What changed.

When we came to edit our work we came to the horrific realization that making a music video is actually really hard, we were constantly having to change and adapt our plan. Every action we undertook had lead to a re-think in order for it all to come together in the editing. It's because of this that our final piece will look different to the original plan. This was expected, however we were not aware of the extent.

Josh Frampton.

Josh Frampton, for those who don't know, is a member of the band Against the Tide from which we took our song.
We asked for his opinion on our album booklet, this is what he said; "It's something that most teenagers fantasise about. Being in a band and I feel very honoured to say that I was in one that, for the most part, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed writing the songs, I enjoyed the recording process but, above all, I enjoyed the live performing. I think we all did. Especially when we got the crowd involved with what we were doing. At every live gig we performed, we did a crowd jump in the middle part of a song called "Within Me" which always made us feel good I think. There's something about people actively jumping to something you've created. (Especially when, at one gig, the mass of people jumping in one room caused the building's fire alarm system to go off!) As for I Won't Die For You, Joe brought the song to a practice one day and I automatically fell in love with it. It was Joe's first major writing contribution to the group but i could tell it's potential when Joe first played the riff and taught us the rest of the track. It took us a little while to complete it due to a creative argument with part of the song but we managed it. I also had to re-write the lyrics due to Joe's original lyrics being near impossible and, well, lyrically....interesting. The lyrics in the chorus, however, are Joe's original lyrics so about 90% of the lyrics have been re-written. But it was always a fun song to play live and we always enjoyed doing it too which is important. It continues to be one of my favourite live songs and I even play it acoustically at solo gigs! But every band needs some kind of love song and this was ours. And that was fine because it was heart felt, passionate and technical. But above all, it was fun and that's what counts." -Josh Frampton [Vocalist for Against the Tide]

Being Creative.

As we are putting our film together we are finding new and different ways to edit and compose our video. An example of this is our choice of editing in the narrative; in a mid section we have decided to separate one shot into four different shot. Although all four of the shots are from the same angle we have changed the speed and continuity by cutting a second out of the video at three points. This effect is done in time with the beat of the music which we feel makes the video more immersive and therefore engage the audience more; this was an issue we identified with rock music video's in earlier posts.
 In addition, we feel that this better represents the theme of the video. The disjointed aspect of the music is reflected in the editing, instead of the smooth flowing video we have chosen to create discord and better reflect the music.
 A secondary reason for this particular edit is that the usual convention for music video's is that it flows faultlessly will little to no creativity, one shot flows to another and so on. As we doing a video for a Rock song we felt we should better reflect the Rock and Roll attitude, not conforming to various social roles, we feel this will again help us to connect to our target audience.
 The final reason for us to use this technique was to change a lengthy shot into various shorter shots with different editing styles between them, this makes the shot less dull and more interesting for its audience.

This was posted by : Scott, Hayden and Ian Murray.

Filming.

We have started to film and edit our final piece at last! At the moment the few clips we have recorded our looking very good. Also we have decided to start by working on our performance pieces first and we have some very good shots of the guitar but we also have some poorer shots regarding lip sinking. So consequently as a result of this we have decided to re-film quite a large proportion of the lip syncing shots as we need them to be absolutely perfect in order to create a convincing music video. We have discovered that finding actors and actresses is a problem, however we have actually found enough actors to form a convincing band so therefore we are just looking for an actress to play the part of the girl in the music video. Although overall so far our final piece is going pretty well =]

Posted by Scott and Hayden

Day One of Filming.

 So earlier today we started our first bit of proper media filming for our project. The footage we recorded was all performance based in the school music recording studio. Here are some pictures of us and our actors...
         

Posted by Scott and Hayden

Shot list.

Shot list.
This is a list of shots that we will use to assist us with our filming, just makes everything a bit easier!

shot no.                shot of...
1                           song title
2                           memories book
3                           close up, open book
4                           focus on first picture
5                           fade of black
6                           mid shot of room
7                           zoom into chest of draws
8                           guy answers phone
9                           rejection from girl
10                         zoom into picture frame
11                         picture become motion
12                         mid shot of band
13                         lower half of guitarist
14                         close up, singing
15                         drums
16                         pan through trees
17                         boy and girl shot
18                         wont hold hands
19                         guitar shot, close up
20                         jump onto bed, look at door
21                         zoom to door
22                         into picture
23                         guitar
24                         boy given flowers
25                         into a vase
26                         drums
27                         guitar
28                         singing
This will repeat in this order for the remainder of the screen time.
Published by Scott and Hayden.

Audience.

Our audience.

Our target audience for our production would be predominately pre-existing fans, however, we have considered that due to our song choice our fan base is going to be minimal. The band we have chosen (Against the tide) is a local, small time band, because of this the fan base will be small. To combat the small fan group we will also be trying to branch out and encourage a different and new audiences. 

 To accomplish this task we will be putting more conventions of heavy metal and rock into our video, our research has shown us two main contributors to the small fan base; they are as follows.

- The lack of identifiable content:

The song, however good, is not direct enough about its purpose, the song essentially is about loving someone who loves a girl whom doesn't love him back. We intend to make this message clearer, as our the age of the age of our fan base is mostly late teens and early adulthood we feel that this message will be easily received and better identified with. Overall we feel improving the main message will help increase our fan base.

- The non-existing video's:

For reasons unknown our band did not feel it was necessary to create a video, this then takes the music from a 3 dimensional platform to a 2 dimensional platform, the video gives life to the music and helps to involve and interest the audience.

Over all,

Our main audiences will be fans of the band and fans of the genre, we intend to draw in fans from the genre, whom may not know the band, using the video.

Published by Scott and Hayden.

Creating the artwork!!

Cover art.
For our CD cover we had the idea of a single red rose in front of a smashed mirror, we wanted this on a picture as this will fit in with the theme that we have already developed for our video.
  We also chose the rose as it will fit in with the idea of death in the video.
Process;
Firstly I purchased the mirror and rose, I also brought a second flower just in case.
The mirror then needed to be cleaned and shined and the rose needed to be pruned ect.
 After this I removed the mirror and took various precautions before I could smash the mirror, this included covering the mirror in various fabrics and taking it outside.

  On Once I had smashed the mirror, I then had to re-insert it into its frame and position it for the shoot. Unfortunately the mirror was to fragile an needed to be reinforced. To do this I used a large amount of super glue. This gave the mirror I bit more strength and meant that I could position it more easily.

Once the mirror was reinforced I built a platform for the rose, composed of some books and a black anti light mat. The mat is designed to stop glare of light bouncing of it, I chose this as I thought it would be a good contrast to the bright red of the rose.

Finally, I took photos of the rose in various positions in slightly different light levels until I found the best variables for a good image.
When in a low light with no flash I found that the colour of the rose is most prominent and therefore this is the set of variables I used for my final shots.

 This is the final four from the first photo shoot.
My personal favourite is the bottom left, however the top left is also good.




Photo shoot and post by Hayden.
Edited by Scott

Filming time has begun!

Lets Film!

As I am sure many of you will know, its summer holiday time in the great land of Britain. This means that our media group has been blessed with the opportunity to get all our filming for our music video done and ready ahead of the game.
Through the wonders of modern technology our group is isolating the best time period for our filming to take place, the actual filming is likely to occur over the 2,3 and fourth week of the holidays as we have determined that this is the best time for filming.
As our personal technology doesn't quite match that of our schools, individual and raw footage may not be uploaded in till a much latter date! This said we do still aim to have the raw footage done and on our YouTube account within the next month!

Deadlines are a b****!

This was posted by Hayden. (Obviously!)

Location.

Location.
Our location is likely to be Gillingham (Dorset) high street, a house, and various grass area's around gillingham.
Unfortunately we cannot be more specific about our location as it will depend on both weather conditions, daylight and availability.
We have chosen this area as it is easy to get to, two members of the group live there (Will and Scott), and as we know it well, we wont have to worry about locating it.
In addition, we have decided that traveling long distances with the amounts of equipment that we will have is not ideal. That said we are considering one trip to the beach for our final fire scene as we feel it would be most effective in a beach location. For this scene we would be using Sandbanks as the third member of our group lives there. (Hayden)

The reason for choosing some of the locations show vary.
For the image on the top left, we would use this location as we fell that it will connate a change in direction; a roundabout naturally meaning that one road can lead to various others, therefore hope that this will easily connate the idea of the relationships dynamic changing.

For the second photo we have decided that a beach will effectively signify a romantic couples walk. We will use this location to suggest that the couple should be happy and then again later at night we will film the fire scene as this will break the convention of happiness as as we have learnt, heavy metal/ metal groups like to break conventions in order to develop an image.

The last location has been chosen as it is away from the town, has some nice scenery and we think that this will maximise the concept of romance. This will make it more dramatic when or actor is rejected, adding to the concept in our story board.

The majority of filming, however, will take place inside of a house or local building. This we have chosen as it works well with our concept ideas  as well as developing a sense of isolation for our artists.


This was posted by Scott and Hayden.

Treatment - Our plan!

Treatment: 

• - Basic plan.
• For our plan we have constructed a drawn media piece to run along side the video, in the video you can see various parts of our idea laid out in the simplest possible way.
  The basic concept is as follows:
  A band member picks up and opens a book of memories, before one of the pictures becomes the moving image.
  In the image a phone rings and is answered before panning into another photo of the band playing, this then becomes the moving image.
  Next we see the same band member looking at an earlier version of himself being rejected by a girl.
  This causes him to jump into his bed and look at more pictures of the door, the camera then pans into a third picture.
  In this picture the boy is being given flowers, which he puts into a vase.
  This plan, however, is subject to drastic changes as we have failed to find an good female actress, we are therefore likely to make her presence more implied.
• - Location.
  Our location is Gillingham Dorset as this are accessible and appropriate for our music video. Specifically we will be filming by our local river and quiet benches and the train station, we will be using the train station as a main role in our video. The station will be used in order to show that our main protagonist is feeling lonely, the passing of large groups of people whilst our main character is on his own help to convey this.
• We will be using Gillingham High-street and some of the surrounding fields as we feel that this is an appropriate area for the music video, its moderately dark and doesn't have a large population  this will mean that we wont have much trouble with people in our background ruining our shots. In addition we both know Gillingham well and won't have any issues finding areas to match the atmosphere of our music. 
• - song/ lyrics.
  Our song is "I wont die for you" written by a local band "Against the Tide.
  We chose this song because we enjoy it, it represents our style of music and we know members of the band. This helps as we will be able to check things with them as we go.

This was posted by Scott and Hayden

Story one.

Our first story:

Here is our first story board,  it was constructed by Hayden and is only a drawn image at this moment. It will most likely be edited. This is just one of our ideas. This was drawn by Hayden. It is a basic plan for an idea. This is what we came up with so far.

Posted by Scott, Hayden

Concept Artwork

Concept Artwork:
So we researched a load of metal bands concept art and here is what we found...

This first bit of concept art is for Asking Alexandria's song "The Death of Me". This piece of art is very eye catching and shows quite a lot of information about the band, such as the Great Britain flag in the bottom right hand corner. Also it shows a member of the band, Ben Bruce, wearing their stereotypical metal clothing of black skinny jeans.This concept art is also an edited photo so it looks very clean. Also in the bottom left of the photo there is a skull which is often associated with rock/metal which is defiantly a very relevant image for our group to take into account as we are constructing a music video for a rock song so therefore we may want to include this kind of image in our own concept artwork.

This second bit of concept art is from an Asking Alexandria poster. It shows a zombie like skull with a cobra emerging from its mouth. Snakes are used quite a lot in Asking Alexandria merchandise so this is why it has also been used on this poster. Also the bands name is very eye catching at the top of the screen as it is highlighted by blood from the head and stands out due to it being andy murray yellow. So overall this piece of art portrays the artists music style as it contains classic images associated with rock and metal, such as skulls and snakes. The idea of skulls being included in concept artwork can be seen in concept art 1, however the general idea of horror-like images being used a lot can be seen in pretty much all metal concept artwork so obviously this is an idea that we need to take into account with our own project.

This third bit of concept artwork is from the front cover of Crown the Empire's album "The Fallout". This album is all about an apocalypse and therefore the artwork matches the feel of the album. This can be seen by the style of artwork which has been used, which is kind of cartoony but still realistic looking. The artwork shows a man standing hunched over whilst lava and fire spreads around the world he was used to. This artwork signifies the end of the world and the overall feel of Crown the Empire's album. This piece of artwork also corroborates with the idea of horror being used within metal concept artwork as the image of the apocalypse looks quite horrifying. As a band a lot of Crown the Empire's music is focused on evil and horror.

This fourth piece of concept artwork is from the front cover of Motionless in Whites album "Creatures". This album has a distinctive horror feel to it and this is furthermore portrayed by the album artwork. This artwork contains classic horror images, such as black crows, full moons and zombies. So overall this art directly relates to the bands music, as Motionless in White's music is largely influenced by horror stories and films which can be directly seen in the artwork chosen by the band for their album cover. This idea is also shown in many other pieces of metal concept artwork, such as Crown the Empire's and Asking Alexandria.

This final piece of concept artwork is yet again from Asking Alexandria, however it is from an advertisement for "A Prophecy" which is one of their main songs in their album "Stand up and Scream". This poster has been produced by their record label, Sumerian Records, and is advertising the fact that their newest songs music video will be released soon. During this music video it rains constantly which can also be seen in the poster as it is trying to promote and get people hyped up for it to come out. Here is the music video...

Posted by Scott
Edited by Hayden

An advert for Scott.

Please donate to this worthy cause!
Evidence that Media Studies can be fun!

Warning. This is a joke not a real donation. Any money we receive will not go to Scott but to our back pockets where we will spend it on all sorts of things to bully Scott with.

Song and lyrics.

Song and Lyrics.

So the song we are doing for our music video is by a local Progressive Rock band called Against the Tide. The song is called "I Wont Die For You." We chose this song over others as it had clear lyrics which was easy to understand. This is important as we can get a clear idea of what story we can put in our video to match the lyrics. The song type was the particular genre we were looking for. We were aiming for heavy metal/ rock and the song gave us what we were looking for. It also has a divined rhythm. We also know the band members so it was easy to get permission from them.

Here are the lyrics for the entire song...

You keep telling me that I am still confused
But I guess that's better than being abused
Fall asleep and fall inside a dream x2
Won't you look me in the eyes
Tell me why I have to die for you
Because I've been waiting for you
And all you did was stare through me

You keep telling me that I am still a tool
I might be many things but at least I'm not a fool
Fall asleep and fall inside a dream x2
Won't you look me in the eyes
Tell me why I have to die for you
Because I've been waiting for you
And all you did was stare through me

Won't you look me in the eyes
I don't see why I should have to die for you
Because I have waited for you
And all you did was stare

Won't you look me in the eyes
Tell me why I have to die for you
Because I've been waiting for you
And all you did was stare through me

Posted by Scott

Snow White's Poison Bite- "So Cinderella"- Music Video Analysis

Snow White - Music video analysis:

-Solely performance based.

-Uses green screening.

-The band are dressed in a stereotypical way for a metal band.

-Use of lighting- both darkness and the light.

-Lots of action shots of the band- when they play the guitar/sing.

-Band are not shown performing in front of an audience but alone.

-Lots of movement by the band- headbanging/jumping around.

-Focuses solely on the band instead of a storyline which could have been employed with the overall feel and narrative of the song.

-The band are dressed all in red- connotations.

-Camera focuses a lot on the lead vocalist.

-Camera switches a lot depending on who's singing/playing a key part of the song.

Posted by Scott [Fan Favourite]

We have a song!

Our Song:
After having waited two weeks for a response from Pierce the Veil we have given up, instead we have got a song from a local band instead. Our Media prof. insists that we wont need to ask the band as they are friends of his, so thumbs up to that! The song is also the type of genre we are looking for. We also liked the song which is a huge bonus!
Here it is

Against The Tide - I Won't Die For You 

In addition we have spoken to a member of this band, they are allowing us to use the song and we will soon be posting an official document to display this.

Posted by Hayden and Scott

Mood Board

Moodboard:

This is a mood board that contains a selection of images that inspire our style of music. It is a dark and gothic theme. It displays the type of music we are looking for. The storyboard contains a few bands we like. The storyboard shows horror and the type of image these bands show, in addition this demonstrates the genre of song we are looking for.

Posted and storyboard by Scott

The Green Screen results!

Green screening:
As you may know we have done a green screen practice yesterday, the results are a little bit of but overall we are happy with how everything worked out.
Here are the images from the practice.

 As you may be able to see, some of our equipment was a little temperamental, for the green screen's stand we had to use some tape to hold it together.
This problem, however, was very easy and fast to fix so overall we are not massively worried about setting it up when we are doing our final shots.

 A problem that we did encounter was using the computer programs. Editing the green screen out of the video was easy enough but replacing the background with another proved more difficult than we had anticipated. We ended up having to consoling with YouTube for help with the programs.






This is Rob, he was just a backup dancer.
Big thanks to Rob!!!

Posted by Hayden

Green screen practice.

Green Screening:
Ahead of filming for that final piece we want to get lots of practice in. Making sure we know how to use the equipment could mean the difference between success and failure.
 With this in mind today are going to be doing a green screen practice, we will hopefully be using a green screen for our final piece. As we have never used a green screen before, or even been set one up, we feel it purposeful to give it ago ahead of date.
   We will film onto the green screen and then edit it using Adobe After Effects CS5.5. as this is the best program that we have at our disposal.
Below are some pictures of our group getting the green screen out, we soon realised that it needed to be ironed or left to get less creased!

 In addition we noticed that it is very large compared to what we thought it would be!


This post is by Hayden...

Meet the Gang!

This is us:
Here we are, Scott Savage and Hayden Blake.

 Scott Savage

Hayden blake











Posted by the group

Andrew Goodwin's Media theory 2

Andrew Goodwin's 6 features of music video's:
In his book Dancing in the Distractions Factory Goodwin established 6 primary features.


1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.

This is suggesting that music video's will incorporate various elements that are there simply to establish the genre type of the artist and their music.
  When looking at multiple music video's it becomes clear that for different genres there are different signifiers. Examples of this include the large use of gold jewellery in pop video's such as Will.I.Am's "Feeling myself" video.
In addition, and more relevantly to our project, when observing various heavy metal music video's (the genre our group intends to adopt) various signifiers became very clear to us. We have broken these into categories, they consist of the following - Clothing - Instruments - Colour scheme - Mise en scene - We intend to use things from each of these categories in order to better establish our music video into the genre.
Examples of things we saw in these categories are as follows:
- Clothing-
Long dark over coats
Tight black, ripped jeans
Gothic hairstyles ie. long black hair
- Instruments-
Guitars (electric)
Drums
Little to no acoustic
-Colour scheme-
Black
Grey
Mostly just dark!
-Mise en scene-
Chains
Skulls
Crosses
Very gothic with connotations of religion.
2. The lyrics are represented with onscreen images.

This, unlike the first feature, seems less obvious in the music video's that we watched, the basic idea is that as the video will illustrate the lyrics as they are sung. On a basic level, if the artist is singing about a break up, you will be shown an image of a break up on screen.
  This is present in a large quantity of music video's and therefore we agree with the feature to some extent, however, this is not a constant law. This is to say, it doesn't always occur.
   In our music video we do intend to adopt this feature as we feel it is a safer bet than trying to be overly abstract, trying to force levels of creativity that we don't naturally have seems more damaging than beneficial. Sticking with the feature is not by any means easier, overcompensation or being to literal with the representation can also be highly damaging to the video. this said we have to try and discreetly match the lyrics with the visuals onscreen.

3. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music.

This one I feel is very simple, if the atmosphere of the music is dark and aggressive (much like the music we intend to use) the video must reflect this. If we were to create a bright and happy video for a dark song it would be pointless, even trying to be ironic is dangerous as if this is not clear the video just wont make any sense.
 The artist will usually have a rough idea of what they want, knowing what they want to connote helps to develop the video as every detail can be approved before it is compleated. An example of this is Will.I.Am's "This is love" video shoot in which various details are checked several times before being filmed in order to insure that both the artist likes them and that they suit the music.

4. The demands of the record label will include lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop a sort of style that will become individual to them.

Most video's that we have watched demonstrate this very clearly, almost every video will at some stage have a close up of the artist looking dreamingly into the distance. In addition we have noticed that a large amount of artists have a signifier that separates them from other well known artists. This however, is a lot more common for pop artists such as Gaga and her "fashion" or Miley Cyrus's twerking.
It is a lot less common for artists in the heavy metal genre to have a signifier that reoccurs on a frequent enough basis for it to become unique to that individual artist. It is not however unheard of for this to happen for example Motionless in White uses various signifiers that can be seen in the following advert for their new album.

 We have for the reasons above, decided that we don't intend to deliberately introduce a different of completely new style instead we are going to tweak the pre existing styles to suit ourselves.





5. There is frequent reference to notions of looking, in particular voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

This feature we feel is aimed at pop music video's, no other genre dictates as much time to showing of the female body. Male artists often use women as objects to signify their dominance, power and respectability. Artists such as Tiny Temper usually have a group of female dancers wearing very little around them, this generates an image of sexual dominance for the artist and portrays them as better or more empowered.
Female artists often project their own bodies in sexual ways, the use of very tight or revealing clothing makes them seem as sexual icons for other women, parading of their well toned an often airbrushed bodies to demonstrate that they are in better physical shape than others.
  Basically it is all showing of and we do not feel it is not needed for or piece as it is a lot less common in our genre of music.

6. Often there are inter-textual references to films, tv programs, other music ect...

This feature we do feel is important for our piece as it is often used in our genre of music. As a music video only has a short period of time to convey understanding and meaning to its viewers it will often use pre existing images from past texts to help create a better understanding of what is going on, what is meant and what the message is.
 Motionless in White use this feature to help create a dark and gothic atmosphere for their music video's. An example their song "The last snow" connotes ideas from the film edward scissorhands with lyrics like "a man with scissors for hands" ect...
We feel this, when used properly, can be very effective when connoting the idea's we want without having to waste time establishing our themes.


Does it still apply then?
Overall we feel that Goodwin's theory does still apply to music video's as we have found lots of evidence for this, however, we also now see that sometimes avoiding rules and being more abstract when making a music video can be very beneficial.

This was posted by Hayden and Scott.

Andrew Goodwins Media theory 1

Andrew Goodwin identifies 5 key aspects of music videos that audiences should look out for:

• Thought beats ie seeing the sound
• Narrative and performance
• The star image
• Relation of visuals of the song
• Technical aspects of the music video

Through beats
First step is to look at the music itself. Take into account the structure of the song e.g chorus/verse.
Secondly, the voice of the song. The artists voice is unique and can form identification or trademark that work well with the star image.
Thirdly Goodwin alos points out the artists mode of adress. Songs can be seen as stories and the artist is the storyteller, making the music videos a story.

Narrative and performance
Goodwin explains that music videos should ignore common narrative. it is important in their role of advertising. Music videos should coherent repeatability. Narrative and performance make it easier for the the audience  to watch over and over without loosing interset. The artists acting as both narrator and participant the lip sinking and other mimed actions remains the heart of music videos.

Star image
The star image is a vital aspect of the music videos. This is the main person in the music video. This will be who the audience recognises and interprets. The star sometimes is the narrative and tells the story to the audience. Meta narrative, which is a big story, describes the development of the star over time. In boy/girl bands, the singer is mostly the star image as they are the most recognised and well known. They are also the narrative of the video.

Relations of visuals to song
Music videos can use a set of images to illustrate the meaning of lyrics and genre. This is most common. Amplifying is similar to repeatability. Meanings and effects are manipulated and shown constantly through the video. Disjuncture is more rare to be used. This is where the meaning of the song is completely ignored.

Technical aspects
This holds the video together through the use of camera work, movement, angle, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and special effects. Speed, camera movement, editing, cutting and post production are all forms of use of camera. Lighting and colour help set the mood and emphasise key moments of the song for dramatic effect. Mise-en-scene, the setting of music videos, is vital, it needs to look authentic and attain professionalism. Beats, music videos use cuts to go with the beat or  rhythm, making the video more entertaining.

Written and posted by Scott and Hayden

Bring Me The Horizon "Pray for Plagues" Video Analysis

Bring Me The Horizon Music Video Analysis:
-Very animalistic
-Abstract feel to it
-Editing matches the tempo of the song
-All of the cuts justify and match the song - eg the guitarist appears when the guitar tempo picks up.
-What is shown on screen matches who is playing the part of the song - Oli Sykes singing in the song and also on the screen.
-Lots of abstract transitions used.
-Greenscreen used/pitch black room.
-When the screamo grows longer the video becomes shakier.
-Moves from performance to other recorded footage.
-Switches a lot back and fourth from live footage to cinematic and later recorded video clips.
-All of the clips are synced perfectly with the song- makes the song feel faster.

This post was done by Scott

Motionless in White Interview

Motionless in White interview:
This is an interview from Motionless in White, in this interview they discus various elements of their video's that we intend to adopt.
The band itself does the same type of music that we, as a group enjoy, therefore we feel it is very relevant.


-The idea of using elements from other genre's to help create a sense of something new or different whilst remaining distinctively heavy metal appeals, to our group as it will help us to produce something original and different.

- The concept of trying to bring a horror film to life is an great one, using images that grab the audiences attention and draw them in appeals to our group. Much like the artist in the video we don't want to just re-use every cliché that we know in order to establish our video.

- Watching the interview it becomes clear that each little detail is planned to perfection, much to our dismay, we are going to adopt this. We feel that it is important as it makes us less likely to make mistakes.

This post was done by Will, Scott and Hayden.

What we are working with. How we constructed our prelim.

What we have:

This is our basic equipment; Canon EOS 550D with a matching camera stand, in addition we also plan to use a green screen, camera tracks and possibly a crane.  The extra equipment, however is down to availability and as it sits now, we are focusing on what we know we will have.






















The images above show the equipment that we used for our preliminary, in addition for the construction of our prelim we used premier pro below are a series of screen shots from the process.

Here you can see the process of which we edited our raw images, top of the pile is the final edit, as you can each shot had to be lined up perfectly with the music. This was very time consuming as each shot had to be accurate to the second, this however, was not accurate enough, in the final piece we intend to be as accurate as humanly possible.




In this image you can see us tweaking the music, we had to elongate small notes in order to make them better fit the images, in addition to this we could match the song with the noise of us singing to get better continuity.

In this image we are adding the visual effects such as speed and length of our shots, as some shots were to long when compared to the base music. By slowing down the video or speeding it up we managed to better match the music with the video

In this image you can see how we were doing colour adjustments. We were not happy with one of the shots as it was considerably darker, without a large amount of time we couldn't completely fix this however some minor tweaks helped match the colour schemes.




This post was done by Hayden

Prelim Upload.

Prelim:

This is the prelim project mentioned on the previous post.

When looking at this piece it is very clear that there are several problems that we need to address when attempting our final piece.

Although this video isn't particular serious it does still help us. Doing this project helped our group to isolate the main issues ahead of attempting our final project, issues such as timing, musical talent, co-ordinatin and editing.

Our main issue by far is editing, as we just downloaded the actual music and therefore only needed to shorten it we couldn't alter it in order to make our filming fit as well as we would have liked.

Due to this problem we had to break the shots apart in order to match the music. This resulted in us having to replicate or reuse footage, this took away from a possible professional look.

All in all we are happy with how this came out, although there are various problems, we are happy that we can now address them when coming to our final piece.

This post was by Hayden.

Video analysis 2 - Will.i.am - Feelin' Myself ft. Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, French Montana

Will.I.Am - Music video analysis:

The second video we are analysing is Will.i.am's Feeling Myself ft. Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, French Montana.

-Unlike the first video, their is very little performance, mostly this video consists of the artist trying to connote their power, sexual status and dominance.

- The image, top left, demonstrates how the artist is showing of their wealth, the large wad of money suggests that he is better off than most people and should therefore be respected. In addition to this the artist is wearing large amounts of jewelry such as rings and necklaces which help to connote his wealth. Will.I.Am - Music video analysis:

- The lack of mise en scene in this video is deliberate I feel as it causes the audience to focus directly on the artist. This further establishes the artist as powerful and central.

- The image, bottom left, demonstrates how the artist is showing off their sexual identity. Her body language suggests a sexual intention which is backed up by her facial expression which connotes power and sex. In addition the artist is wearing very skimpy clothing in order to show of her figure, this helps to signify sexual intent.

- The majority of shots focus directly on the artist with no real background, this keeps the artist as the main interest and helps to generate interest for the song. The angles of the shot are on average low angle shots which helps to connote a sense of power and status for the artist.

This post was by Hayden

Music Video Analysis 1 - Pierce The Veil's Caraphernelia

Pierce the Veil - Music video analysis:

- Mainly performance based. The video manly consists of shots of the band performing the song, however their is also a narrative running along side.

- Cuts from band performing to a real life performance. This connotes the idea that the band members lives are fairly represented in the music video.

- Collaborations with other bands- Jeremy from A Day To Remember help to increase interest for the video and therefore both bands.
- Shows the bands everyday actions- drinking, recording music etc. Which draws interest from the viewers as it makes it easier to associate with the video.
- Jeremy's screamo represents shouting- anger and conveys an emotional response from the audience.
-Two peoples narratives- split screen talking to girlfriends and arguing. This narrative fits in well with the lyrics and makes the video more interesting for the audience.
- PTV are having a good time whereas Jeremy is arguing with his girlfriend. This again helps the audience associate with the band as they too have relationship problems, this also helps to improve the narrative.
- Raising of 4 glasses together shows unity, helping develop their image as a band.
- Most of the shots are focused on the lead vocalist, Vic. Establishing him as the main role, this is continued via the narrative.
-Final shot is of PTV playing live at a gig, this rounds of the video nicely as it ends with a real life situation.

This post was by Scott and Hayden.

Prelim work - The construction

Prelim construction:
  We have been working on a preliminary project to check our skills and knowledge ahead of our final piece. For the construction of the prelim we used Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 as we feel this program is the easiest to use and when used properly can produce a professional appearance.
   For our prelim we used the song boulevard of broken dreams by Green Day.
We filmed ourselves  singing along in the studio and then began editing the work together with the track. We have had several problems when putting the prelim together, however we are glad that we have come across these problems now as it minimises the chances of them occurring during the final piece.
   The three main problems the we faced were the following:
  Lip sinking -
As one of the main components when it comes to making a music, lip sinking is a big problem for us. In the prelim you will see that in places we have sinked well, however this is not consistent throughout. Because of this we have made the executive decision to try to minimise the amount of performance in the final piece
  Instruments -
This is defiantly a problem for us as we are all very bad when playing instruments, so as you can see in the prelim, we had to improvise and this is very obvious. From this we have decided to ask friends who can play a series of instruments for the final video.
  General appearance-
Without being prejudice the type of person that is usually associated with the music we have done has a  very specific look. We as performers do not share this general appearance. In the video we stick out against the music as if we were lost in a mosh pit. We intend to change this! When shooting our final piece we will be using costumes, makeup and other accessories to insure our actors/ actresses look the part.

This post was completed by Hayden and edited by Scott

Inspiration for our prelim

Inspiration:

Green day's "Boulevard of broken dreams" music video is inspiration for our final movie. The video is mainly the band walking down a lone dusty, deserted road. This is significant as the opening lyrics are "I walk a lonely road". The band members have an expression of guilt and loneliness on their faces, as they feel alone. There is a variety of mid shots of the band walking along with close ups of each individual member and a few shots of the band walking towards the camera. These would be good shots to use in our final project as it tells a story. The road is significant in the song as it matches the lyrics, having a setting that matches the lyrics to this extent would be a good technique.

This post was by Scott and Hayden

Introduction

Hi, this is our A2 Media blog. This year our task is to create a music video for a song of our choice.

We will be posting all of the steps of our journey this year from the start to finish of our project.
Throughout the year we will be posting our work on this blog in order for it to be moderated.
Firstly we will working on a prelim project to determine our skill set. This will be followed by a series of research posts into the music type we intend to do and indeed other music types. We will analyse video's and comment on media theorists and their theories.

We will plan out the video and the narrative, how it will be done, what will the narrative be, who will be our actors/actresses ect. Every detail of the production will be considered in detail and posted onto this blog.


Scott and Hayden.


This post was done by Hayden and Scott x