What not to do and what to do in a music video

In our lesson today we had Luke who works and helps with the production of the music video's came to talk to us about the do's and don'ts for a music video.  He has 20 years of experience of working in the production of music videos.

1. Should not use famous artists as there are too many problems that occur for example people would observe a Beyonce song and question why the original singer is not performing.  

2. Don't use popular songs as the audience will question who is singing.

3. Do not pitch an idea where there needs to be a large crowd of people for example; nightclub or festival as it would be hard to film and we wont have enough people.

4. Public locations are always hard as you have to obtain consent from anyone who walks through the filming.

5. He mentioned that we should treat this task as a real production company especially if we wanted to go with an amateur/up 'n' coming band to help promote their song and make them a real music video.

6.  The song and the video should link well with the mood of the song. we were given a tip for future reference, that your music video should be released 6 weeks after releasing the song.

7. During the video in the middle 8 we should have something completely different e.g. slow motion or sped up depending on the tempo of the song you have chosen.

We watched a music video that was very interesting: Breezeblock by Alt-J

My production Group

Welcome to my production team for making a music video:

Our task is to work as a small independent production company and create a promotion package for the release of the album, including a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

1. A website homepage for the band 
2. The cover of the CD
3. A magazine advertisement for the CD

This task must be completed by the end of the Autumn term, which is December.

A Rocky Ride

This is an image of my journey throughout the past year during Media.

• The mountains show that there were ups and downs on the road but ended on a high. 
• The clouds and rain are showing the down fall in the middle of the year where panic started to appear, stress of not being finished or organised in time for the thriller shoot. 
• The sun represents the making of the thriller with my production group. 

Initial Idea 2

Song: Drop by Chloe X Halle

A (18-22) female standing in a white cube/room then at 0.48seconds coloured powder shoots out covering the room and this would be shot in slow motion. This cuts between different settings of the cube, so adding mirrors so the solo singer is multiplied, this idea formed by the original video as they are twins. This music video would be very abstract. Starting at 0.18 then it cuts at 1.14 to start again at 2.07 until 3.30, which ends up being a 2.30minute video.

Mirrored room - displaying multiple views of the solo artist.

Coloured Power that gets thrown into the area.

White room/box that solo artist performs in.

These two artists are very similar to Lorde. They have the same tempo and same dynamics. Lorde is a New Zealand singer, her first single was called Royals, which was released in June 2013 it was characterised as an art pop/electro pop. The song, written by Lorde and Joel Little, is lyrically disapproving of contemporary artist lifestyle.

Initial Idea 1

Song: Burning Benches by Morning Runner

Runner is an alternative rock/pop band who were formed in 2003 in Reading UK. There were 4 four members to the band, it included a singer/guitarist, drummer, bassist and a pianist. The band unfortunately split in 2007 due to commercial pressures from their record label. The one album they released in 2006 was called 'Wilderness Is Paradise Now' and their song 'Burning Benches' made the top 20 single chart. 

A young (20-25) male playing a grand piano in a plain white empty hall wall/room whilst singing. When the music builds up at 1.11 in the song, we see a different male and a female dancing on a beach flashing back now and then to the piano player. At 2.21 in the song we cut back to the piano player for the last couple cords in the song.

Cut the song from 2.26 until 3.52 to get a good finish, which makes the video 2.43minutes.

I would say that Morning Runner is very similar to the band to Snow Patrol. It has the same restless but empowering tone. Snow Patrol are an alternative rock band created in 1993. Their first release was called Polar Bear

Photoshop Introduction

Through the A2 course I learnt how to use Photoshop. Photoshop is digital editing software that allows the user to adapt any photos or even connect two or more photos together, which develops into something completely different from the original photo, creating an album artwork piece for example. Photoshop is designed so that anyone can use it from a beginner to a professional with lots of experience. There are so many tools you can learn and they are all labelled and manageable to figure out.

In Photoshop you have a section where is shows you your ‘layers’. This tool is used to help your work not get messed up or limit the chance of your work getting deleted or lost. You would build you final product up in layers so they are separate then one layer shows how the image looks all together, so each part will be in different layers.

Some tools are very important for starting out for example the cutting tool. The Lasso is one of them, you can select 3 options; Lasso, Polygonal Lasso or the Magnetic Lasso. These allows you to select a section from the photo and cut around the image leaving you with the cut area. You can then copy, paste, rotate etc. until you get exactly what you are looking for.

One tool I used a lot of was the undo button. Being a beginner on this program I made a lot of mistakes that I needed to correct, however by making mistakes helped me learn more about the program and showed me what to do and not what to do.

The more time I spend on this program the more I will come to grips with is all, so the first time I used Photoshop I went at a slow pace so I could really take everything in. This process has encouraged me to be more adventurous on the program, trying new things so hopefully my final product will be just how I want it.

Lip Syncing Task

End Product:

I was involved in a lip sync exercise with my class using the song ‘All about that Bass’ by Meghan Trainer. It was a case of filming, choreographing and finally editing the clip together. I began the exercise by placing myself in front of the camera, which helped me understand how hard it was to be exactly in time with the song making it look as realistic as possible. This experience will be very useful for when we move onto the task of actually creating our own music video, as we will have to create something that looks professional and not amateur.  We had to think carefully about each shot being taken and using different settings. We had to keep track of how many shots we had taken in one particular place, meaning that we had to reshoot some shots so that we were guaranteed enough footage for the editing process. 

 I also had to go behind the camera at one point. Our group was using a Song FS 100, Song FX3 then the Cannon 5D and these were used to shoot the other half of my group lip-syncing to the song. I had to create various shots, trying to make it original and interesting to the eye, but making sure all the actors were in full focus so the picture was clear on the screen. It is a tricky process as the actors are constantly moving so I had to follow whilst making sure the camera was positioned in a safe and mobile place, but still creating a good angled shot. There was one particular roll I did not get to do, it was called the ‘floor manager’. This job entailed shouting directions, for example ‘rolling’ and ‘action’ so everyone on set knew when to start filming so that the music would be perfectly in sync.

The last part of this process is the final editing of the clips. To do this we moved into the editing studio where in our original group we looked back on all the footage we shot. During the shoot we used three different sets so when reviewing all the footage we grouped the shots from each setting together. Then we were to sync all our shots and videos with the music, making the task a lot easier when editing them together. After this process was done we had to choose different clips that we wanted to use. There was tool called the ‘snipping tool and this enabled our group to lengthen or shorten footage. After all the footage we had chosen was edited together we were left with a music video.