"Let's Eat"

Inspiration: For my quarter four project, to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis' song, "Let's Eat" I have created a music video. It centers on a boy and his struggles to lose weight as a result of the oh so relatable temptations of tacos, cheeseburgers, and fries (among other tasty carbohydrate-filled goodies). Comprised of three storytelling elements and locations (lip-synching in front of a McDonald's, dancing/acting in front of a green screen, and the main narrative visually portraying the lyrics word-for-word) the video captures the light-hearted and creative storyline I intended. I drew my inspiration for the video from the song as well as Macklemore's other music videos. I watched the music video for "Downtown" and "Dance off" to get a sense of how the directors and videographers of those videos portrayed a storyline to Macklemore's style of music.

Pre-production: After printing off the lyrics to the song, I developed a basic outline of what lyrics would be heard at what setting. Lyrics I couldn't follow exactly with a visual, would be lip-sung while the shots in front of the green screen loosely followed the lyrics and was the visual for the majority of the chorus. I tried to follow a basic pattern of: closely followed lyrics narrative, green screen, and lip synching. I then proceeded to brainstorm and storyboard specific shot types and angles within each of the settings. Investing extensive time through storyboarding in pre-production to plan the video down to the second saved me a lot of time and kept me organized in production and post-production.

Production: The first obstacle I faced was that the actor I originally had in mind for the lead, couldn't find time to film. Although not ideal, plan B was to use my brother, despite him being skinny and not really fitting the "look" I had in mind. The scenes with my brother and the shots in front of the green screen all went smoothly. All of my actor's showed up and I got the shots set up with no problems. The next obstacle I faced in production was that my actors didn't learn the lyrics for the lip-synching scenes. This made production that day take four times as long as it would of had they just learned the lyrics. I problem solved by sitting in front of the camera holding the paper with the lyrics on it for the boys to read. Two of the boys were not exactly Macklemore caliber in their acting, energy, and dancing, but at that point I was already behind production schedule and had no alternatives.

Post-production: Editing was a breeze because I had planed the video so well in pre-production. However, I did have to cut down on the duration of the lip-synching shots. I utilized such quick cuts in the rest of the video that the static shot in front of McDonald's seemed to drag. Other than that, I was able to stick very closely to my storyboard.

Final Thoughts: I loved every step of production and it was an absolute joy creating the music video. I thought my cinematography was excellent; I experimented with the duration and variety of shot types and angles, as well as got even more experience using my DSLR. If I could go back, I would change the green background. Instead of trying to use the green screen effect, a white sheet would have done the job. The scenes in the gym I am also not a fan of. As a result of limited time, I was forced to shoot in someone's basement whereas it was my preference to film in a real gym where the lighting and mis-en-scene would have been much better. Overall, I'm very proud of the concept, structure, camera work, and editing of the video.