Now we knew who we were using for our actors, we needed to think about where we were going to set the scenes. We are planning on using a variety of locations to represent the past and the present situations in our story. We don't want viewers to get the impression the video is based around one day, and this is what would likely happen if we were to choose just one location. We ae planning on using an area with nice scenery and surroundings for some of our shots involving our video story. Ideas we had for this were;
A local field, located near our sixthform; This particular field is fairly large and has nice woodland scenery so we feel this would be a good place to film some of our shots for our story.
Hamstead Heath, Parliment Hill; This settings has beautiful views and surroundings so we feel this again would look good in our video. Here we are planning to film our story also. This field is also large so we can do a lot with it and use this at our advantage.
Tellytubby Hill; We considered videoing here as this is a nice greenery area. However, the hill is fairly small and is located next to some houses so we felt this wouldn't look as effective in our video.
We are planning on filming our boy actor on 'dates' in the past with his ex girlfriend and in the future with his new girlfriend.Again for these we want a nice setting with good surroundings. We have decided we are going to travel into london and film in the streets near Hamstead heath. We felt this would help us time wise as we would not have to travel far to reach Parliament hill to film our other shots. Also the streets there are fairly quiet so we would not have the issue of filming a busy street filled with people.
We are also planning to use a cafe to film our actors on dates. A cafe we will use will be one located in the town centre as this will be easy for us to reach as it is not located far from our sixthform. This is also somewhere that all of our actors can reach easily.
As well as our story shots, we also needed to think about where we were going to film our band shots. Our research of You me at six's other tracks showed us that their band shots are filmed in small hall like settings. This idea we liked so we have decided wer are going to film the band shots in our school hall on the stage. This will allow us to film the band performing with their instruments. If we were to have filmed the band outside this could have been very difficult as we may not have been able to use some of the instruments.
We struggled to find actors to play the girl roles in our video as none in our sixthform were willing to volunteered. We didn't want to waste too much of our time searching for actors for these parts so we thought it would be easier if we appeared in our own video instead. This would also help us when filming as we know we would be reliable as we don't want to fall behind. I will be playing the role of the 'new girlfriend' and my group partner Millie will be playing the role of the 'ex-girlfriend'. For the boys role we have chosen to use our friend Sam Wilkinson. We chose this particular actor as again we know he is reliable and we would find it easy to direct and work with him as we are all close friends.
Clothing For these actors we have come up with some outfits for them to wear. As we are planning on basing our video on different days and events it is important that we get the actors wearing a couple of different outfits to show that these are different days. We have also thought about making them wear summery and wintery clothes to show the past and present times. For the past events we want our actors to be wearing summery clothes so we have decided that they will be wearing the following for some of our shots;
Millie- Summery Dress
Sam- Shorts and T-shirt or summery Jumper.
For the wintery (Present) events and shots we require our actors to wear the following;
Millie- Tights and warm clothes, Coat
Lauren-Skirt, Jumper, Coat
Sam- Jeans, Jumper and Coat
We thought this would be an affective way to show the different days and it would emphasise the fact that some shots are from the past and some are present. This will show the boy's memorys of before in the summer with his 'ex girlfriend'.
Now we have decided on the band's clothing we needed to choose the best people for the roles. As we have chosen to make a music promo for the indie genre we thought it would be a good idea to stick to the stereotypical style of an indie band. We want our audience to straight away recognise that our band is an indie band, not only through the music style but also through the way they look. It is also vital that we choose actors that we know we can rely on so that we don't end up being let down by them on occasions. We would need to choose people that we will be able to easily get on with so that we can all work well together to get everything done on time.
For the band actors we have decided to use;
-Jake Horton- Guitarist- We chose this actor to play the guitarist as he already knows how to play this song on guitar so when we film him in our video it should really look like he is actually playing it without us editing it too much.
-Sam Harvey- Base- We chose sam to play base in our band as he is also in our media class and knows how important it is to get everything done on specific dates so we know for sure he will be reliable.
-Haydn McMaster- Drums- We chose this actor for this band member role as he already has experience in playing drums so he would know how to appear to be playing them in our music promo. This would help us be able to make our band performance look more realistic and effective.
-Matt Bailey- Lead singer- We have decided to not have the lead singer playing the guitar also as we felt it would be difficult for him to be doing both as we want to focus more on h8is lip syncing rather than his performing with instruments.
Band Clothing Our previous research gave us an idea on how the band like to dress, however we thought it would be worthwhile to research this further to help us shape and form our own band for our video. It is important that we dress our actors so that they appear appealing to our audience. Below are a few pictures of the band, showing their style of dress in their music videos and out of them.
Here you can see that the band are dressed fairly smartly and similar, this shows that they are close as a band as they are dressing the same. This also created the idea that the are professional. This picture shows the band dressing similarly to how they dress in their music videos. They way this band dress has inspired us to make our actors dress in a smart fashion in our music promo as we feel this will look more appealing to the target audience rather than them wearing casual clothes. We want to make our actors look as appealing as possible to ensure that the viewers enjoy the video and like the look we are trying to portray with out band.
In order to help us plan our outfits we decided on a main look that we wanted to achieve with our band actors. We want them to dress in; Smart shirts Tie (Optional) Blazers and Smart Trousers. We have decided that we aren't going to be specific on colours of outfits. This is because viewers may find this a bit boring and we want our band members to stand out quite a bit so that they look even more appealing to the target audience. We will obviously be dressing our other actors playing the story of our video in a different style of clothing.
Now we have a clear idea of which genre music we are using and we have carried out a bit of artist research we can start planning aspects of our music promo. The research we have looked at so far has shown us the types of techniques that the artists use in their videos and has given us ideas for our own. During this piece of research we also began to identify how the band has been formed. The band is made up of five members;
- Lead Singer
- Rhythm Guitarists and backing vocalist
- Lead guitarist
- Drums and percussion.
For our video we plan to create a band that will be made up of actors from our sixthform that are of similar age to us and our target audience. We have planned to use four actors to make up our band. We will have one playing drums, another singing whilst playing guitar, the third playing rhythm guitar and the last will also be playing guitar.
As well as the band members we will also be using other actors to help create our story for the narrative side to our video. We will be requiring 3 actors. We are planning to create the story of a boy that has recently broken up with a girl and is now in another relationship with another individual. However when he is with this new girl, all he can think about is his ex-partner. This relating to the main chorus of the song 'But when I looked at her I thought of only you'. This idea will help us create our narrative video. By creating a kind of 'love story' this will also help us relate to the whole meaning behind this song (Different stages of love). We will need one boy actor and two girl actors to play the roles of these characters.
We hope to use a variety of different locations to set the scene for our video. However we want to try and make sure these locations link in with one another effectively. We will also be using a variety of different sets of clothing for our actors to show that some events features in the video are in the past and present.
We thought that it would be worthwhile to create a risk assessment so that before we started to film our shots we were aware of all of the possible risks that could occur. This could help us to plan to prevent them so that we can film successfully and safely. Our risk assessment is shown below.
After our research into our target audience we have a good fixed idea on exactly who our target audience is going to be. We will be targeting it at both boys and girls as we have identified that both genders like You Me At Six and both fit into the indie scensters category. We will be targeting people within the age range of 15-20 as again we identified that these were the age ranges of the people that are interested in the bands music. Now we needed to think about how exacty we are going to target them with our work.
Firstly as we are aiming at both genders we need to ensure our story is suited for boys and girls. We need to make sure that both can relate to it. Even though we are planning to create a kind of love story due to our research telling us that this is the kind of thing people expect to see in this kind of video, will will make it so that it is not aimed more at girls. We can do this by ensuring that the story can be something that could happen to both genders. A good way to target the girl audience though is to use Goodwin's theory of using a lot of close up shots of the band as this is something they will want to see.
Also, by identifying what fashion labels the target audience is interested in we can link this to our video by making good choices on what our actors wear. It would be a good idea to have them wearing things from the fashion labels that influence them as they are likely to recognise the styles of clothing we will be showing them and are likely to be influenced by them. For example we could have our girl actors wearing clothes from topshop etc. Also we have identified that one of You Me At Six's band members have their own clothing line known as 'Cheer up' clothing. If we have one of our actors wearing this, the fans of You Me At Six and our target market are likely to recognise this brand which will keep them interested in our video.
We can also aim at our target audience through our websites. As we know some of the other icons and artists that our target audience are interested in, we could maybe try to mention these somewhere on our website in order to again draw in their attention to pages on the web.
Obviously, as You Me At Six's type of music fits into the style of music that indie scensters listen to they are also targeting it at this sub culture tribe. However we thought it would be useful again to research further into the actual band's fans and audiences to help us to identify whether their music is targeted at any other types of audience.
We looked at their Facebook page to see the types of people that had 'liked' it. The image below shows this.
71 of my Facebook friends have liked the band's page. The majority of these people are age ranged between 15- 20 and are mixed genders. This can help give us a more fixed general idea of who exactly these indie scensters are (how old etc)
Because both boys and girls have liked this fan page it shows us that the band are targeting their music at both genders, however some of their videos suggest that they are targeting more to girls such as 'stay with me' as the girls are able to connect to the video more , romantically. Although we want to try and target our video at boys as well as girls so we are open to a much larger audience. We will try to create a story that both girls and boys can relate to.
We also thought it would be useful to see what other band's pages our Facebook friends had liked so we searched profiles to find this information out. We came across artists such as;
- The Klaxons
-Vampire Weekend
-30 Seconds to Mars
- Spank Rock
Three of the bands that we have come across here were mentioned in my earlier research into indie scensters. This again shows that some of these 71 friends are likely to fit into this sub-culture tribe.
As we have identified that these are the types of audience that we are going to be trying to target we thought it would be worthwhile for us to look into them further to gain more knowledge of them to help us be able to target them easier with our promo.
It is said that indie scensters exist thanks to the fashionable status of guitar music. In the indie scensters tribes there are significant role reversals with boys and girls both wearing tight fitting clothing such as skinny jeans and sporting over the top make-up with accessories that stand out. Scensters are also known to be festival goers. Indie scensters are affected by the constantly changing fashion and are currently being influenced by high street fashion labels including american apparel, Top shop etc. Some of their main icons include the Klaxons, Vampire Weekend and Spank Rock etc.
This information has helped show that my target audience is of both genders so we are targeting a larger audience with our promo. This information has also helped us understand how they dress and the types of fashion labels they are influenced by. We can use this information to try and target them specifically through the use of clothing etc that can be seen in our video. It is clear that this is the right target audience for our style of music promo and track as it is fashionable guitar music which is something they love.
Below are images from the internet to show the style of an indie scenster.
We also wanted to look into the indie scenster's media consumption. This could potentially help us when creating our websites. The image below shows that their highest media consumption is of the internet.
Because of this it is important that I target the audience effectively through the use of my website auxiliary task as these individuals are likely to use these kinds of websites for the latest news and updates on the artists they like to listen to. As I already know who their icons are I could mention these on this webpage somehow as well as the fashion labels they are interested in.
One of the most important aspects of this production is the target audience. It is vital that we are aware of who our audience is and how we can target them with our music promo and auxillary tasks.We can also use our questionnaire results to give us a clear understanding of what they would want and expect from our music promo to try to determine what type of audience they really are. As we are creating an indie music promo our target audience are obviously going to be interested in this kind of music. This therefore means that they will be able to recognize indie music promos when they watch them due to the style of video, what is displayed in them and the clothing of the artist etc. Later I will discuss how we have planned to target our audience through the use of clothing for one of our actors. Because of the style of music performed in our video, the target audience are likely to be 'indie' also. It is not likely that an individual that is a 'metal head' or a 'chav' is going to listen to or like this kind of music. A metal head is likely to prefer much more intense, darker and louder music, and a chav is more likely to prefer rap etc. Whereas indie music is usually associated with 'indie scensters' which I found out from researching the UK tribes website. This can be seen by the way that these types of individuals dress, they normally dress similarly to the artists that they listen to. I found this out when I asked one of the people that answered my questionnaire saying that the Maccabees were their favourite indie bands. I analysed the way he dressed and then looked at the bands style of dress and both were very similar.
Now we know what track we are going to base our music promo on we can focus on researching the artists. The track 'Crash' was created by a band known as You Me At Six and does not already have a music video. We thought it would be a good idea to look at the band's other tracks to get an insight into how they put their music videos together and the types of techniques used in each.
We also felt this would benefit us as it would help us identify how the band dress and work together. It would also show us how they place themselves in the videos. This would give us ideas on how we should dress our characters in the music video and how we should position our band actors.
The first track looked at was;
You Me At Six- Finders Keepers
This music promo consists mainly of different shots of the band members. It shows many close ups of eash of the artists which gives the audiences a view on the band's dress sense (Smart Casual). When watching this particular video and others also by the band we found that there is a lot of focus on the lead singer in the shots. There are establishing shots of the band however the lighting has been arranged to put most of the focus on the lead singer standing at the front of the location used leaving the rest of the band in shadows almost. We think this is an effective technique to use and will consider using this in our music video. The lighting has been arranged effectively throughout the video, we particularly liked the way the video starts off dark and dull but then brightens up as more of the band are shown in the shot. This again is something we may consider using in our promo. Another technique we also liked in this video was the use of slow motion effects.
This video clearly follows Goodwin's theory point of meeting the demands of the record label as it provides numberous amounts of shots of the band performing. This video is not as narrative as we are hoping our video will be so we will be taking into consideration using some of the techniques we enjoyed from this video as well as creating a narrative style for our own.
You Me At Six - Underdog
Again this music promo uses the technique of arranging the lighting so that the band are playing in 'shadows' and there is no real focus on them yet. As soon as the lyrics start the band are brought into focus as the lights turn on and you are provided with an establishing shot of the band. Once again after this shot you are provided with a close up of the lead singer, similarly to the previous video we looked at. This again is following Goodwin's theory by meeting the demands of the record label. Once again we are beginning to get a real idea of how the band are dressed in their videos and how they position themselves as a band when they are performing with their instruments. This video is also more narrative as it is telling a short story which is something we will be including in our promo.
Another thing we also noticed from this video was that the age of the actors featured in it. They appear to be in the age group of the band's target audience of around 14-20 years old. This would mean that it allows the audience to be able to relate to the story being told in the promo. Because of this it would also mean that the actors may seem more appealing to the target audience. This is something we want to happen with our music promo so we will be asking people that are a similar age to us to appear in our video. This idea will help us appeal more to our audience and target them better as our audience will also include people of around the same age as us.
You Me At Six- No one does it better
This particular music promo goes for a slightly different approach to the two previous ones we have looked at. It does not include many shots of the band performing with their instruments but rather includes them more in the actual 'story' of the video this time. They may have done this to appeal even more to the audience and to meet the demans of the record label as you are still being provided with even more shots of the band members. This video again uses a lot of close ups of each band member. For this video they are also dressed slightly different. Instead of their usual 'smart casual' look they have gone for just 'casual'. This may be to express to the audience their many different styles of dress. They may not want their audience to get the impression that they dress the same all the time. This could express that they like to change their image now and again to appear 'different'. This could again be to keep the target audience interested in them. For our music promo it is important that we plan out how we want all of our actors to dress in order to look appealing to our own audience.
The pace of this song is fairly slow and mellow. There is a relationship between the visuals and the music. During the slow pace of the song there are slow edits and the motions used for the story of the video are also slow. For example the birds that fly across the screen are moving slowly and the actor in the shot with the bath is also doing the same. However when the song hits the chorus the shots speed up slightly to match the pace of the song. We think it would be a good idea for us to give ourselves the challenge of including a narrative style, meeting the record label demands and trying to create this music and visuals relationship for our own video. This will help us to gain more skill in filming and editing.
You Me At Six- Stay with me
We noticed that for the first two videos we looked at the band had used similar locations and lighting. However in this video the band has gone for a completely different kind of location. The band appear to be performing in a small field like location. This setting uses bright colours instead of the dull dark colours used in many of the band's other promos. As always the video uses lots (and lots and lots) of shots of the band members; meeting the demands of the record label and its audience. There is also a clear relationship between the music and the visuals. The pace of the song is fast which matches the quick paced shots that are used when the song hits the chorus.
This video seems to show many shots of the bands and their instruments which is something myself and my other group member really liked about this video. We want to consider using close up shots of our band actors and their instruments for our video. We thought this was an effective way to show them performing.
After viewing these tracks by our chosen artists, we have decided on the sorts of techniques we want to try to include in our music promo. The videos have helped us to come to the conclusion that we want to provide our audience with many shots of our band performing, this will make our video more appealing to them as we have realised that it is a good idea to use actors that are of similar age to ourselves and our target audience. These videos have also helped us identify that it is also an effective idea to ensure there is a good clear relationship between the visuals and music so that everything runs smoothly together at similar pace. The videos have also started to give us an idea on how the band shape themselves and the ways in which they dress. We will carry out some further research to get a clearer understanding of the band and how we should create our own.
Now we have researched and decided on a genre of music and we have a clear idea of who our target audience is and what they expect and want from our video we can start to research different tracks to help us decide which one to choose. From our questionnaire we have an idea on which artists to research as these are the bands that the audience said are their favourites. The artists we decided to research were; The Maccabees You Me At Six General Fiasco Foster The People The first track we looked at was; The Maccabees - Love you better
The whole of this video contains shots and close ups of the artists in the band and their instruments. There is no relationship between the lyrics and the video so therefore it is not narrative. However if we were to make a video for this we would ensure the lyrics create a story with our video. The many close ups allow the audience to familiarise with the band members and their dress sense. The track is fairly fast paced and speeds up as it hits the chorus. Some of the edits have also been done to match the pace of the song. However as there is already a video for this song we felt that if we were to take ideas from it the two videos may look too similar. You Me At Six - Crash
This track does not already have a video for it so this would be a good song for us to choose as we would not be tempted to copy parts of it too much. This song is a fairly slow paced song that speeds up on the chorus. The lyrics in this song talk of a love story. We researched the meaning behind this song and the information we got was that it is about how someone can have such a big impact on your life. The information said that each verse was a different stage of love. General Fiasco - Ever so shy
This song is fast paced and the video focuses on the band members. It uses a lot of close ups of each band member. The shots have been matched up to the pace of the song. However we felt this song did not create a love story as well as the previous tracks could. Foster the people - I would do anything for you
This song is moderately paced and does not already have a music video created for it. We also felt the lyrics to this song could also create a good love story for our video. After researching these tracks we felt that the best one for us to create a music video for would be You me at six - Crash. We came to this conclusion firstly because it was one of the tracks that did not already have a video for. So this would mean we would not be at risk of copying too many ideas from it. We also liked the pace of this song as we felt all of the others were too fast and a lot of our edits and shots are going to be quite long whereas the shots on the other videos were very quick edits. As we also wanted to create a video that was going to be narrative and would tell a love story we felt that this song was most suitable for this as the lyrics and meaning behind the song are based on this idea. This is also a song that me and my group member really like and we are also fans of the band so we felt that this would help us understand how to dress the characters in our video and we would also therefore enjoy making a video to this particular song.
For part of our research we decided to undertake a questionnaire to help us understand exactly what our target audience wants and expects from our indie music video. Firstly we want to know if the audience actually enjoys this genre of music so this will be the first question on the survey. Our questionnaire will hopefully help give us more ideas on how to make our music video more appealing to the audience. To make our questionnaire more effective we decided to incorporate the points in Goodwin's theory into our questions. This will help us to identify whether or not they prefer a video that is narrative or one that involves live footage of the artists performing etc.
The questions we included were;
Do you enjoy listening to the indie style of music?
What do you expect to see in music videos of this genre?
Do you like these videos to be narrative? (To tell a story)
What kinds of stories do you like to see in an indie music video?
Do you like to see a lot of close ups of the artists?
Do you enjoy indie music videos that contain live footage of the artists performing, e.g. in concerts?
Does the idea of intertextual reference interest you? (Do you like videos that are based around T.V shows or films)
What kinds of films would you expect an indie video to be set around?
List two of your favourite indie artists.
Below is a picture of the questionnaire that we handed out to people within the age range of our target audience.
Below is a picture of our questionnaire that has been filled out and answered.
We collected all of the results in and all of the answers to the first question were 'yes'. This information is useful to us as it shows that our target audience are interested in indie music and do enjoy listening to it. This shows us again that we have chosen the right genre to base our video around.
A lot of the answers to the second questions were things such as couples and love stories. This helps us understand what type of theme the audience expects to see in our music video. It is important that we include this kind of idea in our indie video so that it appeals to the audience.
The results from the third question also showed us that the audience like the videos to be narrative and tell a story. We have decided we are going to include this in our video so it is important that the song we decide to choose has lyrics that are not too difficult to make a story out of. We will need to make sure that there is a clear relationship with the lyrics and our video.
We asked them what kinds of stories they like indie music videos to tell and the majority of the answers were 'love stories'. This again links back to the results in our second question. When researching the indie genre we did find that a lot of these videos told this particular type of story. As the audience have said they would expect to see couples in the video it will definitely be a good idea for us to create a love story for our track. Someone said the would like to see a scary story told however we felt this was not suitable to this genre and felt it fit more into the rock category.
We also asked the audience if they would like to see a lot of close ups of the artists as this would be helping us meet the demands of the record label. The results showed that everyone answered 'yes'. This shows that the audience do enjoy these types of shots of the artists so this is something will will definitely be including in our video. As we will be providing close ups of the artists we want to make sure that we choose people to make up our band that are going to be fairly good at lip syncing so that our video looks professional.
A lot of the audience said they don't enjoy live footage of the artist being included in the music videos so this is something we will not be including in ours. We also decided not to do this as we would find it difficult to find a location that would create the live footage image. The audience also said they didn't want to see any intertextual reference in the video so this again is something that we will not be incorporating into our video. To follow this question we also asked what kinds of films they would like to see in the video if they were to say yes to the previous questions. The majority answered 'love story'. A lot of the questions link together on the idea of involving couples and a love theme so this is definitely what we are going to do with our video. We will be creating a love story that fits the lyrics of the track we decided to choose.
Finally we asked them to list two of their favourite indie artists to help us know who to research when deciding on what track to choose. The artists that were listed were ones such as,
The Maccabees
You me at six
Foster the people
General Fiasco
and others. We will be researching tracks made by these artists to help us decided on which one will help us create our love story the best.
Before we could start planning our music video we needed to decide on a song to base it around. This song needed to be either 10 years old or not already have a video created for it. We also needed to decide which genre of music we were going to use. To help us decide on a genre and song for our video we researched a few different genres each with their own target audience. It is vital that when we do decide on a genre we learn about this type of target audience and work to make a video appealing to them. We decided to research three different genres, these being; Indie Rock Pop We felt these would be useful genres to research as myself and my group enjoy each of these genres so if we were to choose one of them we would definitely enjoy making the video for this style of music. This would also make it easier for us when finding a song we want to use. We also felt that researching these would help us as we could take ideas from these to help us understand what is required of ours. We decided it would be most useful to research a song from each genre to help us get a clear idea of how the filming and editing is used in each. Indie The music video decided to research for this particular genre was: The Libertines - Don't look back into the sun. I chose to look at this video as I feel it clearly demonstrates a point in Goodwin's theory as it uses shots of its live set in its music video. This is something that me and my other group member found a lot of indie bands did. This video also uses a lot of close ups of the band members which is usually done to meet the demands of the record label. Again this idea is used in a lot of indie songs music videos so if we do decide to choose this particular genre this is something we should also consider doing. This video also uses a lot of quick paced shots to make up the video. This is to emphasize the fast tempo of the song. The characters in parts of this video are also dressed the same which adds a professional feel to the band. Myself and my group partner thought if we did choose this genre it would be a good idea to dress our characters that we choose for our band in the same types of clothing. This idea can also help the target audiences identify the arrtists dress sense which will then help them to familiarise with them even more and get to know them better. If my group was to decide to choose indie as the type of genre for our video I feel it would benefit us as we are both really into this kind of music so this would make it a lot easier for us to decide on a particular track that we would base our video on. This would save us a lot of time. We also found a lot of ideas that are used in many indie music videos that we would like to incorporate into ours. The link for this video can be found below;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLYsIESNtUc Rock The video decided to research for this particular genre of music was: Foo Fighters - All my life. This video focuses its filming on the band performing with their instruments. Again it is meeting the demands of the record label as it is providing you with lots of close up shots of the artists. This video provides you with fairly long shots of the artists playing their instruments and singing which myself and my group feel is a good idea that we may consider using in our video. This particular style of genre is usually set in a dark setting with the artists wearing dark clothes to emphasize the idea of rock. For this particular video there is also a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. The video provides you with shots that flow with the tempo of the song. When the track begins to speed up the shots get quicker. This is also something that my group thinks would be a good idea to incorporate into our video. This video also uses the idea of footage from a concert. They have set their video up to be like them performing in one of their concerts. However this footage foes not seem to be live. They begin the video with a shot of the sign saying "Foo Fighters, in concert tonight". This again is following the points of Goodwin's theory by using the location of their concert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ04WbgI9rg Pop
The video that I have analysed for the pop genre is Katy Perry - Last Friday Night. I decided to research this particular song as I felt it clearly represented Goodwin's theory as their is a relationship between the lyrics and the video. This song is very narrative. The song talks about having a crazy party last friday night and that is exactly what is going on in the video. This video is typically pop as it creates the common theme of a party involving lots of bright colours, young people dancing around and love. This pop video is also over the top which seems to be the case with many songs of this particular genre. Pop songs commonly use the idea of iconography by each having the same style theme and setting.
This video as well as many other pop music videos seems to use many extras to dance around in the background to make up the crowds in the parties. However this is something that my group may not be able to do as we will find it difficult to find this many people to participate in our video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A
After researching each type of genre we have come to a decision. We have decided that it would be most suitable for us to choose to make a video for the indie genre. We have decided firstly not to choose the pop genre for our coursework because we felt these types of videos were too over the top and typical. Pop videos also have too many extras and this is something that is not possible for us to do. However we will be taking the idea of making our video narrative as we feel this will help us to create a good story for our video and it will be less difficult.
We also decided not to choose the rock theme as we thought this was too heavy and dark for us. A lot of rock artists also use live footage in their videos and this is something that we decided we didn't want to do with ours.
We thought the indie genre was the best one for us as myself and my other group member enjoy this style of music the most. A lot of indie videos also use a lot of close up shots of the artists which is something we thought worked really well. We will be finding people to play the band in our music video to lip sync the songs well so our video looks more professional. We will need to do this as most indie songs are sung my males and myself and my group are both females so we will need to find someone to fit the part.
We also found that this particular genre has the target audience of 15-30. We have also decided to use this as our target audience as our age range is included in this so we feel it will be easier as we will understand better what this audience wants and expects from our video. A way in which we could get a better insight into what this target audience want from our video is by using a questionnaire to identify what they like to see in an indie song music video. This will help us to make our video appealing to them.
For our media coursework myself and my group are required to choose which brief we would like to make. We could decide between either a music video or a movie trailer. We have decided we would like to create a music video as we feel we would work better with this style brief. This is because we have already had experience with filming a music video in our practice task which we feel will now help us with our final brief. We also felt that the research had influenced our decision towards this brief as we now have sufficient knowledge on what is expected from a music video.
Another reason for us choosing this brief is because we felt that it would be too difficult to come up with a script for a movie trailer and we felt that creating one would have taken up a lot of our time. We felt it was easier to just stick to lip syncing in a music video. Myself and my group also love every kind of music and know we will enjoy getting to make our own video for a song that we both enjoy.
For my portfolio I will be blogging each step taken in the process of making our video and completing the two auxillary tasks that are required of us. These two tasks are;
A creation of the cover of the CD track
A creation of an advertisement in a magazine for this CD
Now we have looked at music videos we are going to analyse a movie trailer to help us decided on which brief to focus our own work on. We thought this would be beneficial to us as it will give us a clearer idea of the types of things that need to be included in both a music video and a film tailer, which will then help influence our decision towards a particular one.
This video has been created in a way that increases the intensity and excitement as it goes on. At first the shots are slow and long lasting but as the trailer goes on the shots and clips get faster and shorter that creates a pace that builds your excitement up and quickly makes the whole thing more intense. If myself ad my other group member were to choose to create a movie trailer this may be something that we should consider to help create interest quickly. This film trailer gives you a good overview of the film. Straight away you are introduced to the main character and the other actors that are filmed a lot also. This shows the audience who they can expect to see throughout the rest of the film. This particular movie trailer does not use a voice over to explain the story but instead character dialogue. This in a way could give you the idea that you are hearing the story through the characters point of views. Even though you are introduced to what the 'Hunger Games' actually are, the video builds up to this event however to not give to much away it cuts off when you see the games start. This builds suspense helping influence the audience to watch the real movie. To create a movie trailer like this you would have to have a rather high budget as you can tell this from the professional actors/actresses and the locations and pieces of equipment used. If we were to choose this brief we would have to think about our location very carefully to make it look more professional.
During one of our media lessons we were given a practice filming task. This was given to us to help us prepare for when we start filming our coursework. We were all put into groups and then given a song to which we would make a music video for. The song myself and my group were given was Dolly Parton 9-5. This was a song that me and my group were fairly familiar with which we felt would be of an advantage to us. The main point of this task was to help us practice with filming shots and editing them into a full video. This task would also help influence our decisions on which brief we would choose; either a music video or a film trailer.
Firstly before we started filming it was important for us to plan exactly what we were going to film, where and when. As a group we listened to the song a few times over to get even more familiar with it and to help us learn the lyrics better so that if we were required to use lip syncing in our video we would find it easier to do so. We decided to search youtube to see if the artist already had a video for this song to see if we could take a few ideas from this to help us with ours. However the only videos we found were live ones in which she was performing on a stage for a large crowd. Although we noticed that she used props such as desks which fit in well with the theme of the song. This idea helped us to come up with the location for our video. We decided the best place to record was in the school itself as this was convenient for us and as it is in a work environment this would also help set the scene and link to the lyrics in the song. By using the school as a setting this would also help us keep this video fairly simple as this was something we wanted to do as we had not filmed this kind of footage before.
We brainstormed and made small storyboards to help us lay out how we were going to record the video. The brainstorm included the types of shots we wanted to use, who was going to be in each shot and what role they would be playing in the video. By assigning roles in the video this helped us to stay organised.
As a group we decided that as mentioned in Goodwin's theory we wanted to make our video narrative so that the video had a clear relationship with the lyrics. We decided we would do this by including shots of people hard at work. On our storyboard we included the lyrics to various parts of the song and drew a small sketch of what would be happening during this time. To make our video as narrative as possible, during the time where Dolly sings "I swear this man is out to get me", we decided to include a shot of a woman at work getting told off by her boss.
We also decided that we would use the lip syncing idea. We had one of our group members mouth the words while two of us sat beside her and danced to keep up with the fast tempo of this song.
As this was only a practice task I feel our group worked well together to produce our final video. Each one of us contributed ideas and everyone was happy to take part in the making and editing of the videos . We made sure as a group that everyone participated equally which helped us not waste any time and we managed to produce our video in around a week. It took us a while to get the hang of editing the shots and putting them all in the right order but after a while of experimenting with it we managed to pull it all together nicely. Now I have done this practice task I feel I have more experience in filming and would have less difficulty producing my coursework.
Below is the final video created by our group for Dolly Parton's 9-5. The video has also been uploaded to youtube.
Goodwin's theory can be used as a good effective way of analysing music videos. The six points can be identified in any music video and I will use the theory to analyse videos of my choice. I have blogged below the videos I have analysed.
1. Weezer- Buddy Holly
This particular video depicts the theme of the band members singing on a stage within a small america diner. The same diner that was a hit setting in the old well-known television show 'Happy Days'. The sixth point in Goodwin's theory talked about intertextuality being use within a video. I feel this video clearly demonstrates the idea of this as it is creating a parodic view on the old show. The video starts with a reporter talking about the band members performance, so it is giving the impression that they are performing their song on this show. During the video you also hear the phrase "stay tuned for more Happy Days" which again shows that the artists are mocking the show. The video also includes the laughing of audiences which is commonly used for television shows and ends with conversation. This video also meets the demands of the record label as it provides you with many close ups of each member in the band, and the main focus of the video is the band itself which the audience is sure to want to see a lot of in the video.
2. Usher- Love in this club
This particular R&B music video demonstrates the first point I listed in Andrew Goodwin's theory. It shows that the same genres of music do include iconography in their videos as many have very similar themes. Usher's video contains the typical situation of the artist in a club scene surrounded by beautiful women paying attention to them. In this video there is also voyeuristic treatment of the female body. As it is set in a club scene there are many women dancing around in small amounts of clothing that is drawing in a lot of attention. This idea is again used in many other R&B music videos. This video also shows a link between the lyrics and the theme of the video as it says "make love in this club" and the actual video itself is set in a club. There are also a lot of close-ups of the artist which shows it is meeting the demands of the record label.
3. Michael Jackson- Thriller
I chose to analyse this video as I felt it clearly demonstrated the point in Goodwins theory of the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. You can identify straight away that the theme of this music video is going to be horror due the name of the track. Because of this identification you expect to see thrilling images throughout and that is exactly what this video gives you. The close ups in this video play an important part on representing the thrilling lyrics of this video. The close ups are used to show the change between when the artist is normal and when he turns into the monster. The close ups help show the visual change which has relevance to the lyrics of the track. There is clear relationship throughout the video between the lyrics and the video itself, the lyrics clearly demonstrated by the theme of the video are ones such as ''it's close to midnight, and something evils lurking in the dark" and "Cause this is thriller, thriller night, and no ones gonna save you from the beast about to strike". The video is very narrative as a lot of the terrifying things mentioned in the lyrics are happening in the video. There is also a link between Michael and his dance routines as he makes them very unique in every one of his videos.
Andrew Goodwin published the book known as 'Dancing in the Distraction factory' in which he mentions six points on how to analyse music vidoes. I will use this theory to help me analyse two music videos of my choice.
His Theory;
1. The music video demonstrates genre characteristics for example stage performances in rock videos and dance routines.
2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the videos.
3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals. (Amplifies, contradicts, illustrates)
4. Demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artists and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. (A visual style)
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens with screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
6. There is often intertextual reference. (Films and TV programs)
