FMP Reflective Journal
17/1/17
Gary’s Lesson
To start off with, I have been analysing 3 different types of video for my assignment. As I was doing this, I found it very straightforward analysing the videos. This was because, I done a short brief before I started typing my reflective journal with sonia who helped me break the reflective journal down into a few short sentences reflecting back on everything I learned this week. This really helped me as I made little notes of what I done during the week of what i learned and then elaborated on my points. Lastly, I learned in Gary’s lesson on how to reference to the university standard.​
This is an example of how I referenced my work to the university level. The reason why I took so much time with referencing was so then I knew I understood it and that my referencing was to the standard it's meant to be for when I do my final major project and for my future assignments. Moving forward, I did get a critical incident on my previous work this week, and the only downfall the teachers explained was that I don’t link all my previous work that I’ve learned to the work I’m doing now. As I got this feedback I had an understanding that all the assignments I have done are all linked together. However, it’s just about me as a person transferring my knowledge in the right context in the assignments I do throughout this course. Whilst learning how to reference correctly i found it very inspiring . This was because i found it interesting and knew by learning how useful it is, I learned that it can give me a better grade if i do my referencing to the university standard. This grade is important to me as i find this course a learning experience. By reflecting back on everything and noticing what i have to do makes me as a person determined to get the best grade as possible because by doing that i know i've understood the work correctly and will be useful for me to have all these skills for when I go into presenting. Furthermore, by knowing this, it motivates me throughout the lesson to get it right. However, i did come across a few more critical incidents. This was firstly because i did not understand how to reference when I was doing the example at the beginning on ilearn. Furthermore, i was making further mistakes, such as not putting the individual's name on who wrote the information on the referencing list. Also, i used Wikipedia which was very difficult as i was not able to write who wrote the information and therefore, i did not think that anyone is able to go through wikipedia and edit it and write incorrect information. By coming across these incidents made me realize to use websites which are more reliable and to keep in contact with the teacher, so making sure i ask the teacher if i'm doing my work correct and to always get someone to check over it. I feel very confident about doing this task. This is because it helps me to improve my work to a better standard and furthermore, it gives me an extra step at university, as i won't have to struggle with trying to get my head around referencing. In addition, i feel that i came across 2 brief skills which are communication. To elaborate on that, i communicate with an individual if i do not understand something that i’ve been taught and secondly, i feel that referencing is an important skill, which I can now say i think i have finally achieved. On the other hand, the reason why i made sure i motivated myself during this lesson was because i knew this is an important skill, which will help me strive for a better grade for my future assignments and will also benefit me throughout my time in education. Last but not least, reflecting on my downfalls, i'm going to make sure I reference every assignment i do. This will occur if i have taken information from any websites or books. By doing this can also help me as an individual to gain more practise referencing. However, throughout my referencing,, i realized that i only had web sources. This was a downfall as it would have been better for me to use a range of sources. For example, reading books about my assignments and then referencing that book. If i had done this i would have given me a range of sources rather than just having a range of web sources.
21/1/17
Filming My music video
First of all, this was the day we began our filming. So, me and the group went stratford and met with the client, producer and an engineer. To start off with, we went to a number of different locations in the olympic park, which is located in stratford where we filmed. Secondly, during my time filming i did find it inspiring as i was learning how to create a music video. I learned how to position the camera in different ways to get the shots different. Personally, i found the whole experience inspiring, because i felt independent and was in charge of what was going on. However, i did experience two critical incidences. This firstly occurred in stratford when we was beginning to film and a security guard approached us and told me and my group that we had to get a permit to film. Therefore, as we did not know this we explained to the security guard how this is our assignment for college, and and we would really appreciate it if you let us film in this location just for a short amount of time. However, he disagreed continuously and told us to speak to management. This resulted in me and my team going into westfields to speak with management about the whole situation. However we never got anywhere. Therefore, we decided just to record in a different location in stratford, which luckily was successful. The Second critical incident i experienced was the girl actor was not acting the part to the standard we needed. We needed a music video which was more realistic. However, the girl we had looked really uncomfortable and confused. This resulted in us as using Carmen to play the girl role. However, coming across these incidents, made me realise as an individual that when an assignment is approaching, to make sure wherever my location may be filmed, just to make sure that if a permit is needed that i’ve gone through that process so i don’t have any disturbances or interruptions when beginning to film. Lastly, making sure that me and my and my team all communicate and making sure everyone is satisfied with what's being done . Reason why i say this is because if we don't communicate as a team then i feel the assignment overall will not be successful as everyone's opinions mean something and could make positive results. Overall, if i was going to change one thing about this experience filming i would make sure that i have a completed shot list. This is so, im not thinking of different shots to do when filming. Whereas if i had a shot list, it would have been more straightforward when filming as i would know how to position the client and actor and furthermore i feel that this would be a situation where we wouldn't had contemplate about where everyone's standing. This is why next time, i'll make sure i have a completed shot list for my assignments in the future. After finishing with the client, we decided to go to Camden and take some shots there's, without the client. This was so we had a bigger range of still shots which could be used as romantic night shots and could also tell the story of the song just by how beautiful the view looks.
28/1/17
Sonia’s Lesson
During this lesson, i learned in more detail about visual research and why this type of research is important. Throughout this lesson, i was looking at different music videos and where screenshotting different shots which i would want to recreate in my music video.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
During my time in lesson today i found this lesson was inspiring as i did not have the understanding of how important visual research is. Secondly, i did not think i would have the capability to recreate a visual shot from a popular music video. Furthermore, with visual research i thought it was more of a straightforward task. However, it's more about analysing the shots, seeing if this visal shot can be recreated in my own music video. Moreover, by participating and having a much better olf what teachers expect when talking about visual research makes me feel even more confident, which i also feel has expanded my knowledge in more depth about recreating shots. However, i did come across a critical incident. This occurred when i was analysing the different music video, where i noticed i was not finding any shots i wanted to recreate. This was making me really frustrated as i felt i was wasting my time. However, i spoke to Sonia about this and explained the issue, and cutting it short, i noticed i was only looking at one specific music genre. So after realizing this, i began to look at a range of genres and then however found my work was becoming more successful. This was because i was finding all these unique shots to recreate which i do not see regularly in other videos. Looking back on my reflection, my actions i'm going to take next time, is making sure i remember to use a variety of videos which made me realise will give me a range of different visuals. Furthermore, for future reference i am going to make sure i use may time well. This will be so my work will be at better quality. Moreover, making sure that i’ve done more visual research for my project now and begin to apply the recreation of each shot on my music video. By doing visual research i felt has helped increased my knowledge as i did not understand visual research and has now helped me for future reference. This has helped me, as i will now be able to understand clearly what the teachers are advising me to do, and will make sure i relate the work that i’ve learned to my future assignments in college.
24- 6/2/17
Editing my music video
Bee and Johns Lesson
Throughout these lessons, I spent number of days editing my music video. This was to make sure that i have synched the lyrics with the track properly, and was making sure i colour corrected it right and also made sure there was not too much visuals being used. However, throughout these lessons i mainly learned about color correction during John's lessons. This was showing me how to color each clip to make them blend and for the clips to color flow. Elaborating on this, just making sure there are no scenes which are brighter or darker than any other. Furthermore, throughout Bess lessons i was learning how to add effects in that i wanted to recreate from watching other music videos. I did find these lessons partly inspiring as i knew i would be able to gain a lot of information which i knew would als guide me through my assignments in the future. However, ik did come across a critical incidents. Firstly, it was the first day that we was beginning to edit and Abdul used his memory card which had all the footage. However, when getting ready to download the footage Abdul realized that there was no footage on the card. So we explained the situation to Bee and she looked through it however there was no change. Experiencing this made me feel like it was the end of the world, my heart was pounding so quick and i could feel myself getting angry.Therefore, Abdul went to the media room to discuss the situation with the people in charge of the cameras. This was incase the footage we filmed was saved on the camera instead of the Sd card. Luckily with the help of the teacher and for him looking through the sd card properly, was our footage which was saved successfully in a folder Abdul thought would not be there. By experiencing this made me know or next time to make sure we know where all the footage is saved and also, knowing what folder it is in. Secondly making sure we use 2 sd cards during filming this is just so, after finishing filming all the clips would be there, and would not end up being corrupted at any point. Furthermore, i did come across new techniques and skills. This was when editing playing around with the edit and putting different visuals in to see how it looked and also using the color contrasting on final cut. I feel the more i’ve been using final cut the better i’m getting and the easier it's becoming.
Post Production
I firstly started to find my client. This happened when i was asking a numerous number of artist to star in my assigment. However, as the notice i gave them was late they was not able to do it. Furthermore, i also found this a critical incident as a lot of people had a client and i didn't. Therefore, i spoke to my friend Cam’ron who is a producer and works with a lot of artists and luckily he spoke with his friend who agreed to be my artist. After hearing this positive news i spoke to the artist Lastborn and explained to him everything i need him to do. Moreover, we decided a date to shoot which was not successful as Lastborn had an issue which where personally reasons however, we figured out another date which was successful however when looking back at my shots i found there was not enough. This resulted in me taking number of days to get it the way i liked it. Secondly we all had a team meeting and discussed where we will be filming our locations. We decided to go to stratford which was allocated in the olympic park and also camden town. We filmed in these two locations as we thought these two places where very diverse areas. furthermore shooting in these particular locations should have been spoken to by some sort of management if wanting to shoot in that location.
Final Evaluation
Reflecting on everything i've learned throughout this unit was a number of things. Firstly when editing my video, I spent number of days editing. This was to make sure that i have synched the lyrics with the track properly, and was making sure i colour corrected it right and also made sure there was not too much visuals being used. I noticed that this was completely new to me as never done anything like this before, and had to learn a lot different things, in order of me to get my video to the point where it is today. Secondly, when filming, we went to a number of different locations in the olympic park, which is located in stratford where we filmed. During my time filming i did find it inspiring as i was learning how to create a music video. I learned how to position the camera in different ways to get the shots different. Personally, i found the whole experience inspiring, because i felt independent and was in charge of what was going on. So i felt a lot of independence when filming, and by the teachers giving us this opportunity to film made me confident and new that they new we could do it. However, i did come across a lot of critical incidents, throughout, which has made me aware of what i need to do in my FMP, so i don't experience the same mistakes. Firstly, occurred in stratford when we was beginning to film and a security guard approached us and told me and my group that we had to get a permit to film. Therefore, as we did not know this we explained to the security guard how this is our assignment for college, and and we would really appreciate it if you let us film in this location just for a short amount of time. However, he disagreed continuously and told us to speak to management. This resulted in me and my team going into westfields to speak with management about the whole situation. However we never got anywhere. Therefore, we decided just to record in a different location in stratford, which luckily was successful. This has now made me come to the conclusion, when filming in sociable locations to always make sure I have a permit. Just so i don't experience any type of confusion or interruptions when filming. Second incident i came across was Firstly it was the first day that we was beginning to edit and Abdul used his memory card which had all the footage. However, when getting ready to download the footage Abdul realized that there was no footage on the card. So we explained the situation to Bee and she looked through it however there was no change. Experiencing this made me feel like it was the end of the world, my heart was pounding so quick and i could feel myself getting angry.Therefore, Abdul went to the media room to discuss the situation with the people in charge of the cameras. This was incase the footage we filmed was saved on the camera instead of the Sd card. Luckily with the help of the teacher and for him looking through the sd card properly, was our footage which was saved successfully in a folder Abdul thought would not be there. By this happening, made me realize to make sure i film onto SD cards when filming just so footage does not become corrupted and secondly make sure i look over, making sure i new where my footage was saved, just so it doesn't cause any incidents when ready to edit. Third critical incident which was the biggest one was that we did not have a wide range of shots to use for the music video, which resulted me to re use similar shots constantly throughout the video. This made me come to the conclusion that when filming for my FMP that i have got 3 shots for each angle i’ve shot. Just so i have enough shots that i can fall back on if some of the acting is not done to my standard. Overall ,this music video i did really enjoy as i had a lot of independence when doing this unit, i came across self independence and was proud of what i achieved, even though I thought i could never do something like this. I learned a lot of new skills when working on this unit, which i know can guide me throughout my whole learning process. Furthermore, i’m happy i came across the critical incidents as i was not aware something like that could happen, so now i’m aware of these incidents i will make sure that i have definitely got a permit for when filming my FMP. Lastly, by using final cut when doing this unit as also made me noticed a lot of things i didn't know about. I feel much more confident when using final cut by myself and definitely think i’m ready to start this FMP.
