All - Learning from the Mini-Vid

What makes for a good pitch? 
First of all to have a good pitch you need to have a good idea of what you want to create. You also need to have confidence behind your pitch and a good idea of where you want to film and what you want to be filming.



What are the key steps involved in R+P?
Firstly listening to the song and seeing if there are any noticeable lyrics, you can also watch the music video for inspiration, in the comments there was also feedback from someone in the comments "If you're gonna make a classic video that never ages - have nature scenery as a backdrop!"



If this had been the actual coursework, what would you have to add/improve (look at the assessment criteria) to get good marks for R+P?
We would of firstly spent much more time on looking at the songs music videos and music videos that are of the same genre. We would of also created things such as story boards and call sheets, we may have also asked for feedback on our idea from a number of people; including teenagers and adults. 

Related to the last point, was your shoot well organised?
In terms of knowing where we wanted to shoot- yes. Although we didn't have much time to pick locations due to the sudden suprise of actually shooting part of a music video. 



What can/did go wrong on a shoot, and what steps help you overcome such problems (better still, prevent them from happening in the first place!)? 
School children cut short our filming. We also didn't have a tripod which on reflection didn't work out as well as we'd hoped.

Did shoots take more/less time than you estimated?
Finding different locations took longer than the actual filming as we were productive with the time we had.

What difference does working with HD as opposed to mini-DV make?
We get sharper images and you can get more detail and better quality when either zooming in or out. 

Is it necessary to stick to a genre you're familiar with to have a good idea?
No. We had a great time listening to Jason Donovan. 

What issues are raised by working within a group
We had different ideas on where to film and where not to film.

Do you think you could manage a full music video production single-handed?
With a greater collection of clips as well as equipment such as multiple cameras and a tripod I think I could.

What more have you learned about Final Cut Express?

We have used new editing techniques such as key framing and rotating clips. 

How many shots do you now think a good music vid will have for every 30 seconds of screen time?
For 30 seconds they may have 20-30 shots.

Did you shoot each planned shots repeatedly (from different angles)? did you need to shoot more sequences repeatedly to create better shot variation for editing a dynamic video?
As we had limited time we only shot a few of the shots at different angles.

Anything else that occurs to you (eg importance of mise-en-scene and locations; pre-preparing cast with lines + basic direction; having loud portable media player to play track when shooting, dance choreography if relevant etc etc)?
We had a lyric sheet as well as a an iPod with the song on to play the music, this helped us to keep in time.