Digital Media Productions
The issues during production and post-production
Introduction:
ADD VOICE NOTE HERE
On set issues:
The production planning of the music video was done a day before the shoot which was not necessarily ideal but not amazing either. At the very first location (inside the film studio), I ran into quite a lot of issues which then resulted in a major delay for the shoot. The cameraman arrived late to the set, which instantly put everything behind schedule.
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Once everyone arrived, we then ran into another issue which was having technical difficulties setting up the lighting gear properly. Because I was looking for a very specific high contrast slightly cinematic visual aesthetic, getting the lighting right was quite non-negotiable. Unfortunately the process of figuring it all out burned through my shooting time for that scene as we had a short amount of time to get to the next scene due to public transport shutting soon. Those couple problems were a massive learning curve in production scheduling, and it proved to me that even when 99% ready there will always be the 1% part which can almost ruin everything. It taught me that you have to build buffer times into your call sheets because technical and human errors are unavoidable and bound to happen.
Picture of me trying to work a good angle for the lights so the person standing in the middle would be lit the way I planned
A picture of me trying to figure out the best lighting brightness and settings for the scene
Off set issues:
The delays created at the first location developed into a whole inertia effect for the rest of the shoot.
Because we ran over time during the first filming location, we completely missed the scheduled train to our second location. We were stuck waiting for 45 minutes at the station, meaning our planned 2 hour car shoot was suddenly turned into less than an hour of usable time.
With the sun now set and the schedule effectively ruined, I had to completely throw away the pre-planned shoot idea. We decided to freestyle it all almost "run-and-gun" shooting style around the car and filming as much usable footage as we physically could in 50 minutes without a plan. While this was incredibly stressful off-set, the issue forced me to manage everything on the go and adapt to the situation.
Fortunately, this chaotic and raw shooting style actually helped create a more energetic and contrasting "aura" aesthetic that the target audience quite likes and appreciates.
It showed me that sometimes even when things go bad, adapting to work without a plan makes for a better creative result, which did make me happy in the end.
A picture of my friend holding a light at the second location which was one of two lights used for the shoot.
(only 2 lights and a camera in total)
Post-Production Issues:
The stress didn't stop once we were done with filming, it transferred onto my post-production work.
Once I moved onto the editing part, my computer really struggled to handle the effects added to the project and because the video's aesthetic relied on super fast, zoom in, flash and distorted cuts, heavy color grading, and a lot of overlapping transitions, the Premiere Pro timeline got extremely loaded.
In my screenshots, you can see the solid red lines above the timeline, which means the software was struggling to process and render all the effects at once and playback the video as intended.
It got to the point where the app would completely freeze and crash on me (showing the "Not Responding" screen). The other time, the software was so overloaded with the tasks and effects given that the video wouldn't even load in the preview monitor and it just showed me a yellow "Media Pending" warning.
To get around these issues and actually finish the video before the release date of the song, I had to learn how to manage my workflow better. I had to constantly clear my media cache, render small sections bit by bit and save the project almost every minute to make sure I wouldn't lose any progress (as it happened a few times).
It was an extremely frustrating process, but it taught me a lot about optimizing my workflow better and dealing with heavy load programs when doing video editing with such effects added on.
Experimenting and learning to
create SFX in After Effects:
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Another big issue I ran into during editing was due to the fact that Premiere Pro didn't have the right tools available for the specific visual effects I wanted to create.
To get that distorted, high energy "aura" effect that people like Yeat and Lucki used in their music videos, I knew I had to use Adobe After Effects. My only problem was that I wasn't quite familiar with how to edit or create weird effects inside of it.
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Instead of giving up on the idea and just having a basic video, I decided to learn on the go. I spent a some time watching some tutorials but I mostly experimented inside the software, figuring out how to mask characters and add distortions, turbulent displacements, and colorama.
In the screenshots you can see the effects used both for background changes and also for transitions inside and inbetween clips.
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Even though it took a couple of extra hours to learn these things from scratch, pushing through and learning it was 100% worth it as not only did it upgrade my editing skills massively but it also made the final music video look more of the way I envisioned it.
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