Evaluation of reconstruction video

 Whilst doing our reconstruction of Lana Del Rey 'Summertime Sadness' our group faced a lot of challenges that we had to overcome to make the reconstruction successful. Looking through the groups storyboards Summertime sadness was the most possible to reconstruct as although the places would possibly be hard to find it was the most feasible. Most of the locations in the second thirty seconds of the music video where around trees and very abstract so we realised that these shots could be easily replicated my areas situated around the college. Although this was our final idea before picking this Lana Del Rey song we did consider reconstructing to song Skyscraper by Demi Lovato although we concluded this wouldn't be possible as the location was on a beach and a fair few people couldn't make it to Hessle Forshore at  the following weekend due to work commitments and it was very rear that we where going to get a bright sunny day like the one in this video. Summertime sadness would also be able to have more time spent on it actually filiming as the group didn't have to travel far to find a good location.

The first location the group chose to act out the first two shots was by the Wilson building which had a few trees and a pond. Although this had the main criterea we needed for these shots after shooting for a lesson we felt the trees weren't similar enough to be convincing as they weren't tall enough. Another problem was that it was became very difficult for me doing the camera work to try and avoid buildings in the background which was cruical as then it wouldn't be a good reconstruction as the first two shots of the real music video look like there the countryside with no surrounding buildings.Therefore this footage wasn't suitable to use for our project.


For the second location that myself and actress of our project Iona Gladwin went to was a nearby park from our college which was about a 15 minute walk away. Myself and Iona where very determind to get the first shot of a long shot of her stepping out the trees then a close up of her singing in the same place as the first shot with hopefully taller trees and avoiding buildings. Although not an exact match I believe that my first two shots do in many ways look similar too the real video.

 

 




 





This is the first shot. Similarities include a tilted shot of the tall trees, Iona in a white dress standing by a tall trees and the look of summer by the colours included. The only thing I am dissapointed with in this shot is after editing the image to make it look more vintage and blury the colours which where changed aren't similar enough to the vidoes as it looks to sepia as it should of been more colour drained.

In the second shot although I felt the main criteria was met such as a medium close of the singer surrounding by trees and singing I feel like colour of the footage let it down. As there where gaps in the leaves sunlight shined through onto Ionas face and after editing to make it look darker as in the real video her face seemed to react a different way to the rest of her which made it flicker pink. To resolve this I now believe that more footage had to be created to find the perfect take.

Another challenge me and Iona faced was the 3rd shot of Lana Del Ray free falling odd a high platform. I tried many shot techniques to make the hill in a park look higher then it actually was, I did this by using a low camera angle and cutting out Ionas feet. Although we did try many times of making it look as if Iona was falling without damaging herself became very difficult. In the end our group decided that the performer would be in brace position and then it'd cut to the next shot to get rid of the risk factor. This is my favourite shot as the trees we chosoe for this shot where perfect, the only problem I feel went wrong with this was that in the background a goal post is visable and no matter how I angled the camera I couldn't hide it out of the view of the camea.

The last challenge that our group faced was that we had an to find an elegant old style gate for Iona to stand infront of for one of the last shots in the video, however our group couldn't find any gate nearby that reflected these characteristis and had to opt for the gate that we could find which was a college fence. I feel this made the video a disaster as it broke the mise-en-scene of the music video and even had the college side in the background. From this mistake I now know that more research of locations needs to be done and that the mise-en-scene performs a massive role in making a music video successful and realistic. Lastly after filiming and editing I realised that the cinematography was also wrong as instead of zooming in on the artists when singing the camera zoomed in after and then Iona walked forward, this shows that we should have paid more attention to the shots before editing.

In conclusion I now know that although being in a group can have it's benifits I'd rather just rely on myself as we was faced with members of my group  often missing and certain members which hadthings that we needed to make the video. Time was  also often spent getting the song on our phones and therefore time was wasted. Also time was wasted looking back at the original footage instead of using a storyboard which I realised was a vital part of post-production. I do believe I have gained a lot of expierence from this so I can make sure that my music video will be good in terms of mise-en-scence, editing and cinematography.