Test Shoots

In order to do the best job that we can at our actual shoot we did a test shoot to see how many shots and angles would be necessary. We learnt a lot from this and will go into our shoot more informed about what worked and what didn’t.

Below is an edited 30 second clip of our song:

I think overall the shoot went quite well as we got a variety of shots that were in focus and well lit. The lip sync was also mainly in time with the music which is important as if it is not in time it distracts the audience from the actual performance and narrative. I also think our star image was conveyed with the use of mise en scene as I wore dark clothes and performed in dark locations. However there are things that needed improvements that we can make sure we focus on during our real shoot, these are:

  • Have some more intermittent shots to put in the gaps between lyrics
  • Use only 3 locations as audiences like to see stuff in 3’s
  • Some of the transitions looked odd so choose transitions that fit the song better
  • Get some more dynamic moving shots
  • Edit to the beat more to get the feel for the song

Prelim Task Lip Syncing Exercise

Below is my final lip sync to Poker Face by Lady Gaga which I edited using Adobe Premier Pro. I think altogether it was a successful project however some clips could have been synced better for example the last clip is slightly out of time and unfortunately the clips cropped themselves so some of the footage was not the best.

Skilled lip syncing is a crucial skill within a music video as if the lip syncing is off, the video looks unprofessional. Unskilled lip syncing also takes away from the narrative and emotion of the video as the actor is not appropriately portraying the song’s lyrics.

To make sure the lip sync aspect of the music video is as successful as it can be it is paramount that the performer practices before hand and knows the words as to create a convincing performance. Energy is also vital within the performance. The performer needs to grasp and understand the vibe and tone of the song as to portray the narrative convincingly.

Another aspect that needs to be thought about in order to convey a convincing narrative is who looks like the voice. The music video would not be compelling if the performer clearly didn’t look like the sound of the voice for example if you had a female performer lip syncing to Ed Sheeran. The confusion and lack of cohesion would detract from the music video’s narrative making it unsuccessful.

Premier Pro will be a crucial program when I come to edit my music video. In this task I mainly used markers and the razor blade tool to cut my video clips to fit with the music. I firstly used markers as a rough guide and once the clip was in place I used the razor blade tool to do some final cuts if the clip needed it.

To improve this preliminary task I would pay better attention to the transitions between clips as sometimes the lip syncing overlapped. Following on from this, after looking back at the final edit I noticed that some clips were not properly synced up. For example the last clip and the clip at 0:22 are not perfectly in time with the audio, which detratcs from the video and its narrative. Also as in this video, the clips cropped themselves I would make sure that in my actual music video I found a way around this as too portray the whole narrative and performance.

 

Prelim Task Mood Montage

Our montage was entitled ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ Using this prompt we created a mood board planning to video things that people would find beautiful for example flowers and books.

I think overall our montage has an impact however some clips were more impactful than others.

    • For example I think that the clip of the girls laughing at 0:06 effectively portrays the prompt as it represents the beauty of friendship and happiness, however the clip of the people holding hands is not as successful. This is because, as there was little movement in the shot, little emotion was portrayed.

There was not much sense of story with our montage, apart from the beginning and end clip of the eye opening and closing, however we wanted to portray the feeling of seeing beauty. I think a sense of story would’ve been better achieved if we used the same models throughout as the mixture of models made the montage difficult to follow.

Our montage is trying to reflect the expierience of seeing beauty and is not necesarily meant to progress as a narrative would. For this reason there is also no repeated shots. The montage is meant to show a variety of different things that people find beautiful therefore repeated shots would take away from the variety of shots.

To make our montage more effective I would add in a long shot of a stereotypically beautiful person as in our montage we lacked long shots. Also the typical idea of beauty would help represent our prompt and make it clear that beauty was the focus of our montage.

This task will be a great help when I come to make my music video as I now have an understanding of how to cut, reorder and edit clips. It has also helped me to get a grasp on what kind of shots are appropriate for certain situations as there were clips in our montage that could’ve been more successful.