allAfrica.com: Uganda: The Making a Music Video (Page 1 of 1)

SHOOTING a music video is some serious business. What, you thought otherwise? It takes a dedicated team to make it a success. It takes a bit of time too, to capture sufficient material to be squeezed into the three minutes or so of the final product. It is amazing how many hours of video footage the filming crew goes to the editing suite with. Most of this goes to waste.

This thing is serious indeed. It will get even a person like Phina Mugerwa (she of the electric boogie and calypso dance fame), who is usually not one to fuss about her looks, to do just that. When I quietly amble into the National Theater's Green Room at 11:40am on Tuesday morning, I find Phina fully absorbed in a full make-up session with her road manager and make-up artiste, Mariam Nalubega. Layers of foundation powder, mascara, lipstick, and types of make-up whose names and purpose I do not know are being applied to her face as she prepares for the video shoot for her latest single, Ondese (You Have Left Me). At this point the filming crew is also hard at work setting up their equipment. Actually it is as if the video crew and Phina's party are two parallel entities, as each is minding their business.

What does it require, in terms of equipment, to shoot a music video? "Well, a video camera seems like the most basic," says Musta, who was in charge of the shoot. "Then of course the usual stuff like tripods, cables and lights. If you are shooting from indoors, like now, you need lights. Outdoors you could do with reflectors."

Needless to say, also required is an audio output source, from which the song whose video is being shot, will be played. This is because the film track and music track are recorded separately during the creation of a music video. What you see as singing in a music video is usually mere lip-synching.

A laptop computer, a CD player, radio, discman anything can work as an audio source, as long as it is connected to monitor speakers and can play a CD. At first, the crew is using a Dell laptop, but later switches to a DVD player.

As shooting gets underway, it becomes evident why they prefered a DVD player to laptop. Unlike the laptop, the player is remote-controlled, so when Musta shouts "cut", "stop", "bring it down" to one of his aides, the command can be effected immeditely.

Yeah. "Cut", "put it down", "pause it", "run it", "kick it", "let's roll." These are common items of video filming jargon.

Shooting a video is no straight-set affair that runs coherently from start to finish. It is a dragging, repetitive, strenuous exercise. The rule of thumb seems to be to get the widest possible pool of camera shots and angles from which to choose the fairest pictures.

It's 12:15pm when real interaction between the video crew and Phina's group begins. The Green Room, from which the entire video is to be shot, is all set for the task. The three bright lamps set up in triangular formation to enhance lighting are almost blinding, and emitting sweat-inducing heat. All these have to be borne for the entire duration of the filming. Standing about eight metres away from the lights, I can feel the heat they are generating sweep over my skin. Phina, who is sandwiched between the lights must be in a blast furnace. Shooting is getting underway. The first take is to have Phina alone in it.

"Ready, Phina? We're gonna have your close-ups first," says Musta.

He closes a shot on her face, sends one of his boys to adjust one of the lights and zooms in closer on Phina's face, before sighing in contentment at the picture quality. When I crane my neck to have a glimpse at the shot in the camera, I find the pictures "poor." Certainly nothing near the crisp, laser sharp digital quality we see in those videos. Musta assures me that that's the reason there is a whole three weeks of strenuous editing that follows the shooting.

Phina is draped in black high-waist trousers, a flowery red top, black hat and red stilettos. She looks relaxed, incessantly swinging her hands about and tossing back her hair. Her body language seems to read: "I'm ready for whatever is to come." The first take, in which the cameras focus only on her face and chest, lasts a whole hour. It is not with much ceremony, as Phina sings and gyrates from a fixed position all through.

It is the second sweep that is intense. It has three men, hitherto watching the action with us from the shadows, joining Phina on the set. All are decked in suits, ready for deployment. However, Musta thinks the guys could do with a touch of make-up, to soak up the greasiness of their faces. Off they are sent to the make-up artiste. Unlike Phina, who sits through it like it is just another routine, the guys look cornered, defeated and peculiarly tame! An air of uneasy surrender radiates off their every facial expression as Mariam powders their faces. As she works her magic on the last dude's face, Musta declares the pose they are to assume: "Guys, we are not smiling with her. Yeah. No smiling at Phina."

The voice reverberates across the room. "We're acting mannequins, guys. She's gonna come and do all that raunchy stuff on you, but you got to freeze." Just imagine this: You are hired to go and just act hard, tough and menacing, amidst provocation from a close-dancing video vixen! All you have to do is show total indifference to this.

To Phina, who is just from changing her outfit and make-up, Musta says: "They're going to remain frozen as you do the dirty wine on them. Remember not to tickle them, please, lest you excite them."

The scene just about to unfold comes as a welcome relief to a number of people in the room on whom the filming's drudgery had started to take a toll. There is little effort to hide the excitement at the prospect of a possible show at no cost at all. However, when she eventually gets down to "punishing" the boys, everybody seems to concur that Phina is cowering! It seems that everybody wants her to use her lewd waist gyrations to crush these lads' outward macho display. Musta seems to concur. He shouts a rude "Cut!", and makes towards a rather terrified Phina. "I want you to punish him. Terrorise him. I want to see you peck him. Invite him to your world," shouts Musta. "I want you to gyrate all the way down, with your eyes, not the back to the camera."

One force a person shooting a music video has got to contend with is the filming crew. So much of the video's success depends on how well the two parties get along with each other. The people in this video making trade seem to derive a deep and rare form of satisfaction from their craft, and always need their space. No hard feelings intended here, but they usually manifest some kind of know-it-all attitude in the execution of their work. They will not hesitate to dispense of such words as "stupid", "silly", "bull" or "ugly" to describe something that has not been done right. Phina or any musician has got to take it positively, with the reassurance that it is all intended for the good of the video.

It also has a lot to do with how well the cast grasps such instructions as; "feel sweet", "freeze", "a bit of attitude" and "be in your own world" thrown around rather curtly by the crew.

When Phina resumes her gyrations around the "mannequins", she is still shy and inhibited. It is not until the calls for her to dance closer to the dudes turn to near threats, that she finally obliges.

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