Analysis of previous student work

Studying and analysing previous year thirteen music videos not only provides us with the opportunity to witness different creative ideas and techniques, but also allows us to compare our current projects with successful ones from the past. It gives us as a group the opportunity to identify what we need to improve, and also what we should steer clear of as well.

Beastie Boys - Triple Trouble

This is an extremely conventional video for the hip-hop genre, as it is almost entirely made up of shots of the three actors singing into the camera, with the extensive use of hand gestures and conventional hip-hop attire.
The professional director Spike Jonze, who directed many of Beastie Boys' music videos, used many of these techniques when shooting their videos, which in my opinion makes this video very successful. Perhaps one of the biggest compliments I can give is that in my opinion this video could pass for an actual Beastie Boys video (if there were higher production values, and it was actually Beastie Boys performing in the video).
The effects used, especially the unconventional colour changes, are very effective and give the video something different and unconventional. It is typical of hip-hop videos (such as many of the Beastie Boys videos) to be relatively repetitive and so this added colour effect works very well in giving the video something different.

Overall, I think that this was a very successful music video. They stuck to the conventions and stereotypes where they had to, but they weren't completely restricted to the traditional format and tried some different ideas when it was possible. The idea of colour is an important factor in our video, and so the use of these unconventional colour effects could be something that we could look to use when it comes to editing, as I feel it worked very well in this video.

Shot Lists

Below are some shot lists that I have put together of the last few days. As we all know, on the day, filming my change and these are therefore just guidelines to what we may produce. Also I'm sure we will have lots of different shots on the list.

You may think the list is quite small, this is due to a few reasons, firstly as we plan on re-using a lot of shots to represent different parts of the song. Another reason is that we are aware that on the day we will be sure to use what we have and make the most out of our thoughts and ideas. This shot list below is therefore a rough/mini version of what we have.

Shot Lists

Group: Ian, Stan, Oli, Natalie

Teacher: Miss Hill / Mr Morrison

Storyboards!!

An essential step in our pre-production stage is the storyboarding for our actual production. Before filming we have rough ideas that we want to achieve in our film, this are drawn down onto paper where we can look back on after filming. Remember these are only rough, potentional ideas that we have, we may not use them exactley how they appear on the paper.

I have managed to scan the four pages of storyboards onto my computer, and as you can see below we have our storyboards. Please take a look through them. :-)

I'm afraid this is the best quality I could manage to scan onto my computer, hopefully you can see all the details of the storyboards!!

Ian

Self Evaluation of Planning and Research

This provisional evaluation is an important self-reflective tool helping us to improve through looking at a structured criteria. Not only is this a chance for us to look back at our work and see where we can improve, but it also allows you to leave us some constructive criticism and comments around areas of weakness.

Planning and Research:

• Research into similar products and a potential target audience - This is an area that I feel we are stronger in. We have included a mass of textual analysis and research into a potential target audience. Level 4

• Organisation of actors, locations, costumes and props - This area is slightly harder to evaluate as we still have a few loose ends that need to be tied in terms of the selection of actors and the final decisions on all of the locations. Level 3 (low)

• Work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting and storyboarding - Although the work on this area has been (largely) completed, it has yet to be scanned and copied onto the blog. This means there is actually little evidence at the moment. We aim to improve this within the next few days. However, the evaluation must be based on our evidence up to this date. Level 2

• Time management - In this area we are ahead in some parts and behind in others. Therefore I have to conclude that our time management is not 'excellent' but more 'proficient'. Level 3

• Level of care in presentation - I feel we have made significant improvements in this area, and I hope you will agree that our presentation is uncontroversial, easy on the eye, neat and tidy, and professional looking. Level 3/4 (boarder)

• Skill in the use of digital technology/ICT - We have included many videos, pictures, links and original written posts on our blog so far. We soon hope to improve this area by adding sound clips. Level 3

• Communication skills - This area is one in which we feel particularly strong and conscious about, as clear communication is key in getting our visions and ideas across to readers. We also pride ourselves in using more sophisticated communication skills in terms of grammar, vocabulary and layout to project a more professional image. Level 4

The above shows that we vary in grade depending on the area. The areas that we score lower in at the moment are our top priority for improvement. We already have a lot of evidence to add for shotlistings, storyboarding and scripting. This should boost our grade from the provisional one. The same goes for organisation of actors. By averaging out all of the separate area grades, we can find a fitting provisional grade.

I feel it would be fair to conclude that our provisional self evaluative grade is Level 3 (mid)

As usual we welcome any comments that you may have. All will help us to improve so pleased don't be shy.

Many thanks,

Oli

Digipak Analysis

A Digipak is a style compact CD or DVD packaging.They typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.

One example of a Digipak in commercial use is Flight of the Conchords second album, I Told You I Was Freaky, from 2009.



Flight of the Conchords are a folk parody duo from New Zealand comprised of JEmaine Clement and Bret McKenzie. The pair have found worldwide success with their hybrid blend of musical talent and comic genius. This is evident within their Digipak, as inside the package there is a sleeve in which the CD is contained, and on this sleeve there are pictures either side of the two artists crying diamond tears. This is a reference to the opening track of the album 'Hurt Feelings', where they sing 'These are the diamond tears of a rapper', which shows the comedic side of the duo.





However, they are also very talented musicians, and another unconventional feature of this Digipak is the inclusion of the guitar chords for all their songs alongside their lyrics for the use of up and coming folk parody hopefuls.
There is also an intersting picture that runs across two sides of the Digipak (when open) of Bret and Jemaine taken from behind them while they are on stage. Not only is this an attractive design, but it could also connote that fans that have bought the Digipak are part of the band, which is a very appealing feature.

Although some Digipaks don't provide much more substance than the standard packaged CD, I believe this example to be extremely successful and one that we can hopefully take a lot from when it comes to creating our own.

Further Costume Ideas

Our first idea was to involve fruit costumes in our video. After planning our storyboards (Which will be up soon) we’ve decided that we are going to stick with the idea of fruit.

I completed a questionnaire as seen in an earlier post, I managed to narrow down our target audience to a precise age group and intellectual group, from this information I then asked a select group of individuals that fell into our category. I ask each of them if they knew the song itself, and then told them our idea of having actors in fruit costumes for our music video. I received a positive response from the audience that I asked.

Breaking down the costumes

Below are all pictures of each fruit, these are not pictures of our actual outfits, but are similar to what we hope to purchase.

Banana Outfit - We have already arranged to get this banana outfit from a friend. This outfit pictured is not the exact outfit we will be getting but they all follow the same style.

Orange Outfit – Our second idea was to have an orange outfit, another fruit costume. We are going to have a total of four actors who we are friends with and have asked to act for us. We are going to have to buy this outfit as we do not have any friends or family that we could loan one off.

Apple Outfit – Same situation as the Orange, we will have to buy this outfit, something that arose when looking at costumes was that all costumes vary in length both the arms and legs. To combat this we've decided the actors will wear black tights on their legs and black long sleeved tops, this will create a less fleshy-human look and will leave just the colour of the fruit itself standing out.

Melon Outfit – This is the last outfit we will be having in our film, same situation also applies for this outfit, we will have to buy it with our own money. After the filming we plan to sell on the outfits to make back a bit of our money.

Below are pictures of each of the outfits we intend on getting. Hope you like our outfits, if you’ve any suggestions we would like to hear them! Or you can just tell us if you like them or not.

Thanks,

Ian

Textual Analysis - "Fireflies"

This video was directed by Steve Hoover in 2009. The song was Owl City's first single and was an unexpected success in both UK and USA reaching number one in both charts. The music video received a lot of interest after the song had climbed up the charts.

The song is both performance based and slightly concept. This video falls into Goodwin's 6 features of a music video. Such as "The link between lyrics and visuals" this use of Goodwin's feature helps to stress certain lyrics being sung. For example when the text is written on the toy it is there to echo what the vocalist (Matt Thiessen) is singing. Also when he sings words which are labelled as button on his organ that he is playing.

The video is mainly performance as the whole video is shot in one scene with lots of different shot varieties. This can get a bit repetitive but it is still very well edited and flows together well. There isn't really any narrative to the songs video, although it could be argued that there is a start and finish where the toys come alive throughout the song.

I chose this video as I think that I can learn a lot from it. It is a concept based video which is close to what we hope to create. Also the precise editing is what I would like to replicate in our video.

Ian

Target Audience (Questionnaire)

I have been doing more research into our target audience, hoping to be able to narrow down our possible audience. To achieve this I have created a questionnaire, which I gave out to some of my peers and asked them to fill out, I asked an equal number of boys and girls so that their could not be any gender bias problems with this questionnaire. I will now tally up my results and come to some conclusions.

1. Are you Male or Female?

Male: 10

Female: 10

2. Which age group do you fall into?

Under 15: 3

15 - 18: 11

19 - 23: 4

24 (+): 2

3. What is your average household income?

£ 0 - 10,000: 0

£ 10,000 - 20,000: 2

£ 20,000 - 30,000: 5

£ 30,000 - 40,000: 6

£ 40,000 - 50,000: 4

£ 50,000 - 60,000: 2

£ 60,000 (+): 1

4. What is your normal way of obtaining music?

Buying a single or album (CD): 6

Downloading singles or albums (iTunes): 6

Sharing Programmes (Bittorent): 6

Other (Please State): 2

(Ripping songs from internet, i.e. from YouTube) x2

5. Do you normally watch music videos?

Yes: 7

No: 5

Sometimes: 8

6. If yes, which kind of music videos do you enjoy most?

Concept based: (Random video, with little or no relation to the song): 11

Narrative based: (The video follows a story from start to end): 5

Performance based: (Features the band or the singer, performing the song in the video): 4

From these results I can gather some trends, one question that was most relative to our music video was the last one just above this writing, as the type of music video is going to have a big effect on what audience it directs itself at. We are wanting to create a concept based music video. Results from this question show that concept based videos are among the most popular. Our questionnaire was mainly asked on 15 - 18 year olds and these are who we are basing our target audience on, also we will be aiming them at the higher intellectuals of this age group. As we hope to add lots of intertextual reference that we would think people are age group would understand.

Ian

Textual Analysis - "Star Guitar"

Star Guitar is a song by The Chemical Brothers recored in 2002. The music video for the song was directed by Michel Gondry. We have already spoke at Gondry in a previous post, after admiring him as a director I now want to analyse some of his work.

Star Guitar is a very fast paced song, it has 126 beats per minute throughout the song, Gondry uses this to his advantage. As we already know Gondry is a bit of a perfectionist, with this song having lots of beats, Gondry conforms to one of "Goodwin's 6" throughout the video, by which every beat is represented by a visual. Similarly to his video for "Daft Punk - Around The World" where he has a human act fom each beat of the song. In Star Guitar he has landmarks to represent each beat.

Gondry claims that he thought of this idea when travelling on the train in France on holiday, after re-watching the footage again he thought it would fit in with this song. The entire song is filmed from one position on one train journey, however Gondry actually travelled along this train line 10 times to get all different shades of lighting for his footage.

This video is not a performance based video, Gondry focusses on a concept and arguably, narrative based video. The video is extremely well constructed and this is why I have chosen to study it. The editing is perfect, the framing of all his shots are just how he desires them to be and he manages to cut on every single beat. In relation to Goodwin's 6, Gondry links the "music to the visual" as you will now know from watching. He has landmarks repeating over and over again to match the timing of the song.

Although we cannot achieve the level of CGI that Gondry has in this video, we hope to create a song with a similar effect of cutting on the beat, I chose this song as I believe it is at the highest level for fine tuning and editing. Clearly this song as achieve great success with over half a million views on YouTube alone. We will continue to use inspiration like this to help aid us in our goal to creating a similar music video.

Ian

Location Scouting and Analysis

Our media production requires several filming locations. These locations need to meet requirements set out by ourselves in order to gain the most out of our ideas. These requirements include:

- complimenting our visual style and our ideas as a whole

- being able to shoot reasonably conveniently in terms of distance and travel

- being able to shoot efficiently in terms of environmental issues i.e. how busy the area is with the general public, the tendency for the area to change visually and affect continuity

- being non-recognisable to the majority to create a sense of professionalism

To try and decide on the perfect locations for our music video, I have decided to put each possible location through a screening process. This will consist of an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each location. We will then be able to see more clearly which locations are better suited to our needs. Then, with help from you're feedback and comments, we can pick our final location choices and get filming!


The possible locations:

Cherry Hinton Hall Park, Cambridge

Strengths - consists of a large green space with trees, two small paddling pools and a play area. All of which can be used to create some interesting shots. A low profile means this park is unlikely to be busy during a shoot.

Weaknesses - not too convenient in terms of distance. The play area creates a chance of young children being at the location during the shoot.

Castle Hill, green space, Cambridge

Strengths - originally an Iron Age fort, the castle hill offers an expansive view, a large green space and trees. All of which can be used to create some exclusive shots. This green space also has a low profile and therefore is unlikely to be busy.

Weaknesses - not convenient in terms of distance. The historic hill could attract tourists during the shoot.

Christchurch Park, Ipswich

Strengths - includes a large green space, tennis courts, shelters, ponds, trees and a croquet lawn. These facilities could help spark some creative shots. The park is fairly convenient in terms of distance.

Weaknesses - the park's high profile means the park is likely to be busy, or at least contain a fair number of people, during the shoot.

Nowton Park, Bury St Edmunds

Strengths - offers a massive green space (200 acres) with trees and ponds, creating many possibilities for shooting. Very convenient in terms of distance.

Weaknesses - fairly high profile locally may mean it will be busy during the shoot. Recognisable locally, reducing our look of professionalism.

As you can see there are several dilemmas. For example, deciding between travel distance and being locally recognisable. For this particular dilemma I feel Christchurch park in Ipswich offers a great compromise. However, this location is likely to be busy during the shoot. Shooting in either Cambridge location would ensure a quiet shoot, but then travel distance becomes an issue again. We will need to consider all factors before deciding a location.

Do you have any experience of these locations? We would really appreciate any feedback for these locations to help us decide.

I will subsequently post our final location choice as well as some new location possibilities for a different scene.

Many thanks, and remember to leave some comments.

Oli

Directors Study - Roman Coppola

I have chosen to study Roman Coppola as a music video director, Coppola was raised in a media saturated setting, he grew up in New York City with both of his parents being heavily involved in the media industry. Roman's father, Francis Ford, who famously directed both; The Godfather I and II, sent Roman to the New York's University Film School when he was growing up. Roman had always been surrounded by the medias influence throughout his childhood.

From watching various music videos from numerous directors I have been picking out ideas that I think would work well in our video, and perhaps ideas that we could adjust to suit our music video. After viewing some of Roman's work I knew I had come across a very unique director whom I could learn a lot from.

Below is a video directed by Coppola - 'Funky SquareDance' by Phoenix"

(I know it's nearly 10 minutes long but I really encourage you to watch the whole video!!!)

From this video I'm sure you are thinking that you have never seen a music video like it. That is why I have chosen to study this, although we cannot really relate to camera shots and lighting effects used by Roman. We can appreciate his pre-production skills, such as the numerous transitions used and the precision of the edits to the audio. (Especially effective from 4:00, onwards)

This video was invited to the permanent collection at the New York, Museum Of Modern Art because of it's unique idea. I especially like the section of this video where he speaks to the audience, the text is directly interacting with the viewers, from 7:10 onwards. He is speaking to the audience and even tells them what he wanted to achieve from the video. This video also falls into the postmodern category because of features such as this, Roman breaks the fourth wall and goes against conventional music videos, he interacts with the audience, talking to them through visual text.

This is one of my favourite music videos, I will be continuing to study and analyse more music videos from various directors. I believe this video is a key example of a successful concept music video, similar to what we hope to achieve.

Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video. I would appreciate any comments or questions. Thanks

Ian

Website Analysis

In order to produce a website about our chosen artist, we figured it would be a good idea to analyse the offical Vampire Weekend website in order to find out the various styles used (ie the format of the website, official band typography and images etc...) and also the content of the website (songs, videos, pictures, tour dates, merchandise among others) and just the general appearance of the website.

The opening page is a full-page image of the cover of their second album, 2009's Contra. This page includes links at the top to such website features as news, videos, pictures, merchandise which was to be expected. Something else that will have only recently come into the conventions of an official artist website are the links to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which is also at the top of the page with the other links. The website also includes an email address and other contact information.

By following techniques used in the production of this website we hope to create our very own website. This site has given us many ideas and other things to think about, and hopefully we can use the influences of this page to help us produce a successful website of our own.

Due to current technical problems we have been unable to put up screen shots of the related web pages but will do so as soon as possible with further analysis.

Goodwin's 6 - Features of Music Videos

Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features in music videos. They are:

- A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
- A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
- Genre-related style and iconography present.
- Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
- Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
- Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

From studying countless music videos from every type of musical style and type of music video director, I have noticed that almost every video has been influenced by this set of conventions. They not only provide the basis for analytical purposes, but have also become something that artists and directors look to when creating ideas and formats for their music videos.

We believe that including certain aspects of Goodwin's 6 features would benefit our music video a great deal as they have already been proven successful on a much larger scale.

Lyrical Breakdown

Lyrics are arguably the most important and influential feature of a song, this therefore has required a lot of our attention during the postproduction of our video, including the planning and storyboarding. The lyrics in our song, A-Punk are quite bizarre; they are unconventional lyrics but we feel this will aid us in our mission to produce the conceptive music video that we desire. Below I have posted the lyrics to the song, I have also annotated (in red) what we have thought we might do with the lyrics in the visuals.

Johanna drove slowly into the city

The Hudson River all filled with snow

She spied the ring on His Honor's finger

Oh-oh-oh

(In this opening verse we will need to introduce the characters, we have planned to get an actress to play 'Johanna' we want to do this as she can be a reoccurring feature throughout the video. The video can follow Johanna, starting in a car driving to an urban setting throughout the song as she is involved with the different predicaments.)

A thousand years in one piece of silver

She took it from his lilywhite hand

Showed no fear – she'd seen the thing

In the Young Men's Wing at Sloan-Kettering

(In this verse the lyrics describe locations and actors interacting, this is where we will require more actors, we are trying to get some of our friends from performing arts to act for us as they already have experience of performing infront of a camera. Having four fruit costumes will require four actors, we will be able to re-use these actors in other scenes such as this verse.)

Chorus:

Look outside at the raincoats coming, say OH (x 2)

ey ey ey ey

ey ey ey

(This is the chorus of the song and is repeated again at the end of the song. We plan to have our fruit costumes dancing in time with the rhythm of the song in this scene. This section of music is also the slowest part of the song, at the beginning of the chorus the music really slows down and there is a break in the lyrics. We think that this is a great opportunity for us to slow down the filming using some precise and careful editing.)

His Honor drove southward seeking exotica

Down to the Pueblo huts of New Mexico

Cut his teeth on turquoise harmonicas

Oh-oh-oh

(We want to link our lyrics to the visuals on screen, we already have the abnormal idea of having fruit costumes, in this verse we had the idea that the actors in the costumes would have Mexican themes with them, we have large sombrero hats which can be used as props)

I saw Johanna down in the subway

She took an apartment in Washington Heights

Half of the ring lies here with me

But the other half's at the bottom of the sea

(This verse involves a lot locations, whilst brainstorming we decided that would would use a train station for the 'subway' scene, we will have the same 'Johanna' acting for us, we will use either the local train station or any other subway/underground location that we can use, we will go out location scouting for ideas and will post photos up on our blog to get some feedback)

Chorus:

Look outside at the raincoats coming, say OH (x 4)

ey ey ey

(As I stated before, we will have similar scenes during the two choruses in the song, also the song quickly cuts out on the 'ey ey ey' so I think we will end on a dramatic note on screen as it would reflect the sharp exit of the song)

Ian