Behind the scenes.

Setting up the lighting.

Focusing the light on the subject.

Making sure the shot looks good through the camera.

The final lighting setup.

Our mask/costume.

Third Day Filming

Today we went to film the band sequence for our music video however it was unsuccessful as we did not properly plan ahead for what we was going to do. We went to the drama rooms in our school which are ideal for filming as they have professional lighting equipment and a curtain backdrop etc. We did not plan ahead for what we was going to shoot exactly, however we did have a rough idea. We asked a music teacher if we could borrow a couple of instruments and we were given permission however we only had 10 minutes with the instruments, this made us rush and not get the shots we wanted. Next time we go to film the band sequence we will schedule a time that we know both the drama room and the instruments will be available to us for a long enough amount of time for us to get the ideal shots.

Second Day Filming

Our second day of filming was very successful as we managed to get almost all of the narrative filmed, minus 1 or 2 shots that we still need get. Today was the only day that we could film as this was the only day that myself (werewolf/main character) and our good friend (red riding hood) were available at the same time. We made sure that we got all of the shots involving both characters first so that we could spend more time on them and then come back to the shots that only I am in later so that we do not have to rush anything. We had to do a small bit of improvising costume wise as I had left my bag with my clothes in it far away from where we were shooting so we improvised by swapping jackets and hoodies with the other two members of my group in order to give the appearance that time is passing in the video and that the narrative takes place over a period of weeks.

We still have the band sequence to film and 1 or 2 shots left of the narrative and then all of our filming will be complete and we are ready to start the editing process.

Robin Thicke - Blurred Lines Controversy

When American singer-songwriter Robin Thicke release his single 'Blurred Lines' featuring Pharrell Williams and T.I. it raised a lot of concern and stirred up a lot of controversy for several different reasons.

One factor that contributed to many people thinking that this song is outrageous is because of the lyrics in the song and how they can be offensive, especially to women. For example one line in the song is; "I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two", which a small amount of woment may find offensive. The entire song is about sex and Thicke uses the word "bitch" to refer to a female in the song.

One other reason that people may find this offensive is the video for the song. The song is simply just Robin Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. moving about and wearing suits while a group of females dance around them and grope them. There are two versions of this music video, one of them is more explicit than the other because the women in the song have their breasts out as oppossed to being in underwear. There is also a shot in the video where there are large, red balloons that spell out the sentence "Robin Thicke has a big d**k" which in the less explicit version is sensored. There are some people, such as feminists, that will find this type of video offensive to women, say that it is degrading and protest against it.

However, although the lyrics in this song and the nature of the video may be seen as offensive to women, it is not anything the music industry haven't seen before. US music critic Maura Johnston stated that "this is just a cheesy pickup line song and everyone was like: 'No, it's about forcing women against their will.' There are so many songs out there that are worse about demeaning women." There are also many music videos that include naked or semi-naked women, which have not been called out on demeaning women. For exapmle, Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus contains multiple shots of her fully naked and performing sexually suggestive actions.

Personlly I do not believe that this song or the video is offensive to anybody. I believe that feminist women simply saw Robin Thicke as an easy target and went after him, in the same way the feminist community has protested against Eminem's lyrics along with the LGBT community. I do not see the music video to be degrading to women as there is not much of a difference between this video and other female, pop artists music videos.

First Day Filming

For our first day filming we tried to get the narrative part of our video filmed so that all we needed to film was the band sequence. We ended up not using any footage from this day because we realised the footage we shot was not very good. We learnt from this day filming and now know what mistakes to avoid next time. One shot that was particularly challenging was a shot where I (the main character in the narrative and lead singer) walking into a wardrobe and walk out less than a second later with different clothes on. One reason this was challenging for us was that between the two shots of me wearing two different sets of clothes, I had accidentally moved some bed covers which meant that the two shots could not be edited to look like one.

The next time we go out to film we will be much more thorough with our planning and make sure that we do not make any mistakes that will cause us to re-shoot again.

Treatment

Shot List

Costume and props

Shooting Schedule

Location Sheet

Risk Assessment

Group Members: Thomas McCloud, David Rawana and Terrance Bridges.

Locations: David's house, streets and school.

Storyboard Animatic

This is the animatic for our music video. The drawings are not very detailed and from an outsiders perspective it may be hard to understand what each picture is illustrating, however for us the storyboard is fine as we understand the drawings and they work well by prompting our memory and reminding us what shots to film.

Target Audience Focus Group - Analysis

For our focus group we wanted to target our main demographic, which would be for the most part teenagers and young adults, therefore we asked our questions to two 18 year old males. Three ideas were pitched to our focus group as we had not decided what narrative would be best.


1. One of these ideas was a 'catfish' idea in which the main character was a werewolf, that met a regular girl online and when he meets her it turns out she has been lying and she is also a werewolf.

2. Another idea we discussed was of a man that turned into a werewolf whenever he got jealous about his girlfriend talking to other men and having male friend.

3. Our final idea was of a male character that meets a girl and gradually gets to know her until they get very close, then he transforms in to a werewolf on the evening of a full moon, causing the girl to get scared and run away.


We pitched these idea to our focus group and then asked them questions, such as which idea they liked best and how we can improve on our narrative. The answers given helped us to finalise our narrative and work out any problems we had with it, in order to make the video as appealing as possible.

Storyboard

After brainstorming we decided on a narrative for our music video and started to draw out a storyboard so that when we went to film we knew what shots we had to get.

Storyboard for narrative.

Storyboard for our band sequence to help prompt our memory as to what
shots we had to get.

Target Audience Focus Group

We carried out this focus group in order to test our ideas and see the response to a few of our ideas.

Brainstorming

We had many ideas during our brainstorming session, most of which had to do with romance and a love story as the song is about a female and the vocalist expressing his feelings for her. We also wanted to incorporate some type of monster or creature into the video due to the lyrics and the song being called "Green Eyed Monster". Eventually we came to the conclusion that we should go for a spin on the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" and have a werewolf that falls in love with Little Red Riding Hood although she is unsuspecting of this until the night of the full moon. 

Jamie Thraves Case Study

 Jamie Thraves is an English writer and film director, born in Romford, Essex, who studied at Hull university and started making short films at the age of 20, after previously studying illustration. His graduation film "Scratch" (1991) and another of his short films "The Take-Out" (1993) both were nominated for and won many awards at short film festivals worldwide, this is where Thraves' success began. He then made another award winning film "The Hackney Downs" (1994) after he joined the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1993. However he then left the RCA and joined a music video company called 'Oil Factory' where made a music video for Radiohead's song 'Just' (1995). This music video gained Thraves a lot of attention for its unique and original narrative structure and for its use of subtitles for the narrative sequences of the video. 

One of Thraves' other extremely successful music videos was one that he created for the music video 'The Scientist' (2001) by Coldplay. This video, like 'Just' also has a very unique narrative structure. The video is Coldpay's lead singer Chris Martin singing the song while walking backwards in slow motion. This meant the Chris Martin had to learn how to sing almost the entire song backwards and then sing backwards while walking forwards for it to be reversed, it took him a month to learn. The narrative tells a story of Chris Martin and his partner being in a car accident and his partner dying and Chris walks away from the scene singing the song, however we do not know about the car accident until the end of the song as it is in reverse. 

Music video Duet Editing Exercise - Evaluation

There are a few things that I learnt about fllming music videos while carrying out this task. One of those is that the best way to lip sync to a song is by singing the song loudly as if you were actually trying to sing it, because this gives a more authentic look to the way that your lips move in sync with the lyrics. One other thing is that it is easier to film one shot singing the entire song and then using the best parts and deleting the rest.

I have also learnt that when singing a duet the two singers need to work together and know what the other person is doing in order to portray a sense of chemistry to the viewer. 

There was not much that I learnt about the editing process as it is all basic editing skills that we already knew. However I did notice that it is slightly more time consuming than I expected especially getting our lips synced up with the lyrics of the song. 

I believe one major way in which our video could do with improvement is if we put more effort into our performance, which we would be abe to do better without people observing us such as we had when filming this task. Also having more than just three alternating shots so that it's not boring.                                                      

Breaking My Heart Duet Task

Breaking My Heart David Tom Terry from Robert Clack Media and Film on Vimeo.

Organic and Synthetic Music

Organic music is music that is produced by artists (usually bands) where the music comes first. Usually they will make the music that they want to make and then their record label will try to sell their music to the correct demographic. Whereas synthetic music refers to the music where the record label is in charge of the artist and the record label will manipulate the artist and tell them what to do in order to gain as big of an audience as possible. Examples of synthetic music groups are boy and girl bands like the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys etc.

The 1984

Our chosen band, the 1984, was founded in 2009 "with the goal of creating groovy rock songs that would empathise the band energy."

Vox Pops Evaluation

The purpose of our research project was to find out peoples opinions on music videos and what makes them enjoyable so that we can make out music video as enjoyable as possible. 

We asked our interviewees 5 questions: 
- Do you watch music videos? 
- What is your favourite music video? 
- What do like about music videos? 
- What makes a great music video? 
- Where do you watch music videos? 


I believe that most of our questions were worded well and easy for the interviewee to understand, although I do think that we could have rephrased our 5th question to emphasise the fact that we were asking through what media they watch music videos e.g. TV, YouTube etc. 

Technically, I belive that we were very competant and we knew what we were doing, however we did make a few mistakes. For example, in one shot the boom mic is visible and in another we did not cut to the next shot quick enough and you can hear someone in the background speak. Other than that, everything went as planned and we did not make any mistakes. 

Overal our vox pop was successful in delivering an adequate amount of research informaion and gave us relevant feedback on how we can make our usic video more enjoyable an appealing to our target audience. 

Music Video Vox Pops

100 Greatest Music Videos

100 Michael Jackson – “Billie Jean”
99 Simian Mobile Disco – “Hustler”
98 Lykke Li – “Get Some”
97 Flaming Lips – “Watching The Planets”
96 Jay-Z – “Big Pimpin’”
95 Blur – “Parklife”
94 Radiohead – “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
93 Janelle Monae – “Cold War”
92 Rage Against The Machine – “Sleep Now In The Fire”
91 Madonna – “Borderline”
90 Lauryn Hill – “Doo Wop (That Thing)”
89 Human League – “Don’t You Want Me”
88 Peter Gabriel – “Shock The Monkey”
87 Foo Fighters – “Learn To Fly”
86 UNKLE – “Rabbit In Your Headlights”
85 Bright Eyes – “First Day Of My Life”
84 Robyn – “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”
83 Jane’s Addiction – “Been Caught Stealing”
82 Pendulum – “Salt In The Wound”
81 Ratatat – “Drugs”
80 Summer Camp – “Round The Moon”
79 Sonic Youth – “Teenage Riot”
78 These New Puritans – “Elvis”
77 Aerosmith – “Janie’s Got A Gun”
76 Bjork – “It’s Oh So Quiet”
75 Rilo Kiley – “Silver Lining”
74 Bonnie Tyler – “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”
73 The Strokes – “You Only Live Once”
72 Guns N’ Roses – “Estranged”
71 Eminem – “My Name Is”
70 Queen – “Bohemian Rhapsody”
69 Outkast – “B.O.B.”
68 Klaxtons – “Twin Flames”
67 Daft Punk – “Da Funk”
66 Coldplay – “The Scientist”
65 R.E.M. – “Imitation Of Life”
64 The Pharcyde – “Drop”
63 Tori Amos – “Spark”
62 Bon Jovi – “Always”
61 Missy Elliott – “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
60 Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
59 The Chemical Brothers – “Let Forever Be”
58 Arcade Fire – “We Used To Wait”
57 The Breeders – “Cannonball”
56 Pearl Jam – “Jeremy”
55 Eurythmics – “Beethoven (I Love To Listen To)”
54 Sinead O’Connor – “Nothing Compares To U”
53 Mark Ronson – “Somebody To Love Me”
52 Smashing Pumpkins – “Tonight, Tonight”
51 Aphex Twin – “Come To Daddy”
50 Nine Inch Nails – “Closer”
49 The Knife – “Pass This On”
48 Kate Bush – “Cloudbusting”
47 Pulp – “This Is Hardcore”
46 Depeche Mode – “Enjoy The Silence”
45 Talking Heads – “Wild Wild Life”
44 Judas Priest – “Breaking The Law”
43 Outkast – “Hey Ya”
42 PJ Harvey – “Down By The Water”
41 Major Lazer – “Pon De Floor”
40 The Replacements – “Bastards Of Young”
39 Radiohead – “Karma Police”
38 The Prodigy – “Firestarter”
37 The White Stripes – “Blue Orchid”
36 Prince – “Raspberry Beret”
35 Kanye West – “Monster”
34 Madonna – “Like A Prayer”
33 The Smiths – “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
32 The Verve – “Bittersweet Symphony”
31 NWA – “Straight Outta Compton”
30 The Streets – “Fit But You Know It”
29 The xx – “Islands”
28 Nada Surf – “Popular”
27 Muse – “Knights Of Cydonia”
26 Wax – “California”
25 Metallica – “Turn The Page”
24 My Chemical Romance – “Helena”
23 Smashing Pumpkins – “1979″
22 Nirvana – “Heart Shaped Box”
21 No Doubt – “New”
20 Blur – “Coffee & TV”
19 Hot Chip – “I Feel Better”
18 The Cure – “Close To Me”
17 Lady Gaga (Feat. Beyonce) – “Telephone”
16 Fatboy Slim – “Praise You”
15 OK Go – “This Too Shall Pass”
14 Vampire Weekend – “A-Punk”
13 MIA – “Born Free”
12 The Horrors – “Sheena Is A Parasite”
11 Hole – “Doll Parts”
10 The Prodigy – “Smack My Bitch Up”

9 Sigur Rós – “”Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása”

8 Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”

7 Weezer – “Buddy Holly”

6 Foo Fighters – “Everlong”

5 Bjork – “All Is Full Of Love”

4 Soundgarden – “Black Hole Sun”

3 Chris Isaak – “Wicked Game”

2 Radiohead – “Just”

1 Johnny Cash – “Hurt”

Song Lyrics

1984 - Green-Eyed Monster (Lyrics)

oohohhaah 

What is his name? Where is he from? 

Why is he talking to you for so long?

Is he a friend on just an acquaintance?.

Why is he looking so deep in your eyes? 

I'm sure the stories his telling are lies, 

and why do have, to laugh so much with him? 

It's another attack of the green-eyed monster, 

while I'm looking for you, 

wondering where you are. 

Does anybody know 

that I'm with you? 

While you chat, chat, chat.

To all the boys and that. 

Take a deep breath, calm down.

So why has he texted and got your number? 

Why does he say, and does her another? 

Is he your friend, or something suspicious? 

Haven't you get any friends who are Ladies? 

All the men of all ages. 

Why do you have, to be so close to them? 

It's another attack of the green-eyed monster,

while I'm looking for you, 

wondering where you are. 

Does anybody know 

that i'm with you? 

While you chat, chat, chat.

To all the boys and that. 

Take a deep breath, calm down 

Our Song

The song we have chosen for our music video is 'Green Eyed Monster' by the 1984.

Survey Results and Analysis

These are the survey results from the question 'What is your favourite music video?'

It is clear form these peoples favourite videos that people enjoy a narrative in a video.

These answers tell us that the majority of people watch music videos on YouTube, so this is where we are going to upload our music video.

This confirmed that people enjoy narratives in music videos as 66% of people said so.


















The results to this question told us what people like in music videos and what people like in music video narratives.

The answers to this question told us what the general public think of music videos and their opinion on the artists that create them, giving us more insight on our audiences view.

Getting survey participants.

To get participants for our survey, we posted the link to the survey on Facebook so that it would reach a large audience and give us more answers to our question, which would give us a better idea on what our target audiences preferences are.

Audience Research - Survey

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Artist Profile - 1984

1984 are a small, relatively unknown, British, indie band from London. As the band are not mainstream and fairly unknown, there is not much information about them and their history on the internet. The only details about them are on their myspace page, as they do not have any information on wikipedia or page alike. 

The band consists of four friends that decided to perform together and start a band. 

Steve Holbrook - Vocals and Guitar 

Gaz Sutherland - Lead Guitar 

Rob Power - Vocals and Bass 

Ben Tweedy - Drums 

Record Labels - Major/Independent

Record labels are essentially brands and trademarks that are associated with marketing songs, albums and music videos. Most of the time a record label is also a publishing company, which means that they manage brands, coordinate the production, marketing, promotion, distribution, manufacturing and the administration of copyright laws. In the music industry the majority of artists rely on record labels to expand their demographic, sell their albums, manage marketing and promote them by getting them time on TV and radio shows.

A major music label is a record label that is part of a large international media group, compared to independent record labels which are mostly small localised record labels.

Music video success criteria

There are many factors that contribute to a music video being successful, however the majority of the most successful music videos generally take advantage of all the factors.

One of the biggest factors in a music video being successful is it being memorable. This is because if a music video is memorable then a viewer does not need to remember any lyrics, or the name of the song for them to be able to come back to it. To be able to make a music video successful however, it needs to be unique, creative and enjoyable to watch. The most memorable music videos are those that were the first to do something and not copyable. Some good examples of music videos that or unique and creative are those made by Ok Go, such as 'Here It Goes Again' and 'This Too Shall Pass'.

Purpose of a music promo video.

The main purpose of a music video is to help advertise the single that the video is for. With a music video a single can become more popular than if it did not have a video and was just the song. This is because people may watch the video on YouTube or on TV and enjoy it, so they are more likely to listen to the album or tell their friends about the video/song.

One other purpose for music videos is that it is another way for people to remember the song, a good example of this would be 'One Day Like This' by Elbow, which is one of Elbow's most popular songs and this is most likely due to the music video being so memorable. The music video is simply of a man flipping a sign advertising available condos to buy, however the video is so hypnotic and together with the song can make the viewer feel happy watching it, as it shows a man who does not have much, but is enjoying himself and is obviously happy. People will most likely see this music video and not remember the name of the song, but all they need to do is search the internet for "music video condo sign flip" or a phrase along those lines and they will find the video.

Where to find music.

There are many websites available to acquire music from unsigned artists which will not be copyrighted, meaning that anyone can use them. We searched websites such as unsigned.com, newgrounds.com and soundcloud.com to find a song that we felt was suitable for a music video.

Finding The Right Music

We had to find a non-copyrighted song for our music, which meant that our artist had to be unsigned, unless we got a permission from the artist to use their music. 

Some websites that I used in order to help find our music were soundcloud.com, unsigned.com and 8tracks.com. My favourite from these three would be 8tracks.com as it allows you to search by not only genre but sub-genres also. So if you are looking for a particular type of song, it makes it easy to find. 

Once a song has been found, it is custom to contact the artist, or record label if there is one, and ask for permission to be able to use their song. 

Music Copyrights.

A copyright is a law that gives the owner the song/album rights the rights to it. This means that they can do whatever they want with it and they own it and decide what other people can do with it. Due to copyright restriction, copyrighted music can only be used by another person if the owner of the song gives permission. This could be the creator of the song, the record label, or both. 

Artists that are unsigned, do not have a record label, which usually means that their song will not be copyrighted. Getting permission to use an unsigned artists song is usually still the common thing to do as it can be seen as rude to do otherwise. 

Unknown artists can usually be found on websites such as unsigned.com and soundcloud.com 

Favourite Music Video

One of my favourite music videos is "D.A.N.C.E" by 'Justice'. 

The reason for this being one of my favourite music videos is that the video is something completely original and never done by anyone else before. It is an extremely simple idea that when executed well, such as this video, has a really good effect. The video is also very fitting for the song as it brings a nice, upbeat feel to the viewer as they are watching and listening to the video. 



Coldplay - Paradise from MyMITV on Vimeo.

One of my other favourite music videos is "Paradise" performed by Coldplay. The reason why I think this is music video is so good, is the fact that the video tells a story along with the lyrics of the song. 

The lyrics of the song depict a story of a girl that as a child believed that the future would be a paradise, however as she gets older reality strikes and she realises that life is not as easy as she thought. The girl depicted in the story dreams of paradise every time she sleeps and wishes that she could wake to a perfect life. 

The story that is depicted in the video is of an elephant (man in an elephant costume) that escapes from his life in captivity and strives to find his paradise and be where he belongs, in the wild with his fellow elephants. 

The video also has an element of comedy in it, for example, the elephant riding a unicycle, travelling by public transport with a nun and using a "borris bike" to escape from the captivity.  Coldplay fans will also notice that when the elephant takes his head off for a few seconds, it is actually Chris Martin (lead singer) that is wearing the costume. 

The Brief

Task:

• Produce a music 'promo' video 
• Up to 5 minutes
• Working on your own or in a group of up to four.

You also need to produce: 

• A 'digipak' (six panels) for its release on CD
• A magazie advertisement for the digipak

In addition to the 'promo' video:

• A critical evaluation.