One of my initial ideas was to make a music video where it
would be the main signer walking down a street then locations switching as he
is walking, the locations would be switching to the beat of the song. The main
song which we were going to go with initially was "1,2,3,4" by the
plain white T's however in the recommended section when viewing that song we
finally found "unbelievable".
The initial ideas also included us wanting to do something
more fun than serious as we wanted to have fun when recording this as well as
making a good music video, this help once we had found "unbelievable"
as this is a pretty fun song and was pretty easy to come up with good ideas
for.
Today we filmed at Jacks house. we were all dressed in either pyjamas or onesies. The scenes that we filmed today were the Nerf gun scenes, us eating jelly beans, us playing with dinosaurs, the lion king scene, riding in the power wheels and the piggy back riding. Today we had also filmed our band sequences. We wanted our band sequences to seem more professional so we had filmed it in a drama room with proper studio lighting. I would say today was a overall really good filming day as we managed to film a lot of the scenes.
There are a multitude of different functions of a music video which are; To help sell the song and invoke a reaction so it leaves you remembering the song, to give the listener a better understanding of the song( if the video is a narrative), to entertain, to create a memorable visual for the song giving it a better chance to sell and for marketing purposes trying to get the artist more recognition.
A-HA Take on me
Take on me was quite a memorable video especially at the time period of it's release however this is mainly because of its music video. As this song had been released about a year before without a video it had disappeared without a trace. However when a music video was made roughly a year later the music video was so iconic that it did very well because they combined both stop animation and live motion within a video. The video took three months the make with 1400 sketches. With the video this song hit number one on the charts.
Sinead O Connor
Nothing Compares 2U
When Sinead O Connor redid the song by Prince 'Nothing compares 2 U' The song took off it had made no.1 in 16 different countries and is now known as one of the best song for a breakup. It was not just the way she sang the song that made it blow up, it was the sheer amount of emotion that she actually put into it. And as the song is basically one whole take of just her face you can clearly see all of the different emotions at different parts of the song. E.g. as when she started talking about the death of someone and her mother died recently also she had tears running down her face.
Throughout our planning phase we had listened to a variety of different songs trying to get one that, not only did we like but one that we thought we'd also have fun doing. At first we had a few songs some that were clearly not as upbeat however they were much calmer such as:
And other songs that are much more upbeat that you could dance to such as:
And there were many more that could easily be listed. Although we had many good choices we believed that the song 'unbelievable' by Owl city was the right song for us as its about all the things that you used to do when you was a kid so it is a very nostalgic song. We also chose this song as throughout the lyrics of the song things we used to do is listed in the video which we can easily re-make to suit our style and we can easily add our own clips.
Today we were filming for the first time for our music video. Today we went to the park and were filming the scenes of us climbing trees, messing around in the playground and doing the coke and mentos which became very sticky very quickly. We all wore either shorts and a top or jeans and a top so overall it was just casual clothing.
This is the finished lip syncing video edited by me. I have tried to include multiple shots and most of the lip syncing is synchronized. When editing the footage I used the basic format on layering all the shots on top of each other and using the razor tool to delete excess unwanted clips. This technique was easy and simple to use because it meant that most of the footage was in sync without me having to keep rearranging it. I have tried to edit to the beat, but I found this difficult because when we went out filming we only filmed from a few angles. There was not much variety so I was unable to keep changing the shot to the beat of the music. However this is definitely an improvement compared to 'I got you babe' lip sync where it was just all over the place as there was no continuity.
Bad day 'Bad day' by Daniel Powter is a music video that is narrative based. In this single there is no artist involvement what so ever with the narrative as you can see in the video itself he mostly just plays the piano. The song tells a story about two people that live almost a symmetrical life and shows them having a 'Bad day' clearly showing the audience the song amplifies the scenes shown. The settings used express the way the characters feel about having a bad day. The journey to work shows many people and this could mean that they are just one of thousands of people repeating their boring life. When we look at where they work we see that they are both surrounded with tall buildings and this makes them feel inferior. The body language that the characters show in some parts of the music video tell the audience how frustrated they are. In one of the scenes based on a bus, there's a shot on a young heterosexual couple that are in love but not particularly attractive which leaves the audience thinking why hasn't the main girl found love yet if that couple could, so that shot reflects on the loneliness that girl must be feeling, then there's a consecutive shot of an old couple in love with the woman's arm around her partner. Back to the split scene we see both the main man and woman eating junk food which is often related to 'comfort eating' so this may be a result due to the lack of love in their life. However after they both argued with their bosses they both started to draw and there were split screens at this point. This could symbolize that they are each others other half. Not to mention they work right across from each other. Although the song isn't that fast the editing of the song if fast as there is always new shots every 1-2 seconds.
Shut up and drive 'Shut up and drive' by Rihanna is a performance based music video where she performs with her band. Rihanna holds a mass part of the music video herself as she is in almost all of the shots. The mise-en-scene in this song is used very effectively as she is wearing cheetah print which matches her wild cat drawing on the back of her leather jacket, this makes her seem fierce and a little bit more dominant. Not to mention that the video features a great contrast in the mise-en-scene between the masculine background of a car garage and Rihanna, dressing and acting relatively sexual and feminine and in contrast to her surroundings, almost as if the garage is a man itself. The close ups and different shots of her almost drag the audiences attention away from the music and make them more concentrated on the video because of her body. The shots are almost the same throughout the video. They just show her face, torso or cut off just above her bum and these shots have nothing to do with the actual song. during the band sequence there is a use of different angles and the way they are moving is very energetic (good body language).
