Lip Sync exercise.

In the continuous process of exploration of the music industry we did a Lip Sync exercise in order to learn the basics of how the music videos are created. The song chosen was 'Shape of you' by Ed Sheeran.

When we came to the studio there were three sets set up for us:

A section with neon lights behind the white cloth.

 A blue set with fireplace and a picture of Beatles.

 A green chroma key with a sofa in front.

Each section had a camera, and a neon section had a dolly as well, which allowed us to film tracking shots. We all divided into three equal groups and were swapping between the sets and between different roles - from behind the camera to in front of the camera, e.t.c. We also had a role of the floor manager and a playback person.

Floor manager was kind of a director of all three sets and the process as a whole - that person made sure people on every section were ready to film by calling: 'stand by' and then 'camera rolling' in order to make the filmmaking process more organised. When floor manager got responses from every group he gave instructions to playback person, who pressed on the play button, which showed the countdown before the song was played. All the cameras had to focus on that playback when the countdown starts (we used an iPad as a source of playback), before showing the characters on the set, as it's key in the editing process. 

Me and Ilana in front and behind the camera.

On the set we've learnt to communicate with each other, give instructions and listen to instructions and also it was the first time when we used a dolly.

After finishing filming we went up to the edit suite. 

In the edit suite things slowly started to make sense. We found out why we needed that playback - cause it helps to match the time of the song with the time of the video as it's very crucial in music videos as the actors' moving lips have to match the lyrics 100% otherwise it looks unprofessional. 

So we started editing:

1) First of all, we put all the rushers into the bin and started dragging the ones we wanted on the timeline.

2) We dragged all of the clips on the top of the soundtrack 'Shape of you', one on the top of another, in order to make it easier to edit.

3) After that we started to cut videos in the order that we liked to create a music video.

Overall, it was a very valuable experience - we learnt how to film and edit music videos professionally and in my opinion it's good we had that practice so that we wouldn't do the same mistakes on the actual thing. For example, we had an hour to edit our 30 second of music video, but we haven't finished! We really tried to  make it look good, so we've ended up spending too much time organizing it, rather than actually editing, which we wouldn't do on the actual thing - we would try to plan everything more carefully and spend our time evenly. 

Our final outcome for the Lip Sync task, which we had to finish editing outside of class: