Above is the second draft of our music video, which includes our narrative that we most recently shot. On reflection, this draft has a few strengths and a lot of improvements that need to be made.

What went well:

• In certain segments, we have edited well to the beat.
• We have included a variety of shots including close ups, mid shots and jump cuts; just to name a few.
• We have experimented with effects and filters to coordinate with our genre of electro-pop.

Improvements to be made:

• Add a title that flickers to announce the title of the song.
• Use filters and colour correction to make the best out of the grainy and dark shots.
• Use the filters consistently throughout the video, so the effect looks purposeful, as it’s intended to be.
• Experiment with transitions between clips.
• Increase the pace of edit with the song.

In order to capture the narrative shots we needed we decided to conduct two shoots; one in the white studio and one at the German Underground Hospital. We had varying levels of success.

Our shoot in the studio was very unsuccessful with only a handful of shots being captured. We had aimed to get some extreme close ups of the props we were going to use in the next shoot but this didn’t go as we had hoped.

Then we went on to our next shoot which was, thankfully, much more successful. We were able to capture over a hundred different shots, all of which satisfied our storyboard plan, which we were able to refer to during the shoot.

However, during post-production we have found that a number of shots are blurry which means we have less footage to experiment with in our music video. We haven’t chosen to redo this shoot however as we feel we have enough footage and with the new skills we are learning in premiere pro we will be able to make the best of the footage that isn’t as high quality as the rest.

Here are some photos of me and my group out on our shoot at the underground hospital.

When preparing for our shoot in the underground hospital, we constructed a risk assessment in order to plan for any issue that could arise.

Please click to view the document.

In order to prepare for our narrative shoot we compiled all of our ideas and plans onto a production meeting agenda.

Please click to view the full document.

To prepare for our shoot, we have planned our scenes and a compiled a visual shot list. This will be helpful to follow when we go out on our shoot so that we feel well prepared and our shoot can run as smoothly as possible.

Our storyboard is not necessarily in order, as it doesn’t matter what order many of the scenes come in as they interlink.

Our storyboard and shot plan.

The narrative of a music video is important to not be complete as to create enigma, so that the audience are encouraged rewatch the video.

Therefore instead of the structure of a music video being a complete story and having a beginning, middle and end, Todorov proposed that it should follow the structure of an equilibrium, disruption, resolution and the new equilibrium.

A music video can also be categorised in to one of the following, depending on the structure and order of the narrative:

• Anachronic – the story is out of sequence, including flashbacks and flash-forwards.
• Episodic – short self contained scenes usually thematically linked.
• Parallel – cross cutting between two scenes that meet at the climax
• Linear – runs in chronological order

The narrative can be any one of the following:

• Amplified – The video links to the key themes and messages of the lyrics and aids them.
• Disjunctive – The video and lyrics have very little to do with each other.
• Illustrative – The narrative illustrates the lyrics directly.

In order to prepare for shooting our narrative, we compiled this document of initial planning and ideas for our amplified narrative.

Please click to view the full document.

Above is the first draft of the performance segment of our music video.

Overall, I felt our shoots were a success as we were well prepared, we captured a wide variety of shots and most of the shots we chose to use were in focus. However, for future shoots I do feel we need to be capture more shots of our star moving through the frame.

Reflecting on this first draft, I like the filters and effects that we were able to experiment with, I think most of the lip syncing is well matched and the MES reflected the genre and artists star image successfully.

However there are definitely improvements to be made. Some of these include:

• Adding effects and filters throughout so there’s consistency.
• Experiment with transitions and more video effects to add electro-pop dynamics to the video.
• Improve the scale and position of our artist on certain shots as she isn’t particularly well placed in certain clips.
• Capture more movement through the frame, extreme close ups and more angles within the shots we take as the video is slightly repetitive at the moment.

We had two shoots for the performance half of our video. They were of varying success.

Our first shoot didn’t go very smoothly as our model was unprepared in knowing the lyrics of the song so therefore we struggled to get good lip syncing shots. We overcame this by helping her with the lyrics as much as possible, for example on the extreme close up on her mouth, I was able to hold up the lyrics for her to read from. I do feel, however, that we effectively shared the roles out as we all filmed and gave directions.

Our next shoot was in the bunker at Pleinmont and I feel like this went much better, as our model knew the lyrics, the atmosphere matched the themes of our video and we managed to get some shots we were very happy with.

Below are some photos, evidencing our time and work at both of these shoots.

After looking at our footage we have some targets for future shoots:

• Make sure we have prepared our model well, in terms of making sure they have learnt the lyrics to the song.
• Make sure our shots are in focus, clear and well-lit.
• Capture a wider variety of shots including high angles, extreme close ups and more movement shots.