Treatment group pitch & Evaluation of audience feedback

In this week in our media class, we have been working on our treatments for our music video production. For our treatment, we came up with ideas for our production in our groups; We pitched it to our class to receive feedback of not only what they did like about our ideas, but also what they think we could improve on, or slightly alter to better our music video








We found that they liked our ideas of having both performance based, and narratives to our story, with the actor in the video acting out the narrative of the song, and a supposed artist(rapper), who is rapping about this particular person, who is representative of those who have dealt with similar experiences. They also thought that some of the ideas we had for our editing techniques were good: Ideas we had for making the music video black and white, to add effect, and also having some of the shots in slow motion they liked. In terms of camera shots, we would choose to use a lot of close ups, and eye level shots, being one of the things we explained in our treatment. The effectiveness of these types of shots is that they put the music video on a more intimate personal level, and allow the audience not to only connect in terms of the lyrics, but also with the visuals for the song, and music video as a whole, which was another thing which they thought we should definitely include in our production.


It was suggested that some of the scenes for the "artist" in the music video where we would be lip synching, could be shot in the music studios, (which were available to us at college) and some of the narrative based shots could be shot location. However, some of ideas and concepts would prove to be a bit problematic as they might have been to ambitious, which the feedback helped to highlight. For example, we wanted to show that one of the individuals in the narrative side of the music video doesn't have such a great life at home, and we wanted to show comparisons to somebody who doesn't have much, but nevertheless, they would have a good family life. The problems for us which were identified was that, it would be difficult to try and shoot this for our music video, if we were to still include it in our production. Instead of this idea, it was suggested that we could use editing to portray these image we are trying to get across. For example, it was mentioned that we could use shots in colour for the person who has a good life, and black & white for the person who's life isn't so great to show these contrasts. It was also suggested that we could just show the individual being isolated, and in not such a good environment instead of his broken family. We were advised to be careful of ethical issues, such as swearing in the song, which we plan to avoid by using a clean version of the song, or potentially editing them out in production. Another ethical issue would be our ideas for filming homeless people, and giving money to them, as part of our establishing shots.

Treatment

During this week we wrote a rough plan (treatment) of what we intend to do, and selling our ideas. In our groups we came up with a presentation on prezi, documenting our ideas for our music video. In this we discussed ideas for the visuals to the song, meaning of lyrics, which other music videos inspired our ideas, etc. The track we chose to do in the end was J Cole- Love yourz.

We discussed our ideas for the song, and how we would use some of the techniques we had analysed in our case studies, in the music video production of our own, and how they relate to ours. The main aim of the treatment was to have a clear and structured map of our ideas, how we would carry out these in our production, and also, in order to pitch our ideas to a select sample of our target audience to understand their views on the ideas.

Deciding on choice of music video/ Analysis of lyrics

In our groups we, narrowed down our choice of songs in which we would use for our music video production, where we then came to an agreement on the choice of song. The song we decided to use in the end was J Coles - Love yourz, off of his album "2014 Forest Hill Drive". Knowing that we now had our one chosen song, we would need to have a better understanding of the song itself, in order for us to come up with some ideas for visuals for the song

We then researched into the song, the lyrics in particular, and annotated them, breaking down the literal and implied meanings of the lyrics also. For parts of the song where we had an understanding of the lyrics, we jotted down our ideas of what we could do in our music video.

The general meaning of the lyrics in the song did relate to the type of ideas we initially had for our music video. These ideas were similar to not only my case studies, but also some of the other music videos we had suggested at first

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Case studies (3rd - Wale)

The setting is in a place where the artist depicts a time before the money, where he came to a point of realization of everything going on in the world, and how our generation is so focused on clothes and materialistic things in life but we’re still trapped, locked into a system… The whole essence of it is that really everything about money ruined everything around us

The video follows a narrative story everyday life in an environment such as the artists and the things they have to do to get by. It implies how our generation is run by materialistic things, and how the money has basically “taken over”. It follows a story of what appears to be what he sees in his everyday life, and things he does for the money, but the video explains how it is the money which is killing our society. It doesn’t involve performance such as dancing etc, like how Kendricks song does, it is more narrative based following a storyline of a teenager who sees the money and lifestyle the drug dealers had, and ended up killing them for the money.This music video explores the themes of life in “struggle” and connotes the “dollar and a dream” idea, which is a recurring idea throughout.

There are two parts simultaneously occurring in the music video: the actual story or what’s going on, and the artist who is explaining the situations. During the storyline it uses several close up shots, and extreme close up shots, and special effects like black&white, and slow motion. It uses this as it makes the storyline more personal and brings a closer connection to the audience from the music video. The mise en scene for the video

Again the target audience for this would be young adults and teenagers between the age of 16-26. This would be because the target audience for rap/ hip hop music is usually between this age range; It is usually the artists who make the music who are themselves between this age range, therefore the audience are able to relate to them well, which would be what  encourages them to buy the record

Similarly to Kendrick Lamar’s – Alright music video which I had used as one of my case studies, this one uses Black and white for the music video. I think the use of this is to relate to the meaning of the lyrics, as black and white reflects the idea of it being simplistic; the song implies how we shouldn’t focus on these things but should look at the bigger picture in life and the simple things which we don’t show as much appreciation to. Seeing as this was used in two of my case studies I think that it is something which I could take from the videos to use in my own, as my music video will have similar meanings/messages to it, therefore I could use these conventions to convey them better.

Case studies (2nd - Joey BADA$$)

The setting is in a place where the artist depicts a time before the money, where he came to a point of realization of everything going on in the world, and how our generation is so focused on clothes and materialistic things in life but we’re still trapped, locked into a system… The whole essence of it is that really everything about money ruined everything around us

The video follows a narrative story everyday life in an environment such as the artists and the things they have to do to get by. It implies how our generation is run by materialistic things, and how the money has basically “taken over”. It follows a story of what appears to be what he sees in his everyday life, and things he does for the money, but the video explains how it is the money which is killing our society. It doesn’t involve performance such as dancing etc, like how Kendricks song does, it is more narrative based following a storyline of a teenager who sees the money and lifestyle the drug dealers had, and ended up killing them for the money.This music video explores the themes of life in “struggle” and connotes the “dollar and a dream” idea, which is a recurring idea throughout.

 There are two parts simultaneously occurring in the music video: the actual story or what’s going on, and the artist who is explaining the situations. During the storyline it uses several close up shots, and extreme close up shots, and special effects like black&white, and slow motion. It uses this as it makes the storyline more personal and brings a closer connection to the audience from the music video.

Again the target audience for this would be young adults and teenagers between the age of 16-26. This would be because the target audience for rap/ hip hop music is usually between this age range; It is usually the artists who make the music who are themselves between this age range, therefore the audience are able to relate to them well, which would be what  encourages them to buy the record.

Similarly to Kendrick Lamar’s – Alright music video which I had used as one of my case studies, this one uses Black and white for the music video. I think the use of this is to relate to the meaning of the lyrics, as black and white reflects the idea of it being simplistic; the song implies how we shouldn’t focus on these things but should look at the bigger picture in life and the simple things which we don’t show as much appreciation to. Seeing as this was used in two of my case studies I think that it is something which I could take from the videos to use in my own, as my music video will have similar meanings/messages to it, therefore I could use these conventions to convey them better

Case studies (1st - Kendrick Lamar)

The music video explores the psychological and emotional burdens which many people in general have to deal with in their lives. “Alright” is a response to that these troubles or woes, detailing how we mean to escape from these troubles. The artist attempts to capture the post-depression moments where people are able to ignore their problems and comfort themselves with the idea that everything will be alright in the end.

The music video is mostly conceptual in terms of the meaning of the music video, and the lyrics used in the song. However the song does involve some dancing, which would involve choreography, and also characters doing “donuts” in cars , and lip syncing involved by the artist in the music video, which would suggest that there is some performance based aspects to the song at least.

The video was in black and white which is one of the many special effects used. ‘An establishing shot was used at the beginning of the music video, to give audience an insight in to the environment which Kendrick Lamar describes coming from in his lyrics, and what life is like.

It uses a tracking shot during the introduction to the song, following the artist, and also uses this shot type, following the artist who appears to be “flying” through the air, which is a special effect which they have used in the song. The editing appears to be fast paced, with a lot of short shots edited together through the video. It involves a lot of jump cuts which, and uses match on action throughout the narrative of the story. The music video uses high angel shots several times when it cuts to the crowd of people in the background singing the song. Also, for some of these high angle shots, it zooms in and out, which is another shot type.

The target audience for this would be young adults and teenagers most probably between the ages of 16- 30, certainly for this genre of music in particular which is rap/hip-hop, even though this is more of a slightly wider range compared to the other case studies, as it has a broader meaning, so therefore would apply to more people in general. They are encouraged to buy the record, as the narrative of the song is about young adults and teenagers. The people used in the video are between this same age range, which reinforces the narrative of the song visually, which also encourages them to buy it, as they feel they can relate to the music more.

From this music video I could take certain aspects to use in the music video of my own. For example I could take the editing, and the camerawork. I intend to use a lot of various shots for my own, and in this music video I like the selection of shot types and how they have been edited together. However, in our music video of our own we would have to make sure that there isn’t a lot of swearing etc., which this music video has a lot of, therefore being one of the aspects we could subvert to our music video of our own.

First ideas for music video production

For this lesson we got into groups for who we will be working with in the production of our music video. We got into groups based on having similar ideas for the songs we would choose and the sorts of genres we were interested in. We disussed possible ideas for our music video and which song to use for it. Whilst selecting, we had to make sure that it was a nice song to use, which we could realitcally make a music video for relating to the lyrics. Also, more importantly we had to ensure that the music videos we wanted to use did not have an existing video to the song already. From this we then came up with a shortlist of possible songs which we could use...

Editing & finalising practice task

For this lesson I began editing for the music video, and the shots we had already filmed in previous lessons. For this I uploaded all of our footage, and soundtrack for the music video on to Final cut pro for our editing. I started synchronising the soundtrack with the video, so that they are aligned properly, and are in time. I then began cutting out segments of each of the video footage, and started stitching some of the shots together.



This music video practice task will help me to have a better understanding of techniques I can use for my production. I understood that it is important to have a wide variety of angles, and shot sizes when filming for my video, giving better visuals to the music video, and making the music video seem more professional. Also editing the practice video, at this point, helped me familiarise myself with the FinalCut pro software and how to use certain tools on the programme to edit my music video. I can find use in this as I now know how I can edit the video and can use it in  my final production.

Planning & filming for practice task

During the first week, we will create a short music video of our own, to a current track which can be Pharell Willams' "Happy" or Frozens "Let it go", or even a song of our own choice. In our group we chose to use Joey Badass' "Survival".



Within these first two lessons we began planning shots for the music video we would create for the song we have chosen, and then filming for the pre-production music video. We firstly decided to create a brief plan on what we intended to use in our production, and bringing together our creative ideas. Locations around college were used for our production and therefore the precise locations had to be chosen. For our song we decided to make it seem as if he is in a flight of stairs in flats.

We also decided on appropriate costume for the mise en scene of our production, a hoodie, trainers etc, which were chosen carefully as they are conventional for the type(genre) of song we had chosen to use, which was rap/hip-hop. We also aimed to get various different styles of shots for this; We decided we would use high angle, low angle, eye level, close up, medium and medium long shots. The reason we chose to use all these different types of shots was to ensure that we our music video looks more professional, as we see in actual existing music videos.

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Creative ideas and Scheduling - TimeToast

Within the first few lessons of A2 media studies, we created a timetoast production schedule for our a2 course. We added the tasks for our media coursework onto the production schedule along with a brief description of the tasks, and deadline dates for each. This scheduling is used as it will allow us to be constantly aware of the tasks which we need to complete and the deadline dates for each of the tasks. This means that we can stay on track, and be more organised in the build up for our music video productions.