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.
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.
In groups we were given a mood/story starter and had to create a video montage from 40 seconds – 1 minuet long based on the mood we were given. The mood my group had to base our montage around was ‘frustration’. Below is our storyboard we made with a variety of different camera shots labelled so that we knew what we needed to shoot when it came to filming and to create the atmosphere of frustration.
Finished Montage:
After watching the final montage I can identify the strengths and weaknesses that affected the end result.
Strengths:
We edited it well to help portray the mood of frustration.
We used a variety of different camera angles in order to not make the video boring to the viewers by keeping it in the same camera angle.
Our group worked well together and communicated well.
Weaknesses:
We didn’t film long enough shots to make our video over 40 seconds long.
We could’ve added more transitions or edit the transition we used better to make it look more smooth.
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.
