Individual Music Video

This my individual attempt of our music video, We are using it as our first draft. I was helped with this video by my group as I was late to creating my individual video. This has been uploaded to our group blog channel.

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Class Video Previews

Today in class we are showing our first draft of our music video, We will be taking notes of the other groups videos and giving them good and bad feedback on them. By doing this we will be helping them improve their video and vise-versa. I will be writing my notes down and them posting them on my blog for the other groups to see so they will be able to save for themselves. 

The first video shown to the class is our own, this is the feedback we have been given from our classmates and teacher -

The second video shown was group two and this is the feedback I have given them - 

The third video shown was group one and this is the feedback I have given them - 

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Group Update

Today we completed are music video and have it ready to show to the class tomorrow for reviews and discussion. This is our first draft and over the Christmas break we will each be creating our own video to our own specifications rather than 'a group'.

The editing was going really well and smoothly, everything was coming together well as Liam was familiar with the software through his research and mock work, I was helping Liam edit and decide on what clips we should use for the video, it took us approximately 6hours to finally decide on the clips we were using. We hit a stumbling block near the end of our video completion as when Liam was editing a clip in time with the beat he had to extend the length of the transition. When he clicked the transition and changed the length he did not realise that there was a checkbox next to it saying "apply to all transitions" therefore we went on to compete the rest of the video making everything click into place. Then when it came to exporting the clip, Liam played it back and then we realised the lip sync and timings were not as we originally had them. It took us about half an hour to realise what was actually the problem. Then we figured out it was the transitions they had all been set to 1 second rather than the original 0.5.

I am glad we realised the problem ourselves and was able to fix it in time for our first deadline.

Once this issue was resolved we went back and fixed the transitions and then our video was back to the way we wanted it to be.

As a group we are very happy and excited about our video as we all believe it is a huge step-up from last years work, now we are going to get feedback from our teacher and class to help improve our video and make it the best it possibly can be

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Dillion Francis Album

I recently bought the album 'Money Sucks, Friends Rule' by Dillion Francis off beatport. The album is an House music/ Electronic based genre. 

Money Sucks, Friends Rule is the debut full-length album by Dillon Francis, an American electronic music producer. 

The album features collaborations from artists such as Major Lazer, Martin Garrix, Mad Decent label-mate DJ Snake, rapper Twista, Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie and more. It was released on October 27, 2014 on Mad Decent in collaboration with Columbia Record.

This is one of the first albums I have bought in a while and I have really enjoyed every song on the album. The album cost me £6.99 from beatport. I have recommended the album to all my friends that enjoy this genre. 

My favourite track off the album is "Set me free" which features Martin Garrix, it has a unique sound and feel to it, the vocals are very nice for a dance music song to. 

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Group Update

We have completed our filming as a group, we are now onto our editing process which will take a week or two. We are each editing a part of the video. I will be editing the middle of the video.

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Group Record Label

Since our music genre is dance music we decided to check out the biggest recording labels in this genre. We have found two big record companies which are 'Spinning Records' And 'Revealed Recordings' 

Spinning Records is home to some of the biggest artists in the world such as Martin Garrix. This recording label is constantly promoting its new and young artists through youtube and twitter. Spinning Records do not offer many music videos with their songs and this is why I do not want to sign for this label. 

The other big record label is Revealed Recording which is owned by the biggest DJ in the world Hardwell whom is the maker of our song. 

Dutch DJ/producer Hardwell presented his very own imprint Revealed Recordings in 2010. The young house sensation revealed a fresh and open-minded label. Next to Hardwell’s own tracks and collaborations, Revealed Recordings will also release tracks that fit the versatile sound of the label, whether that be progressive -, tech – or electro house influenced. Within a short period the label has build up a distinct label profile in todays Dance scene with a unique sound, a Revealed sound!

I believe this record label fits our needs and produces many music videos so it is a perfect fit for our artist. 

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Music Mixing

In my free time I like to mix some of my favourite songs and see how they sound, I have decided to experiment with our groups song 'Young Again' and adding a different drop to the song. 

You can check out the original song here

You can check out my two remixes/mixes of the song here!

I have used the software 'Mixx' to create and mix these two tracks, the software is free to use and very easy to use once researched. I wanted to create a mix of our groups song to see how different I could make the original song sound and attempt to make it better. The process I took to create my mixes were very simple, first I took a note of the songs 'drops' and then set the software to mix the songs at that moment to create these new sounds. 

I don't think I have been very successful in making the song better as the mixed songs do not go with the original, in the future I would like to attempt to remix the song. 

As stated above I have used the software Mixx for my song mixes, I am planning on upgrading software soon since this software is becoming outdated I also would like to buy myself a pair of DJ decks. The software is very simple to use once the key components are understood. 

Firstly you have two separate CD decks in which you place your two desired songs into, once you have imported each song you play the first song on the first deck and then let the song play until the moment you want to mix it into the second song. As the point of mixing approaches you manually use the mix slider in the middle of the software and drag it towards CD two and the software will mix the two songs automatically. There is the option of doing this completely manually but this is more advanced and I am not up to this point in mixing yet. 

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The Hypodermic Needle Theory

The Hypodermic Needle Theory

The "Hypodermic Needle Theory" is a theory that imply's that mass media has a direct and powerful effect on its audiences. The media in the late 1940s and 1950s was shown as a powerful and clear influence on behaviour change. The theory suggests that the mass media could influence and control a very large group of people directly by 'injecting' them with messages and ideology's designed to trigger a certain response which is posed by the creator of the media text. To express this theory if you use the example of a bullet and a needle which both suggest a powerful and direct flow of information from the sender (The media) to the audience.  

It is suggest that the media is a dangerous way to share and put across idea's since the audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message. The audience is seen as target and vulnerable since we have no idea if what we are being told is true since there is not other was to get the information we are being fed. The a popular example of this theory is the 1938 radio broadcast of Orson Wells 'War of the Worlds' in which over a million people throughout the United States genuinely believed that aliens were invading.The audience passively receives the information that is given to them through the media. They are manipulated into what they’re being told and seeing is true. I have applied this theory to my own by using the repetitive theme in which never to give up on a loved one or dream. The message we are trying to portray to the audience is that you are never to old to enjoy yourself and to chase the things you love and we use this through visuals but mostly lyrics. Our video will be always reminding the audience about the message being put across.

I have applied this to our own music video by trying to force the message across that we are only young once so make the most of it, The original idea of our video was a lot more complex and contained more narrative so it was easier to portray a message of 'you are only young once' but now its filled with more performances and setting the scene clips so it will be difficult to force a message across now. The hypodermic needle is not the best theory to link to our video since it's aim is not to force a message and ideology on people  but rather to make people aware of how quick time flies. 

The target audience for my music video is anyone between the ages of 16-35 as these are the ages that tend to listen to dance music, I do not really apply this theory to my work since I am not forcing any ideology on the audience. A better theory related to my work would be the reception theory or the users and gratification theory. The Hypodermic needle theory suggests the audience are passive meaning they do not question the media that they are receiving, my video is not intended to be used like this I want the audience to be active while watching my video. 

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Personality Task

Personality's and Group update

In lesson today we looked at different types of personalities and what kind of personality we individually have. In the picture below we each discussed with each other what box we thought we fitted into. I personally thought I fitted into the Red category since most of the characteristics fit me. 

My group disagreed with me and thought I fitted into the Green category more. Following on from this we decided to assign roles to each of our group members, I was assigned the role of editing, finding locations, creating the logo/website and finding the right camera shots and movements. These were assigned to me as I am known to be the most creative member of our group and I have a lot of 
experience in editing and creating websites. 


We decided to go with Liam as our team leader because overall he had the best leadership qualities and he has good time management skills. The ideas we have had for our music video has changed a lot already and we are still in discussion about certain things, this is because when we come up with ideas individually and then have a group discussion we tend to develop and change many of the ideas that we have come up with.

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Prop List

We are creating a prop list in order to prepare for our filming. We will each be assigned to props and have the responsibility of gathering them. 

The props and costume needed for our video are -

(For our character in the video)

Skateboard

Skinny Jeans

Baggy T-Shirt                                                      

Skateboard shoes (Vans/Nikes)           

GoPro Camera

(For our Artist)

Plain Black T-Shirt

Blue Jeans                                                          
Headphones

Studio Mic

I will be responsible for our group gathering all items, all of the props above are essential for our music video. 

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Music Video Theories 4/4

The Carol Vernallis Theory 

4)Editing 

Editing will sometimes match the musical instruments or the beat of the song, linking the visual images together this way, the audience realises that the beat/rhythm links in with the visual images and will relate these visual images to other things after watching the video.

Music videos constantly break or disrupt the "rules" of continuity editing. This is the main convention of music video editing.

When we see edits they will tend to be quite obvious, in divergence to the "invisible" continuity editing This needs to be really obvious, the edits actually have to draw attention to themselves and a successful music video will do this to assist in breaking the narrative. The most common edits you may see in music videos are:

Jump Cuts

Lack of 30 degree rule

Lack of 180 degree rule

Fancy editing or cuts

Extreme jumps in time or space

Extreme changes in pace

Graphic matches

Style of editing exclusive to the video. 

Cutting Within the Lyrics

Cutting against the Movement

I now have a idea and list of things to avoid and potentially use when editing my video together. I will certainly be using Cutting within the lyrics since it would suit my video rather nicely. 

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Music Video Theories 3/4

The Carol Vernallis Theory

3) Camera Movement and Shots

 I will now look at Vernallis's Theory of camera movement and framing.When it comes to camera shots, Extremes are VERY common along with Establishing shots, even if they are Extreme close-ups, or at a extreme distance, music videos try to avoid shots such as mid-shots, or a middle-ranged shot. They tend to sit on the the extreme ends of the scale.

Styles of framing and movement tend to run all the way through the video.

The camera may move in time with the music, just like the edits as in my previous post this is just for  drawing focus onto the artist


Repetition in the music video is really common to portray a message or meaning the style of framing and movement are usually a continuing theme that is distinctive to that video/genre.

A example of over us of extreme shots is this music video -

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Music video theories 2/4

The Carol Vernallis Theory

2) Diegesis

Diegesis in music videos is known as the "world" inside the video. It is always revealed slowly allowing interventions, and a story to develop over time. Repetition is key in a music video because it allows the artist to get a message across through the concept of quantity, it means that they can create a world for their song through the video An example of this:

While we are exploring the "world" of the video, we see how are protagonist (Jared Leto) feels, reacts, and does. The theme of war is the point of the video and the message is to stop war, Jared Leto acts as a solider in this video. 

• Movements may move to the music, this can be character movement or object movement, i have used this in my own music video and it  can be seen in the video above too.

• There may be times when the audience does not understand the Diegesis - Gaps in time and space, music, performance, and narrative.

Using this theory, I understand the need to focus on music, and time progression and movement along with the music. I have learned that i need to openly and slowly show the story of my video to the audience.

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Music video theories 1/4

In the last few days I have been analysing theories of Music Videos. One of the theories I am going to cover is the Carol Vernallis Theory.

I read part of Carol's research which was titled - The Kindest Cut - Functions and meanings of Music Video Editing. Carol Vernallis's theory revolve's around four different and important concepts.I am going to break them down. They are: 1. Narrative 2. Diegsis 3. Camera Movement and Framing 4. Editing (I will be submitting a detailed post about this) I am going to analyse each of these concepts and I will establish what they mean, and how they can benefit my music video since this is research for it.

1) Narrative

• A music video is a visual response to the song and lyrics, not the other way around. The video should be support the lyrics meanings and song, but the artist/star will remain dominant, this is to appeal to an audience.
• There does not need to be a  balance between narrative and performance. A song can have a full video of narrative, or full of performance or a mixture. Most of the time performance takes prominence in order to to show of the star and song more

• A example of a music video that is purely performance is Martin Garrix - Wizard

The video is 95% percent performance, its only real focus throughout the whole video is Martin Garrix and him entertaining his crowd. This is just one example of how a video can be focused on performance rather than narrative, I may use this theme in my own music video. This video is the same it focuses on performance but it has a narrative with it and this gives me more ideas for my own music video.

This video is Fall out boy - Dance Dance

• Carol Vernallis says that there at the end of the music video it may not give a real ending or clear closure for the audience. The narrative is not always finished, It can be a fragment, the story does not have to be finished

• The narrative may appear disjointed - There is no need for continuity in a music video, this would make the audience focus on the video, not the song, trying to follow the story. If the video is jumping from performance to scene repeatedly, the focus remains on the stars and song since it makes the audience aware of the artists.

• Something still needs to drive the video forward, however, it's usually not the narrative, this may cause the video to ask questions it doesn't actually answer, it leaves the audience guessing, and wanting more from the artist.

• There many indeed by a narrative theme running through the video, but usually in a montage theme, throwing it together since continuity is not needed for a music video.

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Mood Board

I have now been placed in my group and we have decided on using the genre of  'Dance' for our own music video. In our group we each discussed our own personal taste in music and what we favour, me and john both love dance music and instantly put this idea forward, Liam also enjoys this genre but wanted to do something around the theme of RnB. We discussed the possibilities of both genres and finally decided on Dance music. 

I have decided to create a mood board which relates to my favourite genre dance music/EDM. The mood board consists of many known Djs and some underground ones. The mood board contains artists such as Hardwell, Tiesto, Calvin Harris, Armin Van Buuren and Blasterjaxx. 

Here is my mood board - 

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Three Artists

In lesson we had to choose three songs/artists we really liked so we could start creating some ideas for our music video and get some inspiration. My favourite genres of music are mainly dance music and rock music. 

Firstly my favourite artist is the dutch sensation  - Armin Van Buuren 

Armin van Buuren is a Dutch music producer and DJ. He is known for mostly playing progressive trance. Van Buuren has won a number of accolades, including the #1 spot on DJ Magazine's Top 100 DJs fan poll a record of five times, including an unprecedented four consecutive years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and again in 2012. He is currently the #3 DJ on DJ Magazine's Top 100 DJs poll for 2014.

Armin Van Buuren has been a inspiration on my personal life as his music really inspired me to create my own music and want to learn more about the genre of dance music. Armin's music videos are always fun to watch and have a deep meaning in each one. If my music video is based around dance music he will be the first source of inspiration for me. 

My second favourite artist is the rock band - Enter Shikari 

Enter Shikari are an English four-piece rock band formed in 2003. They are well known for their crossover style incorporating post-hardcore and various heavy metal with elements of various electronic genres, such as industrial, dubstep, trance, and occasionally drum and bass. Their debut album, Take to the Skies was released on 19 March 2007 and reached No. 4 in the Official UK Album Chart.  Their third studio album, A Flash Flood of Colour was released on 16 January 2012 and was positioned at the top of the UK Album Chart for almost its entire week of release.

Enter Shikari are a very unique band and their style of music is clever. Enter shikari are the first band I seen live and since then I have not stopped loving their music. I have been fans of the band for six years and have kept up with all their songs and music videos throughout them six years. Enter shikari have very unique music videos and I believe they are great research for my own music video.

My third favourite artist is the DJ - Hardwell

Robbert van de Corput, better known by his stage name Hardwell, is a Dutch progressive and electro house DJ and music producer. He was voted the world's #1 DJ on DJ Magazine's annual Top 100 DJs poll in 2013 and then, again in 2014. Hardwell is widely known for his live sets at major music festivals such as Tomorrowland and Ultra. The video streams of his performances on his personal YouTube channel have collectively garnered more than 100 million views.

 Hardwell has been one of the biggest artists in dance music for the past few years, his music is enjoyable for alot of audiences. Hardwell produced around five music videos in 2013 this is alot for a dance music artist. I believe hardwell has the best music videos for any other dance music producer and this is why i believe he is good inspiration for myself and my group.

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Update

Blog update 22/10/2014

On thursday I traveled to Amsterdam to take part in its yearly event of 'ADE' (Amsterdam Dance event). During this week amsterdam celebrates its ever growing culture of dance music and over 2000 Djs take part in events over 5 days. I stayed in Amsterdam for three days and for the three days I took part in events, interviews and I took many videos of my time there. The city was full of posters, videos and more which was very nice for my research in media as it has opened me up to another culture and I have begun to think about new things which I could implant into my own work.

The city was full of advertisements for events and gigs, there was near enough five posters per street, compare this to england you are lucky to see one poster every ten streets. The promotion of music in the city was very big. Here is a example of a few posters I spotted as I arrived in the city - 

Over the week Amsterdam had many buildings dedicated to listening to music, browsing the internet for events and updating yourself on what is going on in the city. I thought these were very clever and useful especially since they helped me get information on what is happening media-wise in the city.

This is a picture of one of these buildings. 

My trip to amsterdam has helped me alot and opened my mind to many more ideas for my own media work. I have many clips and images of my time which I will be uploading to my own personal blog. The trip to amsterdam has shown me the difference in how music is celebrated and promoted compared to in England,

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Group Blog

We have created our Group Blog which will be for all our updates and research on our music video. I am in a group with Liam . You can find my group blog here -  

. Group Blog 2 .

The first thing we are going to look at as a group is different types of filming we can potentially do. We want to have unique shots and scenes in our music video so we have decided to experiment with different things. John and Liam have begun trying filming things in a time lapse and even underwater. I have put forward the idea of doing a aerial shot from an airplane. 

Here is a example of my experiment of filming from an airplane to create an ariel shot - 

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Style Choices - Martin Garrix / House Music

On tuesday we created our groups for our music videos, I am in a group with John and Liam I was in a group with them last year and because I have experience with them already I believe we will have an advantage when completing our music video. We had to create a mood board on the different styles of music we could do for our video. I decided to put forward the idea of Dance/Progressive house music as I believe it has a lot of potential in music videos.

A song that stands out for me which I believe could be used as our song is Martin Garrix - Golden Skies. This song is a progressive house song and has alot of vocals in it. I like the idea of this song since its vocals can be shown very easily visually and a narrative can be built around them.

Im going to be highlighting the artist Martin Garrix as he has had a lot of success in his dance music videos.

Martin Garrix is an 18 year old DJ who rose to fame quickly in 2013 with his hit single 'Animals' which hit number one in more than ten countries. Martin Garrix reached the status of #4 best DJ in the world in DJ mags top 100 this year. At 18 he is the youngest successful DJ of all time.

This poster is an example of one of Martin Garrix's tour posters for America. The poster is pretty simple as it lists the location and dates of his shows on the right side in clear writing with a picture of him next to the locations. The poster is white black and green, these colours would stand out to anyone walking past. I believe the poster is simple and gets to the point which is to promote his gigs.

This is the cover album of Martins first album 'Animals'. The cover features a white lion on a black background. The lion is related to the name of the album which is 'animals'. This album is really basic as it only displays a picture of a lion and the artists name and recording label. The fact the cover album is so simple shows that he does not need it to stand out since it will be successful just from word of mouth.

This is a picture of Martin Garrix performing at a live show. A picture like this would most likely be used on his social networks to show the fun and energy at his gigs. This will promote more people to want to go to his events if they see the crowd and artist having fun.

This is Martin Garrix's music video for his song 'Wizard'. The video shows the artist traveling and performing his song in front of crowds. I believe the purpose of this video is to show people how fun his gigs while showing off his new song. The video is full of energy and happiness with people dancing. The video has no narrative or meaning it just promotes his new song and makes people want to go to his shows. 

This is a short documentary on the 18 year old DJ.

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Individual Lip Sync Progress

I have been practising my iMovie skills this past week and have been trying to remove a green screen from my lip sync video and then place a image over it instead. I have used the song Linkin Park - Numb as my lip sync song. The first step I took to replace the greenscreen with a image was importing the clip of my lip sync into the iMovie project tab. After my lip sync was in I drag the image I want behind me over the video and select the option 'green screen'. By doing this it replaces the greenscreen with my image. 

Lastly I need to import the song and then put my video in sync with it, I am currently having trouble with this and may need to redo my lipsync video since I have missed some lyrics out. I will post my finished video here -


This is my first draft of my lip sync -

Linkin Park - Numb

This is the background I have used to replace the green screen - 

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Lip sync presentations

Today in class we had to present our lip sync task to each other and then comment on each others blogs regarding what we thought of their lip sync. I commented on each of my classmates blogs and told them what I thought of their attempted lip sync. I will be uploading my lip sync on friday I have not had access to the green screen. In this blog post I will update it with the comments I have received on my video.

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Blog Update

My blog has not been updated the past week due to personal reasons but I will be posting a lot over the weekend to keep my blog up to date with the rest of the class. I have been informed about what I have missed out on.

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Lip Sync Practicing

 Before creating my lip sync I need to practice replacing a green screen with a video/image. I have created a mock up of what I will be creating here -

The process I have went through to create this is here -

  - Adding a title, to my clip.

  

- Putting the Greenscreen video over.

- Putting credits in.





Final product

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iMovie Research

This week I have decided to look into how to use iMovie and I have been looking at guides on youtube to help myself. First off I looked for different editing effects and how I go about editing parts if of my own videos. The iMovie software is pretty basic and easy to understand so I believe this is a good starting point for me. iMovie is just one of the video editing software's I will be trying to teach myself as i would like to use more advanced software's but this is the only one currently available to me. This is the video I am going to watch first - 




After watching the video I think I have learnt alot of new editing information and discovered things I Didn't know you were able to do on iMovie. This video was very long so it was hard for me to take it all in, I will have to try and test some of the things I have learnt in school and update my post showing my new skills. 

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Camera Movement

In class we took a quiz to refresh our memory on different camera movements, as I had not researched them in a long time I struggled with a lot of them. After the quiz we went through lots of different camera movements and this helped me refresh my own memory. This activity has helped me since when it comes to creating my own video I will be able to incorporate a lot of them into it. 

Camera shots and movements are used to demonstrate different aspects of setting, themes and characters, Composers of films also use camera movement to shape meaning. The following are some examples of camera movements and how they can be used to shape meaning in films.


Zoom In - A Zoom In does not require the camera itself to move at all. Zooming means altering the focal length of the lens to give the illusion of moving closer to or further away from the action.

Zoom Out - The Zoom Out does not require and camera movement either had its just altering the focal length of the lens, The zoom out is used mostly as a establishing shot to show the audience more depth of field.

                                                     

Tracking shot - A tracking shot is when a camera follows a person or an object physically moving with the subject- This can be done using tracks, handheld, ropes, Steady-cam

  

      

Pan shot - Panning is a camera movement technique that involves moving the camera horizontally to the right or left. With this technique you can track an object or follow any type of movement.

Whip pan - A whip pan is a camera movement that is a very fast version of the pan shot it is that fast it usually blurs the background, it's used for things such as following a passing train or spaceship. Because of motion blur, it's most often used to smooth transitions between abrupt cuts of shots or scenes.

Arc shot - When the camera is rotated around the subject in a circular motion

        

Crane shot - In video production, a crane shot is a shot taken by a camera on a crane or jib. The most obvious uses are to view the actors from above or to move up and away from them, a common way of ending a movie.

Steadicam - A Steadicam is a brand of camera stabiliser mount for motion picture cameras that mechanically isolates it from the operator's movement. It allows for a smooth shot, even when moving quickly over an uneven surface.

Aerial Shot - A extremely high angle view of a subject usually taken from a crane or a high stationary camera position, but may also refer to a shot taken from an actual aeroplane or helicopter.

Hand held camera - The Hand-held camera shot technique is when a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conveniently sized for travel and because they allow greater freedom of motion during filming. Hand-held camera shots often result in an image that is perceptibly shakier than that of a tripod-mounted camera.

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