MUSIC VIDEO CONVENTIONS

• NEGUS states that a music video is a promotional tool.
• ANDREW GOODWIN says 'music is not primarily a form but a promotional one
• Music videos are essential synthetic tools for marketing 
• PETE FRAISER a music video is part of the construction of the image of a particular band or performer, for an example lady gaga's videos are essential to show off her image and they construct her image or a boy band one direction





LADY GAGA USES MUSIC VIDEOS TO PORTRAY HER OWN UNIQUE STAR PERSONA



IN THEIR MUSIC VIDEO THEY TRY TO CONSTRUCT THE
GOOD BOY NEXT DOOR CLEAN AND GOOD LOOKING, TARGETING THEIR
PRIMARY AUDIENCE YOUNG GIRLS AND SECONDARY MIDDLE AGED
WOMEN, MUMS OF THE GIRLS



EXAMPLES OF MUSIC VIDEOS SHOWING THE STARS OWN MARKETING AUDIENCE AND PERSONA

INRTODUCTION TO ADVANCED PORTFOLIO

A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options: 

• A website homepage for the band 
• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package)

All material for all tasks to be produced by the candidates with the exception of acknowledged non-original sound or image material used in a limited way in video/radio work. Further guidance will be available in the support materials. For music video, permission should be sought from the artist for use of the audio track.

The centre will be expected to allocate marks according to four levels for each of three categories:

• Research and planning
• Construction 
• Evaluation 

In arriving in a level for each category, teachers are advised to look for evidence of 'best fit'. It is possible both for a candidate to be placed in different levels for each of the three categories and to receive quite different marks form other members of the same group responsible for producing an artefact, according to his/her contribution. Teachers are asked to support marks with written comments under the three categories on the assessment sheet. 

MY VIDEO ANALYSIS

NOT READY TO MAKE NICE
By The Dixie Chicks




This Dixie chicks are a country band popular in America, their whole star persona was that they were beautifully musicians and sexy.  The band formed in 1989 in Texas.

 


During a London lead vocalist Natalie Maines to say ‘we don’t want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas’
These words that she spoke offended so many people that it cost the band half of their fans and audience back in America.
After being marketed as a sweet but sexy innocent lovely country band that sang love songs they had to go for a new approach to win back their publicity. However on a personal issue they believed they had been treated completely wrong, they received hate mail, death threats, radios wouldn’t play them etc. this made them decide to fight back in a different voice, instead of pleading for forgiveness and apologising profusely like their ex audience believed they should do, they wrote a song, that was unlike their others, it was relevant to their situation and because it was so personal the song was filled with meaning and soul that helped create a very good song.
With this song they won
“The question of how the group's new record would fare commercially attracted intense media interest.” (All publicity is good publicity)

With this scandal happening many of the other competing country musicians targeted the same audience with patriotic songs with American flags. This helped them seem better to the audience that were so hateful of the Dixie chicks. The lead singer Natalie Maines hated "The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country ... I don't see why people care about patriotism”

The video and lyrics all apply to this incident. They use dark black colours and old clothing like school clothing. They use short clips of them looking like there being told what to do and being treated like school girls in the Victorian times to reinforce their words that they shouldn’t be treated like this, they have the right to say whatever they want. They also keep up however their original star persona with them looking classy and strong and sexy.

Using black paint as a symbol of them being “misbehaved” and branded with this guilt on their clothes they helped portray the feelings audience felt about them during their words in a way that makes them seem like they are the strict old teachers in the school. They are asked to do lines on the black board and writing the words, ‘talking without thinking is like shooting without aiming’ the themes are black and red and they are wearing white, symbolising innocence whilst they are covered in black paint, to reinforce the idea of them being innocent and noe turned black, they cant get rid of the black paint, they now have the darkness branded on them.

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS

This is our pop prelim video
The genre of the song made us immiddeitly choose the setting and mood of the video, we had very little time so we decided to keep in simple, with bright lights from beams at interesting angles and a no house light, we put wires all over the floor and madew the set look messy to re-inforse the idea of breaking the rules and not conforming, this fitted with the genre of the song too. This prefrabley would help us make the video more appealing to their audience. As the genre is not mainstream but niche, 'scremo, rocky, loud etc' having a darkly lit but with cool flashing lights and a messy breaking the rules stage reinforses their star persona.





When we began to film we dicovered alot of our shot on our story board would not be as easy as we thought, we were howeer able to change it and ,#make it work on the spot as our thrillers had the same issues, this helped us test our selves under pressure and still put tofgether some good shots even if the story boards didnt match, however we followed mopst of them very closely and we were able to look back at a good quick days filming.

in post we learnt a good technique about how to make all of the shots stay in sync whilst we changed them about, this helped us put on some cool druming bits and the guitar tapping solo without spending hours syncing it together, this is a plus to final cut pro, it was quick and efficient and myself and my group were very pleased with our section of the outcome.

EVALUATION OF POP PROMO PRELIM VIDEO

For our prelim task we were asked to film and edit a music video from an unsigned band. the class was split into three groups and were given a CD of our selected section of the song.

from that we listened to the different areas in our clip and decided what looked good and wrote them down in rough as well as drafting a story board of an image what we expected the shots to look like.

the shots we decided to give ourselves were influenced on our time given as well as the music. as we only had 25 minutes to shoot all of our chosen shots. we wished to do a tracking shot and a shot from above the drummer however the time we had we were being unrealistic and decided to do similar shots but not using the tracks or the genie lift. by making the trip of high and having an angled high shot over the drummer and the tracking shot idea we abandoned instead we thought we would cut lots of moving shots together in post production to create the feeling of quick and chaotic shots matching the sound of the music.

In our clip we were given the section when the guitar and drums both got to show off. this meant we could use extreme close ups for our advantage. for example the guitar section, we had a medium shot and then we did the same thing closer. to show a variety.

the singer was used a lot in our shots we decided to flick back to him a lot being the main center of attention in the song and placed in the traditional band position with the band behind him. however we wanted to make sure that all the band had a fair amount of screen time. this was easier than with a band that had a main singer and only a main singer as the lead guitarist also sang in the chorus's and took over a lot of the screaming areas of the song, for example the beginning and end.

in the production of the video me and my group all equally shared roles the more voiced members of the group took directing role more than the quite members however that was balanced out with the camera role and the playback role and well as being assistant directer choosing shot choices. although the choices of shots were already chosen and discussed by every member of the group.

our team worked really well, we all shared roles happily no one tried to take over and everyone got on well, this was due to our preparation all of us being able to make a compromise or settle for other peoples ideas over our own, because all of our concern was to make a good promo and so in order to make in look professional we had to get on although we got on anyway as a group with out needing to try.

EDITING EVALUATION
from my experience in final cut pro I found the editing process much quicker than before. this was because we could

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

My you tube video had some feed back on the video itself.

this is so. creepy.
IAmGracesFace 5 hours ago

Amazing!!!!

unguy9fcp 3 weeks ago

As well as feed back from other viewers family and friends that i asked them to write up a small sentence on the aspect that jumped out at them the most, or what the noticed the most, after doing that i selected a variation of different comments on different areas of the sequence, they are the following...

William Day

"loving the pipes"

This showed that our after effects and photo shop, were well received.

Heather Wilkins

"really scary"

This confirms that out thriller theme is a successful genre and the plot fits into the category

Lizzy Ward Thomas

"why is the girl scared?"

This helps us see that our thriller leaves mystery which was intentional however we probably could have made the fact that it was a mystery more obvious. As we were hoping for the audience to trigger the fact she is oblivious to the bombs but the shows fear at the sight of the man.

Isabel Boddy

"the camera shots are really effective especially the shot of the clown moving in the second half of the

sequence. its timed well with the music and makes it more creepy and scary"

This is very positive feedback as we were going for this the 'creapy and scary' feel this quote helped us see another way of saying that the sequence was scary...

Fergus Brown

"I literally peed my pants at the sight of the girl in the mask, it was so

 clever with the sound and the lighting"

With the feedback we received we tallied up 95% liked it and 5% didn't we searched thought the different categories and discovered that the % that didn't like this were in the age group 8-12 years of age. this shows that its unsuitable for very young children as it doesn't fit in the the "U" certificate.


young children ages 7-12 would not be
appealed to this film as our reseach confirmed

 

ages 18 to 34 had really positive feedback and comments

If i was to criticise our sequence in any way i would say that it was maybe a little two dark at the end of the sequence, it ma have seemed too stereotypical. howver all in all i was really pleased with our feedback from viewers. 

ages from 34 upwards had really good feedback