Music Video in a Day - Recap

On the 31st October 2022, my media class was tasked with producing a music video for one of the college's very own bands 'Instructions Unclear' who performed a live version of their original song, 'Lost in Space'.

Being music students, the band were situated on the floor below us at my college and so, it was not at all difficult to transport the kit to our TV Studio and have the setup done within an hour. But let's start from the beginning...

The media students arrived in college at 09:00 hours after a week-long half-term break and immediately, we were tasked with producing a music video in a day. We already knew that we would be doing this, having been briefed before the previous term concluded. However, we were still the slightest bit concerned, we had had no practice for this particular production and everything would be done from memory of our work that we have done the last year and a bit, as well as from our own skills.

We were quickly arranged into groups and this gave us enough time to familiarise ourselves with our roles and responsibilities by around 10:00 hours. We had camera-operators, floor managers, lights FX and more. Myself and one other media student were put in charge of putting together a behind-the-scenes documentary video for the event and thus, our work was a bit different, acting on the outside of the production, keeping track of all that was going on and being the production behind the production if you will.

It was important that we tidied up the TV Studio to ensure that the mice-en-scene was acceptable and that we could set up our lights, cameras and band kit in ample time, whilst not rushing the job and having everything done properly. To the credit of my peers, a fine job was done of assembling both the media and music kit, as well as tidying up the TV Studio which I did also take part in.

We then headed to the AV centre at college to pick up a camera, a tripod and a small boom-mic to pick up audio. We took pictures of the set-up, made short video-interviews (including one with the lead-singer and guitarist of the band) as well as ensured that we could showcase a behind-the-scenes look at the work going on in the radio studio where the majority of the editing crew were doing their jobs. It was the "engine room" of the production, with the floor-managers floating around, walking in and out repeatedly throughout the set-up, checking that all was running smoothly, as well as giving instructions to the rest of the team, yet in a diplomatic and liberal environment where little to no ideas where disregarded.

By about 11:30, we were ready to go and the filming was a complete success, the video has performed well on YouTube and this has made the whole team feel good about the job that we did, with the documentary video that I worked on also achieving moderate success. I had very little say in the editing process, however a good chunk of camerawork was done by myself and I do also appear in the video at numerous points throughout the documentary, as do most of our peers. We did several takes of the final video to ensure that we could have a variety of shots to choose from and that we had done a thorough job and it is perhaps this attention to detail, which led to the production, the video and the day, going as well as it did.