R+P Post 29: Rehearsals

To prepare for our shoots, we had rehearsals with all of our actors and dancers, so that on the day they weren't blindsided by what we needed them to do and also to ensure that they could believably portray the part we had cast them in.

Below is an example of one week's rehearsal schedule.

As an emotional song it was very important that Laith (AJ) had a believable lip-sync and emotions tied to the lyrics. To get an idea of where Laith was at with this, after we chose our song we did a quick screen test with him which can be seen below.

The screen test helped point out what areas needed more work before the main shoot for example, Laith needed to stay completely in character the whole way through and to really sing for it to look authentic.
To help with this we asked one of our friends Tyra, who is a drama student, to help Laith with his acting and really connect with the lyrics. This was actually really effective and the improvement from the screen test to the test shoot has been huge.

Below is an example from the screen test and test shoot showing the improvement in the lip-sync due to the rehearsals.

Fitting with R&B conventions, our music video has a lot of dancing and so it was important that we had rehearsals to teach our dancers the choreography, ensuring that it looks effective. These rehearsals actually went really well and I am very pleased with how the dancing has improved.

Below is a picture from one of our rehearsals