For our teacher to have a full understanding of our music video ideas/concepts we had to make a pitch. In the pitch we talked about our ideas for the star image, narrative concept and performance concept.

Our Final Pitch

6x Positives

• Our narrative has a good base of an idea.
• We have a model/models who are willing to work with us.
• Our mise-en-scene is strong.
• A good plot that allows the audience to interpret our storyline in their own way.
• Our group had good communication so we all know the narrative and mise-en-scene ideas.
• We have considered the locations we will film at.

6x Goals

• Use the ending of the story at the start of the music video to give the audience background of what is happening, has happened, or could happen.
• Look into possible locations in depth.
• Potentially think of more costumes – don’t use the same two as it could get boring.
• Think about how and where we are going to film the performance/lip-syncing shots.
• Consider camera angles more.
• We need to be organized in order to film and get the shots we need to get with no hassle.

By showing our ideas and concepts to our teacher it has allowed our group to move forward with the video and have a clear vision of what ideas we need to keep and what else we can add. It has also allowed us to have experience of getting criticism and feedback from people and we have learnt how to move forward with the criticism we received.

In order to portray emotions and a story to the audience and make good cinematography with my music video I will have to use a variety of camera shots. In an alternative/indie music video there will be a certain criteria of repertoire of elements in order to make the video conventional and match the genre. Below I made a Padlet with my group listing a range of shots we will use, writing about how our genre goes well with these shots, how the star image will be presented with the use of different shots and what impression it will give to the audience.

In order to know what skills and weaknesses our group has we did a group agreement contract. By doing this it has allowed us to communicate well and work on our organization skills. This has benefited us as we now know what we need to work on and which skills we need to learn in order to produce the best music video possible and which tasks to delegate to each person.

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Killing Boys – Halsey

The song we chose to do for our music video is Killing Boys by Halsey. It is a Alternative/Indie genre song. The track “Killing Boys” is based on Halsey’s desire to directly confront her romantic interest. The song is indicative of the singer being frustrated by her lover to the point of losing her cool. Our idea for the music video is to present the performer who is also the main character as an innocent girl however as we move through the video signs start to come up to show she is not as innocent as she seems.

In order to prepare for our music video we need to know the conventions, narrative types and performance types. When listening to potential songs I made sure they had a good beat in order to edit it to the beat. I also made a word cloud in order to get an idea of the star image. I made a slideshow with song ideas and story ideas for my music video. I then chose a song and pitched it to my group for them to feedback on.

BLUSH – 2016

In order to know what makes a good music video I deconstructed, decoded and analyzed a former media students music video. The reason I chose this music video is because I like the performance element of it and the editing. I also think the song choice is similar to my music videos final song therefore it could help me with my work.

Technical Conventions: The lip-syncing to the song throughout the video is close to perfect. It matches up to the lyrics and the model who is lip-syncing matches the voice of the artist singing. The editing to the beat throughout the video is extremely well executed. You can tell when filming they have used the rule of thirds for the framing, allowing the video to look professional and easy to look at.

Narrative/Performance: The video is mainly a performance video, with clips here and there which could potentially lead the audience to have their own perception of what is happening. The performance matches the feel/concept of the song, this creates a small narrative for the audience.

Star Representation: A key aspect that portrays the star as unique and different is she has glitter under her eyes. The star is also portrayed as mysterious, creating a sense of audience perception of what the stars story is and who she really is.

Video Style: Mise-en-Scene has been used throughout to represent the genre of the video and song. The editing and camera shots have been used to help portray a story to the audience. The use of the fast-pace cuts as the music builds up helps create a chaotic feel and impression to the audience and keeps them hooked into what is going on. The shots which have been slowed down also help the audience have time to think what is going on.

For this task we had to analysis a music video by Katy Perry closely in order to understand the narrative and performance aspects. I had to learn the generic conventions of the video and the media form in order to understand what it was about.

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By doing this task I had to decode and analyze well in order to get the full impression the music video is trying to project. For example I had to decode the music video in order to find out what genre it is. The conventions that showed to the audience that it is a pop video are the bright colours used in mise-en-scene and how the music is edited to the beat. Another technique this helped me learn was knowing if a video is illustration, amplification or disjunction. By decoding the music video I worked out it was an amplification video with occasional illustration as the video added another layer to the song. By learning these techniques I now know what I need to incorporate to make my final music video the best it can. I can know what I need to make a narrative video or a performance video or incorporate both.

For this tasks I had to watch four music videos which consisted of only performance, only narrative and half narrative half performance. This task allowed me to analyse music videos closely and help me decide which type of music video I would like to consider when making mine.

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