Research & Planning - Music Videos and Auteurs - Shane Drake

Shane Drake on Prezi

Research & Planning - Moodboard & Audience Profile

[Scarlet Pills Mood-board]

Here I have created a mood-board in response to what I think my target audience will be like. Headlights (the chosen song for my video) appeals to a rock/punk/light metal genre audience, although I feel they will not be too hardcore in their ways of life and have tried to demonstrate this balance through their typical ideologies in my mood-board. I have done this because I need my work to be eye-catching and appealing to the target audience, from this I can tell what sorts of brands and colours I should use, what brand styles to avoid and perhaps what locations would be useful in relation to the song. To aid me in the production I listened to the track and surfed the internet, thinking of as many aspects to include as I could.

Research & Planning - Synaesthesia

[Synaesthesia Diagram]

Synaesthesia is the stimulation of one sense in reaction to something, leading to the automatic and involuntary experience in one or more other senses. An example of this would be if someone were to see the colour red and perhaps automatically think of a raspberries taste, due to their minds subconscious association. Most people associate particular colours with particular days or the week, or even months of the year. This is a common example of synaesthesia.

[Synaesthesia of the Months]

A typical game formulated to test the minds conciousness as to what it sees, and what it thinks, has been adapted into the Nintendo DS's "brain training" game. In this game you are asked to read out the colour which has been written out, however the colour of the writing will be different to colour the word says, for example; "orange" will be written out in the colour blue. You want to say orange but find yourself saying blue. This is to see whether you will involuntarily mention the colour that is shown rather than the word.

Synaesthesia can be an important aspect to music videos as it can make the video ideal, or just weird. Redundancy and entropy, will eventually boil down to the directors synaesthesia towards the track.

When planning this track, me and my media partner sat and listened to the song several times airing ideas when they came to mind, this was extremely useful. Although these ideas didn't come in the correct order, they helped structure the basis of the story allowing us to fill in the gaps with relevant ideas. A useful element to this is how varied the song is with high energy parts, deep thoughtful parts, ambient parts and finally ending on in emotive mind set. This variation allows for an interesting and captivating video story line.

Research & Planning - Artists

Searching for an artist to feature our video on was a deceptively tricky task. Before searching for a band/song, we decided on some specification features which we wanted to include in order to set this to be successful from the start. These are some of the aspects we were keen to find;

[Paramore Band Photo]

• Preferably a female member to appeal to wider audiences. This member could be a guitarist or singer, and would add a different slant on the bands representation. Bands such as Paramore utilise this difference and base a certain amount of popularity to it.
• High recording quality is an important aspect to look out for when shooting a music video, although the visual quality may be high, it will be severely let down by poor audio quality. This specification may make our search more difficult but will definitely result in a more professional and satisfying finish.
• Catchy song, preferably not acoustic. Although acoustic songs can be a popular genre, indie acoustic songs are often slow, depressing and from viewing previous project outcomes, can lead to a boring video. The sort of song we will look for will contain driving guitar lines and drum beats, keeping it relatively high in tempo capturing the audience and maintaining their interest in both song and story. We will also look to use a song that contains deep, almost grungy parts to allow for a ranging story line and thus interesting video.
• Really we would like to use the original band members to uphold a realistic performance, although we understand that if this isn't possible, actors can be used. If we do have to use actors, we will cast people as closely to be band members appearances as possible, showing respect towards the band.

To begin with, we looked into a band my media partner knew called "Junk". They were relatively local and despite not containing a female member, they did have relatively high recording quality. Unfortunately we had to rule them out after a discussion over location. Although they were quite local, they were too far for easy filming, and yet too close to resort to actors.

Next we looked into the possibility of using my own band, previously called "1st Born" but currently referred to as "The Guys" for ease. We soon decided not to follow this up as our recording quality was not great, as well as the fact I would have had to be featured in all performance elements.

After I began searching the internet for unsigned bands, since we had little luck with our connections. From this I found a band called "Voletta", they again had no female members but did have extremely high recording quality and seemed near perfect for our project. The vocals were slightly generic but the guitars and drums were catchy and sounded very good. Sadly, we got no reply from our e-mail to them and so had to rule them out as a possibility as our featured band.

[Scarlet Pills Band Photo]

Finally I came across a band called Scarlet Pills (previously known as Geneva). This band had mediocre recording quality, but did have a female singer. Upon e-mailing them I received a reply informing me of their name change, and directing me to some of their more recent work. This recent work was extremely impressive as the recording quality had gone up hugely, and the singers voice had blossomed into something even better. After talking to them we decided they were perfect for our project as they ticked almost all boxes. Sadly they were based in St. Petersburg and so obviously using them in the video was out of the question, instead we must use actors, this major distance though made the actor use justifiable. Following is the e-mail conversation me and Nick (bassist from Scarlet Pills) had when talking about using them and their work in our project, as well as the link for the song we chose to use; "Headlights". As can be seen, they were eager to participate in this project, and learn more about it.

[E-mail between me and Nick]

[E-mail between Nick and Teacher]

Research & Planning - Research & Planning - Music Video History

The History of Music Videos on Prezi

Research & Planning - Audience Theories One (Cultural Studies)

The effects theory is the idea imposed by psychologists, that target audience behaviour is almost directly correlated with the portrayal of violence within media forms such as music, gaming, films and adverts for any of the prior. This can be simplified to saying media forms have direct behavioural effects upon the passive audience.

The cultural studies approach attempts to understand media texts intentions and sees the audiences as active rather than passive. This shows varying audience demographics to hold different standpoints in relation to those depicted within the media. The Gratification Theory shows audiences to be active by asking “what people do with media” rather than the passive approach  “what media does to people” (Katz, 1959) The cultural studies approach was developed within Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS) and shows how audiences perspectives can be split into three clearly defined sections; 
Oppositional reading, to which the viewer is totally opposed to the representations, values and messages and thus are not influenced.

Negotiated reading is the middle ground. These viewers will broadly accept the media's messages, representations and values although they will have reservations and slight disagreements with particular aspects.

Preferred readings are also known as the target audiences views. These people will not have any problems with aspects of representation and will see it as appealing overall. They may be swayed and influenced by the messages these media forms portray, but are likely to see it as "cool" rather than take it as a way of life.

For example, an oppositional reader would view this as negative, promoting reckless driving and destruction and in no way see it as appealing to the driving game it is advertising, especially through the catch line "inner peace through outer violence". A preferred reader through would understand that this violence and destruction is only meant in the harmless nature of it being a game. They would see it as cool and rebellious not only through the male dominated imagery of the burning tyre and trashed car, but also the contrasting catch line. A negotiated viewer though, would appreciate both arguments, they may disagree with aspects such as the suggested reckless driving but still view it as a good game because it is clearly meant in a masculine attracting fashion rather than promoting destruction.

In this advert for Hit man, a woman is lying on an expensive, lavish material dressed up in seemingly expensive clothes with a high riding skirt allowing a lot of suggestive leg to be shown. This shows her through a male gaze, attracting a male audience. It is also evident she has been shot with a single bullet wound to the head, backed with the contrasting/controversial line "Beautifully executed".

An oppositional reader would see this as a horrific sight with promotion murder being acceptable. They would also see this as exploitation of the female body, further expanding the stereotype of women as objects. Despite this, a preferred reader would see this as a somewhat appealing sight, combining two of the stereotypical male pleasures; guns and sex. Although these have been combined into a necrophiliac appealing scene, this view is not taken as it is clear the scene is hypothetical, but the game contains both gun violence, and the attraction of women. More so than this imagery, the catch line "Beautifully executed" is much more of a selling line, replacing the semantics of violence with those of beauty. Through all of this, a negotiated person would see this to be a perverse scene, but also meant as purely a marketing scheme, and that while the image is perhaps distasteful, it shows the product to be male dominated and "cool". 

Research & Planning - Effects & Popular Music

The researchers from the following articles are focused on the behavioural effects rap and heavy metal music have on adolescents mental and social states. Although their research is thorough, it is also likely to lead to bias answers as they do not have a wide variety of music genres to look at, therefore they do not know what effect other genres would have on adolescents. This slightly narrow set of variables inevitably leads to a slightly narrow minded set of answers which many would believe brings no conclusive answer.

http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/325.php

Here the researchers were interested proving a correlation between these musical genres and adolescents behavioural responses, rather than the suggested ones other researchers have put forward. To do this they played only rap and heavy metal to three groups while they played football. One set of the groups got the lyrics played, one the entire song and one none. Their aggression was thus measured. The flaw in this though is how it didn't play upon the groups musical preferences, and thus tainted the results in terms of their current musical/behavioural mindset. 

http://www.ehow.com/facts_4896441_effects-rap-music-behavior.html
The key concern raised in this article is how young rap, as a genre is. This is then elaborated to explain that due to this premature genre, its effects haven't had long enough to become enduring and serious enough. Also, as an effect of its young age, where have all these extreme statements of behaviour originated and question their validity. Another aspect raised by this piece is how the lyrics are not always literal, and can be implying things that are not as negative as most would believe due to the crossed meanings when taken into context from their target audience and a mainstream listener. 

http://www.funk-the-system.net/usualsuspect.html
In this piece, the author puts forward his view that rap music itself is not to blame and it is simply a form of entertainment appealing to certain audiences, instead the problems source from the community and corruption within it. As this evidently is focused around American life he pins this to aspects such as the easy availability of guns among other things, thus those blaming rap are simply using it as a form of scapegoat over the underlying problems.  


Overall I feel that these extremes in musical styles do have a great effect on their audience's behaviour (as stated in link/research note #1), but not because of their content but due to the vulnerability of the individual listening. As dominant ideology is focused within mainstream songs to grow popularity and reinforce these values, residual and redundant ideology is incorporated in either end of the musical spectrum (Heavy Metal and Rap) to differ them from these values. This leads their audiences further from what is considered the norm and thus "extreme". This differing from the norm will only result in extreme cases of suicide when neglected and seen to be further shunned. Otherwise it seems to only result in aggression and heightened emotional senses due to the often graphic and "deep" content mentioned within the lyrics. The instrumental aspects purely accompany these lyrics and create further scenes of atmosphere and emotion.

In my project I will try and make my digipak and video suitable for the punk/pop/rock genre. This means it has to be relatively mainstream with some rebellious aspects. These can be portrayed through the imagery, action in the video or colour schemes applied. The overall effect will be rebellious yet safe, allowing maximum appeal and a larger amount of potential TV airtime. As the song is already written we will use appropriate imagery and avoid socially violent and dangerous situations unless they are key to the songs storyline, in which case they will be carefully constructed and represented. This should result in a successful piece with a positive effect on the audience while maintaining the rock and roll punk style. If this effect is not achieved, then the video will become viewed as a more rebellious hardcore video, and will then appeal to a different target audience completely. 

Research & Planning - Music Videos and Auteurs - Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze on Prezi

Research & Planning - Photoshop Digipak Cover

[Bash Roland - Don't Blame Me]

Here I have briefly shown my photoshop skills through designing a quick digipak cover for a band I know; BASH: roland. Considering the amount of time I was given to complete this task, I feel the outcome displays an air of professionalism and suits their musical genre/style. Because of this genre suitability, this digipak design is likely to appeal to their target audience. I acquired the image from their myspace page;
http://www.myspace.com/bashroland

Here I also got the name for the hypothetical album from their media player, adding to authenticity.

Research & Planning - Analysis of Existing Products

Analysis of Existing Products on Prezi

Research & Planning - Genre & Music Video

Land of Confusion - Disturbed

Animated/Spectacle music video.

Unlike most music videos this incorporates no footage of the band playing, and focuses entirely on a video to represent the songs lyrics and meanings. Although the songs meanings are displayed in an entropic manner with a stereotypical "fat cat" politician bursting into money, the intentions are redundant as the explosion of money represents their greed. The entropic elements in this are to attract the target audience and represent them and their video as satirical and clever. Although the message of the video will appeal to high demographics, the genre and animation style may deter them making this a somewhat niche video.

Comin' Home - City and Colour

Performance/Spectacle music video.

This video, despite having a spectacle element, portrays the musician as serious and devoted to his music through the soft focuses, saturated effect and numerous shots of him playing his guitar/singing. The spectacle aspect of this video is used to compliment the songs lyrics and emotional atmosphere rather than distract from the song and shots of the musician, making the video relatively redundant while maintaining a slight air of entropy for interest and depth.

Sweet Child O' Mine - Guns 'n' Roses

Performance/Backstage

This video of Guns 'n' Roses shows them to be a dedicated band through the footage of them both playing their instruments on stage as well as off stage setting up or playing out of pleasure. The use of grey scale also adds a serious side to this video and further connotes a redundant theme. There is very little entropy in this video as it all connotes relatively dominant ideology, making this a somewhat mainstream song.

Song 2 - Blur

Performance/Quirky

Despite this video being focused totally around the musicians it is extremely entropic. To begin with the musicians seem to be serious as they play their instruments, but one the song gets heavily into the beat, the musicians begin bouncing off the walls and playing on the ceiling. This makes is similar to the Black Stone Cherry video, in the sense it is a performance video edited to be interesting. This will be a higher budget production compared to Black Stone Cherry though, due to a more mainstream audience and bigger record label backing. This entropic style depicts them as slightly playful and quirky musicians, while the performance aspect maintains a theme of devotion to their music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI9KXK-X2Bo&ob=av2n

Redneck - Lamb of God
Performance/Spectacle/Backstage
This video is extremely interesting in the respect that it combines three main music video genre styles seamlessly into one. Since the band is messing about in a rockstar fashion/setting up a stage and performing on it, this video technically a performance/backstage video. But because of the sheer entropy/juxtaposition of scenario and location, this gives the video a huge spectacle element. The entropy here is used to exaggerate their rockstar approach to life and capture the attention of the target audience. Although mainstream viewers would see this as ridiculous, the target audience will see this as total dedication to music and boost respect.

Gay Bar - Electric Six
Performance/Spectacle/Spoof/Sexy
Out of all videos so far, this is definitely the most entropic and bizarre. Although it includes a member performing the song with vocals and guitar through the entire video, the main element are the spoof sexual scenes. These scenes are highly entropic and although may seem for niche appeal, it will probably target a wider audience because of its comedic value. This does not display the band to be serious and brooding as most artists will want to, but shows them as extremely wacky and funny, while maintaining a devotion to music.

From this post I can conclude that the majority of modern music videos employ entropy rather than redundancy in order to capture the eye of the audience. This entropy aspect sets them apart from every day life, adding surrealism and thus interest.

Research & Planning - Restricted & Omniscient Narration

Narration is an important aspect of a story that must be considered, it is split into two sections; Restricted Narration and Omniscient Narration. Restricted narration is when the viewer has restricted knowledge of the unfolding events or characters, this is done deliberately to create a feeling of mystery for the audience with an unknown outcome. Omniscient narrative is completely the opposite, this is where the audience is not bound to a single character or story line as the camera reveals elements which may not have voluntarily wished to. This makes the audience expect and wait for something, although the suspense of time is maintained.

Gives You Hell by The All American Rejects employs Omniscient narration, since we see both sides of the story and all the characters relevant actions. This is displayed via cutting from scenes of one household to the other in parallel action. As the audience witnesses the households acts of revenge, a story line builds up and we, the audience expect to see a form of confrontation finale. Although this video allows us to see everything we expect, the ending scene of swapping houses, wives and overall lives shocks the viewer as this was not expected (since no character expected this to happen either). This shows that shock elements are still possible within an omniscient narration as well as a restricted narration.

Research & Planning - Music Video & Narrative; Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss argued that story narrative is motivated through rivalry between binary opposites. One of these we, the target audience, are supposed to identify with and view as the right side, whereas the other side we should view as the villain.

This All American Rejects music video, "Gives You Hell" is a perfect example for Claude Levi-Strauss's theory as it clearly displays rivalry between two clearly opposite people. On one side there is a rather smart, posh man who lives in a very sugary life displaying the audiences perception of mainstream life. On the other side we have a rougher looking musician who represents the target audience, we immediately identify with this man and his household as it suits the genre of music and appeals to the genres audience. This video can be taken metaphorically to represent the push fight between youth and rebellion v.s. adults and establishment. By the end of the video though, the two men have swapped households, wives, and in effect lives. This creates an interesting scenario as the man who we initially identified as a form of enemy, becomes the accepted role for the target audience. This slightly unclear conclusion makes the video story challenging, showing this could be aimed at a less mainstream audience.

Research & Planning - Music Video & Narrative; Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp suggested that story lines are motivated by various character roles and functions. These Character roles consist of; The hero who is the centre of the story and will try and seek something, this person can either be a likely person who will be either stereotypically muscular and handsome, or a slight outcast who becomes the hero to earn their place in society. The hero is usually a male role, although it is possible to challenge this and use a female. The "princess" character function is the motivation for the hero to complete his challenge, the princess is usually a female although once again it is possible to be a man. The villain in the story is someone or something which will obstruct the hero, this prolongs the story adding interest and suggesting there will be a climax. A helper is a character who aids the hero along their path. This person may be aiding in heroic actions but is usually not considered as heroic as the main character. Finally there is a sender, this is a character who will send the hero on a quest, or perhaps send the villain to prevent the hero. This double role is also applicable to other characters such as the helper, who may help the villain. All together these roles help create a deeper and more interesting story line.

In this video for "Gives You Hell" by The All American Rejects, there are two houses. One contains a very smart man and his wife, the other contains a rougher looking rocker man with his girlfriend. These two houses rival each-other and therefore each man is a hero, as well as each-others villain. This creates an interesting story, since it depends upon whos' side you view the story from. The helper in this story is also, ironically the opposite man's wife, as in both households the wife opposes their man's form of revenge and seems to side more with their neighbour. This poses them as both the helper and the princess for either man. This unusual twist concludes with each man swapping lives/wife's, therefore each man conquers his quest, and receives his "princess".

Research & Planning - Music Video & Narative - Todorov

Torodov claimed that stories in general will follow a structure of five stages: The Equilibrium, which stands for the natural/accepted balance of life. The Disruption/Disequilibrium, which is where the equilibrium is challenged. The Recognition is where this disruption is recognised followed by the reparation, which is how the disequilibrium is begun to be the norm. This is finalised with the new equilibrium, to finish the story and suggest a conclusion.

All American Rejects - Gives You Hell (Full Narrative Version)

The equilibrium in this video is portrayed through the two houses and their seemingly normal lives within their own styles of living. This is shown through the expressions of the characters, against how we would expect their lives to be like judged by their appearance/surroundings. One household is very sugary, where everything seems perfect, the other contains rougher looking young men and a girl, living a rockstar musician life. The disruption here begins with the rivalry between the two houses, as the "perfect" house goes to sleep, the "rocker" household wakes up and begins playing music. This leads to each man attempting to annoy the other one in revenge for the previous act. This is continued through the entire video until a confrontation outside their houses is held, which leads to the recognition and simultaneously the reparation. During this show-down, each man seems to realise their lives are better off the other way around. Therefore they swap houses, wives and ultimately, lives. This quickly results in the new equilibrium as we see the smart man rocking in the band, and the rougher musician cuddling up in bed. Although the target audience would firstly identify with the rougher looking musician more, and view the other smart looking man as the disruption, the perceptions are drastically changed at the end showing that some things are not quite as they seem.

Research & Planning - Goodwin & Music Videos

City & Colour - Comin' Home

This video has an atmospheric relationship between the lyrics and the visuals which illustrate misery and despair, amplifying the songs message. It does this through a saturated filter and slow motion camera movements so that the viewer feels as if the situation is drained of colour and thus drained of joy, while moving at a slow and mournful pace. The watermarked post production effects create a sense of faint memories over the musician performing, allowing the video narrative to tie in closely with the verses. The numerous close ups in this video give a feeling of personality to the artist and that perhaps the artist has great a great reference towards the lyrics. 

Less Than Jake - The Rest of My Life

The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals show irony by using children to act out an adult situations compared to the relatively serious nature for the lyrics. This irony though is explained by the opening quote, turning this irony into a metaphor for life. Although the lyrics do not always have a direct correlation towards the visuals, the pace and atmosphere seems to accompany them very well. To ensure the video and music are tied together, the child actors all take turns to lip sync some lines of the song. This also makes the lyrics seem further relevant towards the scenes being displayed, strengthening the relationship between the video and audio.

Research & Planning - Music videos and Redundancy/Entropy

Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim

This music video with a redundant theme of a relatively old looking, sharply dressed man man sitting in an empty and quiet hotel. However, when the song begins playing on the radio, it catches his attention and starts to dance, this shows us that the music video is entropic due to it's unusual surroundings (alone in a hotel) and the fact it's an older looking business man doing the dancing. The entropy escalates throughout the video, especially when he begins flying through the hotel. Although once the song endeds he sits back down in his chair and the video reverts to appearing redundant.

Vermillion - Slipknot

Although many aspects of this video contain redundant themes involved in daily activity, such as waking up or walking along the street, entropy is incorporated to make the video more surreal. This surrel effect is achieved through the peculiar main character costume of an old wedding dress, and sped up effect to make the viewer feel disorientated. The disorientating effect is applied in order to compliment the musics atmosphere as well as enforce a feeling of slight confusion, sadness and passive anger.

Black Stone Cherry - Blind Man

Despite this entire video being redundant in theme, the methods of shooting/cutting and location connote a sense of entropy. This entropy inserted to the mundane video theme gives a sense of interest and excitement to the viewer, yet doesn't distract from the song itself. This style also connotes the band are dedicated to their music since it is completely focused around them, but also have an energetic approach to their music. Without this element of interest the video would be rather boring for the reader and thus would negatively reflect on the band and song.

Coffee and TV - Blur

The video begins with a redundant theme of a missing person on a milk carton, but once the milk carton comes alive entropy is suddenly applied. However, we can see the carton then attemptys to find the missing person, which could be seen as a metaphore for "its photos purpose to search for this person" which slightly restores the redundant message.

Research & Planning - First Video Production Skills Audit

Although I feel comfortable and capable with my skills in producing both print and video work, I would like to improve on all aspects in order to achieve a higher level of professionalism and quality to my work. Despite this there are 5 areas I would particularly like to learn more about;

* Animation, this would give a unique feel to my video project since few other videos incorporate it. With animation skills I would be able to reduce continuity errors, create scenes which would otherwise be impossible and not be dependant on props, weather or actors. This would be a very interesting aspect to my video, although I feel that the animation skills I would lean will not be of a high enough quality in time to be key features within my video. I would still like to learn this skill for future use, but feel I may be too unfamiliar in time for my production.

* Although I am relatively confident in video editing, further transitions, filers, effects and editing skills will be useful to me in production, since it gives a wider range of techniques to choose from. This would lead to a far more professional outcome and can make me avoid using less suitable options.

* The rules on privacy are extremely important and is something I have not encountered before. These will pose as major obstacles in my project, and therefore must know the appropriate procedures to execute. This includes using images of people and their consent, using songs and being given copyright permissions as well as using appropriate locations for filming. These are highly important aspects to consider.

* I am a creative and resourceful person, but would like to learn current tried, tested and successful techniques for make shift equipment such as a dolly and track in order to save time. Once I am familiar with these designs I can develop them to be suitable for the jobs I need. Ideally these techniques should be as smooth as possible to achieve a high outcome quality.

* Finally I want to learn about current, professional music video time scales and how they are divided/allocated to specific tasks. Even though my video production scale will be far shorter, I will be able to scale the professional plan down to fit my time span, giving me a rough idea of the times I should spend on aspects of the production. This should result in a consistent and thorough piece, leaving me with a professional product.

Research & Planning - Video/Audio Post Production

Most post production tasks came under editing, remaining tasks were for uploading to you tube. During the editing sessions the razor and movement tool were the most important, these allowed me to cut clips and move them to sequence them into a smooth flowing scene. I also went on to use other tools such as opacity key frames, volume level markers, contrast filters and speed/duration modifiers in order to maximise the quality of my final scene. Speed/duration and the movement tool were extremely important when editing the lip syncing aspects, because if the mime was a fraction of a second off, it would be clearly fake. All editing took place within the Adobe Premiere 2.0 suite, this is specialised software for video editing. During the post production editing for recreating the “What I go to School For” music video (originally by Busted) I found that many people cut clips too short, and they became like flash scenes, rather than clear cuts, I found to overcome this problem very careful editing had to be done to achieve a professional outcome.
Most of my problems arrived when uploading to you tube. For the lip syncing project you tube informed me the audio track for my video was copyright protected and removed my video. Other than this aspect, the uploading process was easy and unproblematic.

Research & Planning - Digital Technology

During this music video task my knowledge of production technology strengthened because of practice and further experimentation. This development of technology skill will help increase my future projects quality level leading to a professional result. This increased technology knowledge covers the video cameras I used, the editing suites and uploading to you tube.

During this production task I leant little new, but it did help me improve on what I already knew concerning production technology. One of the problems I encountered was how the camera had a fade setting on, I overcame this though by searching through all relevant settings until I found the fade option. This experimentation with the camera helped me learn a lot about it, this will help me in the future for any other issues. Within the production I also found research to be very important, me and my group relied heavily on the official busted video on you tube as a guide to our video.

For my A2 exam production I feel I should carry on developing my camera skills and also look at sound quality if required, as the video camera microphones are not of a brilliant quality.

Research and Planning

For the research and planning of my Busted task, I found the video playback most useful in terms of both planning shots and research to locations/props. Although print screening a storyboard was useful, this wasn’t easy to display exact camera movement, camera angles, durations or character movement. Other than that we did little planning as we weren’t sure what we could do. Looking back it might have been useful to plan out costumes more and plan what scenes we would shoot on certain days, to ensure continuity in character costumes and lighting. Embedded below is the official music video, we researched and planned out video by repeatedly watching this. Our storyboard simply consisted of print screens from this video.

In my A2 exam project I will make sure I am more thorough with my research, this will reduce continuity errors and result in a highly professional outcome. The planning will include aspects such as; A script, props, costumes, actors/actresses, locations, shot types, order of filming and probably more.

Music Video Recreation Task

In my next short task, me and my group had to recreate the first few scenes of the Busted video “What I Go to School For”. the following posts will be analysing my research aspects, the digital technology and the post production aspects. Here is the video me and my group created.

Preliminary Camera Work; Lip Syncing

To help us get used to the cameras, a task was set to lip sync a given song, my group chose Motorhead’s Ace of Spades. Even though this was a short task, I edited it with cut shots to air guitaring. This was to fill dull space, maintaining momentum and action within the video. For the lip syncing parts I got my team member to sing in front of a projected image of the Motorhead logo, this I felt would give a slightly more professional finish to the video, rather than an empty classroom, a wall or trees and cars. All lip syncing shots were taken mid close up and at a relatively level angle to try and keep focus on the mouth movements. The air guitar shots though were taken at a low angle to make my team member seem dominating and strong, as well as swung left with his head just out of frame to give an edgy and interesting feel to the shot.
I feel this task went well and produced a successful video. Also, as this was one of the first times I had tried editing on the software, I feel I did well and resulted with a worthwhile sequence. One of the problems I faced with this task though was, when uploaded to you tube, the audio track was recognised as copyrighted and blocked, luckily if I went into my account and viewed my videos I could still watch it.