The ideas of a music video is to promote the band and earnt hem more money, so me and my group felt that a performance video would be the better choice for establishing iconography and focusing on the roles of each band member. Another reason for choosing this style of music video is because of the fact it is a common feature used in this genre of music videostherefore it makes sense to follow the conventions.
I began to research into my targetted audience which would clearly be anyone involvedwith the alternative rock genre or the fanbase already created by OneRepublic. TO make the video fitting to the targetted audience i will need to look into the interest and hobbies that relate to the genre and fan base.
The target audience most likely to consume our video would be the Young Alts 'tribe'. Tribe icons include Green Day and Kurt Cobain, fitting to the genre we have chosen.
UK tribes states that:
'Young Alts are after something different, but beyond that, they’re not exactly decided. They’ll read about or listen to a huge variety of bands and try Skater, Emo and even Urban fashions. They also love a lot of mainstream fashion and music.
After looking into these facts about our targeted audience i realise that it would of been best to go with hosting our video on NME TV but sadly it was closed on the 5 January 2012. So the next best thing would be for us to have it aired on 'Kerrang! TV'. This channel has also aired similar bands to my groups chosen band, most noticeably; Green Day, Paramore and You Me At Six.
When looking in the styles of clothing of which our band members should wear, my group concluded that after looking into other bands such as green day (picture to the right) we notice that they wore coloured ties, normal black shirts, belt and black jeans/trousers. with their clothing accessorised by badges and ripped sleeves. The hair of the band is wacky and styled to the genre of grunge of which their past music had been.
So, after looking into what the audience expected our band to look like i came to the conclusion that our band should wear shirts and ties along with black trousers, but we wanted our own kind of uniform as 'GreenDay' had. So my group suggested have white shirts instead with only the singer in a black one. This way helping him be the main focus. We also noticed how each one of 'GreenDay' had a change of style, such as a hat, full suit, no ties and then ties, so we chose to utilize this idea and present our band members in the same way. Only difference we want form 'GreenDay' it so make our band members look less rough since our Mise En Scene will be a church we wished to keep them clean and neat.
Here You can see a rough drawing of what me and my group was planning on what our band will look like:
I started to research into magazines and their advertisments so i could get a more developed understanding of what our advert would be like if it was realistically going through to print.
Kerrang is a weekly magazine with a total circulation of 43,033. It mainly concentrates on rock, alternative rock and metal genres and features a range of reviews of many different bands
Although this magazine does hold my chosen genre choice, it doesn't seem to be wide enough to audience of which I wish to meet. It does have a small variety of sections of which would most likely feature the band i choose, such as:
Feed Back
News
Live reviews
Features of Bands
New albums
Gig Guide
The New Albums section which would be perfect for our advertisment to be placed for our digipak. Also the Gig Guide is a section at the end of the magazine which is devoted to promoting tours and gigs, this would most likely seciton to have toward my genre since alternative rock is mostly known for their gigs and tours.
In the magazine I have chosen, Kerrang, There are 63 Pages inside. 20 Pages of the magazine (12.6% of the magazine) is advertisement for products. Below shows the products being normally categorized into groups:
New music albums or song
Concerts and tours
Competion
Fashion
Kerrang Radio and subscription Page
The other pages consist of tour and gig tickets, new album, top song charts at the moment, and advertisements. Some advertorials weren’t that clear, which might cause confusion to whether it is an article or advertisement. So with this all in mind, i beleive this magazine would be perfect for an advertisement of a digipak to be held within my coursework.
So you see the camera work and editing are so key to music video that they most likely wouldn't even exist without them, when looking into my song i have identified the instruments (as mentioned here in my post).
So, when looking into how the instrument, The Cello, is represented through shots and angles i found out about that a band called 'Murder By Death', who is a cello rock group (which our song has been known to be) seem to be a excellent example of how to portray our own cello.
The picture to the left is a lovely image of a middle shot cello with its bow, all mostly in full screen. Its a nice close up when the Cello was playing by it self within the video. I like this shot because it establishes the instrument being used and shows off the user's ability.
With the picture on the right i wanted to know how the cello was presented when it's playing in a group or when another instrument had became more interesting for the viewer to watch. So with this picture you see the medium shot of the lead acoustic guitarist with the Cello besides it. She sitting down due to how cellos are played so hence why she is placed as such. The picture helped me to noticed how the cello is always shot from the front view, no sides are used or anything to justify the musician, other than the close up shots used on her later on.
This next shot on the left is a beautiful shot of an extreme close up on the strings and bow of the cello, which would be nice to incorporate into my own video. As you can see it enhances the audiences knowledge on the musicians abilities to play their instrument. This is a nice concept of how I'd like my own shots represent my cello.
The next two shots are taken after one another, with maybe a 5 second gap. But here you can see her in a normal framed shot which gives you a nice over-view on the musician and her instrument, with the second shot you have the long stretch out with the bow, taking up the whole screen with her arm's length which is a nice dramatic way of playing the cello and would again go well with my song choice due to its dramatic nature.
Underneath are some images put together by 'The Piano Guys' it shows longer shots, and different types of angles that we could use when filming a cello. i personally prefer, the middle shot due to how it presents the cello in the spot light and can clearly see the cellist in action.
When i was looking at sites and digging into the internet for some music video editing tips and what's what, i came across about.com: Need, Know, Accomplish. And although this site was not focused on editing it had a great article piece.
"Your footage might be great, but it'll only become a great video through editing. To do a good job you'll need patience, time and more patience. You'll need to decide the 'feel' and pace of the video. Will it be made up of long sweeping shots, or quick sharp edits? Do you want to follow the mood of the song and edit to the music or do you want the video to contrast with the track?"
I chose to include this quote due to how it helps to present the understanding about the effort that goes into editing a music video. So straight away i can explain how important editing is to a music video and how not fully thinking about it would jeopardize the whole project.
Another part of this site which was very interesting on my behalf was here! It helped to show how i could try shooting my video to help editing for at the end of the day, if the footage is rubbish then the whole project will look amateurish.
My favorite two quotes from the upper-said-link, are these:
Don't Be Over Ambitious: A simple idea well executed is often more effective than a complex idea done badly.
And Ignore All I've Said: The most interesting videos are made when the rules of convention are bent, buckled and broken, so keep experimenting and above all else, make something interesting.
Reason for this is because of its simplicity and understanding of great depth into the music industry. And with these tips i can my self understanding the way in which i should go about thinking when I'm doing my own editing on my music video.
Once me and my group have chosen our song to use for our music video, we decided that we'd have to ask the Copyright holder for his permission, and so we researched the copyright holder and it turns out that the man who wrote the song and produced it was their lead singer who is well known for writing many songs and working with big performers when producing their songs.
So after finding Ryan Tedder, The copyright holder, we agreed to send him an e-mail asking for his permission to use the song and this was what we sent:
The theme fo confession was the strongest idea we had for a music video. Due to this me and my group thought that a church was the best place to set-up the music video as it is a place people can go to for confession. IT also gave us the diea of secrets through these confessions adn hence why we liekd the idea. We also liked the idea of having a stained glass window behind the band as they performed dur in the song. We studied the song closely and began to think about the shots of the lead singer being inside a confessions box would be an ideal shot for our video. We studied the lyrics in more detail and jotted down some ideas and shots we would associate with certain lines:
'Something to get off my chest'
Ideas of secrets, lies, and confession, with the singer appearing upset or guilty
'Need something that I can confess'
Would be an ideal line to say whilst inside a confession box, once again implying that the singer has done something wrong that he is ashamed of
'I'm gonna give all my secrets away'
Relates to confession and being open about something, a shot could involve the singer gesturing strongly to show he is open about giving away his secrets
'Come by it honestly I swear'
The word honest ties in with the themes of confession and secrets
'My God, amazing how we got this far'
This line shows that the lyrics could have been talking about a journey of lies and dishonesty and now it is coming to an end, the confession box could be end of the journey.
All display religious or confession imagery and make a church setting even more ideal. Lines such as 'need something that I can confess' could be performed from inside a confessions box and would a way in which the video reflects the song lyrics. These ideas have added a small narrative option to our video which we had not previously thought about before, as we had originally decided to create an entirely performance video. However our ideas have changed the more we have thought about the song and setting.
My group has formed and have been selecting song choices, originally we planed to do a narrative video and so we was originally looking on how to use our videos to create a nice story. But after a discussion on how we knew more people with connections to musicians that we found making a live music video is a better choice. So we have agreed with the choices of: 1) The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony 2) One Republic - Secrets 3) Bon Jovi - It's My Life
The reason we have chosen these three songs is because we wanted nice lyrics of which we could explore, but since we chose live performance we also looked into how we could present this live. With 'Bittersweet Symphony' we could picture how it would be videoed, with violins opening the video, how it could pan out to a wider image E.t.c. And so we went through a list of things we could do for the video which is posted below:
With 'Secrets' we straight away loved the lyrics and liked how we might be able to play with this, since it used a unique set of instruments which aren't normally videoed live. But with this in mind we came up with the idea of scenery. But again more ideas shown below:
Lastly we have 'It's My Life' which we agree would be great live. We thought of lots of energetic shots of the performers and how we could incorporate the band in one room, maybe an audience. But we started to select ideas which may find to difficult.
But in the end we found that Bon Jovi and The Verve are way to big for us to pull off due to how people would already recognize the song and then put the original artist in recognition of the song, therefore turning our own song into a fake look-a-like. So the final choice was One Republic - Secrets.
With this song we chose to do a live band due to its simplicity which we wanted to uphold after looking at our favorites, we also thought we could make this more interesting than if we did a narrative. After this we quickly listened to the song and worked out that the instruments within the song are as follows:
With this in mind we started a brain storm of people we knew who could play these parts:
As you can see we left ourselves with a wide range of people to choose form just encase one fails to make it to a shoot or can't due to circumstances. This is in an attempt that we are not backed into a corner without performers.
A company who are in competition with MTV Networks for an audience would be Box Television (formerly called ‘Video Jukebox Network International Limited’) It is a British television company which is content subsidiary owned by Bauer Group (50%) and Channel 4 (50%) and acts as its music television programme production arm.
The Box, realesed in April 1992, is a television channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The channel is one of many within the Box Television network, a joint venue between Channel 4 and Bauer Group. The channel mainly broadcasts music videos, although it also features other music-related programming from 4Music. The channel broadcasts 24 hours a day with Teleshopping shown late at night.
4Music, realeshed in 15 August 2008, is the only channel within the Box Television Network to be branded under Channel 4 and the only channel in the network to be broadcast in widescreen. The channel replaced The Hits and is available on broadcasted 24 hours a day. 4Music is now the home for music/celebrity orientated shows and comedies that were once shown on Channel 4. It's mix of music and comedy is similar to that of the defunct channel Play UK.
Kiss TV is a commercial music television channel which started as a pirate radio station in London in 1985. The playlist predominantly consists of mainstream hip-hop, Dance and R&B. The Channel is based from the Bauer radio channel, Kiss 100. Kiss tv celebrated the 20th Anniversary of its launch in 2005.
Magic TV, realeased in September 13 2001, plays mainly easy listening music videos and is based on the Magic Radio network also owned by Bauer. Like some other Box Television music television channels under Bauer's brand, Magic operated a jukebox service where viewers were able to request videos to be played via a premium-rate telephone number. Magic mainly focuses on music from the 80s and 90s although a large section of daytime is now dedicated to 'Today's Magic Hits' to keep up with the current market.
Smash Hits! is a British commercial television channel that broadcasts general pop music in shows such as Chartbusters, which is about recent music and Pop Domination (which is new and old music). It also shows other programmes such as themed countdowns and charts such as Top 50 Boy Bands. The channel also has hours dedicated to a particular artist or band such as Pussycat Dolls: Ultimate 10. It is based on the former Smash Hits Magazine, which was owned by EMAP (Bauer). The channel broadcasst general mainstream pop music on a "jukebox" system, where viewers had to call a premium rate telephone number to select a Music video to play.
Q, also called Q The Music (queue the music) because that is the slogan's name, is a UK music channel based on Q Magazine, launched in October 2000. The channel specialises in indie, rock and alternative genres. Therefore plays a wide viriaty of music, prodominantly bands like Snow Patrol, Coldplay, and Stereophonics.Q was originally a jukebox channel,however this element was dropped in 2004.
Kerrang! TV, realeased in Spring 2001, is loosely connected to the magazine, Kerrang!. And as of 2005, all of its programme content is music videos, the majority of which is open scheduled, for text requests from their playlist. The TV station's playlist is mainly nu metal and pop-punk/skate punk, although with some unusual exceptions. Certain bands, such as Tenacious D and Limp Bizkit get higher than average play rates, due to higher rates of text requests. The station unusually guarantees to play a requested video, unlike others where a voting system is in place. However, it may take some time for the video to be played.
The first broadcast of Kerrang! TV had a countdown of voter's most desired videos. The most popular choice and the first video ever shown on Kerrang! TV was Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Limp Bizkit's Break Stuff and Everlast's Black Jesus were also in the first 3 videos ever played.
Many artists have different styles of music videos when is come to their genre of choice, and like Andrew Goodwin, the author of 'Dancing in the distraction factory', said was that "Different genre music videos may have specific iconic and typical specific music video style" (E.g Guns 'n' Roses - sweet child of mine, would stereotypically be a live performance). So with Eminem's video's, everybody normally knows that he is the 'rap' and 'RnB' genre, which normally consists of a story-telling style of video, normally along side the main artist raping along to it in various ways. (Other people like Busta Rhythms and Lil Wayne follow this description). The video starts from a black fade transition along side a camera zoom-in towards a window. Thunder then suddenly flashes allowing us, as an audience, to examine the setting of the video as well as the dramatic effects cause by the thunder.
Within the Mise En Scene of the first few seconds, the thunder allows us to see the scene out side the house. Like the fact we can tell its raining, and that the house is a tacky or worn down. The thunder and rain help to set the scene of a horror/Shocking story within what we would beleive to be an old or abandoned house. reason to beleive that is by the way the house's outer design is falling to pieces and basically rotting away. The curtains within the window are also helping to prove this by being a faded yellow colour, instead of a pure white which would implicate pureness (you can tell that the curtain use to be white by over time it has inherited this colour of old), It represents the old fashion imagery to help again give the house a sense of old or out of it time. The way the curtain glides over the camera with a ghost-like movement further my point of the set being a horror/shocking film based.
Next we are then zoomed towards the first human seen in the music video, at this point the music moves a little bit more towards non-diagetic sound and way form the diagetic sound of rain, thunder and the wind. The Non-diagetic music consists of violins which give the woman a sense of tenderness around her. The room is dark with the acceptance of a lamp left on and a mirror reflecting the light, which is contrasted on to the woman. When the lightening is stricken again, it presents the whole room which the woman is asleep in. The mise en scene in the room is shown to be very plain with a damp/worn out floor panels with a black-grey wall to match. The atmosphere gives no emotion out to the audience except from the only bright coloured woman, who is surrounded by 'Blue'. (Blue vest, blue covers, blue dressing gown and blueish sheet).
This scene is then very quickly uses a dissolve transition from the medium shot to a birds eye view shot, souly focused on to the woman who has now completely dominated the screen by becoming central and even reflected in the mirror. She is also surround by more blue in this shot, with blue items such as a pair of blue slippers and the bed sheet (which has darkened from a very light blue into a deep blue).
We are then zoomed towards the woman who is rubbing her pregnant belly (or presumed this up until the lyrics later say so), we still hear the rain and see it's shadows, the lightening still effects what is heard and seen as well, this proves that the set idea of the shock/horror film is going to be consistent and not giving it up.
Another quick cross dissolve transition is seen as it goes into a medium close up camera shot of the woman, these very quick cross dissolves are hardly seen but do give a more softer effect on the video, adding a more tender viewing upon the woman. She wakes up, cuts to her grabbing her gown within the previous birds eye view shot.
We are then cut to a new setting, a lighter, greener setting when compared to the previous. The Mise en scene continues this broken atmosphere with the broken wall which looks like it could crumble in the background. the shot is a steady close up, just above the sink line. The shot's scenery is disrupted by a guy (of whom we later know is 'Stan') who seems to be washing his hair or rinsing it out, we still hear the non-diagetic sound dieing down within the background (such as the thunder and rain).
Stan easily has the imagery and mise en scene of 'Eminem' with his typical short spikey blonde hair, a tattoo on his left upper arm, and a white tank top and finally with a Dog tag chain around his neck which match with how Eminem who always wears a chain.
We then cut transition to a medium close up where we finally see Stan's full face which is quickly followed by the Diagetic sound of thunder with it flashing upon his face . Allowing us, as an audience, to understand that he is going to be a part of the horror which will transcends on characters in this video. This also give us our first full view onto the character 'Stan', who look exactly like Eminem, allowing the audience to recognise the artist. A sudden cut to a bird's eye view shot that shows Stan getting annoyed with his girlfriend as she demands to come in. with her face leaning on the door to help show her desperation, Stan is quickly anger and became fanatical, starting to open the door and pull her in forcefully and slam the door behind, leaving ehr alone in the shot.
The song begins with the mian chourus by Dido, starting with the line 'My tea's gone cold and I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all'. Already, the tone and lyrics have set the scean work well with the pattering of the rain and keeping everythign within the mood of depression and the utmost sympathy for Dido's character. It also begins to reveals more about the chaacter by the Mise-en-scene, were it suggests that she is unhappy with her life and wants to change it for her and 'stan'.
The next part follows on with the line "The morning rain clouds up my window, and I can't see at all" however, reveals that her future is unforeseen and dark. And since this was all shot inside the barthroom and even pans away frm her shows that she is not that significant to the main music video and that stan is the main interest of this video. The chorus continues and repeats as the video shows Stan
UK tribes states that:
A company who are in competition with MTV Networks for an audience would be Box Television (formerly called ‘Video Jukebox Network International Limited’) It is a British television company which is content subsidiary owned by Bauer Group (50%) and Channel 4 (50%) and acts as its music television programme production arm.
