Audience Expectations Of Our Music Video (Jonny)

This is a video that I made to represent our target audiences expectations of our music video. I created the video on Imovie with the experience I gained last year from our film openings. In our questionnaire we asked people to listen to our chosen song 'All This Time' and then asked them questions relating to the style of the song and what they would expect from the music video. This video will help us to understand what our target audience expect from our music video and will work as a guideline when story boarding our music video. We realized after editing the video that we had no female input shown on our video, this was a problem as our target audience is both male and female ages 13-21. However we have solved this problem by keeping the data response from our Music Video Interviews and our Questionaire which have both male and female responses!    

Synopsis Planning (Jonny)

We planned our Synopsis on a online brainstorm and mind map creator called bubbl.us. We started by splitting the music video in to 4 sections: 1st,2nd and 3rd verse and the chorus. We then followed these up with the locations, characters, the lyrics to that section and a brief synopsis of what would happen. This allowed us to create the mind map above.  

This was the first time that I used this program and I found it relatively easy to use! There was a small introduction to the program when I singed up which talked me through the basics, this was useful. There were also buttons which worked as short cuts which made things much quicker, for example ctrl+enter added another branch to the mind map. This mind map program was really effective in organizing all of our thoughts on our music video synopsis and displaying it in a format that is simple to follow. I will definitely be using this program again! 

Organizing Costumes For Our Music Video (JONNY)

I took on the role of organizing the costumes for both the band and the actors in our music video. 

When deciding on what the band should wear, I felt that it was right to represent the real village musicians style. I hoped that this would give an authentic relation between the band members and the song. For example; it would not have been effective if our band members wore baggy jeans, baseball caps and golden chains.
However, I felt that it was also important that our band members wore something true to themselves and that represent their unique style as a band. I found some pictures of the band and posted them on our group facebook page. I showed our band what the real village musicians wore, however explained to them that they had free reign over their own costume as long as it was similar and represented the genre of music. 




When shooting the narrative I ensured that Mike was wearing the same costume to avoid continuity errors. I worked with Ami (our actress) to co- ordinate a costume that represented her character
and that went well alongside Mikes costume.




I decided that it would also be important to start developing an 'image' for our lead singer Mike. Something that would distinct him from other artists. We decided that his leather jacket gave him a really nice nice image, and so you can see him wearing this jacket throughout the music video.

Filming of the Narrative 29/11/12 (Josh)

Yesterday we went and filmed the narrative parts of the music video. This was a long day for all involved with us starting at 10:30 and not finishing until 19:00. We had a number of different locations which we needed to shoot in and wanted to make sure that we wouldn't have to re-film any sections so we took lots of footage.

Here is a photo of jonny at the first location capturing soem footage from the point of view that the main singer would have. This will be used in the early part of the song. Jonny made sure that he held the camera steady whilst taking this shot so that the video is of the highest quality.

Here Jonny is explaining to Mike what he needs to do for the next scene. We made sure we done this before every single scene that we filmed so as the actors would have 100% confidence that they knew what to do. This meant that the filming would not take to long and would be efficent for all involved and wouldn't mean that the actors would have to film each scene to many times.

 Here Ami (the girl in the narrative) and Mike are about to start acting one of the scenes and are just recieving a final brief on what they will need to do from myself and Jonny. This is another part of the film which will go during the part of the film where the main singer (Mike) is imagining that they are in a relationship.

Mike and Ami mid scene, this is another part of the footage for when the lead singer is imagining they are in a relationship. Mike and Ami were confident that they knew what they were doing and done a fantastic job of this scene. This was ine scene that we filmed not sure weather or not we would use it but after we had filmed it we decided that we would definately be using it as it look great.




To conclude this was a really enjoyable day for all involved and was very constructive for Jonny and myself. We managed to get all of the footage that we need for the film and hope to have it completely edited by the end of November.

Organizing our filming schedule with the use of Social Media (Jonny)

Before commencing our filming for our music video Josh and I had the complicated task of organizing our filming schedule. This may not seem like a complicated task, however logistically finding a day where we could use our chosen location or green screen and where all 3 of our band members were available was never going to be easy!  Because of this, we decided to take our filming schedule in to the 21st century and create our own Facebook event where we could co-ordinate days with our band and actress and find dates that were mutually convenient for everyone!

We invited our 3 band members and our actress for the narrative to the event. We uploaded images of the original 'village musicians' so our band could get an idea of the style, along with this we also uploaded our animatic to help explain to the group the structure and story line of our music video.

When we needed to film a scene we would 'tag' whoever was needed in a post along with what we needed to film and where it would be filmed. Those who were 'tagged' in the post could then post a comment telling us what dates and times they were available, allowing us to co-ordinate a date that everyone was available. This process was very simple and saved a lot of time. It was a excellent example of how social media can connect people, as if we had not created an event we would have been left with the tedious task of phoning each member individually and collating the dates that everyone could do, before phoning back all of the members to tell them the date we had decided. The event page also allowed us to inform the group of any plans for the filming, for example, where we would meet, what they would need to wear etc..

Along with making life easier for ourselves, using social media also allowed to us to add another technology to the ever growing list that we have used in this A2 course. 

Prop List (josh)

There are a number of props that we will be needing for our video, these will be essential in ensuring that the video will be successful and have the professional look that we intend to have once we have finished it. Through planning in advance the actors that we will be using will know what they need to bring. It also means that we will know what we will need to bring for the actors.

The props required are as follows:
Guitar for all scenes mike will be in
Drum kit for the performance scenes
Key board for the performance scenes
Coke can for the scene outside the shop
Mike clothes: white T-shirt, jacket and jeans
Nicky clothes: blue jumper and jeans
Tom clothes: Jeans, two jackets
Ami clothes: a number of different outfits so that it doesn't look like it was all filmed at the same time

Nine Frame Analysis (JOSH)

I am going to analyse the music video for the Noah and the Whale song 5 years time. I have chosen to do this particular video because they are from a similar music genre to our band as well as having used some the techniques that we intend to use for our music video.

 Firstly in the opening few seconds of the music video there is stop motion which is used to introduce both the band and the song which is an idea which we particularly liked as it is a reasonably unused method of making sure that the  audience definitely knows the name of the song and the name of the artists. This means that the audience is much more likely to buy the song as they won't have to go the effort of finding out the name of the artist from an outside agent e.g. an app on their smart phone.

Second the music video has close ups of the ukulele when this instrument is being played which means that the images are cohesive to the audio. Without this it is possible that the audience my get confused and not understand the meaning behind the video.

In a later frame there is an image of a chicken which adds some irony and humour to the video without having being too cheesy as it is unexpected for there to be a chicken at a zoo. This isn't something that is done for the entirety of video as this could mean that the video looks unprofessional.

The whole of the video appears to have been filmed in a low quality camera which adds authenticity to the video and is yet another way that video has some uniqueness to it without being to wild and rubbish thus creating a poor viewing experience for the audience.

We also liked the way that in the chorus when the words " Fun, Fun, Fun" were said these lyrics appeared on the screen along with some actions which appear to show some dancers having fun. This is one technique that we will be considering for our video as it is one way of complying with Andrew Goodwin's rules that is reasonably easy to do.

Sixth is an example of another techniques that we intend to use, close ups of instruments. This means that the audience will be able to create a cover of the song easier if they wish to as they will know exactly what instruments are being used.

At 2:56 there is a shot of some characters within the video creating a square with their feet, this is one shot that is especially effective as it shows clearly what the shot is intended to show. If this shot had been done with a long shot from a tripod it would have been impossible for the artist to covey entirely what they want to.

3:23 shows the band performing all together which is one of the conventions of most music videos and is something that as we know from our research is something that audiences have come to expect from a typical music video.