Lip syching Exercise Evaluation

In lesson, we were set a group task to film and edit ourselves lip synching the song ‘Don’t go breaking my heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee. One of the things I learned during the making of this was how to film a music video effectively. For example, initially I would have filmed the music video by sections- which would have meant that I would have a lot of short and not very detailed shots which would have been very difficult to use in the editing process. However, through this task I have learnt that lip synching the song all the way through in one shot provides better variety of shots to be chosen and also made the editing process much easier. In addition, I also learned that it is very important for the artist mouth the words very clearly in order for the song to match up with the lip synching very easily. When it comes to filming duets i have learned that timing is key in the case of Lip synching, as the mouthing of the lyrics as to match the actual songs- in order to get the right person singing at the right time. To make this successful, we had the music playing out loud whilst the artists were lip synching. 

We used the programme- Final Cut Express for our editing process. We then synchronised our footage with the song which had imported by putting the footage in the appropriate time frame. Furthermore, we then selected the shots we wanted for each section of the video from the different shot types that were already synchronised-this way is a lot easier to put together.

I have realised a few mistake in this preliminary task that could be avoided next time. One of the mistakes was; some of our lip synching wasn’t much synchronised with song. To avoid this in the future- I would have the artist make the mouthing of the lyrics really emphasised and clear. Another one of our mistake was the lighting in our shots; some of our shots were really dark because of us having our backs to the window on a summary day-therefore creating a dark silhouette. To prevent this, I would have the artists located somewhere right away from a window and well lit, in order to prevent deep shadows. This preliminary take was very helpful to us towards our real music video, as it made us aware of what to include and what to prevent and it was a huge learning curve on lip synching and synchronisation in the editing process.