Friday 30 September 2011

Pitch Evaluation

After presenting our pitch we were asked a few questions, this will help us to make the music video more successful and less problematic.


How much will it cost to hire the hotel room?
We have emailed the University Arms Hotel, hopefully we will be able to form an agreement for a reduce price if not for free. We are waiting to hear a reply. If we can't use this hotel we will contact other hotels in the nearby area.


What will the characters wear in the video?
In our video, Adele will be wearing a black formal dress, as if she was going to a formal event. She will look smart and like she is ready to go out. Kanye West will be wearing a suit, similarly like Adele, he will look like he is ready to go out to the same formal event.

How much time do you think you will need to film this video?
We think that our filming will be complete over a 2 day period. We will spend roughly one hour in the hotel room, as there is less to film inside so we can do this  quickly. Then we need to film the outside footage. This will be done in the day as we need as much sunlight as possible to make the film visible. If this is too bright we will change the effects when editing to make it look darker.

How fast is the rap in the song?
The rap is midtempo, although there is a lot to learn. We will need our Kanye West character to learn this in plenty of time, and get it very accurate so that lip-syncing is easy during the editing stage.

How will you do the tracking shot?
We will go and look at the location and assess the pavement. If the pavement is smooth, we can use a dolly as this would provide the ideal shot. If the pavement is rough, we may have to use a person holding the camera as steady as possible. Alternatively we could do these shots in parts, the characters could walk off screen and then re-enter in another shot.

Music Video Deadlines

  • Monday 17th October: Music Video Shooting Deadline
  • Friday 21st October (last lesson of week): Music Video Rough Cut Deadline
  • Friday 11th November (last lesson of week): Music Video Final Deadline
  • Friday 25th November (last lesson of week): Ancillary Products Deadline
  • Friday 16th December (last lesson of week): Evaluative Commentary
To help us be more successful in this project, we need to shoot as soon as possible. This will give us longer to edit, and even go back for more shooting if needed. The extra time could allow for better ancillary projects and less pressure overall. It is important for us to plan out our time and to be organised.

Monday 26 September 2011

Auteur Study: Diane Martel





Pixie Lott's music video to 'Boys and Girls' was directed by the french auteur; Diane Martel. This director and choreographer is most famous for her work with Mariah Carey, including being director for songs such as 'All i want for christmas is you' and 'dreamlover'. After researching and viewing many of other music videos directed by Diane Martel, it becomes obvious that a trend throughout is portraying the lady in the video in a sexual way, which may promote the artist. For example, in Pixie Lott's video 'Boys & Girls', there are a lot of close-up shots of Pixie's legs, which she is well-known for. This is also clear in Beyonce's music video to 'best thing i never had' where there are a number of shots of the singer rolling around in not a lot more than a corset. It appears that Diane often works with female artists which would suggest that the theme of her work is more feminine and often is to slower songs, however she has also directed the music video for the Killer's 'Read my mind'.


Track Pitch/Research

Narrative
We've decided that the Adele song 'Met My Heart To Stone', would be the best song for out music video. The narrative for the video will begin with an argument scene between the artists, this is just as the two characters are getting ready to go out. We've considered shots of Adele putting makeup on, looking into a mirror, and then Kanye pushing everything off the table in anger. Kanye will then walk out of the room, and Adele will be left alone. There will be several stereotypical Adele shots, looking depressed in a window for example, or crying and looking at "old photos" of them together. The emotion/mood of this beginning scene would be enhanced with a blue filter in the editing process.

The next scene will be Kanye's rap, this will take place outside on the streets. During this part he will be walking and along the street, we could use lots of intertexuality because this is conventional of rap videos. Adele's actor will join the street scene and begin to argue and try to get Kanye back, he will take his ring off and throw it at Adele. There is an instrumental part where we could have some performance or more acting. The ending will see the couple back together, and a closeup on their hands to symbolize this.

We want the video to flow together in a very linear way, and have had an idea for continual shots such as the ones seen in this video:

Actors & Performance
Two main actors needed, playing the characters of the artists. They will both have costumes to look like the original artists, which will be explained in the costumes section of this research. The actors will be following the narrative whilst lip-syncing along with it, creating quite a quirky/different style to the video.

Location
First scene will take place in a bedroom or apartment. We are going to try contacting the University Arms Hotel for the possibility of a room for 1 - 2 hours. This is only an option, so we need to contact the hotel as soon as possible. The website for the hotel with images of the rooms and surrounding location is here.




In the second scene where the characters are on the streets, we thought that we could film on Silver Street near the river in Cambridge.This is because it's an old area in the city, and will suit the lyrics of "Right under my feet there's air made of bricks". There are some small alley ways near Granta Place along the river, which could give a city feel that suits the lyrics also. Kings Parade is another good location to take some street shots, it is an old part of the city again and there are small alleys again which will be less busy. Below are some photos of the possible areas which want to film at.

Granta Place

Trinity Street

St Mary's Passage

King's Parade

Costumes
Both characters will begin in evening wear, as if they are going out. The Adele character will be in a dark dress to symbolize the depression of the scene, her hair will come undone and mascara will begin to run down her face. When she moves to the outside street scene she will grab a coat. This is important as it will show her strength to go after him, and will represent love, passion and perhaps pain.

Kanye's character will be wearing a white suit, this will show his contrast with Adele. Intertexuality to refer to his rap background will be represented by a hidden chain, or a ring. His costumes will remain the same throughout the video. 

Props 
For the room scene we will need lots of photos of the couple together. We may need to use phones to illustrate the communication between the two characters, this will be used during the scene where Adele goes to look for Kanye. This room scene will be inspired by Adele's version of 'Make You Feel My Love'.

Lighting
For the Adele scenes, we thought we could have blue tinted lighting so that the scene looks quite cold.
(alternatively this can be done with editing) We want most scenes to be quite dark so ideally we would be filming at dusk or on a cloudy day. We have the option to film at night but this would require extra lighting (I.e. floodlights) to lighten the scenes just enough so that characters can be clearly seen but the audience can tell it is night.

Editing
We thought that the editing would follow a linear narrative. The editing would need to have continuity throughout. We will also be lip-syncing in the editing to match the audio to the video.

Shots
There are several shots that we want to include in the video. One will be a shot of something being thrown at the wall, symbolizing a domestic violence message which we have considered to incorporate into the video. Another shot would be over-the-shoulder looking at the Adele character in a mirror, this would be as mascara falls down her face.



Artist Research: Kanye West

Many of Kanye West's music videos include bright lights, new technology and many things which symbolise wealth, however we dont want this look for our video so we have focused on three of the few videos of his which have a slow/meaningful story line. The first video has a theme of poverty and Jesus and which is very different to his usual music videos. Kanye west often wears a white suit in his videos and we would like to carry on this theme through to our video because our actors will have just returned home from/about to go to a formal event.



Sunday 25 September 2011

Auteur Study: Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze is an american autuer that has worked with many top artists such as Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim and Kanye West.


This video shows a man who is shown with a dog head and on crutches where as everyone else is normal. There are many interpretations on why Spike Jonze chose to use this in his video, but there is not one certain answer. This video is effective as it shows the man carrying around a boombox actually playing the song 'da punk'. This makes it seem like this song is already popular with some people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppdWrsHJeEE&ob=av2

This video, which is from Fatboy slim 'Praise you' is very different from the previosu video discussed. This video was shot in 'Guerilla style' meaning that they did not gain permission from the owners of the location where they shot the footage. it shows this in the music video as one of the workers in the video turns off the music and they stop for a moment in the video to turn the music back on. This video is also effective as it represents the upbeat music by having dancing and everyone looking happy and like they are having a good time


This video from Kanye West is one of Spike Jonze's modern videos. Although this video is newer, it has similarities from the previous Videos. One example of this would be that in all 3 examples i have shown, you never see the artist that is singing, this means that the viewer cannot actually see who is singing the song. This makes it more important that the video is effective as the audience needs to remember who sings the song, so the video has to be good enough to stick in the memory.

Friday 23 September 2011

Artist Research: Adele

The three videos we have studied by adele have been the videos which go with her most successful songs. We have noticed that adele often looks very elegant and dignified in her videos and we would like to reflect this in our own video. We wanted the idea of the video to be that there is a couple who have just arrived home from a formal event and are having an arguement, therefore the lady will be looking elegant in a formal dress and the man will be wearing a smart suit. This will make our own video like well with the originals. Also, a lot of the shots of adele are close ups of her face and the lighting is always very dramatic we would like to include this in our own video.



Tuesday 20 September 2011

Auteur Study: Chris Cunningham

Following on from our earlier post on Michel Gondry, the experimental French director, this post will examine the work of Chris Cunningham. He is a British director born in Berkshire during the 1970s. The director has been compared to Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, both of whom have experimental styles. Cunningham first made a name for himself in the 1990s when he was making robots for major motion picture, after his work on the ABC robot for Judge Dredd he was propelled to work more individually.

The first music video that Cunningham directed was Auterchre's 'Second Bad Vibel', after watching it I have found it to reference aliens, technology, the future and the robots he designed. After this he worked on a number of other English rock band videos, which gave him valuable experience in filmmaking.

The 1997 piece 'Come To Daddy' is perhaps the most well known video. Again the video includes themes of supernatural life (or aliens), and has the same dull lighting and less vibrant colours. It is clear just from the two videos mentioned above that Cunningham has got a distinct style, and has very clear ideas that he likes to incorporate into his work. The video for Bjork's "All Is Full of Love" won Cunningham several awards including a MTV Award for Breakthrough Video, this showing it's commercial success.

Friendly Fires music video still
Although I have mentioned music videos in this post, he has also created equally great commercials and short films. One of his more recent commercials was "Gucci Flora" for Gucci, even within short video we can see his desire to include supernatural elements and to have "thriller" themed music. A recent music video was the Friendly Fires 'Kiss of Life', this being his most vibrant and mainstream piece of work. It features a main performance scene, some of the characters have masks which is reminiscent of those used in thrillers such as 'Saw' or 'Scream'.

Chris Cunningham is currently said to be working on one or more feature films, the list of these can be found here.

Analysis of Tracks for Music Video

Track 1 - Kings of Leon
The song is quite depressing and cold, which is typical of Kings of Leon. We think that the colours should represent the emotions that the artists/song evoke, so blue and grey would suit it best because they are cold, metallic colours. This can be adjusted in the editing stage through filters and colour correction. Some narrative ideas that we've had were to have the artist walking through a forest, or have a cold snow/winter scene. The main character could be hungover and depressed, and be lost in the woods. Lots of the video will include flashbacks. Another idea would be to use a city scene with the same narrative as I've just explained. Lighting would be dark or natural to make it more realistic.

Track 4 - Adele & Kanye West
Lots of Adele's songs show her in a room performing the song, with the rest of the video being very artistic such as 'Rolling in The Deep'. For this track we would begin the song with Adele sitting at a rainy window in a city, representing sad emotions. Again a blue filter could be used during editing to give the overall video a depressing feel. Another idea would be to have the characters walking through the streets of a city. Items would be give to the character and then passed on, when Kanye West's part comes on the item would be passed to him. The entire video would be one continual shoot.

Track 7
This track was from a band, again it was a very emotional; depressing song which described the character trying to "break in" or being too late for something. We think that this could be followed through in the narrative of the video with the main character trying to find someone and they're too late. The video would have two scenes, the first would be the main narrative and the second would be a performance scene on acoustic guitar in a cold old barn/room. The ideas for this video are also similar to track 1 as we would use cold lighting and blue/green filters to give a natural effect.

Track 10
Track ten was one of our favourite tracks because it had a really good base beat which would be easy to clap along to, this could be the stem of a dance routine or a beat which they could walk to. The song has a really happy feel to it, which is funky and layed back. The song reminds us of fields and flowers. the colour theme for the music video of this song would be really bright and on a summers day because the song has a happy summery feel. We feel that we could be really experimental with this song as we had the idea of using animation in a really funky way, we wanted the animation to appear as though it is being drew and the animations will be in bubble writing and cartoon with lots of bright colours.

Track 8
Track 8 is a very upbeat track which is in the hip hop genre. This track would not need many props, one for example  would be a microphone which links to the lyrics in the song. The colour scheme i would use would be shiny colours like golds and silvers as this reflects the mood and genre of the song. The location i would use would be the streets. This song is upbeat and this couldbe reflected by the use of bright lighting. The only problem with this song would be that lip syncing may be more difficult as the lyrics are fast and may be hard to replicate.

Monday 19 September 2011

Auteur Study: Michel Gondry

'Auteur' is french for author/director. The term was first used by film critics in the 1950s to describe directors with an artistic signature across all their work. There are many directors in both film and music videos that can easily identifiable, such as Chris Cunningham, Hype Williams, Spike Jonze, Jonathon Glazer and Michel Gondry.
We looked at Michel Gondry, who is best known for his work with Bjork and The White Stripes. He was brought up in 1960s Paris where he was surrounded by colourful art and culture. Much of his inspiration comes from old films between the 1960s and 1980s such as 'Back To The Future'. You will notice that his work often experiments with time, and this is a main theme throughout his work.

The most obvious things for the audience are the vibrant colours, and artistic ideas which we wouldn't expect to see or happen in real life. The acting and props are all over exaggerated, with lots of repetition, this shows an almost child-like statement to the video. It's clear that Gondry draw inspiration from his 1960s childhood, there are many old school sets.

Gondry has also mentioned that he spends time trying to develop new effects, such as morphing or 'stopping time'. The theme of time is prevalent in the videos, in Kyle Minogue's "Come Into My World" there are doubles of the performer which is an experiment with time. The Bjork videos feature performances and stages, showing the perform watching themselves back or replaying something that has earlier happened in the narrative.

Michel's more recent work includes "Eternal Sunshine" with Jim Carrey, "The Green Hornet" and an episode of "Flight of the Concords". Below are some screenshots of his work.


Saturday 17 September 2011

Goodwin's Theory Debate

Goodwin's theory may offer some points as to improving a music video, however it is not the only way that a music video can be successful. We were given the statement "Meeting Goodwin's points is a sign that a product is good" and had to debate whether this valid or not. We have researched videos which do follow the theory, and others which don't. However, all the videos are considered successful.

For:
It's typical of pop/mainstream music videos like Katy Perry's "E.T." to follow the theory more closely. There are costume changes, bright colours and experimental styles which are all typical of the pop genre. The lyrics of the song match with visuals, Katy wears several alien-like costumes and the narrative follows an "out of this world" narrative. In relation to selling the artist, Katy Perry is trying to push boundaries and appeal to the same audience as Lady Gaga. We can see this because the video is what many would consider "weird" and "experimental", which is Gaga's trademark style. There is also some deep intertexuality, the video references "Born This Way", post-apocalyptic era, and the "Alien" films. The music video has over 130 million views on YouTube, this represents it's success.

Against:
"Fight For Your Right Revisited" is a long music video which follows the conventions of a short film. The video does use some intertexuality of the Back to the Future car, and the original Beastie Boy costumes etc. Although this is the only point that it fulfils from Goodwin's theory. The reason the music video is successful is because it has a clear and comic narrative, the audience is interested and engaged by this. Therefore, it doesn't matter if the video follows the rest of Goodwin's theory as the audience is not concerned with this. The music video is very long (almost 30 minutes), which results in the music part of the video becoming second to the actual dialogue and narrative.

Goodwin's Theory

Some music video follow Goodwin's theory, and some believe that it can make a music video more successful. Here is what the theory includes:
  1. Genre characteristics
  2. Music & Lyrics
  3. Music & Visuals 
  4. Selling the artist - the artists image and the audience they are targeted to.
  5. Voyeurism - watching others as if you are in the scene.
  6. Intertextuality - references to items, people, events or pop culture in any way.

Friday 16 September 2011

Music Video: Artist Representation

The Beastie Boys released "Fight For Your Right" back in the 80s. This year "Fight For Your Right (Revisited)" was created in celebration of 25 years since the original video. The video it self references to the Original Fight for your right to party video. The new video's narrative takes place directly after the original video where it shows The Beastie Boys being portrayed by popular actors/comedians, Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, Seth Rogen (as well as Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Jack Black)

The does not follow the usual conventions of a music video because the Artists themselves don't actually appear in the music video. The Purpose of the video use the popularity of the actors to to gain interest in The Beastie Boys again because they were popular group during the 80/90s period.

Overall, This music video engages you because it does not follow the usual conventions of a music video because it is more like a short-film (the video is approx. 30 minutes long). The Music is not the main feature of the video instead it is the Narrative and intertextuality, which proves that the director is more focused on representing the Beastie Boys in a certain way which is different to what the audience expects.

The video is successful because it has gained a large amount of popularity online and has gained awards such as MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction.

Music Video Analysis: Experimental Video

Dizzee Rascal's video for the song 'Dream' is experimental as it differs from many other videos. It shows Dizzee as a puppet acting out the scenes he is singing about. It is also different because it is edited to look old and as if it was shown on an old fashioned TV. This may be because he is describing how his life was before he was famous and had lots of money. Also, having puppets around him whilst singing could make the viewer relate to his success when he was younger as he was not known and he was just like everyone else. The video is set in an old lady's house which makes the set seem plain and dull, which could link to the way he was living when he was younger.

Music Video Anaylsis: Spoof Video

In 1984 Weird Al Yankovic created the spoof "Eat It", which was a take on Michael Jackson's "Beat It".This video is intended to almost identically mimic the Michael Jackson video but it includes a comedic interpretation. Weird Al Yankovic did this to gain the attention of mainstream audiences because of the popularity of Michael Jackson.

The video does engage the audience as it has comic value. The original video is well known so viewers have an expectation of the narrative and the lyrics, therefore the spoof contrasts with and it causes the audience to hear the changes. Also it brings Weird Al Yankovic's audience to the attention of Michael Jackson, and the "Beat It" video in particular. So in a way, both artists share their audiences with each other and show different interpretations of the same video.

The video is fairly successful as it does what a spoof is meant to do, it is comical and follows the original music video very closely. However, the production company would have to pay quite a lot of royalties to Michael Jackson and therefore it wouldn't make Weird Al Yankovic much money. But it was probably used as more a viral marketing stunt, used to get his name out there and to bring in a larger audience for his work.

Below is the spoof video and original "Beat It" video for comparison.

Preliminary Task: Magazine Advert/Photoshop Skills #2

Last lesson we used Photoshop to create a magazine advertisement for a band/artist's music video of our choice. The brief was to include a picture of the artist, use an original font,  relevant information to the single, recommended retail price and rating. This task was ultimately to refresh our Photoshop skills, such as using layers and using adjustment filters. We will need these skills later in the magazine and DVD cover design part of the project. Below is our magazine cover for Coldplay's "Ever Teardrop is a Waterfall".

Preliminary Task: Magazine Advert/Photoshop Skills #1

Our task was to create a magazine advertisement about a song of our choice. We chose 'You Need Me, I Don't Need You' from Rizzle Kicks and Ed Sheeran. This poster links to the video of the song as the video is in a normal environment, this is why we chose the brick wall as the background for our poster. The bright colours in the title link to the upbeat song and genre of music. We included the iTunes label to show it was available to but and included the single price to inform the readers how much the song would cost to buy.

Thursday 15 September 2011

Introduction

The purpose of this new project to create a music video. This blog will be used to document all our research and ideas as the project progresses, with the results being our music video, magazine cover and a DVD cover. Before beginning the music video we need to analyse and research other music videos and theories, this will give us all a better chance of succeeding.
 
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