Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Evaluation of Deconstruction + Reconstruction of a music video (Miley Cyrus- Party In The USA)


For this task, we had to get into a group to deconstruct and reconstruct an existing music video. In my group there were 5 of us and we chose to reconstruct Miley Cyrus – Party in the USA. The task was to recreate 30 seconds of the music video however we recreated 40. This task was such a great way to help gain confidence with the technology and the editing suites. We allocated a main role to each member in the team. I was allocated to take control of the camera.

Before beginning the process, we got as much information as we could about setting up the camera, how to use a tripod to get still shots and doing tracking shots. This was really helpful for recording ours and took us around 3-5 minutes every time we used it. This really helped gain confidence and helped me understand how to set it up for future filming.

The actual video was shot in America and has a very different weather setting to that in England which caused quite problematic having to depend on the weather. The video appears bright and sunny giving it that whole optimistic outlook. When filming ours, we took every advantage of the days when some sun came into view however it wasn’t always possible to get those good days as filming needed to continue. In the video, Miley Cyrus is wearing shorts and t-shirt with cowboy boots, so to keep ours looking similar to the real thing we had to ensure the cast had similar summer styled clothes. Due to having to shoot on different days, it was also essential that cast bring their costume to maintain the continuity. It was necessary for the video to be filmed in a car park preferably looking dusty, old and full. We realised this could be a problem because we couldn’t use the car park within the college grounds. However after loads of thought, we worked as a team and came up with lots of ideas and then decided to meet up at the KC Stadium car park on a Wednesday afternoon due to early finish Wednesdays. All the cast and extra people we needed all attended to perform which created a really nice team presence. We got a lot of our filming that was needed done here and so after this, anything else needed to film was easier to do.

We needed to film a few seconds with a black car which was exactly like the one in the real video, so we managed to get our media teacher’s help to borrow his car one lunch time. This was managed to be filmed really quickly because we had recorded what needed doing and was able to just get done.

After filming everything, the editing took us around 3 days in total to get 40 seconds of film. We managed fairly well with editing our music video and never encountered any problems because we always had our storyboards with us to ensure we could get our music video as close to identical as we could and also to get the video in sync with the song. Tasks were allocated to each member of the team within the group which meant everyone got to experiment with everything which was really good because it gave us all an idea about how to work different things and made us a good team. We were always aware of what was going to happen each day in regards to filming and who was doing what. This was helpful because it meant we finished by the deadline.

After finishing this task, I have grown so much more confident with the camera as I was terrified to use it before and was unsure how to place a good angled shot. I also feel a lot better on the editing suites because they look more difficult than they are which gave me so much relief. However, without having our planned out storyboards nearby, I don’t think our work would have been quite as good or even finished without planning first before doing, so this task has benefited me into knowing how crucial it is to always plan before hand.

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