Analysis of a music video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJO3ROT-A4E&feature=g-music&list=MGGB&context=G1e834YMAAAAAAARAA

The genre of this video is pop, aimed at in particular teenage girls. Throughout the video is shown the 5 boys messing about with eachother on what looks like a stereotypical summer day by the beach. This appeals to teenagers as the beach scene is very eye catching as attractive scenery has been used.

There is a link between the music and visuals as the cuts of the footage are in time to the beat of the song which allows the viewers to keep up with the video and it doesn't appear too rushed or too slow either. At the start of the video one of the band members taps on their steering wheel to the beat of the song, this shows a good opening to the song as the song is very upbeat and lively. When the artists are shown they often walk or move to the beat of the music too, which adds to the effect of the music.

There is a link between the lyrics and visuals as the artists are often shown looking directly into the camera and singing the lyrics of the song, this is done in different locations and is a nice peice of footage to cut away from. One line reads 'the way that you flip your hair' when this line is sung a young girl is shown flipping her hair, this is a clear link between both the visuals and lyrics. While the line 'you don't know you're beautiful' the artists point to the camera which involves the viewer and makes us feel as though we are taking part of the video without being there or even knowing the artist. Near the end of the song one of the artists is shown singing directly to a young girl, this links the lyrics and visuals as the song is aimed at a young girl so we now can draw that link.

Many close ups of the artists alone and as a group are shown, this is so we get to know the band members as individuals but also as a group all together.

Music Video Director.

Marc Klasfeld is the director of many award-winning and breakthrough music videos for artists such as
-Katy Perry
-Jay-Z
-Red Hot Chili Peppers
-Foo Fighters
-Nelly
-Sum 41
-Avril Lavigne
-Beyonce
-The Script
-Ludacris
-Eminem
-Enrique Iglesias
-Justin Timberlake
and many more.

Many of his videos have shown him as a director with a very unique style. One video in which he directed was TGIF - Katy Perry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybLrdztNWms

In this video in particular the colours are very bright and using a large range, this immediatley makes the video stand out and draws the viewers attention.

The lyrics and the visuals often link, for example at one point of the video the lyrics read 'is this a hickey or a bruise' and points to the bruise on her neck which is the one she is refering to. The musics and visuals also link as the image often cuts on the beat of the music to allow the change of footage to be softer and flow easier.

Close ups on Katy when she is the 'geek' and after her transformation are shown to allow the viewers to link the two people together to see her before and after.

Intertextuality is used in this video as the people at the party are showing playing on the game 'just dance' this links the music video with the video game which allows the two media products to work together and promote the game 'just dance'

Looking back at our storyboard

After finishing our project, we re-looked at our storyboard to compare how far we stuck to our original idea for the video.

We stuck to the head shots of the people in the video but certain things changed as they were all holding a piece of food instead of things to play with like the bubbles. We still used many long shots of the group all together but we used more close up shots on the action. We couldn't stick to some shots as we couldn't find a parachute.

I think that we did stick to our idea well but some shots we couldn't do due to not having the correct equipment.

Editing of our Music Video

These are screen shots of our project in final cut, we used different lines as we felt this was a lot easier to move about and everything wasn't squashed together.

Our Music Video Commentary

This is our final commentary for our music video. 

Filming and editing our commentary

When filming the commentary there wasn't enough room to fit all five of us in the shot, so we decided on doing 3 of us in one shot and then 2 in the other. This was more practical for us although did take a little longer.

We were given 45 minutes to film our commentary but unfortunately didn't have time to complete the whole thing so some minor details have been left out in the last two questions.

Editing our commentary was quite straight forward, we filmed a lot of extra footage which either was not needed or not able to use.

After we placed the filming of the commentary together we added the questions as titles before the footage of us answering the question so it was clear to the audience what we were talking about.

We then wanted to make our commentary more interesting so we added footage of our music video when we mentioned a certain thing, for example the 'hazy effect.' We also added photos of our digi pak, tour poster and magazine ad, so the audience can draw links between them and what we are saying.

Past Students Commentaries

http://07longroadmusicvideo10.blogspot.com/

This Commentary was slightly different to most of the others, the group decided to show the video and their products and have a voice over, rather than video-ing themselves answering the questions. I felt that this made the commentary feel less formal and would have liked to seen the directors faces, even if it was just for a short amount of time. Although the commentary was very thorough and they answered the questions confidently. I liked the way they used more of a group discussion so you gained every member of the groups view on the question.

Directors Commentary script/notes.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Jack: Noah and the whale, The Vaccines, inspiration, hazy effect

Charlotte: Genre, indie/pop, summer fun, food fights, target audience

Olie: goodwins, lyrics + visuals, music + visuals

Jade: singing, food fight, indie genre

Alex: research into 'pop' video conventions


How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Charlotte: music video, food fight, preparation

Olie: digi pack, how we made it, screen shots, energetic

Jade: tins, wrappers of food in video, clear links, writing on tins

Alex: fonts similar/same, effect same as video

Jack: Tour dates poster

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Olie: initial pitch 'Jack Johnson', not great feedback

Jade: 'We're from Barcelona' heard lots of great ideas

Alex: rough cut, rushed, wasn't finished, no singing

Jack: final improvements, added shots, colour corrector, added singing

Charlotte: over all how feedback helped us.


How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage? 

Jade: final cut, rewind, fast, slow, colour corrector

Alex: photoshop, magazine ad, text, layers, easy to use

Jack: blogger, research, planning, easy to use 

Charlotte: HD cameras, tripod, stills camera

Olie: how everything helped our video to be amazing!! 

Evaluation Questions

In what ways does your media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- Our media product challenges conventions of real media products as we decided that we did want to show a sterotypical summer time music video, but we wanted to push it one step further and allow the viewers to be shocked by the video and leaves them wanting to watch it again, and again. This was the reason we used 'food fights' as a theme, by showing the singer of the band in a regular location, singing whilst having many different foods thrown at her gives a surreal effect to the video.

We have used conventions by researching into other music videos of the same genre and taking inspiration from them. In specific, videos by 'Noah And The Whale' inspired us as a group heavily, we made note of conventions we liked and would fit well in our video but changed them to fit around our theme. For example the hazy effect in many of their videos went down well with our group, so we used this as a filter on our video but made it slightly brighter to represent a summers day. The Genre of our product is 'Pop' to allow us to work around the correct conventions of Pop videos, we researched the sterotypical things used in a Pop video.

How Effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I would say that they were very effective as the theme stays clear through out, lots of things join them together for example, the font, the editing and the fact that 'food and fun' is brought into all of the products. We wanted our artist to appear fun and quirky, which I think we acheived. We added details to the products which makes the artist appear to be original and hopefully would appeal to our target audience which is both male and female teeangers. We felt this target audience was appropriate as the album was based on a teenage summer time which this target audience could relate to.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our feedback from our inital pitch wasn't great as we originally had chosen a completely different song, bu after receiving feedback from that it came clear that we had taken the wrong route. After hearing 'We're From Barcelona' our whole group decided that was the song for us, and we all had crazy, quirky ideas for our video! Once we made our pitch for that song and receiving good feedback, it gave us the motivation to go ahead with that song.

Our feedback on our rough cut wasn't great either, as a group we felt that it was very rushed and we didn't have enough time to place it all together. Most people, both peers and teachers said our idea was great but we needed to work on certain areas, for example the editing. We also didn't include any singing which was a big problem, but after getting this feedback we knew that singing was a must have.

The feedback on our final cut was really good, we were told that it was a great improvement and that the idea was very original and worked well. The singing peiced the video together as it was something to cut away from but also fitted into the theme of the video.

Overall I have learnt that the whole point of a product is to appeal to your audience and if your audience doesn't like it then it won't sell. You need to have this is mind when producing a music video.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

Before this task I knew the basics of how to use different softwares such as Final Cut and Photoshop. But after acheiving a complex music video, using all different techniques that our video did, it allowed me to develop those skills. As a group we all taught eachother how to use the different softwares so we all had an equal chance of developing our skills on them.

Final Cut especially allowed us to be creative as any thing you want to do to your music video, you can do! iI found it amazing how simple it was to speed up, slow down and reverse clips. I also thought it was great to be able to apply a filter to the whole video at once, without selecting every clip which would have taken a lot longer!

Directors Commentary Research

A directors commentary is usually presented via a video format, the director is either asked questions by another person or just provides answers to certain questions. It can includes the direction giving a commentary on a certain scene, explaining what they like and dislike about it and why they chose to present it in that way. They usually talk about what inspired them and how effective they feel their final peice was.

Digipack and Magazine ad planning

We were thinking of using this as our magazine ad. We feel that the concept would work really well, the only down side to using this image wqould be that where isnt alot of space to write the info around it. Although it really does focus on our food fight concept.

Charlotte did a photo shoot of the products and food which was used in the food fight. We feel that this could also work really well as a magazine idea asw it is more simplistic and and also gives more space to allow the prodct infomation to be released.

We feel that these images would work best as the Digipak as it allows the concept to be stretched to friendship rather than just the food concept. It allows the band to be know from other songs which arent just related to food.

These Images are all ideas for our magazine ad and digi pak. We narrowed it down to these few as we felt they all showed a clear theme and linked well together. But as we didn't want the Digi Pak to focus on the one video we felt that the last image would be better for the whole album as it shows the Artist as a Group rather than a solo artist, which the top image would have suggested. 

 We also liked the idea of using the cans of food as our album is all about teeange years and summer which is heavily linked to food, we decided on using this as our Magazine Ad as we have many different ideas to try out regarding where the text would go, etc.

Analysis of Professional DigiPak

 

The theme of this Digi Pak is a Formal Party as Justin wears a black suit in both pictures, in one wearing a top hat which shows formal and in the other shows a disco ball which relates to a party theme. Both Images are very plain but stand out infront of the plain white back ground. 

The writing is shown in black and orange which again, stands out as the background is very plain. The back of the cover is focused on the image and the track listing. The tracks are clearly stated by adding underneath the name of the tracks any extra singers that may feature in them.

The font on the front and back of the cover stays the same which immediatley draws links between the two. This Digi Pak is very minimalistic and only includes the most important information, which allows the buyer to know exactly what it includes and what they're purchasing.

Analysing Student Digi Pak

This student Digi Pak uses a strong theme of fair ground, the picture runs from both the front to the back of the cover which makes it bigger and easier for people to identify. The strong colour theme has been kept to black white and grey which is very minimalistic as in the few pictures on the back of the cover, the use of colour really stands out to whoever would be reading it. The Font of 'The Thrills' on the front of the cover is kept the same as the writing on the side. The Theme fits in with the Band Name as 'Thrills' is associated with Fair ground rides and theme parks. 

There is a review from 'NME' on the back of the cover which makes it to appear more professional, especially as they have included a four star rating in bold font which stands out to the audience. They have given a clear Age guideline on both the front and back of the cover which stands out in contrast to the monochrome background.

FINAL DIGI PACK AND MAGAZINE AD ITEMS

Tour Date Poster - Digi Pack Extra!

Final Digi Pack Ideas.

The theme for the whole digi pack is Summer with Food.

Magazine Ad:

For our magazine ad we are using a picture of some of the food used in the filming, that is set out well in front of a white background. The food takes up the top half of the picture the there is a white space in the bottom half which we are going to use for text of the magazine cover. We are blanking out the brand names of the food products and replacing them with information about the track such as release dates, where its available from, etc. 

DVD Case:

We are going to use a shot from our music video for the front of the case, which is of the group running away. There is a big clear blue sky that we can put the title of the album and name of the band. We are thinking of calling our album 'We're From Barcelona'. Many bands call their album by one of their main songs so we thought we could do the same. This way we can also use a photo from our video as it will relate to the album. For the back of the album we are going to use a till receipt as this is going with the idea of food as part of the theme. We will change the items on the receipt to track names and the prices changed to the track length. 

Tour Poster:

We are going to make a poster with all the tour dates on it as an extra leaflet inside the DVD/Album pack.

Digi-pack and Magazine Advert Concept

for our digi-pack we have chosen to have a shot of the band on the front of the cover using a shot that wasn't included in the filming to try and separate the digi-pack from the individual track, the inside of the pack will be a shot of the entire group shown in film stretching across both sides of the inside cover. the back cover will be a shot of a till receipt with the track information and other info printed onto it, the magazine ad will be a shot of food but with the album information printed onto well known food labels (e.g heinz beans.

Final Music Video

Feedback for rough cut from Andrea and Amar.

Positives: 

- You can sense a good vibe

- There are nice pans and a few zoom shots

- Good editing in time with the beat of the song

- Stereotypical, a fun song with a fun image to go with it; food fight

To Improve:

- Show each character at the beginning for longer so you can see who they are and what they are holding

- Have more close-ups to vary the shots, to get some reactions

- When shooting the performance footage get a lot of close-ups and try to make the background something other than green bushes. This is to make the audience establish that they are taking place in different places.

We are going to shoot the performance shots tomorrow, friday 4th November, and will use the guidance given to us by Andrea and Amar. We are also going to make the clips of people at the start longer so you can see what they are holding and recognize the character. We are going to look through the clips to see what close-ups we have then try to incorporate them into the video so we get a variation of shots.

Rough Cut Music Video Feedback

Goodwin feedback:
Music + visuals - image changes on the beat.
Lyrics + visuals - abstract, contrasting.
Voyerism - looking at the camera.
Colourful, upbeat, random.

Camerawork:
Good mid shots to introduce the characters.
Should include more shots.
Good natural feel, felt included.

Editing:
Good to introduce people but didn't get any of it?
Reverse stuff was good, but a bit pointless.
Transitions were ok and a good pace.

Mise en scene:
Costumes modern
Props - food fight, light hearted and humorous.
Colour - natural sunlight.
Feel of mise-en-scene correlates well with feel and genre of music.
A bit short.