(Post 12) Our practice task evaluation

We managed to get all the filming done quite quickly. The opening scene was filmed on our way to the main location so we got the intro done on the first take which saved us a lot of time and meant that we already had the first 50 seconds of the song covered. Whilst walking to our location, we took a few shots of our actress Liv just walking, which was useful for the parts of the song where there is no singing. Altogether, we went through the song about 8 times until we had all the footage we needed. The first take was still a bit awkward and my two other team members Jess and Evie had to turn away whilst Liv was singing which made it easier for her not to laugh. Singing the song out loud was strange at first, as there were some people passing and looking over, but it definitely helped Liv’s accuracy in lip syncing and made her singing more authentic. We then went through the song a second time because Liv was still a bit shy the first time and we wanted more expression and emption to make it look more realistic. We then moved on and walked to our second location, on the way we played the song again filming Liv from behind walking. When told to, she turned around singing at the camera which gave the whole video more movement and a different angle and view at the surroundings. The second location was a mixture of close-ups and wider shots to again widen the range of different angles to make the end result interesting to the audience. After the 5th take, we went back to look over our footage and started editing the shots together. It turned out that we did not have enough videos of Liv singing certain parts which we replaced with footage of her walking or just looking at the camera. However we thought that this replacement seemed a bit out of context, so we decided to go out again and get those missing parts right. Again we managed to work very quickly and everyone knew what they had to do and what was expecting them, which made the whole process a lot easier. We remembered the missing parts and told Liv to concentrate on those parts of the song specifically. 

Our actual coursework idea was to focus on a storyline rather than on the performance and we were planning on leaving out a performing singer which is the total opposite of what we did for our practice task. It was a lot of fun making the practice video and getting an idea of what a performance music video is like. I can imagine that if we would not already have such a detailed plan of our actual coursework we would probably have integrated a performance similar to our practice task. However we have made up a creative plan for our coursework which we are motivated to turn into a music video, but it was interesting to see what the other option would have been like. It was really different to what we had in mind for our music video and made us explore the possibilities outside our comfort zone which will help us come up with more creative ideas for our actual coursework.

The video would probably have turned out better if we integrated a storyline into it, rather than just filming one single person as the performer. Even though this would be helpful to sell the performer’s product, it might be too boring for the audience to watch the same face for over four minutes. Combining this with a story would have given the music video an interesting and adventurous feature, making the video more creative. Another difficulty we found was that Liv's expressions did not match with the sound of Adele's voice. Adele has a  very deep tone and powerful voice which you would not expect to hear coming from Liv's overall appearance. If you were to just watch the video without the song you would not imagine her to sound like Adele does. This might just be because we have heard liv sing and we know what she sounds like and Adele is a very famous singer so we also know her voice well so it just seems weird to us to match them together. In reality Liv has a very soft and gentle voice which seems strangely contrasted to Adele's deeper, more powerful voice.