Prelim task - Evaluation

Overall I thought our music video was good but it definitely could have been better as some of the shots were very shaky or they were not completely the same as the real video. However despite those flaws we followed the story of the music video and what events happened in the video, If we had the right equipment and more time to prepare and film then we might have gotten a better result and finished product at the end.

Evaluating the process.

I feel that the process was very useful as it really showed me how hard it is to make a music video and make sure that it matches the track that we would be using, without this I think everyone would have struggled to adapt and learn from their mistakes that they made this time round for their finished product. From this process I have learnt how important it will be to plan thoroughly for our final product and to make sure that all my shots are watched back thoroughly to make sure that they are the best that they can be and to the standard that I had on my storyboard/plan/head.

Some problems that we encountered when doing this process was trying to get the scenes matched up perfectly with the original, even though this will not be a problem for my final product as it is a music video of my own creation I could have rectified it by having the original video in the bottom corner from the start as I did not when I first started putting the clips together. We also did not have enough props and costume when doing the filming due to lack of time to do it, this means that in my music video I will make it a key point to make sure that props and costumes are properly researched and used in my video to make it more professional.

Task 3 - Marketing packet research: Digipak

Minutes to Midnight was released by Linkin Park in 2007, they are an indie rock band and appeal to a 18-30 year old audience. The front cover of Minutes to Midnight shows the six band members next to a body of water in black and white. The band members on the front are dressed in casual dark clothing which reflects the laid back characteristics usually associated with indie bands and artists, it also shows a calm atmosphere which can also reflect the laid back stereotype of the genre of music.

On the back of the digipak it lists all of the tracks on the album, it has very simple and small font to display the tracks. However this type of font might not draw the customers eye but they focus mainly on the background art where it shows the band by a lake much like the front cover however they look more like silhouettes than people. This background is what the album relies on to make the customer look closer at the back, it also reflects the laid back characteristics of an indie rock artist/band.

The gatefold/book style paperboard inside the album is very different to the front of the digipak and the look of the CD, inside it contains the words to the songs featured on the CD and the background to them are very colourful and each has a different theme which links to the song or creates a feel as to what the emotion in the song that is conveyed. As you can see from the pictures down below they are very different to the other pictures of the digipak that I have shown, this helps show a different side to the artists that you can only see if you buy the album therefore connecting with their most loyal fans.

The CD inside the Minutes to Midnight album is very simplistic, it shows the main band logo and name in dark colours which really stand out on the CD. It also has the track names and their numbers on the outer rim of the CD which add to the design of the CD. The simplistic design of the CD represents the laid back and relaxed nature of the band and the genre.

For the Minutes to Midnight album they also made a poster to go with it, the poster followed the same theme as the outside of the album where the background was entirely black and white with simplistic font to go on it. However as it is a poster which is designed to attract customers to buy the album they had made the band name very big and a unique font to make it stand out, also they put their logo in the middle of the poster and made it big and red which makes it stand out on the poster consequently makes the poster more eye catching due to the contrast in colours. Here is the poster:



Prelim task - My contribution

Overall I contributed the same number of hours as my group as I spent two hours planning and filming in the first lesson and then at the next lesson I spent two hour editing the music video with my group, therefore altogether spending four hours in the production of this music video.

In our music video there wasnt much lipsyncing throughout as the music video was for a film called 'Jennifer's Body' with Megan Fox starring in it, therefore in the scenes where it featured scenes from the film they didn't lipsync as that would have made the film weird and confusing for the audience. In one of the scenes where I am the solo singer on stage you can see my mouth lipsync words, however these were not the words of the song as in the video that scene is from the film so he is singing something completely different therefore I made up a sentence to act like him.

Prelim task - Editing

We all took turns editing the music video and made sure that the work that the other people did in the group was correct and to the best possible standard it could have been. Therefore I cannot show specific parts that I edited as we all contributed equally to the editing of the music video, however I can show you the editing bay that we used to edit:


One of the things about my editing process that I would have changed is to make sure that the real video was put in the bottom corner of the screen so that it would be easier to piece the clips we had made together, therefore it would have took less time to edit and made sure that all of our clips were properly timed to make sure that we could get it close to the original as possible.

Prelim task - Filming

When filming my preliminary task we shared the task of filming between the group so that we could all get a go at filming, I did quite a bit of filming as I wasn't acting in the preliminary task that much as a lot of the scenes were for the girls to do to keep consistancy. Filming was challenging as we had to make sure that we got the shots right to successfully recreate the real video, also a lot of the shots that the real video had used had been done with special equipment therefore it was hard to recreate the shots to match the original music video. However I think that we did well with the filming despite not having the same equipment as the real video had, we could have done a better job had we had more time to film with proper preparation and the right equipment.

The shots that I filmed are down below:

Task 5 part two - Research into Indie rock

Conventions of Indie rock from Guy Nicholson

• This is music for the band I am going to use, you can hear at the very start the quiet instrumental sounds that then turns into the main riff and the lyrical sequence.

Task 5 - Research into Indie rock

Indie rock is an alternative rock genre from the UK founded in the 1980s, examples of Indie rock bands past and present are Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes and the original main founders of Indie rock: The Smiths.

Typically in Indie rock music videos the band/actors are dressed in dark and casual clothes, for example in The Kooks music video of 'Naive' the main character is dressed in a black leather jacket and black jeans.



 In Indie rock music videos they also don't have a variety of props, the common prop that they use in the videos are their own instruments such as guitars, drums, bass and microphone. A good example of this being used is in The Smiths song 'This Charming Man'.



The way that the actors convey their emotions in their music videos is very minimalistic as they keep a straight face and don't show how they are feeling. However you can see emotion in their faces in some Indie rock artists music video as they focus on the narrative of the video and therefore need to show emotion. An example of this is in The 1975's music video 'Chocolate' as the lead singer can be seen conveying emotion in his face when he is with the mystery woman.

Task 11 - Music video ideas (Instrument focus)

Whilst watching Paper Shop Dave's music video 'Next Day' I saw another shot that I wanted to use in my music video as the music I am going to use has a few guitar rifts and strong drum beats in the background, therefore I would like to use a close up on the strings of the guitar and a close up of the drums when this is happening as it brings the beats to life and doesn't just focus on the lead singer. I created a GIF of the example I saw on the music video:

What is the purpose of a music video?

Boom clip

The clip Boom was made by MTV and Adobe to encourage young film makers to create their own music videos and compete against others to win the competition, they then created a video to give advice to the people entering on what to do and what not to do when making their music video. This is some of the advice that they gave which I will pay a lot of attention to when creating my own music video.

• The music video you want to create needs to have a clear beginning, middle and end.
• When preparing to plan your music video you need to listen to it over and over and write down whatever comes to mind as these are your natural ideas.
• A woman on the video really stressed the importance of making a storyboard, I think this is very important thing to do as it makes sure that your sticking to your original ideas so the video flows correctly without confusing the viewers.
• Before you go to shoot your video you need to be really prepared, this means good research and organisation which is key for planning.
• Location is another key factor as it draws the viewer in as if it isn't interesting then it will make the whole video look bland.
• Angle variety is very important as each different angle can make the shot look better or worse and it can make someone perceive a situation or person in a different way, then once you have finished log every shot to show which is the best one.
• Finally you capture an atmosphere when filming so try to make it fun for the actors as that will portray across to the viewers if they are not having a good time.

Theorists

Theorists.

Adorno:

Adorno believes that capitalists create music videos to give us false needs, false needs are things that we as consumers think matters however it does not for example who is going to die next on your favourite television programme. Adorno said that false needs are created so that it takes away our attention from how much the government is messing up our country.

Hebdige:

Hebdige is the opposite to Adorno as he believed that people interpret music videos differently because we all have free thoughts, this therefore creates subcultures due to our different interpretations for example: emo. These subcultures popularity creates music taste changes in the future as they create niches in the market.

Negus:

Negus believes that there are two ways of thinking about potential artists coming into the market, these are the organic ideology of creativity and the synthetic ideology of creativity. The organic ideology of creativity is a long term solution as it makes sure that the artists success is sustained, it also focuses on albums and the record company enhance the artists image, an example of a organic artist would be Michael Jackson as his legacy in music has been carried on for a long time even after his death.
The synthetic ideology of creativity is a short term solution and create a lot of artists that are one to four hit wonders, this means that they focus on singles as the artist might not be around long enough to create an album. The record company acts differently to the organic record company as it constructs the artists image so it isn't actually their real personality. Examples of this are Girls Aloud where they took five single artists and put them together on a singing show to create them, therefore they have artificially created the band.

Dyer:

Dyers main beliefs are to do with the stars in multimedia such as music, radio and television. He believes that stars have key features in common and that a star is an image not a real person, the image is created due to things like advertising as it can brainwash people into thinking that is what the artist is really like. He also states that stars are commodities and that they are consumed on their strength of meaning and that they depend on the subsidiaries in media like TV and Radio to construct their image. He believes in two paradoxes: the first is that a star is ordinary and extra-ordinary at the same time, this means that the ordinary is where you see them going to the supermarket for example as it is a normal thing to do and the extra-ordinary is where they have/do something that isn't normal such as owning a lion as a pet. 
The second paradox is where the star is absent and also present as people read things about the artist in magazines and it creates the illusion that they know the artist personally whereas in reality they do not. 

Prelim task thoughts

We were very happy with our final edit and we felt that due to the lack of time we had to film and prepare that we had done very well in terms of timing it to fit the real video.

When it came to editing we had no idea how difficult it would be to match up the words and the clips together, however we managed to do it by slowing down or speeding up our shots to fit the real video. We were a bit behind on some of the shots in the middle where they walk into the school, but we managed to get it back towards the end. Furthermore to fill areas we had to drag some of our shots out to make it last longer than we would have liked and fill the spots where we couldn't fill.

When doing my real video I will make sure that I plan more thoroughly and make sure that every shot will be perfectly timed with the words on the backing track and that we don't miss any shots out. I will also have more time when we film and for preparation therefore the final product will look as professional as and actual big budget music video.

Prelim task final edit

We finished editing our preliminary task and this was the final result:

Task 2 - Others work

For task 2 I had to look at past students blog work and find the strengths and weaknesses of them so that we can use the weaknesses or strengths of their work to make sure that our blogs are detailed and suitable for achieving the highest grade possible.

Research:

For evaluating past students research I used Jake Maud's as an example. The strengths of his research was that it was very detailed and provided a lot of evidence to show and prove what he is trying to say by using different multimedia formats to make his work interesting and unique. The weaknesses however were that some of his research such as the ideologies of the music industry were irrelevant for the creation of his music video.

Planning:

I used Jake Maud's blog again when evaluating a past students planning, the strengths of his was that it was so detailed and well thought out, he had put a lot of effort into it as he had done numerous location scouts and thought about the props and lighting he needed to create the effect that he so desired. He also planned his locations well and got permission to make sure he wasn't doing anything illegal. However there were no weaknesses as I could not find any as his planning was so thorough.

Music video:

Jake Maud's music video was very good it looked very professional and looked like a real music video, he got great shots to try tell the story of crime and corruption between the two characters. However I felt that that there weren't any weaknesses only minor changes such as putting the band in the video or having the male character lip sync the song.

Digipak:

Jake's digipak was amazing and looked very professional the shots where the sun came through the trees really stood out and gave the digipak a unique look. However the black and white effect even though it looked really good on the album it could get lost on the shelves in shops as it doesn't stand out from the rest.

Magazine advert:

The magazine advert that he made was amazing and was so professional, it also had the out of focus background that David and I would hope to create in our music video. It was difficult to fault anything about the magazine advert but if I had to be very picky he could have put the bands full name on the magazine advert as some people might not know what it stands for.

Evaluation:

Finally I used Jake Maud's evaluation to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of. The strengths were that he used a variety of multimedia platforms to display his work: pictures, video, PowerPoint and Prezi. It was very detailed and showed the equipment he used by using pictures of them all. The weaknesses of it was that he could have used screenshots of his editing process for the video or the end product in the editing software to show what he did to the shots to create the different effects, this could be effectively used in evaluation four.

Task 1 - Real video shot by shot analysis

For a shot by shot analysis of a real video I chose The Killers 'Mr.Brightside' as it is a song that I like and I feel that it is the same genre of music that I would like to use to create my own music video.

• Length of the video: 3:48 minutes.
• Number of shots in the full video: 216

In 30 seconds: 

• Shot count: 17
• Number of close ups: 4
• Number of long shots: 8
• Number of mid-shots: 6
• Number of panning shots: 1

This is the video that I used for this task:

Prelim task - Planning

This is the storyboard that I made which shows each shot that the music video for Panic! At The Disco's New Perspective, it also includes a shot analysis to show exactly what is happening in each scene:

Prelim task - Task outline and real video

The preliminary task that we have been given to complete is to choose a real music video and copy the first minute of it to the exact look of the real video. The real video that we chose was Panic At The Disco’s New Perspective, this is the music video that we had to copy is down below (we are only doing up to the first minute where the two male singers are walking down the hallway).