"Upswing" Music Video

Pre-Production

   My group members and I chose the song "Upswing" by Prinze George to edit our music video to. Our original idea was to recreate some scenes of the music video, like the beginning where she jumps into a pool. I bought a black dress from Savers and roughed it up to make it look a bit like the dress from the video. We created the beat sheet and decided to film at the KC Workhouse, which is an abandoned prison that is covered in graffiti and is open to the public. We listed out some of the important shots what we wanted to get, and this whole process took about a week.

Production

   Three out of the four members of the group came to the Workhouse to film on a Saturday afternoon. Since I was the main actress in the video, I choreographed a little routine to the song. Later,  I improvised some dancing in different locations so we could use them as subclips while editing. We filmed in multiple spots around the workhouse so we could have a wide variety of shots. In the end, we used two cameras and four SD cards. 

Post-Production

   The editing took a TREMENDOUS amount of time. I stayed after school for about 3 hours one night to finish editing because I only had 45 seconds completed out of two minutes. Before that, I spent a couple days just sorting through clips to find which subclips I wanted to include in the video. I tried to include dancing clips where the music got louder (crescendo) so that the video seemed more intense. Once I had my favorite clips in place, I used other b-roll and dancing clips as fillers. The ending is my favorite there is a clips where I spin and fall out of the shot and I ended the video there. It was a bit difficult to meet the deadlines but staying after school wasn't a problem for me. 

Takeaways and Changes 

   One of the biggest things I learned was how to edit music and fade it in and out. I also learned how to mark audio to the beat by pressing the m key in Premiere. For changes, I would have liked to change the song because the beat was hard to find and to edit to. However, I like the variety of shots that we got from filming because I never ran out of shots to use. Overall, this was one of my favorite projects because we had more freedom to choose what song, the story, and the shots that we wanted. I mostly like how my video turned out because I spent lots of time editing. 

Hello- Adele

   The next project in my video class is a music video, so we are looking at inspiration for our own projects. This music video tells a story about a breakup, but the boyfriend no longer wants to contact the girlfriend, which is why the title is 'Hello'.

   This music video contains some very important aspects. For example, there was a rack focus shot in the beginning of the video that was executed very nicely. Also, the video had an appropriate amount of exposure and it gave the video a haunted effect. The shots had smooth movements, especially from an aerial point of view.
 
   The story was about Adele and how here boyfriend or significant other left her and she is trying to reach him but he refuses to answer. The music video shows both people in the relationship and what is going on in their lives. Through techniques like different camera angles, the story took the viewer on an emotional ride and had a beginning, middle, and end.

    Adele's music video had some important elements that I could use for future projects. The director placed the camera in some awkward places but it gave the video a special touch that is not used in most projects. They also used a variety of different camera angles that helped complete the video. These shots were well executed by the director. I feel like the black and white effect could be toned down a little bit or keeping the natural clips with less saturation would have suited the video a little better. Overall, the video told a great story through each shot. I also really liked the location where it was shot because it contributed to the haunted and abandoned effect.