Arctic Monkeys - Science Fiction (Student-Made Music Video)

I'm currently in my third and final year of my BA in Film, Television and Digital Production at Royal Holloway University of London, and this year I am specializing in cinematography. For our first assessment of the year, my lecturer gave us a "promo" assignment which meant that we could either make a one minute commercial, a two minute fashion film or a three minute music video (I obviously opted for the music video).

This music video is the result of my labor and I have to say I am really happy with how it came out; I painstakingly planned every aspect of this video for two solid weeks and it basically became my entire existence for that period of time. While all of the pre-production, most of the production, and all of the post-production was my task and mine alone, I did get quite a few friends to help me during the actual production process because I really wanted to be more ambitious with this project. Out of the three films I made last year, I would say I'm content with them but I wouldn't say I was over the moon with any of them and that's because I think I was playing it too safe; hence why I decided to push my boundaries further with this project and make something that I could truly say I'm proud of. I think I can say that.

I've loved the band Arctic Monkeys for years and years and every single time Spotify Wrapped comes around they are always my top artist. Especially with the past year I've gained a particular affinity to their 2018 album Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino and I realized just how amazing all of the songs are, especially "Science Fiction." Coming into this project I became somewhat obsessed with the song and the lyrics and was just listening to it on repeat at one point, and when I realized that it was the perfect length to make a music video for this upcoming assessment, I knew I had to make it. And even though I've heard the song upwards of a billion times at this point over the course of making this music video, I still don't think I'm sick of it and that stands as a testament to Arctic Monkeys artistry.

In regards to each part of the production process, pretty much every aspect of the production was smooth each with a few minor expected bumps that weren't too difficult to overcome. The planning process was arguably the most fun part because I was just coming up with a thousand ideas and trying to string them together to create a cool visual style and narrative for the video, I had some help from friends and people in my department that were there to either tell me that an idea I had was dumb and not possible to achieve or that I had some good ideas and that I should stick with them. I'm beyond grateful for all the help I received throughout the process of making this video and I don't think I could have achieved this result without said help. The actual production was so much fun, I did it in the TV Studio on my campus with lots of high end professional gear that helped me get my desired look, as well as all the friends I had on set to help; everyone was so patient with me while I was either stressed or worried or trying to come up with solutions or no ideas if something wasn't working, I'm surprised they didn't all hate me by the end! But by the end everybody was happy with the work we did, and once I cut it together to see how it all looked, everyone was blown away and just over the moon with the actual result. Even then it hadn't been colour corrected or graded so even with the somewhat flat look everyone was so supportive and kind to me. This version I'm uploading however IS colour corrected and graded, and to be fair, colour work is not my strongest attribute so I tried to go with simplicity and just amplify what I already had by giving shape to the faces and removing all of the flatness that the images previously had.

Enough waffle, I'm extremely happy with the final product and now I can say that I'm truly proud of something that I made because I put so much time and effort into every single aspect of the production process.