Video of the Week: Your Song

This week’s video of the week is Your Song by Ellie Goulding, we chose to analyse this video as it is also from a solo female artist and so is similar to the style of music video that we aim to produce.

Overall Concept: The concept for the video is fairly basic, it is a girl who is generally happy and just enjoying the world and all its imperfections. We really liked the simplicity of this video and thought it was really effective. As our song is about going out and experiencing the world we really liked the idea of a girl just being happy doing the simplest of things that people take for advantage, such as going for walk in the country. However we did think that at times the video lacked any real storyline and so we will aim to have a little more structure to our video than this.

Camerawork: A lot of the camerawork in the video is very amateurish and this helps to create a home movie sort of vibe, which establishes a very personal feel to the video. This is enhanced by the hand held camera movement, which again creates a strong connection between the video and the audience. This camerawork also contrasts some of the more smooth shots that are used to show elements of performance. There is also a strong use of rule of thirds within the video, for example the closing shot, this creates some far more interesting views for the viewer and also allows for some creative focus pulls, which are used very effectively to add more depth to the video. We think it is really important to establish a bond between the audience and the characters in the video and really like the montage feel of the video and so hope to, in some way, replicate this effect. This will perhaps be available through an interesting use of filters. We will also try to be very aware of rule of thirds, as we really think this helps to create a far more professional tone to the video.

Mise-en-scene:

Location: The video utilises lots of outdoor locations and makes good use of nature. This helps to show that it is the simple, basic things in the world that can make you the happiest. Most of the video is filmed outdoors again emphasising the beauty of the world, in particular the shots of the river and waterfall are great shots. We really liked the outdoor locations as we thought it was very effective how simple and natural the places were. Our favourite location in the video was the waterfall as we thought this looked very poetic and summed up the beauty of the outdoors (which is what we are going for in our video) and so we will try to recreate these shots in our filming. 

Costume: The costumes within the video are very every day, simple clothing. This is yet again to symbolise that the best things are the normal things and that people take this for granted. The outfits are also very warm and cosy looking. We like the idea of the costumes being very basic however, we think it is vital for the girl in our video to stand out and so want her to look slightly out of place. This, we feel, would be beset achieved through her wearing a simple white dress.  We also liked the wellies that she wore in the video though, as this created a more enthusiastic and adventurous vibe that we think works well for our video too.

Lighting: Most of the key, eye-catching shots in the video are filmed at sunset and this creates a very dream-like, warm feeling to the video. The video is really light and bright throughout and really created a nice happy feeling to it. We loved the sunset shots and think it would be good if we had the opportunity to film any of our video at sunset.

Editing: The pace of editing is very fast and snappy, helping to create the home movie feeling of the video. The cuts are also placed on the beat helping to tie the whole video together. There are also some good uses of graphic matches between shots of the artist again helping the video to flow well. We too will aim to use these editing techniques however we may use a wider range of editing techniques as we don’t want our video to be quite as basic as this one is, we will perhaps utilise more in the way of transitions as this video was lacking on this front.

One thing we don’t think works in this video: we didn’t like how there wasn’t a clear distinction between the narrative and the performance.

One thing we love about this video: the diverse, outside locations.

The Location Diaries Part. 3

For the performance aspect of the video we want a location that has large windows and very empty rooms. So I went to Seaton Delaval Hall and took some pictures of possible filming locations there.

 

We loved the big windows at this location as lighting was really nice, so hopefully we will be filming here. 

The Location Diaries Part. 2

Towards the end of the song we would like to use the beach for a scene, so I went to the beach by the lighthouse in Whitley Bay to take some pictures of the beach there.

We want to film here because its very rocky and quite open which is the right sort of look we're going for.

Video of the Week: Panic Cord

The first video we have anaylsed for video of the week is Panic Cord by Gabrielle Aplin, we thought it would be best to start with the artist whose song we are making a video for as this is definitley the genre we need to be looking into. 

Overall Concept: The overall concept of the video is a woman is dating a man but isn’t as into the relationship as he is and so they break up. The song and video are very strongly linked about the feelings of the woman and this is what carries the narrative through. Our song is similar to this song in that the lyrics are all very emotional and centred around one person’s feelings, and so we too will aim to create a clear sense of emotion in the video and keep the narrative centred around the girl’s feelings and mind set throughout the story, this will probably work well if we have a very small cast to keep the storyline as simple and effective as possible also. Another interesting thing for us to think about after watching this video is the resolution, as in this video the ending is sad, so we too will most likely choose to have a somewhat sombre ending.

Camerawork: The most interesting bits of camerawork in the video is the range of shots used to show the performance, this is useful in this genre as there isn’t a full band shown in the video and so to keep the audience interested a wide of shots and angles are required of the artist, to keep the video from appearing samey and boring. We too will aim to have a wide range of shots and angles of the performance as we think this is key to the overall professionalism we are aiming for. In particular we enjoyed the extreme close-up at 2:39 of the artist’s mouth, and we hope to replicate this in some form. Another piece of camerawork we particularly liked was the focus pull at 1:27, we agreed that this could be utilised well when combined with some work on rule of thirds, and so we will use these different techniques to help tell a story in a unique and memorable way.

Mise-en-scene:

Lighting- In the video there is a good use of lighting and shadows to create a very calm and dreamy feel to the video, which helps add to the retrospective tone of the song. Interestingly, the video starts off incredibly bright, however as the video ends there is a sunset in the background symbolising the end of the relationship through it being the end of the day. We like the idea of the lighting fitting into the storyline and think this helps the video to flow well. We would like our video to follow a fairly linear storyline and so we will try to film the video getting darker throughout the footage, as this will help to symbolise the end of her dreams and it helps to foreshadow the sad ending that the video will most likely have.

Costume- The performance costume is a white dress, displaying a heavenly innocent kind of image for the artist, which works well at blending into the background of the white room. We do like the white dress however we think this would be more appropriate for the narrative girl to wear and not the performance, as we want the performance girl to stand out. We also think it would be nice to have the narrative girl in white as it shows how innocent and untainted by the world she is.

Locations- There are four locations used in the video: a house, a lake, a pub and a street. The main location for the video is in the house though and all the scenes in the house create a more intimate feeling and this helps create more of a bond between the characters and the audience. Interestingly the break up at the end of the video happens away from the house perhaps displaying that the bond felt at the start of the video has been left behind them along with the security of their home. We liked the contrast between the indoor and outdoor (binary opposites for any Levi-Strauss fans out there) and hope to make this a main feature of our video as this is integral to our song and plot line. We too will use the house a symbol of safety and security, however we will have a greater deal of scenes outside as we think more of a balance between the two would help convey the narrative girl’s desire to break free from her mental prison.

Editing: The pace of editing in this video is interesting as it changes throughout, in particular it gets faster during the bridge section of the song. It is also generally faster in the happy parts and slower in the sad parts which helps to really distinguish the different feelings of the character and of the artist. Also performance and narrative aspects of the video are cut together a lot tying the video together nicely, so that everything fits well and flows. After viewing this video we have decided that the pace of editing is very important and so we too will try to use contrasting editing paces to convey meaning in the video. However we don’t think it is as important to have such a connection between performance and narrative in our video as we think the video would work better if the two aspects of the video were completely separate.

One thing we don’t think works in this video: the connection between the performance and narrative is too strong.

One thing we love about this video: the shots of the artist playing the guitar by the window.

Music Video Pitch

Here is the presentation we put together with our initial plans and ideas for this project:
Video Pitch

Video of the Week

After doing our initial research into existing music videos we thought it would be beneficial to us if we did some more in depth analysis of videos of a similar style to the video we hope to make. Furthermore, we think that it would be in the best interest of the group to continue this research throughout the first few weeks, as this will help to keep us faithful to the folk/pop genre and make our video as professional looking as possible. Therefore we are going to deeply analyse a video and discuss what we can take from these existing media products to enhance our own work.

The Location Diaries Part. 1

During the first verse of the song we want to use a forest location so I went along to Jesmond Dene today and took some photos of possible areas to film. This should help us to reaffirm the ideas we are having for shot types during this verse.

In particular we thought that the waterfall and bridge would be great places to film.

Questionnaire Results

In order to make our video as good as possible we need to do some target audience research, so we put together this questionnaire and distributed it to 30 members of our target audience (people aged between 15-25s). Here are the results:

Q1 What is your favourite genre of music? 

As you can see the majority of people selected pop as their favourite genre of music, this is helpful to us as we are doing a folk/pop song. However as our song is also slightly folkish this means that our song isn’t overly mainstream and does have a somewhat more niche audience.  

Q2 Do you prefer male or female artists?

 The results for this question were less definitive. The people we surveyed were fairly split on this, which leads us to believe that the gender of artist is not as important to our audience, therefore our decision to do a female artist is not affected by this.

Q3 Do you prefer narrative or performance?  

 Interestingly most of the people we asked said that they preferred narrative to performance as they thought this helped them to see the song in a different way and liked how individual and fresh this could make the song. This means that we are going to work hard at creating a really captivating storyline that’s easy to follow. We are also thinking of having a 60/40 narrative/performance split as performance is still a very key element in this genre of music.

Q4 Who is your favourite artist and why? 

After asking our target audience who their favourite artists were these were the top answers we collected. Interestingly these artists are all solo artists leading us to believe that our target audience prefers individual artists and therefore we think it would be best if in our video we had the artist appearing by themselves and without a backing band. Also the majority of these artists play and write their own music, we hope to reflect this in our video, perhaps having the artist playing the guitar or piano at points. 

Q5 What colours do you like and why?

Most people we asked said they really liked bright, vibrant colours as this is a particularly captivating feature of the music videos they watch. Interestingly a few members of our target audience told us that they preferred very ‘natural, earthy colours.’ Keeping this in mind we think it is very important to select interesting outdoor locations with vibrant colours that will appeal to our key demographic.

Q6 What do you think is the most important aspect of a music video and why?

The two areas that people thought were the most important were; locations and an interesting storyline. This means that we need to really utilise the correct camerawork to help convey a story. I t has also helped reaffirm just how integral the locations are to creating a professional standard video.

Q7 Would you prefer the narrative and performance to be played by the same person or a different person and why? 

Most people said they thought two different people would be better as they thought that it helped create a clearer distinction between who the artist actually was and what was happening in the video. However the people that preferred having just one actor said it was because they wanted to see as much of the artist as possible. For our video we think it would be best to go with the people who like having different actors as we think having a video focused entirely on one person could at times become visually uninteresting. 

Q8 Do you like happy or sad music videos and why?

We included this question in our survey as we have been undecided on whether the end of the video should be happy or sad. Two thirds of the people we asked preferred a sad video as they thought it had a more profound and lasting effect on them and that sometimes happy endings can be cliché and too predictable. Taking this into consideration we will most likely utilise a more sombre ending to our video.

Annotated Lyrics

These are the lyrics of the song annotated with some of our intial ideas we have had for the song.

Target Audience

Since we have decided that our chosen genre of music will consist of a folk-pop style, our target audience will consist primarily of younger people between the approximate ages of 15 and 25 years old. It will also generally consist of a female-dominated audience as, stereotypically, this style of music will appeal to them more. Furthermore, due to the fact that our artist will be a girl, our female audience will be more able to relate to the artist on a personal level which should successfully appeal to them. The intended audience of our music video should also be fans of music to ensure that the genre will appeal to them.

Digipak Analysis

Tinie Tempah

Lady Gaga

Taylor Swift

Rhianna

Katy Perry

Music Video Analysis

Radiohead - Just

Eminem ft. Dido - Stan

Beyonce - Run The World (Girls)

Lady Gaga - Paparazzi

Evanescence - Bring me to Life

Important Features Of A Music Video

Today we have been analysing music videos and we recorded the most important features of a music video which we will attempt to include within our own in order to make it more successful.

We presented this within a 'Wordle' to enable us to view the key features.

What Makes A Successful Music Video?

Advert Analysis

Jessie J

Florence and the Machine

Rhianna

Madonna

Ellie Goulding

Initial Research

Our first piece of research for the planning of our music magazine will be analysing various codes and conventions within popular style models of our choice.

Therefore, we have chosen to analyse a number of already existing music videos, digipaks and adverts to act as style models and to provide us with suggestions on how to make our final product more successful. We will analyse their codes and conventions and attempt to include some of these within our creation.

Overall, this will allow us to recognise various features which are commonly used within music videos, digipaks and adverts which we could include within our own in order to make them more successful.

 

Song Decision

Today we decided what song we are going to do a music video for, we decided on Out On My Own by Gabrielle Aplin. The song is from the folk/pop genre. This type of music has a fairly young audience, therefore our target audience will be people between the ages of 15 and 25. Now that we have this information we can begin our target audience research.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to our A2 media blog. As part of our A Level course in media studies we must make a music video. In this blog we aim to demonstrate all the work we are putting into this coursework. This includes, research, planning, evaluation and any other ideas we have concerning the music video.