Unit 9: Music Video Production

 

TASK 1: Research

Research

 For this project, I mainly used Google, Wikipedia, Spotify, & YouTube to assist my research. These are all commonly used research methods, but they do have different strengths and weaknesses when researching things for for a film.

 Google is a powerful tool for quickly finding a variety of information many subjects. It can be especially useful for finding filming locations or researching the subject matter in which you wish to base your film around. But, there is a large amount of information on Google, which could potentially make it harder to find sources that are reliable.

 Wikipedia is good when researching background information on a topic or theme. You can find things such as historical events that may influence your film in some way. However, Wikipedia is a user-edited platform, therefore making it questionable how much information on there is 100% accurate.

 Spotify can be a useful tool when researching a song, or other songs related to it in some way. It can also be used to research the critical reception of similar the song that you way want to use in your project, which will likely foreshadow the reception of your music video. It was especially useful for me when researching how popular a singer is. However, it may not be accurate for critical reception as a whole. For example, a song may be popular on Spotify, yet unpopular on YouTube, as different platforms may have differing audiences.

 YouTube can be useful in a similar way that Spotify is, though here we can see music videos an comments, so that we can have a much clearer view of how the artist visually imagined their song, and we can see the critical reception by audiences in words. This is the best place to figure out a song's target audience, as you can see the accounts of commenters. The same thing could also executed on other social media like Instagram or Facebook. For example, my research on 'Padam Padam' by Kylie Minogue told me that her audience is not limited by age at all, showing a vast range of ages.

 Overall, each of these research methods has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to use a combination of sources to ensure the most accurate and reliable information.

Characteristics & Context

 There are a number of different types of music videos, and each one has its own recognisable characteristics. Here are two examples:

Performance

•  Colour - The colours will likely be natural/true to the colours seen on set. If there are any distinct colours on set, they will be be put across through on-set lighting or costume choices. Colour grading is sometimes used, but isn't always necessary.
•  Lighting - The performance will likely take place on a stage, so stage lighting such as spotlights and lime lights are usually used.
•  Shots - Shots mostly include a close up of the singer (and close ups for each band member if it is a band) and a wide shot of the entire stage.
•  Location - There will likely be only one location, either being a stage, or and empty warehouse.

 An example of this would be the music video for 'Beyoncé - Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)', where the focus of the entire video is on the singer performing the song with two dancers on a simplistic white set:

Narrative

•  Colour - The colours will often correlate with the primary emotion of the narrative (a sad story may have dull, cold colours, and a happy story may have bright, warm colours).
•  Lighting - Lighting will often be cinematic or moody.
•  Shots - Shots will likely relate to the narrative.
•  Location - A narrative will likely require many varying locations, but a narrative with only one location is also easily imaginable.

 An example of this would be the music video for 'P!nk - F**kin' Perfect', where the majority of the video follows the story of a woman's life through the years:

Intertextuality

 Intertextuality is the relationship between texts, especially literary ones. In lesson, we had to find an example of intertextuality in film. My example was in Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, which during the scene where Danny returns to the Overlook hotel, the movie recreates numerous iconic shots from the first film.

TASK 2: Design

Diary

 UPDATE 07/09/23 - In class, we were given a task that entailed or group to make a practice music video in a day based on one of the four songs on the board. We chose 'Hung Up' by Madonna. Our idea for the video was that it was going to look like a low budget music video from the 80s. We used two locations, the green screen room where we put in a pink bed and an old style telephone, and the other location was on the outside of the college. It was filmed, edited, and completed by the end of the day.

 UPDATE 08/09/23 - On the 21st, we will have to pitch an idea to the rest of the group and our tutor. The one that will get picked will be the video that we create for this assignment. Today, I have come up with three potential concepts that I may wish to pursue:

•  'Padam Padam' by Kylie Minogue - I always imagined the at this song is about an alien that goes into bars and seduces men to kill them and she can test on them.

•  'I Wrote a Song' by Mae Muller - Because it's such a generic British pop song, I thought it could be cool for a popular artist to sing to her audience to but them under here spell. She has lots of surgery and a dotted line around the edges of her face were it starts to peel away from time to time.

•  'Mad Hatter' by Melanie Martinez -  A good excuse to do an Alice in Wonderland inspired music video.

 UPDATE 09/09/23 -  Today I have been getting to work on my slideshow that I will use to present my pitch on the 21st. I chose my 'Padam Padam' idea.

 UPDATE 21/09/23 - Today was the day that I finally pitched my idea. Mine possibly would have been chosen, but I made the decision to request for it not to be. This was for the entirety of 1st year, I was the director of pretty much every project I was involved in, and I needed to give myself a chance to try another role. The other two people in my group had also never directed once, so it was also a chance for one of them to step up and give it a try. Here are screenshots of every slide in the slideshow I made.

 Here are the other people in the group's pitches:

Shayne's Pitch

Jack's Pitch

TASK 3: Planning

UPDATE 21/09/23 -  It came time to decide who's project we were going to use, but I decided that I didn't want mine to be picked, as I wanted to give myself an opportunity to do a smaller role, working on someone else's idea. Shayne's idea was based on a song from Sonic the Hedgehog, but his idea was unrealistic, so we landed on doing Jack's idea, based on 'Waitress in the Sky' by The Replacements.

UPDATE 10/10/23 -  We completed a lot of the pre-production paperwork today.

Lyric Script

Mood Board

Shot List

Storyboard

Costume and Props List

 UPDATE 17/10/23 -  We planned our shooting day today, We are going to film in the aviation classroom in college on the 20th, and we're going to give ourselves from 9:30 AM to 4 PM to complete the video, but hopefully it won't take that long. We have also secured one actor for the role of the tramp, but we have yet to cast the air hostess and the extras.

TASK 4: Production

 UPDATE 20/10/23 - We filmed the entire music video today. We opted not to use a microphone as the only audio necessary for the MV is the music and possibly some sound effects. All actors did well and followed their instructions. We followed the shot list strictly, though the director decided to miss out some shots. The main issue is that we only had half of a plane to work with for our set, but we did what we could.

 UPDATE 06/11/23 - I edited the MV today. I struggled a little bit when editing the parts where shots were missed out, so I had to improvise a little bit. Overall, I think I did well with what footage I had.

 In the end, my version of the final edit was chosen to become the final result:

The Music Video

The Poster by Alex Temperley

TASK 5: Evaluation

What Went Wrong

•  The director told us to miss some shots, which made the editing process harder for me in the end

What Went Well

•  The actors all suited their roles well
•  The actors were respectful on set
•  The project got finished on time

What Have I Learned

•  I'm not sure that the DOP role is for me

What I Should Improve On

•  My skills at being a DOP
•  Getting my enthusiasm to a better level when working on a project that is not mine

 Overall, I'm thankful that I gave myself the opportunity to take a back seat, and therefore give someone else the space to take on a bigger role and have more creative control. However, the role I chose instead was on a good fit for me, and if I chose to go for a smaller role in the future, I now know not to go for anything remotely technical, not until I get better at understanding that side of things.