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Music Video Part 1 - Ruff Cut

Filming in Brick Lane & Allen Park

By 9.10am we had left the 6th form building along with our filming equipment (which included a spare battery for our camera and an extra tape). As planned, our first stop was Brick Lane in the hope that we could catch some 'trendy' commuters for our time lapse shoot. However, to our disappoinment, there were not enough people around in order for us to successfully create this effect. Alternatively, we walked to Liverpool Street station which was much more hectic. This meant that unfortunately we could not capture the targets we wanted. We located a good spot for our singer and he changed into his costume. We set up our equipment and filmed for about 10minutes. As advised by a classmate, we aimed to keep the camera at distance so that our singers slight movements were not too visible.
Our next stop was Allen Park. Mustafa changed costumes again into a bright purple checked shirt. We kept the position of the camera the same but directed our singer to pop up in various places. We are planning to edit these into fast cuts as we have previously tried out. We also told our singer to walk from one end of the framing to the other at different distances.  

RESHMA

Friday 10th December

, During the lesson today we discussed when we would film our remaining footage. We have come up with the idea of using a time lapse effect within our music video thus we have decided to film at Brick Lane which should be quite busy. We will film on Monday morning (9am-11am) as this time is convenient for all group members. During this time we also plan to shoot in a park in an attempt to recreate some editing techniques we previously tried out (the fast cuts of our actor).

Album/Magazine cover ideas.

After our magazine cover analysis i found that magazine covers usually follow the same pattern, Artists of the same genre will stick to a specific formula. An artist such as Weller who seems to be making a solo "Come back" album wouldn't follow the same formula as Manic street preachers.

Wellers magazine cover has him standing on stage, very natural look not posed or acted, it's just him playing on stag

e. Which makes sense as the product he is advertising is a "Double feature" CD/DVD of Weller playing live on stage. The use of the stage lights pointing down on him, showing his audience that he is now a serious solo artist and is no longer with "The Jam". It effectively shows he is no longer sharing the spotlight with his ex-band members.

Most magazine cover nowadays have a digital download link for the album (iTunes) this album does not. The album also has a documentary about Paul Weller, this is great for the super fan. It also gives other people extra incentive to buy the album, not download it.

What we have taken from looking at this magazine cover;

Our artist is also a solo artist and we have found that it is important to advertise this.

Shots of the artist in the spotlight alone in there natural state is an effective ways in doing so.

Finally i also found that we should use intertextuality on our album cover and or magazine cover, Because we have quiet a serious artist who has a cold and serious stare i decided to mix this up with quite a serious and emotionless actor: Dexter

Looking at CD adverts within magazines

Today we looked at the conventions for music albums used in magazine adverts. We analysed several adverts, describing the images, looking at what information has been provided on them, picking out features that have made the album distinctive and also features we can apply to our own advert. This task has revealed that it is very common for artists of the rock genre to have a guitar in the image which is used for the advert. The guitar is a typical convention of the rock genre and easily recogniseable to the target audience. This task has also showed me which information music artists reveal in their adverts. The essential bits of information presented are: artist name, album name, release date of CD/performance date. Additional information I found varied between album covers. Few did not have an artist website but a majority did. This has helped as it gives an indication of what information our magazine advert should contain in order to attract and connect with its target audience. From the magazine adverts I have analysed today, these are some of the elements I might be able to apply to our own advert: *We found skills of Weller's documentary on his advert so I thought we might be able to use a few stills of us making the video *The advert of Crowded House used graffiti style font. As this fits in with our genre we may use this *Crowded House, Hawksley Workman and Gogol Bordello adverts all contained an artist website which I think is vital as it enables us to connect to a wider audience *The image of Hawksley Workman in his advert shows us the artist holding an unnatural expression. He is wearing a hat. We have already discussed that our artist may wear a hat in our advert as part of his costume. Also our artist wears the unnatural look in our music video so we could possibly have this look in the advert thus he is easily recogniseable *The advert of Gogol Bordello has the artist name against bright green bricks behind the image of the artist *'Hearts and Minds' the album by Seth Lakeman uses text only on his advert. I thought this was very effective as the main focus is on the text rather than an image

Experiment

So this is an experiment which I done with our footage. We need you guys to tell us what you think about it, so where going to ask you a few question which you will be able to answer in a poll.

Are there enough cuts in the video?

Would you expect someone of the indie/pop genre to wear what our artists is?

Do the locations, match what you would expect to see in a video of this genre?

Friday 26th - The shoot

Tyrone capturing a shot of the changing traffic lights whilst Mustafa is holding the tree branches out of sight (left),

On Friday, as scheduled, we re-shot the Skate Park scene and shot the White Room scene. When shooting the skate park scene again, things went pretty much according to plan. We did not manage to get shots of skaters though because the skate park was deserted. One problem that we did have to deal with was the sun, the sun was very bright so we tried to block it out with an umberella, this didn't work so we went away and shoot something else and when the sun went down we re-shoot it. However, when setting up the White Room with the instruments and cameras, we decided the room wasn't as we'd expected. The marks on the walls showed up on the camera and the lights didn't help in making the room look clean white. All the same, we managed to find an instant alternative. The Great Hall which has a white wall, this was available although we had to wait for a while. We then transported all of our props and filming equipment and set up the location. During the setting up of location we found extra stage lighting which we decided to set up, although this did cause some problems as at some angles it left a shadow, we then tried turning some of the lights down and finally got the lighting how we wanted it. We decided to set up a camera which had all the instruments in shoot, and another camera which was used to get angled shoots and close up shots. If we was filming for a real music I realise that we would probably do the establishing shoots first where his playing all the instruments , we would then keep one instrument in shoot and take the others out, this would mean only one instrument was in shoot at a time.

Todays Progress

Today we completed our shooting schedules, and have decided on the following dates to film:

We are re-shooting the Skate Park shots on Friday the 26th November from 11-1pm

We have also discussed filming the scenes in the White Room on the same day (from 1.30 - 4pm). However, this is yet to be confirmed as we could not reach Miss Cervi who is responsible for the Performing Arts room. As she was unavailable, we, as a group constructed a memo which we will leave in her pigeon hole (and Mr Holders for musical instruments). Here is a print screen image of the actual memo. We are anticipating a response by Wednesday.

We have discussed the props we will need for the shoot. This includes two lights for the white room (to try and overcome the issue of the room not being clean white) and two cameras to enable us to get shots from various angles. If our proposal is accepted, our singer Mustafa will wear different costumes for both locations. We will also borrow a drum kit, microphone and stand, guitar and guitar base for this scene.

For our second attempt of shooting, we require a spray paint to paint 'Brad Sucks'.

The Sky Divers Production Team

Image construction.

COSTUME AND STAR CONSTRUCTION.

I was able to find a pair of lovely converses from a friend at college and he was willing to lend it to me while we shot our video.

On the same day i went to my local Topman and found a pair of skinny jeans, when we got some feedback from the other media group they identified our character as young ,w

hite and a typical Topman customer. So i am trying to make it my goal to become a generic "Topman shopping student???"

Ms.Pollard also lent us some beads to wear and we are also hoping to get a t shrit similar to this so it will match the beads.

Example

During today's lesson we went out locally to get some footage using the ideas we have. As we have planned to have a park as one location, we used to park in front of the 6th form to create some effects. We then edited it to create the fast cuts. We thought it was good and suited the song in terms of genre, particularly the end of the song where the pace picks up. We may use this effect, but to improve it we will cut it more carefully according to the rhythm.

Props for our music video

For our music video where going to need a variety of props to make it work. For the skate park scene which we are going to re-shoot were going to need a spray can, this is so we can write on "Brad Sucks - Making me nervous". For the scene which we are going to shoot in the white room we will need two big lights, Base guitar, Drum kit,keyboard, microphone and a microphone stand.

Locations

This is our first Location Mile End Skate Park(pictured right), where we have already ready filmed parts of our music video. The reason why we choose this as one of our locations is because it fits with the genre which we are song is part, and this is what we know our target audience expects to see.

This is a potential location for our music video, we want to use this room because of the plain walls so we can use it for a nice clean backdrop but after seeing the room today, the room isn't as clean as we first thought, but the room does offer a lot of closed space to bring in instruments such as a nice big drum kit for the opening scene.

We also plan on using an open roof top to record some shoots.

Skate park re-shoot

We plan to re-shoot the skate park scenes on Friday 26th of November. The reason why we have chosen to do this is because I made a mistake when filming. when i looked back at the footage, I realised I moved the camera when Mustafa moved,this was not the correct thing to do as when we come to edit the footage, we will not be able to use elliptical editing, which is a key part of our video. Another reason why we have chosen to re-shoot is because when I looked at the footage we missed a lot of opportunities which would make the video look better. Such as underneath where Mustafa was standing there was Graffiti that says "love sucks" when we re shoot were going to write brad sucks which is the name of our artists. Another one was when we filmed people skating around in the bowl there was a chair in the middle, we realised we could have put our artists on the chair and allow them to skate around, when it comes to editing we will speed it up and it will look very good.

ANIMATIC

This is our animatic, these are just some of the shoots which we plan to use in our music video. As said in the post above some of the shoots which we have already shoot will be re-shoot. This animatic is going to help us with planning as on the day of ur shoots we wont be guessing on which shoots to shoot.

Ancillary task research

When researching the album covers for poprock/indie artists, these are the ones I found. Although these vary in appearance, they share common characteristics. Some use graphic effects to create a funky look while the content of the other abums covers is more funky e.g variety of buttons on Josh Pykes album. They all use vivid colours.

Storyboard part 1

Here are some images of our storyboard. We have not yet completed it but these are some of the ideas we have had for the beginning of the music video.

Filming - Wednesday 27th Oct

As scheduled, today, we met up at Mile End Skate Park at 12pm. We filmed a variety of shots of Mustafa from different angles and distances.. We were fortunate to find artists painting graffiti so we decided to film them (with consent) to use to cut to within the video. We also filmed a couple of skaters who were happy to participate. Tyrone handled the camera.

Meeting

on the 12th of October Tyrone (me) and Mustafa had a meeting to discuss all things about our music video. In this meeting we discussed Dates of filming, Actors, camera person, editor and producer. The date of filming we decided would be some time during the half term from the 25th to the 29th of October, Mustafa will check what time and days his available ans he may have to work. Actors Miss Pollard and Mustafa to ask friendlies if they will be willing to take part in the music video as they would fit the song perfectly. The camera person would be Tyrone (me) as i have experience in operating the camera from last year. The editor would be Mustafa but I (Tyrone) will assist as we both edited bits of our video last year. And the producer will be reshma as she has good organisational skills.

What progress did we make today?

Monday 18th October

Today we began storyboarding. We had some good ideas:

The song begins with a beat which continues solely for about 14 seconds. We figured to fill this gap, we could introduce the character. His feet still first, followed by tapping in sequence with the beat of the music. This also compliments the song lyrics, as the main theme of the song is about nerves. Foot tapping is usually the associated action of a nervous individual.
We also made final decisions on the locations which will be used. A white room (a portakabin within the sixth form which we require permission to use) and park location (images on earlier posts by Mustafa). We may add locations after consultation with Tyrone. Props needed was also a topic of discussion, we carried out some research on clothing and have decided on colours and items we will purchase (checked plimsolls, t-shirt) to enable the character to fit into the stereotype. There was some discussion about using a drum kit within the white room but we have not yet gained permission to use them.

Research

After playing this audio track to the other A2 Media Class, these are the types of videos they pictured the song would suit:
They imagined the main actor style as a relatively funky guy - dressed in skinny jeans, tucked into his boots (perhaps military style). He is white with lenghthy hair, with a scruffy or 'dirty' appearance. He has a serious look about him.
In regard to location, they visualised the following:
-Street corners
-Dancing girls in a completely white room
-They also envisioned that the actor is singing to an audience on stage.
-Some imagined the song being released from a band playing in a room.

The other class also said that there should be different types of shots such as a camera tied to a bike and the actor lip syncing, and the artist standing on a bridge while the cars go by behind them. They said the video should look arty, should have quick cuts and should have an abstract narrative.
As a group, we had already imagined the main character as the other class have described: scruffy, funky, stubbly etc but as a group we have elaborated more on this characters description by discussing age, colour of clothing and more. These varied opinions from the others have inspired us and provided guidance. Yet we do not completely agree with all their suggestions such as those about dancing girls. Our group discussions revealed that we all pictured the video consisting of one character from end to finish and if there was to be more characters involved, it would not be dancing girls. Being a slow paced song, it would not suit dance performances like fast dance songs or R&B songs would (their typical iconography consists of girls, often dancing).


As a result of this feedback, we decided to discard the following locations: band on a rooftop, or singer taking a walk down the canal.

Location Scouting - Mustafa

Second lake:







Path way:

Artists Image Construction

This is what we imagine our artists will be wearing, the look where going for is typical of what you would see people wearing when you take a trip to Brick lane. The look that were going for, for our artists is minimal and indie. The outfit consists of chinos, printed T-Shirts, beads and plimsoles. This is typicalt of what you would expect an artists from this genre to wear. On our first shoot in the skate park Mustafa did not wear the outfit which he was told to wear, for the rest of the shooting period he will be expected to wear stuff similar to what you see here

The band below is similar to our artist they are called the aberdeen, as you can see they are wearing black skinny jeans. There image is simple and minimal its also similar to what we want to do with band in a room . They are most likely to shop in places like top shop and river island. 

 

Genre Research - Typical Music Videos

Example - This song is the same genre as our song. It has all the typical iconography which music videos of that genre do. Such as a drum and base beat and a very out there video.The idea of the video is similar to idea of the music video which we would like to make. We want our music video to have a frame within and frame and stop motion editing. Which would be alot of editing.

Music video research.

I would like to use stop motion or a similar idea in our music video as it really suits the tone and rhythm of Brad Sucks - Making me nervous. The choppy beat and little narrative is very easy to do and doesn't take away from the amazing editing. I really doubt we can have an edit as smooth as this by editing with iMovie09 we will probably have to find the laptop with final cut pro installed because i think imovie09 only goes up to 20 fps (frames per second)

My Favourite has to be Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie:

Target audienc

Age: College / University students (18- 22)
Sex: Mostly Males, but females who enjoy to have a good time also.

Ethnicity:White.
Interests: Dancing, clubing, socialising, have a good time

Other artists they'd like: Example, Foals, Oren Lavie

Location Scouting !

On the 10th october i will be going location scouting to my local parks and central areas of london for a prime location(s) to shoot our music video, ill post the pictures on the 10th on the blog, wish me luck !

Artist Profile.

I imagine the artist to be young in this mid twenties, quite modern looking, wearing fashionable clothing i.e: skinny jeans bright funky t shirts i imagine him looking like Yannis Philippakis from Foals:



The name of our artist is Brad Sucks, this is our artist first single, and the first song on his album. His bid 20's,

His songs are quite electronic "synthesised" so i thought he would be quite artsy, like yannis with the bubbles. So yes i think we could dress some one up like that and it could be quite a easy build. The way the person would act and carry him self would also be alot like Foals (Probably because they are of the same genre)



Indie Video Analysis of FOALS:

This music video is of the band Foals and the song is called Balloons. The music video is quite funky, crazy, hectic. The iconography is clear: a band in a room with a twist - they have chosen to film a hawk flying up and down this yellow wallpapered room. It is a typical convention for indie bands like the Foals to behave in a wierd way. The dress sense of this band is inspiring to us - skinny cut jeans & colourful shirts. In addition they are all shown holding instruments such as: Guitars, drums and bass guitars which we will take into account when thinking about the props we will use. Camera shots: Indie bands such as Foals and the Maccabees tend to have close ups of their face and instruments within their music video. The editing style used appeals to us as it we intend to use a similar style. The cuts from instrument to instrument follow the pace of the song. Although our song is slower, we have decided to go with this style of editing.

Brad Sucks Wordle !

Brad Sucks - Making Me Nervous.

Wordle is a great website that really helps show the words that are repeated in the song, Words that are repeated for a reason.
The words that really stand out in this image are: TIME, MAKING, BABY and SUNSHINE. The word that stands out the most to me is "TIME" in our music video we could incorporate this (TIme running out?), a type of editing which we would use is time laps this is where you keep the camera in the same place and the object moves, you need fast forward it to make it seem like time passes. The songs narrative seems to be a person that is living a stressed life "one step at a time don't be living on the line". The acting style which were going to use is serious, and static, in the music video there will be no reaction to nothing.

Brad Sucks - Making Me Nervous Lyrics

Theses are the lyrics to our song, which Mustafa our actor has to learn to be able to lip sync.

Here we go!

One step at a time don't be living on the line
I don't need a friend i got morbid on the mind
Sunshine in my brain making everyone complain
Radio in the heart don't be being so strange
I think i'm losing it baby where you been
Everybody says that you're moving again
I don't wanna be right baby every single night
I could tell you a thing about taking your time
It's making me nervous yeah

One step at a time don't be living on the line
I don't need a friend i got morbid on the mind
Sunshine in my brain making everyone complain
Radio in the heart don't be being so strange
I think i'm losing it baby where you been
Everybody says that you're moving again
I don't wanna be right baby every single night
I could tell you a thing about taking your time
It's making me nervous yeah

I think i'm losing it baby where you been
Everybody says that you're moving again
I don't wanna be right baby every single night
I could tell you a thing about taking your time
It's making me nervous yeah

I thought of the idea of stop motion for our music video almost as soon as i heard the song. The beat and style of the song definitely suited the cool style we might be going for. Luckily me and Tyrone did some music video research and found that similar mainstream bands and artists like Example and Coldplay used or tried to use it. After i watched Coldplays -Strawberry Swing music video i found that i defiantly wanted to incorporated this similar style in our music video. And this video was shot with a pretty old camera sorry about the quality, im sure when we actually shoot it with a Tripod and not my shaky hands it will turn out GREAT ! :)