It is time to narrow down the iconic shots that we are going to use within our music video and the significance of them relating to our star. We are going to use all, and if not the majority of the shots that we have put in tothis padlet for when filming the performance. It is a good reminder that we can’t have all mid shots, and that we need a massive variety of angles.

We are going to incorporate an effective use of long shots and also drone shots because this will really set the scene and will be a great image of our star along with props such as balloons. If we have alternative angles such as using a drone, Millie can then adjust her dramatic performance depending on how far away the camera is.

Another effective and alternative shot we are going to include is using a fish eye lens to film some shots, which we practiced in our test shoots. In the image above I think it looks really effective, especially if it was of the star, and will give us a cool quirky variety of shots and Millie can work with the fact the lens is a fish eye and come up closer and further away to the camera to give a circular effect.

When planning our pitch, the first thing we did was create a presentation including everything to describe our ideas for the video to our teacher. Each music video group gave a 10 minute pitch to the teacher running through mise en scene, camera and editing in order for her to adapt our ideas to improve and help us achieve the best shots as possible.

We filmed our proposal to our teacher which included her feedback but unfortunately our SD card got wiped before we could import the footage but we have a few notes from our teacher instead.

From this feedback, we gathered lots of positives and a few areas for improvement and targets.

Are positives being;

• Has good energy to the song
• Alternative, goes against stereotypes
• Good action ideas to match emotions
• Good ideas regarding props
• Gets deeper in meaning throughout video
• Great mise-en-scene ideas such as costume and makeup

Targets to think about when shooting:

• No big beat drop/change in tempo so performer energy must be sustained throughout
• Look into more locations/alternatives for school idea
• Make more of own original ideas rather than off internet
• Shoot loads of test shots so can nail real performance
• Continue with valentines day story

Taking this feedback into account, we can improve our ideas and plan very specifically in all aspects of camera and lighting for when we shoot the real performance.

Today we looked at our target audience for the themes and message of our song and narrative. We got some ideas off of pinterest and created a pink, white and black themed mood board which is on the first slide of our presentations.

On the following slides we did some yougov research of our song artist, Lorde, and our inspiration for the music video, Melanie Martinez. We found the results were surprising as mainly men listen to both but we still want to continue with these themes as our target audience is clearly, teenage girls. We have focused on the personal identity aspect of the uses and gratfication theory when creating our mood board of what our audience would look like or be interested in.

Blumler and Katz suggested that there were four reasons, collectively known as Uses and Gratification, this theory described consumers and an active audience. These four are Information, Personal Identity, Social Interaction and Entertainment and we have taken these all into consideration when creating our audience profile. We have tried to make sure that our themes and aesthetic would fit in with our audience’s profile such as their interests and identity and what they like to do in their own time.

The Love Club

Our final choice of song is The Love Club by Lorde. We chose this song as we felt like we could create a great video especially visually, especially focusing on the beat of the track. The lyrics also fit really well with the theme we are going for. Our themes being;

• Love (hating it)
• Growing up
• Emotions – particularly anger
• Relationships (hating it)

We are aiming for quite a performance based video as we have lots of effective ideas, but also want to communicate the message of hating love to our audience. We are going to use cool visual effects such as props to make a mockery out of a love story. It is sort of going to be filmed as a montage so it is going to be quite disjunctive, whilst portraying our theme. We are going to have lots of different jump cuts to different scenes including props such as balloons, love cakes etc.

We were allocated our groups and signed a group agreement sheet to set down the rules and regulations for us to follow for the duration of this project. We wrote down our strengths and weaknesses to learn what each other prefer to work on.

Clicking on the image will lead to a pdf of the entire agreement document.

Here is the full google slide embedded

Then we began to look at key themes, ideas and aesthetic ideas which we started to make a presentation for. We then used this same presentation for our pitch also but the beginning of the slideshow is where our ideas first occured.

The song I have chosen to pitch to my group is Paper Planes by MIA. This song fits into the R&B/slow rap genre. We had to choose one song that we would be interested in having as an option for our music videos. I picked a few options which are all included at the end of the presentation but narrowed it down to just the one eventually which I will pitch to my music video group. The song I chose was Paper Planes by M.I.A because it was very up beat and I thought a majority lip syncing video to go along with this sound would look very effective. She has a really nice tone of voice also so I need to take this into account when choosing my performer.

Summary of the song

In this song, M.I.A. plays up the stereotype of a menacing illegal immigrant, forging documents and threatening violence. It was inspired by her trying to enter America on a visa (she is a British citizen of Sri Lankan descent). However the lyrics don’t portray this message on first listen, you have to look deeper into the song but this message of inequality could be narrated well within a video.

I made a small presentation exclaiming why and what my ideas are behind the narrative and performance of my idea was. Within this, I’ve also included the lyric video and a word cloud consisting of the words that came to my head when I read the lyrics and listened to the song. I also researched what the song was initially supposed to be about to gather a deeper understanding about the lyrics.

Here is my mini pitch

Bloodstain

This is my favourite video that I watched from a former student, here are a few things that I like about it;

• The song choice is great I really like how they have edited the video to go along with the lyrics and beats, it makes the video flow a lot more to the song and fits perfectly which is very effective.
• The lip syncing is very in time with the music which makes it look real, this is because the editing has been done perfectly and it is synced well.
• I like the range of the camera, from long shots to close ups to side angles, a nice variety of shots have been filmed. This gives a nice variety to the audience and helps to tell the story.
• I liked how this video has been edited, all the quick cuts in the chorus flickering between the boys’ faces and them jumping into the sea, this looked really effective and all the short cuts fitted perfectly with the sound. The difference between the two shots shows the impact of the water when jumping into the sea.
• The bath scene is my favourite, with the ‘blood’ continuously being dropped onto his body throughout the video, this is very appropriate due to the title of the video. It makes the video feel very real and the story is told further through the blood element. I also liked how he went underwater in this ‘blood’ at the end, it was very appropriate for the whole video and title and finished the video with a dramatic ending.

Today we looked at another famous music video which we analysed in a lot more detail than the previous ones. The music video we chose to analyse as a class was Thursday by Jess Glynne. This was an interesting video to analyse as it has lots of camera angles andmise en scene to it; and a key message behind it, being natural and to be yourself.

Here is my detailed analysis of the video Thursday, linking to the actual document.

Then we chose a music video of our own choice to analyse in detail, I watched a few different videos and eventually chose Lana Del Rey ‘Born To Die’ due to the story this video tells.

Above is the detailed analysis of Born To Die linking to the document, being able to analyse a video in great detail is a skill I will continuously use from now on when watching music videos.

A key feature of all music videos is someone, usually the artist, lip syncing. Music videos are either performance or narrative, or a mixture of both. Performance is singer acting and lip syncing a lot whereas narrative means the scenes and lyrics are telling a story more than the action in the video.

I had to describe whether each video I analysed was illustration, amplification or disjuncture.

Illustration– Telling a key story through the video

Amplification– The video helps to tell the story of the song even more, it makes it more dramatic.

Disjuncture– The video has nothing to do with the song and lyrics.

Today we began to look at some famous music videos and analysed them in a table. I chose Camila Cabello ‘My oh my’, Harry Styles ‘falling’ Billie Eilish ‘Everything I wanted’ and Katy Perry ‘Never worn white’. Here is my analysis of these videos:

This has really helped me how to analyse a music video and what key elements to look out for in videos in the future.