Meeting the Director: Jake Wynne

On Friday 24th June we met our music director who is going to help us with our Five video: Jake Wynne.
It was really interesting to talk to him and learn more about the process of shooting and editing a music video.

A few main points I learnt:

• When shooting from different set ups, you should shoot the whole song (even if you want only a few lines), in case you want footage from other parts of the song later on.
• It is important to have 'beauty shots' (as shown below) which show the artists to be flawless. For this, strong lighting to eliminate shadows must be used. 
• When lipsyching, it is important to actually physically sing, because if you are just mouthing the words, your throat won't move, and viewers will be able to see that you're not singing.
• Keep it simple: trying to do too much (like his Nojahoda video) complicates things, and can end up with a music video with a confusing narrative which doesn't make any sense. 
• Shooting takes a full work day (about 12 hours), so it may get very tiring, so it is important to keep all your crew and cast motivated and excited to create a great looking video!
• There may be many complications in the day, so if time runs out, it is the director's job to think fast and make decisions, e.g. which different shots to cut out.

And finally, I learnt that you really can be successful in the media business! Jake used to go to our school, and he made it. From filming short films in the woods to directing music videos for the likes of Geri Halliwell and Mark Ronson, it shows you really can make it if your try and work hard!