Friday 28 November 2014

Practising with our shots - possible shots to have in the final product



We went to St. Paul's Cathedral to portray capitalism and "presence of greatness" as Kanye's interpretation. This is a practise to get a better understanding of how we will shoot, how long it will take, the effort and the appropiate places to take good angles for our music video. We have edited the video to black and white and we added a white flash on "Christian Dior" to Dior's store to indicate the power that the big companies are gaining above small, independent businesses (consumerism.)

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Music video update

Yesturday, at around 3:30pm, we decided to go to "Saint Pauls cathedral" to do some practice shots. This consisted of shots of the cathedral, shots using ourselves as models so that the audience gets the idea of what we are trying to reflect, and we also began to use "Time lapse" as we believe this will fit with our music video and ideas the best as we want to reflect a change of time and society, as a result we believe this technique does it the best.

The duration of this session lasted around 2 hours as we took quite a lot of footage, especially as we wanted different times of the day as well, I.E day and night. One of our shots consists of us standing on "Millennium bridge" during the night time and we use distortion of the lights to resemble untold truth.

All the footage we took will be uploaded as soon as possible.

We also did some filming at "Shorditch" where we found loads of shots and locations that we can use, one thing i'm referring to in particular is a wall we found that had graphite on it which said "Extortion" and we used this to our advantage by placing a model in-front of the graphite and testing out different camera angles in order to frame the model successfully.

This footage will also be uploaded as soon as possible.

Monday 10 November 2014

Models



We went model hunting and took head shots of everyone we found. However there are still a few more models that we have in mind. The red crosses symbolise those who we thought would not suit our video after a short interview, and the green circles represent those who fitted the criteria.

Music Video Analysis - Andrew Goodwin

Sunday 9 November 2014

Model contract for our music video

We wanted to make an official contract for our models to read and agree to because we do not want to be responsible for any disagreements during our shoots as that will be a waste of time and we as a team will not get much work done. Therefore this contract will ensure that our models agree to our terms and conditions in a working environment. We also have a list of models that we have chosen from (casting list). This has helped us to choose the right people for our music video. We have kindly disregarded the unsuccessful candidates. In this document, we clarify the following areas: Purpose of contract, Description of service, their award, terms, working hours, wardrobe, cosmetics and transportation. We hope that this contract will clarify any confusions that our models may face before shooting.

Narrowing locations for the shoot



These are the locations that we first started off with at the beginning of the planning and we still want to shoot in these places to communicate our political views in our music video. We as a group want to portray the luxurious life that capitalism offers to certain people who can afford to live that lifestyle but on the other half of the song, we want to expose the reality that lies behind capitalism and the native outcome to certain people like homeless children, adults and less fortunate people. We believe that religious places, highly modern architecture, prestigious buildings are representations of capitalism. We are not planning to use only locations to communicate the negative outcome of capitalism, we are also going to focus on other big issues that our world is currently facing like; climate change, landfill, war and conflict. We many not be eligible to use our own footage for war and conflict or climate change therefore we may have to use secondary input from the internet, newspapers and experts.

A2 music video analysis - 'Cant Hold Us' by Macklemore

This is a music video of 'Cant Hold Us' by Macklemore and it has been done by media students. My overall opinion on this video would be that it looks professional, scheduled and prepared. I think that this group would've made a very detailed storyboard as this video is a mixture of caricature/animated and half live video therefore they would've had to draw out the contrasting parts. This encourages media students to consider their storyboard before shooting because recording without a plan could make the video look very unprofessional and rushed. However, some people may have the intention of making their video unprepared and realistic by shooting unexpected things but it would still be good to have some ideas about what they would want to shoot. 

This music video has a storyline and linear narrative that is shown clearly throughout the video. Following a linear narrative makes it easier for the audience to follow and understand the storyline as they are not expecting something completely different from the last shot or event. I think the use of linear narrative in this storyline has worked amazingly because the confusion from the characters of mixing up their bags is the only confusion that is presented to the audience so the linear narrative takes the audience on a mission along with the protagonists. 

They have used a lot of creative and interesting editing techniques in this video which made it even more attractive to watch for the audience. Different angles and compositions of shots has shown the different perspectives of the situation from the external characters. The change of density of the shots made it inescapable for the audience to give up on the mission of finding the correct bag and the less dense shots enlarged the complexity of finding a bag in a big world. 

The director of this music video has figured out the performance really well, in fact the video is mainly directed by performance. The lip sync was perfectly done. The mise - en - scene of costume in this video clearly defines the villain and the innocent. The stereotypical representation of the 'good' and the 'bad' made the video more hilarious and it highlighted the genre of comedy. 

Although this is a contrast to our intended music video for our project, the editing techniques and the denouement had an impact on me. 

Friday 7 November 2014

Video treatment - written & visual




We as a group discussed and brainstormed visuals that would be suitable for the lyrics. We divided visual ideas between the 2 lines a verse to ensure clarify between the audience and the shot. This is a treatment for the entire song. We highlighted the lines to distinguish the ideas and new part of the song. 


Wednesday 5 November 2014

Our Music video Questionnaire.


                          Music video Questionnaire.

 

1)   What would you expect to see in a music video for 2014?

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2) Would you expect a music video to convey meaning?   
 

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3) In your opinion, do you think a music video should be simplistic or abstract?
 

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      4) What do you not want to see in a music video?   

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 5) Are you politically aware?

 


              Yes                             No


       6) What are your views on Capitalism?


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This is the template of our music video questionnaire, we are still in the process of gaining audience fed-back and so the results will be posted shortly this week. This will be the questionnaire given to our targeted audience in order to help us with some of the decisions to our music video and based on the types of answers will get will determine how we construct the music video.
Some of the above questions were also used in a clip previously posted of our audience research as we want to get as many responses as possiable.
 

    

Monday 3 November 2014

Existing students blogs and music videos

                       Other A-level students who are also creating music videos and blogs


1) http://petesmediablog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/music-video-for-level.html

This is the link to another media students blog, who also has the criteria of making a music video. Pete, is also an A-level media student and by looking at his blog i can see that he has good and consise ideas for his music video, however he does lake on information and pre-production.

The layout of his blog is also quite bland and not as detailed as it may be expected to be at this stage. Although his blog isnt the most terriable it is of a basic standard and so helps us as a group acknowledge what our own blog should consist of.

In comparison to Petes blog, we have posted and focused alot on our pre-production so as not to lose marks. In doing this we have focused on: Demographics,psychographics,postmodernism, locations, models, costumes,target audeience research and much much more.

However, his final piece (the music video) is good as it uses a range of different camera angles and techniques.   

2) Existing music video by A-level students

 
Here is a music video i found that has been made by A-level media students. This video consists of good camera angles and a use of different techniques, for example; black and white. However, the video is out of time with the song and so the main "artist" lips are not in time with the song which creates a sense of disorganisation. It implies that the students perhaps rushed the video and so as a result lake the marks they needed.
 
One of the positive critisms i can give is that the video is unique in a sense because it is shown in black and white, this technique gives the audience a feel of something old and as a result they are not distracted by a range of different colours so they can focus on the video and all the implications that may errupt during the music video.
 
The student has gone for a simplistic storyline it seems as the main theme is "love" (or lake of). This will reach out to a particular type of audience and so may be affective to some extent, on the other hand that just makes the audience seem basic and narrow minded as most music videos focus on something simple rather than miore abstract.
 
Our music video "stronger by kanye west" will be more abstract and have a deeper meaning behind it which may not be entirely obvious to the audience. This means we require them to use some "brain work" and actually pick up on our hints throughout the music video . We dont want to treat our audience as "dumb" because we believe that our audience are their own people and they do to have a say in our message, if it wasnt for them or us we wouldnt even have a message to put across and so we acknowledge their importance.
 
 

Sunday 2 November 2014

Contacting Roc - A - Fella DefJam to get permission

This is a letter that we wrote to inform DefJam that Dimension would like to use their artists, Kanye West song 'Stronger' for our A2 Media project. We have clarified that we will not go against their policy and regulations. Also, we have also made it clear that we will acknowledge and credit any incorporation  from an existing media product that may have been taken from their labels artists. We have also explained our ideas to them to ensure that we are not remaking the original video for our project.