We have just been introduced to our new project, which is music videos and have made a start on our assignment until the end of term. This is very exciting for me as I am a big fan of music and enjoy watching many of the videos. I also have a strong interest in how music videos are produced so this topic will allow me to find out the ins and outs of making a music video. I am looking forward to developing my skills in planning, researching, filming and editing along with group work.
The music video in which we will be doing as a class is from the band 'She and Him', with their song 'In the Sun' and the genre is Indie folk. We will all be performing and trying to re-create this video with the help of a team. We started by looking at the lyrics, and then deconstructed the video itself.
We started the workshop last Friday, when Jake, a director and former Latymer sixth-former visited us to introduce himself to us and tell us about his experiences on set of different music videos. He directed the famous Geri Halliwell video 'It's raining men' in which he had a budget of around a quarter of a million. This meeting with Jake was very helpful and I found it very interesting to find out what it is really like to direct music videos. He also told us how music videos can use narrative or performance, or even a combination of the two and how important it is to think about the music genre or style of the artist and how important it is to keep your artist(s) happy and deliver a visually pleasing video that will ultimately sell the song.
In terms of performance, we had Jasmine Blackborow come in to help us with the choreography of the music video that we will be re-creating. This was also good at getting us to warm-up and become at ease with the steps and letting ourselves go. At first I was apprehensive about the dance however, as a group, we all had to just have fun and it turned out well as we all remembered the steps and tried our best.
Overall, I am excited for the workshop as it will be a great experience and will be a good introduction to producing a music video for our main project. I have been casted as the school jock who is a background dancer, which I am pleased about as I do not have to do too much dancing or lip synching. The next few weeks will be a lot of fun, and I hope that the finished product will be extremely gratifying.
