Planning for my music video.

Using stop motion can be very time consuming but I think it can be very effective if it's done well. At the start of my video I want there to be a sequence of images in which the sun is coming up, this will mean having to take a picture of the sky every so often from when it is dark to when it is light. The end will be similar apart from i want a person walking away from the camera in to the darkness.

Changes to my music video

I have made a lot of changes to how I want to film my music video I will now be using stop motion instead of filming footage and piecing it together so the post I made referring to the planning of my music video is mostly irrelevant now, I may still use a super 8 filter to brighten the pictures but seeing as there wont be any actual footage this will be less prominent. I have also made changes to the song which I will be using, this doesn't cause any problems though as when I asked the band leader if I could use 'Impress this mistress' he said I was welcome to use any of the songs. The reason I have chosen to change the song to 'Let it out' is because it's more up beat which i think will be better when using stop motion.

Test Footage

I filmed some test footage using the green screen, but this is only for one of the effects I want to use, I need to film test footage for my other effects so I can see if what I want in my music video will work.

Planning for my music video

I want my music video to have a super 8 filter shown through the majority of it, this will be less likely in the band shots. Some music influences of how I want my video to look are Wavves, Best Coast and Lana Del Rey, I like a lot of the effects used in Wavves Video -Post Acid, it doesn't look like they had a high budget, but I think the fact it looks kind of cheap makes it more quirky and fit with their stylistic vision.

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Digipak

Front of Digipak

Track list, inside of digipak

CD holder in digipak

Back of Digipak

Research on Jonas Akerlund

Jonas Akerlund's work tends to feature a strong narrative, he also tends to make very controversial material, firstly coming in to the public eye with The Prodigy's "Smack my bitch up" which showed drug use, violence and nudity, this was consequently banned from the majority of music channels however massive demand from the public forced MTV to show the music video only after midnight with a news warning. This then led him on to work with other artists such as Madonna, Maroon 5, Rihanna and Lady GaGa.
Many of his videos form something like a short film, he has a strong individual style, and uses a lot of taboo subjects: lesbianism, drug use, murder, and sexual explicitness.
Mostly Akerlunds work seems to be mainstream pop, he uses a lot of fast cuts which gives the video a fast pace making it more interesting for the audience, i like his work because of the indepth narrative and the way he can make awful things look beautiful, i've included some examples of screen shots for two different videos below.

Lady gaga telephone video by Jonas Akerlund

Here Akerlund makes prison seem glamorous and fun, when it is as we know quite the opposite.


Lady GaGa Paparazzi video by Jonas Akerlund

 Here GaGa makes even disability look glamorous this is a very typical warped image of reality from both GaGa and Akerlund to make something so awful look beautiful.

And again with the prison scene, you wouldn't pose for the camera but GaGa does everything differently.

Research on digipaks

I like Katy Perry's digipak because it conforms well to her album 'Teenage Dream', the candy theme relates well to some kind of childish fantasy, yet to get the populations attention we find here she is being presented in a sexual manner i.e barely wearing any clothes to perhaps attract an audience slightly older.

The digipak works well because of girly, soft colours and candy themed CD's to appeal to the target audience.

The simplistic design of this digipak is very effective for the target audience because teenage girls don't tend to be to in to complicated designs but the fascination lies in the colour scheme. Because of the sexual nature of the front and back image I wouldn't say this was for young girls even though they do listen to her music.

The Odd Future digipak conforms well to the way the rappers see the world, the pictures are not that of a normal CD, there is no one looking glamorous or just a plain group shot, the pictures are slightly deluded, pieces cropped from various images to make up surreal portraits. There is nothing in the pictures that gives any kind of hint at a target audience, but the 'parental guidance' sticker on the front indicates children should not be listening to this form of rap music.

My Digipak

for my own digipak I want it to open from the middle so it's double sided and then each side (left and right) opens once more to create a long strip, on the front I will have the name of the band and some kind of graphic, and on the first left hand side I will have brief information about the band and a track list and on the right I will have something to hold the CD and the CD itself.
Once opened so the digipak is a long strip I will have a panoramic shot of some kind, perhaps an image of the band layered over a landscape which is a bit surreal.

It will have the basic formation of something similar to this.


The bottom image will be what the digipak looks like when you first unfold it, and the top image is similar to how the digipak will look when it's fully unfolded.

Practice green screening

Sequence 01 2 from Bianca Gotts on Vimeo.

We filmed Craig pretending to Ski against the green screen and then used after effects for colour keying. I them imported the clip in to Premier to add a snowy mountain background and use the key framing effect to move Craig from place to place, it's only a rough edit just to get used to using both programmes and I am aware that there are major changes that need to be made as it is very disjointed and I wouldn't expect that from a professional music video.
For example the slowness that occurs when Craig gets to the end of the screen but doesn't quite disappear, and the break between the disappearing image to another image of Craig reappearing.
Little breaks in the sequence like this can be fixed by checking over my work and  redoing certain formations.

Proof of permission from my chosen band.

Emails to a band member about use of their tracks.

ABC task

ABC task from Bianca Gotts on Vimeo.

My ABC task was made on Premier, I managed to handle this task fairly quickly, I went out of class and recorded all of my footage and managed to edit it and finish it in the same lesson. I edited quite a lot of the song so there was no introduction music and no music after the alphabet had finished.
Some problems with this occurred in some of my clips not being quite clear enough, another issue was where the song speeds up the audience may not be able to process the image they see with the letter given, for example the letters L through to P are only very short clips. Another problem I had was with the letter D, the door wouldn't rotate and save, I have no solved this problem though and so it shouldn't appear like this in any of my other projects.

Cutting to time task

Cutting to time task. from Bianca Gotts on Vimeo.

This is the cutting to time task in which i had to film clips and edit them to conform with the song, parts I think work really well are 0:22 where the walking of the boys speeds up in time with the music, 0:26 the bicycle riding along at the same time as the bells, and all of the screams following from 0:43, and the clip of the bicycle on the crossing at 0:58 where the music slows down.
I think this is one of my better pieces of work because it all flows fairly well and there is a clear understanding of what is going on.

Youth subculture

Youth Subculture on Prezi
Brief prezi about my chosen band for my music video.

Looking at editing in music videos and film trailers.

The editing techniques used in this trailer foreshadow the events which will take place in the film, a lot of the clips are reversed and we see from text that that's the concept of the film, 'going back in time'. The non-diegetic sound is a good representation of what is to come and what we should expect when we watch the film.




The video cuts from the studio version for a radio station to a series of shots taken in a car, it looks as though it's been filmed on a handicam the band are effectively mimicking the song and drumming actions.
They then exit the car and it changes to a woman driving, then the camera man and woman exit the car and we see the band have a set up and they're playing to the rear of the car, the whole thing is filmed with a black and white filter.

Analysing three music videos.

The first video I have chosen is Nicki Minaj -Starships, I strongly dislike this video, simply because it really has nothing to do with the actual song, although the dancing and cuts go well with the song and it's not been badly edited i'm left baffled as to why there's a futuristic dance party on the set of Lost. One part of the editing  I do enjoy is the kaleidoscope effect of Nicki dancing at 2:04, this effect is one of the only parts which are at all alien like or could have anything to do with a Starship.
When Nicki moves to a hill top I think the fog/mist which is added to the background is a good effect in making the place look eerie but then again this really doesn't fit with the upbeat tempo of the song, nor the outfit which she is wearing. Around 2:50 there is a flicker of sky lights where there is good use of colouring to imitate some form of sunset, but i'm not really keen on the inverted colouring which follows, there's lots of neon paint and extra layers of dancers are added, giving you the effect of seeing double. The fake lava which spurts from behind Nicki Minaj is poorly edited and just adds to the tackiness of the whole video.



M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

My second video is M.I.A -Born Free, it depicts a genocide against red haired people. The videos portrayal of military force violence met a positive reception but caused controversy worldwide, it received a ban from Youtube in the US and UK With some critics praising the representation of oppression and others criticising the explicit material. I personally really enjoy the narrative of this video, because even though we are "born free" it's questionable how much freedom we have to be ourselves, I think this video is a good representation of a lot of the things which are taking place in the world which are being overlooked. Although this video is rather gruesome I find the whole idea of it rather fascinating. I also really enjoy Romain Gavras' work on M.I.A's song 'Bad Girls' a lot of M.I.A's music has a very political unheard voice to it.



My third video by Bombay Bicycle Club is quite different, when I first watched this I wondered if my computer was failing, but it's just the impression that the video gives off, in a way i'd say this video blurs the line between what's reality and what's not, but I think it's just because it makes you feel slightly uneasy. I have to say this is the only video without a narrative that i've ever been actually interested in watching, i'd say it's because there's quite a lot going on on the screen at the same time. And it's very dissimilar to normal music videos. I like that it's all continually lit the same, and the way they have short clips of random places people don't go often, looking fairly abandoned.

Music video analysis

I like 'The Suburbs' by Arcade Fire because the video tells a story, although the video is actually incredibly confusing you get a vague idea of what is happening, from watching this video it's made me incredibly interested in the short film 'Scenes from the Suburbs'.
I like the way it was filmed, there's a lot of tracking and I like the way it's based around a young boys memories of summer and the innocent fun he had. I like the shots of the houses especially because normally when a person is shown looking distant or deep in thought they look in to the sky, this is just different and i like that it's not so cliché.

You can watch 'Scenes From the Suburbs' on Vimeo here




There's a lot I like about Lana Del Rey's video for Born to Die, firstly i like that half of it is filmed with a filter which kind of distorts the image a little, I think this adds to the controlling relationship shown in the video effectively. As I am a fan of Lana Del Rey I like her clothes and make up used throughout, they're very different to what seems to be used in the majority of music videos, for example her make up is very 50's looking and a lot of her clothes are certainly not styled from this era.
I like the lighting used from 2:00-2:18, I find the whole of this section is very moving, it shows both sides of dark and light.