Back in July, our class were introduced to the basics of the A2 course and were taught the functions and codes and conventions of music videos. Applying our knowledge of technology and history of film and cinema into the creation of a innovative preliminary video, this has successfully prepared us to take on the real and final video this year. We chose to do 'Call Me Maybe' by Carly Rae Jepsen which is a charming and fun song to choose. We all enjoyed participating in front and behind the camera in order to experience the feeling of spotlight from an artist's perspective. We purposefully chose a song that had a young and positive message, gearing away from sexual innuendos usually implied by mainstream, female artists. This allowed us to appreciate the craft of the artist and the music itself.
Using Adobe Premiere, this video took 3 days of filming in order to be ready for final edits.
- The main title in the first shot was created used opacity rubberbands which enabled us to set fades on the words for a luminous effect.
- As the song is by a female artist, we specifically wanted to use the three of us (girls) as well as eager and helpful peers from school.
- The technique that we applied to the filming, gives the viewer a variety of imaginative and creative shots that reflect the mood of the song.
- Panning the camera to medium close up and wide shots in the intro of the video before the chorus kicked in, involved members to participate in the dialogue and created that girly, vivacious feel for the viewer. We used fade to black transitions with white titles: 'Hey!' and 'Call Me Maybe' are humourous and audience-friendly which invite the viewer to take part in the almost kareoke style of the song.
- We also incorporated some dance and exaggerated dance moves to emphasise the optimistic message of the song.
- The high shot of the girl sitting on the floor was tinted green, pink and yellow giving an almost kalidescope effect. This was once again used in the close up shot of me amoungst the plants whilst dancing. This allowed to play around with the special effects tools and in my opinion, it brought life to the visuals of the video. I found this a modern and arty effect to include. This worked as a colour collage which David Bowie uses in his own work.
- We clearly repeated 2 shots of the lip synching as the repetiton of the lyrics is challenging to film again and again. Therefore we structured the coda of shots in a neat order which is almost unnoticeable to pick out as it flows well in the piece.
- Zooming in and out gave the video a slight dramatic effect.
- Amoungst the editing tool bar, the push and doors options worked to our advantage to help put the shots in a slick order.
- I found using the project window, monitor window, the palette tools and timeline window, all efficient and thanks to my experience of my AS Thriller title sequence, this enabled me to edit confidently. I found arranging the clips into the timeline quite simple and the adjusting of the brightness and contrast controls were fine to use.
- In order to get the timing right for the lip synching and music itself, it was at first quite challenging to match yet fading out the audio. As a group we collapsed and expanded the track in order for it to agree with the timing and recorded music.
- Using the equipment worked efficiently and using travelling shots with the dolly and tripod gave us extra confidence for our real upcoming video.
- The lack of costume, placement and lighting continuity was not a major yet we have taken into account that it is somewhat vital for the proper video.
- Our main aim ultimately was to focus on synchronizing video to audio. Then we could from there add colour and tone to make it more creative.
