For my video, I wanted to have some shots of me lip syncing the song in a studio, and the rest would be archive footage of me when I was younger. To make this work, I would gather the archive footage and sort through it, trying to intertwine it all with the lyrics. I decided to book out The Cove, which is a rounded studio with a white background, that gives a light feel to a video. I took out some LED Panel lights to ensure my face was well lit so I could finish the video to a professional standard. It took around 5 takes to ensure all of the shots were worth using. My colleague Matthew Jury filmed them for me.
This was the first edit I did. When I imported all of the hand held shots into Adobe Premiere Pro, I realised they were quite shaky, even though Matthew used a fig-rig to ensure steadiness. I did the best I could to get rid of the shakiness by warp stabilising the shots, but that just made them look blurry. I stuck with it, and exported like normal, however the more I watched it, the more it bothered me and I just had to reshoot some how.
For a previous project, myself and my colleague Naomi Doddridge created a music video, which again, included shots of myself lip syncing to a Taylor Swift song in the film studio, This is similar to The Cove, except it's all black. With it being so dark, it makes it easier to be more creative with the lighting methods. For this, I hired out a DaDo kit, which consists of three stand alone lights. For the lighting, myself and Matthew decided to position one behind me so I would be lit from the back, creating a -sometimes- silouhette shot depending on where I was standing in coherence to the light, one would be in front of me on the left, and the other on the right. This way, my face would be lit well.
We shot the video a total of six times, with all six times from a different angle. Some close up, some mid shots and some profile shots. With this, there would be a diverse range of shots to choose from when it came to editing, and I would have a good mix of camera angles to work with, and cutting between them would look really effective.
My favourite shots actually ended up being the close ups. I felt they really fit with the theme of the video, innocence and happiness. I was slightly worried that the black room would suck the happiness out of the video in conjunction with The Cove, but I really like how it came out in the end.
The second video came out a lot better. The shots worked really well and I didn't have to warp stabilise any of them, which was handy, as I always thinks it takes the professional look away from it when shots are super smooth. The second time in the studio shooting the lighting shots were a lot easier to have in mind, as I would just swap the shots over in Adobe Premiere Pro, so in my mind I knew which shots had to be absolutely spot on.
In terms of editing techniques, I didn't really stress over which clips I used where. I didn't want it to look mega scripted. I wanted it to be a happy video that portrayed the message of the song, which is about me growing up and saying thank you to my family; especially my mum.
I really enjoyed making this my final major project as I felt like it was also an indirect thank you to my family, especially my mum, dad, nan and grandad for being so amazing to me throughout my whole life. Yay.
- Olivia
