Music Video Evaluation

 

18^th December 2015-12-18

Since September 11^th, we have started our music video rock/pop promo. This unit has been a journey of mistakes, exhaustion and lots of surprises, all for which has been a big learning curve.

We started our project by researching and analysing multiple music videos, by their conventions, cinematography, composition and semiotics. We had studied theory work on, target audience e.g. (Male gaze)

Narrative structures. (Linear, Non-linear, Circular narrative, purpose of visual storytelling (Low angle, Dutch) semiotics (What’s in the mise en scene and how that object or thing symbolises it’s purpose.)

On the 2^nd October, James Fox had us listen to a song called. Buried With The Blues, by Moriaches Men. Us as a group decided to go along with this song and started to form ideas on how to pull it off as a music video.

 

Visual note:

From the start we listen to the song and started visualising what we felt fitted within the song. Having a country rock style to it, my group and I started doing a moodboard, where we would go on the web and put images (Bikers, Long Roads, ghost town.) that connect with our visions onto a document.

All these images were also ideas for location, like the beach.

 

We explained our ideas on a:

spider gram, Discussing locations, camera shots, and themes.

 

 

We worked on storyboards, to get an idea for when we shoot, a blueprint to how we want the scene to be filmed, shot by shot.

 

THE NARRATIVE

The narrative of the music video changed throughout the pre-production. Originally, we wanted the story to be told as a circular narrative; focus on a woman who witnesses her boyfriend cheating and decides to poison him in a café; Revealing her face at the end to discover she was the girl who planted the black rose on his tombstone. Using a black rose to symbolise death.

After re-analysing the lyrics, we interpreted it in the man’s point of view and how this woman has psychologically damaged him, by leaving him. Now that the woman has moved on, the protagonist must let go of her and move on himself.

We wanted to use flashbacks and quick time-lapse to show us the protagonists background relationship and to reveal how he has hit the situation he’s in.

 

Media Language:

Within the piece, I used a various of colour gradings; the present time set in the story, I used a strong contrast, with blue colour to give us a feel of this characters mood, his sorrow and despair, where as his memories are quite bright and colour graded green, for a positive look.

We spoke to Ross who was the lead guitarist to Moriaches men; he told us his vision to the song and also did the vocalists who write the song. The vocalist wanted the band performance to look black and white, with high contrast and to look a bit mystery. This is an edited image I did using from premier pro.

 

 

Location ideas

I had been to multiple locations, from restaurants, bars and Parks.  I introduced myself to managers in JD Whether-spoon, grants restaurant and Bar-red; discussing our idea with what we wanted to use their bar for.

We as a group really wanted to shoot a scene at the Dukes Head restaurant as we felt it was the right location for our piece, but unfortunately the manager couldn’t let us. I had to pass the message onto a receptionist, which she passed onto her manager.

For future reference, I will only arrive at a location with paperwork that will pitch our idea, so that I can truly sell myself with what we want and also only speak to the manager.

 

 

 

On the 17/11/2015, we shot our first scene in the park; I was using a Canon 1200d attached onto a glidecam. I had trouble on the day as the glidecam wasn’t set up probably and the screws to adjust the weight were missing.

 

 

Although I wasn’t aware of the screws missing at the time and I wasn’t sure how set the balance on the glidecam, although I did find out by researching tutorials after the shoot. So with some shots being unsteady, I used a tool on Premier Pro to steady the shots, this was a tool called warp stabilize.

 

 

This is an edited image I did from the bar scene that we shot in bar red on the 20^th November 2015

Sam Calton shot the scene in the bar, Sam has more experience with the steady-cam harnessed, so we felt it only made sense that he captured this scene. In this scene we are seeing the leading character drowning his sorrows with a bottle of beer, from there he looks at a photo of his woman and we go into a flashback of the park scene.

 

The filming is now complete and is almost been pieced together.

The things I have learnt and will apply in my next music video is

• Plenty of cut aways
• Improve my communication.
• How to use glide-cam (Movements, set up.)
• Framing with the DSLR