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.