The planning process is perhaps the most important as it incorporates the pooling of ideas and creative endeavors as well as then converting them into storyboard representations of what we envisage for the screen. This means specific analysing of the lyrics and the meanings of the song as well as it's context. Particularly for our video as we intend to use Sylvia Plath as our song. This has connotations with a poet and her lifestyle and takes on a more serious tone. For this reason we need to research her a lot more as well as the singers interpretation and viewpoint of her. The themes of the song are indulgence, excess and self destruction. We want our video to appeal to the general mass, not in the way that mainstream music does. As our song is more of a ballad, it will be a lot different in it's visuals but not to the extent that it narrows its viewpoint to only appeal to a niche audience. In a nutshell the singer is longing for a woman like Sylvia Plath, someone who is intelligent and yet almost crazy at the same time, as the song progresses we see her flaws, they become more apparent. As our video follows a story involving two characters we need to introduce them and show their place and situation as soon as possible at the start of the video so that the audience understands what is going on. For this reason we would use the main (male) character reading her book before picturing her so that the audience realizes that this is a part of the book, that she is not actually there.
The visuals will be in muted tones, blues and greys combined with certain amount of orange. It gives the video a bleaker edge so that when we do use flecks of colour they stand out against this backdrop. The colour scheme will be similair to those in the screen shots from Queens of The Stone Age and One Republic videos that i have shown in my research section. We want to show that this woman the singer seeks is unatainable that is why we would cut between shots of him with her book and then in the shots where he is visualizing her the style of shot and transitions will be slow and in an almost dreamlike quality, this will stress the fact that this woman is not real and that she is unattainable. We will use the combination of one actress and one actor in our video.
Our setting is an important factor in the video, we need a large house that has a high class feel with a large staircase and we already have a location in mind. This is because we want our actress to have an aristocratic upper class feel. She will be costumed in a long black dress with long gloves on and a pearl choker around her neck. The setting needs to be extravagant in order to make the cracks and flaws seem bigger. Her hair will be tied up and she will be heavily made up. This elegant appearance will contrast well with what becomes of the character throughout the video as we begin to see the cracks in this beautiful public persona, and instead notice her flaws as her self destruction becomes apparent.
The institution we would aim our video towards is mainstream MTV. Our videos lack band footage, something that is more apparent with established artists who do not need to get their personas' across, rather focusing on the video and the story to it. It also does not fit into the narrower channels i.e. MTV dance or MTV base. If it were on one of these channels it would be MTV Two as that channel is focused on bands with smaller but strong followings. Our artist is someone who falls into this category, so if we are basing it on the artist then we would be on MTV 2, but the video is more aimed at an MTV audience.
In our AS production we used two different cameras in our production. The first, a Canon XL2 was our main camera during shooting as it's quality was of a higher level than that of any other camera we used. We were able to manipulate the look of the shot more so on this camera than any other and thus used it most. For re-shoots we used the XM2 as it was lighter and smaller allowing us to get shots that we were not able to get using the XL2. For this years production we plan to carry on the usage of two cameras, catching as much as we can with the XL2 and shooting the make up shots with the XM2.
work in progressssss =]
Monday, 29 September 2008
Monday, 22 September 2008
The Music Video
Music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song with lyrics. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back much further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when MTV's format was based around them. The term "music video" first came into popular usage in the early 1980s. Prior to then, such clips were described by various terms including "promotional films" or "promotional clips".
Music videos use a range of styles of filmmaking, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action.
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam & the Ants, Madonna and Mylène Farmer, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos. Some academics[who?] have compared music video to silent film, and it is suggested that stars like Madonna have (often quite deliberately) constructed an image that in many ways echoes the image of the great stars of the silent era such as Greta Garbo. But the music video which would arguably make the biggest impact on the music video industry was the music video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller."[5] It would become the most influential and successful video ever in history.
-wikipedia
Music videos use a range of styles of filmmaking, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action.
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing. Many important acts of this period, most notably Adam & the Ants, Madonna and Mylène Farmer, owed a great deal of their success to the skillful construction and seductive appeal of their videos. Some academics[who?] have compared music video to silent film, and it is suggested that stars like Madonna have (often quite deliberately) constructed an image that in many ways echoes the image of the great stars of the silent era such as Greta Garbo. But the music video which would arguably make the biggest impact on the music video industry was the music video for Michael Jackson's song "Thriller."[5] It would become the most influential and successful video ever in history.
-wikipedia
Friday, 12 September 2008
research
Research
Before beginning filming our music video we needed to research music videos extensively and find out what makes them successful or not. We have to assess what the function of the music video is in selling the song, whether its there to keep the audience interested or they’re to boost the impact of the song. Either option seems to be true. Foo Fighters’ ‘Learn To Fly’ video is a farcical comedy, adding little edge or weight to the song. Whereas the video for Linkin Parks ‘What I’ve Done’ takes on a political theme, bombarding the viewer with negative images from all corners of the Earth, seemingly taking an anti government stance.
Music videos often use band footage intertwined with a story. This allows the video to keep the interest of the audience without the song behind it becoming non diagetic irrelevant background noise that doesn’t relate to the song. This is achieved by cutting in between the band singing and the story progressing. Often music videos only utilise one of these forms, either having a full story or just band footage on its own. It is commonplace that bands or artists with more poetic, piano based music have stories in their videos as the song lyrics serve a deeper meaning than to sound good to the ear. With more mainstream guitar based music the videos focus on the musicians and the instruments they are playing, trying to capture their image and the difficulty of the song being played, to reinforce the bands image.
Below is an example of Foo Fighters Learn To Fly video. You can clearly see lead singer Dave Grohl in a number of costumes, cross-dressing. This shows the light nature of the song and that the band are seeking an easy going image for themselves. The video also features cameos from various comedic actors e.g. Jack Black. This shows the band trying to associate themselves with certain types of celebrities by using them in their videos and the element of humour involved shows that the links are in that nature.
Below are a series of shows from One Republics videos. They are much more somber in their colour schemes and general cinematography, giving bleak outlooks to their weighty lyrics. It adds to the effect of the song whilst cementing the bands image as a serious act. The colour schemes are mainly blues and browns with shades of grey. The video shown below has a particularly negative outlook. It's singer is distressed and almost crying to the camera in desperation as the series of events unfold.
One video that shares similar imagery and characterisation to what i plan to do is Queens of the Stone Age's sick sick sick. Although it combines both band footage and a story it has many themes that i intend to utilise. For example the female character in my video will look almost exactly like the woman in this video, and as the video goes on her cracks and imperfections are shown. The lighting in QOTSA's video is similar to what i hope to achieve as it is darker and more sinister than natural light. It's colours are dirtier and grittier, reflecting the sound and lyrics of the song. The colourscheme is dominated by greys and blues to heighten the scary aspect of the visuals. The grungy nature of the songs means that the video is intended to shock slightly and so they have taken a beautiful woman and the idea of food and made it look sickly, overpowering and have sexual connetations. The gluttony etc throughout the video gets more and more and she starts to destroy herself. The idea of self destrution is one i want my female character to fall into, which i'll discuss further in my planning section. As the tempo increases towards the end of QOTSA's song the imagery becomes more frequent and a lot scarier in its nature, the range of shots is vast and chaotic as the sounds of the guitars and drums crash and contrast.
Before beginning filming our music video we needed to research music videos extensively and find out what makes them successful or not. We have to assess what the function of the music video is in selling the song, whether its there to keep the audience interested or they’re to boost the impact of the song. Either option seems to be true. Foo Fighters’ ‘Learn To Fly’ video is a farcical comedy, adding little edge or weight to the song. Whereas the video for Linkin Parks ‘What I’ve Done’ takes on a political theme, bombarding the viewer with negative images from all corners of the Earth, seemingly taking an anti government stance.
Music videos often use band footage intertwined with a story. This allows the video to keep the interest of the audience without the song behind it becoming non diagetic irrelevant background noise that doesn’t relate to the song. This is achieved by cutting in between the band singing and the story progressing. Often music videos only utilise one of these forms, either having a full story or just band footage on its own. It is commonplace that bands or artists with more poetic, piano based music have stories in their videos as the song lyrics serve a deeper meaning than to sound good to the ear. With more mainstream guitar based music the videos focus on the musicians and the instruments they are playing, trying to capture their image and the difficulty of the song being played, to reinforce the bands image.
Below is an example of Foo Fighters Learn To Fly video. You can clearly see lead singer Dave Grohl in a number of costumes, cross-dressing. This shows the light nature of the song and that the band are seeking an easy going image for themselves. The video also features cameos from various comedic actors e.g. Jack Black. This shows the band trying to associate themselves with certain types of celebrities by using them in their videos and the element of humour involved shows that the links are in that nature.
Below are a series of shows from One Republics videos. They are much more somber in their colour schemes and general cinematography, giving bleak outlooks to their weighty lyrics. It adds to the effect of the song whilst cementing the bands image as a serious act. The colour schemes are mainly blues and browns with shades of grey. The video shown below has a particularly negative outlook. It's singer is distressed and almost crying to the camera in desperation as the series of events unfold.
One video that shares similar imagery and characterisation to what i plan to do is Queens of the Stone Age's sick sick sick. Although it combines both band footage and a story it has many themes that i intend to utilise. For example the female character in my video will look almost exactly like the woman in this video, and as the video goes on her cracks and imperfections are shown. The lighting in QOTSA's video is similar to what i hope to achieve as it is darker and more sinister than natural light. It's colours are dirtier and grittier, reflecting the sound and lyrics of the song. The colourscheme is dominated by greys and blues to heighten the scary aspect of the visuals. The grungy nature of the songs means that the video is intended to shock slightly and so they have taken a beautiful woman and the idea of food and made it look sickly, overpowering and have sexual connetations. The gluttony etc throughout the video gets more and more and she starts to destroy herself. The idea of self destrution is one i want my female character to fall into, which i'll discuss further in my planning section. As the tempo increases towards the end of QOTSA's song the imagery becomes more frequent and a lot scarier in its nature, the range of shots is vast and chaotic as the sounds of the guitars and drums crash and contrast.
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