Pre-Production: Roles

Created by Keisha:

ROLES by Keisha

Today's Lesson

In today's lesson, we were told what we had to do for pre-production. The list consisted of:
- Roles
- Storyboard
- Recces
- Costumes,Props and Make Up
- Risk Assessment
- Release Forms (Location and Song)
- Call Sheets

To make it easier, me and Sharay decided to split up the roles between us, taking 3 items from the list each:


We also created a Whatsapp group chat where we would hold our team meetings:

Audience Feedback To Treatment and Evaluation

Our audience feedback mainly consisted of telling us which music video idea was better and why. The people who answered said that both ideas were very good therefore I feel like we did well in articulating and presenting our ideas in both the writing and visual aspects. Initially, it seemed like there was a divide in terms of who prefered Side Crush and who preferred Bad Differences as we had a two-two divide. However, after the vote it was clear that Side Crush was the overall all preferred version.
Many commented on how Bad Differences seemed more planned out in terms of camera angles and theme therefore we have decided to use some of the shots we planned for Bad Difference for Side Crush, as well as placing a larger focus on making sure that Side Crush is very planned in terms of camera shots and angles and not just the theme of it:

Pre-Production

In this lesson, we began to plan our shots and scenes through the use of a storyboard and the lyrics. Instead of starting by drawing the scenes, we began by writing down the ideas we had next to the lyrics on the lyric piece of paper, and then putting it onto the storyboard so that we can easily visualise and then draw it. I worked on the lyric sheet whilst Sharay worked on the storyboard, but we came up with the ideas together:

To make our ideas neater, and clearer I decided to take a screenshot of the lyrics and place it on ThingLink, to then write the details on there in a fuller and clearer way. We decided to do something similar with the storyboard when its completed:

Music Video Treatment

Here is our completed music video treatment:

Starting Treatment Pt 2

In today's lesson we started to add the creative elements to the treatment, by putting into Prezi. We used the same format that I used for my own music video ideas that I completed over the summer, in terms of colour and structure, whilst adding all the relevant information:

Starting Treatment

We started to come up with the information we were going to put in our media treatment. We narrowed down our music video ideas to two, therefore we will be making two treatment ideas for the music videos and asking the class which one they think is best.
We started coming up with concepts for our videos, for example we came up with the idea of referencing 90s culture in the first one and the idea of have a red/rose theme for the second one.

We drafted up these ideas on Google Slides, so that we could clarify the information before we moved it to Prezi where we would later add an creative element:

Treatment Music Ideas

In today's lesson, we were grouped with people who had similar ideas, and came out with prospective song choices and ideas for the music video.
Me and Sharay were grouped together, and we decided to go through different song ideas. As we both want to do a 90's style hip hop or r&b song and video, we each showed our case studies and narrowed it down to:
- Side Crush by Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj and Lil Kim
- Bad Differences by Ariana Grande x Nicki Minaj
- Do it for Love by Tupac x Aaliyah
- Ridin by ASAP Rocky ft Lana Del Rey

We also started to come up with different concept ideas relating to each individual song idea that we had, such as the type of mise-en-scene we'd have, the type of video we want (in terms of performance, narrative or conceptual) and the actors we could get.

Love Galore - Music Video Practice

Music Video Practice Editing PT 2

In this lesson, we essentially just added the finishing touches to the music video. There were certain sections where one scene was too long, so we found other scenes to use and insert over the top to create cuts. We also added transitions such as cross dissolve, additional dissolve and fade to black into our final edit:

We also changed the speed of some of the clips to add effect. For example, we slowed down the speed of the clips in the beginning to add a slow motion effect to the start. We also used a YouTube clip, to help us learn how to reverse the speed of a clip so that it played backwards, which we managed to do:

We managed to complete our editing and MV practice today, and export it into one file - I am very happy with the result as we tried lots of new things, and it was also evident that we had improved largely from our first practice with No Scrubs:

Music Video Practice Editing

In this lesson, we started editing the footage we filmed the day before. We went through our footage, after transferring the files to Premiere Pro and unlike last time, we managed to get a lot of footage that was usable - so essentially, was stable, had good lip-syncing and was in focus:

As we'd previously had a practice on Premiere Pro, I was familiar with a lot of the settings and how to edit therefore the process was quite smooth, beginning.
We started off by laying down the basic clips and the song:

We then went on to cut clips to place them over others to create slow and fast paced cuts, and also to sync the song with the video:


We then experimented with the use of writing, by creating titles. This was our first time attempting to put text on a Premier Pro video, therefore we went through many tries before we got it where we wanted it in terms of the screen and the video but we managed to place it in the right spot:



Overall, we have progressed a lot in terms of editing in todays lesson.

Practice MV Filming

In my group of 3, we decided to create a 1 minute lip-sync video to SZA's Love Galore, due to the easy nature of the song as well as all of us having R&B as a song genre we may want to do for our final piece. We experimented with various different locations and camera shots, such as mid-shot, close up, extreme close up and long shot.

We tried to add some effects and features of the camera that we had learnt in the recap such as depth of field, however, when actually doing filming it did not work for us, so we were unable to do so. However, we managed to get an overall blur effect used for some shots, and we got clear and mostly stable shots.
We did not use a tripod as some of the shots and angles we wanted to get were very low, or high up so we did it handheld. We managed to get some stable shots, whilst a few were slightly shaky but not too noticeably.

Camera Induction

In today's lesson, we became reacquainted with the Canon DSLR's, by doing a recap on how to use them, and how to work the video mode. In this short tutorial, we learnt how to focus, make sure the video is in HD, create depth of field, use the white balance to change the temperature of the shot according to the weather to ensure the best shot, amongst many other techniques. After listening to the recap tutorial, and trying out the techniques of the camera, I got a better understanding of the DSLR and feel confident using it during my filming.

Production Schedule

Own Music Video Ideas

Media Case Studies

MUSIC VIDEO CASE STUDY 1 by Keisha

MUSIC VIDEO CASE STUDY 2 by Keisha

MUSIC VIDEO CASE STUDY 3 by Keisha