Prelim Edit

Audition Video

Personal achievement

The main achievement I'm looking for out of this A2 prelim is experience, in a a number of new and challenging areas. Firstly, the lip sync was a useful tool that I learnt and can utilize as someone wanting to work in the acting industry. It was also, and perhaps more prominently, useful; to act in front of a camera. Acting in front of the camera, as an actor so comfortable with stage acting, is a new and challenging experience which will be very useful; as an actor in the current industry, screen acting is very essential. In addition, acting in a music video is also very different, especially as someone who utilizes lines so much when acting. I want to be able to gain the skills necessary to act in a music video i.e. lip syncing, rhythm/timing to music, using more stylized movement skills without vocal skills etc.
I think that many of the things I would like to gain from this experience are those that will challenge me, although acting itself is within my comfort zone. Working with the camera is one of those, as stage acting is tailored to an often large theater and audience, while camera acting is tailored to the camera lens. The precision needed with music videos, especially a remake (i.e. lip syncing, adjusting movement to the music and rhythm etc) is also challenging as someone who is not used to acting with that restrictive precision.

My role

My role is the red visor girl. She is a very fun, superficial, posey role. This type of character is within my comfort zobe as I have often played this. She is presented as an 'airhead', shown by particular gesticulation and facial expressions, seen in many of her mid shots shown below: As seen Above, her movement is very flirtatiously stylized to show her superficial nature, which is also seen in the pool scenes, where she acts similarly:
 She also has a rather tongue-in-cheek scene where she is eating a hotdog, again playing to the very flirtatious and superficial character:
 

My costume

My costume consists of a

• Red visor
• White apron
• Red crop top 
• Short skirt/shorts
• Glamorous high heels:

In the video below you can see her full outfit:

I have a short skirts to wear, and I should be able to borrow a red crop top and glamorous high heels, and the red visor and white apron are available for me to wear.

Evaluation: Question 1:

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

As a drama student I really enjoyed all of the drama games and warm ups. I thought it was a great way to get everyone warmed up and in a more comfortable space to get into character.
I also really enjoyed the characterization work we did in our performance rehearsals. The group I was in had all of the girls whom, in the video, were models acting and posing. We spent a lot of time perfecting our 'model' walks and using various but very specific focal points, i.e. a desk or piece of paper on the wall. This helped us as a group to get into character more securely. We then worked on finding different poses - as in the music video the models are very posey, as you can see from a few examples below:


We finished this characterization exercise with a catwalk, showing off our model walks and poses. I really enjoyed this, despite our slight embarrassment.

Me in my costume on set

I also really enjoyed the costume I got to wear! It was such a fun costume paired with a really fun character and I really did love getting into my costume and character.

I wasn't performing or needed until the end of the day, so I had a lot of time to watch everything going on on set. This was really enjoyable as I got to see everyone performing in their scenes, the set ups, and as someone who would like to get into the film industry, was really interesting from that point of view too.

On set performing was also a highlight. I spent a lot of time watching the videos nervously (as you can see in the second picture), but on set was able to have fun with the character and enjoy myself. I thought that there was a very supportive atmosphere which made the whole experience really great. This was especially so for scenes where I had to put a burger in my mouth in a close-up, which I was partially dreading, but in the end was fun.

Evaluation: Question 2:

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

• Auditions

Before making the audition videos I had to learn how to lip sync properly. Filming and editing the audition video began my process of learning how to edit a music video, which was very different from my previous experience of editing footage. In my film editing experience continuity was one of the key features of editing, however in music videos continuity is marginalised. 

• Performance rehearsals

Learning a new drama game (Woo-Haa!) was fun!The catwalk exercise and focal points/characterizations exercises were really useful for learning the stylized movement needed in music videos. Particularly for the very stylized characters, perfecting poses was crucial.

• Performance/Shoot day

Firstly, I learnt just how much make-up was needed to look good on camera!

Whilst on set I spent a lot of the morning and school day waiting/watching/practising. Whilst waiting and watching I learnt a lot about how the whole filming process (particularly for music videos) worked which was very beneficial as I would like a career in the film industry. Going up to the gallery up was very beneficial too to see the more technical side of the shoot day.

On set filming was really a good experience of working in a professional way when filming and I learnt so much about the whole filming experience. In particular, with the burger scene, I learnt how something may seem natural but not actually look so natural on camera - when I looked back at the burger footage I realized that it looked so unnatural and not at all how I thought it was looking.

Evaluation: Question 3:

Are you pleased with the footage and your edits? Is it how you expected it to look?

I am pleased that we didn't miss any shots and that the shots looked really professional and accurate (in terms of the original video), e.g. (the original video is in the right hand corner of the shots):

Additionally (as you can see) the set and costumes look really great and everyone's lips were in sync with the music. 

I wasn't completely pleased with the overall outcome of the grading as shots were a bit too grey at times:
for instance, in this shot, the original video had much more contrast and perhaps saturation than our version. However these are just small tweaks that I would have changed for shots if I had more time.

Some of the shots, like the one below, didn't turn out quite as I had expected:
Our shot:

Our original shot was very different than the original music video, so we had to spent a lot of effort grading it to make it look similar, but there was only so much we could do and this shot was slightly disappointing.
The original:

Evaluation: Question 4:

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

I think I'll have more fun and confidence in the audition videos. I think that I was quite nervous/embarrassed in the audition video, but will try and enjoy it more next time!

I saw just how much work is put into making the set and costumes look good. I think now I understand how the preparation for shoot day is much more intricate than the shoot day itself.  

The actual filming aspect didn't seem too complex as everything has to be changed around the camera to make the shot look good. There was a lot of time spent looking at what the shot looked like on the monitor and making changes around that.

 The lighting itself was very intricate, especially for scenes like the photography scenes. Even though up in the gallery there had already been arranged set lighting plans, on the day many changes were made, and so I would definitely prepare for that on the day.

I was actually very surprised that we got all of our shots and were finished filming at around 6/7pm. I thought during the day that things were going to overrun, but everything was done and finished around the times it was meant to, and I thought that the detailed schedule that we had (along with the First Assistant Director) was key in everything being done on the day. This included details like timings for everyone's make-up to be done in time for their shots.
First AD checking schedule: