Welcome


Welcome to my A2 media coursework blog, my name is Chrystal Li (0470) and I will be working in Group 3 along with Audrey King Lassman (0397), Juliette Wileman (0875) and Brandon Poonwasie (0660).

On the right-hand side of my blog, there are labels which you can use to navigate yourself around my blog.


Thank you


Here is a live link to our group facebook page.

Website

Group 3 Music Video

Album Digipak

Album Digipak
Album Digipak (Top Left: Back Cover, Top Right: Front Cover, Bottom Left: Inside Left, Bottom Right: Inside Right)

Saturday 19 July 2014

Personal Achievement

For our A2 prelim, we are remaking the music video for Girls by The 1975.


What do you personally want to get out of the whole A2 prelim experience?

From the whole prelim I would like to use this opportunity to boost my confidence in being in front of the camera. It would also teach me how a professional team work together throughout the day to ensure the shoot ends well. Also it gives me a chance to get contacts that I would be possibly be able to use in the future.



Is it a challenge for you or within your comfort zone?



This is quite outside of my comfort zone, since I'm not used to being in front of the camera and acting. I prefer to be behind the camera, watching everything happen, which I would be able to do during the scenes where I'm not in.


Have you achieved/learnt anything so far?

So far, we have made our audition videos, in which I learnt how to lip synch. We also had a performance session which helped me learn performance techniques like co-ordination.

Friday 18 July 2014

My Role


Describe your role, how you feel about it.

My role in the music video is the floral girl in the pool scenes. I don't mind having this role, except it may take some time for me to get into characters because of my awkwardness.



What does the role actually consist of?




I have to act quite doll-like along with the other two pool girls(Mari and Maisie). We have to move synchronised with each other while lying on the beach chairs and when playing the guitar. We also have to pose and be a bit of an airhead.

Is it challenging for you, or something within your comfort zone?

This will be a bit of a challenge for me since I'm not used to acting in front of the camera but this will help boost my confidence.

Thursday 17 July 2014

My Costume

Describe or list the specific costume/look you are aiming for?



In the music video, the character I am wears a bikini, but it is a bit inappropriate, so instead, I would wear a floral dress with black heels and my hair in ponytails.

Do you have the items you need or are you planning to beg/borrow? Is there anything that may need to be bought?

I have black heels but I don't have a floral dress, so I would have to borrow a floral dress off someone or buy it.


1. Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?

I enjoyed the whole workshop day, it allowed me to be in the field of work when a professional music video is made. The whole atmosphere or the set was different and the crew was very helpful with us, especially since we were just amateur actors.

Bike scene from lighting desk
One of my favourite bits was just watching the magic happen. From behind the camera, we were able to see everything on playback on the big screen. The whole set looked magnificent and so professional. Since I had never ever been on a music video set before, I have never experienced this before. While I was sitting at the back, I was able to see the crew and the actors in action, even the runners who had their small jobs of making tea and coffee for the crew and running small errands. Everything I saw was what was needed to make a good music video.                                                                            
Even a miscellaneous shot need a lot of attention
Bike scene on playback










My favourite spot on set would probably be up on the lighting desk area. From there I was able to overview everything, they even had cameras which were rotatable and I was able to watch everything from different angles. Also I learnt how to control the cameras from the top as well as the TV screens on the side. I never knew that we were able to have a lighting set for one specific scene and save it so we could go back to it later. Technology really is amazing!

View from lighting desk

Since everyone's scenes were at different times, when the cast was free, we would just help out around the set. To help us keep track of what scenes we were on and what scenes we had done, I ticked off which scenes we had done on the shoot board for people to see. There were other jobs that people helped out with as well, including holding the clapperboard, helping block the shots and many more.










Wednesday 16 July 2014

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

Audition Video:




At the beginning of the prelim, we were told to make an audition video. In the audition video, we had to lip sync, which I found quite hard to begin with but I was able to get used to it nearer to the end. Instead of just miming the words, we had to actually sing the song which made it look more realistic than miming. This then gave me a challenge when editing, to try to match up the visual to the audio, in the end it would be very satisfying hearing the synced video and audio, this then made it easier to edit the clips.

Lip syncing for audition video

Practicing My Performance:

One of my moves
Performance coaching
During our practice, I was not confident at all, especially with the amount of people that i saw were watching our performance. I worried that i would look awkward; but with our performance coach, she taught me how to dance and move like the character in the music video but also to still have a sense of our personality.


It was convenient having someone guiding me from a different viewpoint to mine, since i'm not able to see what i'm doing wrong and what i should do to look more convincing. Also by having a performance coach, i became more confident and more relaxed with my performance which was very useful for when it came to the shoot day.

Costume:

Bright costume(Yellow crop, pattern shorts)
Unfortunately i did not have a floral outfit, so instead to keep the bright theme of the scene going without clashing with the other two pool girls, i wore a bright yellow top with ice cream patterned shorts, still going with the pool theme as well.
I learnt that even though we had a slight problem with the costume we were still able to overcome it just by altering it slightly and it would still not look out of place.

Make up area
As for the make up, i did not think that a rehearsal makeup was needed. So for the rehearsals, the makeup artist used a smokey eye make up but since it did not fit my persona, for the actual shoot day a more natural make up was used.


The Shoot:


The shoot was a 12 hours long, this is completely different to our shoots for our previous projects. I was not used to such a long shoot, I thought since it was such a long shoot, it would be very tiring and boring, however, that was not the case since everyone had something to do during the shoot and just watching the shoot itself was entertaining enough for me.

Unfortunately we started to fall behind on schedule around 11 o'clock, but luckily we were able to finish on time. So I've learnt that the first AD is in charge of keeping to schedule is quite important but once you've fallen behind on schedule it is quite hard to come back up, but for us we were able to finish on time.


During the shoot i become more aware of the roles that come together to help the shoot be more efficient and successful. For example, the runners have to get the set ready as quickly and accurately as possibly with the help of the camera operator to guide them for a good set.
This experience on set also gave me a chance to enjoy being in front of the camera and just make the most of it.



Even when i wasn't on set, i was able to watch even do their thing through the playback on the big screen, which showed everything the camera was able to see and to help us, we had the original 'Girls' music video playing on the side screens on the walls. 


The Edit:

For the edit, i realised even though we were already given a template for our shots and not much creative choices were needed, each edit would be different from their different grading and the takes their chose.
Timeline with our template
Grading for white scenes
I was able to learn more about grading. For the white scenes, we had to make it a bit more blue to counter the orange-ness of Kayvons skin tone.

Editing this music video remake taught me many new techniques:


  • Editing to lip sync - This was quite hard since in the takes, there sometimes would be background noise or you might be a bit off. However once you get it spot on, it is a very satisfying feeling.
  • Flashes - Just by increasing the brightness and contrast of the shot key-frame by key-frame, i was able to artificially create a flash. Though it looks weird when doing it frame by frame, since it's quick, it isn't noticeable.

Tuesday 15 July 2014

3. Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?

Overall i was quite happy with our footage. Even though there were scenes we were not able to replicate accurately, it still turned out to be fairly good looking. For example, the bike scene, in the actual music video, it's a car but we had to use a bike instead since a car would not fit in our studio. We were still able to work round it for it to still tell the rough narrative of the music video.

Bike crash scene

Boot girl on bike
Boot girl on bike








The part i was quite pleased with was the guitar shots, it was satisfying watching over my edit and seeing the nicely graded shots which were perfectly matched to the music.


I genuinely preferred the white scenes over the others scenes since i was able to grade them nicely, although i had to make them slightly more blue to counter Kayvon's over-exaggerated orange skin tone. Though it was hard for me to get rid of the dark edges.


Overall i think i did reasonably well for my edit but if i had more time, i would have been able to make it better. For example for the yellow scenes of Kayvon, the background is slightly green on the left because i was trying to even out his skin tone. And with the white scenes above, I was not able to get rid of the dark edges.


Monday 14 July 2014

4. How do you think your prelim experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?

Now that I've had an insight into how a music video shoot is set up and shot, i am able to use it as a template for next term's video coursework. Also now that I've been in front of the camera, i wont be as opposed to performing next year in my own music video, since it would be much easier acting in my own music video without having to rely on other people outside of media who have not much knowledge of what to do.

I would be able use my new skill, lip syncing in good use next term and by having the music playing in the background, it would allow easier editing in sync.

Clip from my edit

I've also realised how much effort is needed for organising the shoot especially with the props that are needed for the scenes to look good. For example:

Poolside set up(beach chairs, barbecue etc)
Bike set up(bike, zebra crossing, bus stop sign)
Sausage shaped letters
Since the props are a big part of the music video, we would have to plan that early ahead. This also includes the costumes for the actors, since i had a problem with my costume, i've learnt that if we plan ahead then if anything goes wrong, it can be altered to still work.

As for the editing, we would be allowed to have more creative decisions that could be made and we wouldn't need to stick to a template, which may be hard to begin with but once we've made our storyboard, it would be easy to edit to. I would be able to use the grading and general editing skills that i have improved on for this prelim edit.