Filming (Day 1)

My group began filming while I was unwell, and they managed to film and edit the first line of our music video. They used stop animation for the iconography of the Rolling Stones t-shirt, for the lyrics "He's got a Rolling Stones tee, but he only knows one song".

Iconography

Iconography is something we are plan to use in our music video as we have found many music videos that have used it really effectively. One example of this is in Wilkinson's video for 'Afterglow':

Many of the lyrics in 'Stay Out' are perfect for the use of iconography, for example "He's got a Rolling Stones tee, but he only knows one song", where we plan to use stop motion to create the effect of a Rolling Stones t-shirt. The references to time and dates are also useful as we can use a flip calendar to show dates or time passing by.

BFI Trip (South Bank)

We recently went on a trip to the BFI in South Bank as a media class to research further into making our music videos. There we met the chief examiner, Pete Fraiser, and he talked to us about the key steps of making a music video effectively and using our  time wisely, including guiding us on key shot types and features of a music video that we need to include to make it successful, for example, aspects of performance and ensuring we have conformed to using the theory of 'star quality'.
We also got the chance to listen to the director speak to us about some of the music videos he has had the chance to work on. We were lucky enough to hear about his thought process when planning some of the videos such as 'Autophilia' by The Bluetones and 'It's raining men' by Geri Halliwell.

               

Richard Dyer's Star Quality Theory

Richard Dyer is an English academic currently holding a professorship in Film Studies at King's College London. He specialises in cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender. 

Richard Dyer's star quality theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are constructed by institutions for financial gain by being built up to target a specific demographic. His theory is broken down into 3 sections: Audience and Institutions, Constructions and Hegemony:

1) Audience and Institutions-
This is the idea that stars are used to for the sole purpose of making money, and the institution modifies the celebrities image around the target audience.

2) Constructions-
The idea that the star is built for an audience and is not an actual person. They are then built with a certain signature to them, making them stand out from other stars. One example of this would be Lady Gaga's loud and fashion sense which separates her from other celebrities.

3) Hegemony-
This is the idea that we relate to the star due to the fact that they have a certain feature or quality that we admire about them or share with them, which then develops an admiration which turns into idolisation. Some people may then replicate what they like about the star, which can have positive or negative consequences.

Location Ideas

These are some of the main locations we are thinking of using. We want to film at winter wonderland this year because we feel the song 'Stay Out' has a very wintery feel to it and would fit well with the setting of fair ground rides and christmas stalls. The next location we want to film in more of a rural location, and we found a cultural park which is accessible to us in London, and the bridge below is where we want to film. We also feel that Covent Garden would be an appropriate place to film as it fits with the theme of our song, along with the record store. 

Mood Board

For inspiration we searched our main themes on Tumblr to create a mood board. Our ideas so far consist of a 60's theme, in which we want to incorporate loud colours from this period, old fashioned items such as flip calendars and vinyl record players, along with a sepia effect to make the footage appear to be old with a retro feel. 

Email for Permission

We e-mailed the manager of the record label Nina Nesbitt is signed to, Universal Music Group  and asked for permission to use her song for our A2 music video to avoid any copyright issues. We are awaiting a reply!

Brainstorming

This lesson we made a brainstorm whilst listening to the lyrics of the song. 

These are our initial ideas, which consist mostly of retro locations and themes which will help us stick to our theme of fun and youth. These ideas will mostly be shots if teenagers in different situations enjoying their youth, which is portrayed throughout the song via the lyrics. 

Lyrics

These are the lyrics to 'Stay Out'. The key lyrics that we picked out to focus on were "They think they're from the sixty's, But they were born in 1991", to show that the group of teenagers we are focusing on are more old fashioned than the period of time they are living in. We had the idea to portray this mainly through shots of old items and iconography with a sepia filter to add this 'retro' feel to the music video. We will also play on the lyrics "stay out" due to the fact that this is the main lyric repeated throughout, to create the young and carefree vibe we are aiming for.

Song and Concept Idea (3)

We recently came up with a new idea to create a more relaxed and chilled out music video. As we could not decide on a strong enough concept for the song we had previously chosen, within the group we went away individually and came up with a song and a concept of our own and then reported back and shared our ideas as a group. When discussing, we all really liked the idea of creating a video with a 60's and retro vibe, and settled on the song 'Stay Out' by Nina Nesbitt, as we believe we can create a fun and light hearted video with a strong message of being carefree within your youth .

Lyrics

Riptide by Vance Joy is a song in which the lyrics portray a love story between two people, but not necessarily a smooth one. The key lyrics that stand out to our group are "and they come unstuck" and "I wanna be your left hand man". The reason for this is because "they come unstuck" could be referring to the breaking up of a relationship, however "I wanna be your left hand man" is a play on words of being somebody's right hand man (one's most valuable assistant or supporter), in which the lyrics suggest that the main protagonist still wants to marry and support his partner despite the ups and downs they face. These lyrics are what inspired our concept of portraying a rocky love story, showing the extreme highs and lows throughout the relationship.

Song and Concept Idea (2)

We decided recently to start from scratch with a completely new concept and song, as we felt that we were going round in circles trying to come up with a strong idea that we believed would work to our previous song 'Changing', and were getting absolutely nowhere! So, our new (and hopefully final) idea is to work on an idea for the song 'Riptide' by Vance Joy. Our current plans are to focus on a female protagonist, but from a male's perspective, in which we will follow the story if her mental state. We will portray two sides to her, one being her upbeat and happy self which will quickly be contrasted by a dark and crazy side to her as the beat changes. The message we would be looking to portray here is the effects mental state can have on a relationship, and we would show this by being from the point of view of the male in the relationship. Here is the original music video to the song:

Brainstorm and Lyrics

This is a brainstorm of our initial ideas, nothing is set in stone so far, as we are still uncertain about our song and have many ideas that we have been discussing as a group. The song we are currently working on is 'Changing' by Sigma ft. Paloma Faith, which contains really strong lyrics that would be effective to work with if we could come up with a strong concept (which we are currently struggling to do). However, we have brainstormed a few of our ideas, as shown below, focusing on one particularly strong line in the song "I won't live my life through you", from which we are developing a character that is currently breaking out of a rough or dark past. 

Song and Concept Idea (1)

My group have been discussing our song choice without being able to agree on an idea for the past couple of months, but we have finally chosen the song we are going to use. Firstly, we picked the song 'Budapest' by George Ezra but couldn't think of a concept to go with it. Then we thought of a concept for 'Afterglow' by Wilkinson, and picked our final song to this concept. The song we have decided to make our music video to is 'Changing' by Sigma ft. Paloma Faith. The concept, which i will blog about separately, is coincidently about a characters life changing after a dark period in their life, and therefore this song is perfectly fitting!

Prelim

Our group had so many ideas for our prelim, but as usual we picked music videos that would be too complicated to replicate, for example, 'All I do is win' By DJ Khaled:



We then moved onto a simpler music video of 'Black Velvet' by Alannah Myles, however this turned out to be too complicated to edit as we didn't plan our editing with the pace that the shots changed at, therefore the lip syncing and music weren't in sync:



In the end, we used a couple of our friends to film our prelim, using 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars

AS Film Opening Evaluation

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY:
Last year whilst creating our film opening we used a range of different technology. For example, to shoot the majority of the footage we used the Panasonic video camera given to us by the school and a few clips of the film were shot on an iPhone 5s using a fisheye lens and our flip camera. Most of the footage was reasonably well shot as we used a tripod to steady the camera, but we could have improved upon the footage shot on the iPhone and flip camera as it was not as in focus and clear as the rest of the footage. To shoot our music video we have been given a new SLR which will hopefully improve upon the quality of our footage.

We edited our footage on iMacs, using iMovie which was fun and fairly simple to use once we got used to the settings. However, it was quite restricting when we were creating our titles for the film opening, due to the fact that we wanted a more creative font for our text to fit the psychological thriller genre we were aiming for.

CREATIVITY:
Within our group we had so many ideas, but most of them were too complex for us to create, causing us to be the last group to agree on an idea, film and then edit our final film. We initially had three different ideas planned (although we only started to film one), until we came up with our final idea for 'When the bough breaks'. Looking back as a group, we realise that with each idea we were trying to be far too creative, and eventually we realised that less was more and that we needed to use the unique resources we had access to i.e. Emily's dads taxi, and our creative and this time, more realistic, idea followed from there. We then used locations close to us that were easy and convenient for us to get to, in contrast to our previous ideas that required various different locations in London which would have made things like reshooting difficult. This year we are definitely more aware as a group that simplicity is key!

RESEARCH AND PLANNING:
Once we had decided on our genre, our whole group watched as many film openings and title sequences for psychological thrillers and we were mostly inspired by the film 'The Bone Collector' as it contained key features that we had access to, like the taxi. I used my blog to record any aspects inspiration that came to me during the planning process. To plan, we initially used a brainstorm of all our ideas and then as a group made a detailed shot by shot plan that made our filming process efficient and productive to ensure that we weren't wasting any time.

POST PRODUCTION:
Whilst editing, we realised we were not going to stick to our original storyboard and ended up editing for hours on end to fit the footage together in a way that flowed well, but also created a great deal of tension to fit our psychological thriller genre. We had to re shoot the first clip of the boot closing as it was first filmed the wrong way round. When we were putting the finishing touches to our opening and editing the sound (which was the hardest part of the process), we jokingly added a baby crying noise to the end of the film, and even though it was extremely twisted and sick, many people we asked loved it and said that it made the opening completely. We also ended up changing the song we were using in the background at the last minute as we found 'My funny valentine' on a whim and decided that it fitted better and added a creepier and more eery feel to the opening.

Music Video Song Research

While researching the genre of song I feel would be right for our music video and which kind of artist I want to research more deeply into, I came across the song 'Young and Beautiful' by Lana del Rey. I really love this song because as a group we want to portray quite a strong message through our work (not yet sure what this message will be) and this would be a perfect song in which to do that.



Even though this song has a really powerful meaning to it, it also lacks a beat that would make it easier for us to come up with a storyline and edit to, so i researched into some remixes and really like the following version of the song:



Listening to this remix, Tara and I have already come up with many possible ideas that we could develop on, for example, depicting the idea of youth and beauty in various locations and scenes.

Music Video Research

1

1) Beyonce- Countdown
Despite being slightly biased as Beyonce is my favourite female music artist, Countdown is one of my all time favourite music videos. I love the various effects used within it and the vast use of colour and changing visuals. The fact that it appears to be filmed in many different locations, but after researching into it finding out it was all shot in one run-down building, also amazes me. This video also ties in with Andrew Goodwin's theory as it portrays many of his key points regarding music videos. One example of this is that it contains aspects that prove the "male gaze", as Beyonce is shown in various different costumes that are slightly revealing and would definitely appeal to male viewers.




2) The 1975- Girls
I love the simplicity of this video and how it is all shot in one location, yet is still so effective. The changing effect from black and white to colour, with an aim to prove that they are not a stereotypical 'pop band' is also really powerful. Once again, this video can relate to Goodwin's theory as it shows point '4' from my previous blog post, as the visuals display a certain image of the band that the record label are clearly trying to create.

Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Theory

"Music videos ignore common narrative as they are essentially advertisements. As consumers, we make up our own meaning of a song in our minds: a music video can anchor meaning and gives the record company/artist a method of anchoring meaning"- Andrew Goodwin

Key Points of Goodwin's Theory:
1) Relationship between the lyrics and the visuals: Themes, mise-en-scene and events of the video match with lyrics of the song, to help to portray the message of the song.

2) Relationship between the music and the visuals: The cuts and edits of the video are in sync with the rhythm and beat of the song matching cuts or effects to specific drum beats or notes.

3) Music videos have genre characteristics: Certain features are expected out of a video depending on the genre of the music, for example a girl bands/artists are expected to have dancers and close ups of the singers, whilst a Indi band are expected to have performance shots ofthe band and cut to a fast beat.

4) Often due to the demands of the record label, artists videos will include many close ups of the artist and will often develop motifs that recur across multiple videos: This allows the record label to promote a set image for the band, which will help target audiences empathise with the band.

5) Emphasis on 'looking': The 'male gaze' is often used to attract a male audience. The male gaze is a focus on presenting things that appeal to men. This often means a voyeuristic view of, and an objectification, of women. The emphasis on looking also includes the artist looking directly into the camera helping the audience connect with the artist.

6) Intertexual references: Music videos reference other forms of media, most commonly film, but can also be television and other music videos.