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The main bulk of the final year of my Film and VFX degree entails the planning and execution of an individual media project. This project will ideally utilise all of the skills that I have learned and developed at university. Initially I was thinking of creating a music video for a new song that I am producing. This would enable me to use a breadth of videography and VFX techniques whilst creating a piece of media unique to me.
Following up on this idea, I looked back at my previous modules and picked out the key skills and practices that I thought would be most relevant for my project. These are as follows (in order of completion):
Moving Image Production
Production documentation and legal practices
Introduction to 3D Computer Animation
Weekly blog post discipline
3D modelling
Creativity and Imagination
RGB value manipulation
Soundscapes
Communicating a mood or theme through sound design
Influencing visual experience through sound
Creating synaesthesia
Classical Animation
Classical Animation principles
Appropriate lens choice
Digital Compositing and Post Production
Motion tracking
Masking
Look Development, Lighting and Advanced Rendering
CGI lighting
Rendering for compositing
Developing and creating a visual aesthetic
Script Programming and Technical Animation
May need some scripts for repetitive/experimental images
Looking back at Introduction to 3D Computer Animation I was prompted to start a blog to evidence the process of conceptualising and planning my project, as it was very effective for that module.
Now that I had identified which skills I wanted to use, I turned my focus back onto defining the project itself. At this moment, I was thinking of making a music video - roughly 3 minutes long. I had expected the individual project to be the first semester only, as it had been in previous years, however during this year's introductory lecture I was informed that the individual project now spanned the whole academic year. Following this lecture, I realised that the scope of my project was far too inadequate for a project spanning seven months.
I definitely want to create a music video, as I am currently producing a song and I would like to involve it in my project. I have also been making music videos for really long time and quite enjoy making them, here is an example of some of my previous work from 2015 that I thought was particularly relevant:
For this artist in particular, I had also made a series of shorter content for them to use for announcements and engagement on their Instagram:
This got me thinking, maybe my project can be a marketing campaign in order to support my music video, which would involve making a plethora of content for a variety of popular social medias. Not only would this shift the criteria of success away from the quality of the music video, which is somewhat abstract, but to the success of the marketing campaign, which can be empirically measured. This would also allow me to show off a wider variety of VFX, fully demonstrating the skills I have learned on my course. Furthermore, the project itself would become a portfolio which can be used for post-graduate employment.
From this point I checked the module reading list from 2021 and looked through the suggested materials on project management. I found the Project Manager's Portable Handbook, by Cleland, D.I. and Ireland, L.R., particularly useful. It details the need to establish a set of project objectives, and more importantly the need to define the criteria for the success of these objectives. In order to set realistic and relevant objectives, I have decided to research successful contemporary music marketing campaigns in order to gain inspiration from their objectives and outcomes. This will be the subject of next weeks blog.
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