In one sense I wish I had made this my Visual Language project, but it has worked well to tie up Visual Language and introduce my project next semester where I want to make videos.
There were three services, the first on Saturday 5th February. I spent all day Saturday at church to plan shots at the rehearsal. I got a good idea of the sort of shots I wanted to get, but it was hard to remember many of them or put them into practice... so this taught me my first lesson- write everything down. This later was reiterated as I forgot which songs I had recorded in full and which I only had clips of.
The second lesson came in the 2nd service on Sunday where I ran out of memory right in the middle of filming. I was well prepared in terms of having a back up battery, but I needed to make sure I went into every service with an empty card.
I found it exceptionally difficult to get a good range of good shots. I got some great ones from my tripod, but as this was a fixed position I could only get relatively similar pans/zooms. I tried to get good shots with dingle where possible, but with difficulty. In total, I filmed around 100 clips; some were several minute long buzz tracks, others cutaways. I also filmed around 15 interviews, although the quality of the sound generally dictated which ones were usable. I only worked out how to increase the brightness on the last shoot too, which was rather frustrating.
Having said all this, I am happy I'm able to watch the video back and see where errors lie.
Improvements:
- Remember which way is focus and 'unfocus' as the first clip is part out of focus
- Use separate audio tracks to ensure maximum sound quality- the entire clip could have better sound (although it's not bad to say it's straight from the camera).
- At 0:37, I would like to have some more cutaways rather than going straight to an interview
- At 1:18, I would ideally have a smooth pan up. I considered setting up the tripod here on Sunday to get this, but this would have been very restricting in getting any other shots for the sake of one shot.
- The way I ended 'Fix You'. There was little choice here as I couldn't find a full buzz track of it (although I thought I'd filmed one). Better organisation and planning could have prevented this.
- I would have generally made the clip longer with more footage of music. I would need better planning of shots to enable this.
Things I'm pleased with:
- The introduction. I think the way the music starts while the title slide is on works well.
- The pan at 0:30 works really well I think, and captures the atmosphere perfectly.
- The shots between 1:13 and 1:26. These pans work with the song.
- The cutaways at 1:32 and the following pan that enforces the social aspect of it.
- Interviews were great- loved speaking with people and being able to get good quality shots on those.
- The ending where it goes out of focus, zooms out and fades to black.
- Most of all I'm happy I remembered how to use Final Cut Pro ...and that I got a bottle of wine of thanks out of it!
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