Category: Cover Video Short Essay

In the experience of making this cover video, I get a chance to understand K-pop music videos from the perspectives of idols and producers.

  Lil touch, the music video we imitated, is a song from girls’ generation’s latest album. The content of the mv is quite attractive, with skilled singing and dancing, delicate styling and affluent scene changes. It is not an easy job to take so many things into consideration as non-professionals. I learned how fast the movements in the dance are and how exhausting it is to rehearsal again and again. This also suggests that idols must have spent lots of time practicing singing and dancing before finally they are able to give perfect performance to audiences. When we start to brainstorm everything, I realized that how difficult it can be for producers to come up with creative and remarkable scenarios to compete in such a flourishing industry. I can also imagine that for real producers, they have even more aspects to preconceive before actions, such as artists’ availability, property, recording facilities, assistants and even budget. This is a complex but usually overlooked process. Thanks to the significant contributions made by these behind-the-scene staff, K-pop can develop at tremendous speed and acquire so many fandoms worldwide.

Although limited by resources, we try our best to use a lot of scenes in campus to match the ones appears in the original mv. And I can see the strong willingness and great efforts by group members to do a good job saluting to this iconic girls’ group. Making this cover video is an interesting and impressive experience as we managed to complete our music video with so limited equipments and understood K-pop practitioners’ work better.

Wenhui

After filming the cover video ’Lil’ touch’, being proud of my group is my major thought. Most of us have no performance experience, but each of us tried our best. And also, through the filming process, I have learned more about how group idols MV highlight uniqueness from the dancer perspective.

I have noticed the filming technique was very important when dealing with this problem. SNSD is a idol group, thus if the MV was all about group dance, it would lack of personal uniqueness. Some fans who only love one of the group member would be disappointed by cannot see their idol’s face clearly. Thus, the director used personal scenes interspersed through the group dance in order to increase the uniqueness. These personal scenes provided us a lot of fun during our film process——watch our group members did such fascinating actions which I have never seen in front of camera. But after watching edited video, I found it was very important to make audience impressed by each member. Another possible solution to deal with the personal uniqueness in the MV might be the dance position. In total of 4 dance scenes, each scene has different member standing at the centre position. I have noticed in order to do so. it created a harmony and uniformity in the video beside uniqueness.

I appreciated this experience, it gave me the insight of how idols produce MV and also a great memory with my group members. I have also learnt that producing MV and gave thought to all perspectives was never a easy thing.

Tong

As a nine-year SONE (fan of Girl’s Generation), I have only watched and admired the aesthetics and remarkable performance in the girl group’s music videos over the years. However, this project offered me an opportunity to simulate the production process of KPOP music videos. I decided to maximize my participation in different roles to gain holistic experience. Being a photographer, a dancer, and the only editor of this cover video provides me unique insight of KPOP video production and elevated my respect and admiration for producers because our experience was only a simplistic simulation.

After choosing “Lil’ Touch”, their latest video, our member Shuwei Zhou has spent several days figuring out the choreography. We spent days learning it and shot our cover dancing and lip-syncing at Rose Garden, the Nest, and Life Building. From the filming process, I have acquired skills in setting angles and capturing the motion of dancers, as well as creating adequate video composition to maximize visual attractiveness. Since I also danced, memorizing moves and blocking was challenging for a physically disoriented person like me, not to mention displaying appropriate expressions when dancing, but the choreography was my glimpse into how girl groups display physical attractiveness through body movements. Editing was the most insightful for me because I learned basics of Adobe Premiere Pro without previous knowledge. I adopted skills in accurately chunking and matching video clips to sync dancing with music and organizing raw footage onto a smooth, aesthetically pleasing timeline. Without blending in variety of shots, plain dancing would be less attractive. As an editor I realized the importance of kaleidoscopic transitions in KPOP videos, and I appreciate such extensive hard work behind each production. I am grateful to participate in this meaningful project with helpful and motivated teammates.

Aijing

In this video, my group and I made the dancing cover of Girl’s Generation’s new song <Lil’Touch>. This MV uses the hide and seeks as a theme to create a tense atmosphere, and the sophisticated and toxic music and power group dances make us transform into the goddess of power and show mysterious charm.

The process of covering made me realize the hard work of Korean female idols. Every member of our group tried our best to contribute and make a much more perfect video. We have not regarded it as an assignment. On the contrary, we treated it as a piece of art that we have made by ourselves. Because I don’t have the talent to dance, it is very difficult for me to learn the complicated and varied dance steps in the MV. Fortunately, my team members taught me very patiently so that we have finally finished it after practicing together for only two entire days. Through the shooting, I found that every member in Girl’s Generation is very outstanding and powerful. In addition, I found that the division of labor of Girl’s Generation is clear. For example, Taeyeon is responsible for the lead singer, Hyoyeon is responsible for the lead dancer while Yoona is responsible for grasping the eyes of the audience at first sight, which makes this group very attractive and versatile. From my perspective, the average ability and clear division of labor are the primary reasons for Girl’s Generation to be so successful. Secondly, I think the expression management of members in Girl’s Generation is perfect. When the lens gives the members a close-up, each member can sing and dance while making a fascinating expression and movement towards the camera. The process of covering helps me experience the excellence and care of K-pop MV production. K-pop and Korean idols are indeed worthy of fans’ love and pursuit.