Part 1
Part 2
Thursday 15 December 2011
analysis of a music video
Coldplay - Paradise
genre: Alternative/Pop
- completely unconventional music video
- band members appear as the elephants but we only find this out right near end of video
- bright lighting and colours are used
- lryrics match up with visuals such as the lyrics throughout the song are displayed on cardboard plaques
- when talking about paradise shows the elephant in nice forest locations
- the video altogether though does not really link with the song.
- no running motifs
Basic camera angles/shot
There are many different camera angles and shots used in films/videos, these include; Extreme Long Shots, Long Shots, Medium Shots, Close-Ups, Extreme Close-Ups.
Different height orientated camera angles include; Bird’s Eye View, High Angle, Eye Level, Low Angle, Oblique/Canted Angle.
- Birds eye view shots are often extreme long shots and are used to establish a location.
- High angle shots have multiple uses, they can be used as establishing shots, they are also used to make the focus appear smaller and sometimes less significant.
- Eye level shots are used to show the artist face to face to create a greater connection between them and the audience.
- low angle shots are often used to make people appear larger and more important.
- Extreme long shots are mainly used to show/establish locations or settings as seen in the example above.
- Long shots are usually used to show the scene in full so that the audience can get a feel for the location
- Mid shots are usually used to show the artist (person being filmed) so that the focus is on them and what they are doing
- Close ups are usually used to show emotion on the artists face only so that the audience is focus on their facial expression
- Extreme close ups are essentially used to do the same as above
Different height orientated camera angles include; Bird’s Eye View, High Angle, Eye Level, Low Angle, Oblique/Canted Angle.
- High angle shots have multiple uses, they can be used as establishing shots, they are also used to make the focus appear smaller and sometimes less significant.
- Eye level shots are used to show the artist face to face to create a greater connection between them and the audience.
- low angle shots are often used to make people appear larger and more important.
analysis of a music video
The Only Exception - Paramore
genre: Punk rock
- follows a story-line so matches the lyrics
- punk everyday outfit
- notion of looking into someone's house
- laying on the pile of heart matches song lyrics
- wide shot of the whole song
- lots of close ups of main artist
- close ups of the band playing
- effective use of costume changes
- some outfits are more seductive than others such as the dress on the date
- ends on the same scene that the song begins on
Wednesday 14 December 2011
Contacting The Saturdays
I found out that fascination records were The Saturdays management team and so decided to email them concerning using their song as our choice. Above is what i would of wrote.
Themes in The Saturdays music videos
The Saturdays is a girl group and is made up by 5 different singers. In every one of their music videos they have made it colourful through the clothing they wear or the accessories that they use. A good example of this is their music video to their song 'Up'.
The above screen shot is from one of the first fast shots 1) setting the pace of the video which fits in with the genre and 2) giving a clear imagery of colour which associates with The Saturdays and is consistant through all of their videos.
The screen shot below is also from one of the first shots in the video which shows the different colours and allows the audience to associate the different colours with the different members of the group.
As I pointed out earlier they also use the accessories to associate their colours with themselves as this screen shot is showing, the member that the shot is focused on is holding an orange bad and an orange ring and as seen in other shots from the video, is also wearing orange tights and holds an orange microphone in the video just as the member in the back ground of this shot is holding a pink/purple microphone and also wearing the same colour tights.
Evaluation indiviual timed response - Melissa
In our music video we changed normal video conventions where the artist is made to look glamourous whereas we made our artist, Emma, look ordinary and having a really bad day as we wanted to show that all though singers/artists are famous, they also have bad days. Our digipak is a cross between a happy mood and a bad mood. Our magazine advert has a screen shot of Emma from the video throwing her broken umbrella to the floor in frustration. This challenges the conventions ussually used in a magazine advert as the producers of the advert may use; a photo of the CD album or they may have done a photo shoot of the artist looking glamourous using a theme from the music video or something that apears in several of the music videos of the album and the photo of the artist would most likely be a close up of the artist's face. Some of the writing on the magazine advert is slightly harder to read and in my opinion, now that I've looked back at it, should be a different colour than orange and blue, that is easier to read on the background colour that it is on and i feel a dark red would have been a better colour to use as it would have shown up on the background.
For the DVD cover we used the same font for "The Saturdays" as in the magazine advert, but we used a darker shade of orange. We have Emma looking slightly more glamourous as it isn't just for the song "Had it with today", but for all the songs that are featured in the album. What we did use to show that the product was connected with the video and to connect it with the magazine advert was the umbrella idea.
When viewed seperately, the audience would be able to link all three products together from the simple but effective image of Emma with the umbrella. This is because in the video the shot of Emma with the umbrella is quick but the fact that the umbrella is in the album cover and she looks happy and it's a different one triggers the idea that she has a new umbrella and that simple things in life can make people happy.
The feed back we recieved was helpful to us as it told us what we did good and the auidence made it clear what they didn't like about the video and through that suggested what we could have done to make it better. The audience liked that the visuals in the video we made matched the lyrics which was used quite a few times in our video. The outfits Emma wore during filming had quite dark colours and she mainly wore black trousers or jeans which we and the audience felt helped reflect a bad/dark mood which is the subject of the song which is what we wanted to get across to the auidence. Another technique we used which was mentioned in the audience feed back, was that we used the idea of voyersim, the notion of looking, which was shown twice in the first part of our video. The first time was when Emma was in bed waking up and the second was through the mobile phone and the text that was recieved.
To create our music video and digipak we used several different technologies which ranged from the construction, research, planning and the evaluation stages. For our research we used a number of websites that contained the theories we need, for example, Goodwin's theory. We also used google to gain images of real magazine adverts and album covers which we then analysed to for research on what we would need to include in ours. We also looked at several music videos which had the same genre as ours and also at several music videos which The Saturdays had already created in the past. For our planning we used still cameras to blog our written ideas which includes our story board, time line for our deadlines and feedback which we later decided to type up instead. We also took still shots with the HD film camera, which we also used for filming, for the ideas of our possible locations and to do test shots for our video to see where and how we'd position the camera. For the construction of our video we used the following technologies; HD film camera, Mac computer and final cut. We tried several techniques available from final cut on our film shots to get the best we possibly could get out of our video. We also had advice from the technician who advised us to make our shot durations shorter and add more shots to make the video correspond to the genre of the song. For our magazine advert we used final cut and photoshop to get the image we wanted and the text. I feel we didn't spend as much time needed on the magazine advert as was needed as I feel it could have been done better if we'd spent a bit more time on it.
We used a HD film camera and took still photos, tripod, iphoto and photoshop for the album cover. I think this product is our best as we put a lot of time and effort into producing this product and aligning all the peices of the photo together, getting the shadows right and also adding all the text. The colour of the text has my mixed opinion. The red writing shows up well and is easy to read as is the dark orange for "The Saturdays"
For the DVD cover we used the same font for "The Saturdays" as in the magazine advert, but we used a darker shade of orange. We have Emma looking slightly more glamourous as it isn't just for the song "Had it with today", but for all the songs that are featured in the album. What we did use to show that the product was connected with the video and to connect it with the magazine advert was the umbrella idea.
When viewed seperately, the audience would be able to link all three products together from the simple but effective image of Emma with the umbrella. This is because in the video the shot of Emma with the umbrella is quick but the fact that the umbrella is in the album cover and she looks happy and it's a different one triggers the idea that she has a new umbrella and that simple things in life can make people happy.
The feed back we recieved was helpful to us as it told us what we did good and the auidence made it clear what they didn't like about the video and through that suggested what we could have done to make it better. The audience liked that the visuals in the video we made matched the lyrics which was used quite a few times in our video. The outfits Emma wore during filming had quite dark colours and she mainly wore black trousers or jeans which we and the audience felt helped reflect a bad/dark mood which is the subject of the song which is what we wanted to get across to the auidence. Another technique we used which was mentioned in the audience feed back, was that we used the idea of voyersim, the notion of looking, which was shown twice in the first part of our video. The first time was when Emma was in bed waking up and the second was through the mobile phone and the text that was recieved.
To create our music video and digipak we used several different technologies which ranged from the construction, research, planning and the evaluation stages. For our research we used a number of websites that contained the theories we need, for example, Goodwin's theory. We also used google to gain images of real magazine adverts and album covers which we then analysed to for research on what we would need to include in ours. We also looked at several music videos which had the same genre as ours and also at several music videos which The Saturdays had already created in the past. For our planning we used still cameras to blog our written ideas which includes our story board, time line for our deadlines and feedback which we later decided to type up instead. We also took still shots with the HD film camera, which we also used for filming, for the ideas of our possible locations and to do test shots for our video to see where and how we'd position the camera. For the construction of our video we used the following technologies; HD film camera, Mac computer and final cut. We tried several techniques available from final cut on our film shots to get the best we possibly could get out of our video. We also had advice from the technician who advised us to make our shot durations shorter and add more shots to make the video correspond to the genre of the song. For our magazine advert we used final cut and photoshop to get the image we wanted and the text. I feel we didn't spend as much time needed on the magazine advert as was needed as I feel it could have been done better if we'd spent a bit more time on it.
We used a HD film camera and took still photos, tripod, iphoto and photoshop for the album cover. I think this product is our best as we put a lot of time and effort into producing this product and aligning all the peices of the photo together, getting the shadows right and also adding all the text. The colour of the text has my mixed opinion. The red writing shows up well and is easy to read as is the dark orange for "The Saturdays"
Lighting Research
Ambient Lighting: light already present in a scene before any extra lighting is added.
Incident Lighting: Light sourced from a light source such as a lamp.
Reflected Lighting: Light seen after bouncing off a surface.
Contrast Ratio: difference in brightness between the brightest white and darkest black.
Hard Light: Light directly from a source such as the sun tavelling undisturbed onto the subject.
Soft Light; Light that appears to wrap around the subject produces less shadows or softer shadows.
Key Light: main light on subject in 3 point lighting provides most of the illumination and contrast.
Fill Light: light placed to the side of the subject to fill out shadows and balance the key light.
Back Light: Light placed at rear of subject to create light from behind.
Hard Key Lighting
Low Key Lighting
Contrast Ratio
Incident Lighting: Light sourced from a light source such as a lamp.
Reflected Lighting: Light seen after bouncing off a surface.
Contrast Ratio: difference in brightness between the brightest white and darkest black.
Hard Light: Light directly from a source such as the sun tavelling undisturbed onto the subject.
Soft Light; Light that appears to wrap around the subject produces less shadows or softer shadows.
Key Light: main light on subject in 3 point lighting provides most of the illumination and contrast.
Fill Light: light placed to the side of the subject to fill out shadows and balance the key light.
Back Light: Light placed at rear of subject to create light from behind.
Hard Key Lighting
Low Key Lighting
Contrast Ratioanaylsis of a music video
Missing you by The Saturdays
genre: pop girlband
genre characteristics
- lots of different camera angles of the band
- close ups of individual members to start and finish the song
- use very girl based locations such as the beach and a flowery meadow and a club like resort
- use of a short dance routine - sexy dance moves used
- the lyrics do reflect the mood of the song but there is no real connection between the two things
- picks up the pace of end of song and video cuts to a scene of a club where everyone is dancing.
- this is used as the girls are dressed in low cut bikinis and tops and small shorts. the floatly outfits though such as the sarongs on the beach do help to reflect the mood of the song.
Anaylsis of a music video
Panic! at the Disco - Ballard of Mona Lisa
genre: Alternative rock
genre characteristics
- camera: lots of close ups used of the lead singer and the instruments and loads of long shots used to show whole band.
- Editing: there are always cuts between the performance and narrative such as everytime the drummers beat comes in it cuts to an image of him.
- Mise - en - scene: unique costumes for the band which are old fashioned and mainly in very neutral colours creams, blacks, browns and white.
- dark low key lighting is used.
- when stating rules such as rule 1 open all windows we see a girl cross to the window and open it.
- when the chrous comes in there are a lot of close ups of the lead singer and a lot of fast paced editing such as jump cuts.
- motif: always use very old fashioned style locations and videos.
- motif: use same scenery from older video before it changes
- close ups of artist and band
- no voyeuristic views of women
- notion of looking when the door opens and we get the view that the audience are looking through the door to all the people talking inside.
Tuesday 13 December 2011
mood board for our music video
Friday 2 December 2011
directors commentary planning lesson 1
For the first piece of our planning for our directors commentary we all had to do a timed response to the evaluation questions. This was a good idea as it helped us plan what we needed to focus on in our products and which bits in the video we felt were strongest in our opinion. This was good as we were not being influenced by each other. This time was good for me as it gave me the chance to really think about the improvements and strengths that we had throughout this project and how to format it in the directors commentary. After putting together all the ideas from our individual timed response we are then going to put them into a script format so we can use the ideas as our commentary.
Evaluation questions
1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms + conventions of real media products?
In our media product there are many ways in which we have both conformed to and challenged conventions of real media products. For example, we have challenged the conventions of the main artist looking glamourous as is done by the saturdays. We have done this by making our artist, emma, look like an average everyday person so that the audience can relate more to the artist.
Our video in many ways follows the usual conventions of a music video in that we have a wide variety of shots including many close ups and long shots of the artist. We also have many shots of the main artist dancing which is common of music videos.
Our digipak follows the conventions of a digipak quite well in that we have an image of the artist on the cover along with the artists name and album name in big bold lettering. on the rear of the cover we have the track listings as well as a list of bonus features also. we have included a quote from a review on the cover as well which is common of digipak to increase sales.
Our magazine advert also conform to the conventions of a magazine advert well as it shows an image from the video as well as the artist and album name in bold lettering. We have also included a sale date and the name of the shop where it would be sold.
2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
In my opinion the combination of our main product and ancillary products works very well. we have a recurring theme of the use of umbrellas both in our digipak and magazine advert which links in well with one of our strongest scenes in the video of emma with an umbrella. This theme helps to link the 3 products well and effectively promotes our product.
Our magazine advert links well with the video particularly as the main image of our artist is a screen shot from our video. The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts works well as the ancillary texts both promote the video well and help to give some idea of the quality of the video before it's viewed.
However, our song and video is about a bad day and i fell that our ancillary texts, particularly the digipak, fail to get this message across as neither indicate a bad day.
3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback indicated that their was a good link between the lyrics and the visuals throughout the video and that the message we put across in our video was clear. We have also learnt from our feedback that our video was well edited and that our audience particularly liked our split screen effect.
The feedback also indicated that more locations would have improved the video as well as a greater variety of shots, also that as the song was quite fast paced the shot durations should have been shorter to be more in keeping with the song.
From this feedback I have learnt that if I were to make this video again I would have used more shots at a faster pace to keep up with the beat of the song. I would also have used a greater variety of editing techniques to make the video more interesting to the audience.
4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction + research + planning + evaluation stages?
In the construction stage of our project we used HD video cameras to film the video as well as a speaker to play the song as we shot to help with lip syncing and timing. Once filmed we used the program final cut express to edit our video and piece it together. Throughout this editing process we also used the website blogger to blog our progress, we also used this website throughout the research and planning stages by blogging all the different pieces of research and plans we did.
We used the program photoshop in the construction of our digipaks and magazine advert to edit images and create these products by adding text and other images.
we used the powerpoint program to create our pitch for our promotional package in which we pitched the ideas for our products. On top of this we used the program word at various stages to type up various bits of research.
we used the website youtube to watch other music videos in the research stage to gather ideas for our own video and in the evaluation stage to analyse and evaluate other videos.
We also used the program Iphoto to upload images for our products during the construction stage as well as iTunes to listen to our song during the planning stage.
In our media product there are many ways in which we have both conformed to and challenged conventions of real media products. For example, we have challenged the conventions of the main artist looking glamourous as is done by the saturdays. We have done this by making our artist, emma, look like an average everyday person so that the audience can relate more to the artist.
Our video in many ways follows the usual conventions of a music video in that we have a wide variety of shots including many close ups and long shots of the artist. We also have many shots of the main artist dancing which is common of music videos.
Our digipak follows the conventions of a digipak quite well in that we have an image of the artist on the cover along with the artists name and album name in big bold lettering. on the rear of the cover we have the track listings as well as a list of bonus features also. we have included a quote from a review on the cover as well which is common of digipak to increase sales.
Our magazine advert also conform to the conventions of a magazine advert well as it shows an image from the video as well as the artist and album name in bold lettering. We have also included a sale date and the name of the shop where it would be sold.
2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
In my opinion the combination of our main product and ancillary products works very well. we have a recurring theme of the use of umbrellas both in our digipak and magazine advert which links in well with one of our strongest scenes in the video of emma with an umbrella. This theme helps to link the 3 products well and effectively promotes our product.
Our magazine advert links well with the video particularly as the main image of our artist is a screen shot from our video. The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts works well as the ancillary texts both promote the video well and help to give some idea of the quality of the video before it's viewed.
However, our song and video is about a bad day and i fell that our ancillary texts, particularly the digipak, fail to get this message across as neither indicate a bad day.
3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Our audience feedback indicated that their was a good link between the lyrics and the visuals throughout the video and that the message we put across in our video was clear. We have also learnt from our feedback that our video was well edited and that our audience particularly liked our split screen effect.
The feedback also indicated that more locations would have improved the video as well as a greater variety of shots, also that as the song was quite fast paced the shot durations should have been shorter to be more in keeping with the song.
From this feedback I have learnt that if I were to make this video again I would have used more shots at a faster pace to keep up with the beat of the song. I would also have used a greater variety of editing techniques to make the video more interesting to the audience.
4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction + research + planning + evaluation stages?
In the construction stage of our project we used HD video cameras to film the video as well as a speaker to play the song as we shot to help with lip syncing and timing. Once filmed we used the program final cut express to edit our video and piece it together. Throughout this editing process we also used the website blogger to blog our progress, we also used this website throughout the research and planning stages by blogging all the different pieces of research and plans we did.
We used the program photoshop in the construction of our digipaks and magazine advert to edit images and create these products by adding text and other images.
we used the powerpoint program to create our pitch for our promotional package in which we pitched the ideas for our products. On top of this we used the program word at various stages to type up various bits of research.
we used the website youtube to watch other music videos in the research stage to gather ideas for our own video and in the evaluation stage to analyse and evaluate other videos.
We also used the program Iphoto to upload images for our products during the construction stage as well as iTunes to listen to our song during the planning stage.
Thursday 1 December 2011
Evaluation individual timed response
In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real music products?
The first thing about our music video is how unconventional it is especially in the artists style and how we portrayed this. We decided as the song was about a bad day it was a better idea to put the artist across as an average everyday teenage girl rather than the normal glamourous look that pop girl bands normally use. I believe this was the biggest way we challenged the conventions of a real music video. I believe by challenging the conventions of having a glamourous artist we have developed our artist into a sutiable role model. By using an everyday image we have created a way for young girls to relate to the artist. Another way we developed the conventions of our music video was we decided it should follow a storyline which is something that is rarely done by girl bands or female pop artists. By doing this I believe we created a good strong link between the lyrics and visuals which is one of Goodwin's theory points. The outfits we used as well also showed that unlike Goodwin's theory not all videos need to put women into voyeuristic outfits to be successful so this was also an example of challenging the stereotype. I found we did use the conventions for our genre effectively in our video but instead of using them like normal we altered them so they could be challenged which I think gives our video a bit of a unique edge.
How effective is the combination of your video and ancillary products?
I believe all 3 products as a combination work well together. I believe this as we managed to get across the feeling of a bad day throughout all 3 products. We decided when designing the products that our visual theme that would run through all 3 products would be umbrellas. We decided this as a group because a lot of people say they have bad days due to rain or weather and this is the link we used and assosiated with umbrellas. Between all 3 products we used the same outfits, locations and colour scheme to create a strong connection and link between the music video, digipack and magazine advert. We also used an image from our music video where our artist throws her umbrella in frustration as our magazine advert image as we believed it got across the theme well and the feeling of defeat on a bad day.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From our audience feedback I learnt we used a great deal of matching lyrics and visuals such as when the artist sings 'woke up this morning feeling bad' we actually see an image of her waking up looking miserable and finding a text from her boyfriend saying he wants to break up. The feedback also suggest a good link between the music and visuals as there are images of her being bullied which really well match the songs mood. The dark colours also add a good link to the mood of the song. They also believed by using a mobile phone in the video we gave the impression/notion of 'looking' which standard music videos have. They also said our use of planning and thinking for shots such as panning and tracking shots was used effectively and added good variation.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?
For the construction of our video we got to use high definition (HD) cameras for the filming stage of our video these were great as it not only added detail which we couldn't see but it also gave our video an amazing quality. We also got to use photoshop and final cut this was a lot of fun as its always a new challenge to use these programmes but through using these programmes we got to add in some awesome effects to both our music video and digipack such as the spiltscreen effect used during the music video and through photoshop we created the awesome effect on the digipack where it looks like i'm standing on the field in 3 different places at once. For our media products as a group we always get assigned a new blog specific for our group on blogger. This was especially helpful during the research and planning stage as anything useful we found on the internet or any new ideas could be blogged from anywhere even home so nothing could be forgotten very easily. In our evaluation we are going to get to use the studios to film a directors commentary. Doing an evaluation as a directors commentary is new and different and interesting and should be a good way to show off more of our skills as a group with a camera and on final cut when we edit it.
The first thing about our music video is how unconventional it is especially in the artists style and how we portrayed this. We decided as the song was about a bad day it was a better idea to put the artist across as an average everyday teenage girl rather than the normal glamourous look that pop girl bands normally use. I believe this was the biggest way we challenged the conventions of a real music video. I believe by challenging the conventions of having a glamourous artist we have developed our artist into a sutiable role model. By using an everyday image we have created a way for young girls to relate to the artist. Another way we developed the conventions of our music video was we decided it should follow a storyline which is something that is rarely done by girl bands or female pop artists. By doing this I believe we created a good strong link between the lyrics and visuals which is one of Goodwin's theory points. The outfits we used as well also showed that unlike Goodwin's theory not all videos need to put women into voyeuristic outfits to be successful so this was also an example of challenging the stereotype. I found we did use the conventions for our genre effectively in our video but instead of using them like normal we altered them so they could be challenged which I think gives our video a bit of a unique edge.
How effective is the combination of your video and ancillary products?
I believe all 3 products as a combination work well together. I believe this as we managed to get across the feeling of a bad day throughout all 3 products. We decided when designing the products that our visual theme that would run through all 3 products would be umbrellas. We decided this as a group because a lot of people say they have bad days due to rain or weather and this is the link we used and assosiated with umbrellas. Between all 3 products we used the same outfits, locations and colour scheme to create a strong connection and link between the music video, digipack and magazine advert. We also used an image from our music video where our artist throws her umbrella in frustration as our magazine advert image as we believed it got across the theme well and the feeling of defeat on a bad day.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From our audience feedback I learnt we used a great deal of matching lyrics and visuals such as when the artist sings 'woke up this morning feeling bad' we actually see an image of her waking up looking miserable and finding a text from her boyfriend saying he wants to break up. The feedback also suggest a good link between the music and visuals as there are images of her being bullied which really well match the songs mood. The dark colours also add a good link to the mood of the song. They also believed by using a mobile phone in the video we gave the impression/notion of 'looking' which standard music videos have. They also said our use of planning and thinking for shots such as panning and tracking shots was used effectively and added good variation.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?
For the construction of our video we got to use high definition (HD) cameras for the filming stage of our video these were great as it not only added detail which we couldn't see but it also gave our video an amazing quality. We also got to use photoshop and final cut this was a lot of fun as its always a new challenge to use these programmes but through using these programmes we got to add in some awesome effects to both our music video and digipack such as the spiltscreen effect used during the music video and through photoshop we created the awesome effect on the digipack where it looks like i'm standing on the field in 3 different places at once. For our media products as a group we always get assigned a new blog specific for our group on blogger. This was especially helpful during the research and planning stage as anything useful we found on the internet or any new ideas could be blogged from anywhere even home so nothing could be forgotten very easily. In our evaluation we are going to get to use the studios to film a directors commentary. Doing an evaluation as a directors commentary is new and different and interesting and should be a good way to show off more of our skills as a group with a camera and on final cut when we edit it.
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