'Dirty Heart' Final Product.

This is the final draft of 'Dirty Heart' by The Machine Ate Florence. I cannot say that I am entirely unhappy with it because whenever you finish a media product, no matter how stressful it's been, you can't help but be proud of what you've done. And I am. If speaking from a non-biased point of view I would still say that it is a successful piece. There are still moments that now that I have been looking back through the music video should have been changed but we have no time to change. Things that I probably should have looked at earlier on such as the artificial lighting during Sarah's scene with Ben. The orange-y glow of their skin does not fit the tone of the scene though it could be argued (which I have in my 1st Evaluation Question) that the artificial lighting is to represent the lights turning on in Sarah's mind about Ben's suspicious ways.

I may have also have considered changing the black frame around the entire piece. For me personally it does not take on the effect I had hoped it would but this may only be because I have spent months of editing it together. The mise-en-scene works really well within the scenes. I especially love Livvy's use of the chocolate rose. Roland Barthes idea of Signs and Signifiers works nicely here. As well as Claude-Levi-Strauss's binary oppositions and Ferdinand Saussure's mythologies (mythology of roses being symbols of love and beauty which clearly this scene is not but it is representative of fairy tales and this fairy tale is being shattered). 

I think the performances shots being indispersed with 'playful' shots was a nice touch and will be satisfying for our demographic. This will remind them that although the narrative is quite serious, there is still a fun side to the band or 'youthful' side which will not only appeal to Pop genre fans but younger audiences as well. It also gives more symbolism in regards to the weather (happier weather, happier band members).

The editing of the phone sequence is professional looking. It took so long to edit each individual clip during that sequence so that they went in time with the song so I am ridiculously happy with how it has turned out. The fact that we managed to capture Sarah just after she had her individual shot of typing out the numbers is also, in my opinion, very good. I also like that each girl was filmed from a different angle.

All the text shots are clear and visible which was a a problem we were having during production as the camera kept blurring out the words. This is a success for me to see as it means we filmed at appropriate angles with the appropriate camera. Ralph of course is who we owe all of our success to.



Overall I am so chuffed with the final outcome. I hope you are too examiner and I really hope that you can forgive me for any slip ups you may find you notice. I don't see any but I know you, the examiner, are supposed to pick up on them. I look forward to receiving a grade from you.

'Dirty Heart' Draft 2.5

This is our 3rd draft of 'Dirty Heart' but we have chosen to name it Draft 2.5 as not much as really been changed since the second draft. As you can tell we have chosen to keep the colour scheme we had going before after taking a consensus vote with the class. Our class of fully professional media students all decided that we should stick with the bright colouring so that our music video would attract a younger audience. Children usually prefer things to be quite colourful as it reminds them of crayons and drawing and fun or that is what I like to assume.

Still having no problems with the cinematography or the editing. The main problem I was would point out with this draft is the background noise that I can contiuously hear. I do not know if this is a problem that you, the examiner, have noticed but I have and therefore I will have to go back and change it.

I'm not too sure about the black frame around the music video. This was, despite what you may believe, a concious decision that Sarah and I made during the post production process. This was because we wanted to give our audience the feel of being in a cinema while watching our video. As if this were in fact a mini film as opposed to a music video because of the narrative. We wanted to replicate this sense of being in a cinema, excited to get past the adverts and onto the film itself. This is why there is a black frame encircling the video but I am unsure as to whether or not I like it. It may distract from the actual music video and make it look unaesthetically pleasing and/or unprofessional therefore quite tacky.

I shall post the finished draft soon.