Ziyang
It has been puzzling for me to characterize which genre of media K-pop belong to. From a sheet of paper featuring the singer during the colonial era, to the music videos (hence force MV) that circulating in the cyberspace today. It’s obvious that visual materials have always been an inseparable part of K-pop. In fact, it may not be so far-fetched to state that K-pop, incorporating more visual materials along its way of development, has now become a mixture of audio and visual media. Now the question is, should K-pop still be classified as music? Or, put it in another way, what makes movies like La La Land not a glorified MV?
From an actor’s perspective (as I am an actor in our group’s MV), the most prominent difference between an MV and other audio-visual media (e.g. movie) is the absence of lines and the resulted need of exaggerated facial expressions and the abundant use of body gestures (which were also distinct features of the original Heart Attack MV). I believe the lack of any verbal elements other than the lyrics in the original MV is likely a conscious decision for helping the audiences to better focus on the song itself (which is also our goal for the cover video). The priority of the music in MV productions was also evident in our brainstorming of the plot, during which the story was constantly modified and twisted to accommodate the lyric, furthermore, according to our shooter/editor Elaine, in the editing process, our already not-so-logical story will be further fragmented, accompanied by filler clips from our singer’s lip-synced shots, to match the “pace” of the song itself.
To conclude, K-pop, now a form of audio-visual media, distinguish itself as a genre of music from other mixed media consumables by prioritizing its audio elements. In other words, the incorporation of the visual elements is, for the most part, to help the music building its impact on the audiences.
Miradee
Creating a Kpop music video cover was a totally new experience for me. Although I have experience in singing, I never really stepped out of my comfort zone and ventured into other activities such as dancing and acting. Since my strength is in singing, naturally I was expecting to contribute my voice as a member of my group. However, because of certain unavoidable circumstances, I was instead given a chance to try my hand at acting in particular. Through this project, I realized that flexibility and adaptability is a big must when it comes to putting together a complex production such as a Kpop music video.
While working on this project, at first I often found myself in less than comfortable situations. One of my hobbies is music but when it comes to acting, I have not really explored it at all. As a very shy person, I even find making eye contact on a daily basis to be a difficult task! When it became clear that our limited number of members and time meant that we could not all follow what we want to do, I knew that I had to make that sacrifice and take on the role of lead actress. With the help of other members and their thoughtful critiques, I was able to get through it. In the end, it turned out to be not so bad! I even began to think that maybe I should experiment with acting a little more.
Just like in the Kpop industry, everyone has an important role to play, but it does not mean that everyone gets to have their own way right from the start. In actual Kpop groups, I understand better why it is common that not all members get to do what they feel most comfortable with. People who auditioned as a singer may be later asked to rap, or someone may have to take over an absent member's dance portion. Sometimes, people have to simply learn to adapt and go with the flow. Along the way, a new talent may even be discovered.
Word Count: 347
Yaxuan Zheng
The whole process doing the cover video offers me brand new experiences as I change the role from an audience to a participant. Instead of just enjoying the whole perfect singing and visual from the music video, I experienced the detailed learning on making music and singing. I am taking the responsibility to do the cover singing as the leading vocal Choa and Yuna and rapper Jimin. It is unforgettable to learn singing skills and editing music. It’s familiar for me to sing, while I feel satisfied that I can learn a new skill of editing music as a producer does. The experience to be fully involved into making a music and its video let me realize it is a whole team’s corporation that makes a perfect work.
To cover Choa and Yuna’s professional singing skill and to reach the high notes, me and Kaylyn once failed to hit all those high notes. We thought about lowering the key of the original C major key to #B major. While we finally decided to take the challenge to make a perfect cover song. What impressed me a lot is the process after doing the singing. It is not only a single task to sing but also to do the mixing of the vocal and the background music. This is totally a new field that we didn’t even touched on before. We learned the way of using mixing software on YouTube and by asking the professional music producer. After learning using the Music mixer recorder, we do the mix up of our two vocals and make some changes in the tunes and background music mixing.
The whole process let me realize, the corporation between the group members, music producers, back up dancers, video editors, video directors and a lot more other staffs is the key to a perfect comeback. Though what people mostly see are the idols on stage, while the backstage workers should also be paid much thankfulness due to the hardworking. (Words count:320)
Elaine:
In my opinion, the genre of K-pop music videos often involves multi-scene transition and complex color scheme, which can create a suitable ambiance to convey the keynote of the song. The process of covering makes me realize how this music video acts a role to express the song and to represent the image of AOA.
Our group followed the storytelling of original Heart Attack video and embodied our understanding of the video and song lyrics to cover it. It is my first time engaging with music video production. Although I had experience in micro-film shooting before, I found the filming and editing of a music video lay particular emphasis on how the frame is in accordance with the music and lyrics. During real-time shooting, I kept discussing and making adjustments to the storyline and scenario settings with all actors based on their ways to understand and to express the characters, in which we were able to come up with some creative ideas together. In particular, there is neither dialogues nor words shown in the original video to explain the story. Thus, we hope the viewers could learn what message this song is delivering from our acting. Besides, as the lyrics of Heart Attack are written from the perspective of the lead actress, most of the close-up shots are focused on our lead actress, Miradee, to match her emotions with the lyrics. The assembly of clips did not take me a long time to finish, however, I met challenges of combining the frame with the audio. Since we only cover part of the song, the scenes are not exactly following the original timeline of the video, while I tried to fit our complete story-telling with the song. As we know, the background music in films and dramas acts as supplement to heighten the atmosphere and to render emotions. Instead, the story-telling of K-pop music videos can impress viewers and help them establish the image of the idols corresponding to the song itself. (word count: 331)
Ruolin Wu
When I got into the process of making our own cover video, I realized that making a Kpop mv is not that simple as I watched it before. The entire process need every participant’s cooperation and effort. It also takes time, from the pre-work of deciding which song to cover, settling down each person’s role and the video content,and with the following of music recording and video shooting and finally editing the video. Every step in the process plays an important role to the final version of our video.
As an actress in our video, three things raise my concern. The first one is the hardship of making a decision that is fit for everyone, which means that everyone in the group need to sacrifice. For me, to match the sport theme of Heart Attack’s mv, all the actors and actresses have to put on sportswear. Since in AOA’s video they are wearing T-shirts and shorts, in order to make our video closer to their theme, on the day we shot the video, I wore shorts as well, though I know that it will snow on that day, it is worthwhile to do it for our video. The clothing of a Kpop video is the second thing I want to talk about. Through the process of shooting, I found out that producing a music video is similar to a film production, everything presents in the scenes has to contribute to the theme, the difference is that a film has almost two hours to express a story, but the music mv has only around three minutes. Therefore, how to make the story short, attractive and clear for audience to understand is really the key for a music video. Last but not least is that from an actress perspective, every gesture and face face expression is significant to the video’s theme, maybe that explains why many Kpop idols have performance practice as well.
To conclude, as I change my role from an audience to a participant to make a music video, the process helps me really understand better about the hard work and effort of every Kpop industry members. All the performers, singers, and staffs behind the scenes should be also grateful.
words count: 371
Kaylyn:
Every Kpop music video has its own uniqueness and soul inside of it. Our position is to cover the song and show its soul to our audience. Making a cover for K-pop music video requires a lot of practice. Especially we have to change our position from the audience to a singer or an actor for the video. Most of us have no experience filming video and singing in Korean. However, I’m very proud of my group because we did it so well.
Through the filming process, I find out that teamwork is really important. Teamwork can make things come together. When things do not work so well, we find a way to solve the problem instead of pushing responsibility on others. When Yaxuan and I have no experience singing in Korean and editing music, we search on Youtube and ask for help from professional music producer. In the video, I’m singing Hyejeong, Mina, Seolhyun and Chanmi’s part. Both of us fail to sing the high note and think about lower the key. Instead of blaming on each other, we communicate and find a solution which is practice more. We decided to sing the original key because this is the soul of the song. Highnote makes this song more attractive and shows the important role of vocalist. Moreover, the producer produces the song in this way means it plays an important role in the song. We practice and re-record it until we have the perfect song cover. Singing in Korean also requires us to pronounce the Korean word correctly. One sound difference can means a different word and have a opposites meaning from original word. This makes me understand a new language has its own rule and we have to follow it so we are not breaking its culture. I listen to the song and memorize the pronunciation.
The feeling of involving the full process of making a cover video from singing as a singer and editing as a producer; it makes me understand that every comeback of the singer means a turning point of their career. For most of the time, we as an audience only see their perfect synchronization dance and song but did not see how many efforts that backstage staff put on it. When we appreciating the singer’s new comeback, we should be grateful for all the staff behind the stage at the same time. (Word Count:396)