30 second reconstruction of a music video - Evaluation

For our 30 second reconstruction of a music video we chose the song “Make a beast of myself” by alternative rock band Twin Atlantic. The entire video is filmed in one long tracking sequence without the use of edits or cuts and features the singer walking down a shopping district area in slow motion, lip syncing to the song with all the extras acting afraid of him. We would attempt to, as closely as possible, recreate a chosen section of the particular video.

We began by storyboarding the chosen 30 seconds of the video and then made location arrangements as a group, being mindful to choose an appropriate location with a similar mise en scene. We settled on the decision to use Newland Avenue as our location for filming as it had the closest resemblance to the shopping district shown in the video, we also thought that it would be reasonably busy but not too much that it interferes with the video. The next decision that we had to make as a group was the organisation of talent within our production and who would play the main role of the singer. We decided to use Danny as the singer and we also recruited several other people who would act as extras.

My role within the group was that of camera operator, therefore I would have to pay careful consideration to the use of cinematography within the video and how the continuous tracking shot of the singer is done in a seamless manner whilst maintaining stability so that it doesn’t draw away from the action. When filming our video, I kept the camera attached to the tripod with the legs raised to add weight to the camera which would ensure that the film wasn’t shaky and also that it didn’t touch the ground.

Because of the use of slow motion within the video, we played the song from a mobile device at twice the speed which meant that Danny, who was impersonating the singer, would have to mime at roughly twice the speed; this meant that when editing, we would be able to slow the action down but the lip syncing would remain in time with the audio.

When filming on location, we arranged ourselves so that the singer would walk past some shop fronts and eventually walk past a sign that the camera slowly tilts up to in a similar fashion to the original video. Our extras were told to act afraid of the singer and the actions we told them to perform were similar to those within the video which features a person falling off of a ladder, a girl turning around and screaming and a few other people running past the camera.

After capturing the footage we begun the post-production process using Adobe Premiere editing software; this was relatively simple because all of the footage was captured in one tracking shot take. However, the biggest challenge that we encountered as a group was aligning the audio track of the song to the footage that we captured as we had to make sure that the lip syncing was exactly in time with the song. We eventually managed to achieve this to a good standard by zooming into the tracks closely and then aligning them.

After this, we decided that we would attempt to recreate the bright, sepia-like filter that the original video has over it by very subtly modifying the use of colours within the shot. We added a tint more yellow and very slightly removed some of the blue to create this effect. However, because of the natural light achieved by filming during late afternoon time, not much editing was necessary.

I finished by uploading the finished production onto my Youtube channel and then after that I posted it onto my blog. Overall, I feel that this was a success due to very good team cooperation and enthusiasm towards the completion of the production.