Evaluation Question 1: Did you enjoy the main workshop shoot day? What role(s) did you take? What were your best bits and why?

What I enjoyed:

Overall I really enjoyed the main workshop day and I learnt lots of new skills!

Below is a time-lapse of the main workshop day which shows the set and the lighting set up:

I enjoyed:

• Acting to camera
• Getting to perform many different roles
• Performing different dances
• Having my hair and make-up done by professionals
• Learning how to use the lighting pole to move the position of the blondes (lights)
• Learning about the different roles involved in a shoot

The Seward Studio showing the playback on the wall, blonde and red head lights, the silk, traces and camera

My hair and make-up being done by Natalie

Our Camera, camera operator Ed and technician Chris

Our costume lady Olivia and myself sorting out my tutu.

My roles:

My roles were using the claper board, Contemporary Taylor, main Swan Lake dance, band singer, hip-hop dancer, street dancer and end scene dancer.

Below is a breakdown of my main roles:

Best Bits


My best bits were performing in all the different dances and learning how to act to camera-which can be seen below:

Conclusion:

Overall, the main workshop day was a great experience which will put me in good stead for our own music video next term.

Evaluation Post 2: What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks 1, 2 3, and 5?

Task 1 Audition Video:




I learnt a lot from doing the audition video as despite having done auditions before I had never done one to a camera. I found it difficult to look directly at the lens rather than the display screen showing where I was in shot.

I found it quite time consuming as I had to frame the shot, press record, press play on youtube, film the shot and then stop the camera and music afterwards. However, I enjoyed working on my own as I could really let go and go for it.

I learnt how to lip-sync and the importance of editing the shots so the words match the music.

Task 2 Learn & Practice Your Performance:

Because I do dance out of school I picked up the routines quickly which allowed me to be able to help other people in the group if they were struggling. We had lots of rehearsals with our choreographer Tasha and used her YouTube videos to practice at home:


The routines I learnt were the finale, cheer-leading, ballet, street and then individual moves for hip-hop and contemporary.

These types of dances consolidated my knowledge of the necessity to warm up thoroughly in order to not injure yourself. I also learnt to express Taylor's emotion through both my facial expressions and body language/movements.

Our Choreographer Tasha

From our performance director, Jasmine, I learnt Contemporary Taylor's individual movements, different facial expressions to use and how to perform to camera.

Task 3 Help to Plan & Organise Your Costume:

The costumes I needed for the shoot can be seen in the costume list below:

My Costume List

I brought in lots of my own clothes for my costumes such as the tutu for swan lake and the dress for the band scene. Mrs Dymioti and Olivia helped us to organise our costumes and Mrs Blackborow signed off our costumes.

My different costumes

Task Complete the Remake Edit:

I enjoyed editing Shake it Off as I was now more confident with my editing skills than I had been. I worked with Gabriel and Matt. I edited the Swan Lake and Contemporary sequences and as a group we edited the Cheer-leading, Ribbon, Band and Finale sections.

In the edit I:

• Named shots
• Dragged and dropped the trimmed shots onto the timeline
• Graded shots
• Cropped and reframed shots
• Matched the shots to make them sync
• Used slow-motion

A key difference I found in editing a music video is that continuity editing is not required which allows for more creative possibilities. I learnt about how discontinuous editing is used and how there are rapid shot transitions to keep an audience interested and make them to watch the music video again to see all the different parts of it. Below is a gif that shows this:

Conclusion: 

Overall I have both learnt and consolidated my skills in different areas from participating in prelim task 1, 2, 3 and 5.

Evaluation post 3: Are you pleased with the footage and your finished edit? Is it how you expected it to look? What works really well and what would you change?

Overall, I am very pleased with our finished edit and the variety of footage that we had. Our director Dom said "It's great!" and our performance director Jasmine said "Whoop, Whoop it's incredible."



What works really well:

• All our lipsyncns match
• All our cuts match
• Our grading is very close to the original
• And the majority of movements (with the footage we had) match the original

ProcAmp was the basis of our grading

The Three-Way colour wheel allowed us to change the colours ie the backgrounds

Levels was a new tool for us in grading and allowed us to make the colours richer

Below are two examples of split screens showing shots before and after grading using the tools mentioned above:

Me in the end dance scene

Me as contemporary Taylor

What would I change?

The main thing I would change would be to get all the shots we needed as we did not have some and instead had to use other shots to fill in the gaps- an example of which can be seen on the right:

Evaluation Post 4: How do you think your prelim experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?

Pre-Production:

I think it will be important to have:

• A clear and planned out idea for the music video.
• A clear sense of genre, character, style, lighting, location etc.
• Costume and make-up lists.
• A very detailed shoot board with strict timings to be adhered to.
• Choreography and have rehearsed thoroughly before the shoot to make it run smoothly.

Main shoot:

A key thing I have gained from the prelim is that fact that we have done high level performance and used the Seward Studio which now confirms that I want to perform in my video and use the Studio and its cyclorama.

An example of make-up and styling

From the prelim in my main shoot I will include:

• Beauty shots
• Performance/dance
• Styling
• Lip-sync 
• Use of studio lighting

It will also be useful if at all possible to have an assistant director like Amy and runners like Ben to make the shoot run smoothly.

Post-Production:

Professional lighting set up

In our own shoot it will be important to use the following editing techniques:

• Discontinuous editing 
• Rapid shots transitions
• Montage
• Cutting to the beat
• Frequent shots showing breaking the fourth wall
• Prominence of shots showing direct address

Conclusion:

Overall, I believe that my experiences on the prelim will have a large impact on my approach to next term's music video. But I also think my already proven approach to all media projects which is to work time-efficiently and to a high standard will continue.