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

Preliminary Task- Mercy

Our preliminary task was to create a music for the first 30 and 60 seconds of the song ‘Mercy’ by Duffy. The purpose of this task was to allow us to understand what is necessary within a music video, and also what possible difficulties may come up within the production of our final piece.
This task was useful as it gave us a better understanding editing to the beat. It also helped us to get a grasp as to what we would have to do throughout the process of creating a music video and what we could include. Lighting is something that we would definitely have to practice and improve upon if we wanted to use it within our final project. The task gave us an awareness as to the difficulty we would have with lip-syncing and how precise it needs to be, as well as bringing different software available to our attention. Where is in year 12 we used iMovie for our project, for this project we are thinking of using Final Cut instead as it has many more options and effects that we can use. Below is the link to our preliminary task:

The Coursework Task

The purpose of this blog is to show my progression throughout my coursework. The coursework task has five different aspects to it. This blog is the first part, and it will show the research, planning and development of the music video which we will create as our main task. Alongside this, we will also be creating a digipak and a form of advertisement for our music video, which will be a poster. The final aspect of our blog will consist of four evaluation questions. The purpose of all of these things is to show our understanding of, and ability to use, various forms of technology, and understand the different impact that music videos have on the public.