Director's Commentary: Script

Directors Commentary script - Group 13S1-28

- Hello I’m George Adamson,
- Daisy Cookson
- Nick Griggs
- Sam Payne

All four of us have been working together over the past couple of months to create a music video for “Melt my heart to stone” by Adele (featuring Kanye West)

Question 1

One of the first things we did when we were given the task of creating a music video for this song was to research Adele’s and Kanye West’s previous music videos using YouTube and VEVO. This was so that we could get an idea of the style the performers are usually presented in. From this we were also able to learn more about the genre conventions of the music videos for their particular styles of music.
We decided that the song “Melt my heart to stone” best suited the slow R&B genre because it contains both singing and rapping. The conventions for this particular genre of music videos often shows a rapper showing off His “wealth”,“lavish” lifestyle and the women which are surrounding him in this music video. The music videos usually include a lot of intertextuality for example the artist may be seen wearing an expensive branded watch, this advertises the product and makes the artist seem wealthy.
We decided to challenge these conventions, since the song seems to focus on both artists equally, we decide that out music video should do the same instead of following one artist and having the other in the side-lines appearing at off points throughout the music video which is the usual convention for music videos.
We again decide to challenge the conventions of a music video because the way we use and strong narrative and strong use of lip-syncing performance in our music video. The usual conventions are either that you have a strong narrative and the lip-syncing is put to the side (shown in The Beastie Boy’s video “Make some noise” also known as Fight for your right - revisited video, where the music video is more similar to a short-film than a music video) or a strong lip-sync performance video such as Adele’s Rolling in the deep music video where the video Focuses more on her performance than a narrative.
One of the conventions we decided to challenge is the use of costume change within a music video. Our original outfits for the artists followed conventions; smart and classy, however the artist stays in these costumes throughout the video, this challenges the conventions because usually the artist will have a number of costume changes in one music video.

Question 2

One of the ways that we have used our main product and ancillary texts is the consistent look of both items. One of the ways we gave each item a look was the way we used lighting effectively in the creation of our music video and our Ancillary product photo-shoot. We set up lighting in the hotel scene to look quite moody and theatrical. These enables the market audience to identify the Ancillary texts and the Main music video together so it would be recognisable to the buyer when they purchase the digi-pack package.
We also applied a colour tint to both the music video (Main product) and the ancillary texts to the same effect we desired with the use of lighting. For the Hotel scene we used Final Cut Express to add a light-blue tint with a high contrast to the video and used Adobe Light-room for the same light-blue effect to make the mood of the scene more moody and emotional. This makes the Main product and ancillary text look like a more complete product.
The images used in the ancillary texts and the image the artists are presented in the main product creates a mature and attractive image though the use of costume for both artists which helps to sell the artists well. The Costumes; the black dress which “Adele” and the Suit which Kanye West wears makes both characters look attractive and sophisticated.

We used the same font in both items in the ancillary texts the posters and the digi-pack cover because We thought that a recognisable familiarity would benefit our product on the market. We chose a white font because of the way it stands out against the light blue image.

Question 3

The feedback we received for our pitch was positive, both our teachers and our peers agreed that our group had organised the technical elements such as narrative and lighting. We discussed the ideas on our locations and actors which were not finalised and received quite a positive response to our ideas.

The feedback we received for our rough-cut was mostly positive, Our peers and teachers said we had lip-synced well and followed common conventions of a music video in-terms of goodwins points and our peers and teachers were impressed with the use of lighting in the ‘hotel scene’.

However one of the problems with the feedback from our rough-cut was that we did not have a full rough-cut. We feel that if we had been able to show a complete rough cut, the feedback would have been more beneficial to the editing of the final cut.
The feedback which we received for our final edit was mostly positive. The majority of our peers and our teachers have said we have used macro and micro elements such as our narrative and the use of mise-en scene (for example the costumes and the lighting) in our music video. However one of the major criticisms we received was that we didn’t have a varied amount of shot-types in our final cut.

Question 4
One of the pieces of new media technology we used was the internet (more specifically YouTube) to research conventions of popular music videos and which conventions were not being used. We also used YouTube to research cinematographic techniques, editing techniques and for learning how to set up lighting effectively for a music video.
Another pieces of internet technology which we used in our project is “Blogger” which we used to organise our whole project. This was effective in enabling all members of our group access to information about our project such as our storyboard and shot-list, so we could continue with our work if another member of our group was absent.

We used HD Camcorders to record our footage for our music video. The footage from these cameras looked professional and the built in hard-drive enabled us to take multiple takes of shots for use in editing.

Another piece of technology which we used is Final Cut Express. This is semi-professional editing software which we used to apply professional editing techniques to our music video such as the split-screen and the colour-adjustment effects. This made our music video look professional. The editing also helps the audience to understand the narrative by keeping the continuity consistent.

We also used a DSLR camera for the photo-shoot for our ancillary texts. Using this enabled us to capture high-quality professional looking images for use in our magazine advert and our digi-pack cover. Lightroom was used to give the photos the effect similar to the effect applied in the main product, which we believed a consistency throughout our product would help to market our product.
Another piece of technology we used was a camera tripod which we used to keep our shots steady. We also used a dolly which we used for smooth tracking shots in our music video. We also used two lights to make our music video look more theatrical and professional.