ambersA2musicvideoblog

Previous students work

2009-05-07T10:02:00.000-07:00

http://learning.chalfonts.bucks.sch.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=5508

This is the source I used to analyse previous students work.

Storyboard

2009-05-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

Treatment

2009-05-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

This is the treatment I created after completing my research and planning

During my research I found out many key things. The first was through analyzing other music videos, the typical genre characteristics which I found in all of these videos were all the frames were very short and the whole video was very fast paced, along with this there were a variety of different shots, such as tilts and pans. The next key characteristic of this genre that I found was that in a lot of video’s dark colors were used to match the sinister tone of the lyrics, therefore I am going to try and use this sort of lighting conditions in my video. Another key genre characteristic of the video was that the bands were very lively; this added excitement to the videos and helped to establish a band image. I have also come to the conclusion from my audience research that I am going to use both a narrative character and a band to keep the audience entertained and excited. Instead of having a large routine I will use a narrative character who will have storyline relevant to the lyrics of the song, to contextualize the lyrics.

Research review

2009-05-05T04:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a summary of how my research helped me.

During my research I found out many key things. The first was through analyzing other music videos, the typical genre characteristics which I found in all of these videos were all the frames were very short and the whole video was very fast paced, along with this there were a variety of different shots, such as tilts and pans. The next key characteristic of this genre that I found was that in a lot of video’s dark colors were used to match the sinister tone of the lyrics, therefore I am going to try and use this sort of lighting conditions in my video. Another key genre characteristic of the video was that the bands were very lively; this added excitement to the videos and helped to establish a band image. I have also come to the conclusion from my audience research that I am going to use both a narrative character and a band to keep the audience entertained and excited. Instead of having a large routine I will use a narrative character who will have storyline relevant to the lyrics of the song, to contextualize the lyrics.

Questionaire results

2009-05-05T04:53:00.000-07:00

These are the results from my questionaire.

5) For question 5, “How often do you watch indie, rock, punk or metal music videos”, the results were as following:
Occasional – 1
Once a month – 2
Fortnightly – 0
Once a week – 3
Every day – 3

This shows that out of my target audience 50% of them watch this genre of music video frequently; therefore the results are going to be quite useful and some of the answers are going to be quite reliable.

6) For question 6, “which of these do you think plays the biggest role in making a good music video”, the results were as following;
Music – 9
Pace – 1
Plot – 1
Setting – 2

From this it was pretty obvious that the music was the most important thing in a music video. This therefore was fine for me as the band I am using is up and coming and features in Kerrang magazine (currently the best selling rock music magazine). As every one of them was chosen by at least one person this shows that they are also an important factor in making a successful music video.

7) Question 7, “Describe the look of characters featuring in an indie thrash or rock music video”, plays a large part in helping me to create an authentic thrash indie music video. In order to do this I need to use characters which fit along the lines of “long hair”, “confident” and “good looking”. For the music video they possibly need to be dressed in “black clothes”, “skinny jeans”, and “leather jackets”

8) For question 8, “Would you prefer there to be a storyline in a thrash indie or rock video instead of a routine with as large number of characters”, the results were:
Yes – 70%
No – 30%

This confirms the choice that I want to use a storyline in the music video; I think this is because it keeps the audience watching and it doesn’t become too mundane unlike watching just the band.

9) Question 9 was “Which would you like to see in a thrash indie or rock music video?” The results were as following:
Narrative – 0%
Band – 30%
Both – 70%

From this I have decided to use both in my music video; however I will put a bigger emphasis on the band as nobody wanted to see a narrative character on their own for the whole video. Also, some people just wanted to see the band therefore if I use more of the time for the band then my video will appeal to a wider range of my target audience.

Questionaire

2009-05-05T04:50:00.000-07:00

Questionnaires

Before conducting my audience research I had to discover who my genre’s target audience were. I found this out by using the media resource,” MySpace”, by looking at the band’s webpage and viewing fans profiles to find out the age groups. I then targeted 15-17 year olds in my questionnaires as I found that this was the age group which listened to this style of music most frequently.

Here is the questionnaire I created and handed out in order to gain an understanding of what my target audience wanted and expected in a music video.

Music Questionnaire
Please would you spare a few minutes to help me research into music video preferences for my AS project?

1) Name___________________________
2) Gender: male / female
3) Age: ____

4) Do you ever watch thrash indie, rock, punk or metal music videos? Yes / No

5) i) If yes, how often?

Occasionally Once a month Fortnightly Once a week Everyday

ii) If no, why not? _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________

6) Which of these do you think plays the biggest role in making a good music video?

The music The pace The plot The setting

6) Do you prefer the action in the music video to match the lyrics? Yes / No

i) If no, why not?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

7) Describe the sort of narrative characters would you expect to find in a thrash indie or rock music video?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

8) Would you prefer there to be a story line in a thrash indie or rock video instead of a routine with a large number of characters? Yes / No

i) If no why not?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9) Which would you like to see in a thrash indie or rock music video?

A narrative character The Band Both

Thank you for taking the time to fill out this questionnaire. Please tick yes no if you want to evaluate the music video at a later stage.

Yes No

Brief & Proposal

2009-05-05T04:46:00.000-07:00

Here is the brief and original proposal from the begining of the project

AS Brief: Film
To create the opening sequence of a new thriller, including the titles, aimed at a 15 or 18 certificate audience (approximately two minutes duration)

A2 Brief: Music Video Production
To create a music video for a song (approx 5 minutes in duration)

The main difference between the AS and A2 brief is that the medium has now changed from a film to a music video. Creating a music video means that we can now choose our target audience therefore allowing a lot more creativity to be put into the video. With the A2 project we now have control over the style of video we want to produce however it must correspond with the music genre. Unlike the AS project we also have to use lip syncing which will require the ability to edit the video with good timing. Many previous existing thriller openings just used a traditional film; however with the A2 project we now have the freedom to choose what format we create the video with, whether it is flash animation, stop frame animation or even documentary style. With the A2 project we have also reduced group sizes to pairs or individual work, this allows us to have greater responsibility for our own work unlike our AS project.

Proposal
I have decided to create a music video for my piece of coursework. I have chosen this area because I am highly interested in a variety of music and feel it would be more of a challenging project to work on. For my music video I was considering using a screamo indie song as it would appeal to a variety of audiences and this genre would also provide me with a lot of ideas and influences. For this genre I was also contemplating using a character instead of a band as it could provide me with a larger diversity of settings.

My progress

2009-03-10T04:16:00.000-07:00

Since the start of my music video project, I have not only developed the locations, I have also gained a better understanding of editing pace and scene choice. The location choice in the beginning seemed as though it would suit the style of the video, however after creating my first anamatic, I found that the setting wasn’t appropriate to the chosen genre of music video and gave me a limited amount of room to film in. The shoot in a more urban location developed the authenticity of my music video and allowed me to progress other ideas on location. One of these ideas was to change the time of day, the second scene was no longer filmed in daylight as the location may not have fitted well with the codes and conventions of the rock genre, so being filmed at night made a significant improvement.

From this my ideas for the plot of the music video progressed slightly. I realised that with the new settings and lightings, the video was becoming more serious and for the narrative character to realise that the whole video was a dream wouldn’t fit with the rest of the video anymore.

Getting a band together with a crowd took a lot of organization with people, however not enough preparation was put into it on the day, so I ended up with no drum kit and the location not looking as it should have done therefore making little progress. From this I learned to give more time to the preparation on the day of the shoot so that I don’t have to waste time re-shooting it to make it look more professional. In the process of editing my first band footage, I realised that the frames weren’t fast paced enough, therefore slowing the video down and making it look less like a rock video. After re-shooting and getting more footage I was then able to shorten the frames and use a larger variety of shot choices which was a great success in bringing me up to the stage where my rough cut looks more professional.

Band scene

2009-01-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

Tommorow night I am planning to shoot my band scene. I have found a bridge with lots of room under it, i have found a van to get the drum kit and large speakers there. It will be shot in the dark, whilst raining around the bridge, using 3 sets of car headlights to light the band...I hope it lights it well enough otherwise I will have to shoot it in daylight which wont look as good.

I have decided to not use a crowd as it's too hard to organize and the last crowd didn't give the right feel to the video. Also this way it will put more focus on the band themselves.

Then hopefully edit that footage thursday night and my music video will nearly be completed by friday and only a few minor things will need reshooting.

music video

2008-12-10T06:26:00.000-08:00

At the moment, the band scene in this video looks too much like it's pretending to be in gig, whereas i either need to make it look like it's a band playing at a house party, or a gig.

Also because there is only one narrative character it may look too boring, and it might not establish the plot enough, so i have got to incorporate another character e.g. the girlfriend, to show that the relationship has ended. This could be shown with her inside the house looking through the telecom at him. I could also put an interval in the song where she tells him that it is over, which could make it easier for the audience to understand the plot.

Filming

2008-12-03T06:28:00.001-08:00

After editing all of my first shoot I realised i needed a lot more clips and a wider variety of angles and depths, I hope to do this tomorow. On monday i filmed the band part of my video which i am currently editing, I got loads of footage of this just incase, however i think i need more shots of the crowd. I plan to shoot the 3rd scene tomorow.

Textual analysis of music video's

2008-12-03T05:55:00.000-08:00

The Darkness - I Believe in a Thing Called Love

The frames in this video were very long, which is unusual of a rock music video. The characteristics of the genre aren't shown through the setting, but the lead character is very stereotypical of a rock band. The word love is being constantly reinforced by both the sexual nature of the character and the mise-en-scene which is red to symbolize love. This video is mainly concept and perfromance based.

Airbourne - Too much, Too young, Too fast

This video has lots of pans and tilts, which gives a faster pace to the video, this is also helped by the amount of movement from the band and the short frames. The plain background gives the audience nothing else to focus on but the band, therefore making the video more performance based. There are a variety of shots used and a lot of close ups of the vocalist, however not so many of the rest of the band.

Audience research

2008-12-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

The qualitative data collected from my the questionaires confirmed my idea of what the characters in the band should look like. "Leather Jackets", "Emo fringe" and "Skinny jeans" are all characteristics which my band members need to have.

Audience research

2008-07-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

Today i completed my audience research questionnaires. I found lots of useful things, the main one is that people would like to see the band and not just use a narrative the whole way through. Next going to do a write up of the result and research into codes and conventions.

Filming

2008-07-11T07:01:00.000-07:00

I Had a rough idea to film a short 30 second music video to Greenday - Boulevard of broken dreams. The general idea was to get somebody to walk along a deserted road and get the to mouth the words using a lot of tracking shots. Unfortunately I did this on Wednesday and found it really hard, even though they were walking slowly I tried using a shopping trolley to track them, very wobbly! Then I tried using a skateboard, just as wobbly! So I scrapped that idea and came up with a new one to accompany the song Seize the day by Avenged Sevenfold. I started filming and editing this today. The filming went well and the lip syncing is good so far, however when editing i realized that i need more shots so i will do this A.S.A.P.

First Post

2008-06-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

This blog will be used to keep a diary of things that i think will help with our A2 projects.

ambersA2musicvideoblog

Similar Videos

Previous students work

Storyboard

Treatment

Research review

Questionaire results

Questionaire

Brief & Proposal

My progress

Band scene

music video

Filming

Textual analysis of music video's

Audience research

Audience research

Filming

First Post