Studio Exercise

In preparation for our music video shoot next year, yesterday we spent the morning in the studio shooting a music video as practice.

The track that we used was Clean Bandit - No place I'd rather be. The experience was very helpful in terms of getting to grips with how to shoot in the studio, using light and different sets, as we did not have these resources when we shot our thriller which we shot in town.

There were three sets up and ready to use when we got there, one which was a plastic sheet with coloured cylindrical lights behind. This set had a track to use so that we could create tracking shots. The next set was a couch with three wooden walls behind it and the last was just a standard green screen set up.

We alternated roles and each had a turn at either performing, using the camera and using the clapperboard. The clapperboard was so that we could time up the audio from the track with the video that we had filmed in the studio so that the lip syncing was in time with the track. I really enjoyed the performance element, and as well as being enjoyable it helped me realise the importance of having an actress/actor who is good at lip syncing for our music video next year as it is not as easy as it looks!

The tracking shot I was familiar as I had used it previously in the thriller, and reflected on the importance of having a good pace when pushing the camera on the track to ensure a smooth shot. Also, when actually on the camera shooting the shot, you need to make sure that you manually move the camera whilst it moves on the track to make sure that the subject is kept in frame.

After shooting everything, we took a break and made our way to the editing suite, where we uploaded the footage and began to edit on Final Cut Pro, which we were of course familiar with from the Thriller editing, However it was very different editing to the editing in the thriller, as you had to worry about a plethora of other aspects such as timing the audio with the track (which is where the clapperboard becomes useful) and also cutting all the different shots around each other to make the footage in the chronological order of the song.

After figuring that out the rest of the editing was pretty straight forward and the finished product was good and I was happy with it as it taught me a lot.