Location Shots

Previous to filming Alex took some location shots. These are to see what the area looks like on film, the problems the area could encounter and the lighting.

Audience!

We carried out a questionnaire to find out exactly who are out target audience is. We need to know who we are aiming at so we can create a project to suit their needs. Rachel has uploaded the results.

Filming Schedule

As Alex has the closest relations to the band she devised a filming schedule. She also sent an email around Facebook, being more quicker and efficient, to find out about who can cast in the video, and letting them know dates, times and locations. We felt she was best suited for this as there were friends she wanted involved we didn't necessarily have the profiles of. However it would be very simple to add these people if needs be just to send a quick email, but no as efficient as friend requests would need to be replied to (which could take hours-days).

Sound and Lighting within Music Videos

Sound and lighting are two crucial elements used to represent the genre, tone and narrative of a media product. This is no exception for a music video. We need to know how sound and lighting is conventionally used within the Indie genre. Therefore I have carried out some research so we know what is expected of our video.

Lighting: Being an Indie genre this traditionally means it isn't high production. This label plays for the love and fun of the music and performing, its more personal than a business to them. Therefore lighting is conventionally natural lighting. Traditionally there is no massive element of performance with an audience and stage lighting.

Sound: Independent label means their isn;t a specific type of genre. However it is broken down into sub genres, Indie-pop, Indie-rock etc. The sound of the music drives the editing and sets the tone.

Deconstruction of a music video

We have all decided to deconstruct a music video, individually, to gain more knowledge and understanding of our genre, editing, sound and lighting. I am basing my deconstruction on an existing music video to get a real feel of how they link everything together to make it suit the genre.

I have looked at The View and their official video of Shock Horror online on youtube. The band is seen as a Indie-Pop genre. Within the Indie label it does create sub-genres as its a generation where they love to perform, not necessarily one type of music.

Here is a link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0db-uwN90

Music: The music within this video is driving the editing. Simple cuts are used on each beat. This is conventionally within the Indie label.

Match-on Match Action: As you would expect when shots of the band singing or performing the music is in time with the movement of instruments and mouths. This keep continuity and giving the idea they are actually singing and playing whilst recording.

The lyrics are not driving the video. The shots have a theme of coloured smoke deriving from things they jump on or hit. But they are non-linear shots of the band having fun and messing about. Again this is conventional within the Indie Label. There are close ups and mid-shots of band members standing around the location, expressions giving an impact on the audience to wonder what they are feeling. Expressions and actions within the video appear to derive from the tone of the video; care-free and fun.

The lighting is a natural lighting, however dark as its been filmed, in what appears, an underground graffitied location. The darker lighting contrast against the coloured puffs of smoke/dust (which explode from a mattress/doll the band jump on/hit) and the graffiti writing on the walls. Also within parts of the video there is an element of performance where the lighting goes red and camera is zoomed in, this contrasting with the other element of performance, a wide shot of the whole band playing in the underground location. The band are also wearing subtle colours to contrast with the dark lighting tone. The zoomed, red lighted element of performance adds a flash of colour to tear away from the darkness to add to the element of fun (bright colours tend to signify happiness and fun).

There is a theme of a doll hanging from a string throughout the whole video, the repetition making it recognisable. This doll also contrasting against the darker tone of lighting making it stick out as it is white.

The camera angles and effects are kept minimalistic. This not to give off a high-Hollywood production but promoting the idea of the label. As said before the cuts are made on the beat of the song.

There isn't great use of mise-on scene. Its an underground location with graffiti on the walls, this creating a sense of realism for the audience. There is a mattress and chair lying around, again something that wouldn't surprise you to see in that sort of location. The location is kept very natural, which once again represents the Independent label conventions; showing its about the love of playing even if there isn;t an audience!

Semiotics within our music video

Although we all looked into what semiotics are, we needed to look at how we are going to use semiotics within our music video. Therefore on behalf of the group Laura carried out some research on the matter.

Music Video Conventions.

Conventions are a set of generally accepted norms or criteria within a piece of media.

All types of media carry there own set of conventions, therefore music videos obviously have their own. We researched music video conventions and below are the most common and universal. We need to know what the conventions are so we can look into which conventions to follow, and which to break to make our music video more post-modern.

• Lyrics: establish a general feeling/mood/sense of subject rather than a meaningMusic: tempo often drives the editing.
• Genre: might be reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles.
• Editing: the most common form is fast-cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. Often enhancing the editing are digital effects, which play with the original images to offer different kinds of pleasure for the audience.

Andrew Goodwin's Theory· Visuals either illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics and music· Genres often have their own music style/iconography· Close-ups should always be included· Intertextual references are also popular

Semiotics with Music Videos.

Semiotics is the study of signs and meanings. 3 areas of study are :

1. The sign – the picture, object, sound.
2. The system into which signs are organised.
3. The culture within which these signs operate.

Semeotics are important for all media. Theefore I have researched how semiotics are important within a music video.

Music videos stripped of sound should still be able to portray the musics genre by signs within the video. The signs including location, lighting, camera angles, colours and mise-en-scene. Different music genres follow different routes within their videos, for example: a more indie genre would tell more of a story where as within pop music the video would be more of a performance with bright colours and choreographed routines. Another way semiotics can be used is in the culture within these signs operate. If the video was set in a dark location, with dark mise-en-scene and wardrope this could signify a sad tone to the song. Therefore semiotics are important for the audience to gain more knowledge of the song; genre, beat, atmosphere.

Useful Websites.

http://getaheadocrmedia.blogspot.com/

Above is a useful website which has information about our coursework, therefore it can help us with any queries and keep us on track. The website was created by OCR.

http://www.virtualmediastudies.com/

Another useful website above contains information about media techniques and examples which futher more can helps us when we're stuck or unsure. This can help to guide us to producing high quality work.

Storyboard

By constructing a story board it will enable us to be extremely organised when filming. We will know exactly what frame we want with what camera angle and what precise order. This will make our video to the best standard as we are organised and planning what should work together. If we were to just 'wing' it we may find we have missed bits out, or things didn't work well together when edited along side each other.

Camera Angles

Mid-shot: This shot shows a bigger picture of what is going on, but without involving too much of the background. Being closer facial expressions can help express emotion within the shot. This shot is an effective shot to use to focus on a band member.

Long-shot: A long shot is mainly used to distinguish location. It shows you the location and what is going on within it, mise-en-scene and props, so an idea of plot can start to become clear. This shot may not be necessary that many times within our video as it is primarily just to set the scene. However it can be used a couple of times to do so.

Extreme close-up: This show deletes most of the surroundings out of the picture to focus on one thing. This shot would be used to bring attention to something and impact it to the audience.

Close-up shot: A close shot makes the viewer be able to see clearer more details. Within this shot we are able to see the guitar playing in more detail and facial expressions. These will all help to give off a tone within the frame.










High-canted angle: This shot makes the person(so standing within the frame look shorter and inferior. However this is not effective within a performance as the band are the most important thing. This type of shot may be used in a film on a protagonist to make him/her feel small next to the antagonist, showing the antagonist at this point has the control.

Low-canted angle: This shot makes a person(s) look bigger and more powerful. This is the opposite effect to a high-canted angle. I think this works as it makes the audience feel like they are looking up at the artist/band as they would do if the artist/band were performing live on stage. However it does take away some of the detail in the frame but this could just be a lighting issue.

Camera Angles!

By Thursday we plan to film an Artist singing, simply so we can play around with different camera angles. By doing this it will help to generate ideas, see what looks effective and expand our skills within operating the camera. We cannot use the original band as they are not available.

Band Questionnaire Analysis

The following link takes us to the answers the band gave to the questionnaire we provided them with. The answers help give us a understanding of how to make the music video to suit them and their needs. Also helps within beginning to give us ideas for the video!

Update

We have now recieved our completed questionnaire which we are going on to upload and analyse. Once the questionnaire has been anaylised and edited we can start researching ideas for our music video; looking at the artist influences within voice, lyrics and music video. Deconstructing other artist music videos, which relate the bands answers, will help give us ideas on lighting, editing and camera angles.

Carpet Monsters Profile

The orginal artist we have decided to use are a band called the 'Carpet Monsters'. We will be using one of their original songs 'Keep on Rolling' for the music video. The band currently have their own album called 'Down to the cuboid' which we will also be advertising within our subsidiary task.

The Band members:

Laura Hooper - Vocals
Mathew Castle - Guitar
Simon Durrant - Bass Guitar

The band have been a group sine 2005 and played numbers of gigs and performances.

Interrogating the Carpet Monsters

We have decided we need to interview the band to find out their music influences and style of music, to help gain an idea of what the video should be like. Due to timing and work commitmentswe are unable to do this so are going to email each member of the band a questionnaire.

The questions we have decided are necessary to use in the questionnaire we will be sending to the Carpet Monsters:

1. How would you classify the music you perform?
2. Who are your influences?
3. Are there any current music videos which you like and would like your video to be like in anyway?
4. If you could compare yourself to any artist, who would it be?

We have decided to make the questionnaire quite open eneded. This giving the band a chance to elaborate more and us receiving as much detail as possible. We are then able to work to their ideals as well as our own.

A New Path

We have considered the options available to us, as a group we have decided to join with Alex Castle and her project ideas.

We came to this decision as we were having difficulty finding an original artist who had the time to commit to our project, due to it being quite time consuming. However Alex already had a band in mind and as one of the members is her brother, it will make it easier to contact, more reliable and an idea of his free time.

As a group we will carry out research into music videos and begin brainstorming ideas for our music video.

Next Goal

Our target for this week is to find the original artist that we can work with to create a music video, that would promote them.

Once we have found an artist we need to start thinking about what research to carry out with them to decide ideas on how the music video will turn out.

This excercise will be a group effort but everyone will know different people so we will all be collecting our individual ideas; and then as a group deciding upon one of the artists.

Brief 29/09/09

Group members: Charlotte Stokes, Rachel Gaffney and Laura Burroughs.

Within our group we have a wide range of different strengths that we can pull together to produce a high quality peice of media.

Today we sat down as a group to finalise what idea we want to carry out. We have decided we want to create a music video. We were bouncing between video or print. As none of us have as much experience with print as we have video, we decided we would be able to produce a higher quality video than magazine! One of the members within the group, Rachel Gaffney, as part of their GCSE have already created a music video, therefore has experience in what works and what won't work.

Our concerns about a music video were getting an unsigned band that we could conduct our own primary research to produce a video to represent them. We don't want to use a well known artist that already has a big reputation, therefore people having an opinion of them, as we would have to play to their current reputation. We concluded by using an original artist, the research can be alot more personal, there will be know pre-affirmed judgements and we can have alot more freedom to play around with diferent ideas without expectation.

OCR A2 Media Studies Specification

Below is a link to the specification for our course. By having this hyperlink easily accessable will mean I can constantly refer to the page to make sure I am keeping on track. It will also be helpful as I can be sure I know exactly what is expected of my work and what needs to be done.

http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/asa_levelgceforfirstteachingin2008/mediastudies/documents.html