Preliminary task

Task outline & real video

Our task was to shoot and edit a shot by shot copy of a real music video (about 60-70 seconds long). We had to be involved with the filming, editing, directing and singing. The video which my group chose was ‘knock you down’ by Keri Hilson and the original music video link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_RqWocthcc

Planning

The first thing I did when planning my preliminary task was choose the song ‘knock me down’ by Keri Hilson, featuring Kanye west with my group members (Tammy Harris and Abi Glynn) .

We then watched the section of the music video between 3-4 minutes and did a shot by shot analysis of the music video, analysing 20 seconds of the 60 second segment each. This made it easier for us to then film it as we knew what image appeared in each shot.

The only other planning we did was to make sure we had similar costumes to those in the video and also any props.

Filming

On our day of filming we took the approach of filming each shot in sequence so that we wouldn’t get confused and made sure that we got all the footage we needed so that when it came to editing we had enough to work with. Overall the filming went well and we took it in turns to film and be in the video lip synching. We used the cannon 700D camera which provided us with good quality footage and it was easy to operate with its touchscreen features.In addition to the camera we used a tripod and studio lights to create good quality clips which are steady and not shaky like a handheld camera would make it look.

Editing

Editing our preliminary task at first proved rather difficult as the video is mainly split screen which meant that we had to resize all of the slips to fit on half of the screen. However, once I learned how to do that the rest of the editing on premire pro worked well and I am pleased with the overall outcome. We inserted the original video at the bottom of the screen so that you could see the original music video at the same time as our replication of it. This also made it easier for us to make sure the lipsynching was in time to the lyrics and music.

Editing this prelim task was useful as it gave me an insight into how to match up lip synching with music and taught me that it is a long process which requires attention to detail

Final product

Our final preliminary task was uploaded to youtube and as you can see in the picture we made sure that what we filmed was the same as the original video which is shown in the bottom right hand corner. I am pleased with how the final video turned out considering we only had 6 hours to produce the whole thing and I know that when I make my music video later on I will have more time and the video will therefore be better.

My contribution

I filmed quite a few shots within the music video and my fellow group members, Abi and Tammy were featured more than me so I therefore filmed them when I wasn’t in front of the camera. To the right is an example of a shot I filmed.

I also lip synched in part of our preliminary video and took the role of Keri Hilson, shared with Tammy whilst Abi sang all of the parts where Kanye appears. To the right is an example of where I acted in our video.

Editing is something that I enjoy doing so when it came to editing our video I volunteered to take a main role and managed to edit together the video using premier pro with the help and guidance of my peers. To the right is an example of what I edited.