SP - Evaluation of Media Day

The week before Media Day we were assigned into groups of about 6-8 people. In these groups we also got were given a certain time period and a certain setting within the music video to film. Our group was told to film the classroom sequence which was also the very start of the music video. We had to film from 0:00 to 0:17 but also help out as extras in the gym sequence as our part was the shortest. 

However in the lessons building up to Media Day we were put in to pairs and we had to deconstruct the whole of the music video. Each pair had around 30 seconds to deconstruct so then we had a detailed deconstruction of all the shots, mise-en-scene and transitions/effects in the whole video. Once we had this summary we were put in to the groups of 6-8 and this is when we had to create the call sheets.

On Tuesday 14th July (Media Day) we started out the day in the Eco Pods. This is where we started practicing how to lip-sync. It is also the place where we filmed our fist part of the behind the scenes vodcast which was all about introducing the team and the task that we were set to do, in our case the classroom and extras in the gym scenes. We also prepared ourselves for the next period where we were actually filming our scenes. This included looking over our call sheets, sorting out all of the mise-en-scene/props and refreshing our memories of who was Britney in which shots.

During periods 2 and 3 we were filming our scenes and being extras in the gym scenes. As our classroom scene only took us around 20-25 minutes to film we had to help out in the dancing routines in the gym. After lunch during periods 4 and 5 we were finishing off our vodcasts which included an evaluation of the day and how we think we could have done things better. We also uploaded all of our footage on the Macs and onto Final Cut so we were able to see what our footage looked liked.

Throughout the whole day we did stumble across quite a few problems whilst filming. Firstly I personally believe we did not spend enough time in the Eco Pod in period 1 planning exactly what the Britney Spears looked like and how we were going to replicate that. A knock on effect of this was that when we arrived in B12 (the classroom we were filming in) we spent too long moving all the tables round and getting ready for the actual filming. Another problem we found was that we did not have enough white shirts to go around so this wasted a lot of time as well. We had to go to the lost property box and use some of those shirts so we had enough for everyone in the room. Another problem we faced was when we went to help the other group in the gym was that we didn’t know any of the dance moves and we had to be taught them by a choreographer which wasted quite a lot of time. Another problem was that we weren’t in the right clothing so we stood out from the other dancers. Some people also thought that they could just mess around in the gym scenes because we had finished our scenes which made the whole team face the consequences.