Baby One More Time Music Video Preliminary Task

Task Outline
The Preliminary Task for the A2 coursework sounded simple enough at first: Produce a replica of the first one minute and twenty seconds of a music video. This did not sound like a particularly hard task until the music video we were to replicate was revealed. That video was Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time' video.

The reason that this particular music video is so hard to replicate is because of its ridiculous amount of short, quick shots that appear in the first minute and a half. It also involves a complicated choreographed dance sequence which is most certainly more difficult to reproduce than the video previous years have replicated: Busted's 'What I Go To School For'.

Planning
To reproduce such a complicated video a lot of planning was required. The sequence contains sixty four shots each of which is about one to two seconds long. The first port of call was to create a storyboard of shots which was taken on by me and James Thompstone. However, after finishing the storyboard it was obvious that a screen dump storyboard would be more effective when filming.

Included in the screen dump were rough approximations of who would be in each shot and these were decided by a few of us. The screen dumps also included the length of the shot to make editing so much easier.

One of the reasons this video was selected was because it was set in a school, however, since it is an American school, when location scouting, we were required to find the only place in our college that had lockers. Annoyingly, this corridor is incredibly narrow but it was the only choice.

Finally, costume was simply school uniform, although, for the female members of the group the style was more specific as Britney has a unique look in the video.

Filming
One of the major specifications in the Preliminary Task was that everybody must film, direct and perform within the video. This was something that I tried to strictly adhere to and I made sure that I did all three tasks so that I would have a broader knowledge of music video production by the end of the task.

I filmed all of the shots seen here:

I directed all of the shots seen here:

I performed in all of the shots seen here:


Overall, I believe that the shots I filmed and directed were effective and as efficient as we could get considering the difficulties involved with the room we selected for the class room shots and the overly shy nature of some of the actors. The class room had to be moved around so that the shot was as accurate as possible and this did mean that time was wasted. Also, it took forever to get some people to film their locker section as they constantly squirmed under the camera. This was annoying, but, it was to be expected from people who are not used to performing.

These difficulties are definitely something that I will try to avoid when it comes to the creation of my final music video.

Editing
As with my AS Coursework, I edited my work on Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 HD Platinum Production Suite as it is the program I am most comfortable with and it is not needlessly complex for simple tasks. As I was already proficient at editing and because I was not informed of the change from editing the entire one minute and twenty seconds to only a short clip of that, I edited the entire segment together myself.

This was simultaneously an easy and complicated task. The cuts were all incredibly simple straight cuts bar one flash which was not all that complicated to implement. However, the sheer amount of short shots forced me to get the original video and then split it into the different shots before then applying the shots we had filmed so that they were the correct length and in the correct place. This piece of ingenuity saved me a lot of time and made the whole editing process so much more simple. However, due to how we had filmed the video, it was not obvious which shots were the desirable ones and this required lengthy trawling to find the correct ones.

Also, it was at this stage that I realised we were missing three shots: The second shot with multiple people at their lockers, the shot of the guy removing his jacket and finally one of the close-up locker shots of Britney. With a little bit of thriftiness I was able to re-use the previous shot of multiple people at their lockers and it did not look like it was repeated and I also used a different part of the close up shot with Francesca Burchill to replace the guy removing his jacket. Finally, for the missing close up I used part of James Thompstone's close up which had not been used for the clip thereby filling in all of the empty space.

Other than that, there were no problems in the editing stage and all that remained was to mute the audio and import an audio only version of the video into my software so that I could make the video and finish this phase of production.

The Final Product


Overall, I feel that I have contributed massively to the production of this video. I was involved in the filming of 23 seconds of the video (Nearly 30% of the video), involved in the direction of 38 seconds (Nearly 50% of the video) and I performed in 7 seconds of the video (Nearly 10% of the video). I was also an integral part of the planning procedure and I also edited the entirety of this version of the video.

Evaluation
The final product of my preliminary task is not something I am particularly proud of. The location was poor but it was the only option, the acting is awful in many parts and the lack of numerous shots made the entire thing more complicated and a much lower quality than I would have liked it to be. It is not a perfect replica, but then again, it was never going to be as we students lack the ability to produce something of such a standard with limited equipment and limited time. It lacks the polish and refinement that I would want to produce, however, much like with the AS Preliminary Task, I decided to expend effort equal to the result of the project. It was merely a learning exercise and was treated as such.

As a learning exercise it was incredibly useful. I now know to avoid choreographed sequences at all costs unless the song demands it, I know that I need to get professionals (Or close to it) to perform in the video to get the polish that I want to achieve and I know that I need to choose my location very carefully so that the lighting and framing is perfect.

One of the major issues that arose in this process was the lack of shots. By missing out those shots I was required to be incredibly thrifty with the other shots to create a full flowing video, however, if I collected all of the shots that I needed then I would have a much easier time at the editing stage and this, if anything, is the major thing that I will take with me into my final project.