What is the purpose of music videos? Part 1 of my blog work.

The representation of women in Pop.

The representation of woman in Pop. on Prezi

Logistics of our production!

Logistics! on Prezi

Props list or mise-en-scene list.

This will be a list of some of the features in our music video including costume, lighting, setting, location and prop. I shall convert this into a prezi as soon as I get in.

Costume
Although we have as of far left the costume down to the actors when we do our actual music video we intend to plan what they're wearing. Currently the actors are seen in casual clothing that they have chosen themselves for the purposes of our draft.

• Livvy is seen wearing pair of wintery leggings, a t-shirt that is unseen, a black coat, a wooly hat and a pair of boots. This is during the first scene where Livvy and Ben are walking down a street. In the performance sequence she is wearing a red and white dress with tights and black heels. This is because in most pop music videos the performance element is usually the part where the band make an effort to look 'famous' or out of the average whereas they strive to look average in order for the narrative to make sense.
• Sarah's first scene costume consists of a white, printed t-shirt of Johnny Depp topless (bow chicka wow wow), a pair of high waisted shorts and tights. She is not wearing shoes as she is shown indoors. She would be comfortable in her own home and therefore we made her dress as such. In the performance sequence Sarah is seen LOOKIN' FINE AS ALWAYS 'After all this time?' 'Always' wearing a pink, one shouldered dress. Underneath she is wearing a pair of tights and black heels. THEY'RE BLACKER THAN BEN'S HEART. 
• Hannah, that is me, I am during my first scene wearing a purple top, black and white cardigan, black and pink aztec skirt and a pair of black tights. We all are wearing one item of black which is symbolic to the way that Ben's black heart is tainting us. In our performance scene I am wearing a purple dress with printed gold birds on it, I am also wearing tights and heels.
• Jess (though only viewed once but is still pretty fine) is wearing a black coat, tights and shorts and a grey top. 
• Ben changes clothes quite often throughout the music video. In his scenes with Livvy and me (as they are on the same day), Ben is seen wearing a blue plaid shirt, black jeans, jacket and bag (over the shoulder). He too tends to wear at least one item of black as he is the one with the black heart. When he is with Sarah, Ben is shown wearing a pink shirt with white circles and the same pair of jeans he wore the first day. He is not wearing black in this scene because his darkness is shown through movement however on the day of filming the actual draft I shall have Ben wear some item of black on him.

Lighting

• Mostly natural lighting as we had no need for aesthetic. A lot of the shots we filmed were located outside therefore there was no need for extra lighting. On the other hand my scene with Ben is set in the darkness because they are supposed to be watching a horror film but this may change depending on any developments we make later.

Location

• 1st scene: The location is a street directly adjacent to the Waltham Cross shopping centre.
• 2nd scene: The location the hall at school. We are on the stage singing.
• 3rd scene: The location is the garage conversion. In there is a sofa and television so it looks like a living room.
• 4th scene: The location is my actual living room but set as Sarah and Ben's living room.\
• 5th scene: As of yet unidentified. We have not filmed this bit yet.

Prop

• Ben's phone which Sarah picks up and finds out that Ben is cheating. The big reveal happens in the 3rd scene.
• My television remote for Ben to turn the horror film on. I don't see why he does that as it's supposed to be the scary bit. EH.
• Bacon Rashers to make Ben look more manly.

The cast and crew.

So today I was given a list of things that I need to include on my blog. One of these things was a list of the cast and crew involved in the making of our music video. Being that we have already filmed our first draft I can state who was involved, what their role was and how that role may differ when we film our final draft.

The cast:

• Sarah Byard and I. Sarah Byard who is the love of my life. The beauty in my existance. Actually she is my partner on this project. Last year (as you may well know) we were a group of three known as Cats In Space however due to the decrease in numbers of our class we had to split into a group of two and one. Me and Sarah (after months of deliberation) decided to stick together. Jess decided to work on her own. So yes. Me and Sarah together forever. But on a serious note yes we are working together on this music video. After thinking over our options we decided that the most viable one was for me and Sarah to be a part of the cast and by that I mean members of the band. This was the simplest option as it meant that we didn't need to depend on anyone else. Not that we don't know people who are reliable (as you will soon find out) but we thought it was less hassle and less time consuming if we used ourselves. So in this circumstance Sarah is one of the band members featured regularly throughout the music video and so am I.
• Livvy Midson. Livvy Midson who is the love of my entire existance. Even in death. Livvy is our best friend who after being pleaded with for months on end agreed to be a part of the band. This again was our simplest option as she is someone who understands how complex the process of filming and editing is because she has been there on various occasions during last year's post production process. So in this circumstance we trust her to make the time to help us. Livvy is a member of the band (like Sarah and I) who is shown regularly throughout the music video.
• Ben Amatruda. First of all i'd just like to point out how grateful we are to Ben for starring in this music video. This is because Ben is a member of our media class who has his own coursework to focus on but still promised to help us film during half term. He basically dedicated all his time to Media and for that we are sincerely grateful. Ben plays a massive part in our music video as he happens to be the "monster" the song is based around. Ben plays a 'lad' who is sneakily dating all three of the band members. He too is shown at regular intervals throughout the music video.
• Jess Fells. I'd also like to thank Jess for the time she put into helping us film. She only had a minimal role to play but she still came out and helped us and for that we are very grateful. Jess stars as a girl who Ben (mentioned above) happens to check out while on a date with Livvy. This then causes the pair of them to row and Livvy storms off. End of scene.

The crew:

• Director of Dirty Heart by The Machine at Florence - Sarah. If you moderated my blog last year you would know that last year the role of director fell down to me. This year Sarah and I have decided to switch roles in order to see the responsibilities required for each of them. So this year Sarah is the director.
• Producer - That would be me. As mentioned above we have decided to switch roles from what we had last year so that we can get a further grasp of what directing and producing is.
• Editor/s - Me and Sarah are both co-editors of this music video. We are both taking part in editing the music video together. We've spread these roles evenly between us.
• Director of cinematography - There is a divide here between me and Sarah but Sarah mostly dominated the filming.
• Lighting - I took responsibility for the lighting. Though a lot of the shots we filmed were in natural lighting so we didn't need any aesthetic.
• Craft services - Not really relevent for this music video.
• Make up - We left this down to the actors involved. We didn't want to force Ben to wear make up.
• Costume - Again we left this down to the actors involved. As long as the clothes weren't inappropriate.
• Prop Wrangler - Left down to the actors involved. There were not many props needing to be wrangled.
• Transport manager - There was no need for much transport in our music video but we can thank Jess's mum for dropping her off.
• Location manager - This was my job as a lot of the shots we filmed were in my house. In fact all but one were filmed in my house. Therefore I am the location manager.
• Continuity editor - Sarah as she loves making things correct.
• Set dresser - Livvy. As the set didn't need much dressing and she wanted a mention.

The start of my first Digipak analysis.

I say it is the start because I haven't quite finished the last slide. I shall however be finishing it today.

Video analysis: Say my name by Destiny's child.

There are many similarities between the music video for 'Say my name' by Destiny's child and 'Black heart' by Stooshe which we have been given permission to use for the purposes of our coursework. I should also add that the comparisons I will be making between the two will be based off of the music video we are creating as opposed to the actual video for the song. So essentially I shall be discussing these two bands and their music videos: Destiny's child and The Machine Ate Florence.

Let's start with the similarities between the two shall we?

1. Destiny's child is an all girl band. The Machine Ate Florence are also an all girl band. This means that both music videos should (if one of the most common stereotypes of girl band's is correct) have some symbolic representation of girl power or feminism. This could be shown through use of narrative, Claude Levi-Strauss's binary oppositions, Barthes mythologies or Sassure's theory of symbolism. Symbollically the fact that within the music video for 'Say my name' the three girls stick together in each room is to show how girl power is still dominant within the shots despite the fact that the man is clearly controlling all three of them. Similarily this will be shown in our music video with use of the performance shots including all three members of the band. These will come up within the music video at purposeful moments to foreshadow the fact that even though the male has been in control for the majority of the music video girl power will PREVAIL.

Here is an example to two all girl bands: Little Mix and Stooshe.


2. Destiny's child includes three band members. The Machine Ate Florence includes three band members. Generally there will be different roles allocated to each of the band members - an example being that there will always be one soul sister (the one who sings the long and/or high notes), one front woman and one who sings during obscure moments such as the bridge. During our music video we have allocated these parts to a certain member of the group based on where in the song they sing. Sarah has become our resident soul singer, Livvy is shown as the front woman of the band by taking the lead at the beginning of the song and I will be shown singing the obscure moments in between the chorus and the verses. There is a slight difference however with Destiny's child as there is clash between the soul singer and the front woman. This woman is Beyonce and she has taken the lead within the music video for 'Say my name' and sung all the high strung notes. In this particular music video (as it is quite an early music video) there are four members to the band of Destiny's child but shortly after this song was released the fourth member left. So I don't consider her a member of the band.

3. The song of choice in this particular music video by Destiny's child is about the band's suspicions that their boyfriend/s is cheating on them with someone else. This is demonstrated through the use of the lyric: "Could it be that you are at the crib with another lady?". This links in with the theme of our music video of three girls claiming that the man they are in love with is a monster: "Daddy i'm falling for a monster. Somehow he's scaring me to death". And also links in with the narrative that we are trying to display within our music video that the man is infact dating all three of them. This is shown through use of various shots of Ben (the actor we hired to play the monster who is actually lovely and FAB) spending time in romantic situations such as going on a walk, watching a scary film and his first meeting with one of the girls with each girl at seperate intervals within the song. The purpose of the song 'Say my name' is also reiterated throughout the music video as we see multiple shots of the man in question dancing (symbolically manipulating) with one of the band members while two of the other girls are within the shot with their gaze averted.

 

 

 

 

How does this music video demonstrate the conventions of pop music videos? 





Here is a list of the expected conventions of most music videos within the Pop genre:

• Colourful
• Close up of artists to establish innocence
• Fun and up beat
• Appeals to a younger target audience though will include some mature aspects
• Shows the artist/s/band involved in some form of dance routine
• Leaves audience member in a good mood through use of location, mise-en-scene, cinematography etc
• Scenarios tend to be based around love
• Videos usually have a narrative

This particular music video conforms to practically all of these conventions which was one of the reasons why I chose to analyse it. I can only see one convention on the list that isn't displayed within the music video.

Colourful.

 

 'Say my name' uses a variation of colours - red, white, orange and blue to differentiate between shots. As the music video progresses the bright colours begin to indisperse with each other to represent how the girl's are being forced together by the realisation that they're boyfriend is seeing all four/three of them.

 Another use of the colour changing rooms is to give each member of the band an equal amount of time on camera. With every shot we see a new line up of the band. Each girl is spread evenly between shots with the exception of Beyonce who gets her own seperate shot every time she sings on the track as she dominates a vast majority of the song.

The use of colours could also be a symbolic representation of their emotions on the situation. White could be the shock because of their naivety and innocence. Blue could be the sadness they feel. Red could be the anger at how foolish they may feel and orange could be the paranoia or the feeling of impending doom on their relationships. I don't know. I could be wrong.

Close ups of the artist to establish innocence.

Here are three screencaps of some of the close ups featured in this music video. Out of the three of them Beyonce has the most because of her overall dominance within the song. The use of these close ups is to establish the artist as the wronged party. This is done by placing the close ups at the appropriate moments within the song. This would usually be to show the importance of the lyric to the person singing it however I could not find an example of this in this music video.

The most common lyric used in the close ups of this music video is: "Say my name" which could suggest the desperation the band feel for their loved one to essentially look them in the eye and say they love them.



In this screencap Kelly Rowland's hair matches the background behind her. This could be to represent that she feels blue about having been cheated on or at the prospect of losing this person she loves so much.

Shows some form of dance routine.



 

It goes without saying that their is definately a performance/dance element to this music video. The bridge which is mainly music orientated is opened onto a dance performed by the band members and other dancers behind them. The dance doesn't particularly consist of much other than bending and spinning but the fact that it is in sync leads to me to believe that it has been choreographed. The purpose of this dance routine is to keep the audience interested during the moments where there are no lyrics to preoccupy them. This may also be in order to appeal to a larger audience through use of the male gaze. By wearing skimpy tops and tight, leather trousers they are attracting audience members who wouldn't usually have listened to this genre of music because of the voyeuristic treament of women in this particular scene.

 

 

 

Although there are aspects of each convention in this music video it is hard to explain them through my analysis. I shall post some more tommorow in regards to the rest.

I shall have no more banter on my blog.

Not that I don't appreciate banter but it looks unprofessional when the Examiner marks it. I would very much like to apologise for any mean comments I have made on this blog to anyone who has read it. This is me promising not to be too mean from now on during the course of this year. I don't know how long this promise will last...but I shall try for the sake of my sanity and our teacher's.

From here on out I am nice Hannah.

Our Sales Pitch

This is our sales pitch for The Machine Ate Florence that we did on Tuesday. The Machine Ate Florence is the band name we will be using for the purposes of our coursework. The song we will be using is Black Heart by Stooshe.

Storyboard for our minute extract

Here is a video (which we will probably edit later so that we can stop our incessant cackling) of us explaining our storyboard for our minute extract of Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. Please ignore the mini conversations between me and Sarah whilst displaying our fabulous drawing skills.

TMAF Initial Ideas

You may (or may not) be surprised to find out that these aren't really our initial ideas. This was us displaying the song we're going to use and our beautiful, swivell chair talents. We would very much like feedback from our teacher(s since we still consider Mr S as our teacher even though he isn't).

P.S This is really our singing.

HE GOT SUCH A DIRTY BLACK HEART. INNIT GIRLS?

This is what we hope to show in our music video. :) I hope you kick it. OLD SCHOOL.

An overview of what our Sales Pitch will include.

So I noticed that I haven't posted anything new in a while so I decided i'd log on and let you (the examiner or Mr Nicola or whoever is reading) that i'm not dead. After having finished our second one minute extract we decided we would get going with the Sales Pitch for our final music video. This will include the following:

• A band logo that we have created for our band name: The Machine Ate Florence. We've named the band The Machine Ate Florence for several reasons. One being that we were aiming to use something satirical because we have discovered (after months of audience research) that our demographic prefer bands with the use of funny/satirical names. However I would like to add for the sake of clearing my conscience that by using this name we are in no way insinuating anything about Florence and The Machine (though it may look that way). I myself am actually a big fan of Florence and The Machine so the use of this name is strictly for the purposes of the music video and not for self expression.
• A storyboard/shot by shot of what we intend to do for the opening minute of our music video. I shall post (later on today) a mock up of our storyboard so that you can see what we're trying to achieve within our opening minute so that if we keep it we can justify our choice of location, setting, mise-en-scene, lighting etc or if we decide to take a different route we can show the process and if neccessary justify our reasons for not keeping our original.
• An analysis of how our fake band will/does conform to the stereotypes of most girl bands. A.K.A Girl power and so on.
• An analysis of how our fake band will/does subvert the stereotypes of most girl bands.
• How and why we made our song choice. For our music video we shall be using the song: "Black Heart" by Stooshe. I will explain in another post why we chose to use this song and the legal information required. Rest assured though that we do have permission from the band to use the song and I will give evidence of this in the aforementioned post.
• We may even go into detail on what we want the message of our music video to be and how we will represent that throughout the video.

So far we have completed -

• Mocking up our band logo
• Our storyboard 10 seconds into the song

And have started working on -

• The storyboard/shot by shot of the opening minute of our music video.
• The analysis on how our band conforms/subverts the stereotypes of typical girl bands

Today we should be working on finishing the storyboard for our opening minute. This will commence when Sarah finishes her driving lesson. If I do not have a mock up of our storyboard by tonight then take that as to meaning we haven't finished and I will try to get it onto my blog at Thursday the latest since we will probably be working on it in our free periods on Thursday.

Wish us luck.

Wuthering Heights (our one minute prelim).

This is our one minute extract of Wuthering Heights. We did try to make it as accurate as possible however that clearly isn't the case. Perhaps we should have chosen an easier music video to remake but here it is anyway.

I will be addressing the issue on there being houses in the background in another post where I will be analysing our prelim. So do not worry. There will be an explanation though I think we do explain in our video diary.

Hopefully we will be uploading another version of this so that there won't be nothing but eternal blackness and Kate Bush singing in the end. Enjoy.

Wuthering Heights video diary

HEY GUYS. IF YOU IGNORED SARAH DO THIS SURVEY.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NYGDV2M

My second animatic.

I chose the song "Last night" by Lucy Spraggan which isn't actually a recorded song (as you can tell) but a song that was performed on X Factor. Side note - I was watching X factor because my sister wanted me to watch something with her. I was away for a month without seeing her. So I had no choice in what it was we watched. So that's why you can hear people clapping in the background and things. I will be uploading this onto youtube as soon as I get back from visiting Sarah and Livvy but for now it's on my blog. I hope you enjoy it.

Facebook research.

So far...

Conventions of hip hop music videos.

Conventions of hip hop music videos. on Prezi

My poor attempts at audience research.

I realise that I am still missing key things on my blog but I should have them up by Tuesday since i'm currently working on two things at once to get them all done. I still take full responsibility for not having done them. My family and I went away and took our laptop so I could achieve this goal but there was no wifi and I had no way of posting any of the prezis or editing them. It's a poor excuse as they should have been done months ago but I feel that I owe you an apology in advance for my tardiness. Is that what they call it in America? I think they do. Anyway.

I've been trying to get audience research from all over the globe. I've been asking in Ibiza and in the Isle of Wight for people's feedback but it's hard to come by when you have no wifi to show them the song so you have to ask random questions like what is your faviroute genre of music and do you like the music videos affiliated with that genre of music. So today i've been doing more online audience research. This has clearly been the wrong approach as my generation are either too shy to answer properly or just generally idiotic so that they don't answer what i've asked them. Oh dear. I sound as cynical as Harry. But yes I have been trying to get more evidence of audience research that i've been collecting but it's harder than it looks. I thought, however, that I would post something to explain the conundrums i've been facing and to enlighten you by letting you know I have been doing research.

 

I will let you know when anyone I come across is willing to answer. :)

I realise that I have missed many deadlines...

and I accept full responsibility for missing them. I don't have an excuse for it other than the fact that I was taking part in the Olympics. I'm kidding. I was actually being a lazy student who keeps putting things off by a week without realising that she only has a week left to complete all these tasks as she is going away on the 6th for four weeks.

So this post not only serves as an apology for my lateness but as a promise that I shall be putting up during the course of this week  -

• My Hip Hop conventions which I should have finished a month ago but didn't get around to because of reasons.
• My Rock conventions which I should have finished last week but didn't get around to because of reasons.
• My animatic for a song of my choice.
• Hopefully the video diary we filmed while doing our one minute extract of Wuthering Heights.

If I do not get these things done by the end of this week then I will have to complete them in an internet cafe somewhere. Which will be my punishment as I hate social contact.

Good day.

Filming our one minute extract.

I think what i'm about to say might be a bit obvious (due to the title basically giving it away) but we filmed our one minute extract for Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" today. Despite us having done an excercise similar to this one before this task was alot more complicated however this was not due to us learning the direction or the camera shots for the piece but due to other factors such as the weather and mise-en-scene. Finding a costume for this was always going to be tricky since Kate Bush's video was filmed quite a long time ago (well to me) but we managed to find something suitable that does actually resemble the outfit worn by Kate Bush in the video. The dress itself isn't as long as the one worn by Kate Bush but we evaded this problem by having Sarah wear red tights beneath the dress to blend in. We also chose a minute that consisted of mostly mid shots so it wasn't so obvious. Another issue we crossed was finding the same colour of red that Kate Bush is wearing. As you can tell the colours aren't that similar but although we searched we couldn't find an outfit that remotely resembled Kate Bush's outfit that was the exact colour of the original. So we settled on having Sarah in a red dress that was similar to the original and put emphasis on the accesories such as the flowers in her hair, the flower around her neck (which in the actual video Sarah is wearing but I couldn't find a screencap from the behind-the-scene footage with the flower round her neck) and the black fabric wrapped around her middle.

We didn't have an issue with recreating the make up Kate Bush is wearing in her music video because she isn't actually wearing that much. From what we could see (and you can see) Kate is wearing greenish/silver eye shadow, mascara and red lips. Me and Sarah are both female (shockingly) so it wasn't hard to find the make up that could be used for this. The flowers in their hair aren't identical but they are both red and chunky so we didn't think it mattered too much. The main focus of our music video will be on the choreography and the camera angles/movement and we think we did both rather well. Here is a side by side of Sarah as Kate Bush and Kate Bush...as Kate Bush or Cathy depending on how you look at it. If I can find a closer shot of Sarah's make up then I shall replace the photo I have up now with that one but for now I think this picture shall suffice.

The weather was the biggest problem we faced today. Living in England means we rarely have a spot of dry to film in (even when it's Summer) which meant that me and Sarah had prepared to wait until 7 pm for the Weather to calm down. Eventually (though not at 7 luckily) the weather became bareable so we rushed out to film. We filmed in a park round the corner from Sarah's block of flats that is just one grassy plane with trees surrounding it. For this we thought it was perfect although the trees do not match the ones in the music video. I suspect this is because Kate Bush's music video was filmed in another country but I could be wrong. We spent about an hour on filming all the shots and a half an hour filming behind the scene footage and answering questions on the important aspects of our production. Hopefully we will upload the footage or the finished article when we return from Summer but there may be a chance of us uploading it before then.

Until this does happen we decided to film and edit together a mini promo for our music video (actualy it's not...we were using mean girl's lines to promote Kate Bush) and make a video of media terminology dedicated to our media teacher. Not random media terminology I might add but terminology that we had to consider within our piece. Do enjoy the media terminology video. Unfortunately I cannot work out how to post the other video so...

Our lip syncing montage.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to see this (due to it being blocked in some countries. Which I don't understand personally. Why should other countries be able to see it and other countries not? That's country-ist!) but here it is. The picture that comes up before you start the video is hilarious. Overall i'm happy with the result. There are a few mishaps with timing (but their only slightly off and you probably won't notice it) and the occasional moment of speech but other than that it should be your normal, run of the mill lip syncing video. You should also take notice of the impressive choreography we worked into each song. Carry on my wayward son was planned very intricately and  took us a few shots to get precisely right. We care that much about our media coursework. We edited this together during Media today and overlayed (?)/added the filters to it during our free 4th period. Here is a list of the songs we used -

1) Carry on my wayward son - Kansas
2) Total eclipse of the heart - Bonnie Tyler
3) The bed intruder song - Autotune the news
4) Barbie girl - Aqua
5) Bring me to life - Evanescence
6) Mambo No 5 - Lou Bega
7) Superbass - Nicki Minaj (introducing Tanya on vocals for that number)
8) Hey Mickey - Tiffany
A pause for dramatic effect of grey and
9) Because I got high - Afroman.

This was originally supposed to be 2 - 3 minutes long. Oh dear. Enjoy.

One minute extract analysis.

Can you tell which is which?

For our pre-pre-pre prelim task we had to recreate a minute (of our choice) from the music video 'A million ways' by Ok Go. Although we had no issue with the cinematography due to the fact that the original music video was filmed in one long shot, we did have issues with were mise-en-scene and direction which you will soon find out when you watch our extract.

Cinematography.



As I explained above the original music video for 'A million ways' didn't use many camera angles. Infact they only used one which was a long shot that continued throughout the entire video. This wasn't hard to accomplish with ours as all we had to do was set up the camera at a far distance so that all of our bodies could be shown. As the whole thing was filmed using one shot it meant that we had to learn all of the direction for our chosen minute and try to perform it without making any mistakes otherwise we'd have to start again. That was the

tricky part.

Mise-en-scene.



 Despite me saying how tricky we found the mise-en-scene for this music video was, that is not to say that there was much mise-en-scene. The only things we really had to consider were the actors, costume and setting. As Sarah pointed out quite rightly in her analysis outside of Media we don't have that many male friends who were willing to help us with our minute extract. The only male friend we did have who agreed to be a part of it was Omar so we had to substitute the all male cast (?) of Ok Go with females. These females being Sarah, Livvy and myself. Setting wise we decided we were going to use my back garden. This was because nobody else in our group had garden's big enough for us to perform a dance routine and Sarah didn't have a garden at all. When comparing the two videos you can tell that our set looks nothing like the set used in the Ok go music video but we had no other choice. We did try to incooperate the concrete flooring by (originally) having the camera angled the so that the path was visible (even if we weren't dancing on it) but because my path was so narrow the camera couldn't pick it up. We also tried filming on the decking which overlooked the grass but my decking wasn't big enough for us to perform the routine. And being that we are now a professional dance group we wanted our first routine to show off all our potential so it just couldn't work.

The biggest problem we had with mise-en-scene was our costumes. Being that more than half of our group were female we found it really hard to recreate our costumes exactly as they had it. Omar (the one standing with a very sassy pose) got his costume almost spot on. The only thing that didn't work with the original was the colour of his waist coat. Sarah's costume was quite close to who she was representing as well. Again her only issue was with colour. My costume wasn't at all near and neither was Livvy's.

I'd like to add that we purposely subverted the heights of the band members through our use of actors. Me (being the shortest) played the tallest man in blue, then Livvy played the second tallest, Sarah played the third tallest and Omar played the shortest when Omar was the tallest of all of us.

Sound.

This was never going to be an issue for us. All we had to do for the sound was mute our performance and put the sound over the top during editing. Later we realised that this wasn't going to be easy as we had to predict the exact time that we began dancing to the music and where to cut the music at the right moment. We managed to do it successfully though as the music and dancing goes in time quite well.

Editing.

As mentioned previously the editing for our piece wasn't going to be difficult because the whole video is a continuous long shot. This meant that we had to film the whole routine in one shot without making any mistakes. When watching it back you will be able to see that there were a few mishaps but that wasn't to do with the editing. For editing we had to mute our video, put the music over the top, cut off the beginning and the end of our video (as we were celebrating getting the dance right) and flip the shot so it went from this

 To this

At first we had been planning to do move the opposite way to the people in the Ok Go music video when we realised that we could film the same way (which would be easier for us) and flip the shot later. Which is what we ended up doing. Now we are positioned correctly to the real music video.

Lighting.

As pointed out by Sarah in her analysis that although it is clear we both filmed in the middle of the day our reacreation is alot lighter than the original. This could be down to the fact that they filmed on a gloomier day (as me and Omar performed a sun dance beforehand) or because they were under the cover of trees. Either way the natural lighting in our's is much brighter.

Direction.

This was definately the most complicated aspect of our production. The direction of this piece is very intricate and probably took the band months to learn. Unfortunately we only had around a month to learn it and to convince others to learn this routine. To make matters worse once we had learned the routine we decided (at the last minute) to change our minute to one that was simpler. This meant that we spent a good three hours before filming learning this new minute. This is possibly why there are a few mistakes in our piece (mostly from me) but we gave it our best shot. Here is how it should have looked.

 And here is how it ended up looking.

This is actually more accurate than I thought it would look.

What could we have improved on?

I think the main thing we could have and should have approved on was our direction. No one can say we didn't try but the idea of the task was to make our minute as accurate as possible to the real thing which clearly direction wise it wasn't. There were too many mistakes and obvious discomfort on our faces down to these mistakes. We also could have spent longer looking for a more appropriate cast of people. We're very grateful to the people who did star in our recreation but ideally they would have all been male.

Any elements you'd consider using for your actual music video?

I did really enjoy the dancing in this piece. It gives the video a happier feel to it and makes it less serious and more comedic which I like. I think that me and Sarah have decided that we want to use a more upbeat/happy tune this time because of the depressing tale that is Esther so having a dance aspect to our video could be really effective.

Elements you won't be using?

I don't think our music video would be purely dance based. Not only is it essential for our music videos because of the exam criteria to have a narrative but I think it would be more interesting if our music video did have a narrative. In my personal experience of watching music videos I find that i'm more engaged in the piece if there is some form of narrative because otherwise I have no idea of what's going on. Similiarly I can't stand it when a music video has a narrative that has no relation to the lyrics (Goodwin's theories) because that too becomes confusing.

Conclusion.

I do think that our recreation was quite successful. It does resemble the music video we were recreating in one way or another. In some ways more than others. I think that the aspect we captured the best from the Ok Go music video was the cinematography as it was straight forward and didn't need much work. The thing I found the hardest was direction but we knew that was going to be the case in the first place as the whole routine was very advanced.

Overall I really enjoyed creating this prelim.







Here is my unfinished engaging version of my analysis. It will be up fully tommorow I promise.

http://prezi.com/ehyorbnau2cc/conventions-of-hip-hop-music-videos/

Just to put your mind at rest.

My conventions of hip hop music videos will be on here tonight. I'm just changing it from a text post to a prezi so it's more engaging.

However some of the points i've made are really obvious. Might be because of my choice of songs.

• Nelly ft Kelly Rowland - Gone
• Young Money - Bed rock
• Soulja boy tell 'em - Kiss me thru the phone
• R. Kelly - Ignition
• Jay-Z + Kanye West - Otis
• Snoop Dog ft Pharrell - Beautiful

I'd like to clarify I only knew of two of those songs. The rest were chosen (very graciously) by my dear sister. I have nothing else to say. Bye.

Storyboard part uno.

 

'Half inlove with Elizabeth' by Edwards scissor hands

On their album 'Half inlove with this album'










1. A long shot from the side of a young boy of around 7 drawing. The camera is slowly zooming in towards his face.

2. The shot rapidly cuts to a close up of his drawing. The camera is again zooming slowly towards Elizabeth's face in the background you hear someone coughing.

3. A two shot of the two of them walking hand in hand. This shot is shown in greyscale to show it is a memory.

4. That shot rapidly cuts to another two shot however it is clear time has passed as the kids are now teens. The shot is still shown in greyscale as this too is a memory.

4. The last shot rapidly cuts to this two shot of the pair. More time has gone by as they are now adult, This shot too is greyscale to show it is a memory.

5. Another rapid cut and the shot changes back to 3 except Elizabeth's drawing is seen seperating the two again. The shot is in colour and lasts for about 2 seconds.

6. Rapid cutting takes us back to 4 except (as expected) Elizabeth is shown. The shot is only 2 seconds long and is shown in colour. The shot fades out.

7. This shot is a close-up/two shot of the adult pair. The shot is shown in greyscale to add to the drama - with the dramatic subtitles - she is saying 'I love you'. This shot fades in from black.

8. Rapid cut to another close up/two shot of them. The shot is shown in greyscale. He is saying 'I love you'.

9. Rapidly cuts to a close up of him. This time in colour. This is to represent youth as Elizabeth is a figment of his imagination. Or is she?

10. Rapid cut to a close up of the drawing standing where his girlfriend once was. The shot is slowly zooming in. This rapidly cuts to...

11. Another greyscale close up of the pair kissing. Ewww. This shot lasts for a maximum of two seconds as...

12. The image of his girlfriend suddenly switches to the drawing of Elizabeth. The shot is in colour. This lasts throughout the sentence.

13. Rapid cuts to a two shot of his girlfriend and Elizabeth. His girlfriend is shocked as she feels a presence. This shot is only a second long as...





14. A mid-shot/two shot of the two in a restaurant. The girlfriend is looking sufficiently awkward. He is staring into the distance wonderingly. The camera zooms in on his face and shot fades to white.