Our music video was put together using a variety of ideas which we have thought of and we took ideas from actual music videos. The conventions we used match the ones suitable for the song and genre of the music that we based our music video on. Also we used the lyrics from the song to give us influence for the actions of the character in the shot. We wanted to make the plot of the video clear to the viewer so the project was not confusing and the audience could see that the character is visiting a house where he had many memories. We attempted to make the video so that it would carry on the atmosphere that the song already created. A number of the shots capture light from windows and doors which creates an uplifting feeling. The song carries a positive feeling about it which influenced our decision to focus on the sunlight.
In the video a worm-eye view shot is used to make the character look more in control and increase his presence whilst he is singing. The shot towards the end of the video shows the character singing with the sky in the background which is very effective in showing the character as being strong. There is only one character in the video so it was important that he was the focal point in the video. The tempo of cuts match the speed of music in certain places in the song. Towards the end of the video, where the song starts to increase in speed, the number of shots increase as it comes to the end of the video.
The photographs in the house show the viewer that there is a lot of personal history that the main character has wrapped up in the house, this helps the audience in being able to relate to his emotions. We concentrated on the emotions of the character by using close-ups to view the facial expressions and feelings. The clothing was chosen very carefully, we chose a casual dress code as it represents the 'indie' genre.
As the song is emotional, we have slowed some clips down as we have seen this done in many other music videos from this genre. This gives the audience time to take in what's happening in a certain shot allowing the audience to make more sense of what's happening.
This idea was inspired by a video by the 'Killers – Smile Like You Mean It', this video also shows a band visiting an old house. The band are shown performing in the house in different rooms and it shows events from the past.
The combination of the music video and our ancillary texts contain a lot of character and colour. We tried to use the same colours on the web page as the ones used on the CD cover. The album, 'Black Swan' is what both the ancillary texts are based on and the music video further promotes the release. The CD cover uses bright colours with a simple portrait of a swan on the front which is very eye catching. We have also edited the image to give it more of a glossy effect. To match this, the web page also has a glossy effect. The heading on the page, 'Black Swan', promotes the new album.
From the audience feedback I have learned that careful planning and detailed editing is essential to producing a good final piece of work. Fortunately we received mostly positive feedback from our peers upon watching the final product. The shots used in our video were liked by everyone and were considered to be aesthetically pleasing. The parallel narrative that was continued throughout the video was well put together and was liked by our peers. We only received a couple of pieces of negative feedback on the video, the first bit of negativity came towards the end of the video when the lip syncing goes slightly out of time with the music as we had trouble editing the music to be perfectly in sync with the video. Secondly, was the zoomed in shot of the characters left eye, most felt that it was slightly uneasy amongst the rest of the video, however, we decided to keep this in as it increased the wide range of shots that were already used throughout video, we felt this added to the texture and kept it flowing.
Overall, I am happy with how the project turned out. Despite a few negatives, the music video definitely lives up to the expectations we had during the planning stages. I think the song by Athlete is perfect for the ideas we had decided to follow.. The amount of footage we had to work with is in my opinion the reason why we were successful when putting the music video together. We filmed over 30 minutes of footage that we thought was worthy to be included, therefore all we needed to do is select our favourite clips to use in the video.
Certain features such as the flashing lights when the character walked up the stairs was effective in going with the music. I was also impressed with how the shot when the camera moves down stairs then out of the house looked. We sped up and reversed the clip to match the increase in tempo of the song. This effect works well as it isn't noticeable that the clip was edited in the way it was.
Planning
During our planning stage we used media technologies such as 'youtube' to gain ideas for our own video and see how to meet the needs for certain genres. We looked a various other music videos to gain a better idea of what conventions to follow and what effect this can have on the audience. Once we began our production we used a digital camera to take photos of our storyboards and were then uploaded to an 'iMac' and was made into a short film. We then set out to do the same thing but with photographs of the actual shots that were going to be used in the music video. We imported the song that we were going to be making a music video for onto 'iTunes'. We then took a HD camera and a tripod to shoot the music video. We used the tripod to create more professional shots by preventing the camera shaking during shots. The High Definition camera was a big advantage in creating a high quality music video.
We used storyboards to help us create an image of what we wanted to achieve. This allowed us to sketch some initial ideas down on paper such as camera angles and scenarios that we could use in the final video. In total we drew over 30 drawings of suitable shots. This helped us to develop the narrative of the story as well as realise what would work in the video. It was important to do as many sketches as possible at this stage to keep an open mind to more ideas and to help us when actually filming the footage we needed. These drawings included specific close-ups and establishing shots that we decided to include.
After we had filmed all this, we uploaded all the footage to the iMac using the iMovie software. After we had done this we transferred the footage over to iMovie HD which was better suited to the HD camera we used. iMovie HD is the programme we used to edit the music video, on this programme was a large variety of special effects, we used some slow down and speed up effects on some of our shots as we felt this became a major convention of the genre. We uploaded the song from iTunes and then we exported the video form quicktime.
We created the CD cover and web page on the latest Paint programme which allowed us to create the 'glossy' effect which made them stand out against the overall project. Also the programme offered a wide range of font which helped us to choose the most suitable font for the two ancillary texts.
Friday, 19 March 2010
Friday, 9 October 2009
Task 1.1 (Research - Initial Trailer/Short Film Analysis)
The film 'The Messenger' follows the generic convention of a horror in the sense that it builds suspense. The film leaves a seemingly normal family thinking that they are going mad and starts the family turning on each other. This film lives up to expectations of a horror as it has the main aspects, I.e., mysterious storyline accompanying characters, a dark past for some characters, the whole story isn't revealed until right at the end which leaves you questioning what's going to happen throughout the film. The music in the film is usually minimal, but it is effective in building suspense in the film. Technical devices used in this film such as a crab track to follow the characters by their side so you can't see what is in front of them until the camera pans around. This helps builds suspense by not showing everything that is happening on screen until last minute. The film varies between slow and quick cuts, the slow cuts are used to build it up into the scary parts of the scene, the quick shots help keep the sense of fear that the character is feeling. The angles are very suited to this type of film as they use the lighting to their advantage by creating shadows for possibilities of something emerging from them. There are a mixture of long shots and close ups in the film which is effective as it allows the camera to only show what he wants to be seen by the audience. Match-on action shots are used to give a better showing of what the characters are doing at certain points of the film and makes it easier for the audience to focus on what is really happening. The use of flashing lights is as effective as using quick cuts as it block your view of what's happening for a very short space of time and it goes back to being able to see what is happening again so it is almost as if it has cut to a new shot.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Task 2 (Genre Comparitive study)
The two videos i have chosen are 'A Day to Remember-The plot to bomb the Panhandle' and 'We are the Ocean-Nothing good has happened yet'. Firstly, these two bands are from the genre of metal.
These video's follow the generic conventions of this type of music as the playing of the music and the skill of the musician is very important. This is also a way of selling the artist, for example in the video by A Day to Remember it shows them performing so this would entice the target audience of the band to want to watch them live and see them performing there songs live. The same can said for the video by We are the Ocean as the band give an energetic performance despite there being no one around to spectate, this makes you think if there doing this without a crowd, then what would it be like with a crowd.
These two videos both have the typical convention of this genre, and this is that you can see the band playing, however, they are presented in different ways, for example, 'A Day to Remember' are playing in a 'Dojo' with a crowd in there presence whereas 'We are the Ocean' are playing in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse by themselves almost as if they are having a band practice.
In the video by 'A Day to Remember', you can see a big guy who looks like a sumo wrestler showing everyone what appear to be sumo wrestling moves to a large group of people, then come the end of the video, the large group of people are doing these moves along with the music. The big guy in this video raises his eyebrow in beat with the drums. In some cases, the lighting blocks out everything else in shot apart from the band members face, meaning that you are drawn to looking at them. There are some links in this video as, for example, when the singer says "Its proven i can't trust a word you say", he looks into the camera when he says "you". In a way this personalises the video a bit more and makes you feel that he is saying it to you. At the end of the music video, the last shot just shows the guy clapping for the band by himself.
In the video by 'We are the Ocean', at the beginning the screen fades in on what looks like a t.v screen. At approximately 2.07 mins there is a shot of both vocalist' in one frame. When there is 'feedback' at the end of the video, the screen starts to blur and the video slowly fades out until it stops and it finishes on almost the same fade in which it started. There is a link between lyrics and visuals at the beginning as you can see them standing inside, and the singer say, 'Let me in From the rain' and it shows you that they are inside. This video appears to be quite a low cost production which in a way contradicts the stereotypes of most famous bands being rich and having money to waste, and it puts them on a level playing field with all of their fans.
The idea taken up by 'We are the Ocean' is completely different to that of the 'A Day to Remember' video as they seem to have gone for a higher costing video, for example they have lighting and extras hired for their video rather than just the band alone.
In the sense of voyeurism there is very little between them besides the lively performance that they are giving, this makes you want to see them live more as not only is it there music you want to hear but it helps a lot when a good performance is given along side the music band as the have to focus on the extras in the video, however, this has been done well in this case as each of the extras are constantly active and their acting always coincides with the music that is being played at the time. At the end the band and the extras are all brought together at the end and the band carry on they would if they were playing a gig.
Overall, both videos show great contrast on a range of the aspects that would typically be seen in music videos.
These video's follow the generic conventions of this type of music as the playing of the music and the skill of the musician is very important. This is also a way of selling the artist, for example in the video by A Day to Remember it shows them performing so this would entice the target audience of the band to want to watch them live and see them performing there songs live. The same can said for the video by We are the Ocean as the band give an energetic performance despite there being no one around to spectate, this makes you think if there doing this without a crowd, then what would it be like with a crowd.
These two videos both have the typical convention of this genre, and this is that you can see the band playing, however, they are presented in different ways, for example, 'A Day to Remember' are playing in a 'Dojo' with a crowd in there presence whereas 'We are the Ocean' are playing in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse by themselves almost as if they are having a band practice.
In the video by 'A Day to Remember', you can see a big guy who looks like a sumo wrestler showing everyone what appear to be sumo wrestling moves to a large group of people, then come the end of the video, the large group of people are doing these moves along with the music. The big guy in this video raises his eyebrow in beat with the drums. In some cases, the lighting blocks out everything else in shot apart from the band members face, meaning that you are drawn to looking at them. There are some links in this video as, for example, when the singer says "Its proven i can't trust a word you say", he looks into the camera when he says "you". In a way this personalises the video a bit more and makes you feel that he is saying it to you. At the end of the music video, the last shot just shows the guy clapping for the band by himself.
In the video by 'We are the Ocean', at the beginning the screen fades in on what looks like a t.v screen. At approximately 2.07 mins there is a shot of both vocalist' in one frame. When there is 'feedback' at the end of the video, the screen starts to blur and the video slowly fades out until it stops and it finishes on almost the same fade in which it started. There is a link between lyrics and visuals at the beginning as you can see them standing inside, and the singer say, 'Let me in From the rain' and it shows you that they are inside. This video appears to be quite a low cost production which in a way contradicts the stereotypes of most famous bands being rich and having money to waste, and it puts them on a level playing field with all of their fans.
The idea taken up by 'We are the Ocean' is completely different to that of the 'A Day to Remember' video as they seem to have gone for a higher costing video, for example they have lighting and extras hired for their video rather than just the band alone.
In the sense of voyeurism there is very little between them besides the lively performance that they are giving, this makes you want to see them live more as not only is it there music you want to hear but it helps a lot when a good performance is given along side the music band as the have to focus on the extras in the video, however, this has been done well in this case as each of the extras are constantly active and their acting always coincides with the music that is being played at the time. At the end the band and the extras are all brought together at the end and the band carry on they would if they were playing a gig.
Overall, both videos show great contrast on a range of the aspects that would typically be seen in music videos.
Conventions of the genre
It shows chaos breaking out outside of the gig, police are there to break up any trouble that may kick off, not a high tech camera, a live show. Backstage party after the gig with all the other bands that played.
Links between visuals and music
The music is fast paced and all cuts made are quick cuts.
Selling the artist
Shows them when they're not on the stage, just back stage having fun. It shows them doing what they do on the stage aswell.
Voyeurism and the art of looking
Everyone's looking to the camera man, the camera doesn't stay in one place for long. Spot light sticks on person in focus.
The conventions of the genre shown on this video show a live performance on an old non high tech. All from the point of view of camera man. The footage is just compiled together from one gig, the police turn up and are there to break up any trouble that may kick off.
There is little linkage between the visuals and the lyrics in this besides what the people are doing backstage in accordance to the lyrics. This video is very basic in terms of a music video, yet it appears to be effective in what it is trying to achieve.
Actions that are shown are all done with the music as it is footage of a live show, however the backstage footage doesn't fit with the music. The performance is lively and the band doesn't hold back on their performances on stage. The camera work in this video represents the music that is being played. It is shakey and follows the people from the band around.
In the sense of selling the artist, the video shows the band not only on stage doing what they are known for, but also when they are backstage having fun and just chilling with their mates. This sells the artist as it give the viewer a group of people that are just the same as us and in a sense we can relate to them.
POST WRITTEN BY CHRISTIEN MCKEEN, 23RD JUNE '09.
It shows chaos breaking out outside of the gig, police are there to break up any trouble that may kick off, not a high tech camera, a live show. Backstage party after the gig with all the other bands that played.
Links between visuals and music
The music is fast paced and all cuts made are quick cuts.
Selling the artist
Shows them when they're not on the stage, just back stage having fun. It shows them doing what they do on the stage aswell.
Voyeurism and the art of looking
Everyone's looking to the camera man, the camera doesn't stay in one place for long. Spot light sticks on person in focus.
The conventions of the genre shown on this video show a live performance on an old non high tech. All from the point of view of camera man. The footage is just compiled together from one gig, the police turn up and are there to break up any trouble that may kick off.
There is little linkage between the visuals and the lyrics in this besides what the people are doing backstage in accordance to the lyrics. This video is very basic in terms of a music video, yet it appears to be effective in what it is trying to achieve.
Actions that are shown are all done with the music as it is footage of a live show, however the backstage footage doesn't fit with the music. The performance is lively and the band doesn't hold back on their performances on stage. The camera work in this video represents the music that is being played. It is shakey and follows the people from the band around.
In the sense of selling the artist, the video shows the band not only on stage doing what they are known for, but also when they are backstage having fun and just chilling with their mates. This sells the artist as it give the viewer a group of people that are just the same as us and in a sense we can relate to them.
POST WRITTEN BY CHRISTIEN MCKEEN, 23RD JUNE '09.
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