Technical Tutorials

I thoroughly enjoyed mine and Charlotte's technical turorial session as it gave us a chance to practice using the green screen and helped us with our confidence when performing in front of the camera. There wasn't any pressure to perform we just had fun and done the best that we could. As we might be using instruments in our music video, it was really helpful practicing with them in our performance as neither of us has ever played an instrument so we were able to get some tips from other members of our media class who do. My having our session with the green screen I realised that I wasn't as confident in front of the camera as I initially thought, therefore Charlotte chose to take the lead role in lip syncing our chosen song which was 'Glad You Came' by a pop band called The Wanted. I'm glad that we chose a pop song as our song for our music video is pop, therefore we had to convey similar emotions and energies.

This is an image of me and Charlotte filming other groups using the green screen. For each group we used three people to film at the same time as then you were able to capture the group from all different angles. This is a clever idea as having many different angles of the shots avoids viewer fatigue, and will allow our music video to be more successful. I enjoyed being behind the camera as I got to experience what would look good from the directors point of view, as I will be filming Charlotte for the majority of our music video. We also might be using the green screen for our actual music video, therefore me and Charlotte benefitted from this as we had never really used the green screen before and so this gave us some good practice and a heads up.

Overall, I found our green screen session very successful as both me and Charlotte benefitted from it. Because we were slightly embaressed about our class watching us, I don't think neither of us performed to our best ability. However we tried our best and it was a success. 

Below is our final edited version of our practice green screen that we edited in final cut. Although we struggled with final cut and things kept going wrong for us, we were persistent and worked hard to finish it.

Here is a video from our session in technical tutorials. I think that the video is quite good but I think that there is a lot of room for improvement. I'm pleased with the selection of our song, as it fits perfectly with our genre and the image that we were trying to portray. Charlotte already knew the lyrics to all of the song, so that was also helpful. However, there was a couple of times when she slipped up, but this was only a practice and we know now that for the real thing that she needs to learn her lyrics off by heart. I think confidence effected our performance to an extent, as I particularly was a lot more shy in front of the camera than I thought I would be. That is why we decided that I should direct, as Charlotte is a dancer and therefore is confident and has a lot more experience in performing. Overall I would say that keeping in time was our biggest issue, as when Jack comes in on the drums he is also slightly out of time. Moreover, I think that both myself and Charlotte could be a lot more enthusiastic in our performance, as the artists of the song are pop musicians and in a pop performance there should always be a lot of energy and enthusiasm to connote to the genre and lyrics in the song.
Overall, I am pleased that we did this practice technical tutorial in class as even though it wasn't that successful I think that watching ourselves back we knew exactly where we went wrong and area's to improve on. I also enjoyed it, as we got to experience being behind the camera as well in front of it. As we are keen to use green screen in our music video, it was useful to help prepare and set it up. I have  little experience with the green screen and Charlotte doesn't have much either, so instead of rushing into it without really knowing what we were doing, it was useful to practice when we had our teachers support and assistance.