Group Planning

For our group Mini-vid, we had to come up with 60 seconds of a music video and then plan and shoot it. Afterwards we would each edit an individual version of it and add effects, utilising Final Cut Pro to the best of our abilities.

The track we chose was Stayin' Alive - a cover version by Ozzy Osbourne. Roughly the opening minute of the track would be used to create the video, as our concept matched the track in that both featured a long introduction before the song started.

Our main idea was originally thought up by George, and it created a narrative around a character who would eventually be played by Jake; this showed his entry to the school and his journey through the main hall and into various corridors. The rest of the group recruited various extras, who along with ourselves, filled in the background and played the rest of the parts. Very few props were needed for the video and we all wore our own clothes. The main notable exceptions were the large pair of mirrored sunglasses that Jake's character had to wear, and various paper balls that needed to be thrown to create an atmosphere of chaos.

After the narrative was shot, including scenes where characters were required to be throwing the paper balls and running past each other, we moved onto some performance footage. This consisted of Jake lip-synching to the track against a plain white background, so that it would be easier to layer him into existing shots in our edits. It also was necessary as it was realised that in our haste to shoot all the footage we had neglected to include any shots of lip-synching in the narrative - something that was vitally required for the video.

Originally further scenes of Jake's character in the corridors were to be filmed and the chaos going on the background would've been longer and more elaborate, but these were cut due to both timing concerns and the practicalities of organising a large group of people to perform such an elaborate routine - especially as any finished result would've had to have been shot from several different angles!