Before going any further, me and my group had to come up with an agreement. This was to just get a basic understanding of our skills and weaknesses to see what each of us could bring to the table and help each other with.
Signing this together as a group shows that we have all made a commitment to each other, and will not let each other down.
To continue with our music video, we have to get permission from the artist, Halsey. So we messaged her on instagram to use her song for educational purposes. This is important as in the music industry, lack of permission would lead to copyright or piracy.
Moving on, we had to create a collection of shots that we want in our music video. In some music genres, the aesthetic heavily relies on the shots as part of the repertoire of elements. We collected some cinematography shots that we would like to create in our video. This and editing will help us create a smooth, impressive music video.
Creating this visual shot list allowed us to understand what shots we needed that went well with our genre of music. Our video will have more soft and smooth shots that portray the artist as sweet and laid back, however some shots will be more intense as the music video also has more chaotic moments which would require different shots.
Now that we have collected a series of shots, we will be able to recreate them in our music video, and create a mood board that will help and inspire us along the way.
To go on with our. music video, we first had to allow our teacher to understand our basic idea. We created a small pitch to present to her that summarised the star image, narrative concept and performance concept.
Making this really helped paint more of a picture in our heads of what we wanted and allowed all of us in the group to understand and interpret each others ideas. Although I was absent, my group went on to film the pitch with my teacher.
Our teacher gave us feedback on our themes and issues to help us reflect on our work and focus forward on making it even better. This allowed us to help with developing ideas on the narrative and performance.
After showing our video idea to our teacher, it has allowed us to experience critisism and feedback in the industry and how that can help shape our work. Now we can move forward with clear ideas of what we already wanted, and things we can add.
This is my final song idea:
I chose this because:
This is my music video pitch to my group. It is for the song ‘Killing boys’ by Halsey. I chose this song as the intro is from one of my favourite films, ‘Jennifer’s Body’, which is about a cheerleader who eats boys. I felt this theme would be interesting to convey in my music video. It would be interesting to create the star image of a sweet innocent girl who has a dark side that is revealed throughout the video. Halsey herself said the song is based on the manic fantasy you get after a break up. This inspired me to think of the theme of a girl who, after a rough break up has shown her true side. Whether it is real or part of her fantasies is up to the audience.
This is my word cloud of themes and idea’s for the video:
To present my ideas to the group, I created a small presentation of the song and what my idea’s are for it. In white is the story I want to tell, a montage of a pretty aesthetically pleasing girl who, thought the video, reveals she has killed her boyfriend. I want the video to be a mix of performance and visually pleasing montages that tell a story in a sort of abstract way in locations that are simple. Perhaps a pair of feet, or sudden shot of the boy laying in grass or floating in a pool would allow the audience to interpret what is happening. At the end of the song, I think it would look really good if as the song suddenly cuts, she tosses dirt over the camera, burying the boy and any love she felt for him.
Now that I have all these things I can present my idea to the group. I think the song has a good rhythm so we can edit the video to the beat. The song represents the fantasies you get after a breakdown and that is what I want my music video to convey.
This is one of my favourite pervious students works. I really like the song and think the video matvches it really well. Its a good performance and I like how there are clips of things like record players to break up the clips and add to the aesthetic if the video.
Why?
The technical conventions like his lip syncing is good and the voice of the artist fits him well. The transitions are really good, like the camera lens turning into the next scene, which I found really impressive and would love to learn to do. Also, the clips were edited quite well to the beat which is something I want to be able to do in my video. The change in colours gave the song life and added a sense of fun to the video. The bright flowers and slightly blurry/ trippy filters creates a hallucination- type vibe which is fitting for the indie genre.
Most of the video was performance which I personally wouldn’t have in my video. I think i’d prefer an equal amount, however, it went really well into the video and I admire that. I like how they have put in some performance clips and other random clips to match their vintage aesthetic.
The star has been presented as a kind of old-soul, cool kind of guy. His clothes are colourful and not too dramatic, which creates his star image as calm and collected rather than all over the place. He’s wearing trendy things, like crystal jewellery and a rainbow jumper, which exhibits him as someone who could set trends and meets the aesthetic of the audience.
This has inspired me to create a video that is bright and visually pleasing, not too plain, but with enough details to tell a story and spice up the video.
For this close analysis on a music video, I chose the indie/ melo pop genre artist Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to Die’. By looking at the conventions of the video and trying to decode it, I found it is trying to capture an abusive relationship and convey the idea of toxic love having a fatal effect. The video, being a mix of narrative and performance, presents Lana’s star image as heavenly, free and love obsessed. The MES adds to this, her wearing white dresses and having soft curled hair. She looks pure and fragile, like a doll. The MES of her love interest creates him to look rough and intense, underlining he may be bad for her and is the bad guy.
After closely analysing this music video, I now know how MES, aesthetics, technical conventions and generic features are heavily relied on to create a narrative for a music video. I can now go on to later create my own narrative for my music video I’ll create with my group.
In this post, I looked further into the forms and conventions of three different music videos. One was just narrative, one just performance, and one was a mix of both. By analysing each video, I saw how each song fitted into a genre, creating a star image for the actor/ singer. I was able to decode the videos and break them down to see the meaning in each one, like Beyoncé’s sexuality and fierceness, or Bebe Rexha’s pain and sadness.
From this, I now know how to create a narrative for a song in a music video, and how styling ur main star to fit the genre of song is very important for their star image and telling the story. I think having both performance and narrative is important and it is a good mix and keeps the target audience more entertained.
