Music Video Analysis

Music video Analysis

The responsibilities I had during the project included:
· Taking care of all the pre-production work – this included making the storyboard, the treatment, the synopsis, the call-sheet, the shot list and the shooting schedule
· Producing – this included coming up with locations and filling out risk assessment forms for those locations, finding actors to star in the music video and making sure they are where they need to be at the right time, making sure any props/costumes that were needed were gathered and were in the right place at the right time.
· Directing – this included making sure the actors knew what they had to do in the shot
· Editing – this involved making log sheets for the tape and logging every shot, batch capturing all of the shots and cutting out the parts of the shot that are needed and placing them in the correct order, adding transitions into the clip, editing the colours and lightness of the shots and adjusting the speed.
I think overall my contribution to the music video was quite effective, although there were several things that I could have been a lot more careful with or done a lot better. My final edited music video did not stick as close to my original storyboard as I would have liked. Due to a lack of time I wasn’t able to acquire all of the shots I wised to capture, this was due to the shots I did acquire taking a lot longer than expected due to weather conditions and equipment failure. I could have overcome this by choosing locations and a storyboard that could easily be filmed in without depending on the weather. The lack of shots I was able to achieve has lead to my final piece not running as smoothly and making as much sense as I could have hoped. The feedback I received seemed to be revolved around the idea as my piece not being as easy to follow, as it should be and being a little difficult to understand. I have tried to overcome this by re-editing my piece again after receiving this feedback. I have tried to edit the piece to focus more on the female in the music video as a few of the male shots are missing. I wanted my music video to show the boy and the girl both doing the same type of things but in different ways and I wanted to show using parallel editing, but not being able to acquire all of the male shots I hoped for has lead me to focus primarily on the female, reducing the importance of the male’s role. When making my storyboard, treatment and synopsis and shot list I wished to show the male and female characters getting ready to leave the house for everyday business and I was hoping to get very similar shots for both the female and male but shot in different ways and using different styles in order to portray to juxtaposing emotions of both the male and female characters. For example, the second shot used in my music video is a close-up of the males phone as his alarm clock goes off, and the phone is shot on a wooden desk with nothing else viewable in frame. I also have a close-up shot of a small pink alarm clock on a bedroom floor being turned off but it is a much different shot as there is a lot more going on in the frame. The alarm clock was placed on top of a broken plastic heart that when the alarm clock was moved revealed the words “happy valentines day”, which clearly gives the representation of a broken heart and lets the audience know that there is something wrong. And I planned to carry on the theme of showing the girls depression and giving more generic indicators of depression and sadness, and making the male character to look a lot happier and more relaxed. So the shots I wanted to get of both the male and female characters getting ready and leaving the house I managed to film but after both of the characters had left the house I wasn’t able to get as many shots as I had hoped I could acquire. An example of this is when I featured a point of view shot of the male character sitting in his car with both his hands on the steering wheel, but I wasn’t able to get the shots of the female’s transport I hoped, which was down to the fact of practicality. Practicality was a big factor when acquiring my shots. For example I made my story board and shot list to feature a point of view shot of the female character sitting on the bus with both of her hands on the bar just in front of the window, but this proved to be very impractical when trying to position the camera without severe shaking, also the front top seats which I was planning to film on weren’t always available, and unfortunately once the seat was available there were issues positioning the camera which were not solved until the sun had set and it become very dark which would have severely affected the continuity of my video so I decided not to use the shot. Another shot involving buses I wanted to get was a close up shot of the female character putting change into the ticket machine on the bus, which could not be filmed on a moving bus that you could simply get from a bus stop without being filmed hand held, which didn’t work with the rest of my piece I have decided to make some flashbacks later on in the piece hand held, so the hand held affect has significance in my piece. I tried to overcome this by contacting the bus company, hoping to be able to film on one of the stationary buses that are kept in the depot, although it wasn’t possible to get permission to do this. Another example of practicality being an issue is when I had planned in my story board and shot list to get some shots the male character laying in a hospital bed with the female character by his side and I doctor telling the female character that he my not remember the girl to use as a flashback. I wasn’t sure how to go about getting this shot without using a hospital bed, but after contacting the hospital it was made apparent that filming in an actual hospital bed would not be possible, so I had to go with my back up location which was to film the scene in one of the medical rooms available in Suffolk New College. I ended up having to change some of my shots around as I had several issues being able to get the mid shot of the doctor I required. I realised it was more difficult than I had thought to get my hands on a stethoscope and a white doctors coat that wasn’t a Childs play set. I also had issues with being able to play the doctor anyway because I couldn’t find another male actor on such short notice to play the part of the doctor as I myself was playing the role of the male in my music video, so I wouldn’t have been able to play the doctor as well and still have the piece make sense. I decided that I wanted to edit the ending of the music video to be quite fast paced because the end of the music video is the bit where the couple meets and the flashbacks are introduced. I think that when this is done it gave quite a good job in almost representing the couple’s heartbeats as it’s a rush for the girl to see the boy, and it’s a rush for the boy having all of these memories flooding back to him. I wanted to put the sound of a heartbeat over the top of the music to add to this affect but I wasn’t able to find one. A small issue I had was that I planned in my storyboard and shot list that I was going to have a close up flashback of the couple kissing, but due to circumstances between the actors this was not possible, so I tried to overcome this by getting a close up of my friend kissing his girlfriend, but it wasn’t until I came to edit that I realised the shot wasn’t close up enough to hide the identity of my friend. I tried to overcome this by zooming in on the couple in an attempt to hide my friend’s identity.
I feel as though I gained a lot of knowledge from the experience of making this music video. Most of the knowledge I have learnt was about the pre-production work of the music video and how important it is to think about the practicality of the type of shot and locations I choose when creating my storyboard and shot list. I also learnt that it is very important to check your camera equipment is all working before going out to film. I learnt this because after a session of going out and filming I realised that the camera I was working with was faulty and cut off quite a few of my shots before they were finished causing me to take out quite a few shots I was planning to use. This happened on my most important shot which was the long shot of the male and female characters turning to each other. When I recorded this shot originally I had the couple walk towards each other and wrap their arms around one another to show that the couple are back together, but this bit was cut out of the shot. I had no choice but to use this shot anyway because it is one of the most important shots I had. I decided that the music video would still work as a whole if the shot ended with the couple simply facing each other as it leaves the end of the narrative up to the viewer.
I decided that I wasn’t going to worry too much about the lighting of my music video as it was quite impractical to carry a large light and stand to my locations, and also powering the lights would have been a big issue. So I decided the only shots I would use lighting on are the shots of the guitarist playing the guitar in the studio, as it was very simple to set up the lighting. I put quite a lot of thought into the camerawork and the cinematography of my piece when making my storyboard because in order to help show the characters emotions I wanted to have most of the shots of the female character being high angle shots looking down on her to give the audience the feeling of looking down on her which helps show her depression.
I think the ideas I had about the use of editing, cinematography and mise-en-scene were quite well thought out and would have work very well, but I don’t think I managed to portray these ideas in my music video as well I hoped to. Ideally I would have thought a lot more about props and costumes but budget was a big issue and practicality played a part in it again as the people I had used to act in my piece had come straight from college. If I had a bigger budget and access to actual actors I could have used the aspect of performance to portray the emotions of the characters. Not being able to use performance I had to use other aspects of mise-en-scene such a draining some of the colour out of the shots that featured the female character and cinematography.
I certainly could have portrayed the idea I originally had for my piece a lot better if I had access to a budget, actors and had correctly thought through my shots and locations.
The feedback I received about my piece was mainly focused around the editing and use of shots. The main criticism I received was about the narrative of my music video not making too much sense when all put together. So I gave my piece one last edit in order to try and use the editing to help push the narrative along a bit better, and actually ended up taking out some of the shots as I thought they seemed to complicate things even more than when they were in there due to the lack of following shots to back up the idea.
When carrying out my research I based my idea of the music video on the idea of having a strong narrative structure to my piece. I found from my research that most music videos form the same genre as my piece of music seemed to use the video to push along the song rather than the song is the main focus and the using the video just to promote the music.
If I could do this music video again I would certainly put a lot more thought into the pre-production work of my video and make more realistic locations that would be more suitable to fit the aspects I was working with. I certainly would have been a lot more prepared before I went out to start filming as I found that certain obstacles made it hard for me to stick to my shot list, which directly affected the overall piece.