Brief

The task that we have been set for this is year is to make a Music Video, my group consists of Me, Nathan Powell, Nathan Oliver And Tyler Chambers. We have had to think of what genre of music we are going to use and then think about the conventions that we will have to out into our video to make it successful.

Analysis Of Pop Video 1 (The Wanted - All Time Low)

Sound:

• Music is in time with dancing
• Lip Syncing

Cinematography:

• Rapid cutting among members of the band is continuous
• Variety of close ups of each member. (shows they are a band)
• Also long shots of whole group dancing to make clear they are a group

Mise-en-scene:

• Stereotypical boy band dancing, costume & lyrics

Editing:

• Rapid cuts
• Montage editing

Performance:

• Eye contact with audience
• Dancing
• Jumping around stage
• Lip syncing

Analysis Of Pop Video 2 (Proffessor Green ft Lily Allen - Just Be Good To Green)

Sound:

• Lip syncing
• Typical rap beat

Cinematography:

• Close ups of professor green; shows he is the main main of the video
• Lily Allen and Professor Green appear in same shot to show they are a duet

Mise-en-scene:

• Bright colours - relates to lyrics and high tempo music

Editing:

• Montage editing

Performance:

• Lip syncing
• Long distance cuts when the artists are singing on their own
• Eye contact with audience
• Lily Allen pushes over the other women is the concept of the story - she is getting the better of the other women.

Analysis Of Rock Videos (Kings Of Leon - Sex On Fire)

Camera:

• Cuts with beat
• Typical 'crazy' rock actions
• Panning across different members of the group to show they are a band not a solo artist.

Editing:

• Montage editing
• Quick cuts between group members to make it clear that they are a group

Sound:

• Beat cuts with camera movement
• Typical 'hardcore' beat and voice
• Typical instruments

Mise-en-scene:

• Dark colours
• Not alot of light
• Typical rock costume (vests, black clothes)

Performance:

• Lip syncing
• Playing instruments
• Eye contact
• Reaching out

Video Analysis 2 (Young Money - Bedrock)

Camera:

• Panning around the house to show how the members if the group live
• Shows the audience the groups lifestyle
• Actions show how they enjoy themselves

Editing:

• Montage editing

Sound:

• High paced music - goes with crazy dancing and crazy lifestyle
• Several artists sing - shows they are a group

Mise-en-scene:

• Bright colours represents that the group are enjoying themselves and enjoying their successful lifestyle.
• costumes are mainly bright colours - again goes with happy successful lifestyle.

Performance:

• Dancing
• Eye contact
• Lip syncing
• Reaching
• Pointing

Video Analysis 3 (Eminem - Beautiful)

The name of the song that I have chosen to analyse is beautiful by Eminem. This song is part of Eminems recent ‘Relapse’ album which was released in, May 2009 and was considered as one of the best songs on the album. The video was shot in Detroit and was directed by Anthony Mandler, it first premiered on Yahoo Music in, July 2009.

The song is about Eminem’s feelings of people being put down, this is shown in the lyrics when Eminem says; “And don’t let em say you aint beautiful” this song is also about Eminem making a crucial decision regarding his next album, this is again shown in the lyrics when he says “I don’t know how or why I when I ended up in this position im in, I started to feel dissin again so I decided to pick up this pen up, and try to make an attempt to vent, but I just cant admit or come to grips with the fact that I may be done with rap I need a new outlet.” You can see that Eminem no longer has the inspiration that he once had in the lyrics of this song, and that he is not sure about continuing his music career. This song is also about Eminem being on his own lately and becoming more independent as a person, we see this in the opening lyrics when he says “lately I been hard to reach, I been too long on my own, everybody ha s their private world, when they can be alone” this shows that at times Eminem likes to be on his own.

This video is Eminem representing him being independent because he is on his own in a brokenndown warehouse, which is very derelict and somewhere that people are not allowed to be, the video shows in many ways him being on his own through eye contact and lip syncing, walking on his own and rapping is a very independent look that goes with the independent lyrics.

The first 45 seconds of the video is just setting the scene, we see Eminem walk past a lady and she totally ignores him, giving the first signs that Eminem is individual and no one takes note of him any more, then we get into the music and we understand why the video is doing this. The lyrics “lately ive been hard to reach” give the audience the impression that if the lady that he walked past wanted to talk to him then she would not have been able to because he is ‘hard to reach’. In the second 45 seconds of the video we see Eminem come into his element, he raps for the whole 45 seconds about taking his responsibilities and we see that he has suffered from some of them because of the lyrics we here and the actions that we see, the lyric that shows he suffers are; “I took my bruises, took my lumps. Fell down and then got right back up”. This shows that he has suffered but is prepared to get back up and deal with life as it comes, during these lyrics we see him

Analysis Of Videos 4 (Lil Wayne ft Jay Z - Mr Carter)

The artist of this song is Lil Wayne; however Jay Z features in the song. The song title is Mr Carter, and the song is from the album ‘Tha Carter III’.

The song is predominantly about Lil Wayne reportedly going missing for a while, and now he has come back on the scene and is now addressing his fans again, we see this in the lyrics because one of the lyrics are “hey Mr Carter, tell me where have you been?”

This song is also about Lil Wayne’s fans asking where he has been because he had been off the scene so his fans were worrying when he was going to release a new song. But Lil Wayne also used this song to reassure his fans of his devotion to music and that he will never completely leave music, this is again shown in the lyrics “two words ya never hear, Wayne quit”

The main content of the video is Lil Wayne returning to his home town and catching up with his friends, we see him in several different scenarios with different people, a few of these are with boys and another is with a girl, this shows that he is catching up with his friends that he hasn’t seen in a while and possibly a girlfriend that he is eager to get back together with after his absence.

The first 45 second of this video shows Lil Wayne in a few different locations, showing that he is just trying to cover as many places as he can to catch up with as many people as he can, because of how long he has been away, the lyrics are mainly just the main chorus “Hey Mr Carter, tell me where have you been?” so overall the first 45 seconds are just breaking the viewers into the song.

The second 45 seconds shows Lil Wayne with different people and even more different locations, he is cuddling and shaking hands with people, showing that he has missed his friends while he has been away and has lots to share with them, the lyrics give us more of an idea as to where Lil Wayne has been, because the lyrics say; “around the world and now I’m back again”, so this could give the impression that he has gone on a long trip to get his mind off of music for a while.

The third 45 seconds focuses on Lil Wayne addressing his friends, and letting his friends now that he is back in town, the video shows Lil Wayne in a car with a man and they are enjoying themselves, laughing and joking, so we assume that they have been friends for a long time and they were really close before Lil Wayne went away. He again uses the lyrics “around the world and now I’m back again” – he also uses the lyrics “I am here”. This just reassures everyone that Lil Wayne is back.

The fourth 45 seconds is the last time we see Lil Wayne in the video on his own because Jay Z begins his part of the song, in the video we just see Lil Wayne occasionally among his friends and the attention turns to Jay Z.

The type of video is mainly a narrative type of video, however it could also be deemed as a mixture of abstract and performance, this is because there is no main storyline. There is a bit of performance but not enough to determine the video as a performance video. And there is no specific structure because of the montage editing used.

Conventions Of A Music Video

In the music industry there are many different conventions of music videos. They are:

• Eye contact with audience
• Lip syncing
• 3-4 minutes long
• Camera shots make it clear whether the artist is a solo artist or a group
• Quick shots
• 3/4 main locations
• Performance relates to lyrics
• Cuts match beat
• Montage editing
• Actions match beat
• Costume changes
• Different scenarios
• Performance - Dancing, singing, playing instruments
• Concept - Not looking for story line

Theories 1 (Bordwell and Thompson Theory)

Bordwell & Thomson are 2 theorists that created a theory on four categories of film editing; Graphic Editing, Rhythmic Editing, Spatial Editing and Temporal Editing.

Graphic Editin

g:

• Graphic Match - Shots link together by graphic similarities
• Graphic Dis-continuity - Playing around with colour, footage, mise en scene.
• Graphic Continuity - P.O.I remains constant throughout everything.

Rhythmic Editing:

• Different shots and cuts have different effects on audience.
• All shots are the same length
• Shots can become shorter and shorter
• Shots with good length are steadier
• Longer or quick rapid shots

Spatial Editing:

• Continuity editing and establishing shot
• "Kuleshov Effect" There is no establishing shot but audience still know where it is set
• Cross cutting or parallel editing in different locations.

Temporal Editing:

• Order of things can be changed by reverse shots
• The story/plot can change to interrupt normal order of time
• The events during the story can be altered through an eclipse
• Continuity editing - an event happening only tends to happen once.

These 3 images are an example of Graphic editing from the film Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock directed this film and was a fan of Graphic Editing and in this particular part of the film he chose to focus on a circle theme; using the shower head, plug hole and the victims eye

Theories 2 (Vernallis Theory)

The pictorial qualities within a video.

• Patterns, light and dark, color similarities and differences
• Can be used to create smooth continuity or abrupt contrast

• Graphic match - shots link together by graphic similarities
• Graphic continuity - point of interest remaining contrast throughout cuts, maintaining a color theme, same lighting levels.

Rhythmic

• Editing the footage and thinking about the duration of each shot - how long each shot runs for before cutting to the next
• rhythmic editing will show that each shot runs on length according to the beat and tempo of the music
• Different shots will give different effects ( the faster the beat, the shorter the shots).

Spacial - basically maintaining continuity through thinking about the space where the events of the music video takes place.

• Continuity (establishing shot)
• The "Kullshov effect" (no establishing shot)
• Crosscutting ( parallel editing)

Temporal
Still uses continuity
Based on the time frame that the action is taking place in - and how the video footage maniplates time.

• Order (order of the events)
• Duration (how long for)
• Frequency (how often)

Carol Vernallis

MTV Stlye Editing:

• Frequent
• Disjuncture
• Different to film editing

Pop video editing has many functions, these change rapidly. Not one element must gain the upper hand and it must keep up in the present moment.

These changing rapidly, not one element must hain upper hand and it must keep us in the present moment

Shots and edits:

• pop video editing
• Hollywood editing
• Continuity rules
• Prevents time and space overtaking
• preserves time and space

Theories 3 (Goodwin Theory - Jason Derulo - In My Head)

Jason Derulo – In My Head;

In this video we see a lot of dancing from Jason Derulo and his moves always catch the beat, a way of noticing this is that when he is dancing with the change of beat we see him in a shadow form on a white background where we see his main dancing moves.

This always pops up when the beat changes and the lyrics are usually changed to “In my head” We see the meaning of the lyrics in Derulo’ face and body actions, when he sings; “in my head, I see you all over me”. We see him touching a woman’s face and when he s singing the more “emotional” lyrics we see a type of pain in his face.
Derulo is dressed and acts in the video how we would expect, he is dressed in his normal costume of a jacket, and jeans. We see a lot of dancing in the video which is typical Derulo. His image in this video is projected as a bit of a “playa”. He is trying to get a girl and is doing so in a very confident way.

The video cuts on the beat to make emphasis of Derulo’ dancing, we only see a few different types of shots; these are mainly long shots of the whole body or close ups to emphasise facial expressions. The images that we see in the video help to understand the lyrics more, for instance although “in my head, I see you all over me” could quite easily relate to a girl we can not be 100% sure of this until we see the video.

Although it seems that Derulo is not playing a fictional character it may seem that he is, however judging from other songs you could think that this is actually him; with songs such as ‘Ridin’ solo’, ‘Whatcha Say’ and ‘Queen of Hearts’. These are all pretty ‘emotional’ type songs about girls so it seems that this song is very much about him and not a fictional character.
This video is put together well and this shows because the music always cuts on the beat and never off which shows the sign of a bad music video, however this video never has silence in it and the beats are always cut spot on so this is a good video.
The image in the video relate to the lyrics that we here in the song which also shows the sign of a good video because it helps the audience to understand the lyrics more whereas other videos where the image does not match the lyrics would be a bad video because If the audience don’t understand the lyrics then they would look to the video to help understand more. The image that we see Derulo in is an image that we see him wearing regularly which shows consistency in his image which I would consider a success.

Analysis of mood board

Analysis of my mood board; Classic R&B:

When doing my mood board I noticed many regular themes about the genre of classic R&B, a regular theme is the artists leaning on a wall or leaning in someway shape or form. Another regular occurrence is an artist laying down.

Costumes are always similar between the artists, the male artists regularly have chains on and a jacket, the only individual is Trey Songz who is topless on his album cover. The female artists regularly wear long dresses or skimpy clothing, artists such as Leona Lewis and Whitney Houston wear long dresses whilst Beyonce, Ciara and Alesha Dixon wear more skimpy clothing.

I found that there is rarely any performance from the artists in promotional photos, the main type of performance that we do sometimes see is the artist pointing at the viewer and looking at the viewer making eye contact with the audience. All artists like Chris Brown tend to dance in their videos. Females tend to be similar with some artists like Alesha Dixon, Beyonce and Ciara dancing in their videos whilst Leona Lewis has a more laid back less performance approach to her videos.

The females in the genre of classic R&B tend to wear quite a lot of make up, some more than others for instance Cheryl Cole and Ciara wear quite a lot apposed to Whitney Houston.

The mise en scene in the videos of classic R&B, is quite bright colours and a lot of focus on the colour red, we see Chris Brown, Alesha Dixon and Beverley Knight all wearing red or with red in their shot. However bright colours seem to be the focus.

The album covers are different for the genders however the same genders are the same type of album covers, on Trey Songz and Usher’ albums they both have a very serious face on and are in a dark room. Which is a pretty big contrast to Alesha Dixon’ and Ciara’ album covers which are bright colours such as red and blue.

The screen shots of the music videos are all very similar, we tend to either see the artists laying down, leaning on a wall or post or dancing, this is consistent throughout all of the classic R&B artists and music videos that I have included in my collage.

To conclude looking at the different aspects of the images I have used in my collage I can see that the things we see in one music video you will tend to see in the next one you look at because the artists tend to follow each others conventions.

Genre Research 1 (Genre Mood Board)

Record Label Research 1 (Konvict Muzik)

Konvict Muzik is a record label founded by Melvin Brown and R&B singer Akon. Other then Akon there are other popular artists such as Kardinal Offishall, Kat DeLuna, Lady GaGa, American Yard, Brick & Lace, T-Pain and Sway signed to the label. At the beginning of most Konvict Muzik artists' songs there is the sound of the clank of a jail cell, followed by Akon uttering "Konvict". Sway signed to Konvict Record labels in 2007, being the only UK artist signed to the label. Konvict Muzik was founded in 2005 covering genres of R&B, Raggae, Hip Hop and Urban. Konvict Muzik is American located in Atlanta, Georgia.

Interscope records is the distrubutor of Konvict Muzik. Interscope records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.

Konvict Muzik records is a label being parented by Universal Music Group. It is the largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry. It is the largest of the 'big four' record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations.

Record Label Research 2 (Columbia Records)

Columbia records is an american record label owned by sony music entertainment, and operates as an inprint of the columbia/epic record label group. Columbia records was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company - successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings where released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS records label before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world. Steve Barnett and Rick Rubin are the co-heads of Columbia Records.

http://www.columbia.co.uk/

Columbia records are also the record label of many other famous bands and artists of different genre's such as:

• Avril lavigne


• Calvin Harris


• Foo fighters


• Good charlotte


• kesha


• kings of leon


• AC/DC


• Bullet for my valentine

Record Label Research 3 (Dirtee Stank. XL Recordings)

Dirtee Stank; Dizzee Rascal.

Dizzee Rascal has his own record label called Dirtee Stank, however both of his albums have been produced and released by XL Recordings. Dirtee Stank has a MySpace page that suggests that the label is bringing many different genres together such as indie, majors and the street in order to reach all audiences.

After XL Recordings released Dizzee’s first two albums, the song “Dance Wiv Me” featuring Calvin Harris, was released by Dirtee Stank. Other songs such as, bonkers, holiday were then released by the label and his latest album “Tongue n Cheek” were also released by the label.

There are other artists registered to the label, these are; Newham Generals and Smurfie Syco.

XL Recordings is an independent British record label, and was launched by Tim Palmer, Nick Halkes and Richard Russell. This was done with Beggars Banquet Records in 1989. This was because they wanted to release their rave and dance music. The label has now grown as one of the most commercially successful record label in the UK.

XL Recordings has many successful artists signed to them such as;

- The Prodigy

- Peaches

- M.I.A

- Giggs

- Friendly Fires

- Dizzee Rascal

- Basement Jaxx

- Adele

Audience Research 1 (Questionnaire)

Genre Research 3 (Grime Video Conventions)

• Women
• Dancing
• Estates
• Underground Areas
• Chains
• Hats
• Groups/Gangs
• Leather Jackets
• Lip Syncing
• Eye Contact With Audience

Audience Research 2 (Pie Chart 1)

Digi Pack Draft

This is my first idea of my digipack, it is not complete I am still missing one image and the idea that I have had for that is another image of myself the artist, or a text page thanking the different artists that I would have worked with on the album. The first image is the section where the CD will be, and I have decided a simple image of a black background and a light blue circle in the middle that will be representative of the CD when the CD is not in the case.

The next image is of 'Southbank' where we are going to film the majority of our video, I have edited this video with a filter gallery effect called 'Cutout' on Photoshop, this effect has worked successfully because it is more exciting rather than a boring picture, when we film I will have to take this image again because I have taken this image from the internet.

My next image is an image of me as I am the artist, this is again an edited image on Photoshop, the effect that I used was again on the filter gallery and was called 'Neon Glow', again I think this is a good image because it is important to have an image of the artist and the edit has worked well.

My next image is my track list, this is one of my more simple images on my digi pack, it is a black background and has a light blue circle in the bottom left corner, then the text that i have used is 'Zapfino' and is size 6, the colour is again light blue, I think that i am going to change this font to a more 'graffiti' style font that I plan to find on; www.dafont.com.

The last image that i have finalized is an edited image of the Big Ben, an image that will again be taken by myself when we film because this image was also taken from the internet, the edit that I used was also in the filter gallery on photoshop and is called 'Plastic Wrap' which again worked very successfully and added a different effect.

The final image is yet to be finalized but I think that the idea that I will be going through with is another edited image of myself.

Audience Research 2 (Pie Chart 2)

Audience Research 2 (Questionnaire Results Analysis)

After looking at my results from my questionnaires I can see that I must have asked a very similar group of people about what they like to see in music videos. I saw that the main age group that I asked was in the region of 12-24 year olds. I think that this could be why I got the results that I did, because the favourite types of music were; Grime, R&B and Pop. These types of music are very young orientated with artists such as; Akon, Lil Wayne and Britney Spears. These are all world renowned artists that younger people will look up too.

Another reason that I think I asked the same type of people is an obvious reason that everyone that I asked lives in South London, in South London the most recognized music could arguably be Grime, this is because Grime was originated in South London and Grime is very much an up and coming genre with several artists breaking boundaries, for instance Tinie Tempah’ new album is tipped to break many records.

What I found from what people like to see in their music video is that there is a wide range of what people like to see, from my results I saw that the 3 favourite types of music video are; dancing, performance and storyline style. I think that people like to see this because it is entertaining to watch as well as listening to the song.

Another thing I found from my questionnaire is that I asked a majority of male people, I think that this could be a reason as to why the types of music were favourite because males tend to like Grime more than females, the Pop genre was also a favourite in my results and this could be because of the female audience that was asked.

I think that the audience had a problem asking some of the questions that were asked; one of them was the question about “what is your favourite record label” so there were limited answers however the favourite was XL Recordings who are a very famous record label.

Overall I think that the younger audience was influential on the results that I got because the results that I got were very young results because you would not expect an older person to listen to Grime music or want to see young women dancing in the music videos they are going to watch.

Low Budget Ideas

Figrig invented by Mike Figgis, is designed as a cheaper version of a steady cam and it can be used really easy to track shots and move around with it, crain, crab.

Lighting:

• Use torches


• The sun


• Reflectors by using white sheets


• Cling foil

Mise-en-scene:

• Go out and find locations to film
• Green screen
• Layer different locations on top of them and then speed things up behind them

Slow motion - Create effect were performer is moving slowly but the lipsyncing is still on time. You will need a sped up back track for this.

One low budget music video that I analyzed was from an up and coming music group called 'The Unit'. In there video the main location that they used was in a studio in front a plain white background. Even though this seemed low budget, the way that they used and set them selves on the set looked good. When they done their solo's, the camera would have lots of close up shots of them standing in front of a white background. When they are as a group doing the chorus we see them all together in front of a green background. In some shots they also have still shots which cut in between each other.

'The Unit' have also made another music video called ' Game Over Remix' which was also low budget and was filmed in a gym, however there are props in the background that have worked very well with the song.

Another technique that they used well when doing their video was putting their music video on top of the facebook background and this worked well because their song was called 'Facebook'. Also, they use simple effect like putting mist into the video and cuts which zoom in and zoom out. The transitions that they use to go from one shot to another differ as well by including fade outs or swirls and others.

CD Cover (Tinie Tempah - Disc-covery)

A CD cover that I really like and think is really good is the album by Tinie Tempah 'Disc-overy' I really like the main image which is an image of Tinie Tempah holding a city in his arms and alot of different special effect graphics around him. This is very reflective of Tinie' personality and his type of music because although he is a grime artist he has a very 'Funky' feel to his music which is why the way his album cover has been made is succesful.

I think that the CD cover that I make will be similar to this with an image of the artist from our group having alot of editing around him to grab the viewers eye and make them want to buy the album.

Favourite Digipack (Kanye West - Graduation)

After looking at several digipacks the favourite one that I came across for me was Kanye West' album 'Graduation'. I like this because the animation work is very clever and there is a little 'teddy bear' type of character that I think represents Kanye and throughout the whole digipack and the different images it shows him going on a journey and I think this links in well with the title; 'Graduation'.

I also like this because you would not expect to see this type of style from a rap artist so he is showing that he is different.

Here are 3 examples of images from the digipak to give an idea of what you see.

Digi Pack CD Cover

A digipack is a different type of cd cover that contains, images, song details artist details and sometimes song lyrics. It is different from a normal cd cover because it is made from cardboard and it folds out in a leaflet style.

Concept

The idea that we have come up with for our idea is a very conventional grime video, we are going to have one person perfoming throughout the whole video. We plan to go to 'Southbank' and shoot our video there where the skateboarders will be in action and there will be alot of graffiti on the walls. We will then go around certain places in London and shoot different types of shots.

The costume is also very stereotypical again and is very similar to Tinie Tempah and Example' type of clothing because we feel these two are very succesful. Tinie is a different style of Grime\Hip Hop artist, he has added a sort of 'Funky' style to his music and it has worked as he has recently won a 'Brit Award' so we will not be stuck in regular grime conventions we will use a mixture of this style of music. focusing on artists sucha as "Devlin, Example, Tinie Tempah and Drake"

Shooting Schedule Explanation

The reason why we have done a shooting schedule is so that we have organisation about our group. Because now we have to stick to our dates that we have planned to have and we will get our filming done asap.

Shooting Schedule

Initial Ideas

When our group first got together we immediatly knew that we wanted to do a song from the Grime genre. After that we had to decide what songs we could do and what songs we think would work best for us as a group. We were all interested in Examples latest album 'Wont Go Quietly' so we decided that we would choose a song from this album.

We really like Example as an artist because he both follows and breaks conventions and his own style of genre clothing. A style of clothing that a few of the members of our group also like and wear.

We then had to start thinking about what locations we would use, and we decided that we would film in one area but in several different positions in that area. We had to choose between two different ideas that we came up with, Brighton; along the pier, on the beach and around the fair ground. Or at Southbank in London, which we feel has a very grime feel to it with the graffiti walls etc.

In the end we decided to go with Southbank because it is a very underground place, easy to get too and will fit in perfectly with our chosen song.

Working together has been vital during this year because we have all put in our own ideas and analysed things together to get the best knowledge for our video, before we make a final decision we speak as a group first because we want to make sure that everyone is okay with the decisions and with the final video.

Location Permission Letter

Track Permission Letter