Jailbreak - ID# 186

Mundelein

Music Video

Entry Description

Copyright music does not apply. A local Metea Valley High School student band stages a jailbreak out of Old Joliet Prison.

Copyright Info

Recent Teacher Comments

• 4/30 8:28 am - Your production value was off the chain! Love that you filmed at the prison, love the costume choices, etc. Fabulous. Some of the lip syncing was slightly off, but the rest of it and instrument playing was very nice and real. You had great visuals and story line. This was great.
• 3/12 3:59 pm - Thin Lizzy!!!! The cut to the band by the jial is perfect. Clean, tripod shots are funny and great. Female love interst is casted well. Loved the close up shots with the jail in the background. Breakout to handheld with the ridiculous guard is awesome! "Don't you be around" the first one, could have synced better. Other than that, this was hands down one of my favorite videos. You guys rock. And roll.

Judge 1

Positives: Sound mix was great. Story was fun and the images worked well with the music. Camera, lighting, editing, all great! If this had MTV lower third text I would have thought it was a professional music video.

Improvements: A few of the later shots had lighting elements that didn't seem as well conceived as earlier moments. The color balance changed throughout the day as the natural light became more golden. It looks good that way, but I would have color corrected all the footage to one style.

Judge 2

Positives: I like that there was story. Would have been easy to just make it a visual video because the imagery you're dealing with is pretty awesome... but you didn't rest on that. Granted, a jailbreak story shot in a jail to the song jailbreak was kind of, expected? But you did it justice. And obviously the location. You used enough variation and uniqueness to make the jail seem like you had access to everywhere. You definitely found interesting ways to feature all the cool things there are to see. And the main shot in the snow is about as epic as any big budget music video I've ever seen.

Improvements: The story is interesting enough to keep the story going... but it also lacks any depth. Some back story would have been nice? Some way for us to get to know these characters? The girlfriends talks are fun and I think it's kind of hilarious that he didn't end up with her at the end. But we don't learn anything from them and they don't really help the story. The patrol guard too. Awesome character but way underdeveloped. He could have been a much bigger part of things. The sync. Oh, the sync. I know it's probably almost impossible to match Phil Lynott's vocal cadence but at times it seemed like they weren't even trying. And the drummer was rarely in sync and that was distracting. If you framed him up differently you could just get his movement and not the actual hit on the kit. Then it goes anywhere! But sometimes the out of synciness of it was endearing. So I don't know. But keep making videos!!! This was great!!!!

Judge 3

Positives: I LOVE that this video included performance by the band. I didn't know the song, and I had to look up whether this is an actual song by the band in the video or a real band. Great use of handheld when the bassist yells, "Breakout!" A terrific visual design choice by the director. Generally, this is a subtly well-directed video. The choices feel consistently intentional and professional. Which leads to my kind of nit-picky suggestions below.

Improvements: When you go for a synch performance, you draw attention to shortcomings in the synch of the lead vocals, and especially the playing by your lead guitarist. Maybe he can't play these licks, but it's a shame. If you make music videos going forward, just have your band actually play, and more importantly, actually sing to playback on set. You can tell subconsciously when a singer is actually singing or just mouthing the words. I didn't love the color correction and aspect ratio choice. I understand it's an attempt to be in keeping with the age of the song, but you unnecessarily end up degrading your image and cutting off some compositional choices.

Judge 4

Positives:

Improvements: