Post-production | Jaxmine Onyango (2024)

In my peer assessment review, most of the questions were answered favourably. Others thought it was a performance video with narrative elements in it, which is exactly what I was aiming to do. The continuity flowed well and the scenes didn't repeat often enough to be noticeable. It was very obvious that the music video was meant to be a parody

One of the things I was criticised for was the narrative of the video being unclear. . They also said a few of the shots didn't sync up well with the music. I changed a few scenes to flow a bit better and while doing that I noticed a few shots could've synced up better with the lyrics as well. One of the criticisms was to make the video more vibrant so that the carrot would stick out more so I used Lumetri Color and the Brightness & Contrast effect to make them stand out more

Today I had to finish editing my music video and my thumbnail for it. I also had to do the evaluation for the peer assessment I sent to others. I finished all of this pretty early but went back to make some readjustments to the video. I have to show someone in my age demographic the video and then interview them with questions. I also then have to write an evulation with 1500 words on the entire project, the audience feedback being a part of it. The deadlines for those are due on next Tuesday at 9:15am. The homework for Professional Practice is due next Wednesday at 4pm

I think I could've done better with the final edit and the thumbnail but I'm just glad I finished it. Doing the blur for the licensing plate was infuriating and I had to watch a guide on YouTube to help me but I think I did it okay enough. I had to edit with both Premiere Pro and Photoshop. Making the thumbnail was easier for me as I know how to use Photoshop already and I preferred editing the thumbnail to actually editing the video

When we were first told we were making a music video, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. I knew I’d have to go to other places to film different scenes and I’d have to edit it later, but I’ve never edited anything before. I was also very worried about having to hold the camera. Once we chose our song, our group instantly knew what we wanted to do with it during our first meeting. Our first idea was to make a parody on flex culture, but we quickly thought of it being about a carrot as well for a pun on “24 karat magic”. We thought the idea was funny and it could instantly fit with the codes and conventions for pop because the ideas could easily fit with dancing and absurd fun

We did an audience questionnaire on Google Forms to check if our ideas would fit the theme of a pop music video. We also did research on the musician of the original video, Bruno Mars, to get more ideas on what we should add to our music video. Finally, we did research on our job role in the project, mine being the producer, to better understand what we should be doing. For me the most significant and interesting results came from the questionnaire, I enjoyed reading through the responses and got a few ideas from them as well (one answer mentioned rabbits to go with the carrot theme and there were a few answers that mentioned other metals as a pun to go with 24 “karat”). The questionnaire was primary research and majority of the questions on it were qualitative, which meant the audience could be more detailed with their answers. This really helped me understand the answers more and allowed for different kinds of answers and ideas I hadn’t even thought of (the rabbit and the metals responses being the two biggest examples). For me the least effective was the musician research as most of the things I found weren’t actually useful for me making a music video. The musician research included his personal life, his start in the music business and his creative process for making music. However this may be my fault for not researching more about how he makes his music videos, if I was doing this again I’d do that instead

Overall I think I did okay for the music video. I was the only one in my group not in the actual music video as I didn’t feel comfortable being in it, so like a producer I was purely only behind the scenes besides editing the music video. During pre-production I had to do a lot of paperwork on hazard forms & risk assessments and had to do call sheets for both the days we filmed, Wednesday and Thursday. This shows that I am resourceful and can understand the risks involved in choosing a place for filming. During production (on Thursday) before I could join everyone else in filming, I had to change the call sheet for Thursday as we planned to film in the park for that day but already did it on Wednesday. This not only shows that we were ahead of schedule but that I am able to quickly change important documents if needed and could remember what we were planning to do for both days. My role while filming was to make sure we were on schedule, were filming shots that were in the storyboard and taking pictures for our production log. As I was in charge of time management, it was my responsibility to make sure we were on schedule. This shows that I am wary of how much time we have. To make sure I knew what shots we had to film, I carried a printed copy of the storyboard. This also shows that I am resourceful and prepared in case I couldn’t access the storyboard on the teams group (which was a good thing I did as my phone didn’t have internet). For post-production I had to edit the music video and a thumbnail for the video. I had never used Premiere Pro before this, so I had to learn how to edit an hour prior doing it. This shows that I’m able to learn new things quickly as I understood how the software worked

I learned that music videos need many, many shots to fill in all that time. We took a few extra shots but I found myself having to reuse some of them, an example being the long shot of the carrot dancing inside the gazebo. I don’t think it was that bad for me to do as I only used them for a few seconds each and they’re quite small. It took us a bit longer for us to create the story around the carrot that would go in the intro and it changed every time we were asked. At first it was going to be about a person laying on their couch and eating a carrot while listening to the song, then we eventually did it about a student falling asleep while eating a carrot and listening to the song. We ditched the student eating the carrot idea as we also planned the student to fall asleep and it didn’t flow together. Other than that there were no major changes to our idea. I think our planning could’ve been improved on that regard

Despite me not being excited about this project, I had fun filming the video. I didn’t like the walking though. I felt more comfortable talking with my group and that let me enjoy the production more. The group communicated well with each other and me but because it was my first time meeting with anyone in this college, I was very quiet at first. Overall our group didn’t face many struggles collectively, but I do think we should've coordinated with each other more. An example being the introduction to the video but also with where we wanted to film. We had to walk all the way to the Church in town for only one very small scene when we could’ve just used a building nearby everywhere else we filmed, I admit it would’ve saved a lot more time walking there and back to the college if we did. One thing I found challenging was editing the video as it was a bit frustrating, especially blurring out the licensing plate in all the car scenes. I still think it could’ve came out better but for my first time doing it, it didn’t come out that bad

I still feel like I could’ve done better with editing the music video, I didn’t use many transitions and some parts didn’t come out as good as I hoped it would (an example being the title and credits scene, I didn’t want the song title to have a drop down animation but I didn’t know how to change it). I was frustrated with blurring out the licensing plate and I think it unfortunately affected the overall video quality. The genre my group was given was pop but we made the video itself as a parody with pop elements. Throughout most of the video the actor lip syncs the lyrics of the song and dances, which is a staple of pop music videos. The original video for 24k Magic does all of these things. The primary target audience for this video was young teenagers, with the secondary being young adults, and I think we catered to them well. The video is funny to watch as it’s a person in a carrot costume dancing and that could also be fun for children as well

I think overall how I edited it could definitely use a lot more improvement, but I really did try my best and I understand that it was my first time using Premiere Pro and editing a video in general. Throughout editing I started understanding the software more so I think the next time I’ll use it my product will be better. I think editing has also helped me understand what shots are good for editing and what’s just not salvageable

I personally don’t think the music video reflects industry standards. I think it’s very obvious that this video was the work of college students, but I also don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Some shots definitely could’ve been better, the TV studio shots have bad lighting and was overall too orange, but I think the way it’s shot and edited adds to the feel of parody videos. Parody videos are meant to be fun and don’t usually have a big budget, an example being LankyBox’s popular parody videos that do exactly what the original music video does but with a low budget. The video absolutely doesn’t feel professional but it feels fun, and you can tell that it was fun to record. I think this is also the strength of the video, if it had a higher budget and was filmed professionally I don’t think it’d be as funny. The atmosphere of this video is almost like a home-made short film with the camera quality and the areas we filmed mostly being in a popular park and a shop. This isn’t completely related but when we went outside on the first day of filming, our actor put on the carrot costume for the whole day. This garnered a lot of attention onto him and we told him multiple times that he could take it off whenever we’re not filming, but he said that the attention was good as he liked making people happy. I think what he said there captures the style of our music video pretty well

Bruno Mars. (2016) Bruno Mars - 24K Magic (Official Music Video). [Online Video.] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqyT8IEBkvY

LankyBox. (2020) JUSTIN BIEBER WITH ZERO BUDGET! (Yummy PARODY). [Online Video.] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YsVd3fHwds