking out irrelevant clips. When choosing the transitions, I decided to take my time and experiment with them and seeing which one would look the best for my video. I think changing the order of my clips as well was important as before I changed the order, they didn’t make sense or flow throughout the video and made my video look very jumpy and confusing.

Feedback

When asking for feedback for my pitch and my final product I created separate google forms surveys to ask my target audience/ focus group what their opinions were on my products. In these surveys I have asked relevant and suitable questions that will benefit me by giving me the best feedback that I could get. I took close consideration when asking these questions as I wanted to ensure I got my audiences honest opinion and when making improvements it would be clear on what I had to do. I have taken feedback on board by making the changes needed that my audience stated, however one improvement that I didn’t make was changing the camera focus as I had already created the final edit of my video and had very limited time left for the product to be completed. 

Brief

For this project I believe I have met the brief by targeting my video to the correct social grade and target audience. With the target audience being in-between the ages of 15-25, most will be in the lower social grade due to them being in some form of education whether that being college or uni. The main message for my video was to show that you don't need money to make yourself happy or smile. I chose this as one of my main messages as some people may be unemployed or have a minimum wage paying job. When meeting the original brief, I believe I have done a good job of meeting it as I have made my product with the target audience in mind. I have also taken my initial research into consideration when creating my plan and when creating my final product. When realizing my original idea i have stuck to that original idea but with the problems that I have ran into when producing the product, as i said previously, I had to make a few changes like I was unable to shoot family shots, walking along the beach etc. due to my actors becoming unavailable. If i were to do anything different i would have people who would be there as a back up if anyone became unavailable to film, as i know that my original idea would have been a lot more effective then my current video. I would have also given myself a lot more time to film my video as I didn't give myself enough time to film my video due to the unexpected problems that I ran into. What I want to do in future is improve on my camera work as in my final video i believe that the camera angles and focus could have been better than what they are. The current lockdown did not have an effect on my project. Throughout filming I came across many setbacks and technical difficulties, one of the setbacks, as said previously, was all my actors became unavailable for any filming, so I then decided to be the only actor in my video. Another issue that I had was the weather due to a storm I was unable to film on the day that I had planned to film on. With these setbacks I decided to decide on other days to film on and check the weather app before I started filming again. I also had issues with my SD storage, although there was no media on my SD card the card was 'full'. To overcome this i just bought a new SD card to make sure i could get my filming done on time.

Experience

From this experience over the past few month i have learned many new skills such as professional practice and technical skills as before starting this project i had no experience with creating videos with a camera. 

The research element of the project also gave me a great insight on how its important to do the theory before creating the actual project and just going straight to do the filming. It also showed me how important it is to understand your client and to fully understand the subject that you are creating the video around. Before starting the project i believed that i could have created the video with no planning, no research and no pre production, but i was very wrong. These are the most important stages as it allows you to see a clear visual representation on what you need/ want to create for the product. If i had went straight into filming without planning, creating story boards or not completing any research into existing media products i think i would have been very lost and confused. However, once i had planned my product i had a clear representation on what i wanted to create for my project, and seen as i had done research into the client I had a clear understanding of the clients needs and what they would have wanted. Another important part of the research is looking into my target audience, if i created this product blindly without seeing what would attract my target audience first I believe that my video would have went terribly and i wouldn't have met the brief. When looking into pre- existing media it helped me see what different companies use to attract their specific target audience, which I believe helped me a lot as if i didn't have that visual representation i would have been slightly confused.

I found the pre- production stage the most difficult as i have never done it before or even heard of it. Once completing the forms I had also never 'scanned' through from paper into the computer before so that was also a new skill that I had learned. I now feel confident for the future when i have to complete more pre production as i now know what to do and understand h0ow it can help with the production. 

For future projects i wish to add more detail into my pre production stages such as my pitch and my rationale as this gives sets the foundation for the rest of the whole project. As well as my pre production, for future projects i would like to improve on my time management as that is something i have really struggled with throughout this whole project, with trying to balance my college work and my job I found it difficult to find time to complete my college work. I also found my self having very low self belief when creating this project as i had no experience when creating a video, editing or handling any technical equipment. But from the beginning to the end of this project i have gained a lot more confidence when creating a product although i believe my confidence will grow the more experience I gain.