Filming

The following image is an example of our time management, showing how we organised meeting up to film during our Christmas holiday. We created a group chat with our actors to make it easier to organize a time to meet up and film. 

We went out on the 30th to do some trial filming. We spent around five hours filming various shots, using our animatic and shooting script to help guide as we did so. We got lots of footage, containing varying shots which we plan to put together when we get back to school so that we can really get to grips with what we have and where we are currently at. 

Shot List

Today we went and filmed for our A2 final music video, we followed a Shot list (pictured below) that helped us to know what we had to film and where. Originally we were going to film everything in London, however we came to the conclusion that it would be easier to film it all in Upminster because it is local and less busy. We stuck very closely to our animatic with our shots and added even more footage on the end as our animatic didn’t cover the whole song.

Equipment

To film our music video, we have been allowed to use one of the school's media department cameras. It's a Canon DSLR 1200D. This is a very high quality camera and it's very easy to move the footage from the camera to the computers, where we can then start editing. It is easy to focus and creates a very clear shot.

Overall Idea For Our Music Video

The idea that we have settled on is based upon the song ‘Just Haven’t Met You Yet’ by Michael Buble. We are going to create a music video which shows the formation of a couple. It will begin by showing a long shot of a man sitting at a train station and once the train goes past he is no longer there. We will then jump to a mid-shot of the same man finding his seat on the train. The seat which he chooses ends up being opposite a woman. A close-up will clearly show the man’s face followed by another showing the woman’s. This will be subtly done and made more interesting by the use of a prop; she will be answering her phone. The next event to happen will be the woman getting off the train; however she will forget her Ukulele (another prop which is specifically used to add to the entertainment level and help link the plot). The man will then jump up, grab the ukulele, seen through a close up, and chase after he out of the station, seen through a tracking shot. Once out of the station there will be a mixture of long, mid, and close up shots which will show his journey around, until he becomes tired and stops at a coffee shop. As he walks inside there will be an over the shoulder shot showing the same woman sitting at a table. He will walk over to her and hand the ukulele over, there will be a mid- shot which shows her asking him to sit down. We will then either do a close up showing a clock speeding forward or we will create a time-lapse or the two of them chatting, this is to show how they have been getting along for a while. She will then hand over her number to him, which will lead to a close up of him smiling, and then a long shot of her walking out of the shop. Another close up will show him instantly ringing the number and a mid-shot of her smiling and answering will follow this. There will be a couple of seconds of a black screen which will then move on to a picture of him waiting with flowers in his hands. A long shot will show her sneak up behind him and a mid-shot will show him kiss her on the check and give her the flowers. A mid-shot taken from behind them as they walk of will show her taking his hand. A pan up will then occur followed by a pan down which will have them in a different location. There will then by various shots of them laughing and having a good time. Before the video ends it will go back to the shot of her walking off the train and instead of showing him get off after her there will be a close-up of him staring at the ukulele. This is to surprise the audience as everything they had just seen would have been a day dream, the concept also matches the lyrics of the song as it will be the idea that he ‘just hasn’t met her yet’.

Location-Upminster

During the week we brainstormed many ideas as to what the location for our music video should be. London was an idea that we liked, however we settled on Upminster due to it being more practicable.It is nearby for everyone involved with our music video, as well as having all the different places that we were hoping to film in. Key aspects of the music video that we are envisioning contain a coffee shop, train station, and a park; all of which are easy to find within Upminster. Using Upminster as our location also benefits us greatly in the respect that if we need to do any extra, last minute filming it nearby and quick to get to. Below is a couple of pictures of places in Upminster where we are planning on filming:

Upminster Park

Upminster Platform

Upminster Train Station

Costa Coffee

Animatic

The following link is to our animatic. It is only the first two minutes of the song because we are currently still thinking what we are going to do next, and are hoping that after we have gone out and filmed the beginning that we will get some inspiration for the rest of the video. The animatic is very useful to has as it helps us to visualize what our music video is going to look like. This can then show us whether or not our current idea flows well together or not, giving us time to think if an adaption if necessary.  

Signing In and Out

Here is anothe image showing when we have signed into the media lab to complete extra work.

Creating Our Animatic

Today we took pictures of our storyboard. Once all the photos had been taken we uploaded them all to the computer and imported them into Adobe Premier Pro. We then began editing them to create our animatic. To import the song we used youtube converter and added the pictures to the song, edting the length of time each one lasted and also edited to the beat for some parts. We found this particularily useful in seeing where we are at, and how much more planning we need to do. 

Deadlines

The above image shows the deadlines that we have been set. 

Music Video Analysis

Above is a link to a presentation on media theories based upon Michael Buble’s music video for the song Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

Feeling Good- Theory Analysis

Below is a link to my Prezi on the music video feeling good. I have analysed the theories that relate and subvert the music video.

Haven't Met You Yet Ideas

Below is an image showing a mind map of our main ideas for our music video. For our Narrative, we begin with the boy sitting at the station, he sees the girl on the train and she leaves her Ukulele behind. He runs after her to try and give her back her Ukulele and it sparks the beginning of their love story. For our music video, we are going to use our friends Megan and Will. She will be wearing a dress, ribbon in her hair and have a Ukulele, he will be wearing casual clothes and earphones/headphones. We’ve decided to film at Upminster Station, London train stations, Covent garden, a Park and the London Eye. We will be using shots such as: a pan, establishing shot, close ups and shot reverse shot. Editing to the beat will also be used.

Camera Movement Tutorial

We found that this video would be very useful when starting to film our music video. The video shows lots of different shots that can be used to show emotion and because our music video is about love, some of these shots would be very useful. Although we don’t have access to a track and dolly, we can do some of the shots handheld but put a stabilizer on the videos. The video has helped inspire some different shots that we would like to use within our music video, which we believe will help to make our video more captivating and entertaining. 

Media Representation Theories

The following Prezi is about different media representation theories. I have used the TV comedy series Scream Queens to provide examples of how these representation theories are applied.

Prop List

Within the general idea for our music video there are some props that we will need. These include:

• Ukulele
• flowers
• chips
• oyster card X2
•  wallet
• drinks (in Costa)
• mobile phone X2

Luckily, these props are not too difficult to get and some of them we already have, meaning we won't have to hunt down many props. 

Costume Ideas

Our ideas for costumes are on the basis that they should be fairly casual. This is because our setting is in the streets and therefore surrounded with people. We want to show how both characters look normal and fit in with society, and how they don't particularly stand out in a crowd to everyone else, however to each other they do.

We have a clear outline for what we envision for the female character:

• dress
• ribbon in her hair
• cardigan
• possible scarf- dependent on weather
• important prop for her to have is a ukulele

For the male character we think:

• jeans
• top
• hoodie

Another reason why we want them to look like ordinary people, is so that the audience will relate to them, and therefore enjoy the music video more.

Story boarding

Today we spent some time story boarding. This is an effective way of planning as it helps us to visualize what shots we want within our music video, and which order we want them in. It has helped us to decide what types of shots to use, varying the type, angle and movement of the shots. We can see how the shots look together and therefore decide whether or not it works well and if we should add any other shots in, like deep focus shots. By story boarding, we can also gather how well our idea will flow together. Below are images of our storyboard so far.

 

Characters

At this moment in time, we only have basic ideas as to what our characters will be like. There will be two main characters. The reasoning for this is because we want to show the formation of a couple within our music video. Our questionnaire findings also showed that most of the respondents said that the feel a connection and can relate to two characters. This helps us to know that our audience will be able to relate to both characters. These characters will be a young female, and a young male. They will both be fairly happy, carefree people which enjoy the simple things. At the beginning of the video they will be strangers, and the video will show the progression of their relationship.

Location Reconnaissance

During half term, we  visited London Waterloo station and took some photos and example shots that we could use in our music video. A lot of our music video will be based in a train station because we feel it shows how difficult it will be to find the girl at the busy train station. London is a very picturesque city and is perfect for our music video. We will also go to covent garden to film some of the street performers and the couple as they begin to meet each other.

The New Idea

Due to the change of song, we have adapted some of our original ideas for shots. There will still be some signs of editing to the beat, however it won’t be anywhere near as much as there would have been with the previous song. This is because editing to the beat isn’t as common within music videos for the style of song that it is. We are still planning on filming around London and on the trains, as we believe the setting still works really well and will help to convey the romance narrative strongly.  Varying shots of street performers, such as long shots and close up shots,  are still within our plan, however the pace of the shots will be different and the quantity will be smaller. The narrative has changed although it is still similar to our previous idea. The difference is rather than having only the males journey to finding love, which was what we had previously envisioned, we now are showing how the relationship forms and grows instead. We are still currently deciding as to whether we should have the ending as though everything seen did happen, or whether to end it as though it was a daydream that he was having.

Half Term Homework

This is the homework in which we were set over the upcoming half term:

You have a choice! Both of these stages of preparation will need be completed but please choose which you will complete over half term:

1. Location reconnaissance- you should travel to the locations where which you expect to film your production and take some photos of possible locations. The photos should be followed up by a summary of the benefits and (or) potential problems of each location (200- 350 words)
2. Costume design- Either gather inspiration from audio visual sources, screenshots or images and design by hand or digitally the likely costumes to be worn in your video. You should try to comment on the connotations of the costume or any symbolic reference in the same way in which you would analyse a media text.

Questionnaire Results

The results of our questionnaire can be seen below:

A total of 18 people completed our questionnaire. The first two graphs show us that the respondents are both male and female, and between the ages 17 and 18. This has helped us as we were hoping to have a older teenage target audience, this is because we are of similar age and think that this will help us to be able to aim it at our audience, and so the results will help us ensure the video fits in with what the target audience prefer. The third graph shows how narrative based videos are largely preferred (over 50% respondents chose narrative), this is greatly beneficial to us as it gave us the ability to start planning our video successfully, and know exactly what style we needed. Indie and Pop were the main answers for the which genre of music was the most popular. The song we are leaning towards doing has a more jazzy style towards it, however it can also be classed as pop. The questionnaire has made it clear that it is the music and the artist that attracts people to music videos the most rather than the promotion or video itself. This makes the narrative of the video crucial to its success and popularity. Each setting had an aspect of interest, however the city was the most popular. We decided to film our's in Upminster, as it was more easily accessible for us and therefore more practicable. Once we have completed our music video we are going to post it on YouTube, The reason for this is that it is the most popular place to watch music video's, this was made clear through our questionnaire. The question on what people like to see in music video's brought back a range of responses. Some wanted a narrative, others wanted dancers and some wanted it to directly relate to the song. The current idea that we have for our music video would directly link to the song, helping us to know that our video would be one that the target audience would enjoy. 50% of our respondents said that they relate to one character strongly. Taking this on board we have decided to have to characters but focus mainly on one. We have decided to end on a cliffhanger despite the results saying only 25% liked cliffhangers. 50% said they liked a happy ending but we thought that as the video was generally happy we would be a bit different and have a cliffhanger ending, as it would get people talking. Over 50% of people said that they prefer the narrative/ music video to match the lyrics, the current narrative that we have in mind fits in with the lyrics and words, which matches the interests of a lot of the people. Our respondents said they watched music videos fairly regularly, meaning the results of this questionnaire are fairly useful . Our chosen narrative genre is romance which was also a popular response within our questionnaire. Overall, the questionnaire was very useful in consolidating our current idea, and it also helped us to further develop what we had already got which will help our music video be more successful.

Change

Today we had a discussion about how realistic our idea for 'Waiting for Love' is. The outcome of this was that we decided to change the song that we are doing our music video to. Originally we decided on ‘Waiting for Love’ by Avicci but we felt like we couldn’t do much of a story line with this song. We thought it would also be incredibly to get the right amount of energy needed to create a successful dance music video. Therefore we changed to the song ‘Haven’t Met You Yet’ by Michael Buble. This song has potential, with the opportunity to create different types of story lines. We decided to do the journey of the meeting of a couple and how she ‘lost her ukulele’ and he found it and went and gave it to her. The lyrics of the song, link with the story line/ plot and would suit it. We plan to meet up later this week so that we can plan our music video in more detail and possibly start story boarding. Below is the link to Michael Buble's song 'Haven't Met You Yet'. 

Questionnaire

After thinking about our idea in depth, we are starting to see many problems with our idea. The typical conventions of dance music video's is that there is a lot of energy, usually portrayed through club scenes. We acknowledge that this would be very difficult to do, and that without it the video may not be very good as it lacks the needed conventions. Our solution to this problem is to change our song choice. To help us decide what song to choose we created another questionnaire with more questions, to add to the help this questionnaire can give us we sent it out to a wider range of people. We used google forms to create this questionnaire. Below are images showing the questions on our questionnaire, along with a link to our questionnaire:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DeZpIBOXD2vyOajSz5A0P1zoq4cB9d83GkZAhEN-M-s/closedform

Signing In and Out of the Media Lab

Below is an image which clearly shows our signing in and out of the media lab. This is when we meet up to do extra work outside of lessons to help improve our understanding of the course and develop our planning.

Teacher Feedback

 

Above is the feedback we were given on both our blog posts and our questionnaire. Overall, we have been told our blog shows evidence of proficient research into audience and excellent development of our ideas and our research is good. Our questionnaire is well presented and shows a good indication of understanding of target audience.

To improve our blog, we could research into existing ideas and our blogs could be communicated and include more detail. This could include evidence of research into settings and props. To improve our questionnaire we should refer back to the questionnaire to see how it influenced our decision and our ideas.

Images of Possible Locations

We decided that we would film our A2 music video in London, mainly around Covent Garden. In the dance break, there is an opportunity to film all the street performers and use editing to the beat. Editing to the beat is common within Avicii's music videos, as well as typical dance/ pop music video's. We chose Covent Garden because it is very picturesque and has lots of character. Avicii's videos usually take place in an area which has character to help bring the video to life, which is why we believe that Covent Garden could bring our video to life. Our Protagonist will be a businessman and having him walk through Covent Garden will give the video a fun aspect and suggest that ‘Love’ is fun, because of the song title ‘Waiting for Love’. Another reason for this is that in a lot of Avicii's music videos tend to follow one main character.

Man 

Train

Covent Garden

Covent Garden Station

Street Performer

Audience Theories

Uses and Gratification Theory

• This theory suggests that the audience is active and choose the media that they consume
• The theory focuses on the consumer/audience
• It says that the choice of media is influenced by: Identify, Educate, Entertain, and Social interaction.

An example of this is when someone is choosing music to listen to, they choose it so that it matches their mood.

Hypodermic Needle Theory

• This theory suggest that the audience is passive and don’t have a choice with the media that they consume
• It believes that the media inject people with it
• Mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by injecting them with the desired message to gain their wanted response
• This theory highlights the danger of media as it can easily communicate ideas to the powerless audience/consumer.

Two- Step Flow Media Theory

• Media doesn’t directly inject society, rather it injects an opinion leader who passes it on
• opinion leader’s spreads the message across society to all those who look up to them and so save media the job of spreading it.

The theory that relates to us with our music video is the uses and gratification theory. This is because our video will be made for entertainment purposes. There will not any hidden message to inject into our viewers, not would we have an opinion leader advertising our video, and so the hypodermic needle theory and the two-step flow theory will not apply to us.

Our Plan Synopsis

We have decided to use the song ‘Waiting for Love’ by AVICCI. The music video will mainly be set in London, filming on trains, train stations and even street performers in Covent Garden. Our protagonist will be a male and there will be an appearance from a female actress and passers-by and street performers. We will use the idea of ‘Waiting for love’ to create the narrative, the man will be ‘Waiting for Love’.

Our protagonist will be a male, there will also be a female in the video, but the plan is that you will never see her face, only her feet. This will avoid any sexualisation of the woman in the video as it is not needed but can often be seen in music videos these days. The protagonist will be on their way to work and will be ironically ‘Waiting for Love’. At the end of the video, you will see the male character meet the female ‘lover’. The male character will be wearing a work like smart suit to show a businessman. You will only ever see the feet of the female, who will be wearing high heels, preferably red ones. These heels will imply that she is also in the business world and so will show that there is connection and something in common between her and the protagonist.

The music video will mainly be set in London, filming on trains, train stations and even street performers in Covent Garden. London is very picturesque and is the stereotypical businessman place of work. When it comes to editing, we have decided that we would like to use a lot of editing to the beat. We would also like to lip-sync the most important lines, such as the first line.

Todorov's Narrative Theory

Todorov’s narrative theory states that most story’s or plot lines follow the same pattern. He says that there are five steps in this pattern:

1. Equilibrium: The first part of the story will display a happy start. This is where the majority of characters and content is as it should be.
2. A Disruption: The second part of the story is where there is a problem that disturbs the happiness.
3. Realisation: This is the part where everyone realises the problem and there is chaos.
4. Restored Order: This is when there is an attempt to repair and restore the damage.
5. Equilibrium Again: This is the final part of the plot where the problem is resolved and everything is happy again.

We most likely will not be following these five steps with the narrative for our music video, as it does not fit the plan that we are already forming. It is not a necessity to follow these steps, and they do not fit in comfortably with the genre of electronic dance music.

First Idea

Above is a link to our Prezi which explains our basic ideas as to what we would like to do for our music video. It summarizes our main ideas, and explains clearly our plan.

Propp's Character Theory

The following link is to a prezi on Propps narrative theory. His thoery looks into the types of typical characters that can be found.

Levi Strauss' Narrative Theory

The prezi seen below is about Levi Strauss' narrative thoery; Binary opposites. It provides examples of where binary opposites can be seen within the film The Women in Black.

Avicii - Waiting For Love

The above is the link for Avicii’s song ‘Waiting For Love’. This is the song that we are planning to do our music video on. The link is for the lyric video rather than for the actual music video. This is so that the ideas that we come up with are not influenced by the original video. We decided that this song would be good because it matches up to the results from our questionnaire, in the respect that it is a dance video which allows for editing to the beat. It has also provided us with ideas which match up to results in terms of the location and plot line. 

Our Questionnaire Findings



The first graph shows us that the majority of people believe that the music video are vital to the success of singles/albums, 40% of people said that it was only sometimes that the music video affected the success of a single/album. Nobody said that a music video was not important to the success.









The second shows us that the top five most important aspects that people chose were; a good setting, a great setting and great actor, professionalism, decent acting, and editing to the beat. These are all things that we hope to be able to incorporate into our music video.









Our best result was for the question asking which setting people preferred for a music video. The result was 100% preference towards music video’s set in cities. Coincidently, this benefits us greatly as we had hoped to film our music video in London, and so this feedback really helped us become confident with our chosen setting.






The fourth graph shows us our findings from the Question ‘What attracts you to the music video the most?’ 60% of people said that the music video itself attracts them to watching it. This shows that the music video needs to be very good to then attract people to the music and the artist. 20% of people said the music attracts them to the music video and 20% of people said that the artist attracts them to the music video; however no one said that the promotion attracts them to it. This shows that music videos need to be better promoted.






Electronic Dance music was chosen by780% of people as the type of music they listen to the most, whereas pop was chosen by only 30% people. This led to our decision in doing a song in the genre of Electronic dance music, as it is most listened to by the public.






In terms of what music videos interested people, the results showed that it was between narrative and performance videos. Abstract and conceptual didn’t gain any responses. 20% of the responses chose performance videos, giving narrative 80%. This helps us when deciding which style to chose for our music video. We like the idea of creating a narrative video and feel like it would be much more interesting for both us making it and the viewers watching it.

Questionnaire

Below is a link to the questionnaire that we made to gather feedback as to what various people prefer within music videos. We will use the results to help create our ideas for our own music video, so that it is appealing the target audience that we choose.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JLHQMMZ

Roar- Katy Perry

 

 

 

Katy Perry's song 'Roar' fits into the genre of pop, one of the genres that Michael Buble's 'Haven't Met You Yet' comes under. The above video is the official music video for her song. The video comforms to many of the typical conventions. A common aspect of pop music videos is that the artists are clothed in fashionale, stylish and mainstream outfits. At the beginning of the video this isnt

the case. Rather than wearing stylish clothes she is wearing a long sleeved top and a skirt that is slightly ripped. However, as the video develops and shows her to become more confortable in the jungle surroundings, her costume changes. Supposedly the purpose for the change in costume is so that she looks as though she fits into the jungle scene. Another reason for the change in clothes from sensible and covered up to more revealing and provocative is for the sex appeal. Commonly in music videos these days, women are

dressed in few clothing. Mulvey would argue that this is the fault of the male gaze and that the camera often sexualises women. Another example of Mulveys theory is the close up shot of Katy Perry showering. This shot has very little purpose within the video and so can be said to be used purely to sexualise her. Another typical convention within pop music videos is that the artist is often portrayed as happy and content with life. This again is converted at the beginning where she is portrayed to be scared and unfamiliar with her surroundings, but at around

half way through the video she adapts to her surroundings and it is at that point that she begins to be portrayed as content and enjoying life. A theme that is seen within this video and most pop video's is the use of bright colours. The use of bright colours helps to create the happy, upbeat atmosphere that the songs are trying to create.

 

The Paper Kites - Bloom

The above video is the official music video for the song 'Bloom' by The Paper Kites. The genre of this song is folk. Folk music generally has a an older target audience due to it's style and the way they do things. Many of the conventions of a folk music video can be seen within this video. One main aspect of these video's is that there are lots of close up on the artists and their instruments. The purpose of this is to show the emotional connection between the artists and their song as this portrays the depth of the song across to the audience clearly. Throughout this video there are close ups showing the artists and their instruments breaking up the narrative. Another convention of a folk music video is that there is exaggerated music playing. The purpose of this is to evoke the audience more and make them feel more involved with the song. It does this by shoing the artist getting into the music and therefore making the emotion much more believable.

There is one moment in particular when this is seen. At around two and half minutes in, the camera starts to do a circular pan around a tree, where each of the members of the band are sitting playing their instruments and singing. This shot is one of the longest shots within the video and so has the most emphasis and the longest lasting affect. It clearly shows how the artists are getting into the music and therefore helps the audience to get into the song as well, the reason being because they have seen it as acceptable to do so. Also the emotions within the song are brought to life more when you can see the artists reacting to the feelings the song provokes in them. This video doesn't conform to all the conventions of a folk music video. Typically in folk music videos there will be editing which uses a lot of black and white filters. Usually this is used to make the enviroment and the song more daunting and bring the song to life more. This song, however, doesn't use any black and white filters, most likely because it doesn't have a very dark feel to it, and therefore the use of the filters wouldn't have seemed to fit.



Evaluation of Avicii's Music Video

AVICII-Wake Me Up

Typical conventions of a dance music video:

-Clubbing, party scenes

-High heels, short skirts – night out clothing

-Lots of make up well groomed

-Jumping

-Drinking

-UV paint

-Pool

-Fun atmosphere

-Dancing

-AVICII creates Electronic Dance music.

-Most of his music videos follow a narrative, which is stereotypical of this genre.

-The music break is usually in the middle and often includes dancers or festivals.

-The costumes at the beginning are used to show how the people in the town and are old-fashioned as the clothes they are wearing contrast to the clothes that the people are wearing later on. These clothes match the typical conventions of a dance music video

-The tattoo’s are used to show the difference in groups

-There are many close-ups of these tattoo’s on different people throughout the video, highlighting their importance.

-There is a happy atmosphere, dancing scene in the club. This fits in with the typical conventions of a dance music video, along with the flashing lights.

The following link is to a Prezi which further evaluates the video. https://prezi.com/s8ypjlzoroly/music-video-evaluation/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy