Evaluation question 2: What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks 1, 2, 3 and 5?

Prelim task 1: Completing my audition video

The first task was to shoot and edit a short audition video, in which I lip synced to the first chorus of Taylor Swift's song Shake It Off. The audition video was used by the staff team to cast the remake video.

Directly addressing the camera

At first, I was uncomfortable with performing in front of the camera because I lacked confidence; but I had a lot of fun making up moves and just showcasing my character. From my audition experience, I learnt that I should look straight into the camera lens instead of at myself in the monitor. In order to force myself to look into the camera lens, I flipped the monitor around so that I wouldn't worry about how I looked. I think that looking straight at the lens gives off a more confident vibe and it was a necessary progress in order to recreate the music video, where direct address is very common.

I also learnt a lot while editing my audition video. In order to create a realistic audition video, I had to lay a performance bed and I synced the clips up to the music so that my lips were in time with the words in the song.

Prelim task 2: Learning and practicing my performance

The most strenuous part of the preparation was learning and practicing our dance routine with Tasha and Mikey. We attended dance sessions after school and in my spare time, I watched Tasha's Youtube videos to practice the moves. The cheerleading dance video below is one of many dance routines that we had to learn.

This is a video of us doing the routine:

Some of the shots in the music video were impossible for the people in our class to do (e.g backflips, splits) and we might not get all the footage that we needed in a day of filming due to limited time. The choreography was used so that we could seamlessly run through takes from beginning to end. If, in the event that we did not have the shot that we needed to best fit the music video, we could use footage of the choreography.

We also underwent an acting workshop with Jasmine, our performance director. This was very beneficial to me as someone who had no acting experience prior to this workshop. I learnt how important it was to convey the meaning behind the lyrics in order to give a compelling performance that would capture the attention of the audience. Together, we also identified and practiced the movements that I would be performing during my role as Taylor Swift in the Swan Lake setup. I learnt that it was important to actually say the words and sing out loud because it looks more realistic as it requires muscles in our neck to move. If I were to mouth the words instead of singing it, it would look fake and lack the realism that audience expect.

Prelim task 3: Helping to plan and organising my costume

At the beginning of this task we were given a booklet with costume references for all the characters. I had prepared costumes for the Swan Lake, Cheerleading, Street, Ribbon Dancing and the End Dance Scene setups.

Most of my costumes were ordered by the school so that we had matching costumes within the different setups. I brought in clothes that I thought were suitable and borrowed clothing from friends and the crew that best matched the clothing in the music video. I went through costume checks with supervision from teachers and Olivia, our costumes director, so that we could have different opinions on what was best for me to wear.

My costume list

On the rehearsal day, professional makeup artists came in to do our makeup to match our characters and also adapted it to suit our personal preferences. They also practiced different hairstyles for various roles. On the day of the shoot, they helped prepare us for the different setups.

Prelim task 5: Completing the remake edit

The editing process took 2 weeks in total. This included renaming all the shots, placing the individual shots on the timeline, syncing up the cut from one shot to another, and grading the shots. Before editing the music video remake, I only had experience with editing films that followed a linear narrative using techniques to create a continuous flow of events.

Editing using Premiere Pro

These are the techniques and theories that I had to learn and utilise for this task:

• Performance sections: star image/beauty shots/direct address

• Loose narrative structure: episodic structure/repetition/juxtaposition
• Discontinuous editing: jump cuts/graphic matches/frequent re-framing/mobile framing
• Graphic effects/slo-mo/colour mixing

• Amplification: relationship between visual references and lyrical content
• Cutting to the beat/selective cutting