Analysis Of Previous A2 Students Work

For this task I took three students’ work from the previous year at my school who had created videos with a similar style of performance to the one which I am trying to create, and analyzed what features and conventions their videos had which made them successful, and also what made them not look professional.

Firstly, I analysed a video by a previous student named Faisal Choudhry and even though his video was from a different genre to mine; it still had performance that was compelling and played a key part in the video. The video was shot very well throughout and used camera work, movement and framing which gave it a very professional feel and I believe that the use of location was also a great beneficial contributing factor in terms of achieving this. The narrative of the child is compelling as the audience feels a warmth and welcoming emotion towards her due to the fact that the child is waiting for her father to return home and is ultimately vulnerable. I believe that the narrative was a good idea but was not strong enough and the main influence was placed onto the performance aspects of the video, and the two parallel plot lines conflicted with each other. This is therefore different to the video that I want to create as I am planning to have a solely performance video, and as a result of this need to make my performance very compelling and strong enough so that narrative isn't needed, but the meaning of the song is still understood.

Next, a student named Josh Barry also from my sixth form used a narrative in his video alongside a performance that included a young man talking about his unrequited love for a woman. From this, there were then two different plot lines being shown next to each other showing the two different ways in which the story could unfurl. I think that is a successful narrative and could have had a lot of potential to be effective, although the shooting of the video- I believe- is poor and it does look as though a student at a school has shot it. This is my biggest fear for my video, and I want to avoid this aspect at all costs so that my video remains as professional as possible.

Finally, I looked at how Charmaine Cablanca used narrative in her video and if it was effective. The opening of the video strikes many questions in the audience and I believe this to be the strongest part of the video as it really draws the viewers in and has many enigma codes. Furthermore, the effects and camera shakes and distortions throughout the video are very striking and again add a great deal of complexity to the video and are certainly a convention and technique which I feel as though I could and maybe should use throughout my video in order to highlight the skills that I have in terms of editing but also to make the video more visually entertaining. To conclude, there are some very good points in this video but in my opinion it is let down by its choice of location and the shot in-between the stairs really takes away all the good work and creativity that was generated by the fantastic start to the video.