2. What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks?

Prelim
At the beginning of the prelim, the most valuable skill I learned was how to lip synch convincingly, which involved actually singing the words and editing the sound out later as opposed to simply miming as I had once believed, which is less realistic and convincing.

Rehearsal
In terms of the rehearsal, it was extremely useful for me to be able to watch the footage live as it made me realise the importance of making sure to get the actions as close to perfection as possible and how this effected people's confidence. When we were completely sure of our moves, it showed in the fact that we were less likely to laugh and, in particular during the "photo shoot", were able to focus our attention on trying to appear as confident as possible as the actions became a second nature to us. However, I also realised the importance of sticking to a time limit as it is a lot more rigid when shooting a music video than when shooting a film (or a film opening as we had previously done). When shooting a film, the filming process is spread over a longer span of time and therefore it is easier to take care of unforeseen issues. When shooting the music video, it was even more important to make sure that we had thought of every possible problem and be practical and keep a level head in the event that something did not go the way we planned.

Workshop Day
The skills learnt in the rehearsal then transferred to the real shoot as we were more prepared and confident and had learnt that it was particularly important to remain calm under the pressure. As well as this, it was different in the fact that we had not all performed in a group since the auditioning workshop. Therefore, teamwork was particularly important as we were working in an area which got very cluttered and hot and it was easy to misplace things. Therefore it was vital that we all communicated with each other well in order to, again, refrain from panicking and making the whole experience unbearable. Also, we made sure to cheer each other on in order to make those who felt self-conscious at the start feel more confident and happy with their role. This meant that they were more likely to be happy and proud of their end result.

Edit

Matching the guitar strumming as
closely as possible to the real music
video.

Editing a music video remake was a completely different skill to editing the film opening for the AS coursework. First of all we had to try and match each shot as closely to the one in the real music video, which was a challenge as it meant I had to go through frame by frame and try my best to match movements as well as making it match the music. The actions weren't exactly the same as they are difficult to replicate exactly so I learnt how to improvise to make the shots look as close as I could to the real edit.

Flashes

As well as this, a new skill I learnt was how to make convincing camera flashes during the edit by keying the desired frame and changing the brightness and contrast.







In General

Improvising when we did not have the
car.

One of the biggest things I can take from the edit is the skill of improvising when met with difficulty. This is seen in the music video when we could not bring a car into the studio and therefore had to use a bike instead. Some of the shots changed, which may have been complicating both on the day and during the edit if it had not been for the sufficient planning that occurred before the practical side of the shoot.