Question 2- What Have You Learnt From Participating In Each Of The Prelim Tasks?

The Audition:
Auditioning for a role in the prelim taught me a lot about how to lip sync to a song in a way that is both realistic and comes across as confident. This is something that I was able to draw on when it came to shooting the music video because I had a small amount of lip syncing with the lead at the start of the video. To a certain extent, I was able to work on my editing to time skill because of my approach to the audition video.

Rehearsals:
While rehearsing a part of the workshop, I learnt how to maintain an performance while still making the camera my main focus. It's something that you wouldn't think requires much effort, but it's much harder than most would believe. As well as this, I learnt how to fully become my character an took on board some of his mannerisms; such as tilting my head back every now and again when I really get into the beat.

Costume:
I was surprise how difficult it was to find certain items of clothing for the costumes, some of the most illusive costumes were some of the most simple. By participating in the prelim I got the chance to see how resourceful everyone was when it came to finding costumes that were suitable, many of the items were brought in by members of cast, because they know what suits themselves best. I also learnt that not having the exact costume you wanted isn't the end of the world, because you can always substitute it for something else and come to some form of compromise that everyone is happy with. Another thing that ways made apparent to me, is that there is no point in having a costume that you may feel is perfect, but the person who has to wear it doesn't feel comfortable in. I know know that if you want the best performance out of someone, one of the best ways to do it is to make them feel comfortable in the way that they look. That's because if they feel like they look good, then they won't have any inhibitions when it comes to their performances.

This is an example where a compromise was made to accommodate for any personal preferences in costume choices. Our costume for the girl's band (left) is much less revealing than that of their counterparts in the actual video (right), because the actors made it clear that they would prefer to be dressed more modestly, as was to be expected.

Shoot Day:
The day of the shoot taught me so much about how all of the cast and crew work together to be efficient and organise amongst what most would call "chaos". I now know that keeping to times is crucial in any shoot, not only so that you can get through all of the shots that you'd planned, but also for the overall morale of everyone. We actually managed to finish ahead of when we had expected to, by moving around certain shots and keeping strictly to our schedule.

Cast were constantly aware of when and where they were needed, to keep the day running smoothly

There were various moments when members of the cast had nothing to shoot for prolonged periods and as such were left waiting around. Rather than acting in an unprofessional matter, it was great to see that everyone remained engaged with what was happening; either watching what was being shot via the playback monitors or helping out the crew with anything they needed doing.

I think that they key to keeping everyone engaged on a shoot is to provide them with opportunities to get involved with the production, both in front and behind the camera. This is something which many would overlook, but that i will be taking into consideration when my time to run a shoot comes next term.

Editing:
Syncing our footage with that of the music video provided one of the greatest challenges for me while editing my version of the music video. Because a large amount of the footage ha someone lip syncing in one form or another, at times I had to compromise getting the footage that fit best with the actual video for finding footage with the correct lip sync.

As well as this, I was able to build on my skills in colour correction and grading, using "three-way colour correction" and "procamp" in Premier Pro.

Some of the setting used in procamp

Colour correction used in some shots

Something which was completely new to me, is the know-how to adding camera flashes into my footage. It was much simpler that I had anticipated; all it required was for me to use key frames and adjust the brightness and contrast at each key frame to give the impression of a camera flashing on and off.