Videos that have inspired our edititng

1. Rihanna - 'Only girl in the world'

We were trying to find ways to enhance the strong beat of the song through our music video. We took element from this video such as the jumpy and quick repetition of small movements. We used this techinique in the beggining of our video with the footsteps and also to fix an error we had made in filming. We did a point of view shot when the male blows glitter to the camera and the reaction shot of the girl receiving the glitter in her face, however the angle in which she recieved the glitter was different to the angle in which the male blew it. so we had to make a few adjustments using the technique. This technique came in handy and looked better than our intial edit.



When we went on our Richmix trip in November Peter Fraser used this video as an example of how the objectification of women have changed over the years. We used this element in a funny way to outline the message of our song which has a pro - women attitude. 



Objectification in our video




Odjectification in Nat King Cole's video



Album cover

I have aleady changed my mind about my Digipak cover. I spotted a old cream beetle car around where I live. I really want to ask the owner if I can use it for my Media project. I'm not sure how i'm going to go about asking a stranger if I can use their car but I am definately going to try! I don't intend to drive it, I just want a shot of the artist appearing to search for something in the back of the car so you can just see her legs wearing a pair of nice heels. I aslo want to have a feminine handbag on the hood of the car in the shot from the front of the car. I want the image to be colourful but I may make it grainy to suit the style of the car.

Update

We finished our final filming this afternoon and have already started editing! We have only edited about 15 seconds so far and have realised that we need the shots to be fast and to the beat. We were looking for inspiration and decided to refer back to the Rihanna - 'Only Girl' video to look at some of the editing, It made us realise how quick the shots need to be, especially as our song has a very prominant drum beat.

Laat minute ideas for shots

We were trying to find ways to do a shot where the protagonist walks over the camera. This AS music video gave us an idea of how we could do this.
Who ever is filming will lie on the ground across the path that the protagonist is walking. The camera will be facing the protagonist so it looks like a low angle shot. As they approach the camera the shot will look lower and lower until they step over and the camera will follow the step over, until there is an upside down shot of them walking away from the camera.

This is the position!

Update


Our coursework filming has gone extremely well so far! We have used all kinds of shots and styles ( my favorite being the point of view shots). We managed to get the owner of a pub 'The Kings Head' to allow us to film in there. We were worried that the lighting may be too dark but everything went well and we managed to get some really good shots ( whilst drinking apple juice from a pint glass).

Our last place to film is at the Playing fields in Enfield .. Hopefully that goes well also!

Album Cover Ideas

Not So Pretty in Pink

Ideas for performance

Our video is partly performance and we have decided to use a plain white back drop so the outfits and colours on our performer will stand out. This video by Florence and the Machine reflect ideas that we may include in our performance part. Her bright outfit, movement and props (heart shaped flower bouquet), stand out against the minimal background. This video has inspired us to make our shots more imaginative, so rather that just a front, still shot, we could include some high angle shots or low shots of feet dancing.   

I also thought the part when the man pops out of the box with a flower in his mouth and her reaction to his gesture was quite comical and directly relates to theme of our song. We may try filming something similar.

Decisions .. Decisions

After much discussion and debate, we have finally decided to have one artist and discard  of the group 'The Coralliens'. We thought it would look better visually if there was one artist and her outfit changed rather than the whole person changing. Luckily our decision to change it to a soloist does not affect the storyboard at all. 
All the girls in our group are interested in being the artist so we are going to try and get some audience feedback by filming us all lip syncing individually, showing each clip to our media class and getting them to vote on the most suitable artist ... this will be very funny and helpful. 

Noted!

Our media lesson last week was about the conventions of a music video. 
The most significant thing I learnt was the fact that we should make use of the tempo (pace) of our track. 
Our song is quite fast and has a very prominent beat so our editing must match! 
I am currently trying this out with a song called 'Reckoner' by Radiohead the song has a beat sequence with symbols, I edited footage that I filmed on the weekend to go with this song. 

Intertextuality in our video

Our group were thinking of ways to include intextual elements and decided to expand on the feminist, pro- women attiude in our video.
We thought that our bedroom scene where the artists are sitting in a girly bedroom we could add a close up shot of a WW1 Women poster on the bedroom wall. This will  not only add to our amount of shots but will also make our music video's message clearer.  

Playing Fields - Opening setting

I took some pictures of my best friend whilst walking through the park where the opening scene of our video is set. When we're filming the trees will be practiaclly bare, I think that will look beautiful.

Editing Ideas

We wanted to add a comical, silent scene to end our video, with the four female actors chasing the male actor down a path with all their different props e.g a bunch of flowers or a high heel. We thought it would be interesting to edit this end clip to have a sepia, 'old movie' effect.

Futher Audience Research

I have decided to conduct a questionnaire about the expectations and preferences of a music video. I will give the questionnaire to teenagers between ages 12 - 19 as that is our target audience and I want quite specific information.  
Below are the questions:

1. Name two things you would generally expect to see in a 'Pop' music  video.

2. What artist do you think is a true representative of generic pop music?

3. Do you feel it is important for the artist to feature in his/her video?

4. On a scale of 1- 10 how important is the inclusion of attractive actors?

5. Do you prefer a video to be:
    1. Abstract with little links to the song/lyrics
    2. Direct with clear links to the song/lyrics
    3. It's not important

6. On a scale of 1- 10 how important is editing and visual effects in a music video?

7. Do you feel that the music video should represent the artist's style and personality?

8. Looking now at Lily Allen in specific, name three elements you would expect to see in one of her music videos ?

9. Name your favourite Lily Allen music video.

10. What about it did you enjoy?


I tried to obtain qualitative data by asking open ended questions such as number (7), which requires the respondent to elaborate on their opinion. I have only put a few open ended questions as I do not want my respondent to loose interest in the questionnaire. The questionnaire also includes questions that would provide quantitative data such as number (5) which provides the respondent with 3 answer options that they have to chose from. Working at Indiefields (a market research company) where my job description was to carry out questionnaires over the phone, made me realise that questionnaires are not so easy to conduct. They must engage the respondent so that they do not lose interest and drop out of the questionnaire or HANG UP ON YOU! Giving them more multiple choice questions to prompt the accurate answer provides quantitative data but it is easier to obtain, where as qualitative data needs a very willing participant. I have asked questions that can provide me with both types of data. 

Interesting band name

Our group have now established a band name 'The Coralliens', we formed the name by thinking of a colour that best suited us as a band, we chose Coral as it is quite feminine and classy. We then translated the word coral to french which came to be a catchy and edgy band name.

Cher's Xfactor performance inspired me to find the reasons for Shakespeare's sister's band name and thought it was quite intriguing.

'Shakespeare's sister' was a two membered pop - glam band formed in 1988 by Siobhan Fahey, the second memeber was Marcella Detroit (who later left in 1993).



This is the song Cher performed and is one of their best songs - 'Stay'Their band name was based on a fictional character invented by the English author Virginia Woolf, "Judith". Judith was a fictional sister of Shakespeare in the feminist essay called "A Room Of One's Own." In the 1980s the punk band the Smiths (Siobhan Fahey's favorite band) wrote a song titled "Shakespeare's Sister", which is where Siobhan took it from.

Lily Allen - Power Point

I have made a short power point document about Lily Allen. I thought I needed to include some information about our artist because some of the elements of her back ground and life style are represented through our music video. For example her London based background is going to be shown through the mise- en - scene in our video.

Lily Allen

Our treatment

This is the treatment we presented to our class, I wasn't very confident in presenting but I believe we got the mesaage across!

Peer Review - Wordle

I created this wordle using http://www.wordle.com/. I typed in words that our peers used to describe our music video treatment to create this wordle. The words that were used more often in their reviews have come up larger. The bigger words are clearly the more prominent aspects of our video as they were the most used descriptions.

Inspiration from Rihanna

This is Rihanna's latest video to 'Only Girl', it was directed by Anthony Mandler a top commercial and music video director who has worked with her in previuos videos such as 'Russian Roulette' and 'Unfaithful'.
I'm hoping we can take some elements of this video and apply them to ours.

The red tint of the whole video is really effective, it creates a warm mood which suits the theme of love in the song. The whole video consists of a lot of glamour shots of Rihanna, the editior has created a fast flashing effect that goes with the beat of the song. The beat in our chosen song is really strong and it would be interesting if we edited a few shots to go with the beat also. Another thing I love is Rihanna's make - up, it is subtle and pretty, not too over the top. The make - up in our video is quite important as we want it to portray different personalities, but we don't want to over - do it, this is a good example of how we could use make - up.

Spidergram

We made a spidergram in our first official meeting to just breifly outline some code and convetions and mise-en-scene that we may want to include in our music video.

Info on Lily

I just read up something interesting on wikipedia about the name of the album which our final song is from. The album is called 'Alright, Still' (which is a quote from the song we're using -'Knock 'em out'). Lily borrowed this phrase "You look alright still, yeah what's your name?" from her brother and his friends. She stated that she also liked Albert Einstein's statement "Nothing changes until something moves" and the idea that "everything is alright as long as it's still".