Images of Props

For certain parts of our music video, like in the chorus for example we plan to hold up flash cards of the chorus. This gives the audience a break of the same shot of the same characters, setting etc. And also this helps keep continuity and also now lets most of our groups ideas to be included, but just combined so it still fits the flow and attitude of the video, yet still keep the affect and mood.

This first picture is our group in the middle of the production of the props, we used the paint colours to give off the correct connotations to the word that was written. For example 'Sunshine' is in yellow to represent the sun, the 'Morning' is to represent the blue skies. Also all the colours we used, are bright, this again helps set the mood and keeps our music video upbeat and positive.





This is the final product of our props, we are in order of how it will be shown in the song, the 'Good' starting then carrying it through until the smiley face is shown at the end of the chorus.
We each plan to stand against a painted wall which is the same colour as our props background, this helps with constancy. But we have considered changing the angles of each clip to keep in pace with the music and keep it interesting, opposed to one straight shot.  

Locations

1. Outside our College, to start the journey

     2. The colour zones, inside the college

    3.  Ipswich Waterfront, as it is a nice, serene and calm setting.

    4. Cineworld, as the main guy is a teenager, the cinema is a popular setting for a date.



   5. Christchurch park, again more romantic imagery.

  6. Train, looking out the window, shows how he misses her

  7. Felixstowe - The beach/ Sea

  8. The Amusements, playful and fun, which are themese for our video

Filming Schedule

Thursday 4th October - Filming in Grant's media lesson, AM.  Will be filming in college; the parts where we shall be holding up lyrics.

Tuesday 9th October - Filming in Town. All the parts with Shledon in town, and filming the couples who are available on the day. 

Sunday 14th October - Hopefully filming in Felixstowe, using the couples who can get there on the day. 

We also leaving some days free in case some people cannot make it, so we wont be tight for time and end up having to rush it.

Final idea

As we had so much trouble with signed artists and gettng permission we went with 'Good Morning Sunshine' by Alex Day, an unsigned musician but as he is a popular youtuber, he is still quite well known.

Here is our idea for our music video;

• Having a main person, being a male, walking through different environments/settings whilst couples, seemingly in love, walk past him. 
• Having a shot of the main person sitting on the train, looking out of the window.
• Using small aspects of stop motion, with us holding up pieces of card with lyrics at certain points in the song. 
• Use green screen available at college when doing the performance part of our video, to have our main person singing in front of a background image. 
• We now decided to make our music video an almost journey by having the romantic couple leave notes for the other and then the boyfriend go round trying to find his girlfriend.
• We decided to keep suspense we don't want to show the girlfriend until the end, to do this we will only shoot parts of her body, e.g. holding hands, we will flash back to the mainman's face but not hers, until the end.
• As our music video is the idea of a journey we are going to have establishing shots so it looks like our leading man is walking there, but these will be sped up.
• We also plan to have ALL of the girlfriends hold up card so this way no one is confused and it has a constant continuity.

A print screen of me asking for permission to use Alex Day's song, even though he's unsigned, I thought it might be good to ask.

First ever idea

Our original idea was to use a song by an artist called Matt Nathanson, we were planning to use his song 'Kiss Quick' as we thought the tone of teh song and the romantic imagery would be easy to transpire from lyric to visuals, like with the band 'Walk the Moon'. Matt Nathanson was also signed.
Below is the music video of the song and proof of asking for permission.
This shows how bands and artists who are signed are a lot harder to get permission from, whereas with an unsigned artist, their songs are their to use and generally just as good.

Conventions of a Music Video

Earlier music idea

Our beginning plan was to use a song by an alternative band, from America called 'Walk the Moon'. But as they were a signed artist, we decided it would be difficult to get into contact with them and we didn't want to break any laws by using their song 'Anna Sun' for copywrite reasons. Below is the song and a few images of our attempt at trying to get permission. We asked the record company personally, by emailing them and we also used a social networking website, 'Twitter' to also try and get into contact with the band members themselves.

Here is the letter a fellow member of the group sent to the record label.

Dear Michael and Lindsay

I am contacting you on behalf of myself and three fellow students to ask your permission for us to use the song Anna Sun by Walk The Moon. This will contribute to part of our A level media studies and will enable us to create a music video. We are currently studying at Suffolk One Sixth Form College in Ipswich, Suffolk England.

We very much hope that you will give us your permission and please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any further information.

I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Yours Sincerely

Victoria Thurlow

The video above is the official music video for the song we were thinking about using, 'Anna Sun' and below is a print screen of my twitter page asking for permission from the band to use their song

Risk Assessment

 We made this risk assessment to show we understood the dangers that could happen while filming. By knowing these problems we can take care when we film.

Goodwins Theory

Andrew Goodwin in his book, 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' writes about what he defines as the characteristics of music videos.
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. (E.g. A dance routine for a boy/girl band or a performance in a rock video).
2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. (Either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting).
3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist/s and the artist/s may develop motifs which reoccur across their work. (A visual style)
5. There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (voyeurism). (Screens within screens, telescopes, etc. and a particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body)
6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos, etc.)
7. There are 3 types of music video (performance based, narrative based and abstract) however more than one can be used in one music video.

Star Image: Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga’s star image is a sexualised one, in nearly all of her videos she wears little clothing and this gives the idea of women being objected as a sexual object. This gives connotations of voyeurism, although the women are mostly undressed, in Lady Gaga’s videos so are the men. This makes the equality of the sexes more equal and far. It shows the taboo subject of women liking sexual objects just as much as men.

 Lady Gaga’s main image on her website is an image of her, this isn’t a regular image, it has many abstract elements. This is the key selling point in Lady Gaga’s style. The font on Lady Gaga’s website is quite feminine, this is because she generally attracts a female audience. Lady Gaga, allows merchandise to be bought, you can tell that she is an important star in the media because of this. This shows that she has many fans who want to show their support of her. This only increases her star image more, as more focus will have to be made on her.

Lady Gaga’s first ever music video, ‘Just dance’ is quiet tame compared to her later ones, the only abstract part of it being that not all of the lyrics match up to the visuals.

Matching lyrics to the visual is a very important part in any music video as it helps the audience understand the artists aim and style. Whereas Lady Gaga’s style is quiet outrageous, we now as an audience expect that constant shock factor from Lady Gaga.

In Lady Gaga’s videos she always has abstract and performance elements in it, her performance is always her lip syncing to the lyrics and usually include some type of dance routine, her music videos generally require many back up dancers, this gives the idea of an audience watching like voyeurism.

A few of her videos include narrative, in one of her videos for the song ‘Judas’ she refers to herself as being the one “in love with Judas”, this is a form of narrative. This helps the audience connect with the video, the connotations of the red in this video give the sense of romance with also links in with the idea of being in love. Like mentioned earlier, Lady Gaga always has a narrative in that she is the one lip syncing to her music, so everyone knows it is her own song. The abstract of this video is the religious elements, this video shows a biker with the name ‘Judas’ on his leather jacket, with men following him behind, like disciples would. Although these disciples have the same names as the ones that Jesus, for example, ‘Peter’ and ‘John’. As it is known that ‘Judas’ was a religious traitor, it’s an odd idea to pair his character with Jesus’ disciples.

Lady Gaga, also makes an effort on creating individual cover arts for her album, this is one of her later albums, in which by this point she has fully developed as an artist. Her album cover is an artistic one in that, she wasn’t ‘born this way’ as in half bike, half human. But it symbolises her unique nature in the way that she isn’t an artist of the ‘norm’. This is one of the reasons she has to now keep up this dramatic shocking image, for her star image. Her genre of music is pop and dance, her music is featured in the charts, this shows her to be a popular musician. Who is now someone people can idolise for her unique messages. As she is always expected to be in the charts, she has to think of new ways to create over reactive ideas.

She does this by expressing herself on stage and through her outfits, while at celebrity events where she is expected to ‘look the part’ she fits in with her star image by dressing outrageously. At one award ceremony she dressed herself up in meat, this then creates an outcry from the public. But her outrageous costumes do have her being talked about, which is essentially the point of it all.  

The lighting she generally uses in her music videos is back lighting which gives her a glow around her face as she usually uses that in close ups. Her general lighting is usually a hard light behind her and to the side so everything can be seen as her songs are usually happy and not emotional.  She also uses strobe lighting which gives the effects of parties and a good time. This fits in with the general idea of pop videos, as they are usually happy and exciting.

Lady Gaga’s body language is quiet sexual in her videos, her dance moves can be explicit and she usually throws her body around in these videos. This links back with the idea of voyeurism and women being looked at as sexual objects.

Her live performances usually match up to her general image and as she’s a very popular artist, many people attend this sort of concert. Her image is even represented in her support acts at these concerts, for example glam-rock band ‘the darkness’ have been said to perform and with them also sexualising themselves it appears to be a good fit for the theme Lady Gaga goes for.

Her support acts are usually shocking and compliment her style of performance. She likes to keep her crowd entertained and does this by bringing even more dance routines and interesting ideas of costumes and scenery into the mix.

While Lady Gaga’s star image is a publicised one, it has a keen effect onto her target audience. That being teenagers and young adults. The record labels know how to keep in trend with each year and model their artists to fit this accordingly. While at first Lady Gaga’s star image was seen as shocking, as time passed her fan base grew and more people turned to be more fascinated by it rather than appalled. Now because of this Lady Gaga is an icon and has started many trends, many artists and musicians now start to look up to her star image and try to turn it and make it into their own.