Experiment.
This experiment has been set to allow us to try different techniques that we may not have had the opportunity to do before. As I am interested in producing a music video my brief was set to film someone playing an instrument in six shots, or more, and then syncronise them with a non-diegetic soundtrack so that it appears as if they are actually playing it.
My initial idea is to get an experienced guitarist to play a simple chorus from a more instrumental piece of music that focuses on guitar. I believe that having someone playing guitar is the most appropriate instrument as it is portable, easy to syncronise, will fit my chosen location well and is very common in many genres of music so I will have a wide choice. As well as this, I play guitar myself so I am familiar with the instrument, which should help me synchronising the footage with the soundtrack and I will be able to choose an appropriate song for my guitarist which I can play myself to determine how hard it is to play and therefore how easy it is to sync.
Song Choice
I believe for this experiment to be most effective I should keep it very simple and focus on the quality of the shots and the sound. I want there to be a chilled but meaningful vibe for this experiment, where the acoustic guitar is very dominant. There are multiple artists that are able to produce the sound I am looking for. I initially thought of James Bay as his music often is trying to put a message across or tell a story however, unfortunatly the guitar is not as dominant in the songs that I would use. Another artist is Passenger, who is very similar to Bay but his music is softer and may suit the experiment better. As well as this, Passenger offers just acoustc versions of his songs and therefore the guitar will be very dominant, which is what I am looking for. On the right are some of the songs I looked at while deciding on the final track to use.
The song I have decided to use is 'Let It Go' by James Bay as it suits the feel that I want to create, is fairly easy to play and this acoustic version focuses on the instrument so it will be easier to sync my guitarist to the non-diegetic soundtrack. I did look at other similar songs by Passenger and Ed Sheeran however, I found that this song was most appropriate.
Casting
I have asked my friend Ollie, to play guitar and be filmed for me for this experiment as he has been playing for over nine years now and therefore is very experienced, and will make few mistakes. As well as this he is highly flexible so choosing when to film won't be an issue as he lives locally and because he is a skilled guitarist, it wont take him long to learn a song so i can be picky with my song choice.
Mise-en-scene
Even though this is just an experiment I want it to look very high quality so I have asked Ollie to dress quite rough and we will film at a local park or at the Valley location I used for a segment in my AS piece, and he will use my guitar, as it is of high quality and should suit the look I am trying to achieve. The only downside to this is that he wont be used to the feel of my guitar but that shouldn't affect anything too much.
Equipment
Instead of using a school camera, I will use my own video camera as I am very familiar with it and I think it will offer a better quality recording for this project as it did during my GCSE coursework. If it does come out well I would try to convince my group to use it instead of the school-issue camera during the final product.
Filming
In the end I decided to focus on mainly camera shots and the editing rather than the aestetics so that I could spend more time focusing on synchronising the non-diegetic soundtrack. We filmed in my dining room with the real sountrack playing in the background so he could play it as accurately as possible and therefore it would be easier for me to edit.
We used my guitar and equipment, with the intention to edit the footage on my Mac, on iMovie. I started by just filming him play the same chorus over and over again from a variety of angles to complete the objective which was originally set.
Post-production
I inserted the sountrack first so that i could move the shots to link the track. Once they were in sync I removed audio from filming so that only the sountrack played. Once I had added a few different angles I created two short titles displaying the song name and the title of the experiment.
Evaluation
Overall I think that my final experiment was fairly successful. Although originally I wanted to make it more aestetic, I think that it is simple and stills comes out quite nice. The camera quality is very good and therefore I would definelty consider the same camera again. I found it difficult to edit the piece together, but that may be just because i'm having to use iMovie, when I would usually use Adobe PremierPro in the school editing suites
