Hit Me Baby One More Time exercise

As a practice exercise, we had to re-create the first 30 seconds of Britney Spears' music video, Hit me baby one more time shot by shot. The task was set in order to familiarise ourselves with the concept of lip-syncing and how to film with the track and then how to link the original track with the lip-syncing so that it matches. Also it enabled me to get an idea and understanding of just how many shots are used in a music video and the timing and position of shots-there tends to be a different shot almost every second and all cuts are made on the beat to the song.

To begin with, I made a table of the different shots in order, how long they lasted and the details of the shot-for example the type of shot and the action taking place.

0:00-0:06	Tracking shot of feet tapping under desk
0:06-0:10	Close-up Tapping pencil on paper
0:10-0:11	Close-up of clock
0:11-0:12	Close-up of face-resting check on hand
0:12-);13	Mid shot of teacher
0:13-0:14	Close-up of face again
0:14-0:15	Extreme close-up of clock
0:15-0:17	Close-up of bell ringing
0:17-0:18	Camera on the floor-everyone picks up their bags
0:18-0:19	Everyone stands up-close-up of Britney
0:19-0:20	Mid shot opens the door
0:20-0:21	High angle shot-everyone runs out of classrooms
0:21-0:21	Long shot of standing in the hallway
0:21-0:22	Mid shot of dancing
0:22-0:25	Close-up of singing against lockers
0:25-0:27	mid shot-two people walk out of classroom dancing
0:27-0:28	Close-up of face singing
0:28-0:30	Mid shot to long shot of dancing

Then I took screenshots of each shot that I needed to use as a guide during filming to make the re-creation as accurate as possible.

Throughout filming, the track was played through speakers so that the camera could pick up the sound and so when editing, the sound waves were accurate to the original track and a specific wave could be pinpointed to link the video and track. In terms of the order that we filmed in, it was based mainly by location. All of the lip-syncing was filmed against the lockers so we filmed it with the track 3 times to vary the position of the camera resulting in a range of different shots. In the same location we filmed all of the dancing, again with the track playing and varying the distance of the shots. We then filmed the remaining shots around the classroom, for example the foot tapping and the clock. 

When I came to edit, initially we hadn't filmed enough to exactly match the original extract due to timing restraints, and so I overcame this problem by filling in the gaps with extra clips from the shots we filmed. With each shot we filmed with the music, I made a marker on each sound clip in the same place with a distinctive peak in the sound wave so that the lip-syncing was in time as I was able to link the audio and mute all the tracks other than the original track. 

This exercise was very useful as it enabled me to understand how to film for a music video by playing the track loud enough for the camera to pick up the sound accurately so I can link everything during editing. Also I learnt how to make the lip-syncing perfectly in time with the original track, and developed my understanding of just how may shots are included in a music video and that they are edited to the beat. In addition, I learnt that the performance is a key part in any music video as it makes the whole thing believable, without a good performance, the video looks off. Furthermore, I gained an understanding in how important mise-en-scene is as it contributes to the verisimilitude and adds to the theme and genre of the video.