Preliminary tasks

As preparation for our main task, we created two videos - an advert and a music video. For the advert, we were given a random item in groups and had to create an advert for that item.

 Our group had a toy wand, and had different ideas about whether to advertise it as a toy or as a real wand. We decided to use green screen to make it look like the wand could make things levitate. This was a challenge as we had to re-film the green screen sections because the wand was too lightly coloured to show up. We had fun filming the section where the white board is cleared, as we left the camera filming and ran in to wipe the board while Chloe held the wand in place, so when we edited we could cut out the people running in so it looked like magic. Making this advert made us think more about creative ways we could film and edit to make things look like magic. For example, we had a shot when the person holding the wand pointed it at the camera and we lifted it up on the tripod, so it looked like the camera was flying. Unfortunately, with this section we had too much footage, so had to cut it out as our video was too long for an advert, which should be clear and concise. We used a title at the end, over a shot of someone displaying the wand, which made it look like a stereotypical infomercial-style advert. Our bubbly American voice over was also intended to make our advert seem like this recognizable style of advert. Whilst adding this voice over, we found that we had to cut it up to spread throughout the video as they were speaking to quickly for the pace of the editing.

This is our advert:

Majik Wand Advert from Emily Friend on Vimeo.

Secondly, we made a music video. As we had to use a song we were unfamiliar with, it was difficult to come up with an idea for the video. We decided to film at the school art exhibition, and use the bright colours and pictures to be like a colourful candy shop. We tried to capture the "aesthetics" of the song, rather than having a singer lip-syncing like in a typical music video. A real life example of a video which does this is Collar Full by Panic at the Disco, which does not have any people in it at all, just shots of city lights and signs. Although this is just a video of the audio and not a proper music video, it still uses the videos of the lights to capture the aesthetic of the song, rather than using a still image.
 We used the editing software to alter the hue of some shots to make it look brighter and more unnatural. We also used green screen in this video, which ended up giving the illusion of a sugar rush with the moving background. We took still images of letters spelling out "Candy Shop" which we found on signs and posters, and edited them quickly together so it reads "Candy Shop" one letter after another. Making this video showed us the importance of quick editing to the beat of the song to make it look more like a traditional music video. We managed to create an interesting looking video even within the short time span of a few hours, but it made us realised how time consuming the process is.

This is our music video:

Candy Shop from Emily Friend on Vimeo.