TASK 2 - student work analysis 2 - Ebony Anderson

Music Video - This music video is done well to an extent. The editing skills used on this piece are done very well and to a high standard, with lots of fading and straight cuts to add the pieces together, as well as this form of editing there is also ghost editing and reverse editing when the actor is smoking, this gives the piece a versatile aspect and a range of different things to look at. I think the video could have done with a larger recording space, as it seemed like everything was shot in the same place, and it did not have a lot of different locations. This is only a minor fault that is something I would change if it was me, however it did not make a difference to the music videos story.
The camera quality and the actor used were quite poor, and not as professional as hoped for, but the equipment this student was given may have been limited, and she may not have any actor friends therefore made do with what she had, which shows that she can work well with what she has. 
The lighting in this piece was very poor, with it being shot in the evening the camera did not give a positive view of the scene, everything was dark and the actor looked very dark and not in focus contrasting to the light of the sunset behind him, showing the level of professionalism as the student may not have thought about the lighting before filming.
Overall this music video is not bad, it has a lot of shots but could do with some more to make the video more interesting and maybe the time frames could have been shorter to fit into the conventional music video theme of having segments of 2-5 seconds before cutting. However, the video had a lot of well done editing that made the video interesting to watch.

Planning - This student has planned thoroughly and added a lot of information into their findings, they wrote a letter to the record company asking for permission off them in order to film the video, and went into detail when explaining their chosen costume and location. 

They described their track and shooting schedule, showing their organisation skills, and provided images to match the descriptions.Ebony even designed a mood board to depict what she wanted in her video, and sketches of the digipak and story board, although these do not seem to be elaborated on and explained, which maybe could have helped. 



Research - The research of this student is very well done and thought out, researching multiple music videos and the genre in which they want to relay into their own music video, showing the level of professionalism as they are going above and beyond to get the best results by making sure they are researching and taking notes from their findings. Ebony went into great detail and included practice videos into different editing skills that she may include in her video. She researched and found information on the director of the music she wanted, and analysed existing magazine covers in order to make her own professional and well thought out.


Digipak - The digipak created clearly had a fluorescent universe theme to it as the entire digipak is covered in this design, with images and text ontop of it. Although this being simple and a great idea, I personally find it not the best to look at, I find it is all too much at once and doesn't hold different aspects. Although the editing skills are good and the girl is faded and cropped to give an edge, the universe imagery dominates the digipak and leaves no room for any creativity other than that. I think to make these digipaks better, the student could have used the universe effect but not add it on to the entirety of the digipak.


Magazine advert - The magazine also uses the universal fluorescent aspect, which is good

that it is the same as the digipak, however the magazine lacks content and is very plain, the same image that is used on the digipak is used on the magazine advert. This advert however does hold the Twitter and Facebook symbol, however does not display links or names in which audiences can find these social network sites which I think may have been better and more helpful. It held very minimal information which could be seen as good or bad, either way, the magazine is satisfactory, but could have done with more detail to add more of a professional aspect.

Evaluation - The evaluation for this project is very short, the majority of it on a prezi presentation. The information in the evaluation is good and thorough, however the shortness of the evaluation does hinder the quality. The student did include theorists and talked about what she did throughout, which is a strength. A disadvantage is that the student could have chosen different ways of presenting her information, such as videos or soundcloud, instead of always using text formats.