CLIENTS RESPONSE TO VIDEO

FINAL VIDEO

29/03/17 EVALUATION

We chose Hartshill hayes country park for our promotional video as we know it well. It took a while to contact our client, we went through many different departments and used both phone and email. Maintaining contact with the team in charge of the hayes was difficult as they are also in charge of other country parks in the area.

We assigned each person in our group a different role for organisational purposes. I was in charge of editing. This included music, sound, and video. Abbie was cinematography/photography, and conner was directing. We all took part in communications.

Our first shot did not go well as we discovered there was a part missing on our tripod. This ended up working out quite well in the end as it forced us to get many handheld pan/tilt/ and tracking shots that we may not have taken before. Luckily it was only environment shots so we didn't require the tripod for an interview.

Time management was very important as we had to cater to the whole team, as well as the weather, and the constraints around renting equipment from college. When it came to interviews it was even harder. We tackled this by organising the interviews very far in advance, and setting up replacement days so as to ensure the shoot happens regardless of weather. Many of our interviews ended up containing too much information due to the amount of time we had set aside for them. This helped us, as we then had loads of footage to choose from when it came to editing.

We chose to first interview my grandma as we all knew her, and so we were comfortable that if something went wrong, she would be patient and understanding. This interview went well and it got us used to it quickly. Our third interview was with the countryside ranger, Mike Labram. We eventually set up the camera only to have it stop working due to a faulty SD card. Luckily, we had a spare camera, so we set up and made do. If we were to do it again, I would have abbie go over the equipment I brought so she could see in advance that the SD card was not compatible, as I have less experience with cameras than her.

Because of the camera constantly turning off and on again, the footage was fragmented and nearly unusable. Luckily, the sound had continued recording, so I managed to keep the sound going in the footage and insert various shots of the woods where the video was missing.

The hardest part of the video was editing. Because we used many different cameras and SD cards, once we uploaded all the footage to one computer, it was very hard to keep track of all the shots. We had over 4 hours of footage, that meant sifting through random folders in order to find one shot. Many technical issues also lead to the project not saving properly, this meant that we would open the project one day to find that some of the shots were missing, and we had to go through the computer finding them, then re-uploading them only to discover the mac isn't uploading all the footage we want.

If we were to do this again, we should buy two large SD cards, keep all the footage on them, and label each folder of footage so that it doesn't happen again. I would also like to make sure all the cameras had the same settings, as we often had to touch up shots to make them the same saturation/hue etc. A series of drone shots would also be useful for a project such as this.

Despite these issues I feel the promotional video went really well considering we had no idea how big the project was going to end up.

FINAL VIDEO

Film Studies - Lacan from Conner Merry on Vimeo.

Lorn - Acid Rain

Daylight/Bad dreams/It's a cool world/With cruel things
Hang tight/All you/Nothing like a big bad bridge to go burning through

The lyrics suggest suicidal themes, phrases such as "Hang tight" and "Bridge to go burning through", this suggests these themes are attached to the main female who is the focus of the video, this suggests that the main girl could have committed suicide, bringing her fellow cheerleaders with her. This is emphasised by the fact that she features in a 4 second clip at the end alone, her wounds are more visible and her sad expression can be seen, perhaps guilt?

The girls all dance in a very jagged, jerky motion, as if to show their bones breaking, or being twisted into unnatural positions. This represents the fact that they were all in the car crash together before you even see the final shot of them together. They also all leave the diner through different ways, with only the main girl leaving through the 'EXIT' sign. This suggests that perhaps she was the only one who died.

The iconography and mise en scene of the environment and the car suggests the era could be somewhere around the 60's. The diner and the car are very old fashioned, classic american iconography, however it cannot be earlier than the 60's as 'Little Tree' air fresheners were made in 55.

The reasoning behind the suicidal themes could relate to the era, for instance, the main female is seen twice clutching at her stomach. Not that this isn't abnormal since she was in a car accident, but she is also doing it in the slow zoom in front of the pool; attention is drawn to it since she stands so still and stares directly at the camera. This may suggest that she was perhaps pregnant, and unsure of what to do about it, as in the 60's abortion was a highly taboo topic, and being a single mother was almost impossible to do.

The fact that she is black may also be a reason she was drawn to suicide; the artist Lorn, has described in the past that he had been a victim of racism, so he may have deliberately cast an ethnic minority (for that time) to illustrate this issue.

Talking Heads - Once in a lifetime

The video consists of variations between a white background and a CGI water-y background, both of which feature David Byrne dancing with various close ups and strange angles, including him lying on the ground, or sliding, giving the impression of a backstroke.

When you first watch the video it appears as though it's just nonsense, but the lyrics actually coincide with the dancing. Brian Eno describes the lyrics as the "call and response" style of preaching commonly associated with American evangelists on the theme of "moving through life with little awareness or questioning". The repetition of lines such as "and you may find yourself..." is an example of a line they took straight off an evangelical radio broadcast. "Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down" is another Evangelistic, existential, and accepting lyric, which associates with the idea that those who give themselves to the church are supposedly giving their life away, and preventing themselves from growing as people.

These lyrics which associate those who subscribe to religion and social expectations ("a beautiful house/and a beautiful wife") with an empty and wasted life, coincide with the marionette style dancing. Byrne jerks and flings his arms around, not quite in time with the music. This suggests that those he talks about are manipulated and used, much like a puppet. The snippets of tribal dancing and rituals further accentuate the idea that he's referring to a mass accepted ideology such as religion.

Sigur Rós - Viðrar vel til loftárása

The song is set in 1950’s Iceland and features a man throwing his sons toy dolls into the ocean, and a boy returning them to him. There is then a football match between two teams of 10 - 13 year olds. The match ends with the two boys kissing and adults tearing them apart. The overall message is the reaction to homosexuality in the 50’s, and is amongst NME’s ‘most controversial videos’.


The setting is very simple and clear, surroundings feature high valleys and mountains, with bleak weather and bland, uncomplicated scenery. I feel that the white skies and damp environment reflects the overall mood of the video; Bleak and melancholy. The Swedish countryside is an excellent basis for a video with such a strong narrative, as it’s almost like a blank canvas leaving room for the story. Slow motion is used the whole way through on every shot, at least 50% speed - This effect is brilliant as it not only goes with the slow pace of the song, but it emphasises every facial expression and emotion, and portrays the narrative in very few shots.

 The iconic subjects in the video is the toy dolls the boy is playing with at the start, the Bible, and the contrast of innocence. The dolls flying through the air and the second boy looking over his shoulder represent the power the two boys have in their world, and how everything happens around them with no control of their own. The Bible is dropped on the floor as the fathers pull the boys away from each other, symbolising the false understanding of the text, and failure to live up to true christian expectations/or how their faith was The contrast of innocence consists of the pale 1st boy, with his white hair and clean clothes, and his father with yellowed crooked teeth and dirty wrinkled face.

In the scene where the two are kissing in the middle of the playing field, the music becomes climactic and orchestral, and we straight cut to flashbacks of the two boys playing together and hugging.