Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?
Yes. The workshop day was very fun, it was very interesting to see how the crew operated, and it was fun to see everybody working together to create something and watching how everybody collaborated on such a big scale. One of the parts which I particularly like was shadowing the person who was doing the lights it was quite fun to move around where the lights were pointing. The best bit for me was probably watching it all come together as we performed the final dance in front of the union jack. Being able to see that everybody was in time and that all the preparation for the dance had paid off was very uplifting.
What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks?
The first task which we did for the prelim was an analysis of a music video (which can be seen in full here). I analysed My Chemical Romance's "Welcome to the Black parade" video this taught me what typically appears in an effective music video.
We next we made a lip sync video was very useful. Despite initial nervousness at being in front of the camera, my group warmed up to the performance and made sure we just had fun. From this I learnt that the best way to get a good performance was to relax. Also the editing style we used,cutting between different layers all of which had been lined up with the song.
We were then told which part we would be playing and we assembled costumes for the different parts. This was a surprisingly intricate process and this showed me that every part of a performance has to be thought through to get an better overall effect
We also had to all learn the dance. This not only helped us prepare for the workshop day but also helped us gain confidence in front of the camera so that we will be more confident for next year's music video.
The workshop day was enjoyable and showed me how a professional shoot was run it was very interesting to see how professionals worked together. We learnt what each of the roles were on a shoot and how each worked together to make the shoot work. I also saw how quickly people became tired and how important it was to be organised so that everything still runs smoothly when everybody is tired
After the workshop day we had to edit the final video. This was laborious, however taught us the correct way to edit the video, using non linear editing to speed up the process
Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?
The footage taken on the workshop day was all very good. The thing I particularly like about it was the colours. The use of such a professional camera really made the colours all look very vibrant, which I think made our edit look more professional. My favourite shot which was filmed was the shot of the 4 girls dancing in the grunge set up (shown left). I particularly liked this shot as the camera is positioned in a way relative to the lights such that as the girls move around in front of the lights a lens flair appears in time with their movements, which was stunning effect.
However on some set ups all shot distances were recorded. For example the individual girls shots for the grunge set ups were only filmed at 1 distance. this was inconvenient when editing as it made it harder to recreate the original video as well.I'm quite pleased with the edit (which is shown bellow) we have as we had limited time to edit it and it looks quite good. However I think that the sharing of the workload in our group could have been better, especially as we had the smallest group to edit in. However we managed to edit the whole video, using up a lot of our free time in the process. We did not manage to achieve what I was expecting to achieve, which was a shot for shot match up with the original. There were a couple of shots which we did not have and so could not make it as authentic as being shot for shot.
How do you think your prelim experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?
I think I will approach next term's music video thinking a lot more rationally after the prelim. I will make sure that any ideas we have are doable and play to our strengths. I think that getting a good performance will be a lot easier than I would have previously thought especially considering that we will be more likely to be enthused for the music we choose to make a video for. I also think that after the prelim I will approach the video with a lot more organisation that I have done with previous projects. I will make a schedule for all our shoots and make sure that it is stuck to, as this will lead to a much more time efficient way of shooting. I will also make sure to choose the group I work with carefully to avoid the stresses of editing with a disproportionate workload. Ultimately I will approach next years music video with a more open mind as to what song we pick, as the experience can be enjoyed either way.
