Britney Spears Music Video Evaluation

In this exercise a group of three of us were challenged to make a 10 second extract of Britney Spears' 'Baby One More Time'. We had to recreate the exact camera angles and shots as well as the costume, mise-en-scene and dance sequence in order to produce a successful video.

During this exercise we learnt simply how to use a video camera successfully, so therefore how to record, how to use the tri-pod, how to zoom in, out, focus in and out. An interesting technical issue that we had was getting the camera angles exactly right, for example the close up at 0.04 seconds. At 0.08 seconds there is a rapid zoom out which had to be done on the camera. This was really difficult in that we had to get it done at the right time to correspond with the dance move, and also had to get the speed of the zoom out right (not to slow or fast).
The editing was difficult as the shots are so rapid to keep the audience interested. We had to make sure that the shots matched the exact shots of the official video. We found the lip syncing very hard to match with the music and would be tempted to take even more shots of it next time.

I think that one of the major things that I learnt about the practicalities of this task was that you can never have enough footage. If you have enough time you need to make sure that you film as many as the same shot as possible as there could be one thing wrong about it, but the fact is you don't have a back up to replace it with which could ruin the whole video.
The extra little things such as props and costume really do make a difference as it makes the video a lot more interesting to watch, and can also sometimes distract you from the angle of the shot which may be a good thing if it didn't quite go to plan as such.
I have learnt that the best technique for the lip syncing is definitely to have the song playing in the background so that the actor can sing a long, which will make the editing a lot simpler as it means you do not need to play with the tempo.

I found this task really worthwhile as it taught me a lot in terms of what or what not to do when doing my music video. I really enjoyed the costume decisions and the mise en scene as they worked really well in this specific video. I also enjoyed getting the positions of the camera correct as the finished product did look very similar to the official video.

From my experience in completing this task I have learnt to make sure that I use a tripod throughout my day of filming unless needing a hand held effect, as the shots look a lot more proffessional when still. I have also learnt to make sure I have the song playing in the background when filming so that the lip syncing is a lot more successful. I would like to use similar techniques to this creation such as the zoom out in one shot, and the amount of shots used in this video as just in the ten seconds there were about 14 different shots.