After going through many song options with different genres which would suit with my narrative I have in mind, I have found one which does go with my narrative quite well (Breaking the Habit – Linkin Park). I have chosen this song as it is not a really popular song which makes the audience more engaged as they might not have heard this song before. This song flowing well with my narrative as it’s main idea is Linkin park breaking the habit he has.

I wanted to also pick a narrative which would be doable to do and not too complex, with a chasing video it would not bore the audience too much like a love story for an example (so making the audience sit at the edge of their seat wanting to see what would happen and whether he will get caught or not). So in my video, I will include quite a lot of performance in it as well some lip syncing as well to balance it out a lot more. however I think I would mainly stick to more of the performance side of it. (Maybe around 70% performance and 30% lip syncing).

Focus Forward: Doing this gives me a lot more confidence knowing the fact that it is all down as well as the fact that it would make it a lot easier when it comes to filming my music video. So now knowing my pitch for Breaking the Habit gives me more of a understanding in what to include (such as different shots and camera angles I could include in specific parts in the song).

For this task, I have chosen 3 music videos which I think that has a good story to it as well as good factors in a music video. Features in a video such as whether it in linear order (having a start middle and end to it) or is it all muddled up (Anachronic) making the audience a lot more engaged in what is happening as they may see flashbacks on the artist

Here are the videos I have chosen:

This video by James Arthur really does give off a good narrative to it as it clearly demonstrates his success and journey in his music career, from him walking on stage looking really nervous and at the end winning. This is a good example of a amplified narrative as it uses specific tactics to suggest that ‘he made the impossible possible’ and most of his lyrics in his song such as “Tell them what I know now” suggesting that he want from being ordinary straight to extraordinary in the video.

This song is also a good example of good narrative music video as it uses a amplified narrative to it. It was also clear to see that it has used an anachronic order to it demonstrating that the younger brother has a dream to become a professional swimmer which the older brother is supporting him to accomplish it. During this, it seems like the older brother is being demanded to give money which stresses him out. During this, flashbacks are present to show the audience when he was happy with his brother. At the end of the video, it shows him sort of escaping from it all swimming away in the lake with his brother.

This video has a good narrative to it as well, the story is clearly shown being based on Romeo and Juliet. At the start, two people are introduced (being the boy and girl) which glance at each other here and there showing signs that they like each other. The girl slowly goes back leading him to follow her downstairs, they kiss and escape with each other happy although things take a turn and they get runover by a truck. It is in a linear order having a start of they liking each other, middle of them downstairs and the ending with a cliff-hanger with them getting run over.

Made up narratives:

The change:  A teenage person sees many inspirational videos on his social media feed of people living life to the fullest. He really wants to live like that but has not got any motivation nor money to do it, he would watch a video but would skip it as he knew that he would not be able to achieve it. A few months pass and saw another one of those videos online and decided that he would want to live like that somehow.

The cost of discipline: A person hates the way he looks physically and sees many inspirational body builders online. He is skinny and has no muscle whatsoever so decided to make a change. He started by weighing himself to see how heavy he is and decided to change his diet to gain weight. He then got a gym membership and worked really hard for months lifting light weights and progressively getting bigger and bigger as he went until he got the body he wanted.

Love vs lost: A old lady is in the attic going through really old photos of her and her husband when they were together. Going through these are really emotional for her but every time she does it, it gives her flashbacks on the memories those photos held. She could see the images move when looking at them and smiles when she sees it, remembering them together and remembering how happy they were together.

Focus Forward: 

Doing this task has enabled me to focus on the story side of the video rather than the music part in it. Also understanding that the star uses words which may relate to the setting that he/she is in.

In the making of a music video, understanding the key factors is extremely important to do as you would want the video to flow well and not go in the wrong direction. So I have chosen a music video to decode which I thought was good but point out improvements which would make it look a lot better then it is at this stage.

Analysing and picking out parts from a music video which needs improving would be beneficial for me as it would make me a lot more aware in the making of my own.

Below is the music video I have selected: 

I have watched this specific video a few times to see if I could find improvements they could of done in order to have a successful music video. So I have filled out this assessment criteria for improvements and what I thought went relatively well:

So overall, I think that this video had many good factors in it such as the lip syncing being spot on as well as the camera angles used in the video. But could definitely could do with some improvements in order to make this a good video.

These points are what I think have gone well:

Mid shots have been used as well a bit if depth of field which makes the audience look at the star image being the singer

A good variety of camera angles used such as this low angle which looks really well done which indicates that they are getting ready to play.

Aerial shot looking down at him making it look like he is following a specific path to get where he needs to be (working environment) really does give the audience something to look at and makes them wonder what he is doing.

Now these are some points which could be improved:

The singer is lacking facial expressions, compared to the original video when the real singer is singing that part he shows real emotion when hitting the high bits but very minimum was shown in this video.

Not much movement was used, like he was not feeling the beat and enjoying the music when singing.

Throughout the video, the same location was used in the whole video instead of going out to experiment with other locations. Meaning that it was quite repetitive throughout this video which would most likely be a little boring for the audience.

Focus Forward:

Doing this task of decoding a students video really made me think on what not to include in mine and what I could do differently to my video to make mine stand out a lot better. I personally think that I am going to try to have the performance and narrative equal as I think that it would engage the audience a lot more being acting as well as lip syncing.

For this task, I have watched 3 different music videos to expand my knowledge in the different conventions and narratives which could be in a music video. In this, I had to decode these videos and pick out parts which represent the star image (Dyer) in a way which makes the audience engaged a lot more in the star. Whilst watching the videos, I also decided whether it was mainly narrative or whether it was performance based (so whether there was lip syncing involved or just performance dancing). There are many different ways to make the audience engaged in the video such as using edit to the beat which gives the video a lot less boring factors about it (increasing the audience finding it interesting and engaging with it instead of moving on to the next one). This really comes down to the type of genre used in the music as you could probably use a lot more cool shots and angles with a more faster pace beat compared with a slower paced one.  It is also important to not have too much repeatability in the video as it would most likely bore the audience with that and would make them not want to interact with the video.

So making sure that the audience could easily be able to decode the video on what is actually happening is really important. However, including factors such as enigma codes (Barthes) to the video could also be a really good factor to include in a music video as it gives the audience a sense of confusion to what is actually happening which would make them want to go back and see if they could figure out what is happening in the video.  There are 3 main main relationships the song could connect to the narrative which are; Amplification, which means that it is inspired by the song (amplifying the themes in the song). Another being Illustration, which is mainly when the narrative in the video closely echoes the music and lyrics. And the last one being disjuncture, meaning that the narrative seems to hold very little relation to the song seeming quite random which would not interest the audience.

So if the video is not in anachronic order, then the audience would be confused on what is happening and would most likely not engage with the video and move onto the next.

These are the music videos I have analysed:

Focus Forward:

This task has made me think about what makes a good music video and what the audience would look for. Including factors that would engage my audience with a variety of different camera angles and Mise en Scene in my video would really be good to have. Now feeling a lot more prepared and having some ideas to possibly include in my video.