Production Log - Nikita

Week 1

We were not in our final groups at this point. Instead, we worked as a whole class to remake a music video. This would be useful practise for later on, as some of the tasks we had to do were things like: directing and editing. Personally, I helped direct which proved beneficial as my eventual role in my group would later on be director.  We also had to create our own edit of the music video. This was especially useful as I hadn't really had much experience on Adobe Premiere Pro and this helped familarise myself with it.

Week 2

In this week, we were sorted into our groups for the music video and we chose our roles. I picked to do directing. We had to come up with a group name.We were also doing general research on music videos; how they became popular, what made a successful music video etc.

Week 3

We started deciding our song through initial ideas. At this point, I started with more general work. For example, a mood board which helped us start to come up with ideas. For this, I focussed on what the song sounded like, and relied on stereotypes to imagine what our audience would expect. This gave us a starting base.

Week 4

We decided on a song. This also allowed us to start doing more focussed work, for example, storyboards. As director, I came up with the very first drafts of the storyboards. These were then drawn out and coloured by other members of the group to let us imagine the final outcome more. I tried to incorporate interesting camerawork to make it interesting to watch.

Week 5

Preparation for the music video officially started here. We went to some of our locations to see if they would be suitable. This was useful as we wanted a specific atmosphere and appearance for the music video and some of the locations didn't fit as well as we had hoped.

Week 6

As director, I created shot lists and shot blocking diagrams for each location. This will definitely be very useful because it will help the filming process go more smoothly without having to come up with ideas on the spot. We actually did have a small test shoot and while it didn't result in the best footage because we were still getting used to the camera, the shot lists helped. The process of actually creating a shotlist is also useful in that it ensured i use varied camera shots.

Week 7

This week was a mix of retrospective thinking of how our music video evolved and some thinking on how it will evolve while it's still being created. Some of this retrospective thinking was about how different directors and pre-existing videos shaped my ideas for the music video. Nasima and I also thought about how it will use codes and conventions. We finished our location recce and finalised the locations we'll be using.

We also started filming at this point.

Week 8

We went to film again. The filming is taking longer than we expected and we found that some of the footage was shaky or otherwise unusable.

Week 9

Our group split up at this point - Shivani and I, and Matthew and Nasima. We decided we wanted to do different edits. Shivani and I also re-filmed some scenes this week.

Week 10

Filming was taking longer than we expected due to our actors availability and because of the amount of locations we have to film at, and so we finished filming this week.

Week 11

Started editing, and finished a rough draft and started editing our transition cut.

Week 12

More editing. We finished our transition cut. This was interesting because although we knew what we wanted the result to look like (i.e like a dream) but we weren't familiar with the transitions offered on Premiere Pro and so we had to look through a huge range before we found one that suited our needs.

Week 13

The start of ancillary tasks. I researched on all three types of ancillary and have decided which ones I want to create - a website and a digipak. Although I won't be making a poster, I still recreated a pre-existing to try out Photoshop for my future digipak. It was interesting and will definitely be useful later on when I'm editing photos for the digipak.

Week 14

It's digipak week! I made a short survey to find out what audiences wanted from a digipak. I decided which pictures I want to use in my digipak. While I have most of them already, because we took them while we were filming, I went back to our locations to take some more pictures. They look great and I'm very proud of myself.

Week 15

I made a first draft of my digipak and showed some of my target audience. I have also need to fix some mistakes that I've already spotted on my own (I've accidentally forgotten my artist name on the cover, which is pretty important).

Week 16

We identified that our audience doesn't understand the storyline in our music video and are planning on using more effects and transitions to make it more obvious for them. I've also started making a website. At first, I was planning to use Tumblr and had started some basic work on it but I've decided to change platforms and switch over to Wix.

Week 17

We've been working on our music video. At this point, we're still fine-tuning the filters. More specifically, although we want to put some sort of filter on parts of the video, we're still exploring our options (these include more saturation, the filters that Premiere Pro offers, or the option we're leaning towards at the minute - colour grading it to make sure we can adjust the shade of pink exactly to our liking). I've also got a first draft of my website!

Week 18

Our final cut for the music video is done. I've been working on my website.

Week 19

More digipak editing, I've moved (and deleted and added etc) pictures around and finished a second draft.

Week 20

This week was focused on final edits on both the website and the digipak. These changes were mostly minor. For example, on the website, I changed the background colour and added a few graphics to make it more interesting