Prelim Edit

A2 Prelim - Josh Gav Kay Audition Video

Personal Acheivement

What do you personally want to get out of the whole A2 prelim experience?

I found the initial prospect of acting in a music video very daunting as I've never done any real acting before and I'm not used to moving my body so much. I feel that I want to gain a greater level of confidence when acting in this shoot. I also want to get a better feel of the logistics of a professional music video shoot for our real A2 coursework task. From a technical point of view, I would also like to be involved in shadowing the technical crew.


Is it a challenge for you or within your comfort zone?


I will find this a big challenge as I haven't got any acting experience, so this is out of my comfort zone. However, I am comfortable with playing a guitar so I won't be uncomfortably holding it, making it easier for me to focus on my performance.


Have you achieved/learnt anything so far?

I've learnt a lot about how to use my body more effectively and dynamically from a performing point of view. This encompasses body movement, facial expression and the importance of exaggerating ones mouth movement when creating a music video to make it more believable that I am actually singing the words. When editing our audition videos, we used several layers - one for each separate shot which we could drag onto the timeline in the appropriate position, whereas we are used to only using two or possibly three layers when editing.

My Role

My role is the main male part in the video. I feel very intimidated by the thought of it and somewhat nervous but I feel I could perform highly if I put energy into my performance and follow the directions carefully from our director. The role is very challenging, especially for someone like myself who has no 'acting' experience.

The performance consists of lots of body movements such as bouncing or 'rocking' on my feet, pretending to play the guitar, lip-synching and eye movement. The clips below demonstrate some of the movements I will do.

My Costume

The costume I need is completely black, consisting of a leather jacket, big boots, skinny jeans, a long-sleeved stretchy top as well as possibly a short-sleeved one also. As I have only the short-sleeved t-shirt, I will have to borrow these. I have already secured big steep-capped boots as well as possibly a long-sleeved t-shirt. If I cannot find a leather jacket, then I may have to buy a cheap one from a charity shop or a vintage shop at Brick Lane. Black skinny jeans are fairly common so I will be able to find someone with black skinny jeans to lend to me before the shoot. Below is a picture of the costume that I am aiming to replicate.

Question 1: Did you enjoy the workshop day? What were your best bits and why?

 I really enjoyed the workshop day, despite finding it very tiring frequently performing under very hot lights and under very rigid time constraints. I experienced quite a strong learning curve but due to the fact that I was often performing in front of the camera, there wasn't a lot of time to learn about the other things going on during the shoot such as up at the lighting and sound decks.

I was amazed how true to the video we could be, such as with the poolside setting which was almost identical to the original video:

Our replica of the poolside setting

The poolside setting in the video

I enjoyed seeing how we compromised with parts of the music video that we couldn't replicate, such as the vintage car, which we replaced with a Vespa scooter.

The Vespa we hired to replace the car

The car in the original video

It was also really fun meeting all these people who were involved in the media or had completed a media course and learning more about their specific industry interests, giving me a better idea of what could be interesting for me in later life.

Question 2: What have you learnt from participating in each of the prelim tasks?

Task 1: Audition Video

I found making the audition video a very awkward and painful experience. However, this meant that the learning curve was greater and it made me feel slightly more confident in myself and in front of a camera. When editing the audition video, I learnt how to lay a performance bed and work with lots of different video layers.


Task 2: Learn and practice your performance

I found this a lot of fun because I rarely get the opportunity to perform or work in this way. I found it a challenge trying to directly mimic the movements that Matt Healy makes as he has a variety of different types of body movement in the video.

Task 3: Costume Planning 

my costume

Trying to find the complete costume most similar to that worn by Matt Healy in the video was challenging, but it only involved asking friends if I could borrow certain items of clothing such as some DM boots and a leather jacket.

Task 4: The Shoot

This was my favourite part of the whole project. I learnt a lot about the logistics of a music video shoot and all the planning and organisation that goes into making it successful. My main role during the day was performing as there are lots of shots in the video of Matt Healy.

Task 5: The Edit

This task was very useful in practicing my ability in Premiere and After Effects. As we had edited a lot in previous topics, I did not learn a lot in this task, but I did become stronger in grading. I also learnt how to add flashes into shots to replicate camera flashes:

one of the shots in our remake featuring a flash

Question 3: Are you pleased with the footage and your edit? Is it how you expected it to look?

I was surprised how similar the final edit was to the original video, because during the shoot I felt like we were being very lax with the exact shots we needed. However we did get all the shots we needed, despite some shots not being an exact replica of the original video. For example, we didn't have enough depth in our studio to replicate the car scene exactly, so we used a bus stop instead and rearranged some of the props:

the original shot

our replica of it

It was very convenient that the original video was cut up by shot on Premiere so that we could easily align our own shots so that the remake looked almost identical to the original. The grading also made the video look a whole lot more professional and similar to the original, which was satisfying.

Question 4: How do you think your prelim experiences will impact on your approach to next term's music video coursework?

I feel like I learnt from a lot of mistakes made during the preliminary task, such as trying to sort out a costume earlier than a day before the shoot. It was also a new experience seeing such a large scale production compared to what I had been used to at GCSE and during AS media.

our replica of the poolside setting

From a creative point of view, I feel that this task has given me a much better understanding of what is realistically achievable for our own music videos, both in the studio and during editing. For example, the number of props from the original video that we were able to obtain or recreate, such as the deckchairs and the zebra crossing.

I have also learnt how important putting a large amount of organisation into a shoot is, as it wouldn't have been successful without all the planning in the preceding couple of weeks.

our replica of the photography scene