Music Video Reflection

Music Video

Scope of the Project

This assignment was to create a remake of on of your favorite music videos. My group chose to remake Kanye West's music video "Runaway". The scope of the project was to teach new angles that could be used, to teach the pre filing process, and to teach one how to edit a music video. All this is different than what the class is use to as we are use to not having to do mush pre work nor getting a lot of shots. Another scope of this project was to lead us into the entertainment side of video class. 

The Process 

For this project and along with the rest of the assignments that the class is about to do requires plenty of pre production. Some pre production assignments that my group had to complete was gathering the following copyright information, lyrics sheet, cast and production sheet, beat sheet, multiple story boards, a professional review of another music video, gathering the cast, creating a schedule, and approval from our teacher. For production (actual creation of the video) I had to gather all the dancers in the video, assign a film day, make sure all the dancers wore the same outfit, gather all the correct outfits, and film. Production was by far the best part of creating this music video as it was great fun. From getting all the dancers to participate to filming each scene was a pleasure to see it all see together and I could not have been more proud to see it all come before my eyes. In post-production (editing process) that was also a lot of fun. To edit my group used Adobe Premiere to create this video. Watching all the clips was the best part of editing as we got to see what we visioned in our eyes come to life. The most tedious part of creating the music video was matching everything to the lyrics, having to cut the sound down, and cutting down each clip. Once this was done the rest of the editing process was easy and fun to create. 

What I Learned 

Along the way I didn't learn anything technically with the editing process as I have been using Adobe premiere editing software for awhile now and I don't really think that there is anymore for me to learn with the editing process. One thing I learned technically about the camera and film making is using more shots than the typical six shot system. Professionally I learned a lot. I learned how to organize a large group of people and communicate with them to get everything the way I wanted.

What I Would do Differently

After watching the video multiple times and presenting it to my classmates there is only one minor change that I would like to make. The one change I would like to make is ado more close ups of the dancers. Adding more close ups add more emotion and feeling to the video. I feel that this is something he video lacked which was a person for the audience to connect to. In one of Kanye's other music videos he provides a lot of close ups which makes the audience feel more connected to him. 

What I Would do the Same

I would do everything the same. If I could go back in time I would change nothing as I am very proud of this video and think nothing is wrong with it. 

Experiences 

Some experiences I had when creating this video is how important communication is. A big part of this video coming together was my ability to be able to communicate with all our dancers and making this happen.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a fun project to create and I hope the class has more like this in the future. 

Professional Video Review

Professional Video Review of Only One 

Summary of Project

For this project I will be analyzing the music video by Kanye West "Only One". In this blog I will analyze what the song is about, types of shots, mood, and other important factors that made this music video iconic. 

Story and How it's Told

The story of this music video is from the perspective of Kanye West mom speaking to North west from beyond the grave. The reasoning for this is for the song to be seen as a lullaby to North west. The song explains how even though Kanye's mom never got to meet North that she is blessed with two great parents, and a very loving and blessed family. The mom also explains how God has great plans for her and the blessings she has. The story of this video is explained by one using powerful lyrics. Another way the story is told is through some artistic and deep shots of Kanye and his daughter North. These shots really show the connections between Kanye and his daughter and show the love that the lyrics are trying to convey to the audience. 

Elements that I would Apply 

One element from this music video that really struck me and that I would love to apply is all the shots have a purpose. Every single shot in this music video is in place with the lyrics. All of the shots convey the message that the lyrics are trying to convey by showing love between Kanye and his Daughter North.

Elements that are Applied that I Knew

One element that is applied in Kanye's music video "Only One" is the six shot system. The production crew behind this music did a really good job of using every single shot. I feel by using this technique it made the music video more powerful and demonstrates the message the lyrics are trying to get across about love and God. 

What the Creator Did Well

 What Kanye West and Paul McCartney the creators really did well in this music video was tell the story behind the lyrics. They did this well by using a perfect setting by filming out in an abandon field and filming and a cloudy day. This setting helped plan out the whole video by giving off a dark moody and a sad tone which the song is singing about. 

How the Creator Could Have Done Better

The creators in my opinion truly did nothing wrong but if I had to nit pick it would be the video quality and the audio error in the middle of the song. First, I am going to start off discussing the video quality. The backstory behind this music video is that it was filmed with an iPhone 6 by one of Kanye's friend and was just an impromptu idea. The song was originally never suppose to have a music video.  However, if Kanye did put maximum effort into filming the video it would of had cleaner shots and more variety than the standard 6 shot system. Secondly is the audio mishap in the video of the song. As one can clearly hear their seems to be a problem in the recording where the autotune is not completely blocking out Kanye's real voice. I know this isn't the creators fault as it's the editors. I do feel though Kanye or Paul could have paid more attention to this and corrected the error before the video went public. 

General Thoughts and Conclusion

Overall I think this is a great video and in my opinion one of the best low budget music videos out there. This is a true inspiration. One reason why this video is huge inspiration is because for my music video project we do not have a huge budget and two the song is inspirational and speaks to everyone. That is what I'm after choosing and creating a music video that everyone can make a connection to. 

Feature Story 2

Feature Story 2

Concept

I had plenty of concepts behind my second feature story. One concept behind my video was to showcase the athletic ability of the Olathe Northwest high school wrestlers. Another concept I had in mind when creating my video was to highlight how hard it is to be good at wrestling on and off the mat. From practice to eating correctly i really wanted to showcase the challenges top tier wrestlers go through. The last concept I had in mind when creating my second feature story was to highlight two varsity wrestlers Brady Pellman and Jake Herl. 

Narrative Lead

The narrative lead I put in my video was the sound of the Olathe Northwest wrestling team warming up by performing a light jog around the map. It affected my video by setting the mood for the video that it was going to be about wrestling. It also helped my video by viewers understand the concept of the video before it even started. 

Who I Interviewed

I interviewed two varsity wrestlers at Olathe Northwest. The wrestlers names are Brady Pellman and Jake Herl. The two interviewees complemented eachother nicely and provided great responses and gave the video an exciting aspect. The two interviewees also complemented eachother becuase they both agreed on most questions which allowed me being the editor to combine the clips as one.

Experience editing and Filming

I edited this video using Adobe Premiere Pro. Editing video is the least fun of most of my projects as i don't really consider myself to be that great. So the editing for this video is quite average nothing that special. The filming portion for this project was quite fun as filming is my favorite part of every project. When filming i tried to get the six shot system and apply the one thirds rule in the interview. I did however mess up on my filming as all the clips are blurry. 

Feedback

The feedback I got from my class was mostly negative as this is what they said 

• Videos were blurry
• Did not have a conclusion to the video
• Interview was washed out
• Too much background noise on some of the clips
• Not enough B-Roll
• Some clips did not fit the mood
• Abrupt ending

The only positive feed back I got was from my teacher to which she said 

• The video highlighted the athletes and the sport well
• Good questions and interviews 
• Good voiceover

This was all the feed back I received for my video.

Conclusion

If i could make any changes with my video I would make two substantial changes. One would be having a voiceover at the end of the video to address the last question and not have to video end so abrupt. The last change would be Making sure that when I film i make sure that i am getting clear and quality footage. Overall this was a fun assignment as I like shooting feature story and like the journalism side of video.  I look forward to doing more projects like this in the future.
 

What Makes a Good Feature Story

Best Feature Story For Sophomore Video Production

What Makes a Good Feature Story 

Concept

The first part to making a great feature story is having a great concept that will keep the audience interested in the video. When the class was first creating a feature story for this assignment our teacher stressed having a great concept and even stated "Having a good concept will lead you to having a good video." Without a great concept no one wants to spend the time to watch the video. Some other great feature stories besides the video above that have great concepts that the class used as examples when creating our own would be about a mom who wore 26 different shirts when running a mile, a teacher who has had a long lasting influence on his students, and a man who drives a semi across the nation to save dogs. All these video have one thing in common they all have a great concept that kept the audience interested and wanting to continue watching the video. 

Good Interview

Another crucial part to having a great feature story that people want to watch is having a good interview and a well shot interview. If the people getting interviewed do not give great responses the video will suck. In the video above both the people getting interviewed do a great job of answering the questions asked and give the view a reason to continue to watch the video. As for how the interview is shot it is important to get the interview shot in the environment that you are making a video about. It would not make sense to make a video about a teacher who has influenced her students greatly and shoot it at a prison. This video above does a good job of showing the environment that the video is about in her interview. Another good part to having a good interview is having good lighting.

Feature Story Experince

Reflection 

Concept for the Video

The concept for the video was to explain the story of a student at ONW who does something exiting outside of school. For my video the concept was to explain how my friend Griffen Allen overcame anorexia to become a teen bodybuilder. The message I wanted to get across with this video is that with handwork and dedication it is possible to accomplish anything in life. I also hope that this video inspires some to go out and accomplish their goals in life and feel proud of themselves. 

Narrative Lead

The narrative lead in my video i feel is very strong and is one of the best parts of my video. The narrative lead affected my video by making it a lot stronger. The lead also helps the audience get interested in the video and keeps them watching the video and not getting bored. Without the narrative lead i feel like m video would be missing an important piece and the video wouldn't be ass good and it would be boring. 

Who I Interviewed 

I interviewed ONW sophomore Griffen Allen and Mill Valley senior Sterling Franzwa. They complimented each other very well in my personal opinion. They flow really well together as they are best friends and have been working out together for years. I feel like even though they don't state this directly in  the video the vibe between the two can be felt through the video and you can really feel how proud Sterling is of Griffen. Another way they complemented each other is both there responses are heart warming and both flow together nicely. 

Creating the Voiceover 

When creating the voiceover I found the process to be fairly easy and pretty fun to make. The only struggle I had when making the voiceover was it was hard to get the voiceover to flow with interview clips. Other than that i feel the voiceover made the video a lot stronger and better overall. 

Feature Story Process

The writing process for a feature story is quite challenging. The most challenging part of the written feature story is coming up with a great introduction that hooks the reader into reading more. After  I came up with a good way to describe the intro to my video in written form the rest was simple. The rest of the written feature story consist of my voiceover in the video and Griffin's responses to the question i asked him in the interview. The last challenging process of the written feature story is the conclusion / ending. The hard part of the conclusion was finding a way to connect the ending to the intro without repeating the introduction. 

Emotion Towards the Feature Story

Writing the feature story was quite fun in my opinion. While it was a challenging process I had a lot of fun transforming my video into word form. The whole feature story process from creating the video, doing the voiceover, editing the video, and writing the feature story was really fun and enjoyable.

Written Feature Story

You can hear Sterling Franzwa getting his workout partner Griffin Allen pumped up for a set of 80-pound dumbbell incline bench. The first few reps go up as smooth as butter, but by the time Griffin gets to his fifth rep he starts to show sign of struggle. Sterling yells some motivating words at Griffin and is able to get him to push up 7 more reps. As soon as Griffin gets done with his set he drops the dumbbells on the floor and everyone in the gym could hear a loud bang.

Many students spend their time outside of school doing a variety of activities such as playing sports, doing homework, or hanging out with friends. Griffin Allen on the other hand spends his time outside of school dedicating his life to bodybuilding. Griffin explains his emotional story of how he overcame anorexia to become a teen bodybuilder. Griffin stated, “Well the emotional part I’d say from being really scrawny to putting on some weight and muscle you know I just feel better about myself less insecure. The best part physically of it is working out putting on muscle getting into shape. One it just gives me the since that I can accomplish anything.” Griffin has had a lot of supporters throughout his amazing transformation. When I interviewed his workout partner Sterling Franzwa about what he thinks of Griffin’s transformation this is what he said.

“Griffin being my best friend transforming himself to the biggest and best version of himself makes me want to do the same for my body.” When I asked Griffin if he could give any advice to those who want to be like him this is what he said. “Anyone who’s trying to put on some weight and muscle eat, eat, eat, a lot. Another important piece of advice is work hard, lift heavy with good form and get sleep. Griffin said sleep is the most important part to building muscle and letting the body recover.”

I think everyone can learn something from Griffin Allen and his journey of how he became a bodybuilder. Even if one’s goal is not to get big or care about the gym you can take away his work ethic. He has dedicated his life to something he loves and you can do the same.

 

Adobe Premiere Tutorial

How to Create Bins on Adobe Premiere 

To add bins on Adobe premiere is extrememly simple and comes very useful when in the process of making a long video to organize clips.

1) First to creating bins is to locate the add bin button. It is located at the bottom left of the screen near the imported clips section.

2) To add a new bin you can either click on the add bin button or use the shortcut which is Control+/ (Windows) or Command+/ (MacOS). (The button to add a new bin looks like a folder)

3) Now that we have added a new bin it will appear in the imported clips section.

4) To rename the bin to what you want just double click the bin and a highlight of the current name will appear and you can type what you want.

5) After that is done all you need to do is drag the clips that you want to be in the bin into the bin.

(These are the clips in the bin a popup should occur if you dragged the clips in the bin correctly if not Look at step 6)








6) Step 6 is for those who did not get a popup on the screen when you drag clips into the bin. To access those clips dropped into the bin all that you need to do is double click on the bin and the clips should pop up. 
After you double click the pop up should happen then you will be able to access the clips you want.






I hope this tutorial has helped you in creating videos and organizing the clips you have edited so your workspace does not look cluttered and like trash. 

ONW 1 in 2000

1 in 2000

    About the Interview 

I interviewed Landon Daniel in this video. In this interview/Video we discussed about Landon's amazing summer where he visited New York and did some exiting activities. Over the interview I learned some interesting facts about Landon as we go to a very deep personal level. Some interesting things that I would like to share about Landon is he is a huge Royals fan and this was his inspiration for making this trip out to New York so that he could go watch a Royals game at Citi feild vs. the Mets. Another interesting thing I learned about Landon was his biggest fear about the trip to New York was the possible terrorist attacks that may occur. Now this says something about America that really disappoints me that a fellow American is scared for his life that he might get bombed its a true shame. 

  Experience with Voiceover   

One of the requirements for this assignment was to write a voiceover. The process of writing the voice over was pretty simple as I am great in writing in formal language. However I did find it a little odd that we had to type out certain words that might of confused our minds when reading. When I had to speak however to get the aduio  that is a whole different story. At first i couldn't record the audio because it was to awkward and id didn't want to say the lines infant of my peers. But after I got over the fear of this recording was simple and the voice over came out really well. 

Experience with Video 

The video filming for this project was fairly simple. All my partner and I had to do was choose a location with good lighting and sit in front of it pretty simple. One struggle we had with filming however was getting the white balance correct and having a solid focus. Another trouble we had was not catching any background noise because the room we herein was fairly loud but with some simple editing that can be cut out. Overall the whole filming process is the most fun of any project and the part  I enjoy the most on any project. 

What I Like about my Video 

What I like about my video is the editing style I used. Another thing I enjoyed about my video is the questions I asked in the video and the answers from my partner. The last thing I enjoyed about my video is the serious tone my partner and I have throughout the video because I feel no interview should be upbeat it should be to the point and get it over with. 

ONW Procedures

The idea for this project was to teach good behavior at ONW for incoming freshman or new students attending ONW. In my video I wanted to demonstrate how to check out a book at ONW and how to act in the library. In pre-production we created storyboard to map out the key shots we needed to shoot and where we were going to shoot the shots along with what angle each shot was going to be. Along the way I learned how to use the new camera software and a new editing software called Adobe Premier and how to collaborate with classmates and managing project deadlines. if I were to do something different I would have added more detail shots to the video and added more music to better fit the mood of the clips. Things that i would keep the same is the editing style and the key clips I have in the video. For the next project i will put more detail shots like from different angles and add better music. Overall I enjoyed this project a lot because i got to collaborate with other students and have fun while filming.

Final

This is my final for my 21st Century program eCommunication.

Ecomm promo

This is a promo video I did for the 21st century program I attend called eComm. I think I did pretty well on this video as I used all the filming skills I have been thought from my previous projects. I hope that if you see this video and were debating on joining this program that it persuaded you even more to join this fantastic program.

Chase Scene

When the class critiqued my chase scene I got a lot of positive feedback. Some of my favorite comments that I received from my fellow classmates were "Oscar winning award scene". Another great comment I received was "The acting was phenomenal".

How to Print

10 words that describe me

This is an animation of 10 words that would best describe me. In this project we did something a little different and used a video timeline instead of using the frame by frame time line that we have been previously using for our other projects. The video timeline in my opinion is easier to use than the frame by frame. Another thing we learned in this animation project would be adding a custom picture for our background. thanks for checking out my video!