This is my weekly progress for my music video project that will details what I have done throughout the week. This report will aid in reflecting on my progress and acts as a plan for the following weeks.
| Week | Start Date | | Task | | Blogpost Title | Content | Deadline |
W1 | 30 September | Pre Production | Research | 1 | Brief | | |
| 2 | Team | | |
| 3 | Weekly Progress | | |
| 4 | Preliminary Research | Broad genre research | W3 |
W2 | 7 October | Research | 5 | Research: Industry | Who makes music videos? | W3 |
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W3 | 14 October | Research | 6 | Research: Genre | Codes and Conventions of your genre | W4 |
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W4 | 21 October | Plan | 7 | Statement of Intent | Your initial proposal | W5 |
| 8 | Theory of Stardom: Richard Dyer | A summary of the class, plus your example | W7 |
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W5 | 28 October | Plan | 9 | Moodboard | Your visual style | W7 |
| 10 | Lyric Sheet | Breakdown your song into scenes | W7 |
| 11 | Storyboard | Shot by shot plan | W7 |
W6 | 4 November | Plan | 12 | Song Research | Background of your song | W7 |
| 13 | Screen Test | star auditions | W7 |
| 14 | Classwork | How to: Camera, MeS, Sound, Edit | W7 |
W7 | 11 November | Plan | 15 | Location scout & Risk Assessment | | W7 |
| 16 | Filming Schedule | Film over the break? | W7 |
| | | W7 |
BREAK |
Because I prefer writing my weekly recap as a complete paragraph, it is a bit difficult to identify the problems that had occured. Thus, I've decided my method would be to highlighted the problems in red and provided the possible solutions below it.
FIRST PHASE - RESEARCH AND PLANNING
Week 1;
Recap:
In this first week of the project, my teacher had gone through the brief. Truthfully, I became extremely nervous hearing that we had to make our own music video as it seemed there were a lot of tasks to complete. However, I did try to be excited it for this project as it will be a new experience for me. We began by discussing on the team and how my classmates and I will be grouped which proved to be a stressful situation as it was difficult to please everyone's ideal grouping. After this, we moved towards doing a small preliminary reasearch on different genres of music videos. I found this task to be slightly confusing as I feel as though music videos aren't as prominent and popularly watched in todays era so I felt as though I wasn't too familiar on the conventions of a music video of more recent times.
Possible Solutions:
Since I am currently not too familiar with the conventions of music videos, I will have to face outside my comfort zone to the world of cinematography and conduct extra research on conventions that appear frequently in music videos.
To do List :
Finalising my grouping is the top priority. This will then be followed by beginning my research on conventions as the next step in my plan.
Week 2;
Recap: This week my team was finalised with the help of our teacher. I'm quite pleased with my grouping as they are all friends I can trust. With the grouping fixed, we choose the genre Indie Pop as we all had initially agreed to do pop however after I expressed my concern on the high budget that the genre often requires, we adjusted it to our capabilities by leaning into the Indie genre (that often excuses the low budget/equipment in the filmset). Moving on, we started researching into mutliple aspects of music videos such as the industry, genre research, and conventions of our genre. This was all such hefty yet essential tasks to be done so I did my best to ensure my research indepth and thorough.
Possible Solutions:
This uneventful week meant for a lack of problems to be solved, thankfully.
To do List :
I aim to simply complete my research by the end of next week.
Week 3;
Recap: This week was pretty dull as we simply continued our research however, our teacher gave us a warning that we will be starting our planning by next week so it is a must to complete my reasearch by this week. The deadline was a bit scary since I had other tasks from extracurriculars. This week, I looked further into music videos of my genre to better understand the style that they share/have in common. Although I tend to find research boring, I quite enjoyed this task as it mostly meant listening to the type of music I liked which served as my motivation. My team and I also took on to discussing what music we wanted to do by suggesting the songs we enjoyed, picturing the visuals of the music video and then conducting a process of elimination to narrow our choices down.
Possible Solutions:
Because of how time-management is crucial at this time, I've begun setting up reminders on my device to make sure I don't let this task slip away from my mind that easily and am able to keep myself accountable.
To do List :
This week, it is a priority for my research to be complete as it will be graded by my teacher. As well as building a foundation of my team and I's music video by finalising our song choice and having the basic ideas on what will our music video look like.
Week 4;
Recap: On this week, me and my team started and completed our statement of intent which ended up being finished faster than I expected. Since everything went smoothly and we had already went through the questions together, we were able to mostly complete it within a single day and only had to polish it at home. Other than that, we began learning about the theory of stardom which helped us in understanding how to create our star persona within our statement of intent.
Possible Solutions:
This week I encountered no big, notable issues that would require any solutions. However, I simply need to get most of my blogposts finished/completed as the deadline is nearing, so I will be more proactive in this aspect by this week.
To do List : Since we are getting started in the storyboarding next week, I plan to listen to the song we choose (catch me in the air by rina sawayama) and jot down ideas for the visuals of the song.
Week 5;
Recap: This week we began the storyboarding process of the project by starting from the lyric sheet. This task was a bit difficult since me and my teammates had not prepared/had a fixed narrative to follow so we spent most of our time building on ideas, continously suggesting our ideas until we settled to one complete idea. After that we created our moodboard to make sure our visions aligned for our project then drew out a small detailed section our storyboard before moving on to discussion about next week. The class had ended faster than I expected so my team and I ran out of time to have an indepth understanding of the plot and would have to continue it on our own time.
Possible Solutions:
By this point in the week, we were beginning to lose track of time and be reckless with how we spent it as we all were dealing with stressful mix of exams. I took on the task to complete the lyric sheet at home to ease my teammates burden so I had taken notes on our discussion home and simply expanded them to more fleshed out ideas.
To do List : Continue lyric sheet and propose the idea to my teammates to then move on to storyboard by the end of week 6
Week 6;
Recap: This week we had a full week to work on our project, which included recap our learning of technical elements and theories, song research and a class screen test directed by our teacher. This was planned to be completed within the same week so I moved on to polishing or adding to my other blogs (such as more research or a self-reflection. However, this task was not as swift as I wished it was as it took quite a while to research technical elements and go through each one of the blogs to complete their content and or reflection.
Possible Solutions:
Because of how much time this classwork is demanding, I had decided to set aside atleast an hour of my day to adding to the blog inorder to get it done by the submission date. I hope that this method will help in eliminating accumulated stress as my semestral examinations are also nearing
To do List : Complete all blogs that my teacher has assigned as it will be graded by the end of next week.
Week 7;
Recap: This is our final week to do our project for this term before we move on to the production phase. My group and I used our last class session to ask our teacher for feedback on the lyricsheet and plan. He suggested we tweak the storyline so it could have a more coherent and clear narrative that is more within our capabilities. Our group agreed to change it so we will be altering it before our filming begins. This poses as a slight problem however since we plan to begin filming on December thus we need to get this done as soon as possible
Possible Solutions:
I'll be finising the storyboard before my semester break begins by keeping my minimum an hour dedicated to completing unfinished task and adding towards the lyric sheet and storyboard.
To do List : Focus on semestral examinations first and foremost before moving on to ending the pre-production phase and move towards the actual production phase
Reflection: This is a checklist my teacher provided which helped me narrow down what I had finished and what is needed to be done. As of writing (13 Nov), most of my blogs are complete with only some that require a little more tweaking before being checked off. The checklist was very helpful as it kept me on track and I was able to hold notes in which I can come back to. Overall, the weekly progress is not a fun task to do each and every week however after revisiting it, I understand it is essential in keeping yourself accountable and responsible on following the schedule provided. I could have utilised it more to be the most effecient by providing more detail on my to-do list. SECOND PHASE - POST PRODUCTION AND FINALISING
Week 1;
Recap:
To do List :
Week 2;
Recap:
To do List :
Week 3;
Recap:
To do List :
Week 4;
