Evaluation Q2: What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks, 1, 2, 3, and 5? Focused on studio/technical, styling, and directing skills as well as performance.

I have learnt a lot from all the tasks, and it has definitely helped me improve my skills in terms of pre and post production. Below is a breakdown tasks 1,2,3 and 5

Task 1: Audition

I learnt quite a lot from doing the audition video.  It was quite hard because I had never done one before, especially not in front of a camera which made it more daunting.

I found it challenging because I wasn't fully comfortable, however doing the audition with my friends did make things  a lot easier. This is because they helped push me to try my best and they also made sure I was looking directly at the lens so that it was more personal.

Editing the video helped me to realise how time consuming something as small as an audition video was and to fully take the time to complete it to the best of my ability.

Overall, the audition video helped me practice how to how to lip-sync and the editing aspect showed me the significance of editing the shots so the words match the music.

To watch the full audition press play below!

Task 2: Learn and practice your performance

I learnt a lot about performance from the performance director Jasmine. She taught us all to get comfortable with each other as that would make things easier on the actual shoot day. As a result we had quite a few practices where we were doing some warm ups, some more serious than others. I learnt a lot from these mini lessons because it showed me that even though I was not reciting a script I was still acting and I needed to show emotion when I was in front of the camera. In terms of learning my performance, it was quite simple as I was not expected to do much, learning the moves was fun and easy.


Here is Jasmine instructing someone on their performance

Task 3: Help to plan and organize your costume
I brought in some pieces for me to wear as my costume such as the shoes and different options for my top, the dungarees I wore were kindly from Noa. Mrs Dymioti and Mrs Blackborow helped us to organise our costumes and put all the clothes in the "costume section" of the studio, with our names on the pieces so that we could keep track of what we were wearing and what we had brought in, when we were happy with the final changes to the costume, Mrs Blackborow signed them off as official. I learnt a lot from costume as it showed me how relevant it is in telling the story of the character in terms of personality. Below is a comparison picture with me and my character cool kid 6

Task 5: Complete the remake edit

I enjoyed editing Cool Kids as I was now more confident with my editing skills than I had been earlier since I had a lot more experience from the other projects throughout the year. To edit I worked with Ray Baker, and also completed solo edits. Our first strategy was to complete all of one set and then move to another however we did not start from set one which made things confusing for us, so by day two of editing we had switched our system of editing, and started working chronologically making things a lot more simple causing less room for mistakes. There were some differences that I found in editing a music video, the most prominent one was that continuity editing is not essential and instead random cuts and close ups were used in different orders, this allowed for more creative possibilities which was nice.

here is a picture of me editing

In the edit I:

Dragged and dropped the trimmed shots onto the timeline - however to begin with I trimmed shots in the timeline which was a lot more time consuming, so in this respect I improved my efficiency skills.

Used effects such as slow-motion and also speed effects - I learnt how to edit the footage and add slow motion effects or even change the order of a shot - I done this as some of the shots in the original music video had been edited 

below is the original clip



below is the edited clip that is backwards



Cropped and reframed shots -  I learnt that cropping and reframing shots made the remake a lot more similar to the original video therefore fulfilling the task

Matched the shots to make them sync - so that it looked more professional and realistic
Named shots - I learnt that naming shots would make the process much easier as they would have matched with the shot list that was made. As well as this, if we needed to find a specific shot we could just search for it by using the number as opposed to checking each shot which would have taken a lot of time as we did not shoot the shots in order.

Overall, tasks 1,2,3 and 5 were learning experiences for me. Looking back now, it was very enjoyable and I learnt so much from it. This great experience has made me look even more forward to doing  the project next year.