Evaluation for Wolves

Evaluation for “wolves” music video.

So originally the group and I discussed what we were going to do for our music video. We had many plans as well as ideas.  We looked at many songs:

·         Sara Bareilles – Gravity

·         Echosmith – Cool Kids

·         Zara Larsson – Lush Life

·         Sia – Reaper

·         Charlie Puth – We Don’t Talk Anymore

·         Kanye West – Wolves

We looked at all of these music videos and decided that we want to make a music video to Wolves. I found the music video different from other videos. The music videos genre was alternative hip hop. I wanted to make something different compared to other music videos.

When we began planning, our first ideas were around costume and the character in our song. We wanted the singer to be mysterious and her face would be revealed towards the end of the video. I also said that the clothing would be black or dark to match in with the mood of the song. I planned on having the singer to wear a black fedora as well as a black trench coat. I was planning on referencing a “stranger” from 1940s period. However towards the end, I planned on having the character having her self-revealed and wearing lighter colours.

On the day we started filming due to not having contact number with the singer we had a different outfit then we planned. We began doing over the shoulder shots as well as a medium close ups. Earlier we had an issue of getting our track. So we couldn’t film.  We carried on planning and more ideas. We needed to film an instrument which was part of the track. During filming we had a problem that the guitarist was recording for his college work. So we had to film another day so we ended up wasting a day. We lost contact of our singer and she never replied to her emails. Then what happened was the singer did not wear the costume we planned of and due to filming constraints we had to film regardless of the costume change. What I could have done if we had more time is to have a better form of contact with both performers and ask for them to wear the certain clothing at the right time. My original idea of revealing the singers face at the end was effected because of the amount of time we had to film. In hindsight I would have planned better as well as finding other people to take up the role.

During post production, Natalie from our group had the idea that we would use a projector. This was going to be used to show more of a dark atmosphere. The reason behind this was to capture the same atmosphere from the original music video.

When we were filming the studio that we were going to use was being used by other students. The days we needed to film on was booked out. So we had a dilemma on filming in the studio. So in the end we dropped the idea. I believe that we had more time we could have added this in. However during editing to replace this we had 4 videos put side to side making a “colliderscape” where the same video reverses into itself creating a 4 way mirror effect.

During post production we discussed the areas we should film in. We needed to film in a forest, a graffiti tunnel near Lake Street and a gallery. The group and I discussed we needed  our performer at the tunnel and forest. We also came up of a wolf graffiti idea that would be used and introduced in the beginning of the video.

During production we couldn’t get the singer at the location we wanted. So we couldn’t film that scene. I on the other hand decided that I would go to the tunnel and create the wolf symbol graffiti. I then created our image. I filmed the image from different angles. This was because originally I wanted our performer to stand in front of it. However I didn’t have time so I decided to do this. I wanted to link back to the original video where Kanye west walks. However my idea was that it would be in the tunnel without the models and actors.

In the original video you see Kanye picking up people up which follow him. Looking at that my group and I discussed that we should have dancers imitating wolves and dancing together. The dilemma to this was that the track was slow and not upbeat. Also we did not know any dancers so we couldn't film this. However during editing we filmed another scene in a forest and we replaced the wolves dancers  with the guitarist and our other singer. Instead of them dancing we had them stand still with their hoods up. We wanted to show that they were strangers looking over the singer walking by. This was to compensate the wolf idea we could not do.

Over all making our music video was very challenging and an experience that I benefited from. It was interesting how post production and production was and how I over came the problems that I had.

Working with 3 different artists was challenging because they had there own work to do. One of the main challenges was keeping contact with people with our artists. One of the things that slowed us down was not informing the singers of our plan when we were recording. Overall towards the end we did work together and were able to put a lot of footage together however I felt it was not enough.

During editing I realised we needed more footage so that's when I decided that I would go make the graffiti. I went by myself to Leak st. Made the image I wanted an filmed it in different angles. During editing I placed majority of the footage in order with the track. I also gave a lot of advise as well as telling my group where certain transition should be. I tried my best to make the video similar to the original. My input to this project was mainly filming as well as planning how the shots for our music video would be. I also thought it would be interesting in exploring a different type of genre in music. Which is called alternative hip hop.

I believe over all I have contributed a lot to this task in planning as well as making this video. I worked hard in making this and I believe it was successful in making it. The wolves video we made was very unique compared to other music videos. It was not as up beat and it did not have a lot dancing to it. This task helped me in knowing my strengths and weaknesses, in the future I will focus more on having a good contact with performers or actors as well as finding other locations to film in. One of the strengths that I should carry on using and improve is editing and filming.