With the music video out of the way, our next production piece would be focussing on making a documentary on one of two predetermined subjects. The subject that we were given was "Harlow: Shopper's Paradise". Since I had played such a large part in the creation of the music video, my role would be fairly smaller, with all the directing, scripting and editing left mainly to the others in the group, with my job basically consisting of doing what the others needed me to do at any given time.
Of course, since no one in the group had ever made a documentary (many had never even seen on in its entirety before), we needed to do some work on understanding the basic theory behind them. To start with, we watched a documentary created by Kevin MacDonald, entitled "One Day in September", which focussed on the murder of 11 Isreali atheletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Monday, 28 November 2011
Shooting the Music Video
With all the planning done, we moved on to the actual filming. Unfortunately we had very little time in which to complete the filming aspect of the music video, so we decided to shoot the music video over the course of one day during a weekend. We managed to get more than enough footage to work with by the end of it, even having enough to miss out entire scenes that we'd shot but didn't have time to fit in.
Here's the music video in all its glory;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TAgsZPvDck&feature=channel_video_title
The basic premise is that our main character, who remained nameless (like all the characters in the video) would be dumped by his girlfriend (also nameless). The main character would go through a dark time, wandering aimlessly as he tries desperately to find meaning in the world after the love of his life has left him. There is a lot of time spent watching him descend into the darkness of an underpass, representing his descent into darkness as he feels the world become darker and darker. A section where he looks into the distance while sitting on a bench represents how he looks back to the past, trying to find a way to get things back to the way they are. The video continues with a scene where he sees his nameless friend with his ex, where he climbs to the top of a multi-story car park, looking over the edge, contemplating jumping off. The video concludes with a scene where he walks off into the darkness - since this follows on directly after a shot of him running across the roof of the multi-story car park, it ends on a deliberately ambiguous note, leaving the audience questioning whether he jumped and we're seeing his descent into darkness, or if he is actually just walking down a dark street.
After the editing was finished and it was uploaded to YouTube, we looked back at it and compared it to Andrew Goodwin's theories, as laid out in his book "Dancing in the Distraction Factory." From the offset we'd decided to contradict the lyrics rather than directly represent or amplify them, and this shows - the video has a very dark vibe, as opposed to the fairly uplifting and optimistic theme of the song. This is very prominant when the song reaches the point where the vocalist proclaims that "The blues they send to beat me won't defeat me", which is where the protagonist descends into the darkness of an underpass as he contemplates what to do with his life. Furthermore, there was a focus on one main character, but this was done more to show his reactions to the events happening around him rather than to sell the image of a vocalist or band. There was also a distinct lack of any references to voyeurism or anything like that - the nature of the song and the basic premise left little room for any reference to voyeurism.
Whilst watching it back, and taking into account the thoughts from others in our media class, we realised that we hadn't made the final scene as well as we'd hoped - it wasn't clear that it was supposed to be questionable, and people would either think that the shot was out of sync with the story of the rest of the video, or that he had just decided to walk away rather than jump. This could have been avoided by perhaps having the protagonist fade out of view as he walked away, but we didn't think of that when we were shooting. We also saw that it was painstakingly obvious when we were simply holding the camera rather than using a tripod - the camera was noticeably unsteady whenever the tripod wasn't used, and this caused a huge distinction with the quality of the footage shot using a tripod and the quality of the footage shot without one - obviously we should have used the tripod for every scene (or, at least, a great deal more than we eventually did). Continuity was also a problem - since the footage was shot out of sync throughout the course of a day, some shots were done in the morning, some in the afternoon, some in the evening and some at night, the time of day seemed to change erratically and illogically.
Apart from that, the music video was received fairly positively, with people commenting on the camera angles and the originality of the ideas that went into the video. However, it was noted that a music video that tries to defy conventions being used in our coursework was perhaps not the best idea ever.
All in all, we learnt that it is usually best to have too much footage rather than too little, as we had a lot of footage to go through and were basically able to pick and choose the best parts of what we'd filmed. We also learnt that it is VERY difficult to film steady moving shots, which leads us to believe that we're probably not going to rely on shots where the camera moves when we shoot future tasks. One other lesson we learnt was to spell things out for the audience - whilst we may think that the ideas behind our production pieces are obvious, in the end, we're the ones making it, so of course it's going to be clear for us. Spelling it out for the audience means that they're definitely going to understand the message we're trying to convey, which, in the end, is all we want them to do.
Here's the music video in all its glory;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TAgsZPvDck&feature=channel_video_title
The basic premise is that our main character, who remained nameless (like all the characters in the video) would be dumped by his girlfriend (also nameless). The main character would go through a dark time, wandering aimlessly as he tries desperately to find meaning in the world after the love of his life has left him. There is a lot of time spent watching him descend into the darkness of an underpass, representing his descent into darkness as he feels the world become darker and darker. A section where he looks into the distance while sitting on a bench represents how he looks back to the past, trying to find a way to get things back to the way they are. The video continues with a scene where he sees his nameless friend with his ex, where he climbs to the top of a multi-story car park, looking over the edge, contemplating jumping off. The video concludes with a scene where he walks off into the darkness - since this follows on directly after a shot of him running across the roof of the multi-story car park, it ends on a deliberately ambiguous note, leaving the audience questioning whether he jumped and we're seeing his descent into darkness, or if he is actually just walking down a dark street.
After the editing was finished and it was uploaded to YouTube, we looked back at it and compared it to Andrew Goodwin's theories, as laid out in his book "Dancing in the Distraction Factory." From the offset we'd decided to contradict the lyrics rather than directly represent or amplify them, and this shows - the video has a very dark vibe, as opposed to the fairly uplifting and optimistic theme of the song. This is very prominant when the song reaches the point where the vocalist proclaims that "The blues they send to beat me won't defeat me", which is where the protagonist descends into the darkness of an underpass as he contemplates what to do with his life. Furthermore, there was a focus on one main character, but this was done more to show his reactions to the events happening around him rather than to sell the image of a vocalist or band. There was also a distinct lack of any references to voyeurism or anything like that - the nature of the song and the basic premise left little room for any reference to voyeurism.
Whilst watching it back, and taking into account the thoughts from others in our media class, we realised that we hadn't made the final scene as well as we'd hoped - it wasn't clear that it was supposed to be questionable, and people would either think that the shot was out of sync with the story of the rest of the video, or that he had just decided to walk away rather than jump. This could have been avoided by perhaps having the protagonist fade out of view as he walked away, but we didn't think of that when we were shooting. We also saw that it was painstakingly obvious when we were simply holding the camera rather than using a tripod - the camera was noticeably unsteady whenever the tripod wasn't used, and this caused a huge distinction with the quality of the footage shot using a tripod and the quality of the footage shot without one - obviously we should have used the tripod for every scene (or, at least, a great deal more than we eventually did). Continuity was also a problem - since the footage was shot out of sync throughout the course of a day, some shots were done in the morning, some in the afternoon, some in the evening and some at night, the time of day seemed to change erratically and illogically.
Apart from that, the music video was received fairly positively, with people commenting on the camera angles and the originality of the ideas that went into the video. However, it was noted that a music video that tries to defy conventions being used in our coursework was perhaps not the best idea ever.
All in all, we learnt that it is usually best to have too much footage rather than too little, as we had a lot of footage to go through and were basically able to pick and choose the best parts of what we'd filmed. We also learnt that it is VERY difficult to film steady moving shots, which leads us to believe that we're probably not going to rely on shots where the camera moves when we shoot future tasks. One other lesson we learnt was to spell things out for the audience - whilst we may think that the ideas behind our production pieces are obvious, in the end, we're the ones making it, so of course it's going to be clear for us. Spelling it out for the audience means that they're definitely going to understand the message we're trying to convey, which, in the end, is all we want them to do.
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Planning our Music Video
For our Music Video, we took the lessons we'd learned about Goodwin's theories and tried to plan our music video around them, in order to make a semi-professional looking music video. Since it was our first attempt at a music vide, we were given a song at random - the songs were all classic like "Feeling Good" and "Magic Moments," with lyrics that were fairly easy to decipher and make a story out of, or just a video that corresponded to the music and lyrics somehow. They were fairly well known by most of us, so it was a decent selection of songs that we had at our disposal.
Our group were given the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head", by B. J. Thomas. The general gist of the song was an upbeat look at the life of an optimistic man, whose life is filled with misery, but through it all he keeps on smiling, looking on the bright side of life at all times. Since we were aware of the fact that another group may be doing the same song, we decided to make our video contrast to the lyrics somewhat. We agreed to make the video about a teenage relationship that goes sour, and ends with the main character killing himself. It was a pretty dark concept, but we thought it was pretty far away from the lyric, and therefore was a good contrast to the happy, light feeling of the song.
We immediately drew up a basic idea of what we wanted to do, and elaborated on one idea a little further, adding a quick storyboard so that we knew exactly what we wanted to do with it;
After our initial planning, with the basic ideas and shots noted down in detail, we made a series of storyboards to illustrate what we hoped to film. After making a short list of the main shots we wanted, we drew the storyboards and took photos of them to upload to our blogs.
We used these storyboards to get a basic idea of what we wanted to do with the music video.
In short, the idea was that the main protagonist would be dumped by his girlfriend at the beginning of the video, and the rest of the video would show the events that take place afterwards. The protagonist would be left completely miserable,
Our group were given the song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head", by B. J. Thomas. The general gist of the song was an upbeat look at the life of an optimistic man, whose life is filled with misery, but through it all he keeps on smiling, looking on the bright side of life at all times. Since we were aware of the fact that another group may be doing the same song, we decided to make our video contrast to the lyrics somewhat. We agreed to make the video about a teenage relationship that goes sour, and ends with the main character killing himself. It was a pretty dark concept, but we thought it was pretty far away from the lyric, and therefore was a good contrast to the happy, light feeling of the song.
We immediately drew up a basic idea of what we wanted to do, and elaborated on one idea a little further, adding a quick storyboard so that we knew exactly what we wanted to do with it;
After our initial planning, with the basic ideas and shots noted down in detail, we made a series of storyboards to illustrate what we hoped to film. After making a short list of the main shots we wanted, we drew the storyboards and took photos of them to upload to our blogs.
We used these storyboards to get a basic idea of what we wanted to do with the music video.
In short, the idea was that the main protagonist would be dumped by his girlfriend at the beginning of the video, and the rest of the video would show the events that take place afterwards. The protagonist would be left completely miserable,
Monday, 12 September 2011
Andrew Goodwin's theory, and the application of said theory
Andrew Goodwin, in his book "Dancing in the Distraction Factory", outlined several theories regarding the creation and content of music videos. There were, he said, several key features that distinguished the music video as an individual form of media compared to other, similar forms. Not every feature would be prominent in every music video, but at the very least, one would be visible in each and every music video created. At least, each and every music video that was of professional - or near professional - standard.
- The visuals may have a connection to the lyrics (either amplifying, illustrating, or contradicting them)
- The visuals may have a connection to the music (again, either amplifying, illustrating, or contradicting them)
- Particular music genres may have particular iconography and styles (i.e. live performances in heavy rock music videos, etc)
- There will be a demand for the main vocalist(s) / artist(s) to be featured in the video
- There is likely to be reference to voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of females, but also in terms of systems of looking (such as screens within screens, binoculars, cameras etc).
- There are likely to be intertextual references (either to other music videos or to films and TV texts).
To illustrate Goodwin's theory, I decided to apply it to the music video for the song "DVNO" by the French musical duo, Justice.
The music video for DVNO straight away ticks one of the boxes in Goodwin's theory; around 95% of the video is computer-generated, with flashing lights and fluorescent visuals, giving a futuristic vibe in keeping with music videos based around electronic / house music. These computer generated images generally give visual representations of the lyrics being spoken, with selected words from the lyrics (such as "mayhem" and "DVNO", for instance) being given detailed, obviously CG visual representations.
The music, as well as the lyrics, seem to effect the music video (and vice versa). For instance, a section when the camera flies through a layer of what appears to be pure music causes the pitch of the music to shift - this is probably not actually in the version of the song on the album, but simply serves to give a stronger connection between the music and the visuals. Finally, the ~5% of real-life footage shows the two band members playing the piano, which is consistent with Goodwin's theory in that it shows a relationship between the visuals and the music, and also shows the main artists in the video as well.
As you can see, whilst the music video doesn't tick ALL the boxes, it does reflect several of Goodwin's ideas concerning the content of music videos.
- The visuals may have a connection to the lyrics (either amplifying, illustrating, or contradicting them)
- The visuals may have a connection to the music (again, either amplifying, illustrating, or contradicting them)
- Particular music genres may have particular iconography and styles (i.e. live performances in heavy rock music videos, etc)
- There will be a demand for the main vocalist(s) / artist(s) to be featured in the video
- There is likely to be reference to voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of females, but also in terms of systems of looking (such as screens within screens, binoculars, cameras etc).
- There are likely to be intertextual references (either to other music videos or to films and TV texts).
To illustrate Goodwin's theory, I decided to apply it to the music video for the song "DVNO" by the French musical duo, Justice.
The music video for DVNO straight away ticks one of the boxes in Goodwin's theory; around 95% of the video is computer-generated, with flashing lights and fluorescent visuals, giving a futuristic vibe in keeping with music videos based around electronic / house music. These computer generated images generally give visual representations of the lyrics being spoken, with selected words from the lyrics (such as "mayhem" and "DVNO", for instance) being given detailed, obviously CG visual representations.
The music, as well as the lyrics, seem to effect the music video (and vice versa). For instance, a section when the camera flies through a layer of what appears to be pure music causes the pitch of the music to shift - this is probably not actually in the version of the song on the album, but simply serves to give a stronger connection between the music and the visuals. Finally, the ~5% of real-life footage shows the two band members playing the piano, which is consistent with Goodwin's theory in that it shows a relationship between the visuals and the music, and also shows the main artists in the video as well.
As you can see, whilst the music video doesn't tick ALL the boxes, it does reflect several of Goodwin's ideas concerning the content of music videos.
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