Conventions of a music video

When you watch a music video you expect:

• Some form of narrative
• To have many close ups of the main artist
• The editing pace to match the pace of the music
• To have the colours matching the mood of the song e.g. if it is a happy song having bright colours
• To have the genre of music match the mood of the video e.g. dark gothic song having dark video.
• Lip Synching
• Some form of performance if they are a organic band.
• If they are an organic band they will feature instruments.
• If they are a synthetic band they are more likely to have a dance routine.

Andrew Goodwin

Andrew Goodwin, a media theorist, wrote about the conventions of a music video:
• There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals e.g. in the music video telephone by Lady Gaga she uses a telephone referencing to the lyrics.

• Particular genres may have their own video style and iconography e.g. Rock bands tend to include more in their music videos live performances
• A demand from the record companies to include many close-ups of the main artist to make him/her look more attractive and thus attract a larger audience
• The artist has to develop his/her own star iconography in and out of their music videos. This also helps to attract a larger audience and gives the artist a style that defines him/her and makes him/her stand out from the other artists.

• References to voyeurism in music videos e.g. Lady Gaga in telephone she is objectified as she isn’t wearing a lot of clothes which attracts a male audience
• Intertextual references e.g. in Weezer’s Buddy Holly he references to the TV program ‘Happy Days’

Analysing a music video

My Favourite Game the Cardigans

Welcome to A2

Welcome to A2

Audience Feedback

We collected feedback on our task from the students of the other classes. This is a summery of the main strengths and weaknesses of our thriller opening sequence.
Starting with the weaknesses, there were many things people liked about our sequence. The definite favourite is the car scene and how we shot it with the go pro cameras. People think that those angles are something special and differ from what others used.

Another often said strength is our good choice of actors. Obviously boys mentioned our “hot” actress Paula, which was exactly what we wanted to target with using her. Also the girls liked her and we succeeded in what we planned, because she has a powerful role of a woman and a nice appearance which girls look up to. The slow emotion hair flick added to our positive views on the actress because she made them look so good. People loved her slow emotion scenes and thought they showed her dangerous appearance and her sexiness very well.

In terms of camera use and editing the students thought of our different camera shots really well and thought we edited them together quite good. They mentioned that we edited the transitions well and they build the tension really well so everyone wanted to know how it is going to continue.

The other students were also supposed to mention our weaknesses. The weakness most people mentioned is that they got confused with the ending. They send that they weren’t sure if there was a gun shot in the end and that it didn’t come across that well. Some boys added that they would want to have more action. The problem why they got confused is that there is the door sound, which could also be a too quiet gun shot and if it was a gun sound the rest wouldn’t make any sense, but it isn’t.

My evolution from the preliminary task to my main task

For the preliminary task we already had our storyboard and plot. We didn’t have to set up the location and costumes. The lighting was also unimportant. We didn’t have to look for good actors, we chose two people who were available. There was no need for props and sound effects. For our thriller we had to draw a storyboard, invent a plot look for really good actors that would suit each role find the props (i.e. the sniper, the guns, a car…). We wanted the room to look like a hotel room; this was difficult as we had to film in a boarding house. We chose Cornhill because it is the boarding house that looks most like a Hotel. We wanted our character to look very sophisticated we needed her to be wearing beautiful cloths so we all had to look for what would be the best outfit for her. The lighting in the room we set our main task was not right so we had to add a light with a blue film on it to make the lighting colder.

The storyboarding process was very long as our idea kept on changing so we did many different storyboards before finding the right one. Storyboarding was very interesting as it made me think in a different way then usually as instead of thinking about words I was thinking about images. It was rely hard to think in a structured way while doing this. This was different form the preliminary task as for that we already had a storyboard so we didn’t have to worry about it. Also in the preliminary task the story was entirely based on dialogue where as for the main task we chose to have none. This made it more difficult as the story line relied entirely on visual signifiers rather then words to tell the story.

It was much more fun to film our thriller then the preliminary task as we could choose exactly what shots we wanted to use as opposed to the preliminary task where the shots had already been decided for us. We chose to do many close-ups of her setting up the gun and of her face and the sniper together to show that she knew what she was doing. We also chose to do so hand held shots as that gave us more liberty with the camera than if we had used a tripod throughout. We also go to use go-pros to film the car, this gave us amazing shots of the car driving, we could not have done them using a camera as it would have been too dangerous as the person filming would have had to hang out of a window while the car was driving. We also filmed parts of our thriller in slow motion. We used it because it made Paula look more attractive and gave the thriller a more personal style that makes it stand out from other thrillers. We did not know how to do this when we filmed our preliminary task. The use of slow motion is an important part of our main task. We also used an eye-line match in our thriller to signify that she is aiming to shoot the man walking outside the car. It was very hard to film in the room because half of the room did not look like a Hotel room so we had to make sure that that half of the room was never seen on camera. This was similar to the preliminary task as we had to pay close attention to respect the 180° rule as it was a dialogue.

The sound in the preliminary task was much easer then in the thriller as it only involved the sound recorded during the filming. For the thriller we had to add loads of sound during editing this was very tedious. We had to find the right sound for the car driving, as there wasn’t always a sound recorded in the go-pro shots. We had to go through all the go-pro shots to find the sound to see if it matched the car driving sequences we choose. We also had to find the right sound for the sniper. There weren’t any slow motion sniper coking sounds on soundtrack pro so we had to elongate many different handgun-coking sounds and edit them together. This took about a day to do properly. We also had to create music to go with the action. We did this using apps on an I-pad and music found and soundtrack pro.

While editing the preliminary task I knew nothing about how to use final cut pro and, being as I am not very good with computers I found it really challenging to edit it. However I spent so much time editing the thriller that little by little I got used to using it and editing became really easy.  I edited the sound for the sniper which took a lot of time but was very satisfying when it was over. I also edited the shots with Simon in it towards the end finding the right moments to add his shots in. We had to add titles in the opening sequence. We chose the font for the titles because we wanted them to look sophisticated but at the same time simple. We chose a strong beat for the first part of the film to speed up the action. When the gun comes up we added a heart beat like sound and eerie music to make suspense rise. This seemed very difficult at first as we never knew where to place them and we had to use two different sizes for most of them. This too became easier and easier as we continued editing.

Preliminary task

Thriller

My thriller