Main Task - Picking An Audio Track

Now that our Preliminary Task has been finished, it is time to start thinking about our main task; creating our own music video! We were given a choice of 23 audio tracks to choose from. They can all be seen here:

Track Choices

I have settled on Track 13 as I think there's a lot I could do for a video:

Preliminary Task - Final Edit

I found editing the footage a real challenge! The sheer number of edits per second meant that it took a lot of time to make it look similar to the real thing. As a result I only managed to create the first 30 seconds of the music video but I am pleased with how far I got. The precision of the editing and lip syncing was quite difficult but I feel that this has prepared me for my main task as I know what to expect!

Filming - The Performance

After our experiences filming with such a large crew, we used only three people to direct and film the performance scenes with four performers. Martin directed the shoot with George A and Dan F filming, whilst myself, Josh, Dan C and Martin performed as the band! With regards to location, we decided to shoot this scene in the drama studio. The whole room is painted black and it also has stage lighting which we were keen to use. Alice and Leah had written the words Riot! over lots of pieces of black sugar to recreate the walls in the videos, so we stuck those onto the walls with blu-tack. We didn't have enough time to get proper costumes ready and I wasn't up for dying my hair orange, but I did get hold of a red t-shirt to wear!

The shoot went very well and only took around two hours. We shot a few of the crucial shots on their own and separately. For the rest of the shots we performed the whole song a number of times to allow George and Dan to get a wide variety of shots.  I must say it was all very exhausting! It all paid off though because we got all of the shots we needed that could be put together to form our video!

Filming - The School Scenes

Our first shoot for the music video didn't go quite to plan! We decided to film the 'school' narrative part of the music video first. We had prepared much of our mise-en-scene before starting, such as the banner above the door and flags on the walls. Someone also managed to get hold of a pair of pompoms!

We began setting up o film after school, but quickly realised that we had picked the wrong location to film in! There were fashion show rehearsals and sports day try-outs going on, so our filming kept getting interrupted. Another problem we came across was the number of people trying to direct the shoot. As the whole class is working on the same video, everyone had different opinions, so there was a lot more discussion than there was filming.

After only getting a few shots we decided to call it a day, and try another time, when we were a lot more organised and everyone had their own roles.

For our second shoot we decided to move our location to somewhere a lot quieter. This worked out really well as we had a lot less interruptions. However, lighting was a problem as the location was a lot darker than the previous one, so we decided to use extra lights to brighten up the set. This time we also decided on who would be taking the main roles of camera and director to prevent any disagreements. We were able to film a good portion of the school scene, so this shoot was a lot more successful!

Lip-syncing Practice

To practice both lip-syncing on camera and then afterwards in post-production using editing, I lip-synced to a short section of the song. This is the result:

Preliminary Task

As a preliminary task, we need to recreate the first minute or so of a music video. We preferably needed to choose a video that was shot within a school, as this would make choosing locations much easier. A few of the choices were:

• "That's What I Go To School For" Busted (2002)
• ".... Baby One More Time" Britney Spears (1999)
• "Teenage Dirtbag" Wheatus (2000)
• "Leave (Get Out)" JoJo (2004)

However, no one could agree on a video that we all wanted to do. Eventually we came across the music video for "Misery Business" by Paramore (2007).  The video was more recent than many of the other choices and a lot more challenging!

The crazily quick edits will make the task a lot more difficult but it seems that we're up for a challenge!

A2 Media

After an enjoyable first year of Media Studies at AS Level, I have begun the A2 course! I'm really looking forward to this next year and developing my skills even further.


We will be required to create our own music videos this year as our main task and I think it will be both challenging and really different to the film openings, but fun. In the lead-up to creating this videos we will also recreate an existing music video as a preliminary task. 


I cannot wait!