Evaluation Q1: Did you enjoy the main workshop shoot day? What role(s) did you take? What were your best bits and why?

Workshop day:
I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop day, even though I originally thought it would be very long and tiring! I was pleasantly surprised when we were more than often successful with shots meaning we didn't have to film millions of takes and I think we all had loads of fun in the process. Everyone was super energetic and up-beat which made it ten times more fun! I tried to get as involved as I could in both performance roles in front of the camera and technical roles behind the scenes. Below is a time lapse of our workshop day which shows the length of the day and how our different set-ups of lighting were changed...

I am in the centre at the top of the pyramid

My performance roles in-front of the camera:

• Cheerleader Taylor-I have had no experience in cheerleading before and I'm pretty sure none of the other dancers did either! However the routine Tasha (our choreographer) taught us was easy to pick up and all our time spent rehearsing meant we could get it on point!I think I enjoyed my role as a cheerleader the most out of all my roles because the routine was the best and I loved our costumes. Below is a short clip of me acting as Cheerleader Taylor in our finished music video.

• Ribbon Dancing Taylor-I was also the main Taylor Swift for the ribbon dance section of our remake. Tasha choreographed a rough routine for us using the ribbons, however this role was more focused on performance. I found it difficult to act really angry and annoyed in one scene but Jasmine (our performance coach) really helped me and I got there in the end. 

• Contemporary background dancer-I was a backing dancer for the contemporary shots. I found this fun as we had a lot of opportunity to improvise, using Tasha's routine as a starting point. However, it was difficult to keep a serious face throughput performing as we did look quite ridiculous! 

• Ballet dancer- I acted as a ballet dancer for Phoebe's main Taylor role. We were dressed in white swan lake tutus and had our own choreographed routine, created by Tasha. I think we all danced really well, and I found this role particularly familiar as I have done ballet in the past. 

• Band singer- I played one of the background singers for the band sequence along with Georgina. This was a very straightforward role. 
  
• Lastly, I was a dancer in the final 'end dance' scene which was a lot of fun as we were all together and able to basically do whatever we wanted, in terms of dancing.

• I also played a role behind the camera in taking the role of 'clapper-board'. For this role I had to 'slate'; particular shots. This role was important to make finding shots when editing easier and keeping the shoot day organised. I have had experience in this role a lot of times through my media work at Latymer. 

Things I could have done better:

I wish I felt less restricted when on top of the cheer leading pyramid so I could have danced a bit more; I think I looked a bit too still and the shot needed more movement. I also would have liked to have gone up to the lighting desk to speak to Ed (our lighting technician) to see how that worked. 

Evaluation Q2: What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks 1,2,3 and 5?

Task 1: The audition video

Our audition video

After participating in prelim task 1, I learnt that it's difficult improvising in front of a camera to music while memorising all the lyrics, even if you're working with your friends! I tried to fake confidence and acted as if I knew exactly what I was meant to be doing, when in reality we were really just improvising! I found this helped as then I didn't look so nervous when it came to watching the audition footage back.I also learnt that when lip-syncing, one must actually say the words so there is visible throat movement which tricks the audience in thinking you're actually singing. Overall I found this task very amusing and a lot of fun.
When it came to editing the video, we realised there were lots and lots of shots where we had to decide which certain bits we wanted to include for each section. This proved quite difficult and meant we had to watch each rush all the way through to make sure we didn't miss any good footage. However, the finished product was fun and we acted very well which gave us a feeling of achievement and left us exited for the remake.

Task 2: Learn and practice your performance

At first I was dreading the many dance rehearsals we were going to have to attend because I thought I'd find it really difficult to not feel self conscious. However, the dance rehearsals turned out to be enjoyable once you get past the initial fear of having to perfect a dance routine in front of people; you realise the best way to do it is to let loose and have fun with it. I think by the end of the dance rehearsals we had all pretty much perfected the routines and I felt particularly confident in the Ballet routine, having done Ballet when I was younger.

Tasha giving us some tips

There were YouTube videos of all the dance routines created by Tasha which were very useful as this meant we could practice at home also, incase we needed any reminding of certain moves/steps.

Task 3: Help to plan and organise your costume

My cheer costume

My Ribbon dance costume

On the right and left are my two Taylor costume shots Matt took of me. This helped in terms of organisation; we were able to make sure we had every aspect of our costume ready and on its own individual hanger, quick and easy to grab at any moment.

We all chipped in and brought in any items of clothing we owned or knew a friend owned that were appropriate for any particular role.

Task 5: Complete the remake edit

me opening up our edit

I worked along side Ella and Pru to complete our remake edit. These are two people I get along well with so this helped a lot when it came to making decision in the edit suite as we all agreed on the same ideas. During this time, I think I advanced my skills in grading as in the last project we didn't need too much grading to make our shots look good, and most of the time it was just a matter of copy and pasting the same grading along several shots. For this edit, I tried to keep the grading similar to the real video colouring which sometimes proved a tedious task but was worth it. In doing this I discovered a few new editing features such as 'levels'.


I am particularly happy with the way we graded the ballet scene shots as I think they look almost identical to the real thing...


                         

In conclusion, I have grasped several new skills which I was not strong in previous to these tasks.

Evaluation Q3: Are you pleased with the footage and your finished edit? Is it how you expected it to look? What works really well and what would you change?

Below is our finished edit! I hope you enjoy...

I am so pleased with our finished edit and have been showing anyone who is willing to watch it! The feedback I have received has been very positive, often stating that the video looks super professional which I think is down to our work in the editing and performance but also due to all the staff behind the scenes who really made it happen.

I did not expect it to look this professional and honestly I am surprised with how none of us have had experience dancing or acting in front of a camera for a music video before yet we all managed to pull it off.

What worked well?

• the grading for all the Hip-Hop shots

                                                             

• the grading for all the ballet shots
• movements, such as Taylor touching her face or moving her hand etc., matched very well with the original edit
• the slo-mo shots in both the Hip-Hop scenes and the Ribbon dance scenes
• all our cuts match perfectly

Below are a before and after shot of our grading for the Robot scenes which I think shows the most drastic change in shots...

What could we change?

• The cheer jump shot was quite difficult to edit to match the movement of Taylor in the real edit as I took longer to get into the jump than Taylor. Our way around this was to razor tool the shot of me in order to shorten it. This worked out fine but the movement is not as smooth as it could have been. I think this is down to issues when filming on the shoot day rather than one we could have solved when editing.

                            

Evaluation Q4: How do you think your prelim experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?

Next term we will be required to make our own music video, choosing a non-mainstream track and creating a brand for our artist(s). This will be interesting to see what challenges we will come to face and what skills used in this prelim will prove beneficial. I am very excited to take part in next year's project and have already come up with some ideas for tracks and performance.

Skills we will be able to carry on to next year's project:                                                                         

• lip-syncing

                             

• performance skills-these could be used ourselves but also could be passed on to our actors
• choreographing skills-having been taught several dance routines, I think we have all picked up some moves which could be reproduced, if needed, in our own music videos
• organising shoot schedules and dance rehearsals-we now know how much practice is needed to go into a music video if we want a professional outcome and to make our actors feel as if they know exactly what they are doing. This all contributes to a smoothly run shoot day with minimal hiccups



Us cheer-leading from behind the camera

• how to warm up our actors in both dance and performance-we played games with Jasmine such as 'woo-ha'

Skills we will need to develop: 

• how to create a music video with a successful mix of performance and story line in order to intrigue the audience but still follow the typical conventions of a music video. We will definitely do lots of research next year into what the conventions are and which we will replicate or challenge
• Next year we will be shooting in the seward studio so we need to consider how to use lighting and use the cyclorama to create our performance shots. 

In conclusion, acting in this music video for "Shake It Off" has taught me some valuable performance skills such as how to present my facial expressions, how to pull of dance routines and how to lip-sync in a believable way. It has also improved my editing skills and allowed me to observe how a music video is shot so in future I can replicate these observations.