Music Video Preliminary Task Evaluation

Our remake of "Wings" by Little Mix took place from 8am until 8pm and consisted of the two Media A level classes and professional members with industry experience.

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

Despite being a long and very tiring day, I found the workshop to be a great experience. I was a backing dancer and the backing dancers were not needed to perform until after 3pm. However, there were many runner jobs that needed to be done. Something I really liked was that we also got a taste of the equipment used in the shoot. For example, I got a chance to do some "cable bashing" in which I had to hold up the cables laying on the floor whilst the camera was filming in order to stop them from being tangled. The cast and crew were very welcoming. We were always made to feel part of the team. Another thing I enjoyed was how as backing dancers we got our hands on the camera, managed to capture footage for a behind the scenes video and also gathered some candid photos. I think my favourite aspect of it all was being able to experience a semi-professional music video shoot and now I have that in my portfolio. As a Media student, I think having this as something I was a part of will be helpful to me in the future. Being able to spend time with both classes and interact with different people was also refreshing.

Dance rehearsals backstage pt 1

Dance rehearsals backstage pt 2

Group circle in between takes.

2) What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks?

Our group's Little Mix "Wings" audition.

Our main prelim task was to shoot a music video of us lip syncing to Little Mix's "Wings" and this was in order for us to be able to lip sync correctly and show our performance talents off. From that I learnt that when lip syncing you need to sing along to make it look believable so, on the whole you cannot afford to be embarrassed and that you just need to go for it and have as much fun as you can.

Furthermore, we also picked our own performance driven music video to analyse and I picked "Drumming Song" by Florence + The Machine (analysis post here). That exercise helped me to pin point the key features of a performance music video and helped me differentiate between different types of videos.

Before the shoot, everyone participating pooled in different costumes to see which ones resembled the outfits in the video the closest. What I liked was that there was a very open minded approach to it as even if the outfits weren't an exact match, if they had similarities in either style or colour they were accepted. For the backing dancers, in the video they all wear black. That did not mean we were to make it boring. We decided that each backing dancer would have a customized look to bring out a bit of personality and uniqueness.

Dancers in costume

The workshop day gave me an idea of what a real shoot would feel like and put me in a professional mind set. I learnt how a filming team would work. I also learnt a lot about the roles of the Assistant Director and Director. Working with the professionals was great as it was almost like a taste of a real music video shoot and we were able to gain knowledge from their experiences. The workshop day also kept me on my feet and brought everyone together as a group. It really showed me that without co-operation and team work we would not have been able to have a successful shoot.

Editing was a familiar experience but slightly altered as this time I was editing a music video instead of a film opening as I did for my AS Media course. Getting the lip sync right was difficult and new to me as there was less creative freedom in this project. We had to match our footage to the actual video of "Wings". 

3) Are you pleased with the footage and your edit?

I am pleased with the footage and our edit of the video. When it came to editing we realised there were some shots that weren't exactly similar or that we had missed out but, we managed to turn that into a positive by coming up with creative solutions for it. For example, in the medium close ups for the "blue grunge" scenes there was one shot that didn't work out so we used another shot and zoomed into it to make it seem like a medium close up. The fact that we were in large groups made me worry a little as I thought it would be very hard to manage and figure out who is doing what. However, we used a schedule and we all made an effort to spend time editing in our frees. We usually did it in pairs and took turn every half an hour or so. The Little Mix music video for "Wings" consisted of very quick shots and cutting our shots to be as quick was challenging. We had already learnt to edit as part of our AS Level course. However, that was focal on continuous editing to create a linear storyline. The "Wings" music video does have linear progression in it as the dance moves get bigger until there is the final big dance number towards the end however, it consisted of non-linear and discontinuous editing which was hard to get my head around at first.

Our group's rough cut of the remake

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

I think this coursework has told me that time management is very key. We cannot afford to not have a shoot schedule as it is important to stick to timings. Time equals to money. When the shoot started, originally we were behind schedule and that taught me not only the importance of timing as shots cannot be rushed but that having a schedule is extremely helpful. Also, personally, before the music video workshop I had thought I would want to make a purely narrative music video but, the workshop showed me the positives to making a performance based music video too. I would quite like to do a hybrid of both.

The dance crew performing the routine.

The experience has also helped extend my knowledge of technical aspects of shooting a music video. It has shown me that co-operation is very important to be able to obtain a successful music video. Motivating the group will help to keep everyone on their feet and it will feed energy into them. For example, when the main girls were performing a lot of the crew sang and danced along to make sure they didn't feel uncomfortable. For our A2 music video shoots we will have to think of ways to keep everyone going but, I think it will be easier as we are in a smaller group. Next year, I will keep in mind that you have to put in more than 100% energy when performing in a music video as your actions appear much smaller in the actual video.

If we were to do it differently I would have allowed more time in the schedule as we did go behind at the start.

Our main aim was to create a successful remake of the "Wings" music video and I believe that we met that goal. Playing the original video in the corner of our remake whilst editing really made me see what we had accomplished.