Blogpost 12: Detailed Planning and Treatment

Challenge that I faced before filming:

Firstly, I changed my actual song choice. It’s a bit abrupt, But actually I made the decision with long time thinking. Before the music I used for my music video is chillin’ from PO8. Afterwards I had changed my ideas based on some reasons. For me to improve my ideas, I had watched its official MV for several times. Then I want to make a vlog type of MV based on this song. The contradiction is, they already done a great job on having a vlog official MV, if I followed their ideas, it would obviously be copy. It is hard to think a new way to do a different vlog MV.

Therefore, after looking through some different songs, I decided to use Hey Kong from Key.L which was one of my favorite hiphop song ever. After I heard of a song, I would imagine what this song would be look like, and tried to put the images in my brain down to the paper.

I could tell more of my other song choices because I do look at lots of different song and facing lots of challenges.

One of the choice would be 上学威龙 from 法老. This song was called comedy hiphop in China, because the whole song sounds funny. 法老 had done a great job on its own official MV and I couldn’t think of a better way to do it. All the elements in the song are included in the MV, if I tried to add new elements to the song, it may got some new ideas down, but it would be change of the song – yes, all the things I filmed I want at least based on the song.

Finally I decided I gonna use the song Hey Kong. It got an official MV, and it looked good. But it was just different to my feeling to the song. I think the song was more about “memory” and “grow-up”, Kong in the past, who was not a good student, who was struggled about the future, who wanted to dropped out from school, doing music, but didn’t want to let his parents down. Kong in the present, which has answer back to his questions from the past, said he has been successful, you should believe in yourself, just being brave and confidence.

For my first draft of the filming, I did not totally followed the filming plan which has brought lots of trouble and mistakes later on, therefore I need to do a new one.

The story board for my first time is kind of weird. I did half-story telling and half lip-sync. For the story-telling bit, it was firstly a basketball court for showing that Kong in the past wasn’t focus in class and he wanted to hang out. Also writing lessons to the future would be one of the story telling part, It’s basically based on what it said in the lyrics of the song. I didn’t plan well this time. What I do is film all the parts that have a clear images in the lyrics, and other part using lip-sync.

Shot list: The shots I used are usually mid shot and some close-up to characters face. Therefore it is not that hard to use the camera for filming. I borrowed the equipment from my media teacher.

I had filming the first draft at nearly the end of the Spring Festival holiday, I spent three days time finished the filming. I had faced many challenges, the hardest one is location unavailable. Some basketball court at that time are still closed, therefore I could only use the outside basketball court for filming. Also, because I only asked one of my friend to come help me film, there had been change going on at the storyboard based on actors unavailable.

Location： For the first time filming, I basically set up the location near my house, some of the shots that taken inside my house and mainly at my room. Also some the shots were taken at the street near my house. What I did is walk around and see where is good to be filmed. It’s actually wasting of time because if you did not find the place, you are just walking around with no reasons. It’s actually pretty messy.

MV casting: There are two characters inside the music video : Kong in the past and Kong in the present. I had acted the Kong in the past and my friend is taller than me so he went with Kong in the present. I did half-performance and half lip-syncing. My friend did all Lip-syncing, but he didn’t know this song before, is the first time he heard of this song. Therefore I had wasted lots of time on correction of lip-sync.

Costumes: I wear more casual clothes and he wear old working clothes for showing that he’s now had a job. The props we use basically was one of the line paper for showing writing a letter, and paper plane for throwing. On the other hand, I also used some books and air phones as parts of the props.

Lighting: When we filming inside the house, we had use High key lighting.