This is the weekly progress blogpost for the music video project.
Week 1:
We were briefly introduced to the project but I wasn’t there since I was sick so I’ll need to catch up on some of the research homework given in class.
Week 2:
This week we started doing the research for the typical genre conventions of the genre we wanted to base our music video on. Finding the genre itself was already very difficult and my group and I struggled a lot, at the end we just decided to settle on a more general genre of pop. We need to do 2 detailed researches as well as 6 smaller ones and I think it is quite a lot of work but I’ll get it done as soon as possible. We have ideas down for the potential songs we might use but I think it is too early to commit to a final song right now and we still have some time so we aren’t rushing. It was pretty interesting to watch a bunch of music videos and take note of what they add onto the videos intentionally.
To-do:
- Finish the genre research.
- Narrow down the song choices.
Week 3:
This week I have started to do more detailed research based on music videos from my planned music video’s genre (pop/indie pop). It was actually kind of fun to analyze each music video, look at the visuals while trying to understand how and why they correlate with each song’s lyrics. I also had to take note in detail about how ideas in the song lyrics are represented through mise-en-scene, camera and edit which helped me polish a bit of my skills in that aspect. Other than that, after watching each music video, I had to also note down any inspiring elements I found in the videos and surprisingly, there are a lot of things that inspired me. Although I might want to use a lot of pieces of inspiration, I’ll have to boil it down to only a few and if I get the editing role, I’ll have to learn each different technique which might take a lot of time. I still think that it was really fun though and this research will definitely help me develop and brainstorm ideas of things to include in the production of my music video.
To-do:
- Finish 6 small research and 2 big research.
Week 4:
This week, we started making our statement of intent and honestly, it was really scary having to commit to a final concept and idea as well as the song. We decided that similarly to the challenge that we are struggling right now, we wanted the overall theme of our music video to be about the struggles of graduating and having to let go of our past connections to move on towards the future. I think that this will especially be conveyed well in our music video since it is very relatable for us. We also learned about the theory of stardom by Richard Dyer which was basically about artist's alter ego and their preferred way of being conceived and seen by their audience.
To do:
- Finish the statement of intent.
Week 5:
This week, we started to make our moodboard, lyric sheet and storyboard for the project. Making the moodboard was fairly simple as I already had ideas beforehand and just needed to add them into a page so that all of our ideas are fairly uniform and clear. I think that it was pretty fun choosing what type of color grading and feel we would like to have for each scene. After that, we made our lyric sheet, annotating which scenes we would like to roughly have for each part of the lyrics. This was a bit challenging since although we had the same type of feel and vibes in mind, we had different ideas for the scenes. Eventually, we managed to roughly add several ideas though. Lastly, the storyboard is going to be done by Rachelle but I'm thinking of helping to add a few rough sketches for some scenes if I have the time.
To-do:
- Finish lyric sheet
Week 6:
This week was an entire project week, meaning we had 3 class periods to work on this project. In that time, we completed a general screen-test with the entire class, although we still need to do a screen-test with more specific actors that we plan to use for the music video. We also decided to make our music video a feature between an artist and another. Because of this, we’ll need to make sure and research music videos with features in order to understand the conventions for those types of music videos. In addition, I started and finished doing the song research. I feel like we haven’t made much process with the time we had to work on the project at school. In order to catch up with all the work and the deadline coming up, I think I’ll need to work on the project during the weekend.
To-do:
- More specific screen-test.
- Music video star research.
- Location scout.
Week 7:
This is the last week of the first half of the semester which signifies the half-way mark of the project. This means that I'll need to submit my work for the pre-production process of the music video. In order to make sure everything is done, my teacher gave us a checklist to complete which I will paste below. There was actually quite a lot of work to do as I realized that even though I've completed most of the blogposts, they weren't up to the standard of quality I wanted to set, which was relatively high. This week, I made sure to work every single day after school for 3 to 4 hours every day to make sure I didn't miss any important details in the project. I think that it was rather exhausting but it did pay off because I'm quite satisfied with the level of detail in my group and I's work. This checklist really helped to keep me on track and reminded me of the blogposts I hadn't completed yet which was super super helpful for me as I tend to forget things easily if they aren't properly recorded. I think that one of the most time consuming blogposts to make was the classwork one as I had to re-write the things I learned in class and summarize them which still resulted in a lot of text. I do think that it was still a bit fun working on that though. This week, my team and I kept consistent communication in order to communicate which blogposts need to be finish and when any of us needed help in completing a task for this project. I'm very satisfied with this level of communication using the platform of WhatsApp. The best part of this project was that each team member finished their work punctually and on time so it really wasn't as stressful than I thought it would be. I'm glad that I ended up finishing all the blogposts on time!
To-do (for the next half of the project):
- More specific screen-test.
Self-reflection:
I think that having this weekly progress and planning blogpost was really helpful at tracking all of my experience during and throughout this project. At the end of each week, I would write about my experience, what I did, what I liked and disliked and much more. Writing it down helped to solidify and remember the mistakes I made and things I had to work on to improve. It also helped me to reflect that without making this blogpost, I would probably not have realised if I had made any mistakes which could potentially result in a chain of other mistakes which will be hard to deal with on the later stages of the production of the music video. Other than that, the to-do list that I made each week also helped to keep track of the tasks I would have to do so that I wouldn't forget since I am quite forgetful and tend to forget tasks if they aren’t recorded somewhere. Having all the reflections in one blogpost also helped to remind me of what I have done in a way that is quick and efficient (since it is all in one place) so I wouldn't waste any unnecessary time checking through all my blog posts again to check whether I’ve already completed the tasks. I think that for my future projects, I will definitely use this again as it was very good and helpful at organising my thoughts, opinions, problems and solutions!
Semester 2:
Week 8:
This is the first week back in school and we had our first media studies classes of this term! To start refreshing our skills, my media teacher, Mr Nick, assigned our class to make a video recording a scene for the song, Here Comes The Sun. The main focus was to practice lip syncing as he had sensed that we were all inexperienced in that department. It was quite awkward to be in front of a camera but I did learn some new things. My teacher taught us to sing out loud while lip syncing as that will decrease the chances of delay from the visuals and the audio. I think this will help me when I record lip syncing scenes for my music video!
Week 9:
This week, we did a different project! We learned about the multicam edit and the use of multiple cameras with the same scene. As a class, we recorded the videos together but started editing them individually and it was actually quite challenging. The biggest problem for me was the editing software as it wasn’t good and often lagged out but learning this editing was a fun challenge! Other than that, my team and I started recording the scenes for the music video, however we didn’t get to record a lot of the scenes. Everyone in my team is always busy when others are free and it has become a bit complicated. I think that we definitely need to adjust the filming schedule and find a way to record many of the scenes as soon as possible as we are getting quite close to the deadline. There may be a chance that we’ll have to replace the actors for the music video if we are always busy.
Week 10:
This week, we learned about branding and started to research into our digipaks, curating a persona for our star and artists. We did this by looking at examples from other artists from the same genre, examining their album covers, music videos and social media pages. I personally started to create concepts and ideas for the album covers using a drawing app called Procreate. I’ll draw the album cover while my teammate Rachelle will help to edit the final image together. We noticed that a lot of indie and alternative artists tend to use mixed media in their album cover so we decided thats probably the direction we’ll want to go to. Other than that, my teammate Rachelle is finally back so we’ll be able to continue recording the scenes for the music video. We’ll have to compensate for the time missed by recording after school and during the weekends as well as in the breaks. For now, we’ll focus on curating ideas for the digipak.
Week 11:
Due to a public holiday break from Chinese New Year and Isra Miraj, we didn’t have a project lesson this week. Instead, we decided to record a beach scene in a location called Pantai Nusa Dua during the free time in this break. It was chaotic. My battery kept on running low very quickly and overheating too because of the extreme heat in Bali. This caused us to have to wrap up recording quickly as now we had a time limit due to my camera's weakness. However, I think the clips came out very good and I really do love the quality! I do think that before we started shooting the video, we should have considered this risk beforehand and prepared solutions such as handheld fans which could cool down my camera. This is definitely a consideration for the next time we record.
Week 12:
We decided to film a part of our music video in a location called Taman Renon, an open field where we would be able to film a scene with us releasing the birds. It was kind of fun but a bit messy since it was quite improvised and even if we did pre-plan the scenes beforehand, once we were there, we found out the scenes we planned wouldn’t work out with our vision since the plan had the scenes dragged out for too long which made them less engaging and boring. Therefore, when we got there we almost completely improvised. In addition, the bubbles we planned to buy hadn’t arrived, therefore we had to scrap the idea of using bubbles to play with for one of our scene. It was also very very rainy so we had almost cancelled our filming session since we thought it might’ve rained mid-filming, however we decided to film anyways since we were very behind schedule. Before recording this, I had a minor disagreement with the rest of the team where I had reminded them to push themselves so that we could meet the deadline, and I hope that it does encourage everyone, including me.
Week 13:
This week, I realized a huge issue while recording, which was that some blank scenes in the timeline that I had initially planned to turn into performance videos in the field was missing since we didn't record sufficient clips while we were on the field due to some planning and storyboarding errors where we didn't really follow the storyboard as our vision was a lot different from what we had initially planned. Beatrice and I asked our media teacher for advice, which Beatrice noted down so that we could execute it some other time. It was a bit hard since Rachelle was absent, therefore we weren't able to record scenes that required both me and her (which was most of the scenes, basically). However, with the new plans we formulated with our media teacher, we got out of the block for ideas and now have a general idea of what we want to record!
Week 14:
This week was full of mock exams so I wasn't exactly able to record many scenes due to not having enough time to do so, however we did film one crucial scene, which was the contextual scene we needed to provide context for why the conflict between Jasmine and Viola ever even occurred in the first place. The filming itself wasn't hard at all though I did get a bit annoyed because we had to keep taking the scenes over and over again since the actor kept on breaking character or acted unnaturally. I realized that I probably should have recorded this scene sooner because as soon as I did, it made the narrative of the music video so much more clearer than it was before. Although my media teacher was the one who suggested that we did this scene, I helped to direct it entirely so I am proud!
Week 15:
This week I didn't do much either as I was again busy with exams. We managed to record the scene where Jasmine got rejected by the university that Viola got into. I used my friend, Jocelyn's, laptop for this scene and I made a bit of a mistake since I forgot to change some of the text on the rejection letter from University of America to Victoria University, but I think that is a super minor problem so I don't want to bother re-recording since it'll waste the time that I need to work on editing. Additionally, my teammates, Rachelle and Beatrice, weren't there, so I had to explain to Jocelyn my vision so she would be able to help me film.
Week 16:
Rachelle was absent again due to sickness and we needed a lot more filler scenes so we had to improvise. I had to shoot a performance video of me because the spinning scene in the field was very dragged out, so we needed another scene to be able to shorten that one, to make the music video less boring. It was just Beatrice, Jocelyn and me and they helped to pose me because I really didn't know how to act for the scene. Overall, my movement came out a bit stiff but it still worked out and I am happy with the results!
Week 17:
This is the final week we have to work on the project and wow, I did a lot. Firstly, due to the delays in filming, we were only able to shoot the last scene of the music video, only 3 days before submission, which meant that I had to film at night, during a school day which made me sick the next day. After that, although I was sick the next day, I was told to take pictures for the digipak on my own because Rachelle (who is in charge of the digipak) had forgotten to take any pictures during the duration of the entire filming timeline which meant that I had to go get some help from my other friend, Jocelyn very abruptly, but thankfully the pictures came out nicely and we were able to use them for both the digipak and social media posts. After that, I finished my BTS, editing, branding research, weekly progress, and all my reflections and wrapped up right before the submission deadline! I lost a lot of sleep and better responsibility and time management from my teammates and I could have helped, but I survived!
Self-reflection:
At some point, due to the high workload since it was near the submission date as well as the increase in mock exam frequency, working on this blogpost felt more like a chore, and it felt like a hassle to do it. I think that the quality of my reflections may have also dropped in comparison to the first half of the project because at some point during the second half, I forgot to write the problems, solutions and to-do list for each week and in the end, I just didn't bother working on them. Working on this project has given me a lot of bittersweet feelings as there were a lot of times where I had fun, filming the video, but there were some other times that almost cause fights between my teammates and I. Although I keep saying this, I think it is very important to keep time management and that was the greatest issue that we had in this project. Looking forward if I ever do film again, it'd be wise to pick an actor who would be free all of the time.
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