My Contribution

These are photos of my contribution to the production process so far. Up top is my input into Mise-en-scene (securing actors, locations, props and costumes) and the bottom is the the percentage of my input into Shot Production (Camera work and lighting). 

Final Song Choice

We listened to this song and I picked out the references I could use for this band and such as Alexisonfire. I decided this would be the best band to use as we both were fans of rock and metal and could relate and reference the genre conventions well.

We both decided this would be the best track to use as we routinely sat through most of their tracks we could find and imaged our own visual interpretations and we both had the strongest ideas for this track. I imagined a girl arguing with her boyfriend and parents during the fast paced angry parts of the track.

we both brainstormed our ideas whilst repeatedly listening to the track and this was the outcome.

We refined our ideas to get a structure for our video and I came up with some shot types needed such as the establishing shot and some advanced camera work such as the through the wall (door) shot.

Planning for my Digipak Idea

INSIDE COVER : Panoramic Shot of band with their instruments (Drummer with Drum Sticks) / Conceptual background made on photoshop DATE: 20th November TIME: 12:15 - 4:00 (PM) CREW: Kieran and Connie PROPS: Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Microphone, Drum Sticks COSTUME FOR BAND: Black/Grey Skinny Jeans for all, Drummer and Bassist = Black T-Shirts Guitarist and Lead singer = White T-Shirts.

Campaign Strategy - 2A

Marketing Strategy Question 2B

Level 1 - Lack of care, incomplete research ect

7 Marks

Grade = U1

Work that is needed

3 ideas of a music video
Music Video Analysis
E-Mail to copyright holder
Target Audience – collage
Mood Board for your Concept (your idea)
Digipak Analysis 
Website Analysis

5/7 Posts need to be redone

Detail of analysis is extensive in parts but mostly poor

Narrative Prezi

Chloe's Digipak

It is a Metal, Scene/Emo genre which is shown by the conventions of her costume, (Stripy hoody, T-Shirt with a skull and skinny jeans). Represents a Lonely, Depressed, Rebellious girl who feels invisible in society and this is shown by her cross dissolve with the smoke into the grimy urban wall. You can tell that the target audience is Girls aged 12 - 16 as the artist is a teenage girl dressed like a young teenager trying to find her identity, making it relatable to girls of this age http://www.chloe-at-a2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/digipack.html

Wonderland - Not a Love Song Concept

Girls do not need boys when they have their friends

Wonderland - Not a Love Song

Initial song ideas 2 - Beliving is not Knowing

All She Wrote - Believing is not Knowing

I pictured this song as a non linear narrative video. During the first 10 seconds I pictured a girl sitting in a mental hospital, in a straight jacket. The as the music drops into the scream, I pictured a group of people including staff and patients circling her and taunting her, throwing things at her and shouting abusively in slow motion. After the fast paced section, at 28 seconds I visualise at shot in which the camera zooms into her eye and we see snippets of her life before she went crazy. To match the lyric 'Admit the lack of honesty' I see her walking in, in a school uniform and greeting her parents smiling as if everything is okay and then going up to room and cutting her wrists. At 52 seconds when the music stops and the line' The words you hear are lies' is sung, I visualise a super slow-motion shot of a droplet of blood falling and hitting the sink.  Then the music kicks back in and I see a fast paced fight scene in which she is getting beaten up by a girl at school. I then see it cut back to the mental hospital where she lashes out wildly as if she is having a flash back. Then the nurses come running in and look after her so it is revealed all the taunting at the beginning is in her head. The scene then cuts to her in the kitchen with her mum who takes a paracetomol and the girl cant take her eyes off her. It then cuts to a scene in which she runs to her boyfriends with a bloody nose (after the fight) and he just shuts the door in her face. As she is walking back past his window we see the girl who beat her up with him sitting and laughing. It then cuts to a scene in her bedroom during the breakdown (2.05) in which she pours out a few pots of pills onto her table and then jump cuts of the pills and a glass of water slowly disappearing. This is intercut with her parents frantically driving to the hospital with her in the back unconscious. As the music turns to the angelic part (2.32)  I picture a Point of view shot with lots of lens flares and Doctors  crowded around her. These shots would fade to black every few seconds to show the passing of time and her slipping in and out of consciousness. When the music kicks back in we see her mum  having a heated argument with a Doctor whilst her dad is sitting with his head in his hands sobbing. At the end we see the girl in the room and a nurse brings in her lunch. As she lifts up the tray there is a note underneath saying - You Are Loved, Signed anonymous. It ends with a close of her face with a single tear rolling down her face and a faint smile playing on her lips.

All She Wrote - Questioning Significance Initial Ideas

For this song I instantly got a picture in my head of an army marching into war with the military drum beat for the first 20 seconds. Then the music Kicks in and is fast paced and I pictured this as jumping straight into the battle scene to shock the audience and this lasts up to 39 seconds. Then as the song slows down I pictured the main character taking cover, and lip syncing to the camera. Then at 59 seconds the song becomes mellow with an echoing voice effect which I interpreted as a grenade going off next to him and he becomes shell shocked wandering around the battle field. The fast pace then picks up again as his senses are returned. Then the chorus comes in and I think that this would be when the performance side. After this the breakdown comes in and I imagine this to be our characters death scene while he is trying to be saved by the medics. Then there is another section of the Echoey melodic music and I picture this as his soul ascending the battle field. After this I picture this cut with our characters, friends, parents and girlfriend finding out the news and their reactions while he watches over them. Just before the outro at the end of the main song I picture this as his funeral with everyone saying their last goodbyes and he can finally pass on to the otherside. At the end of the song there is a heavy bit with the lyrics 'WE STAND UNITED, YOU'RE ALL DIVIDED' And I picture this as the armies standing on the frontline shouting this at each other

Key Terms and Concepts for a Music Video

Music videos are almost the polar opposite to the Thriller films we created last year at AS level. This time it is about extending the song into a visual concept rather, to give the audience a new and fresh outlook of the song. We will be honing the skills we gained last year, such as the exploration of genre and how to reach a select target audience. During this weeks lesson we have been our visual interpretation of songs for music videos by shutting off everything but the song and writing down what comes to mind.

Key Terms 


Most music videos are a mixture of these -

• Conceptual - A type of music video that is a metaphor of the song and may not necessarily make sense when taken at face value.

• Narrative - A type of music video that tells us a story. The stereotype of this is 'Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They have an argument/things break down. They make-up at the end, happy ever after'.

• Performance - This type of music video is of the band/artist actually performing the song.

• Hyper reality - This is an integral part of music videos as if you were to shoot one like a film, in the style of realism, then you would have a very boring two minutes. As with the Chemical Brothers video for Hey boy, Hey Girl, what is more interesting, a club full of people dancing or a club full of skeletons? Exactly. When watching a music video the audience wants to whisked away from their mundane reality. -
  
  Intertexuality - This is where music videos make reference to... well anything. Usually they reference famous films but they can also reference books, TV Shows, other music videos, magazines/comics, and the list goes on - MUSE - KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA VIDEO - The Most Intertexual video ever!

Charlotte Hatherley - Bastardo

The video is set out by watching her story through different media texts. We as the audience watch her through various girly annuals, comics newspapers ect. This is also hyper reality as the story seems to mundane be followed and made into stories for people to read. Also it uses lots of famous actors and actresses which is another aspect of intertexuality as the audience can get the reference by recognising the actors. It can also be considered voyeurism as we are watching her life as it happens.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Prodigy - Firestarter Analysis of Music/Video

The music is reflected in his actions as they start off in slow motion with the slow intro and as soon as the drum track kicks in he head bangs aggressively

His is very expressive of the type of music as it is aggressive electronic punk and he shows this off with his costume - his piercings, outrageous hair styles etc.

This still is also very representative of how the director uses close-ups as the editing is jumpy going very quickly from long shots to close ups to get the lead singer right in your face to show his anger and aggression.

The Avalanches - 'Fronteir Psychology' Analysis of Video/Music Relationship

This still shows the conventions of the genre of the music as it is in a DJ mash-up style and this is reflected with lots of characters from different time periods and different cultures.

The lyric here is "Dexter is Criminally insane".
This is the last spoken part before the song begins and could be an explanation of why the video is so abstract as we are looking at it from Dexter's perspective







This image sticks with the surrealism of the piece but shows the genre with a 'DJ' remixing a vinyl track

This image is reflective of the lyric as it is "you're crazy as a coconut" with the coconut saying it which is 'crazy' in its self.

Connie:

Music:

There are horse noise sound effects synced with a shot of a woman hitting a horse with a stick. This will entertain the audience and set a comical and not-very-serious fee; to the video.

There are "tundra/avalanche" sound effects synced with a shot of a t.v playing and avalanche as well as lyrics stating that there is an avalanche, this will be used to keep the audience guessing about its significants and therefore engaging them to watch on.

C-U:

The use of Close-up's breaks the conventions band CU's and instead shows obscure props. This might be to demon-straight how unstable the video of a "Frontier Psychiatrist" the fact that the song title and lyrics give reference to Psychiatry might mean that these shots are used to create an unstable world abit like the mind frame of a person that a psychiatrist might need to help.

Notions of looking/Voyerism Essay

The video starts off with a close up and the shot zoom out from two womens faces and their costumes show them with heavy make-up and glamourous attire. The editing is fast paced and all of this suggests a party scenario. We then see a woman behind a cage pulling a sexually provocative pose giving us the impression of looking in on a caged animal at a zoo, which leads us to belive that we are superior over her. However the angle is at a juxterposition to this as it places the audience underneath the women showing us that she might be sexually dominant. One thing that jumps out at me is the lack of men in the video and the first shot we see of Robbie (the only male in the video) is a birds eye view and him looking up at the audience giving us a complete sense of power over him, however Robbie seems untrobled by this, giving us a cheeky wink to show that desptie being given a position of power over him that, as a man, he still feels powerful. We slowly see Robbie rise up through center stage with a room of girls skating around him. As he ascends all eyes turn on him and we get a strong sense of voyerism as before he was isolated and now suddenly their are lots of female watching his every move. His gaze moves around the room until he looks up at the DJ, a female who is placed at the very top of the room as she has complete control over the the disco and Robbie as his dancing, which is being judged by the room in general, depends on what the tracks the DJ plays. The camera angles are also low for the women but for different reasons as the shot focusses on their bottoms. I think this conceptual video plays on the role reversal of men and women but still places Robbie at the top of the pecking order as even though the audience are looking at him critically the camera angles are constantly low on him. There is a great shot which compostion shows the hierarchy of the scene as we have the girls in dark lighting at the bottom of the picture, Robbie in the middle of the limelight with his back to the audience and The DJ at the very top centre, in her own booth which is fully lit from the bottom upwards. However I find it interesting that even though the women are meant to be dominant thaey all find it necassary to wear full make-up and dress up as these are characteristics of a women trying to impress a man and this suggests that even in a female dominated society that they feel threatened by men to be sexual. This is in opposition to what appears as it is the women scrutinsing the singled out male who seems to yearn for their approval. This becomes clearer as Robbie starts to strip purely because the women are not impressed by what they see. This is where the video starts to take a surreal turn once Robbie is stripped fully the girls are still not impressed so he carries on by ripping off his skin down to the bone. I think that this is a metaphor for western society and the male gaze as the women are not completely satisfied until the model is stick thin. As soon as this happens the DJ is brought down from her pedastal and this is a metaphor as it shows that as soon as men are seduced they become the slave rather than the master.