53 MV Recording
In the second half of the meeting, even the most patient captain's eyes turned into mosquito coils.
The amount of information in the conference was too much, and it was normal for people who had never experienced it to not be able to accept it for a while. Yuan Xiao looked at them and said, "You go to the practice room first. Teacher Gu and I will go to see you on stage later."
They just need to have a general idea of each aspect of their album, and then when they have experience they can participate in the specific concept design.
The five people left the meeting room. When Su Chen entered the elevator, he whispered to Jin Zeyu next to him: "I don't know why I was so nervous just now. My palms are sweating."
Pei Zijin thought more, "If we design it ourselves in the future, can we do it like Sister Xiaoxiao, clearly expressing the feeling we want and pointing out the problems that need to be changed in each part?"
It turns out that an album has to go through so many steps from the initial concept to the final product. If they were asked to release the album themselves now, they might be completely in the dark.
Yan Fan bumped his shoulder and said, "You'll gain experience if you do it more often. Let's finish the song first. Before I came to Yuanxin, I didn't expect that I would know so many things now."
"Every difficulty will be overcome, one thing at a time."
Ten minutes later, Yuan Xiao pushed open the door and entered the practice room carrying a tablet. All members of Stary were already in the practice room, ready to report at any time.
She dragged a chair and sat in front of the mirror, nodding to indicate that it was time to begin.
If there were more people, the scene would be too familiar, it would be the scene of their previous monthly exams and quizzes.
The title song of the first album, "Star Track", was also the first to be arranged and choreographed. Before it was given to the five of them, this song composed by Gu Yuchen was rejected several times by Yuan Xiao.
Yuan Xiao doesn't know much about music, and only gives his opinions and suggestions from the perspective of the audience and publicity. As a hit song, the story of this song may not be the strongest, but the melody must be the best.
The song had to have a cyclical chorus hook to reinforce the audience's memory and give the group time to perform classic dance steps, while also being suitable for the rapid spread of short videos.
Gu Yuchen, who was also the stage director of the performance at the time, spent several nights tormented by changing the song, and the final product was unexpectedly good.
After listening to the demo, Yuan Xiao looked at Gu Yuchen sincerely and said, "Teacher Gu, can you do ten more songs like this?"
Gu Yuchen smiled: "Another ten years is about right."
In short, Stary is very lucky to have received the outstanding performance of Teacher Gu. This song conquered three-fifths of the group members in the demo, and the remaining two had to admit that it was definitely one of the top three in the entire album.
Yuan Xiao's preparations for this song include a concept MV, a dance version of the MV, and a practice room version. In order to live up to this hit song, she has very high requirements for Stary's performance.
It is indeed good that these children were able to completely master and carefully study these songs in more than two weeks, but they are still far from the standard to perform on stage. After watching them, Yuan Xiao did not criticize them, but only pointed out the points that she noticed needed improvement.
“The prelude of this song is a grand arrangement. From the prelude to the first paragraph in the MV, it will probably be a process of sailing from the universe to being captured by gravity, so when you first cut in, the speed change from static to dynamic should be made more obvious. Now it still looks a bit like a normal cut in.”
"Is that so?" Yan Fan immediately danced the two eight beats again, and Yuan Xiao nodded, "Okay."
She lowered her head and swiped the notes on the tablet. "The next part is the harmony of Yan Fan and Su Chen in Section B. Teacher Gu, can you tell them about the scene you told me about when you were creating the song?"
Gu Yuchen nodded: "The B section is actually similar to the feeling of you looking out through the window of a spaceship. You can tell from the arrangement that some electronic sound effects are mixed in. Xiaoyan is asked to sing harmony in this section because his voice is relatively thin. On the spot, you have to sing in a way that makes it feel like you are floating behind Su Chen's voice."
"When performing this part, you can move the hand mic further away, and the vocal position should be higher. If possible, try to use head voice."
Yuan Xiao interrupted: "If you are worried about your breath being unstable, you can delete this part of the movement. You can switch positions with Jin Zeyu in the next eight beats."
She mentioned two more places that needed to be adjusted before closing the tablet and asking, "Are you guys doing the band song here or?"
Pei Zijin wiped the sweat from his forehead and said hurriedly, "The instruments are all in the studio."
They finished rehearsing very late last night, and when they arrived at the studio, all the instruments were confiscated, and the floor was full of wires connected to the instruments. The room was covered with thick sound-absorbing materials, so they could tolerate their pretense here.
Gu Yuchen picked up the bass leaning against the wall, shook the wires attached to it, and frowned: "How did you plug them in?"
Pei Zijin said apologetically: "My brother tripped here, and it got a little messy when we reconnected."
Gu Yuchen had no choice but to squat down and reorganize them for them, and explained the purpose and connection method of each wire one by one.
If they go out to music festivals with their own instruments in the future, he certainly can't follow them and act as a babysitter every time. It's unrealistic to rely on the organizers. It's better for them to ensure the performance effect themselves.
Stage experience refers to more than just experience on stage. Rehearsals, sound auditions, and positioning are all part of experience accumulation.
Stary also asked him about the band assignment. Gu Yuchen and Yuan Xiao agreed on this point. If one does not understand how to play the instrument and is just borrowing the form, it is better to give up as soon as possible.
but--
It’s actually not bad?
Yu Le has been learning to play the drums for a while now. He has no problem playing the simplest drum beats and the fancy arrangements. The drummer is the heart of the band and needs to have a continuous and stable output. My brother plays a song from beginning to end, and every beat is steady.
Yan Fan's bass was a surprise. Pei Zijin had been planning to learn bass on his own since he was good at playing guitar and both were plucked instruments so they had certain things in common. But he didn't expect that Yan Fan was persuaded by his friends to join the school club band in high school. Although it didn't work out in the end, he had practiced the basic skills of the bass quite well. What he lacked was the experience of playing an ensemble.
Pei Zijin stood beside him and helped Yan Fan to hit the beat. They performed the song so passionately and explosively. The live performance of the band was unparalleled. Su Chen was spinning and jumping in the middle with a microphone stand, singing loudly. When Yuan Xiao came to her senses, she found that she had already been swaying to the music.
When the song ended, five pairs of eyes looked at Yuan Xiao with a little trepidation.
This song is also the first one that was completely adapted based on their ideas since their debut. They spent a lot of their rest time on it, squeezed out time to rehearse in their already tight schedule, and tried to play together again and again. It would be great if they could get Yuan Xiao's approval.
Amidst the five expectant eyes, Yuan Xiao nodded: "Okay, this one can go on."
"Yeah!" It worked! Su Chen cheered and ran over to hug Yan Fan and Pei Zijin. The captain reached out and pulled Jin Zeyu over from behind the keyboard. Finally, Yu Le rushed over with drumsticks in hand. The five of them hugged each other tightly.
Yuan Xiao gave a few people some time to express their joy of success, and then told them after they dispersed: "But you still have to practice before you go on stage. Let your teacher Gu tell you that I can hear that someone made a mistake in the notes just now. Let's see if it's a problem with the technique or something else. I'll come back and perform it again later."
Although listening to a live performance is not meant to be error-free, and the enthusiasm of the teenagers is better than a thousand perfect but restrained performances, one still has to try one's best to do everything to the best of one's ability before going on stage, so that one will have confidence on stage.
She hurried back to the office to get her SLR. It would be a shame not to leave a few side shots in such a practice room. The side shots of Stary's training in the past few days have quietly filled up Yuan Xiao's folder, waiting for her to edit them and send them out in one go.
These photos will not only be used to post daily materials on the official account to satisfy fans, but also some will be used for peripheral production, and some will be used for editing materials such as performance videos and promotional carousels played on the big screen behind the music festival, micro-group variety show trailers, etc. Most of these photos are natural and have a great atmosphere. Using a Polaroid template can make them quite touching transition materials.
Yuan Xiao discovered that when she was with these people, she had to carry her SLR bag with her at all times.
So a few days later, when Yuan Xiao followed them to the MV shooting location, he not only brought his own SLR bag, but also told the publicity assistant to remember to bring a Polaroid camera in addition to recording the behind-the-scenes video.
These materials, including daily training and MV recording footage, will be edited into short films and included in the album. You can watch them by scanning the QR code in the box.
When they went out in the morning, everyone had a cup of American coffee to reduce swelling. After arriving at the recording location, five of them were sent to try out the MV makeup first, and Yuan Xiao turned around and went to see the scenery of the shooting location.
When the first version of the MV storyboard was handed in, Yuan Xiao almost suffocated on the spot. It took a lot of effort to make the planning team understand that not all cosmic concepts and star concepts need to be shown on the green screen at the first reaction.
There are many ways to express the sense of space, but NONONO, don’t do such awkward things.
It would be hilarious if people showed the five people floating around in the Milky Way through photoshopped pictures. Yuan Xiao didn't want to leave a heavy mark on the black history of his boy band with his first album, thus becoming the first abstract group to go viral.
After Yuan Xiao's drastic revisions, most of the space scenes in the final version of the MV were represented by different lights in a pure silver-gray space, conceptualizing the elements. Other scenes that appeared included the pure white interior of the spaceship and the combination of hydroponic green plants, as well as transparent portholes. The scenes of the members' personal narrative lyrics were arranged using different planetary elements, including Su Chen's ocean planet, Yan Fan's gas planet, etc.
Each of the five characters has four sets of makeup, including three sets of group makeup and one set of individual makeup. Two sets are solid-color uniforms with hard silver-gray metal accessories similar to exoskeletons, one set is slightly darker and has more complicated accessories, and one set is slightly simpler. Light white lines are painted on the faces of the five characters, like the state of space warriors carrying out missions and daily activities.
The other one is extremely gentle, with a drape similar to silk and tulle, the hair is curled into fluffy layers, and the cheeks and neck are dotted with tiny rhinestones, as if the children of the stars have traveled across a long distance just to come for you. This set will appear in the Bridge position, performing the softer stage of the song.
The final edit will also be a sci-fi production, splicing together the members' performances and dance steps to create a hymn to the universe.
The concept of the whole song is that the five members of Stary are travelers in the starry sky, and the fans make up the most beautiful starry sky scenery they encounter along the way. Countless stars accompany them forward, and no matter how far or near the distance is, the light connects them into a bond.
According to Yuan Xiao's requirements, the starry sky is the background, the journey is the ongoing tense, and the bond is the focus. Gu Yuchen's lyrics and music perfectly interpret it, which happens to be the same name as Stary.
The overall concepts and outlines of these MVs were all handled by Yuan Xiao herself. After she determined the overall direction, she handed it over to the planning department for refinement. She walked around the scene several times to make sure there were no mistakes in the layout.
It’s very expensive to record a MV, so try to get it right in one go and avoid reshooting.
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