Transitions Music Video Project: Evalutation

To plan for our music video, the three of us wrote a list of song suggestions, then checked their copyright policies for uploading onto YouTube. For ease, we knew we had to pick a song that would be appropriate to film a music video for on college grounds over the next couple weeks. Our decision concluded with American Boy by Estelle and so we all set to learning the lyrics. We also looked at the lyrics as a group and annotated the lines with suggestions for the visuals.

Zara casted Max to be our 'American Boy' to star in the music video, lip syncing with Kanye in the song. We chose as a group to film on the outsides of the campus so you couldn't see much of the college in the background. Once out we began putting our visualisations to reality, with Bonnie directing dance and general movement. Zara took care of the camera for the first half of our filming before I took over so she could star in the video more. My job was to use a variety of shots and angles which didn't come as naturally as I thought it would. You can see that majority of the filming is mid-shots due to me not pushing myself to be more experimental.

In terms of time management, we didn't finish the full song but instead rounded it off earlier to avoid too much repetition with our limited recordings. We're all proud of our final product though, the video has character and was good fun for us all to film. We found out a lot about what makes a music video successful, and also how to use a camera to a better degree than we already knew.

The video obviously has some improvements that could've been made, such as not everyone (me) learning the lyrics to lip sync with. The video is clearly far from 'professional', the camera quality being a factor, setting (very low budget aka no budget), and many others. But for a first attempt with a light-hearted attitude, it was good fun.