Practice music video task

Before we started our actual music video task we did a practice one to help us understand exactly what we had to do and what we wanted to achieve. We created a storyboard before filming our practice task which was a minute from the song 'Banana Pancakes' by Jack Johnson in which we used surrealism and lip-synching.

This is the report that was written for our practice filming task:

Report on practice filming task

We chose the first verse of the song Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson to do our practice filming task. We tried to use surrealist techniques and lip- synching as these are typical features of a music video. We designed a storyboard of our ideas by listening to the song. When we started to film we tried to follow our storyboard as closely as possible.

At the beginning we had a close up of strumming on a guitar during the instrumental. As we were creating a music video it was important to have the instrument there so that the audience could identify with it and recognize the music genre. We then tracked out slowly to reveal a medium close up of the performer playing the guitar. This allowed us to establish a location and was then followed by the performer lip synching to the lyrics. The lip synching at the beginning was quite accurate and worked well because we had the music playing therefore we were able to sing along and it was always in time.

On the lyrics ‘ain’t no need to go outside’ we used the camera to pan up to the sky. These lyrics were quite ironic as by looking up to the sky we can clearly see that the performer is already outside. We then used a graphic match of the sky in the first shot to provide a visual transition to a similar sky shot. After this we panned down to reveal me in a different location still playing the guitar. We thought this worked well because it was a smooth transition and was quite surreal in the way that we just appeared in a different location. However, there were some problems with this shot; the graphic match was quite accurate as the two shots the sky where in different places so in shot there was clear blue sky and in the other there were clouds. This resulted in bad continuity editing. If we were to do this again we would have planned it more carefully and found two locations where the sky was the same.

For the next shot, we panned down into it and then keeping the camera at a neutral level we had the performer walking towards the camera playing the guitar with people in the background moving quickly behind her. To do this we had to slow down the song so that when the performer sung slowly the people behind walked at normal speed. When editing we sped up the song so that the performer was singing at normal speed and the people behind were walking fast. We thought this idea worked well because it was quite abstract and interesting. However, the final result didn’t work quite as well as we expected because the lip synching was out of time. We realised this was due to the fact we were unable to have the music playing throughout this shot. Therefore, the performer had to guess the speed of the music. With editing, we managed to make sure that the key words were in synch but if we were to do it again we would make sure that we always had the music playing so that the before could be in time.

We then used a match on action shot in which the performer tripped and fell. The action of the falling begins in one shot and is continued into the next shot were the fall is completed. We got our inspiration for this shot from the 1928 surrealist film ‘Un chien andalu’. This helped us to get an idea of how surrealism can be used in production. Using the match on action shot in our film really helped to add to the sense of surrealism. Most parts of this shot worked well, the idea of falling from behind screen and into screen was successful. However, the speed wasn’t quite right. We needed to make the speed of the falling action the same in both shots to make it smoother. To improve this we could have filmed the whole fall from two different locations. The way the performer turned around after the fall and sang the lyrics ‘we can pretend it all the time’ worked well because the lip synching was good and it reminded the audience that it was a music video. Overall, the continuity throughout the video was good. We mostly had the guitar in each shot and had the same clothes depending on the location. However, in the last shot we were unable to have the guitar. This was the only point in which I felt the continuity was bad. Next time, we would not film anything until we had everything we needed.

Overall, I think that our practice filming task was a success. We used all the appropriate conventions including continuity editing, surrealism and lip- synching. I think we achieved the idea of surrealism well. Also, the continuity editing was mostly good. There were times when the lip-synching worked well but at other times it wasn’t in time and we felt this really ruined our piece. The most important thing that I have learnt is to have the music playing at all times. This would be much easier when editing as we wouldn’t have to try and match it up as having the person singing out loud would make sure everything was in time. If we were do this task again I think that we would be able to to improve it a lot more.

Doing the practice task really helped us as we found out a lot of things that we would try to do or improve upon in our actual final task.