Research:
The research process was by far the most interesting part as it gave me an outline of what techniques I need to apply to my own Music Video as well as give me a visual insight into what an audience expects from a music video.
I personally think our group went to high expectations when it came to research as we did excessive amounts into order to have our final piece reflect the narrative and genre we chose for our final piece. I researched various music videos and analysed some so that I could see what artists already produce and what techniques are consistent.
I also research media theorists such as Carol Vernallis a media theorist, who wrote a book regarding 'The Kindest Cuts: Functions and Meaning of Music Video Editing', this book explores how the editing within film and music videos differ from each other and Andrew Goodwin wrote a book called 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory'; this book is based around his interests in visual language and imagery that was implicit and explicit with music videos. Goodwin always wondered whether music videos reflected the society in which we lived in and whether there were gender inequality and gender power relations portrayed within music videos.
Planning:
In order to come up with the perfect idea for our music video in which we are all passionate about and all equally have an input in, Connie and Emily decided to sit down and begin to brainstorming as unfortunately I wasn't in college to do so, so I expressed my thoughts via messenger so that I had an input during the process, they did this by sending me image of all the brainstorming ideas they had done.
They started with a general Spider-Diagram outlining five songs with a broad story-lines that could match them, they decided upon six songs in order for us to have options when picking out our final one as well as giving us diversity within our planning.
After they had finished brainstorming, they decided to expand on the ideas suggested and made individual Spider-Diagrams for each song, going into detail with what shot types and narrative that we want them all to include.
A common theme in most of these ideas created by Connie and Emily is to incorporate a story within the music video, Connie seems to be very keen on creating a film with a solid narrative because those are her favourite kind of music videos to watch.
At the start of the planning process I was torn between what idea I wanted to do as I was conflicted with two ideas that I really loved the idea of;
The ideas I were torn between was the idea we chose to do 'The Wombats - I only wear Black' due to it portraying happiness and how we find our inner happiness I love the fact that the they start of as a monster who feels like he isn't accepted within society because they have no inner happiness, they are always sad and going through every day life with sadness instead of happiness.
I like the fact that this idea has a simple narrative that is expanded upon throughout the duration of the music video and shows someone growing as a person and my other favourite idea that they came up with was for the song 'Thoughts - Tate McRae' as it is a song written by a low-budgeted artist that started out on YouTube so I think it would be amazing to bring more attention upon her song by us creating a music video for it.
For our music video, I created a brief outline that documented our idea as well as the meaning behind it. The song we have chosen to create a music video is 'The Wombats - I Only Wear Black'. We chose this song due the lyrics being quite negative towards life and our idea is a narrative story that focus' upon a monster going through the struggles that people go through in their day to day life, our main character that will portray the daily struggles is a monster that is constantly unhappy and clouded, we took inspiration from the lyrics in 'I only wear black' which has quite down-hearting lyrics such as "sometimes you win but generally, you lose" and "sometimes you laugh but usually, you cry."
We want to portray the monster in a gloomy manor of always has a black cloud over his head, so even daily activity seems like a chore; waking up in the morning, making breakfast, showering, getting dressed, meeting friends, being sociable. The monster doesn't look after themselves or have many friends, this will be shown through a montage of his day all done very slow paced.
Although the lyrics in the song constantly stay negative, we don't want our narrative to, we want to contrast the lyrics by featuring. The monster seeing other people enjoying life and deciding that they want to join in and so the build up to the end of the song will be filled with a montage of the monster working to improve themselves; waking up happily, eating healthy, being sociable, creating friends.
As the song ends the monster will shave off all of his fur and reveal that they are a normal human underneath but have just been hiding from society. This is in order to portray the significance in how they are feeling on the inside can reflect on the outside and you have to work from within to create happiness.
In order for us to get an idea of the structure of our music video, Connie constructed a story-board as she has created story-boards previously in projects we have worked on and are well presented and easy to read from so thats why we chose her to take control for this one.
These storyboards documents the shots and imagery that we would like to portray within our music video, the storyboard allows us to have a rough template of what shots we will be using while filming making it a lot easier for us when it comes to the duration of our filming schedule.
We decided to keep some of our second storyboard to allow us to have some free creativity when we are filming instead of having a strict template that we have to follow step by step, the gaps are there for us to be able to determine what footage would fill the gap when we are filming depending on timing and weather.
Overall, I think our storyboards are a solid outline to what we would like our music video to look like as well as giving us the freedom to change it during filming and seeing what shots would fit the gaps within our storyboard. I am thankful for Connie being the person who created the storyboard as her drawings are consistent and match the captions that she added to each doodle.
Location:
During the planning process, I took it upon myself to take lead role on location scouting as I am quite familiar with areas around Nuneaton that wouldn’t be too busy for us to film our Music Video.
For our music video we wanted to feature various locations as the music video is going to document the monsters everyday life and how he fights for inner happiness. The monster will be featured at home doing his morning routine, outside, going into town as we want to document every day life as well as contrasting it with things like going to weight watchers, reading, jogging, eating healthy, dating which is in complete contrast to the first part of the music video where the monster is sadly going though a mundane life.
Hartshill Hayes Country Park: A Peaceful, leafy park with a visitor centre, walking trails, playground & a weekend tea kiosk. Hartshill Hayes is a 14 minute drive from my home in Atherstone and offers parking for only £3.
Camphill: Camphill is Emily's home town, so it is a cheap alternative for us. I would be able to drive to there as it is only a 10 minute drive from home and I could pick Connie up along the way or she could get public transport to Emily's and meet us.
Nuneaton Town: Nuneaton Town will be easy for us to get to as I could drive and pay for parking or we could get public transport depending on what we would like to do and what day we choose as it could be busy and interrupt parking.
Riversley Park: This location will be easy to get to as it is walking distance from Nuneaton Town so we wouldn't have to worry about transport. We could park up and shoot in town, then walk to the park.
We have chose against using Atherstone as it is quite a dense location and doesn't feature many events we could use for everyday life and can be quite busy with delivery lorries plus Connie and Emily both live in Nuneaton so it would be easier if it was only myself that had to travel plus I don't mind because I drive and none of the others do yet.
The location we have decided to film in was Connie’s house which is located near Pingles, partly due to convenience and also for our music video we are aiming to do a day in the life style video so its useful to have Connie's house available to use to film the day to day functioning of our monster. We are also planning to use the area around Connie's house as well, Riversley Park is also going to be a key area that we film in due to its accessibility from both Connie's home as well as college. During the filming process we decided against going into Nuneaton Town, Camphill and Hartshill Hayes due to the realisation of the song being to short and not having enough time to fit everything in so we just stayed in and around Connie’s Home.
Overall, I think the locations we chose worked in our favour and were all close together so we didn't have to worry about travel money as they were all walking distance from college, as Riversley Park is a 5 minute walk from college and Connie's home is 10 minute walk from Riversley making is very convenient for us all.
Monster Making:
Due to our group decided upon the music idea of 'The Wombats - I only wear Black' which focus' upon a monster and having a true narrative; this idea was one of the ideas that I preferred from the start as the narrative we created for the song was to have a monster who finds happiness and how we find our inner happiness.
I love the fact that they start of as a monster who feels like he isn't accepted within society because they have no inner happiness, they are always sad and going through every day life with sadness instead of happiness. I like the fact that this idea has a simple narrative that is expanded upon throughout the duration of the music video and shows someone growing as a person. We also decided that Emily is going to be the monster for our video as she doesn't get embarrassed easily and was happily willing to become the monster.
For the costume planning myself and Connie took a trip into Nuneaton and scouted through various shops that were mostly charities shops because they are very affordable, we managed to find many items that we could use for the costume. The items including 1 metre long fur material, fur scarf, brown masks, eyes, wool and a pair of shoes.
Connie decided that she would like to create the final costume as she thinks she will do a good job due to her being very creative, I personally think she will do the best job as she has created various things like this previously.
Overall, we spent £24 on the monster costume which worked out at only £8 each due to some of the items being pricey but the quality in them were outstanding. I am quite pleased with what we purchased and I can't wait for the process of creating to begin, to document the process of creating Connie is going to set up a camera and record it to create a time lapse of the process.
For the costume planning, myself and Connie took a trip into Nuneaton and scouted through various shops that were mostly charities shops because they are very affordable, we managed to find many items that we could use for the costume. The items including 1 metre long fur material, fur scarf, brown masks, eyes, wool and a pair of shoes.
During the mask making process, Connie decided that during the process of creating the mask she would record herself in order to create a time lapse video to show the documentation of our music video. We also decided that Emily is going to be the monster for our video as she doesn't get embarrassed easily and was happily willing to become the monster.
I personally think this idea was one of our strongest as it allows us to look back at the process of our creation and allow us to reflect more on what we could have done better if we had more time and expenses. If we had more time we could have create a full costume instead of just a mask, feet and arm gloves; we could have also added extra details to each of these components.
Mask:
If we had extra time with the mask, we would have changed the strap on the mask in order for it to sit nicely on the face as we just used the strap that was originally on the mask which was too big for Emily so she had to tuck it behind her ears so it would balance and sit more realistically.
Feet: For the feet if we had more time we would have sewed the fur on instead of making do with staples as the fur fabric was too thick for the fabric and kept breaking as Emily was walking through various scenes.
Gloves: If Connie had the chance to redo the gloves she would have also used gloves as the hands instead of making them from scratch and having to paint the fingers. This would be a lot easier as we wouldn't have used up time painting the hands and waiting for it to dry.
Luckily, some of the materials Connie already had at home so we didn't have to worry about buying some things; the things Connie already had fake teeth and some brown tights that she used as hands. Everything else was bought from charity shops and sewing shops in nuneaton and came to around £8 each.
Survey:
The survey I used to conduct research was created by Connie as she knew what questions to ask an audience where as I was confused by it all, also due to Connie planning the ideas we had to choose from I thought she would know the target audience we needed to aim our survey at more.
The results from our survey were used in order to create the best music video for our audience as well as seeing what techniques people like to see within a music video and if lyrics should connect with the music video or if it should be the editing that is important component towards the making of a music video.
Results from our Survey:
Q1 - Everybody who took our survey watch Music Videos on YouTube which is a popular site for many artists due to it being a free platform to upload to as well as a free website to view.
Q2 - The results for this question are very mixed due to genre being a broad question and the music industry offering a variety; however, the majority prefer Indie music. Luckily, the music we have chose for our music video fit the indie genre.
Q3 - The results for this question vary, but most of our audience prefer Narrative music videos which is the approach our group want to take for our music video, so the results from this question work in our favour.
Q4 - The results for this question were tied, 4 people prefer the artist making an appearance in their music video as well as 4 people don't prefer having the artist make an appearance in their music video. This question was added just to see what an audience likes to see within a music video, our music video won't have the artist making an appearance due to us only being students and not having a relationship with The Wombats.
Q5 - This question is linked to Q4 as we asked our audience the reasoning behind why they chose the answer they did in Q4, most people said they like to have the artist within the music video because it allows them as an audience to create a relationship with the artist and get an insight into the artist visuals.
Q6 - The results from this question show that most people prefer it when the music videos connects to the lyrics of the song; this is an approach our group are taking we are trying to link the lyrics to the visuals of our music video in order to create a narrative storyline.
Q7 - This question is linked to Q6 as we asked our audience the reasoning behind why they chose the answer they did in Q6, most people said that having the lyrics connect with the music video allows the audience to relate more to the music video as well as the lyrics creating an outline for narrative.
Q8 - The results from this question shows that editing is a very important component for music videos, the editing within our music video will be very important as we need to cut our footage to the lyrics and beats of the song.
Q9 - This question is linked to Q8 as we asked our audience the reasoning behind why they chose the answer they did in Q8, our audience say that the editing helps the video to compliment or contradict the lyrics within the music video to connote meaning.
Q10 - This question shows that the majority of our audience are 16-20.
Focus Group:
In class we conducted a focus group in order to get feedback from multiple students in order for us to progress our idea. Here are some notes, pointers and opinions that we collected from our focus group after presenting our music video idea to them. We are very pleased with the opinions given and think constructing this presentation was very important as it gave us the perspective of outsiders before starting to film so that we can make changes or add to the narrative if the group feels like something is missing.
Class Notes:
- Daft Punk - Da Funk - Use for inspiration
- Finding a jumper and he becomes inspired to get happy again {There is a note or something in the shirt, some kind of inspirational note that helps him}
- Falls in love with something or someone which helps him to get happy again {Dancing with an item of clothing, falling in love with somebody, clothing or an item}
- Watching campy horror films {Even the people on the tv are screaming at him}
- Italian neorealism {Just walking through town with the costume on and getting people's natural reactions to it}
- Really rubbish things happening to him throughout the day {Dogs running away from him, raining on him, bags breaking, loosing on a scratch card etc.}
Filming:
Before we started to film our Music Video we decided to create a Gantt Chart so that we could see what areas within this project that we need to complete, we overlapped some tasks due to there being 3 of us so we could do some tasks at the same time. This allows our group to finish areas of this task quicker, we also created this Gantt Chart in order for us to keep on top of filming as well as us having a brief outline of what is going on, so that we could keep up to date with our plans. This helped us stick to a schedule and allow us to see if any time was available if plans were disrupted by weather.
In order for us to get an idea of the structure of our music video, Connie constructed a
story-board as she has created story-boards previously in projects we have worked on and are well presented and easy to read from so thats why we chose her to take control for this one.
The storyboards documented the shots and imagery that we wanted to portray within our music video, the storyboard allows us to have a rough template of what shots we will be using while filming making it a lot easier for us when it comes to the duration of our filming schedule. We decided to keep some of our second storyboard to allow us to have some free creativity when we are filming instead of having a strict template that we have to follow step by step, the gaps are there for us to be able to determine what footage would fill the gap when we are filming depending on timing and weather.
Overall, I think our storyboards are a solid outline to what we would like our music video to look like as well as giving us the freedom to change it during filming and seeing what shots would fit the gaps within our storyboard. I am thankful for Connie being the person who created the storyboard as her drawings are consistent and match the captions that she added to each doodle.
The way our group communicated for filming was through 'Facebook Messenger' as it was a quicker platform for us to discuss our availability as well as create calendar posts to remind us of the days we had planned to film upon. The messages between our group were purely regarding filming, planning and editing. We also used this platform to see when we could film together due to our schedules not matching. We managed to find 2 days in one week where our schedules matched, due to all of us working most days, however that wasn't always the same situation for continuing weeks of the process.
Overall, I think our filming process went quite well however we spent a lot of time procrastinating when it came around to filming or we over-lapped plans resulting in us either rushing or not getting enough filming done in the time we had available which looking back was very stupid of us as we should of all prioritised this project. This was everyones fault not just one person as throughout the process one of us did it at least once, so no one was worse than each other.
Towards the end of filming we had to change who played the monster due to un-planned obstacles so the height of the monster could slightly differ which is frustrating due to us wanting continuity throughout as we were creating a narrative music video.
Editing:
Due to us using two cameras for filming meant we had 2 SD cards full of footage, I decided to go through both SD cards and create different folders in order to make it easier for ourselves when it comes round to sorting out the footage for Adobe Premiere Pro.
Once I created the folders to sort the footage into, I gathered our group in the class room and we all took the time to watch each clip and delete ones which weren't perfect quality and separated the footage into different folders depending on what the footage consisted of.
This process made it a lot easier for our group when it came around to editing as we all knew which footage was where, making the post production a lot quicker so we didn't have to constantly be looking for certain footage as it was in a designated place.
I decided to separate our footage into these folders:
- Morning Routine
- Park Footage
- People's Reaction
- Lifestyle
- Reveal
To edit our music video Connie used ‘Adobe Premiere Pro’ as it is a simple editing software that we were taught early on the year and are very familiar with, Connie used simple editing techniques such as Cut to the Beat, Match lyrics to Visuals, Speed footage up in order to fit the beat better and made sure the Monster’s routine was in chronological order.
Due to Connie creating the baseline for our music video, she sent me screenshots of her work within premiere pro and how the folders I created help her sort the footage into bins easier. I asked Connie to open the music up so I could see where she had edited the footage to the pacific beat, this was easier for me to view when the music was opened up as it allows you to see the beats within the sound waves.
Connie used the sound waves of the song in order cut to each part of the song in order for our music video narrative to make sense and fit the visuals within our music video.
Even though I created separate folders for each of the footage we had shot, Connie decided it was easier for herself to separate them into 'Usable Footage' instead of using the folders I created for now, but when we have filmed more footage we will be using different bins to make it easier for ourselves.
We decided against making a rough draft due to the editing techniques we chose not being very technical advanced and having discussions between one and other throughout the process, so everyones opinions were always taken into consideration.
Overall, I think the editing of our music video went very smoothly as throughout the process Connie sent our group videos of the unfinished piece to get our opinions of it incase there was anything we wanted her to alter. Due to our group deciding early on that we would like us all to have an input in the editing process but have Connie take most control as she is more familiar with the song that we chose.
Music:
A very important part of our editing process was Music, the music we chose to create a music video for was a song created by a well known band, 'The Wombats - I only wear Black'.
'The Wombats - I only wear Black' is a song we don't have rights to but when we upload the finished product we will declare that we have no rights to the song in the description and state the artist of the song. We know that we have to credit the artist due to the copyright law which we don't want to commit, this is just for educational purposes which we will declare. There currently isn't a music video for this song and the song isn't uploaded on YouTube by the band themselves but by a woman called 'Juliana Dindosova’.
Overall, I think our music choice was amazing as the video we produced for this song reflects most of the lyrics as we created a relationship between the lyrics and footage which we applied after learning it from the theorist Andrew Goodwin, as he says that there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.
Un-Planned Obstacle:
Toward the end of our project Myself and Connie were struck with an un-planned obstacle that disheartened both of us due to this obstacle destroying our group that we started with, Emily who was a part of our group decided that she no longer wanted to work with us, this was a decision that she made entirely by herself and we had no input towards.
Overall:
Overall, I think our music video turned out as we intended it to, as we followed our storyboard quite closely in order to stick to a narrative storyline that we wanted to portray for our chosen song. However, we did have to cut a lot of footage out due to the duration of the song being quite short making it very hard for us to cram in everything that we wanted to, so we was quite limited to what we portrayed in the final visuals.
I also think we worked well the un-planned obstacles we faced during the making, obstacles which couldn't have been prevented such as costumes falling apart as the start the boots had fur on them but the longer we filmed walking in them the fur slowly tore away and it was very hard to keep sticking the fur back down so we decided to take it away towards the end of our filming period. We also couldn't plan the weather, so the lighting in some of the footage differs due to the lighting outside as well as having to use artificial light sources to light some scenes as there was no direct sunlight.
Another aspect of our music video we had to take into consideration was health and safety, due to the mask having no holes for the eyes because we obstructed the eye holes with fake eyes, resulting in no vision for whoever wore the mask. So the monster was always reliant on the camera people to guide them to where they need to go as well as many test runs without the mask to get a visual diagram before the mask was put on. To make sure that we continued to keep our monster safe we made sure we used places that were familiar and not busy, luckily we was able to use Connie's home for most of the music video so when Connie wore the mask herself she was more aware of the surroundings because it was her own home making the monster appear more relaxed instead of constantly worried about what they would face in their surroundings.
When we shot at Riversley Park, we made sure that the monster was either seated or guided to areas where it was quiet so that people wouldn't get in the way and the monster was free to move around without being worried about their surroundings. However, if we was do this again I would defiantly have the eye holes free instead of obstructing them like we did so we avoided the monster looking awkward because they couldn't see where they were going.
If I was to do this project again I would have also brought a costume instead of making it, so that everything fit the body properly instead of having to constantly move the mask around to get a symmetrical view of the face as well as having to took access fur into clothing making the monster often look bulky or different weights. Also having the costume pre-made would have allowed us to have more time filming as the costume process took up most of our time due to different parts of the costume having to dry or be made in separate times.
I would have also liked it if we used a more diverse range of locations instead of just using the two locations we did, maybe having the monster featured within some woods so that the monster was at one with nature which often people would think when asked about where a monster would live. I also wish we had filmed more reactions like we intended to do in the start because it would have been a cool aspect of our music video to have peoples raw reactions of what we had created walking around Nuneaton.
Overall:
Overall, I think our music video turned out as we intended it to, as we followed our storyboard quite closely in order to stick to a narrative storyline that we wanted to portray for our chosen song. However, we did have to cut a lot of footage out due to the duration of the song being quite short making it very hard for us to cram in everything that we wanted to, so we was quite limited to what we portrayed in the final visuals.
I also think we worked well the un-planned obstacles we faced during the making, obstacles which couldn't have been prevented such as costumes falling apart as the start the boots had fur on them but the longer we filmed walking in them the fur slowly tore away and it was very hard to keep sticking the fur back down so we decided to take it away towards the end of our filming period. We also couldn't plan the weather, so the lighting in some of the footage differs due to the lighting outside as well as having to use artificial light sources to light some scenes as there was no direct sunlight.
Another aspect of our music video we had to take into consideration was health and safety, due to the mask having no holes for the eyes because we obstructed the eye holes with fake eyes, resulting in no vision for whoever wore the mask. So the monster was always reliant on the camera people to guide them to where they need to go as well as many test runs without the mask to get a visual diagram before the mask was put on. To make sure that we continued to keep our monster safe we made sure we used places that were familiar and not busy, luckily we was able to use Connie's home for most of the music video so when Connie wore the mask herself she was more aware of the surroundings because it was her own home making the monster appear more relaxed instead of constantly worried about what they would face in their surroundings.
When we shot at Riversley Park, we made sure that the monster was either seated or guided to areas where it was quiet so that people wouldn't get in the way and the monster was free to move around without being worried about their surroundings. However, if we was do this again I would defiantly have the eye holes free instead of obstructing them like we did so we avoided the monster looking awkward because they couldn't see where they were going.
If I was to do this project again I would have also brought a costume instead of making it, so that everything fit the body properly instead of having to constantly move the mask around to get a symmetrical view of the face as well as having to took access fur into clothing making the monster often look bulky or different weights. Also having the costume pre-made would have allowed us to have more time filming as the costume process took up most of our time due to different parts of the costume having to dry or be made in separate times.
I would have also liked it if we used a more diverse range of locations instead of just using the two locations we did, maybe having the monster featured within some woods so that the monster was at one with nature which often people would think when asked about where a monster would live. I also wish we had filmed more reactions like we intended to do in the start because it would have been a cool aspect of our music video to have peoples raw reactions of what we had created walking around Nuneaton.
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