Task 4 - Preliminary

A.) Task Outline and Real Video

Our task was for us to shoot and edit a shot by shot recreation of a real music video. We were given a total of five options and our group, sadly, decided to go with One Direction's Little Things. The real video by One Direction will been inserted below.

B.)  Planning

The planning consisted of our group watching the first 60 seconds repeadatley until everyone had a clear understanding of each shot and what they would be required to do. For example, I was given the lyrics to Liam Payne's verse, so from then on I knew I would have to learn his lines and not worry so much about the other members lines. Also, we discovered that during the 60 seconds only two members are seen singing, therefore, because we had 3 people in our group, we had to give Daniel a few of Liam and Zayn's lines otherwise we would not have met the brief.

C.)  Filming

Filming began of the 3rd of July and lasted a total of two hours. We filmed the entire video in the music room and everything went smoothly. We stressed as much as possible to have the right props in the background, even if it wasnt entirely noticable, we wanted everything to look as legitimate as possible. We filmed on one of colleges Canon DSLR's which shoots in 1080p and looks really crisp and clear. Filming went smoothly without many hitches, although at one point we realised we had the original video in the background on the projector which was visible on the camera so for continuities sake we refilmed that section.

D.) Editing

Editing the music video proved more difficult than I expected. Due to the extremely short shots prominent in music videos you have to cut every shot perfectly in order to sink up the lyrics to the mouth actions. We did encounter some issues, one being we seemed to miss a shot which threw the whole end of the video off, I did as much as I could to make it as unnoticable as possible. Also, the lip syncing was near impossible due to us not singing in time with the original which makes the lip syncing look a few seconds off, however it is near impossible to change that as such a late stage and I believe the overall outcome is hilarious and appears well made.

E.) Final Product

F.) My Contribution

I would say approximatley I spent around a total of 5 hours contirbuting to my groups preliminary task.

Sections I filmed: 

This shot required a lot of planning in order to simulate the exact framing.

Framing this shot was difficult as Cirian had to position himself slightly to the right of centre frame

Sections I lipsynced:

Sections I edited:

I edited the first 30 seconds by myself as I thought I could edit the entire music video by myself however I was told by my teacher that I would need to get the rest of my group to contribute to the editing process. Therefore, I allowed Daniel and Cirian to edit the remaining 30 seconds by themselves.

G.) Evaluation

I believe our preliminary task is semi-professional, due to timing and human error our group managed to miss a shot which threw off the pace and made the last 15 seconds off sync. However, I believe some of the lipsyncing is perfect, yet others doesn't sync up at all. It is extremely difficult to sync lips to the voice and still keep the shots at the exact length.

Some of the short comings of our preliminary task are that certain shots are out of focus and other shots are not framed correctly. Certain shots are focused in on the foreground as opposed to the background which makes the overall video feel less professional and less thought out.

I believe the preliminary task is extremely useful for the rest of the course as it allows us to understand how short some shots in music videos are whilst also giving us the chance to replicate one and undergo the process ourselves. I have learnt to shoot more footage than you may need as I realised that I was missing footage and I didnt have any spare footage to bulk up the entire video. To overcome this problem I made certain 'filler' shots a second longer and with all this added up I managed to subtly add another 5 seconds to the overall length and bring us closer to the 60 second minimum.