With both Katie and Sean off today I decided that this would be a good time to start a retrospective blog entry. So far, we have accumlinated a vareity of different knowledge from our research and attempted to implement them into our project as much as possible. We have essentially completed the video now and the print products are underway. In comparison to the preperation for Decipher (which I made at my AS level) I feel that my research and preperation is roughly similar, in the sense that I cannot clearly state that my research for Decipher was more thorough than the other, this is the same for the preperation aspect. Research is an aspect I feel I completed in a large amount of detail for each project. I knew immediately for Decipher which opening sequences of film I should have looked at and my analysis was as detailed as I could possibly make it. Similarly I did this with All The Small Things since I knew that I wanted to create a video based around alternative rock from the start and since I am a fan of the genre I could instantly decipher which videos would be best for me to look at which could provide influence for me within my project. I attempted to get a full understanding of the general charaterstics of the videos including specific shots, themes, narrative focus as well as general attitude and who the video is trying to appeal too. The research for Decipher indicated to me that I needed to implement the idea of crime and a very atmospheric feel in order to link in towards film noir. When researching All The Small Things I discovered that with videos such as Numb the idea of teenagers rebelling is a prominant theme, with other videos such as Uprising the idea of rebellion is even more prevalent, then after videos such as Damages the idea of drugs and alcohol and sex comes into more focus. I thereby knew that these should be themes that would have to be based on within our video.
However I think in terms of filming and the preperation made in order to film the video then the preperation for All The Small Things was much better than Decipher. When filming Decipher we understood the shots we wanted to make and understood the locations where we gonna film. Although the actual execution was improvised to some extent. For instance, the effect the light made when it was placed behind me in Decipher to mask my face was almost discovered entirely by luck when one of the members of the group turned the light over and it happened to display the effect that was eventually seen in the video. We wanted to create the effect from the start but only discovered how to do the effect on the day of filming. If it hadn't been for luck then the effect would not have been made as successfully as it appeared in the video (or at least would not have appeared as effective naturally without editing techniques). Luck was not directly needed when we filmed All The Small Things, we had a much clear understanding of what we were gonna film and how this was gonna be acheived for each shot. We did have some complications at the start with the narrative sequence since we could not decide on whereabouts in the location we should film. However in terms of how to acheive certain shots there was no issue whatsoever. I feel as though this clearly shows how we learnt our lesson from Decipher and that luck should not be something to rely on when filming. Other aspects that were improved on includes the preperation in terms of equipment and props. When filming Decipher disaster struck when filming a sequence in a tunnel, the batteryof the camera ran out before we finished filming all of our shots which meant that a large amount of artistic integrity was lost and the vareity we had when editing was very narrow which was diaspointing. The reason the battery ran out was notably not because we spent time filming, it was because the person who had posession of the camera the previous night forgot to charge it, this meant that we only filmed certain parts and needed to edit around the video in order to conjure up the narrative as best as possible. For All The Small Things, we were able to use Katie's new photography camera which has a much clearer picture quality and also in the end, there were absolutly no issues with regards to using too much memory or needing to charge the battery. This meant that we were far more prepared when filming the sequence and we could even spend time on some shots that weren't orignally planned but we still had time to do (as a kind-of test), some of which eventually appeared in the video such as when the characters are on drugs there is a close up of their face as the room spins around. This was not planned but was able to be acheived purely because we had such a vast amount of time left to do whatever we wanted. In prepreation I managed to create a storyboard which was not necessarily referred to whilst filming however it did clearly indicate to the rest of the group the 'look' and shots the video would have had to have. Even though there was a storyboard made last year I feel as though it was less developed in the sense that it did show how parts of the video would be set up but didn't directly show narrative focus on specific shots that needed to be done at certain points.
The print products are parts which were not made last year at all, even though the text credits and studio logo needed to be made they were far less developed and detailed as the actual products made for All The Small Things, for instance in the All The Small Things poster the concept of text positioning and how appropriate the 'look' of the product is much more detailed than the text in Decipher, in Decipher the text was simply made as black and white with a few editing effects to make it link to the video and research, whereas in All The Small Things we had to create a picture as well as actually think about what font to use (this was considered in Decipher but no was no where near as strenous to discover). Overall I feel as though the majority of the prepation done for All The Small Things was far more organized and detailed than what was done for Decipher. The fact that there were no techinical issues when filming and that we could implement as many different shots as we'd like indicates that we were clearly more organized when filming and were satisfied each time we left from each day of filming. Although I do feel my research in comparison to Decipher is fairly level, I don't believe I have specifically done any more or any less than what I did last year which I don't feel is directly a negative since they both allowed me to discover exactly what conventions I needed to include and what needed to be included in order to make the video conform to the conventions of the genre of alternative rock.
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