Pre-Production
Our assignment for the beginning of the year was to create a music video with a school appropriate song. Our video had to be a max of two minutes long, and had to have a large variety of shots. To start off the project had to pick a song as a group which actually seemed to be the easiest part of the project. We went through about three sons before deciding on Upswing by Prinze George. From there we went home and got all the publication information (When it was released, the writers, the record label, etc.) When we came back, we began planning out out production schedule. We found a location, the dates we were going to go, who all was going and where we were going to get all of our shots. Our idea for the music video was to follow along with the song, running away from problems going on in every ones lives. We were gonna have Lilly dance in the video, and the style she did was almost what we considered fighting her inner problems.
Production
Once we were on location, we only ran into a couple problems. One, it was freezing. Two, it was dirty everywhere, trash was everywhere, it was muddy, and it smelt like a mix of garbage and cold air. The filming was a lot of fun though, we got to meet some really interesting people out there including some professional vloggers TwinSauce who were super nice, and they were a lot of fun to talk to. We did Lilly's dance scene in all the locations of the Workhouse so we would have a variety of shots, different backgrounds, and different lighting. After spending about three hours filming over the weekend, we came back and began organizing and editing clips.
Post-Production
We noticed when we came back, we really lacked in close up shots so a lot of our video is done in Wide, Extreme Wide, as well as Medium shots. Unfortunately, none of us are in a position to be able to go back and film down here again but it is something we we need to make sure we work on in the future; getting a variety of shots. The editing took a whole week, and organizing the clips took the longest part of everything because we had a told of 78 clips between 30 seconds and 5 minutes. As I started laying stuff into the timeline, it got harder and harder to keep going because everything seemed really repetitive even though the other thing that was repetitive was the backgrounds. I ended up having to stay after school a day because I was not able to finish during the week due to making sure everything lined up.
What I learned
I learned a lot while making this. Lighting is you best friend when changing shots and locations. Always make sure you switch shots every couple seconds in the video. When filming, change camera angels and the variation of shots. With the technical aspect of it, I didn't really do any advanced editing in the video. I liked the dark and light mix of shot even though it should all be one color. I could have fixed that, but for some reason I just stuck with the original video clips.
With the teamwork aspect, I never really ran into trouble. I had a great group. Everyone was fun, we were able to share ideas with one another, and figure out all the little problems when filming, editing, and when planning dates.
Changes
In the video, I would change the fact we have almost no close up shots, and I think there would be certain moments in the video that would really be much better if there was more emotion in some shots. However, I do love the location and how Lilly pulled off the emotion of fighting inner problems within the dance. It made everything come together really though even though there are things we are missing.
Takeaways/Conclusions
For our next project, storyboarding will be really beneficial in the pre planning when you have an idea and you can immediately put it down on paper so you have that idea. This project overall though was SO much fun and allowed you to bone with people in the class. It gave you the opportunity to be more creative and express emotion in the video instead of doing hard news cast, or feature stories.
