Music Video

For my first time filming, shooting, and editing, I created a music video with the song One More Hour by Tame Impala. The plot follows me, a young teen, who has been mentally trapped in a universe where she only has One Hour to find a way out. She must sift through her memories to remember where the "exit" is or what to do to get there. The memories have been manipulated to portray a happy past when in actuality she experienced numerous tragedies. She learns this and is regaining control over her mind. But the One Hour is over and she is put back into the endless cycle. 

I learned much about filming, editing, and mise-en-scene. For one, I worked alone on this project. So I had to find someone who understood the idea as much as me and could execute it to my liking. I also learned how to connect different shots into looking like a smooth sequence. For example, in the scene where I look down at the timer, the camera has to follow me as I pull my hand down, look at it, and then turn to run. Filming took multiple tries in order to perfect that consistent movement but at the end I had gained crucial experience. 

Editing was probably the biggest, most time-consuming thing I learned from this project. I used Davinci Resolve which is by no means a beginner editing software. I mean look at it, its like a dark matrix with so many little symbols which click into more symbols and weird technical names. I had totally bit off more than I could chew but with hours of me just tapping at all of the little buttons, I learned how to moderately maneuver the software. In doing so, I unlocked many cool features that you couldn't have on IMovie or other easy-to-use apps. 

Mise-en-scene requires a lot of planning I've learnt. I tried to match the lyrics of the song to the colors of the scene. So this lyric for example: "I did it for love"- automatically the scene has a pinkish tone and there has to be hearts somewhere. And I did this for every lyric where the beat dropped to really dramatize the whole video. Also a major part of distinguishing memory scenes and stimulation scenes was having a strong contrast between them. Choosing a levee for my main location gave me a fully prepared set and created the effect that I was looking for. 

                                                

Lucky accidents did not come often during my filming process but I can vividly remember one instance. I arrived at the levee at 5:30 ish which is like right before the sunset but I finished filming at the end of the sunset, around 6:30. When I got home and was sorting through the clips, I found two very similar shots but one was of the sun at it's vivid yellow color while the other was of the sun at it's deep orange color. Immediately I thought- "I could use this to imply a time-jump for my character and show the audience that the One Hour is quickly running it". And that's exactly what I did. 

                                                                                                                                                                                      

Problems came up mostly during my memory scenes where I had all the different colors and symbolization. While filming those scenes, I hadn't had noticed that I filmed them all while holding my phone vertically. I uploaded them to my computer and placed them in Davinci Resolve meticulously so they would correspond with the correct lyrics. When I watched the preview, there were these two black blocks on each side of the shot and I went oh no. I set up the mise-en-scene and filmed for almost an hour, for it all to go to waste. Of course the next day I redid everything and it worked out but this problem definitely slowed down the momentum I had. It will hopefully never happen again:)