Video Commentry Transcipt

Part 1-
Naomi : Hi Im Naomi

Marianne: Im Marianne

Naomi: And we are the production tram of high up in the sky by the cajun dance party.

Marianne: A Valley Girls Production

Naomi: Before we started filming and planning we had to do a lot of research of the genre of which the video was from, which was actually indie. So we looked at a lot of their videos and got a feel for them. Where we thought about costume, props and locations so we thought about a lot of fields and urban kind of areas - which were used in our video.

Marianne: yeah we because it was cajun dance party who we choose the song from and a lot of their videos were in fields or running around. So we wanted to do something like that.

Naomi: So we looked at the femal vocalist, who always wears a ball gawn - keeping it quite casual and quite young so we teamed the dress up with converses - which was quite contrasted.

Marianne: Yer we thought it would look quite good, that kind of look.

Naomi: And for the male we had him wear quite a smart outfit - but still keeping it looking quite young. We presented a lot of our research on our blog which shows how a lot of our ideas came together.

Marianne: and we showed a lot of our general first ideas.

Naomi: It showed how much our ideas changed due to like problems.

Marianne: Our first ones wernt that good - so we just had to take that, change it and build it up to better ideas and come to a conclusion.

Naomi: And of course new media technologies made it such a better music video than what it could be - because we used a lot of fades and because our syncing was a little bit out it took us alot of editing and time to get it to as good as we could get it.

Marianne: That was because of a problem we had when we was filming as we didnt have the song with us so I just had to remember what it was and try and sing it to the beat. So we had to be precise.

Naomi: So we had to speed things up and slow parts down - we even had parts where no one was singing.

Marianne: We had to cut bits out.

Naomi: which led us to not have a lot of shots of the male vocalist; so its a lot about the girl really as it was easy to refilm if we needed to.

Marianne: We wanted to like use a plot that would be a quite big representation in our video, so we decided to use an multi-coloured umbrella. Which we used a lot either holding it up or just walking along with it - but it was always there - as our main prop.

Naomi: It was something we could link the three products together with, so you could immeditaly tell that it was a Cajun Dance Party theme - like it was apart of them. So we got this idea from a previous picture that was taken on them which was in an urban city and had this big umbrella and we immeditaly thought that was something we would like to use to link our products together.

Marianne: Final cut obviously we used to edit our video, but we also used photoshop so that we could (because we had to make an magazine cover) so we used that to change - because at first we took photos and once we had them on the computer we changed the colors , brightness of it.

Naomi: We gave it effects as if it had been drawn . Unfortuently we didnt have time to finish our poster because it was quite a rushed course and we just run out of time and had some absceneses of the group and we just spent quite a lot of time on the DVD cover.

Marianne: Yeah we was more pleased with the DVD cover. As we had more time to think about what looked good - at first we had one picture of me on the front but then we thought it looked a little too different from the back, because we liked the back quite a lot with the umbrella, so we made the front better; so we had three photos of me but they were all differently edited; so one was darker then we other and then it got lighter.

Part 2-
Naomi: What made our music video come together was obviously the Darwin conventions. One of them of which was notions of looking where we looked at genre conventions - basically when we looked at all the videos we looked at what was expected of and it was with young people and were always wearing what young people would wear today (quite preppy) and its all just quite innocent and young and upbeat.

Marianne: I think thats what we wanted to get across , like a lot of indie videos have the band and a lot of close ups of them singing but we thought that the song wasnt a rock type it was more about telling a story - so we just had a lot like focusing on the person singing and trying to tell a story.

Naomi: Also, a lot of indie videos the vocalist is directly singing at the camera so we wanted to make sure that the audience felt they had a conncetion with the song and felt invloed with - so we had a lot of shots where the singer was singing straight to the camera (making it quite direct and personal) - as it is about love which is something that a lot of people experience. Interxtuality is what are the genre conventions, and here we focused on making sure there was a strong narrative - so we had to make sure we linked the music video well with the lyrics; which was about finding love. We also made sure we had a lot of shots direct with the camera because this was quite common in indie music videos and its quite personal and natural - its not staged, it seems like its true life. The indie music genre had quite a lot of bright colors, big ball gawns, suits like quite a lot of formal wear but still looked quite young/casual. So we made sure we came up with an outfit that was quite obvious to indie audiences. So that they would know that it was an indie music video.

Naomi: In a lot of The Cajun Dance Party’s music videos a lot of nature locations and open fields are used, so we made sure we used places like this. We wanted to make sure we had a lot of different shots, to make it effective and keeps it appealing to our audience. Otherwise you would get quite bored after a couple of minutes of it. We made sure we went out to lot of different locations and got enough shots.

Marianne: Thirdly another convention of Goodwin is Music and visuals. We wanted to relate to the lyrics in the song so we wanted a location to fit ‘walking up the hill’, so we went to castle hill, which I thought would be a good place to shoot. We wanted to get a lot of different shots of the sky because that is one of the main things said in the song, ‘High up in the sky’. I think one of our strongest shot was the end shot when me and josh were sitting on a punt and then the camera zooms up into the sky. It was a good closing shot.

Sian: Hi, I’m Sian and I will be doing the voice over. ‘Walking up the hill’ is a frequently used lyric in the song, so we felt it was a key element to have a variety of shots of our vocalists walking up the hill. We also thought about the location, relating the surrounding to the lyrics. For example the ‘city, gritty, shadow’, so we had backgrounds of cities to relate to this. We then had Marianne and josh walking up the hill together.

Part 3-
Naomi: we had some shots in such open environments, and then we would be in a city in the middle of busy people.

Marianne: they both went well together though, having the town and then shots of the country.
Naomi: to make it more interesting, when the beat gets faster we wanted something that was also faster and more exciting.

Marianne: we used different tempos, so we sped up the bits where it was faster. When we were standing in the city, with people rushing by, we sped this up. Also running, we had a shot of just the feet and sped this up, so it look faster

Naomi: we also though carefully about colours. We used the colours of the umbrella, to be used on our DVD cover and though carefully about font. We had it quite messy and teenage.

Marianne: In quite a stylish way.

Naomi: so it wasn’t rough but at the same time it matched the outfits they wore. It was formal, but at the same time casual.

Marianne: the feedback we got from our rough cut

Naomi: was quite positive, but we still got enough to work with to make it a better music video. A lot of people said that we represented the indie genre well, just by costume and location. People noticed that this is what you expect to see in a professional Indie music video.
People also said how we had good visual lyric links. This is probably because we had the hill and we had a lot of shots of views. We were told that maybe we need more sky shots, so then we went out again and got a few more shots were you would see the sky in the background. We didn’t just get plain shots of the sky as this wouldn’t be appealing to the audience, but we tried to do it in a way that it still link well, but wasn’t to obvious.

Marianne: They also said we needed a few more close-ups of either singing or a face for the close up because we only had a few at the beginning but we did manage to go out again and film some more.

Naomi: Which was also good because a lot of indie music videos do have direct links with their audience, so looks as if the vocalist is singing to you, like talking to you about the issue.

Marianne: We were down on midsummer common and thought it would be good to have a birds eye view of me standing underneath the bridge, so we went on the bridge and had the camera literally looking down and actually quite a lot of people recognized this and thought it was really good shot.

Naomi: I think also a good shot as well was a close up of the converses which is showing it is an indie video and representing indie outfits and a lot of people were impressed by it and we were told to do some more but because of timing issues we couldn't really go back to the set and do that shot again.

Sian: The umbrella was a key feature in our video and this is seen in our ancillary products.

Marianne: We did have to improve our synching because at first it kept going out of place and we would have to change it again but i think it did work in the end, but it was a problem that we had, probably more than other group's as ours had a lot of singing to the camera so had to make it work.

Naomi: A lot of the male vocalist we had to we had to just remove as we would have lost more marks having it there, than having it out of sink, so taking it out and putting in a completely different shot, we had to do that in quite a lot of situations but where it is now it's still not 100% perfect but its much better than what it was before.

Marianne: In a lot of shots i looked a lot brighter, as i had a bright pink dress on so in Josh's scenes he looked a bit dark, so we wanted to just change that so we used filters to make that brighter in quite a lot of shots.

Naomi: We also made the umbrella a lot brighter than what it was before because this is like our key element and was a link to all our products together so had to make sure it properly stood out, because our shots were under trees and was quite a gloomy day so had to make sure we used filters, this was a part of our feedback from our teacher who said it would be a good thing to do.

Marianne: In our pitch we said we quite liked that song and wanted to get across we could make quite a good music video, so we came up with quite a lot of good ideas, where we set it, who would be in it, straight away we were thinking about these things.

Naomi: It became quite natural, we got loads of ideas straight away and were told we had a good idea for the contrasting outfits and locations and making it more interesting really and were told to make a list of props and costumes to make sure we can finalise and have everything there.

Marianne: Straight away people saw we did have quite good ideas for what we wanted to do which was pleasing.

Naomi: We were also told that in our pitch we made it obvious we had a good link to all our products and to be obvious to our audience that they were all in one product together.

Marianne: Hopefully you found this useful, that we actually did quite a lot to produce this video.

Naomi: To get it to the standard that we have, and had a lot of problems, like where to do the filming, did effect a lot of things but i think we pulled out well.

Marianne: I actually had quite a good time filming it.

Naomi: Editing is what made it what it is so just hopefully you enjoy it and you enjoyed this as well.

Marianne: Cheers, bye.

Music Video Evaluation Commentary Final- Naomi

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Once we had chosen our track for the project, "the hill, the view and the lights" it was important that we understood both the track and the bands genre, which in this case was Indie. To help us understand the Indie genre with confidence we used the Goodwin's theory to guide us. Goodwin's theory included the five main conventions in which a music video is made by.

The first convention is Notions of looking (such as using an direct gaze in our music video), which leads into looking at the generic conventions. To help us to be familiar with generic conventions in Indie music videos we researched a variety on you tube. Our results led us to recognizing that most commonly in Indie music videos young people (students, both male and female) are either apart of the band or are used to represent both the song and the band, this helped us to have a clear idea of the kind of person we would like to represent the song in our music video : a teenage girl. This also allowed us to look into costume (here introducing mise en scene), we noticed a trend in which was a quite contrasted fashion sense such as formal wear contrasting with "converses" keeping the style aesthetically appealing but still keeping a young, casual vibe. Leading us to get an image of having a female singer in a bright pink prom dress with very contrasting converses. Also, we looked carefully into obvious and repetitive locations used in Indie music videos, these normally are landscapes such as : fields, forests and busy cities (note that we noticed these trends in the Cajun Dance Party music videos). So using this knowledge we decided to use an open field, a forest and a shot in the city, and of course we also included a hill in some of our shots as this represented the song title well. I feel we researched well into looking at the expected mise en scene in previous Indie music videos, using the internet for websites such as you tube, the cajun dance parties myspace and google images; so we were able to portray our music video being in the Indie genre well. We also reflected the Indie type locations and costumes in our Ancillary products, by having one image of the main singer in the woods, and another in front of a calm, relaxed brick wall.

Intertextuality is another of Goodwin's conventions. Here we looked at trends and styles in established Indie music video, we also looked at female vocalist videos such as Beyonce, to have an idea of different appealing affects and ideas of location and contrast. We noticed that a lot of Indie music videos include a narrative, that is very obvious to the audience, they seem very natural and are the lyrics and the shots are very open to the audience - allowing the audience to be able to see and feel the emotions in which the band is trying to portray. Supporting this statement is that the person used in the music video is mostly always singing directly at the audience to the camera, drawing them in and making them feel apart of the situation that is presented in the music video. This almost makes the music video seem like a miniature film. Looking into colors and other themes myself and the group have noticed that bright colors are used a lot in front of a quite calm, relaxed background with very pastel, light colors - allowing the singers to stand out well. Again this supports my idea of Indie music videos being very contrasting, which may also be portrayed as being quite random and confusing which may perhaps reflect a teenagers life or thoughts. We have reflected this convention well in our own music video and ancillary products, having our singer in a bright prom dress in quite calm landscapes. We also included a lot of shot's in our music video that the singer was directly singing to the camera, again in our DVD cover the main image the singer is looking directly at the camera - creating an obvious link between all our products and other Indie media products.

Finally, lyrics and visuals/music and visuals is another of Goodwin's conventions that we had used to help us produce our music video. Looking at different Indie music videos we noticed a trend that a they most normally always had a strong narrative that linked well to the lyrics in the song. To help us to make sure we had strong links between the lyrics and the visuals we went through the actual lyrics of the song and highlighted all of the key words that we would use to visualize in our video, (a strong example of this is the multiple shot's of a hill and a variety of view shots, which was a effective link between lyrics and visuals as the song title is : "The Hill the View and the Lights). If we were to make our lyrics and visuals more an obvious link I feel having more sky shots would be appropriate and maybe even different types of skies e.g. sun, rain and clouds.

We also thought carefully about the Music and Video links in our music video. The majority of the music video is quite a slow, calm beat so we wanted to have quite long shot's with quite slow action, for example when the female vocalist is walking under the tree with the umbrella. We felt it would be quite random to have fast shots that seemed to busy. So we kept the majority of the shots really calm and relaxed, but made sure we had a variety of different locations and shot types to maintain the audiences attention. However about half way through the song, the music starts to become quite upbeat and sounds almost a little out of control. In this case we felt it was necessary to add some footage of our vocalists seeming a bit more "crazy" and having a lot more fun. So we added a lot shorter clips that we also had speeded up to emphasis the up beat tempo of the song. We had a lot of shots of the female vocalist running around in the leafs; creating the sense of the both the music video and the song becoming slightly out of control. As we choose a song in the Indie genre, we tried to give the impression to our audience that they are young, and do have fun and get a little out of control at times.

We looked carefully at costume and what age Indie is aimed at. We decided that the Indie genre is most targeted at a teenage audience, as many Indie bands are young adults themselves. What also helped us to realise this is the costume, as for example the Cajun Dance Party all wear quite preppy clothes such as; converses. They also wear "prom" clothes, but to keep it appealing to their audience they have contrasted ball dresses and suits well with accessories such as; converses. So we took on this idea, and also thought carefully about using bright colors, which appealing to our teenage audience.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In order to make sure that both our music video and the ancillary products linked together well as a whole we thought carefully about what we could use as a strong identification in each of the products, so that our audience would recognise them to be either made by the same production team or are used to represent the same band; The Cajun Dance Party. To achieve this we thought a prop would be quite an effective and easily recognizable technique, in the end we decided to use a large multi-coloured umbrella - which we got the idea from a current Cajun Dance Party photograph.

In the music video we made sure that we had enough shots of the umbrella (which we decided to use as our visual motif) throughout the timeline. So that the umbrella didn’t become the main attraction to the music video (as this would be quite unsatisfying) we decided that through about 2/3's of the video we would have only shots of the umbrella closed; then once the vocalist had finally met, we would show a majority of shots of the umbrella open. In a sense we used the umbrella to as a metaphor indicate and help guide the narrative; when the two vocalists were "looking for their love" the umbrella would be closed - giving a sense of closure and loneliness. Then once the two had finally met (the scene on top of the hill) we would suddenly use a variety of shots of the umbrella open - giving a much happier vibe.

After the audience had seen the music video they would automatically acknowledge that the umbrella is almost a trademark of the Cajun Dance Party products. So when it came to thinking about how we will make sure our two ancillary products would coincide well with the music video we decided that it would be so recognizable to the audience if we included somewhere an umbrella. On the DVD cover we decided to put a large colourful umbrella (the same as the one used in the music video) on the back, where all of the track list would be listed and other information. We used Photoshop to help us enhance the colours on the umbrella, making it even more outstanding and immediately grabbing the audiences attention. We also used an "paint" effect, making it seem more hand-drawn reflecting the teenage style; a little more messy and unorganized. We also thought carefully about font style, again we went for a "hand written" style (for the same reasons). We put the text in quite bright colours, which were all the same as the ones of the umbrella, keeping it quite organized so it didn't look too unprofessional. We also thought carefully about location, so we decided to shoot the photographic image in a forest, as we use Unfortunately, due to the course being quite time consuming we wasn’t able to spend a lot of time on our magazine cover. So I am not very pleased with our final. I feel it needs a lot more information, more bright colors and most importantly needs a image of an umbrella, as this is what we were using to link all our products together. Our final magazine cover in my opinion doesn’t really represent our production teams work or the band, so it wouldn’t be very recognizable to the audience. The only aspects that do link to our other ancillary product is the font style and having the same vocalist on the front. We also used an "urban" background, which relates to the city shots in the music video.

Overall I believe we did link our products well together, and our work would be easily recognizable by our audience. I also feel that we thought carefully about all our aspects in each of the products and represented the Indie style appropriately. I feel the only disadvantage to use is the magazine cover, as this doesn’t link together with our other two products, and I also feel it looks unprofessional. I feel we really represented our artist well and made sure they both aesthetically suited in the indie genre, such as having young vocalists helps our relate to our audience (as our target market is young adults) and also by costume, as a lot of young adults are seen wearing similar clothes today. These elements all help our audience to connect and interact more with our artists.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In my opinion feedback is what helped us to keep making improvements in our work and make our three products much more awarding than they were before we took on advice. We received feedback for both our pitch and our rough-cut music video.
Getting the feedback for our pitch helped us to address any problems we may have and think of alternative ideas if needed. The majority of our feedback was positive we were given comments such as ; "We showed good ideas for links between the music video and the ancillary products","The idea of contrasting colors and outfits seems like an interesting and effective idea", finally "we presented a clear understanding of what we wanted to achieve". This was really encouraging feedback to receive as it made us feel positive about our ideas and felt that if we worked hard we could come out with a high quality, appealing music video. However we did receive some advice in order to help organize our project better - resulting in a more professional music video; "We should think about writing shot lists", and also "props and costumes list to make sure that we can create this contrasting style we are visualizing". So we took on this advice and thought about what types of costume we would like to use in our music video, we also thought very carefully about props and if they were available to us. This feedback in conclusion helped us to be more organized, so that on the day of shooting we were able to have a more pleasant time, feeling in control and making sure that we would come out with the music video we had once planned.

Once we had made our rough cut, it was important that we got a variety of different feedback, both negative and positive to allow us to be able to adapt our ideas, improve areas and overall make a more successful music video. We got feedback from both our teacher and our class mates. Some of the feedback from our teacher included; The selection of your mise-en-scene in terms of the costume work well to create a strong star image - particularly for the female vocalist, more close-ups are necessary in order to "sell" our artist, I loved the high angled shot, it is a shame that there isn’t any more - maybe this would be something to think about including, The syncing is still slightly delayed which is quite distracting, Experimenting with filters will help to make the male vocalist shots more brighter - as the female vocalist is quite bright and outstanding in contrast. I feel the feedback was most helpful from our teacher, as she allowed us to outline our weaknesses so that we could address them. We decided that we did need more close ups, as it is important that we were able to sell the artist to our audience, so we managed to successfully get a few more close up shot's of the female vocalist - unfortunately we couldn’t shoot anymore of the male vocalist due to contact. I feel this helped us to provide a variety of different shots, so the product didn’t consist of only long shots, which was be quite bland. Unfortunately our syncing still isn’t perfect, this was due to bad organization - as we wasn’t able to have the track with us on the day of shooting, meaning that our vocalists had to mime by memory (resulting in parts of our music video being out of sync). We did however edit a lot more to get it to an reasonable standard, we felt the majority of the music video that was most out of sync was the male vocalist parts, so unfortunately we had to remove some of these shot's and replace them with some female vocalist shots without any miming included. It was quite disappointing that we couldnt re-shoot the male vocalist parts (this was due to time consumption). For the same reasons, we also couldnt shoot anymore high angled shots, as we was not able to get to our previous location.

Finally, we got a variety of different types of feedback from a sample group of a possible audience. Some of the positive feedback we received was; The music video portrays that of a typical Indie music video with key aspects such as younger actors being used, The clothing that they have choose represents Indie and the Indie genre, it follows the characteristics that Indie music videos generally show a narrative, The lyrics fit the visuals well for example when they are saying high up in the sky it is a high angle shot taken, the shots where the lead singer is dancing freely around the countryside and in a field reflects the timbre of the music and finally the use of long shots exaggerates the 'floaty' and playful elements of the song. I was particularly pleased with all the positive feedback we received, as we felt we had achieved what we had planned to do. I’m happy that people felt we represented the Indie genre well, as this was a key skill to had included in our project. Also because we spent a lot of time making sure the -costumes were exactly how we wanted them to be portrayed, so it was quite rewarding to encouraging feedback. Fortunately, The only negative feedback we received from the students was; Have more visuals associated with flying as the lyric about flying is repeated constantly through the song. We felt this was quite a true statement, but we was unable to think of how we could portray flying, as we cant physically make our vocalists fly - so unfortunately we could not address this problem.

I’m exceptionally happy with this feedback, as it shows we took on the advice and feedback once before given for the pitch, and managed to please everyone aesthetically with the final cut of our music video product.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies played an significant role in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages. As without it, our project wouldn’t be possible and our products would not be at their best.

The key new media technology to the research and planning sections of the project was the internet. We used a “blog” on the internet to present all our ideas and plans, using other websites such as You tube, Google and Wikipedia to do any type of research; from images to emailing the Cajun dance party through my space. Having the internet allowed us to be able to visit different websites to find out all the different types of information we needed to know, we used You tube quite frequently so we could look at different Indie artists music videos to help us get inspiration. We also used Google images to help us find examples of different artists DVD covers and magazine covers, so we had an idea of what people would expect from them, making sure we included all of the key elements such as; title, release date, track list and band name.

Final cut express was one of the most important new media technologies that we used to produce our music video. We used Final cut express mainly edit our footage. As without doing this our music video would be very basic including; bad syncing, cut jumps, bad lighting and with no transactions or effects. Final cut express allowed us to be able to add filters to the shots of the male vocalist, as we decided that he was too dull in comparison to the shots with the female vocalist. We also added a lot of fading transactions making the whole sequence seem a lot more smoother and professional. We also speeded up certain clips wear the tempo of the music became a slot more faster, we even had some shots that we had reversed when the female vocalist is walking in the trees and picking the flower petals off - which we felt looked quite interesting. Photoshop was what we used to construct both our magazine and DVD cover. We decided to use an “paintbrush” effect on the photographic images, to give it a feel of casualness (reflecting the teenage style), we also thought carefully about colours, using quite bright ones which all were taken from the colours of the umbrella. Photoshop allowed us to be able to play around with different effects, styles and colours, giving us an more professional aesthetic. For the evaluation I looked at examples of different established directors commentarys for their music videos, to get inspiration for our own.

In conclusion I am happy with how our music video has progressed, I feel we used final cut well with editing, making it look at a proffesional standard. I feel what made our music video so sucsessful was by included a variety of different shot types and locations. If I were to do it again, i would of suggested we had been more organized about the most obvious factors i.e having the track on the day. I also would of been more time wary and spent more time on the ancillary products, especially the magazine cover. If i was able to of spent my own time on the magazine cover (as i was not able to attend this lesson) I would of added more affects, color, made sure there was an umbrella image and had a lot of more information.

Filming and Editing Evaluation (Two)

Overall i feel the filming went well, we planned out locations and time concluding in a well organized shoot. I feel our video turned out at a good standard, as we were able to use a variety of different locations and costumes, making it more appealing and maintaing the audiences attention. We managed to keep our locations in a near by area, so we wouldn't waste time traveling to different sets, this meant that we completed our filming in a very relaxed manor. I think the weather was quite decent as well, as we had a lot of shots near or under trees it was beneficial to have the autumn leaves fallen on the grass, this allowed us to have very colorful shots with unique colors.

However, no filming goes perfectly to plan. As we spent a lot of time focusing on planning costumes, props and locations we forgot about the basic plans that needed to be thought out leading to forgetting to have the actual music playing with us. This made the filming harder as we wasn't too sure of the paste of which the lyrics were being sung, resulting us with some out of sync scenes. If i had time to shoot some more shot's i wad reshoot the male scenes, and maybe have some more "energetic" ones.

Editing went quite well, we worked at a good paste allowing us time to make our music video as professional as possible. I'm happy with how we used transactions effectively, hiding any jump's, and making the music video overall seem much more smoother and connected. I feel using slow motion and reverse techniques allowed use to show of our final cut skills, along with changing the contrast/brightness of appropriate shots. I feel without our skills in final cut our music video would not be at a high enough standard and would not be acceptable, as we are trying to create an professional music video.

Naomi Erskine

Inspiration and Research

This is a video by Cajun Dance Party we got some of our ideas from this video such as running through a field and animation, however are animation isn't going to be the same or as extreme. This wouldn't be a very interesting video if it wasn't for the random animation, so we have taken this style and will use more random images to help make the video more appealing to the audience. Bright colours are also going to be a main feauture in our video and the animation is this video used bright images that are also happy and child like.
Seeing as the song we are doing is by Cajun Dance Party it is important that we looked at there videos and took notice of there style as we want to portray this in the video and make sure it is right to there genre style of music.



Since we have decided to not use animation in our video any more, as we don't think they are right. We still wanted to use things such as a flower, however real ones instead of animated ones. In beyonce's video she is pulling petal of a rose but it is in reverse order this is what we are thinking of doing, when Marianne is in the field and maybe with a daisy.This video also uses black and white. We may use this in our video for different effects as we want to focus on graphics as well as a narrative to make the video more interesting. Similar to Beyonce's video as there is clearly a narrative between her being a 'Broken Hearted Girl', which we see in the video and a male also features in the video, he isn't a artist but he supposed to be someone Beyonce knows and the storyline is about romance so it is quite important that a male is shown as this fits and emphasises the point of romance and love which is what the video is about.
Not only does she have the shot of her pulling petals of a rose, but in reverse order she also has petals falling from what looks like the sky as the shot fades out and in to another one. There are various settings and costume changes in this music video, although it is mainly set at a beach and Beyonce's costume is long or floaty dresses portraying her as feminine and stylish.

Digipak Pitch

It is important that as well as pitching ideas for a music video we also must pitch ideas for our digipak that we will be producing throughout the course. A digipak is described to be a patented style of either a compact disc or DVD packaging. Focusing on the design and style of it in order to be able to attract the intended audience, so instead of downloading the music online people would prefer to go out to the shop because they want to experience having either a additional product or being able to experience having the unique and beautifully designed compact disk or DVD.

For our digipak we will be designing unique and outstanding compact disk cover including all of the conventions that a compact disk cover would be expected of such as : A track list on the back, the artists name and the song title on the cover and on the spine, either a image of the artist or specific colors and symbols which reflects the artist. Here i will list the ideas we have came up with that we may include in our compact disk cover design :

- The artists will be centered on the front, in black and white.

- The background will be in very bright colors, contrasting to the artists being in black and white, allowing them to still stand out even though their not in color. We have chosen to have a variety of bright colors in the background as the music title is : "The hill, the view and the lights".

-We are thinking for the photograph we will set the location in a field as a lot of their music videos are shot in a field (also as we are thinking to set our music video in a film - as this will make our product all link together).

-We will then use our photoshop skills to import graphics such as bright colored shapes and texts and patterns.

We together as a group feel that bright colors, country sides and randomness is what represents the Cajun Dance Party so we will use these representations in our compact disk cover design and for also our magazine cover so our project will come together into one product at the end.

Music Video Pitch

Together we have chosen track 4 : "The hill, the view and the light". We have decided to choose this song because we feel we can experiment with many different ideas and have a chance to use more experimental techniques which differs from our past work, so we can challenge. This song in our opinion allows us to use graphics but can also focus on a narrative, making it hopefully a more appealing music video.

Mise en scene

Location : Were going to try many different locations as its quite a slow song so we need to maintain the audiences attention. A lot of the lyrics include references to out door locations and situations such as the weather (sun,sky), hills and a lot about walking to different locations, in this case we are planning to do a lot of tracking following around the singer focusing on her. Were going to contrast the locations to costumes for example if when in a field or estate the singer would be wearing classier clothes. Here we have written a list of different possible locations :

- Park (close up shots of her on swing)
- Woods
- Walking through estates
- In busy areas such as the city center (we were thinking to have her stood still in a crowd whilst people are rushing by her (we could use a effect to speed up all the people around her - fast motion)
- Fields and hills (mentioned a lot in the lyrics) we were thinking to film at different times of the day showing different types of sky's as a lot of the lyrics mention looking up at the sky.

We want a shot similar to this to show not only the female artist who will be singing, but to show the sky and setting around her, as these are all important as they relate to the lyrics and we therefore want to make sure they are seen.

One of our idea of where we might set part of the music video is in the woods, similar to the picture as it creates an atmosphere and we want to have lots of different location in our music video to create variety and interest.

Narrative

The theme of the song is love, which shows in the lyrics and a lot of metaphors are used to represent love and we will use these to help us with the narrative and to relate the lyrics to what is going on in the video. We aren't having a fixed narrative as the lyrics don't specifically relate to two people. We were thinking that when the artists are singing there is lots of tracking of what they are doing and at the end they meet, which is what are main narrative will be based on.

Pace

The pace of the song is relatively slow to begin with however when the male vocalist starts singing the music and pace increases, this is when we would start to make things faster, and could be when we have people walking past the female singer or male in fast motion.

Goodwins Theory

One of Goodwins theories were that there is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, we are going to show this is our video by showing what is said in the lyrics for example how the lyrics talk about sky and hills which will be included in the setting of the video. Also how the song is about love and at the end we hope to illustrate this by showing the female and male artist together.

There will be a number of different shots including a lot of close up on the main artist and this is how we are thinking to start our film with a close up of the female singer. This will be for both the audience and to help set the narrative and visuals to the lyrics. It is also likely that both artist will be singing directly into the camera which is a example of voyeurism.

Costumes and Props

It is likely that the setting and location of our music video may be a more run down area, therefore in contrast to this we were thinking we would have the people in our video dressed in a more classy, indie way but yet still showing the youth of the artists, as this fits the genre of music. The props will be fairly simple as we are going to focus a lot on graphics and the setting of the video, however the props we will use will probably be day to day things as we will be tracking the artists as though they are doing normal day to day things. Our main prop though will be a multi coloured umbrella which is a main feature in our video

This is what we imagine the artist will be dressed like, similar to this, however maybe slightly more colorful.So we are thinking Marianne will be dressed in a floaty prom dress in the field with wellies, then maybe converse and laddered tights for another location. The male artist will be dressed in skinny jeans and a smart suit jacket and then smart shoes. For another location skinny jeans again, more casual shoes either converse or high top trainers and then a casual jacket and top.

To make sure that all our products fit together as one package we are going to be using the colorful umbrella in all our products, such as: both the magazine cover and the digipak will have the umbrella included in the image, or we will somehow use the umbrella as an opening mechanism on the digipak. The umbrella will also be used in a few different shot's in the music video.

Spike Jonze

For this task our group had to focus on a specific famous music director - Spike Jonze. To present the information we researched about him and also his work and then we made a power point presentation. The main focus to our research was to look at an auteur (to look at what makes his work recognizable to others). So that we are able to think about how our three products will link together well representing our production company label.

On a whole we feel that his work is quite unique and can be easily recognizable to his audience. This is the type of media we need to look at us to help us with our own work, as it is very important to make sure that all our products link well together indicating that all of which are from the same production team.

By Naomi, Marianne and Sian

Q1 Auteur Presentation - Spike Jonze

View more presentations from Media Studies.

Andrew Goodwin Conventions

To make sure we have a good understanding of the conventions of Goodwin's theory we each analysised a music video of our choice and explained how the goodwin's theory was inlucded in each one.

By Naomi
Q1 Music Video Analysis

View more presentations from Media Studies.

By Sian

Q1 Music Video Analysis

View more presentations from Media Studies.

By Marianne

Q1 Music Video Analysis

View more presentations from Media Studies.

Music Video Choices

First Choice : "The hill the view and the light" (Track 4) is one of our choices. We feel we could make the video quite narrative, we imagine a girl or a variety of different girls in different situations matching the lyrics in the song such as "head lights", "flashing lights" and "rain". As there is also a male vocalist in the song as well we could base it on a love story for example when the women is singing she could be walking to go see the boy. A lot of graphics would also be quite relevant to the song. A lot of visual effects and close ups used. The screen shot above is by the same artist but in a different song, a good example of how were going to use tracking shots on the artist running.

Second Choice : "OCWD by self service" (Track 7) is a more up beat and quite grungy song compared to the others. For this music video we imagine it located at a party, with a band playing (close up on instruments) and maybe even some kind of narrative included. We then thought for when the lyrics start the main girl could be walking home (so we would be tracking) from the party in slow motion vandalizing things on the street, while quick flashbacks (use effects) from the party and the band the night before.

-The genre of this song is more rock punk in contrast to the other two.

Third Choice : "The riffle" (Track 10) is another of our choices, if we were to make a music video for this song we would make it quite surreal almost like a documentary or as if it was from a film. A lot of the lyrics are about nature and a lot of running and woods are mentioned so we quite visualize it in having shots of a girl or a child running perhaps through some woods (so here we would use panning and tracking). A good idea for this song would be to maybe document or follow a girls day in life.

- Both track 4 and 10 have quite unusual lyrics in them, this is often reflected in their music video. We are planning on using this similar technique if we decide to use on of these two videos. The style of this music is indie which normally means the videos and lyrics are quite random, and the singer normally is in direct contact with the audience, its as if the singer is singing to you. People who are into this genre would normally expect there to be a narrative and to be quite abstract and artistic.

The mise en scene in terms of location in this genre are quite surreal and everything has meaning, normally reflecting to the lyrics.