Evaluation- Ria Timkin "Energy"
I was requested to do a music video for the singer, Ria Timkin, for her new release single, "Energy". I accepted their request and worked along with them to get the best possible music video for her new single. When we sent out emails for our assignment to make music videos, I sent off to a company named Audio Bay Management as I was looking to work with another singer under their company. I didn't hear anything back from them until after making the video for Shoot The Moon, another singer, who was Ria, asking me to make a music video for them. The main manager of Audio Bay Management passed my name onto Ria, allowing her to contact me to make this video.
FILMING
The filming process went amazingly, the whole day being productive from start to finish. Ria, her makeup artist and her photographer all working well and worked well with us. They brought some of their ideas to the table, us working together to choose the best possible shots to put into the video to represent energy in the video. The team worked well together, all of us bring ideas to the table and trying many ideas to see what worked well and what didn't work so well throughout the day. My friend, Anna McGuinness, helped me with the shoot by doing close ups. She also helped by being the Director of Photography whilst I was directing Ria on what actions and movements to do. Anna also helped me change the sets when the makeup artist changed Ria's makeup and outfit.
We recorded the whole song through every time, changing the looks and backgrounds to add variety. We did this so in editing the backgrounds and looks can switch throughout but don't look out of place from the last shot. Ria mimed each time, allowing the audio to be synced correctly in the editing process. There were multiple shots of her doing the exact same movement, such as a head tilt, on the different backgrounds to allow us to sync the shots much easier and make the whole video feel more natural.
SETS AND COSTUME
We had four different looks and three different sets. For the first two looks we had the same projections playing but with different makeup. For the next look, we used a glitch effect to project onto the background as it fitted well with her outfit and also presented energy well. For the final look, we had fairy lights hanging off the back wall, representing energy for the video and to bring in a different look to the music video. We also used a black background for when Ria had the lights around her arms and in her hands. This was so the audience will focus onto Ria and the lights and not the background. The idea came from Ria for this music video, many inspirational videos being linked to me to make sure we had the same visionary for the final video. We did this as it made the transitions feel much more natural and that the changes in costumes worked well enough and that some were so subtle that the background is the only thing to make you notice, such as the black dress and the gems on Ria's face.
EDITING
The editing process was a long 13 hour process but was fun and easy enough to do. The most complicated part of the editing was lining up all the footage and making sure all of the audio was synced otherwise all the clips would of looked out of place. I then went through and removed any clips where she was speaking or not knowing what action to do, making sure the video blended well. After this, I then went through each video clip and chose the best parts, putting them together to create the final video. Finally, I added close ups and other shots into the video to break it up a bit more and to give variety in the video itself. The editing process went well but consumed a lot of my own time, myself focusing on this project solely for a month to make sure the edit was as tight as I could have possibly made it. It took a lot of focus and dedication to complete the video for the sure effort of running back the footage over and over to remove one frame or to replace a small clip every few seconds.
I did also do colour correction, making some of the lights stand out much better. The shots I colour corrected the most was the fairy light scenes, making the background darker to make Ria and the fairy lights stand out better and to get rid of the grain in the video. It made the backgrounds become darker and make the projectors and fairy lights stand out from the background. I had to be careful with how dark I made the backgrounds as Ria still had to be the main attraction to the eye. Most of the colour correction was to get rid of any noise in the footage that could be seen in the black backgrounds. This made the image look much more complete and work much better visually for the cinematic effects that we wanted to create. It also made many more of the colours stand out from the background and make it more visually pleasing for the audience.
FEEDBACK
After I sent the video to Ria, I got a huge email saying thanks and discussing some of the shots that I put into the video. It was positive feedback and she loved the video, myself then taking the time to re-run the footage and try to fix any issues that Ria had noticed and to re assess my own work before the release date. The video is being released and will be released in blogs and magazines. She's going to be using it as her official music video for this song and will be releasing it as a single, her having her first ever official music video and the first to be more than just a studio or stage performance like her other videos. Ria was very thankful for our work and praised us on a Facebook live stream.
"I just wanted to say massive massive MASSIVE thank you! The video looks absolutely stunning!!!! I love it so much: all the shadows, angles, projections, lights, everything looks amazing! I am sure it will be a major success and the blogs will love it! And can I just say that the shot on 2:36 looks absolutely identical to how I imagined it in my head!!! Thank you so much! Being honest, you nailed A LOT of the shots to exactly how I imagined it, so it is really amazing! Thank you so so much! I couldn't be more happier with the final product! I really hope it will help you in your studies and portfolio!"- Ria Timkin (Client)
"WE Love this so so much.. visually pleasing and a gentle massage for our ears <3 10/10"- Dwfmedia UK (YouTube)
"What an absolutely brilliant video, kerrie and Anna have filmed and directed a masterpiece. I am sure everyone will love it as much as me; so proud. Thank you also to Ria Timkin for giving them the opportunity to show case their talent."- Frank Sloper (Parent)
"The cinematography and effects used are very creative. The style of the video (e.g. colour scheme, projections) is kept all the way through which is also good."- Sarah Cooke (Peer)
CLIENT WORK
Ria is an easy client to work with, implying her own ideas and trying to help out as much as she could to help with the process. She gave a lot of leverage in the ideas, myself and Anna turning some down and her accepting the reasons easily and coming up with another. She had the same idea of the projections as myself before I even messaged her about the ideas, both of us being on the same page since day 1. This made the process much easier as we both had the same vision and this allowed us to work very closely. When Ria came down to work with us, she worked well and performed well. She also followed my directions correctly and gave her own ideas for what she could do. We gave her some free will on the actions and sometimes she would ask for directions or our opinions on what she would like to add into the video. She even brought the idea of the "ball of light" with her that we implemented into the video and worked very well.
Though she brought great ideas, there was some that didn't make the cut as they didn't go as fluently as we had wished. One of these was the fairy lights tied around Ria's arms. Although the shot was used a couple of times, it didn't fit with the video and the shots had too much noise that couldn't be corrected or colour graded. They could have worked but didn't fit with the colour schemes and everything else in the video as the background and image was too dark to fit with the rest of the footage which was bright and colourful. There was also many other shots and designs that did not make the final video as it did not just fit to the style of the video that we wanted to create and the colour scheme we had made throughout.
PUBLICATION
The final music video was shared on multiple social media sites to spread the news of the music video. The main sites that publicized our music video were Facebook, Twitter, Tap the Feed and Ria Timkin's webpage. It has gained very positive feedback, many complimenting the visuals of the music video and how well it fits to the song. Myself and Anna were very pleased with the results and were pleased to see the video being shared around the internet, people enjoying the music video and the song. Everyone had very positive feedback on this music video and we got good recognition for making the music video as well as promoting Ria in her career. This is the aim of a client project, meaning that we met the aim and managed to create a very good video to promote Ria and her song to the public.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, this video went well and was easy enough to do. It needed a lot of time put into it to get the product we wanted and we managed to come out with the video we wished for; maybe even a bit better. This video was fun to do and turned out to look amazing in its aesthetics and transitions, just as we wanted it to. This is probably my most cinematic piece of work that I have done so far and took the most time to edit and to pace in the order of the editing of the clips. Although it was also the most time consuming video for the post production side, it is probably one of the best pieces of work that I have done overall. I have learnt how to use a projector correctly from this project and how much it can take to put a cinematic video together.
1890 Words
