GCSE Music Video - Where is the Love?
..................................................................................................................................
Commentary - Music Video
Understanding the Genre
From the start of this term, our complete focus was to develop our knowledge and understanding of the term music video. Firstly, to start off with I learnt that a music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. And to further develop my understanding and knowledge I looked at the various types of genres in the music videos and analysed them. Music videos have various types of conventions to make up the genres for example: Narrative, dance performance, narrative/live performance, animation, surreal, literal and mixture.
Narrative
Narrative video tells a story for example; Blur - Coffee & TV video, tells the story of an animated milk carton as he goes in search of Blur guitarist.
Narrative/live performances also tell a story but they feature the band or artist usually showed playing music and singing with instruments for exampleMiley Cyrus - 7 Things
Narrative/live performances also tell a story but they feature the band or artist usually showed playing music and singing with instruments for exampleMiley Cyrus - 7 Things
Dance Performance
Dance performance music videos are choreographed and most often show group of dancers dancing on the song with the artist.
For instance Michael Jackson in his video, Thriller.
For instance Michael Jackson in his video, Thriller.
Literal
Literal videos on the other hand are completely opposite to surreal, a literal video will show what the lyrics of the song are, for example; if the lyrics of the song say ‘the time is running out,’ the video will show the clock moving fast. A video that could sum up what a literal video is; it’s Head Over Heels.
Surreal
Surreal music video are bizarre, often these music videos are filled with short random clips which don’t make any sense.
A good example would be Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy.
A good example would be Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy.
Animated
Animated music videos are mainly a rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement.
An example to represent this type of genre’s music video would be The Rifles - "The Great Escape"
An example to represent this type of genre’s music video would be The Rifles - "The Great Escape"
A music video which includes parts of that above genres is known as a Hybrid one as it may include the conventions of all the broad sub genres.
.....................................................................................................................
Research
Lots of research myself and my group members carried out in order for us to get started on our music video. We found out that the target audience of music videos depends on the music genre, for example Hip Hop music videos ideally are targeted to teenagers and young adults. On the other hand, genres like Classical music are aimed at elderly although there are not many videos made on Classical music because there is not big market for it. As the lessons passed our knowledge on the music videos was developing critically as we started to look at Social groups like gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality in music videos that are all represented stereotypically. For example, female in most music videos especially Hip Hop and R&B are portrayed as sex objects mainly by male artist.
To gain more understanding about music videos, I analysed Madonna – Frozen released in 1998 and was directed by Chris Cunningham. The areas looked at while analysing this video was to see what sub genre this music video belongs to? Conventions visible? Its target audience? How are the different social groups represented? And if there’s any use of parody or pastiche? (Refer to Appendix I).
To gain more understanding about music videos, I analysed Madonna – Frozen released in 1998 and was directed by Chris Cunningham. The areas looked at while analysing this video was to see what sub genre this music video belongs to? Conventions visible? Its target audience? How are the different social groups represented? And if there’s any use of parody or pastiche? (Refer to Appendix I).
Planning
After developing my knowledge on the genres of music videos, it was our turn to think of one, for our own personal music video (practical project) which was to be made in groups. After selecting my group members, the next main thing to do was to decide our individual role in our group (Refer to Appendix II). From the start of our planning, our basic aim was to do a Narrative, live performance music video as we believed it would result in a good one after finished. Secondly, our main focus was on the song, as it will play a huge part of deciding what genre our music video will belong to.
A storyline in my mind was expressed to my group members, which them made them come up with the perfect song I wanted ‘Where is the Love’ by Black Eyed Peas. This therefore highlighted our music video’s genre which was hip hop and contemporary R&B.
A storyline in my mind was expressed to my group members, which them made them come up with the perfect song I wanted ‘Where is the Love’ by Black Eyed Peas. This therefore highlighted our music video’s genre which was hip hop and contemporary R&B.
To get ourselves started off with the practical work, we planned a treatment of our music video (Refer to Appendix III) which includes the major information of our music video for example the song used synopsis, effects. This was then presented to the class, in order for us to pitch our idea, which was luckily seen as a good one and approved. Then it was the time to get cracking on with our theory work first, which was to plan a story board, which was made by me personally in my own time, in order for our group to run smoothly and more importantly to know what scene comes next and what should be done at each point (Refer to Appendix IV).
Target Audience Profile
All Teenagers
- Gender : Males & Females
- Ethnicity : All Ethical Groups
- Age Class : 13 - 19 (Teenagers)
- Demographic Group : B/C1/C2
In order for my music video to fit in its genre of hip hop and contemporary R&B I have included a narrative in my music video as it’s a convention of R&B. Our music video is targeted at age group 13-19 as it’s the ages between them that need attention to the message conveyed by this music video which is to raise awareness about the love. It’s basically for young offenders that carry our discrimination on regular basis. It is more likely that the parents will buy our music videos, for instance to show their children to do the same in their school to, ‘spread love’ by doing anything. Hence, the target markets for our music video are the parents.
Our published video would be played on MTV, Chart show as they are the popular music channels which is watched by millions of people each day, therefore making it quicker to convey are message through. Lampton School being the place where our music video is shot, represents London, therefore shows the community with different races, where there could be a possibility of discrimination taking place, making it a reason for me to choose this place.
..................................................................................................................
Production
This was the time, when the difficult bits started off however as usual similar to other practical’s it was also quite fun at the same time. I being the director had many responsibilities starting off from organising my group members, deciding the location (Refer to Appendix V), camera angles and the props used. Before starting off our music video practical instructions by me were given to my colleagues about when to bring it what prop and what is to be done in each lesson.
During the lessons our main motive was to complete each part of our music video, no matter how many retakes it takes to complete the filming of that scene. My role in these lessons was to instruct my colleagues of how to act and concentrate on the different camera angles while filming (Refer Appendix VI).It took us about 4-5 weeks in order for us to complete all our footage, however some scenes for example the war footage and queue needed was obtained from YouTube however was edited to make it personalised. Lastly, but most important bit was to now lay all our footage, edit it and play around with some effects which could be put onto our videos. This all was to be done on Final Cut Pro. In order for me to learn how to use Final Cut Pro, I spent my Christmas holidays on watching tutorials about different things on FCP for example transitions, effects etc (Refer Appendix VII).
Every project has its positives and its negatives, similarly this practical project had positives like, enjoying while filming learning new software i.e. Final Cut Pro, Motion and making something quite unusual to other subjects. However, it had its constraints attached to it, for example in order to meet our deadlines we had to visit our friends house during Christmas as he had the software needed, we had to research in our own times and the main problem was actually to learn how to use the software.
Specially one major effect ‘Chroma Key’ which is used to cut out the green screen (Refer Appendix VIII). Through the editing of my music video there were some modifications in terms of the effects for example we found it better to fade the 1st scene instead of doing a split screen (Refer Appendix IX).
Specially one major effect ‘Chroma Key’ which is used to cut out the green screen (Refer Appendix VIII). Through the editing of my music video there were some modifications in terms of the effects for example we found it better to fade the 1st scene instead of doing a split screen (Refer Appendix IX).
Overall I think all the artefact looks really professional, and us being GCSE students I personally believe that we have done a great job as a whole group. However it’s the effects that play the part in portraying my music video as a professional one (Refer Appendix X). There were areas of improvements for example if we had spent more time in producing quality footage i.e. lip syncing with the actual song even more. On the whole I believe our video on the scale of 1 to 10 would be given a 7 to compare it with industry-produced videos.
