EXTERNAL PRACTICE

In this post I will be explaining some of the external events and exercises I have done over the year, and how they relate to my coursework. 

MUSIC VIDEO DAY (OCT):

On October 10th, my media class planned a "Music Video Day", where we would shoot and edit a recreation of a music video. We chose "Hit Me Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears as there are a lot of locations that we can shoot around school, a large cast to practice co-ordinating, and an iconic look that can be easily denoted. 

We separated the video into 5 scenes: gym, outside, classroom, car, and corridor. I made the shotlist for the gym scene so that we could recreate it exactly on the day.

Britney Gym Shotlist by Laura Fagan on Scribd

We ran into several issues, such as co-ordinating the Year 9s to help us recreate the choreography, which was very challenging since not all of them were enthusiastic, and the choreography was quite hard. There was some issues with the locations we had planned and the timing was very tight so we weren't able to get all the shots we wanted. 

The original video can be seen in the bottom right corner. 

Reflection: As a class, we were not well prepared for the shoot which is a good exercise for remembering the details in the shortlist in order to make the shooting easier. I would also have preferred a more enthusiastic group such as the Year 8s in the classroom. Using the right locations would have also looked more impactful but I think that we achieved the majority of the shots, and the choreography or movements. It was initially hard to shoot with the DSLR due to the set-up as I don't have as much practice with it but I enjoyed using it and quite easy. The editing was also straightforward as there was a clear template and the adjustments in colour correction and transitions were easy to add and looked very effective. 

LOST WEEKEND FILM COMPETITION (OCT):

On the weekend of the 20-22 of October, Sasha and I participated in the LOST WEEKEND: Halloween Edition. The challenge was to make a short film in 48 hours, using the prompts "Is that even politically correct" and a mask, with the genre of revenge. The experience was very fun and we were able to apply a lot of what we learnt last year for our film. It was also good practice for shooting on a short schedule and being as efficient as possible. 

Below is the short film "Sleep-Over" that we made. 

HORNY HENRY MUSIC VIDEO "ELECTRIC FOOT SCOOTER" (NOV):

A local Luxembourg band called Horny Henry asked Sasha and I to make a music video for their song "Electric Foot Scooter". The band members said they wanted a humorous video that reflected their message, and little performance footage. 

We started by watching music videos with scooters to get a vague narrative idea, and created a storyboard on paper. This also included props, costumes, and locations. 

Once we had planned the narrative concept, we found actors and scooters and planned shoot days. This was very hard as we all had different availabilities and wanted to get the shoot done before the start of November, but we found a day with good weather and completed the shooting within a few hours. 

    Since the narrative is quite limited, we decided to attend a concert held by the band to get some performance footage and lighten the pressure on the narrative. This was also challenging as the band members did not want their faces shown, and we had to work carefully with framing. 

For the video, the editing was quite easy. Sasha created the overlays and I inserted them into FCPX. This was also the first time I've worked with a LUT, and it was a lot easier than colour correcting myself. I did colour correct the band shots, simply by turning up the brightness to red, which was easy to do and effective. 

Overall I am quite happy with how this turned out and the band is as well. It was good to practice planning and shooting for a different format than film, and experiment slightly with colour correction. 

As I entered the video into a competition, the band decided to alter some of the colouring, making it black and white, the entered video is below. 

TEDX LUXEMBOURG CITY (NOV): 

I have been working as a marketing/social media intern for TEDxLuxembourgCity since February 2023 and this is my third event with them. I've been able to gain some work experience in the social media/marketing sector, as well as being given a chance to develop promotional ideas and work as part of a larger team. This is especially helpful for the social media promotional aspect of the coursework, as I have a real world comparison.