After finishing our workshop for remaking the Wheatus - Teenage Dirtbag video we had to answer three questions about the day and here to the answers to mine:
1. What do you think you have learnt from Friday's workshop?
From doing Friday's workshop i have learnt many new things that i did not know before, therefore i found it extremely beneficial. I learnt that it takes a very long time to make a music video as we only did a short section from it but it took the whole day. I learnt that managing, lighting and acting are the three most important things involved with making music video. As the music video takes so long to make the pre production is very important in order to make sure your day is organized so you can spend as little time as possible sorting things out, and therefore reduce the time it takes to make. On the day we were sometimes unable to do the things we wanted to due to time and weather issues. Therefore i have learnt that although pre production and planning is important, we have to be able to be flexible in order to still be productive. As we have never shot a music video before we found out that lipsynching was a lot more difficult to look realistic than we had expected. You have to actually sing quietly in order to make it look real and almost mimic the singers facial expressions to look convincing. This was also linked with the performance acting where the actors had to pretend to play an instrument convincingly which was difficult. The management on set was much more vocal and hands on than i had expected. Before we had done this workshop i thought that directors did very little but on the day it was the director who did most of the work and got stuck into the workshop as much as possible in order to achieve the desired effect.
2. What was the best bit?
Despite enjoying the whole workshop throughly, I found the most enjoyable bit was jumping around in the background of the performance shots. Although it was hot and a lot of hard work, we had a laugh and was able to experience what it would be like to be in a real video.
3. What impact had the whole workshop had on your coursework?
From this workshop i have changed my thinking about my main project a lot. I have decided that i am going to find a song that includes both narrative and performance in order to show off the new skills that i have learnt from the performance scenes in this workshop. Also i have realized just how important it is to do a lot of pre production and be organized. If the organization on the day was not as good as it had been it would of taken a lot longer and probably needed a lot more reshoots and in our coursework we want to keep re shoots to the minimum, therefore pre production is highly beneficial. As the video took so long to remake i realised just how much of a commitment being in a music video really is. From this i have decided that in my main project i will try to use reliable actors, preferably from our group, in order for them to know what to expect and we will not have any time issues because this could end up making the shooting a lot more complicated than it already is. From the workshop i found that anything goes in a music video, and the more outrageous you are the better. From this i have decided to make my main project use a simple idea but build upon it to make it something ambitious and exciting. This will make it interesting to watch but yet still easy to shoot.
