Barry Island

On the 1st July I went on a trip to Barry Islands where we were given a day's workshop on how to use a green screen. I took part in this trip to help me with my A2 in case I wanted to use a green screen and advance my skills further. Therefore I found this trip really interesting and appealing.

First we were given a rough introduction to green screening. I was amazed at what effects were available with the green screen as I had never been taught about it before. I was aware that it would be quite complicated to use in my video - I would have to make sure there are no creases and it would take a long time to film.

We were then divided into two groups. In my group we chose to do a music video (linking to our A2) and went for Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend'. Seeing as we were four girls to one boy, it suited it well. We then divided the roles and I got given the main singer as my hair colour is the same as hers in the lip syncing parts. We also got backgrounds suitable - they had to be big enough to fit the screen without stretching it and making the image blurry. We then started to rehearse in a separate room while the other group filmed theirs, and then we started filming.

While filming, it became clear that you can only have one or two people in the shot at the time, and you had to be careful not to put your hands out of the camera or they would be cut off. This became difficult as we also wanted more than one person in the same shot and we could only film them one at a time and had to sync it up.

We were then taught how to put our videos onto the backgrounds. In my group we gave a background with a video to each person so everyone had something to do. I got given to sync the video of me singing with the audio. This gave me good practice for my A2 music video.


Overall I found the experience entertaining and interesting, and would like to experiment with the green screen in the future. I don't think I will use it for my music video because of time and I wouldn't do it as professional as others do. I am glad I got the chance to experience this.

Conventions of a music video

From this task I have learnt about the music videos in my genre and what they consist of. I will take away some of these ideas such as the lights being used in Freezepop and Owl City's videos and use them when I create my own video.

History of music video

From this I have learnt how music videos have changed overtime; music videos today are more advanced in technology and require more advanced editing. Music videos today now include more of a variety of shot types, camera angles and movements, and how quick the shots are being edited together. The main factor of how music videos have changed is nowadays they have a much higher quality than what they were like in the past. This is due to the increase of technology and cameras, allowing the quality to be much higher. In time, this will continue to improve.

Digipak