Thursday 27 September 2012

De/reconstruction - evaluation

Evaluation
We were put into groups in order to deconstruct and reconstruct a media text. My group chose the music video for the song “Make a Beast of Myself” by Twin Atlantic. The genre of the song is indie rock. The entire video consists of one long shot in slow motion, tracking the lead singer of the band, Sam McTrusty as he gets up off the floor and walks through a street to fall back down at the end in the position we first see him in. The majority of passer-by’s have a horrified reaction when they see him. Therefore, this video combines narrative and performance, as the narrative lies within his journey through the street, and the performance is in the singer’s lip-syncing, although we don’t see the rest of the band play their instruments. We were set to reshoot 30 seconds of this music video, reflecting it as much as we possibly could, especially its cinematography and costumes.

In terms of planning, we put together two storyboards, in which one was drawn and the other was produced on the computer, using screenshots from the actual video. I was assigned the role as the main actor and therefore had to memorise the lyrics that were covered in the extract. This didn’t prove to be too difficult as it comprised only of one verse. However, I had to lip sync it faster than the way it is sung, as we would be able to slow it down in post-production, therefore giving it the same effect as the original video. Producing the storyboards took more time as it involved watching the video and having it paused frequently to write down all the necessary details and to draw what could be seen.

The location we decided to film in was Newland Avenue, an area much like the one seen in the video because of its many shops. Filming the entire extract in one take was quite a challenge for many reasons; the actors all had to appear within the framing at the right time together, if any one actor was to show at the wrong time, a reshoot would be required. Reconstructing the cinematography correctly also proved to be difficult, as the camera had to be held very steadily on the tripod whilst still following the main actor. Also, we had to make sure before filming that we had together an adequate amount of actors (which in our case would have been seven) to reflect how busy the street is in the actual video. A few of the people we tried to recruit couldn’t make it for various reasons, so we had to make do with the five actors we had.

We were also unable to get all of the props we hoped to use in the video. We were able to get a ladder for the shooting, as well as a piece of paper to act as the map that the singer looks at whilst he walks, but we also intended to include a bike (due to a biker being featured in the video) yet we couldn’t find a bike we had permission to use near enough to us. We also couldn’t acquire a nun costume for the nun that also appears in the extract.

When it came to editing the footage, it proved to be relatively easy and quick, as we only had one full shot to deal with rather than a series of clips we had to place in the correct order and apply different effects to. We did, however, have to experiment with the speed of the clip so that the lip-syncing would match up to the song. We achieved this eventually and were happy with the overall result of the extract. We did, however, run over the recommended 30 seconds as the necessary footage was longer than this.

To conclude, this preliminary task proved to be a challenge, but we succeeded, and the more challenging the process was, the higher in regard the final result would be held.

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