Prelim task - School Music Video

Today we where asked to create a preliminary piece of work to see out we faced lip syncing. Because we where in out uniforms for school the song we where given was Busted's 'That's what I go to school for'. We where given a camera and see what we could do in an hour. After the footage was taken we logged on to the macs and attempted to try and sync both the music with the lip movements. The program that we used was iMovie as it's a recommended video development software and we felt best that we got used to the tools as this will be the program for our final video. After some confusion we finally figured it out and had solid music video with lip syncing within it. 

My Group

Today we were asked to decide what groups we wanted to be in for our assignment so my close relationship and shared musical interests had to be taken in to account. In the end We decided the best group for us will be me, Scott Greenwood and Bradley Chick. This is because they are my close friends that I know we will be able I share ideas and making sure everyone is heard. However we do actually share the same interest in music so choosing the song for our video won't be be too much of a fuss which is always a bonus. 

Types of Music Videos

Over the past ten years, the development of music videos in the music industry has grown and changed immensely. New technology, abstract images and fresh ideas have encouraged artist these days to expand how they represent themselves in their music videos. It is all headed towards 3 main typologies being:

• Performance
• Conceptual
• Narrative  

Performance
A performance video focuses on showing footage of the artist or band either in a casual environment such as socialising with friends, or performing, whether that be live performance or staged performance.

Concept
Concept videos based around a single idea or concept and are usually unusual and obscure, even surreal for the audience. The unusual context is an attraction to many customers, which draws them in.
A successful concept video will keep the audiences entertained and constantly looking at what or who is on the screen.

Narrative
A song with a narrative based music video the song includes a narrative story of the lyrics/words being acted out in some way. This style relies on imagery to produce a story for the audience to follow and some narrative videos include clips from films that the song has been featured in. This seems to be used a lot in slower songs, often love songs.

Andrew Goodwin's 6 features of music videos

In his book, Dancing in the distraction factory written in 1992, Andrew Goodwin believe there are only 6 key features to how a music video is created and brought to life. I felt it was best to use this theory and understand these features as this will help me develop and plan my very own video in a few months time. The 6 features are as followed:

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.

This is where to would see the same types of styles in the same genres for example a rapper would be commonly seen with jewellery and followed with a group and a dance routine for a boy or girl band.
this can be seen in the work of JLS, as the are a very typical boy band group, who perform in their videos and usually have a dance piece.

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals.

This is just as it's sounds. The story of the song is brought to life in the video and will follow the same pattern as the song whilst the artist plays the song. Ed Sheeran's 'Lego house' is an example of this.

3. There is a relationship with the music and the visuals.

Similar to the last one but this chooses to play the music with the visuals on screen moving along with that tune. Seen in 'Bounce' by Calvin Harris. 

4. Making sure the 'Star' is utilised and seen by the public.

Music lately is all about the star image and more about the artist than the music they create. Well this is no different when the video is created. There will be close ups and common motifs which occur across their work to make sure that they are remembered. Seen most by artists like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. 

5. Frequent use or the notion of looking.

This is making sure that the viewers see what the person on screen is seeing. This is predominately used for men to look at the female body in some sexual expression. This was the case in 'What's My Name?' by Rhianna ft. Drake when Drake stares at Rhianna from behind in the supermarket.

6. Intertextual references. 

Music videos something make a reference to something else in television or music at that time or even the past that would only make sense if you know what they are referring too. This is also seen when there is a song from a films sound track and the video would feature scenes and references from the video. This is shown in the song "I See Fire" by Ed Sheeran, where the video shows clips of the film, "The Hobbit" as the song is played.
 

Introduction

After taking A level Media I have experienced planning and producing a Music magazine for a genre of my choice. This helped me greatly with a wide range of skills and the experience of professionalism with the world of media. Something that helped me definetely last year was the amount of research and planning that I had acounted for and this was my main source of production as what I researched was the core reason to why I produced anything on my own magazine. This year we have been set to produce a Music video again of our choice. Research and planning is something that cannot be squandered and must be taken seriously and for this assignment that's what I'll be doing. We where given a brief earlier this week in what has to be done for this assignment. The brief being 'a promotion package for the release of an album to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options: 

1) a website homepage for the band 

2) a digipak for the albums release 

3) a magazine advertisement for the digipak.

 By December I hope to have had my research and planned completed with a clear outline of what we will be doing and a start will be made to the production of my music video. My main aim is to achieve level 4 for my research and planning and I go about doing that by making sure I have a regularly updated blog showing my progress througherly and keeping it as in depth as in possible. I also go about achieving a level 4 by making sure my communication skills with my peers and teachers is perfect, i need to make sure that we are all on the same page at the same time and to me that's key. Finally I feel that having my very own flavour and style to my blog is very necessary as it will be the style of the video as well. This will show my personality within the blog and the video itself. This is how I believe I can achieve a good level 4 piece of work.