Category Archives: essay of cover video

I learned many important things about Kpop and Kpop fandom through the process of covering the song. First thing is, through the process of covering the song I recognized that every thing does not come easily, it all comes from hard work and dedication. When we look at kpop star dance and perform on the stage, they looks effortless and they dance so well. I usually think that after I practise three or four times, I can become as good as them. In reality, I find out how hard it is to dance and sing well. They practice all day and night to perform good on stage. Also, now I  understand why a lot of Kpop fans are crazy about Kpop. Not because they looks so handsome and fit, they also put a lot work into it. This make fans love them and respect them. Second  thing is, now I start to appreciate every Kpop idol. Because, for example when people look into an industry, they may think it is easy is do well in this industry. In reality, when you start to do it, it is way harder than you think.  Kpop idol needs to keep fit and also practise everyday, not everybody can persist to it. Third thing is the filming angles in Kpop. When Kpop star filming their Mv, the filming angles always film their face and facial expression perfectly.  The filming angle makes Kpop idol looks even better. When our group is filming the video, we just set the camera at one static place. It does not film every group member’s facial expression very well. Also, I find out my facial expression is awkward in video. Kpop idol not only needs to practise how to dance and sing, they also need to practise to look calm, confident and cool on their faces. They need to practise their facial expression. They needs to look perfect.

Making cover video for the song “Rainism” required more efforts and more time than I expected, but it was a fun and meaningful experience for me and I enjoyed it very much. First we spent a long time making song choice decision as Rain has so many good songs. And then we discussed on how to film, how to dance, how to sing and how to edit the video. We did all these discussions even before we start shooting. This made me realize that the final work that artists (K-pop stars) present to us can be just one of their designs that they think is the best within so many possibilities. Especially in such a competitive market as K-pop, their work need to be not only good, but also unique and quickly attract the audience, which make it even harder.

In the process of doing this cover, we spent a lot of time combining different members’ ideas. In terms of K-pop stars, especially for group artists, I can not imagine how many times they need to have this kind of discussion and how much effort they need put in to do a thing well as a team. Speaking of teamwork, I really appreciate my great group members. They are responsible, patient, and talented. I think we make up each other’s shortcoming therefore to present a nice and complete work. And so does the K-pop artists. We never know how many difficulties they need to overcome behind the scene, in terms of directing, shooting, film editing… When I was editing the video, I found it hard to reach my expectation. And I realized that editing is really an important part to polish and deliver the concept of music video to the audience.

At last, I want to show my respect to all the hard work that all the art workers have done, they are awesome.

Ke Dai

From filming this cover video, I get to known my teammates well and this progress improves me a lot. At first, we just decided to film the video of dancing and some meaningless scenes from campus. Ke and I then came out an idea that we can do a story video to fit the meaning of song’s lyrics. From thinking about how to cover the video and how to present the clear story is quite challenge because I had never learned this before. Thousands of K-pop music video show the wonderful scenes, interesting stories, magnificent stage property with contract colors. Those visual fest make K-pop music videos become a representative music type. K-pop idols do practice and work hard behind the stage, but what impressed me mostly is what team do for these idols. They definitely know what is the shinny points of those stars and how to show them to fans is a problem. In “Rainism” music video, Rain shows his sexy body and dancing with lights and post effects. I thought we can do the different video to present the point of “change” which is the theme of our video.

In the process of filming, everyone did a huge contribution to complete this video. At first, I was afraid of dancing because it is too hard for me. It seems the simplest dancing part from the whole video but when we actually worked on it we found its difficulty. For idols, a single wink or nod seems so attractive but not for me. Thanks for group members help, I finally complete dancing after 4 hours and I realized that the perfect performance idols give us related to tons of practices and they deserved to be loved by the public.

I have never done a cover video before this, shooting the cover video of ‘Rainism’ with my group members was really a great and interesting experience for me. I learned more about Korean popular culture and have some new ideas about mv-making of k-pop music.

First of all, I found it really hard to learn the dance moves in the mv. We spent a whole morning learning and shooting the dance part. In the end, the dance cover was ok but definitely cannot compare with the original one. From this I know that being a k-pop idol is not that easy. We only see them dancing and singing perfectly on the stage but usually don’t know how much effort them put into this. A report shows that the usual wake-up time for a Kpop trainee is 6:30-7am and the usual sleep time is 3-3:30am. During the day, other than eating and resting, they are always practicing. But for us we only spent half a day leaning how to dance, I already felt exhausted. I learned from this part that you’ll have to give up on everything and focus on training to be an idol.

Another thing I learn is that an idol could not success without the whole team behind him/her. Although I’m not the one who’s responsible for editing our video, but I was there and saw how difficult editing a video was. There are tons of aspects we need to consider when editing a video. We need to think about the timing, shooting angle, filters, when to add the music and etc. For us it’s only a three-minute video, for a real Kpop mv, I can’t imagine how much effort would be put into it behind the scene.

Shooting the cover video for Rain’s “Rainism” has allowed me to explore different areas of media and performing talents. Since K-pop stars are so multifaceted in their performing arts, learning the dances to this song brought me out of my comfort zone. Although i had a brief stint of dance and acting experience in High school, I had to push myself and bring everything i learned in the past onto the table. Since my acting and dancing were a different style to K-pop music videos, I had to challenge myself to adapt their particular form. This showed me how talented K-pop Idols truly are. Since we generally see K-pop Idols through the lens of a Music Video, we often forget how much work they put into their craft.  K-pop idols appear perfect and seem to never fail, however, it seems to be the case, that in order for them to display this level of perfection, they would practice their acting, dance, etc a thousand times over to get to a stage where they can display their best in a music video.

Their is without a doubt that idol performers are extremely talented, but we often forget what is happening behind the camera. The importance of the development team really shined for our cover video, and it’s unusual that the production is not acknowledged as much in Korean music videos. Assets like editing, sound, direction are very important to K-pop, and allows an idol performer to showcase their best in a music video.

This cover video has allowed me to rediscover acting and dancing, and the importance of the the production and development team of K-pop music videos, and what is occurring beyond the scenes.

Flinton Yang

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