For visual effects, Taylor Swifts style is majority abstract, as there is little narrative or performance. What inspires us for this video is the overlapping techniques between two characters and the imaginative ideas behind it, rather than using just laying, they incorporated objects, such as broken glass, to layer over. looking very professional. The use of overlapping could convey the idea of power between the two characters, or how they need each other, something we would like to explore further into. The idea of this technique is something that excites our group and we are keen to trial it out for our video, exploring with different techniques with the way we edit, but also, the way we shoot the videos, for instance, using a projector and objects.
Indie music, also known as independent, is music produced independently from record labels. The term indie also describes a genre, such as indie rock and indie pop. Indie does not just mean an independent artists, as some 'indie' artists do not fall into a single style or genre and they usually create music that can be categorized into other genres.
1.With indie not being a set genre, it is much harder to find conventions for it, as it can be narrowed down into indie rock and indie pop, thus the reasoning for doing the other genres. But there is also other sub genres such as indie dance and just indie.
2.Low Budget
With the artists being independent, they tend to have a rather small budge for their music videos, this causes the videos to be rather simple in some cases to save money.
3.Live Performance
Indie artists, due to their small budget, tend to lean towards the idea of a performance video as it doesn't involve a lot of different money costing elements, as it is the artist performing the song. Although they may try and incorporate something else into their video to create a more visually appealing video. More commonly now, artists switch between performance and narrative.
4.Narrative
If the video has a higher budget, indie artists tend to go for a narrative video to create a more interesting video filled with creativity.
5.Simple
With the low budget, most music videos by indie artists are simple, but still show their creativity by not having the artist stood still singing. They still make a visually appealing video.
6. Clothing
Indie clothing is very common across the teenage girl demographic. The idea is that everyone has a different style, they are 'individual'. This relates to indie artists as most of them will have a very unique style.
Rock music is a genre of pop music that originally began in the 1950's in the United States and was called 'Rock and Roll'. By the mid and late 60's, particularly in the United Kingdom and United States, it ranged into multiple different styles. Its influence is mainly blues, rhythm and country. Rock is most centered around the electric guitar, usually part of a band consisting of a singer, electric bass guitar, drums and the electric guitar. The genre has become extremely diverse. Lyrics often are associated with love, like pop, but they also address a wide variety of themes that are frequently social and political. The 1960's are referred to as the 'golden age' or 'classic rock era' with a number f distinct artists emerged.
Typically, the conventions of rock music to a more now a date era are:
1.Performance
With rock being mainly bands, they show off the bands talent by also showing them performing, this can either be in front of a crowd, like a show, or performing as a 'rehearsal', but more commonly, they incorporate their performance into some sort of narrative. This means that there is no set angles with in this apart from close up's of the performers and their instruments.
2. Black and white
Black and white styles are often used in music videos, more commonly in the older era however, some rock bands are still influenced from the old school rock and interpret it into their video. This also helps a music video look sophisticated.
3.Dialogue
Rock videos tend to have a section within or before their video where the singer talks, this then gives the sense of a little story or to show their rebellion
4. Instruments
Instruments are the main focus of the rock genre, with them being filled with bands, this means that there will be a lot of close up shots of the instruments being played by the band.
5. Rebellious
Rock stars are stereotyped as being very rebellious with their actions, but also with their style of tattoos and piercings.
6.Fast Paced editing
This convention is mainly due to the quick tempo and beat of rock music, with the drums and guitar, that most videos edit to the beat.
7.Iconography
Rock has a huge range of iconic iconography, from the styles of the artists to what the audience of these bands would be like, some of the most common icons are
Hand Signals
Tattoos
drugs
Piercinga
Instruments
Alcohol
8.Style
Since the 70's, rock has been known to have their own unique style, with the make up and extravagant clothing, but on the other side of this, you had the lazy look, where they appear as they've just gotten out of bed. Now a days it is less likely to see the theatricality side of rock.
Pop music, also referred to 'Popular' music. It originates from the modern form from the western world during the 1950's to 1960's, deriving from Rock and Roll. Pop is known to be very energetic but can borrow elements from other genres such as urban, dance and rock.
More recently, in the 2000's, there has been 3 factors that have affected the pop genre, these factors include falling sales in CD's, Piracy, and the growth of pop careers through television talent shows such as X-Factor, Britain's Got Talent, Pop Idol etc. Critics and music industry insiders have stated that another reason for falling sales is that modern pop has a tendency to to be more formulaic and revenue-driven, less creative and lack of talent.
More modern pop music tend to have very similar conventions
1.Links Between lyrics and visuals
Relating to Andrew Goodwin's theory, having the visuals and lyrics match up is a key aspect in music videos. Within the Pop genre, these technique is used frequently and literally, shown from the examples below.
Never forget you
Never forget you
This video shows the development of a young girl, growing up but also referring back to her child memory, showing that she will never forget you.
Ill write your name
Taylor Swift Blank Space has a long list of visuals matching the lyrics, for instance, ill write you name, as she writes her lovers name into a tree.
Let's Go to the beach
Nicki Minaj opening line 'Let's go to the beach' sets the scene as she is dancing around on a beach.
2.Bright Colours
Pop videos are very visually appealing, with the use of bright colours used consistently through the mise en scene. Artists such as Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga love to work on this element.
Colour can be Incorporated into a video in all different ways, above are just a couple of ways. Nicki Minaj used very bright and vibrant and bold colours throughout in her music video, from the background, clothing, to her hair! where as Demi Lavato uses a more subtle style, cutting to a bright background in between shots that are filled with colour generally. Also Meghan Trainor used a very pale colour pallet overall.
3.Make up!
Artists in music videos tend to be rather extravigant with their make up, the styles and amount they wear. This applies to the females rather than the men.
Lady Gaga; Born this way
Katy Perry; Dark Horse
Ariana Grande; Break Free
4.Fashion
Each pop artist has a very unique style to them, making them a 'trend setter'. Some artists would have an extravagant style, were as on the other hand, some artists would just be very stylish with their clothes,
Justin Bieber
Lady Gaga
Ariana Grande
5. Close Up's
Close ups are a vital part in most pop music videos, as you are displaying the artist, and in a way 'showing off' the product you are selling. The idea is also to create more of a connection with the audience. In addition to this, most pop starts feature in their videos, as the close up's are of them and not actors.
Beyonce; Love on top
Rita Ora; Poison
Bruno Mars; Just the way you are
6.Love
A lot of pop songs are focused on the subject of love and heartbreak, as everyone experiences it making the songs relatable to the audience to gain a wider audience.
7.Dance/Choreography
Dance and choreography make a big feature in a video, as the viewer will remember the upbeat song associated with dance and would want to dance along to the song.
8.High Key Lighting
High key lighting is used throughout music videos to portray the happy and upbeat tempo of the song, and go along with the bright and vibrant colours of the video and the artist.
Today, my group and i started to look at possible songs we would like to do for our music video, although its early days, we thought if we had an idea of the style of music we plan on creating a music video for, it meant we have the summer to start thinking of some ideas for the video and researching more into it. Knowing the genre we want, the next step is finding a range of different female singers that are classified as indie, as my group and i do not want to rely on someone outside the media class because that can create some difficult challenges and to this means the star would have to be in our media class/group, to create a sense of verisimilitude.
Down below are the 5 favourite songs that as a group, we are considering for our final music video
Pvris "Let Them In"
Chvrches "The Mother We Share"
Sia "Free The Animal"
Gabrielle Aplin "Evaporate"
Birdy "All You Never Say"
With these 5 songs, they are relatively different, whether it be the lyrical content contains more, with a range of different verses, the beat, how fast the tempo is, or the visual elements pictured when listening to the song. Yet they are all female artists featured in the Indie genre.
My group and i will narrow down these songs to the top 3, where we can start to visualize the narrative for the video, and which has the best opportunities.
A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Music can be divided into different genres in many different ways. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often subjective and controversial, and some genres may overlap. As stated by wikipedia, giving a general idea of the definition of genre in the music industry.
And today we were introduced to three theorists, who express their views on genre and their definition.
David Duff- Believes that 'Genre is a recurring type or category of text, as defined by structural and thematic criteria.' Barry Grant-States that 'all genres have sub genre's, meaning that they divided into a more specific category, suggesting that this allows audiences to identify them specifically by their familiar and what becomes recognisable characteristics.' (1995) Steve Neale- Suggests that 'genres are instances of repetition and difference, genres are no systems, they are process of systemisation'
As our task begins, i feel like the best start would be to look at music videos i enjoy visually, ignoring the lyrical content, except to see if the lyrics and video have a relation as well as the music and visuals. To see what appeals to me as a viewer to these videos and whether it is something we would be able to interpret into our final product.
By looking at the range of music videos listed above, it is clear that the videos i am personally attracted to are ones which contain real life issues, or have comical factors. As i like the idea of seeing the world in different perspectives and how everyone lives a different life. but also, have a comical value that you could dance along and enjoy watching the visuals. By doing this little research, it has made it easier to know what i would like to see from our music video, although it depends on my groups opinions and what song we would do.
Above is my group and i's bloopers and mistakes during our preliminary process. Making this video made us realise some of silly mistakes, and how different the quality of these clips compared to our prelim, and by watching these, it made us learn from our mistakes.
What difficulties did you encounter during the process of creating your preliminary?
Before even beginning to create our prelim, we found it quite difficult to choose a song to copy, as they tend to be to highly advanced, with the technology they used. To begin with, we were planning to recreate "Falling" by HAIM, (video is below) as it incorporated more than one protagonist, which we wanted to experiment with, however the setting and mise en scene was far too extravagant for the facilities we had, which took us back to the drawing board. We then as a group decided to do Carly Rae Jepson "I really really like you" as we found this song to be more practical but was still pushing our previous skills. Once we had chosen the song and the section to use, and started filming, we found using the new camera for the first time (The DSLR) was more technical, as you had to make sure to focus on the correct point, as during shot 4, when Lauren jumps up, it would not focus on her, it would focus on the background, so we had to film before hand to get her in the shot then she ducked so it would still focus on her. Another problem we encountered was the fact we was unprepared when filmed, as the camera had a low battery, we didn't have any props or miss en scene and had not planned where we was filming, which taught us all to plan thoroughly before filming. Also, as we were filming, we only played the section of the song out loud we was filming, which we thought worked well, however, when we had to cut scenes, we realised that we had not started the song at the correct part, so when filming the final project, we plan on playing and filming the whole song just in case. And finally, when comparing the actual video to our prelim, you noticed to delay in actions, though only minor, it was noticed, which made us realise, we should take our time filming to make sure all the actions and lip syncing matched up, as it only took us less than a day to film and edit, we defiantly could have spent longer on the process.
What are you most proud about in your prelim?
During the process, i found that just seeing the final product, completed is what I'm most proud about, seeing it filmed, edited and put together makes me feel proud, that my group and i created this product. Although i am proud that we was able to replicate the video with good quality and for lip syncing for the first time, i feel it was a good attempt and we have learnt vastly, but will need more attempts before the final product. If i were to pick one section of the clip that i am most proud of is the section where the shot changes from shot 3 to 4, when Lauren jumps up from the bathroom to the street, as i feel the timing was accurate and when showing our video to the class, they also commented on this.
What have you learned that you WILL or WILL NOT do in your music video?
By creating our prelim, theres certain aspects that we have learnt to do for our music video, including the fact of playing the song fully out loud and film while doing so, and also, take time in filming and editing to make sure every section is perfect and if not, don't be afraid to re film just to get in perfect. Another point noted, is the fact that this video did not involve a lot of editing techniques which we plan on using in music video.
Total 51 seconds
although it was recommended that the clip was 20 - 30 seconds
we found with this music video, going up to 51 seconds gave us a bigger variety in shots, getting us to practise tracking rather than just having two still shots.
The task to behing the music video coursework is to recreate a section of a professional video, with it replicating all the shots and timings used.
Above is our song my group and i have decided to replicate for our preliminary material, we all chose to copy the first 50 or so seconds. The reason for choosing this song, was due to the fact it is a very well known, upbeat, popular song, making the lyrics easy to learn, as we only had a short time to create them. in addition to this, we found that having multiple settings and different camera angles in our prelim would have been useful, as for our main task, we plan to use these techniques and with this we was able to experiment with multiple lighting and movements within the scenes. Within the music video, personally i loved how the main protagonist does not lip sync entirely to the song, with their being sections where actions were involved, distracting him from the lip syncing (yawning and drinking the mouth wash), giving the video a different feel, as it does not come across so serious. Something that would be interesting for our final product.
