The Duet Evaluation

The Duet Evaluation

 

What have you learnt about filming music videos?
I have learnt that filming music videos isn't actually as easy as it appears to be. For some reason, I just had the idea that it was getting a camera, turning it on, recording and thats it. On reflection there is actually more to it. When filming a music video, its not easy to do it in one shot. I have seen few music videos done in one shot but the ones I have seen are exceptional. The reason why it is difficult to do it in one shot is because it is easy to make mistakes especially as we have not made a music video before. I also learnt that when filming the music video, you need to do it in a variety of shots and angles so that the audience can get a feel of the surroundings but also so that if there is a mistake in one shot, it can be covered up by using the next shot.

What have you learnt about filming duets?

I have learnt that filming duets is actually harder than to film one person performing. The reason this is more of a difficult challenge is due to the fact that you have to get them two people in the duet filmed equally. You cannot have 90% of the music video on one of the two because this undermines the idea of a duet. It is also difficult to film a duet because when you film it, you want to get in a variety of shots and this may be harder because there are two people and you need to think about continuity problems. Going further another problem with filming duets is that you need to ensure that both people who are being ilmed make as few mistakes as possible otherwise the filming process could go on for a long time.

Describe the process of editing
The process of editing is a long one to put it short! Firstly you need to upload what you have filmed onto the computer on Final Cut Express. Depending on how much you have filmed, the time to do this varies. It took my group about 20 minutes to upload all of our footage. To do this we did four, 5 minute takes because this is easier to edit rather than one 20 minute take. Once all the footage was uploaded, we could then begin to organise it. We had to name the layers and pick out things that were successful and things that weren't unsucessful. Then we needed to get the song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and place it as the foundation layer in the editing program Final Cut Express so that this is the only sound you hear and not the sounds of us filming. Once this has been done, we had to select the adequate shots where we had lip synced the song.

What have you learnt about editing music videos?
I have learnt that editing music videos isn't as hard as first thought but at the same time it's not easy as it has to be perfect and this can be very time consuming. It's relatively simple in regards to putting the track as the foundation layer then cutting up little bits of the edited duet and placing them next to each other. Another reason why it wasn't too hard is because the program that was used to edit the music video was Final Cut Express and this was the same program that was used to edit our Thriller video last year.

In what ways could you improve the filming/editing of the sequence?
I believe that the duet was quite successful as it was well edited. There was a variety of shots and the song was lip synched well by the performers. We could have improved it by going to different locations but given the fact that this was a one lesson task, this would have been difficult.