Evaluation

At the start of the project I imagined fashion film to be a fast paced film with upbeat music, and quick cut editing. Our fashion film is nothing along the lines of this and therefore I have learnt that there are so many different ways a fashion film can be presented. Fashion film is a very broad term.

Problems with our initial designer occurred when she didn't reply and was unprofessional. This was quickly resolved and we were able to get back on track. Although our whole project had changed, as a group we responded much better to Jo's collection/designs than our original collection of menswear clothing. 

Our research began with looking at the film Amour that was another piece of inspiration for Jo’s collection. We chose to reference a scene from the movie in our film. The main character pours a cup of tea but misses her cup as her mind is elsewhere. In our film we used a teapot and teacup as props and got he model to lift the cup as to pour tea. Later in postproduction we were able to show animation of the tea dripping and overflowing as if to illustrate her mind overflowing with memories. To develop our study further, and gain some different inspiration we also looked at some fashion films that were uploaded to the Show Studio website. Although they were not suitable for our style of film, they were still helpful in terms of understanding lighting and specific camera angles that helped to show off the clothes. Once we had distinguished our target audience we were able to agree on a style of film that would be watched by someone in our target audience. The style editing and music were also chosen to link in with our audience.

Something that caused a slight issue was our model. We originally decided on two sisters who were red headed and 5'8. Unfortunately they were not the right clothing size to fit Jo's collection. We then agreed on a model called Zana but at the last minute she became unavailable. At this point we started to stress, as this was the day before we had planned to shoot the film. Thankfully, the agency suggested Jodi Lakin. Having previously worked with her I knew she would be good for the job, however she's only 5'6 as so this was something we were concerned about but it would be something we would have to deal with as we didn't have much time to find another model.  

In terms of working as a group, I think that we worked well together, setting each other tasks and giving feedback where necessary. Everyone understood if people had outside commitments and we would arrange to meet up around these times. We would all have our own tasks to complete and show the next time we met up.

Prior to editing we needed to analyse all the video footage we had shot. Although we had a time limit of 10 minutes we knew we only wanted our video to be a maximum of 6 minutes. Therefore, we had to cut down the amount of footage. Selecting and picking the correct footage was a long process and we based our decisions on what would look good visually and also create a good narrative. Thus, the video footage we didn't include did not fit into this criteria. Having thought about the amount of footage we shot, we decided that if we were to reshoot we would have shot a close up of the teacup and teapot, as they were significant props.

Moreover, I decided to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our film, as I felt confident in using this software having attended useful workshops about it. When starting to edit, we made choices based on what we thought would look good visually. But, as well as this we wanted our editing to fit in with the sound and be relevant to our circular narrative. In order for the audience to understand the circular narrative, we repeated some of the footage at the end that was shown at the beginning. Also, the most intense part of the film is about halfway where the rope maze and close up shots are shown. After this, we aimed to slow down the pace of the film by zooming out and showing long shots so the audience would understand the film was coming to a close.

Furthermore, from having watched other fashion films and music videos I was inspired by Kid Cudi’s video “Make Her Say”, you can see two videos being shown at one time by splitting the screen. This technique was used to show the contrast of the clothes. These clothes are supposed to show the process of the deterioration of the mind. In addition, we added a ‘glitch’ effect to a lot of our footage. We did this as another way of portraying to our audience the uncertainty of the mind during an illness. The made our video slighting jittery and hesitant. In order to produce a wider range of visuals we added in illustrations and animations throughout so that it would look consistent.

Furthermore, we agreed on creating a blog as our group rvj. This was easy for us all to access and post our own work at the same time as each other. We did not need to rely on one person to bring in a sketchbook and therefore this method was much more efficient.

Additionally, it was decided that in order to get our video out to the public we would advertise it on social media. In order to do this I made some spoiler clips that would be used as trailers and posted in the prior week to the film being released.

Overall, we worked well as a team to create a five-minute long fashion film. I am really pleased with the outcome as it shows all of our hard work has paid off. Re-watching the video over and over again enabled us to notice small areas that needed touching up. Each time we did this we were able to rectify something else. Throughout this project, I have gained a lot of knowledge including how to use a Cannon C100 camera, the definition of fashion film and also how to edit using Adobe Premiere Pro. If I were to reshoot the film I would try doing it with two models (i.e. the two sisters we were going to chose originally).