Music Video Workshop: The Evaluation

1. Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?

I thought the workshop day was brilliant fun. The set looked fantastic; it all looked extremely professional with the lighting and the camera equipment - it felt like a real shoot. My favourite parts of the day were probably the firts performance on the stage, and the crowd shots at the end of the day, as I was lifted up and had the chance to crowd-surf, which was great.

2. What did you learn from participating in the workshop?

I learnt a lot from participating in the workshop. I didn't get the chance to opperate the camera or work behind the scenes, as I was in many of the shots, but I still learnt about lighting and camerawork.
I learnt that when lighting a set, it is a good idea to use orange and blue filters, as they reflect the skin tone well and make the subject look very good. I also learnt that playing about with focus and changing camera lenses can give the shot a unique look.

Aside from the technical aspect, I learnt how long and tiring a shoot can be, and how much set-up time there is, versus the actual shoot time. It was important for Jake (our director) and Jasmine (our 1st AD) to keep energy levels up and to get the best performance out of us.

3. Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?

I am incredibly pleased with the footage - it looks amazing, so much better than I expected it to. The camerawork is very professional looking, the pans are smooth, the framing is perfect, and the lighting provides for some great beauty shots.

4. How do you think your workshop experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?

The music video workshop will have a big impact on my approach to next years project. The crew put so much time in to planning to make sure that the day ran to schedule as best as possible. Everyone rehearsed together so we all knew the lyrics and the dance, and every shot was planned and thought out by the crew. From this, I know that we will have to spend a lot of time on pre-production next year, as we do not want to encounter too many issues, and would ideally like to shoot everything in one session, like we did in the workshop.

I also learnt a lot about coping with the shoot day. One of the biggest issues that we may encounter, is our actors might not feel comfortable or confident enough on camera, and we may not get the best performance out of them. To counter this, the band rehearsed with Jasmine, to give us more confidence on the day.
We will also have to try and keep the morale of our actors up during our shoots, as it is extremely tiring and we want to get the bets performance from them.

Overall, I thought the music video workshop was a fantastic day, and great experience.

The Shoot

On Friday 15th, we shot our music video with director Jake Wynne, from at 8am till 7pm. In the video I played Jason J, as I'd hoped to, along with Eoin, Sam, Odelia and Charley as the rest of the band.
The crew had been setting up since the day before, so when we arrived in the morning we were able to begin shooting straight away. We began the day by shooting the stage performance, and the shots with the desks and the students.
We moved later moved on to shoot both the first and second verse, and finished the day with the crowd performance.
The crew were fantastic throughout the entire day, and the set looked amazing. Although it was a long and tiring day, it was incredibly fun and everyone had a great time.
A particular highlight for me was crowd surfing and performing my verse to the camera!

It was brilliant day, and was a great experience. We learnt all about lighting and camerawork, and acquired skills that will no doubt be useful when it comes to our shoots next year.
We're now excited to go and edit the final product!

Everybody Get Up Re-Edit

As another preliminary task, we were given a 30 second section of the original music video, but the shots were cut up and grouped together. This was to show us how many shots and set-ups were actually filmed versus the number of cuts.
Our task was to cut up the footage again, and put it back in the right order. The task was fairly challenging, and showed us just how hard it will be to edit both the coming music video, and our music video next year.
We found that there were so many cuts in a very short space of time, and this was done to create pace and make an exciting video to watch that captures the audiences attention.

Lip Synch Group 7 - Audition

For a preliminary task, so we could get to know the song lyrics and practice lip synching, we worked in groups to produce a short lip synching video. I worked with Adam and Daniel to produce the music video, and we're quite proud of the work we achieved in a short space of time.

For the main Music Video that we will shoot in a couple of weeks, I would like to be Jason J. In our video, I performed his verse, so I know all his lyrics. In the preliminary music video, I have an eyebrow piercing, just like Jason, so I would further fit the part! (Unfortunately I no longer have it though...)

Anyway, we had great fun filming and editing this, and we look forward to the actual shoot!

Inspiration: Let You Go

Chase and Status - Let You Go

This is a music video which I particularly like because it's just so different. It focuses entirely on narrative, and doesn't link to the lyrics at all, and yet is still extremely captivating and a very successful music video. I may consider using this genre of music, Dubstep/Drum&Bass, for my actual music video project.