Friday 22 July 2011

Thursday 21 July 2011

Prelim Task Evaluation

1. Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?
The workshop day was so much fun that it was hard to believe that it was a compulsory part of our A-level coursework! Even though the day was long, I didn't get particularly tired because we had plenty of breaks and all the dancing got our energy and adrenaline constantly pumping. I particularly enjoyed the freestyle dance scenes, because we all got to just stand there and completely let loose, dancing like crazy, and the more energy you put in, the better the footage looked! This was the kind of thing I was looking forward to, as although I'm not really into acting, I have been dancing for years and I love it so it was great that everyone got to specialise in the areas they felt most confident in, as well as trying out new things, as I tend to shy away from being on-camera for most media projects.


I also think that spending so much time working together in one space at one time brought all the year 12 media students much closer and I really enjoyed working with everyone. Despite not being a 5ive band member, I still had loads to do and everyone was participating as much as possible which was good for all of us, and of course fair. It was also great working with all the crew, and being taught by a professional director was especially beneficial.


2. What did you learn from participating in the workshop?
I learnt what it was like on a real music video shoot and how long the hours are. I also got the chance to work with professionals like Jake who are great at their job. We were told that it was important to shoot the entire song from one set-up, even though that's not what we did during the workshop as we were re-creating a video rather than creating our own, so we knew actually what footage we wanted. I also learnt the importance as having to constantly be on standby in case you are needed for your scenes or if you are needed to fill in for anyone, like when the band needed a break. Although the day was scheduled to end at 6pm, we were prepared to be there for another 2 hours in case everything didn't go exactly to plan, which of course it didn't, and usually doesn't in a real shoot either.


It was exciting to work with really expensive professional equipment too, especially the track which I'd never seen in real life before, and the camera the video was shot on was amazing and made everything look so nicely shot even before editing. I also learnt how much lighting is used on a typical indoor shoot (a lot!) and how hot actors and performers must get in front of them. We were also lucky enough to be able to watch the live footage from the camera on a monitor, so we could see straight away what the shots looked like when we weren't on camera ourselves.


3. Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?
I am so pleased with the footage; we were all looking forward to seeing it over the weekend after the shoot, and on Monday morning when we finally got to view it it looked just as good as we'd hoped. The camera makes such a difference, as even if we'd shot the exact same footage on a standard video camera it wouldn't have looked anywhere near as good. It was also very funny to watch ourselves dancing and getting really into character!


Our group decided not to edit the footage into an exact replica of the original 5ive video, as otherwise there would be multiple versions of the same thing amongst the classes. Instead, we made our own version that differs slightly but still uses the same choppy editing, jump cuts and slow-motion dancing. This gave us some creative scope and the video a fresh look.


4. How do you think your workshop experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?
As I mentioned, a valuable lesson to learn was to always shoot too much footage rather than too little, because storyboards always change, so shoot the whole video from every set-up whenever possible. Apart from that, it was good to see who the best performers are, as the 5ive members especially did a great job, which is useful to know as it may impact our casting decisions next term.

Monday 11 July 2011

Re-Edit Task

For this week's task we had to work in pairs to re-edit together a section of the 5ive video that had been cut up into shot types.
The first thing we did was put a small version of the finished clip in the corner of the screen so we could see exactly what we were aiming for.
We then went through the clip frame by frame and found the corresponding shot types in the cut-up clips and placed them onto the performance bed to fit exactly with the real clip in the corner.

Here is mine and Megan's finished re-edit:



The task was tricky as a lot of the shots were very similar so we had to make sure to pick the right one, and because of the fast-paced editing a lot of shots were only about a second long so it was difficuly to find the exact clip and cut it to the exact right length.

From the re-edit task I learnt how important discontinuity is in music videos. Unlike the rules of continuity we learnt during our film unit last term, music videos have very different conventions. For example, often there are cuts from wide shots to close-ups, or cuts between very similar shot types and distances. Shots rarely last for more than a few seconds before cutting to keep the exciting pace of the video and the clips are often cut to the exact beat of the music.
Another important thing I learnt from the task is the fan/band relationship. Throughout the video, the 5ive members are seen dancing amongst the other crowd members and dancers, giving a sense of community and group fun, so the viewers of the video also feel immersed in the crowd and as if they are on the same level as the band.
It was also helpful to learn that despite the large amount of cuts in the video, there are only actually a few different set-ups, but clever editing makes it look like there are a lot more. This is an important thing to keep in mind when working on my own music video next term.

Monday 4 July 2011

Group 2's Lipsync

To practice for the Preliminary Task Shoot at the end of term and for the real coursework project itself, I shot and edited a lipsync to Five's 'Everybody Get Up' along with my group members Charley and Odelia. It was a lot of fun, surprisingly exhausting, and we all got very into it, which was good as it made the finished footage look a lot more realistic and entertaining.
We played around with different shot types, angles and distances to vary it up and we edited in a choppy style, not holding any shot for more than a few seconds to keep the the usual fast-paced style of a music video.
I tried to make sure I sang the words rather than just mimed, but whilst watching the footage back I noticed that some of my lip-syncing doesn't look as realistic as it could, so I learnt something important from this task and would definitely like to get together with some of the other media students to make another video, as everyone would benefit from some more lip-syncing practice.

Although my lip syncing sometimes doesn't look as effective as it should do, that doesn't really matter as the female parts in the Five video don't sing much. I would like to audition to play any of the girls really, but my preference would be clicking fingers girl if I had to choose one.

Here is our final edit: