Music Videos

Making a Music Video

In this lesson we were tasked with creating our own music video. We were given sessions hours to make our video, with one session being dedicated to filming and the following session to editing.

when making out music video we had to take many things into consideration such as -

The choice of song
Location of the shoot
Story Boards - to direct the narrative
Actors
Sound
Lighting

We chose the song - StarStrukk by Katy Perry and 3OH!3 and used a Canon MV600 to film with. The Canon MV600 is a mini DV camera - that records onto mini DV cassettes. Although the filming on these cameras is not the highest, it suited our needs for the project, being small, portable and easy to use.

As this was our first experience of making a film we wanted to make it as easy as possible so we could grasp a clear understanding of the process. We chose to shoot in Manchester Piccadilly gardens using the fountain as a backdrop for our actors and also we shot a lot of scenes inside a car, driving around Manchester. I had the idea that filming out of the window whilst driving, would look very good in the video if we sped up the footage to a high speed.

The following session we uploaded the footage to a computer using a Firewire connection. It is a preferred connection choice over USB as it is quicker and can transfer more high quality data. This is why most miniDV cameras and Apple computers are fitted with Firewire capabilities.

We then loaded our footage into imovie. The software enabled us to edit our footage, cutting out sections to create slides, and add various effects. imovie made it incredibly easy to edit our video. We were able to make a basic sequence of our footage to make an effective narrative.

Rather like podcast software in garage band, we had to import our film (audio in garageband) onto a timeline, adjusting the length and size of clips when needed. Individual effects could be applied to clips also, such as speeding up of footage which I mentioned previously.

Creating a music video was not as challenging as I thought it would be. I very much enjoyed the process. The simplicity of the cameras we were using and also of our editing software, imovie, made the process of making our video very simple. It gave me a definite grounding in the creation of music videos and a good understanding of what needs to be considered when embarking on a movie project.