Evaluation Q2: What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks 1, 2, 3 and 5?

Task 1: Audition Video

Due to this being this being the first audition I have done, the idea of putting myself on camera like this was pretty daunting. Moreover, it was even harder to get myself to look straight into the camera rather than the display lens or any lyrics. This made the process take longer than it should have done but in the end we became more familiar with the music and more confident with our movements/appearance, thus enabling a better and more enjoyable experience.

What I learnt:

• that framing shots and then acting within them is very time consuming
• effective lip-syncs require actual signing
• music videos need many shots to keep them interesting
• to just have fun when lip-syncing as this brings out more genuine/energetic performances

Task 2: Learn and practice your performance

Jasmine was our performance director and she was very helpful in getting me more used to the camera and developing my characters moves. We had many rehearsal sessions with her in which we all worked together to help boost everyone's confidence as we believed this was the key to a stronger performance in front of the camera. One of the most useful tools I took on when practicing was the 'movement dictionary'; after watching the original music video I realised my character Jamie had certain moves which he repeatedly used, in turn I learnt these moves and gave each one a name. Jasmine was then able to shout these names to me when I was performing so I knew to instantly do them; this made my performance far easier as the pressure of memorizing a routine was withdrawn.

Me being instructed on my performance by Jasmine (on right)

Task 3: Help to plan and organise your costume

In terms of my costume, I provided the shoes (borrowed of a friend), the white shirt and the skinny jeans. Apart from these items, the tie and the blazer I wore were provided by other members of the crew and my class.

Me in my band costume, whilst playing a guitar provided by one of the runners on the day

Away from my costume, I also brought in a variety of smart shirts which were either worn by both member of the 'cool kids' and a member of the band (Ray). I also brought in 3 pairs of VANS shoes as these were specifically required by some of the 'cool kids' to complete their look. Below are some of the items of clothing I brought in which contributed to some of the characters costumes:

Through this task I also learnt that wearing the costume can be very useful in actually getting into character; this helps bring out better performances from the actors and is thus something I will take forward into my next project.

Task 5: Complete the remake edit

For the edit I worked with Sailesh and I believe we worked well as a team as we equally divided the editing time to ensure fairness whilst I also felt that both our creative inputs were respected in our final edit.

In my edit I:

An example of a shot where I had to match the lip-sync

• helped choose the best takes and place them on the timeline
• graded some shots
• sped up and slowed down some shots to match the original music video
• matched the lip-sync of our actors to the music track
• changed the framing of some shots

The timeline of our sequence

I really enjoyed editing Cool Kids as I was able to explore more creative possibilities as music videos are not restrained to the traditional continuity rules. For example, each shot is very short and the transitions are constant. This makes the video fast-paced and in turn keeps the audience interested whilst not taking anything away from the actual music track (which must take priority). An example of the fast-paced editing can be seen a a GIF below:

Conclusion

Overall, I think that tasks 1, 2, 3 and 5 have helped me consolidate and improve my skills which which be very useful when it comes to making my own music video next year.