Video by: Cathy Bui, Delaney Millican, Jenny Do
Written by: Cathy Bui & Jenny Do
Pre-Production
Hi, this is Cathy and Jenny!
For our package, the three of us wanted to create a big video about finals week–in a way that wasn’t too cliche or had already been done in the previous years of BBN.
Luckily for us, Cathy had a mashup that she had pre-written for her talent show that she was about to throw away. She took popular songs that had titles corresponding to the dreadful week of finals and rewrote the lyrics to fit the theme. The original songs included: Lose Yourself (Eminem), Hello (Adele),Fallin’ (Alicia Keys), Beat It (Michael Jackson), Misery (Maroon 5),Final Countdown (Europe), Under Pressure (Queen).
Soon enough, this was our idea:
“Reenact popular music videos that correlate to finals week!”
And so, the ride begins.
Music
For an entire week, we spent time organizing the background music and recording the vocals with our wonderful actors/singers, Collin and Tricia. Recording the vocals was easy, but piecing together the actual track consisted of lots of cookies, patience, and staring at the roof, trying to hear if the cuts of the songs were made accurately.
Filming
Now the difficult and most stressful part…filming.
DAY 1: HELLO & FALLIN’
We filmed Hello at a park near Huntington Beach Library. The sky was gloomy, ducks were resting near the lake, and the trees were dead–EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVERY WISH FOR IN AN ADELE MUSIC VIDEO!
Well, everything but wind…which led to other solutions such as dragging a huge piece of cardboard and having Cathy physically fan Tricia as she beautifully sang her ballad in the middle of the park.
Fallin’ was later filmed in the last floor of the library, a quiet and subtle area. It was difficult to get around listening to the music while filming with people studying around us, but everything worked out and hey, some people seemed entertained to see Tricia dancing and singing around the bookshelves as if she was living a real life musical!
DAY 2: BEAT IT & LOSE YOURSELF
This was the most time-consuming and complicated day of filming. We first used Delaney’s bedroom as a set for Beat It. We tried to really match the frame to the Beat It‘s actual video the best way we could and though some shots did not resemble the actual video, we’re glad we kept one clip true to its original!
Lose Yourself involved a bus…that was a challenge because we didn’t want to bother any surrounding passengers and–this is important–we did not know the bus schedule very well.
Here some advice to future bus riders–do not use the online schedule. It is very incorrect. We waited for nearly two hours, later to find from calling the bus company that the online hours are totally opposite. All in all, our goal was make the video authentic and we’re happy with the outcome of the shots! (Big thanks to Collin for being patient with us!)
Before the ride, we needed a restroom to film. Unfortunately there were not many, let alone any, restrooms with walls of graffiti in the happy city of Fountain Valley, so we did what everyone would do…Go into a CVS and film in the women’s out of order restroom.
Editing
We spent every sparing moment editing. The most complex part was piecing and matching the footage to the song.
Color grading the videos was important too. Even though we weren’t very experienced with it, we did our best, learning from online sources, because we wanted the tone of our video to somewhat correspond with its original pieces. (cough, cough–Adele’s Hello).
MORE BTS PICTURES:
Yes, this video required lots of time and energy. Yes, we found ourselves in experiences we never thought we’d be in, for instances, paying a $45 parking ticket, getting stuck in a women’s restroom in a CVS, sitting at a bus stop for two hours, stepping on loads of duck poop in the middle of a field…but each of us can honestly say it was an amazing experience.
We really tested our limits with this video. Sure, it wasn’t exact and perfect to the original music videos, but it was perfect because with every minute we dedicated toward filming and editing, we learned from each other. We formulated ideas and bounced off of each other’s skills and talents–we became a team. And that’s what BBN’s about. It’s about working together and not only striving to create the final product, but working together to create a stronger unity with people you can learn from and call a family.
