Music Video - First Draft

Here is our first version of Human. It is very much still a working progress, as you can see there are large sections with molly just singing to the camera. We still aim to film the big fight scene at the end of the video, this is where Molly comes running out of the house after Joe and finally lets all of her anger out. They get into a big argument and molly ends up throwing a bottle at him, which we're going to out a slow-motion effect on to contrast her impulsive decision, and kicking him out. The dance sections don't make a great deal of sense at the moment but when we've finished all the filming it will be clear that her challenging relationship was putting a strain on other things in her life, e.g. her dancing. Once she overcomes how controlling Joe is and finally realises that she doesn't have to take it, she gains confidence in herself and kicks him out, coincidentally the other areas in her life improve, e.g. her dancing - she kept falling after attempting a pirouette but she got back up every time, after she realised she no longer needed Joe she was able to let go and dance the perfect pirouette.

Continuing To Film

We got some new footage of Molly singing Human. This is the footage we'll be using to lip sync, we weren't 100% sure where in the song this scene would fit so we got molly to sing through the whole song a couple of times so we could get some different angles. This is also good as if we change our minds on a specific section we have the rest of this footage as backup. I know how important it is to be prepared in this industry and it's very difficult to film on the same scene on a different day due to external factors, e.g. weather, as it never quite looks the same.

  This us a still of Molly from the singing scene. I think this scene s very important as it's the first time you see her express her true emotions instead of bottling them up and keeping them to herself, as she does in her relationship. This will help the audience to engage with Molly and sympathies with her, this will create a good emotional response.

Editing Update

We are still continuing to edit our music video. After filming some of the dance sequence we now have much more footage to play with. For example we're planning to use footage of Molly attempting a pirouette but falling down at the end. This is play when the lyrics read 'I can do it', this is an example of how we've contrasted the lyrics with the footage rather than always reinforcing the relationship. 

Filming Update

        We have completed some more filming of Molly dancing that we're going to intertwine and layer over some of the footage. As she not an actual dancer I taught her some basic choreography and we got some interesting angles. It's important to the narrative that Molly chooses to express her emotions through dance as she can't express them to her partner.

 Here is a still from the footage that shows a mid shot of Molly dancing. There is no effect on this image yet as we haven't decided what colour theme to have for this scene yet.

This is another still of Molly dancing. It is the footage that plays when the lyrics read 'I can do it', Molly is falling after a attempted pirouette to contradict the lyrics and symbolise her deep emotional struggle in her relationship.

Choreography

We spend some time today choreographing the dance section for Molly to learn some time next week. We decided that it needed to be quite simple to emphasise how her relationship problems are holding her back in other places. There are sections that show how determined Molly is and that although she may seem weak at first, she's more of a fighter than first meets the eye. We've shown this through a section where she'll be on the floor with her legs in a stag and her body draped over her legs, the lyrics read ''I can do it, I can do it, I can do it''. To portray her strength she gradually lifts her body off the floor then back down each time the song says 'I can do it', each lift gets higher and higher to signify her progress that she'll later make in the relationship.

Starting To Edit

here is a screen shot of us starting to edit on Final Cut. So far we have just started to put our clip in order lining them up to the beat of the music.

Filming update

We began filming for our music video yesterday, we got a good amount of footage. We filmed in Joes house and used it as the couples home where we filmed the punch and normal day to day activities that they do together, for example watching television or washing up. However they aren't showing their love for one and other, rather the frustration and irritation building between the two.

This is a still from the footage we got of Molly washing up. Once she's finished Joe then in comes, pushes Molly out of the way, with a dirt plate and places it in the clean sink. This of course annoys Molly a great deal as shes just finished washing up and now there's dirty plates again. The colours in this shot are dulled down a little to portray her emotion, she sad that she's slaving away for him and he doesn't even care.


This is a still from the lounge scene where they are sitting very far away from each other, to convey the emotional gap between them. Molly then moves over to him to try and regain any kind of emotional connection, however he shifts away slightly, illustrating his lack of care for rebuilding their relationship.

Music video analysis - past student work

Production Schedule

Further Music Video Analysis

Music Video Analysis - past student work

Mood Board

This is our mood board to show all the themes and ideas that we want to bring to our music video. 

Target Audience

This is our glogster we produced to show the features of what we need to include to aim our music video specifically at our target audience.

Target Audience Survey Analysis

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

Question 6

Question 7

 Question 8

Our next two questions required the participant to give an opinionated answer so we cannot show it in a graph but will give a few of our favourite answers and the ones we found most useful to our research.

Question 9

What scenes would you like to see included? (eg. fighting/arguing, intimate)

- Some of our best answers were: "not just the cliche relationship, mix it up, don't stick to stereotypes", "something abstract", "intimate", "kindness/caring".

Question 10

What is your opinion on domestic abuse and how do you feel we could appropriately portray it? 

- Some of our best answers were: "don't show too much violence, just insinuate it", "it's an awful thing and so must be portrayed in a realistic way", "through lyrics and video symbolism", "do lots of research to understand it fully and look at both sides of the situation - from both points of view", "mimed drama or abstract contemporary dance would be the best way to show it", "try to do it in a tasteful artistic way and try not to portray it ever being okay for either a man or a woman", "as long as it is not romanticised."

Our results have concluded that we can do our narrative/performance music video with the storyline we want as from the results from our target audience, they would like to see it and wouldn't be put off by anything we want to include. A lot of the answers seem to show that they weren't that interested, eg.  by putting don't mind, but at least we know they wouldn't not want to see what we want to put into our video

Photo Storyboard

This is the opening of the video. The abusive boyfriend is hitting the girlfriend in their home, they have just had an argument about something, the man loses his temper. This foreshadows the end of the music video as we are doing the rest of the video as a flashback of their relationship. 

Then it flashes back to the past and she is trying to make her boyfriend happy as that is her main priority. She is making him his favourite meal (beans on toast). She ends up waiting for ages as he is at "work" (having an affair) and everything gets cold - this annoys him a lot. Also, he comes home completely white boy wasted. 

Then he gets really mad at her for letting the tea go cold. He blames her and threatens her, and then throws everything off the table in a rage. He shouts abuse at her and leaves the room.

She then gets upset trying to clear up everything and she is saying to herself that she won't tell anyone about anything and will keep everything to herself.

Then she is out in town or somewhere and sees her boyfriend cheating on her with someone else. This frustrates her and makes her extremely upset. Especially as they look so incredibly happy.

We will then have a scene of dancing to support the feelings and emotions of the main characters. 

Then we end up back at the beginning shot of him hitting her and them having a major argument. In the beginning it appears she will just put up with it but then she changes her mind.

In the last chorus, she is going to kick him out the house as she is fed up with his behaviour and fights back. She stands up for herself and it ends up with her looking and feeling a lot more relieved and happy. 

Final Idea

Music Video Ideas

This is our group prezi of our 3 top song choices. We have chosen to use the song Human by Christina Perri and use the idea we have written here, we may adapt it slightly but this is our main plan.

Preliminary task - Music Video

For our preliminary task we had to create a music video to the track 'Why does love do this to me' by The Exponents. We had to include many different camera angles, key framing, colour manipulation, green screen and split screen. This showed that we had the skill level to do all theses editing skills and gave us practise for our the real task.
This is the music video that The Exponents made, it's very performance based including lots of shots of the band and instruments, code ups of the main singer to promote him, making him more famous as he'll be recognised more from the video which will incase word of mouth and hopefully record sales.

We decided to do a narrative/performance video as we thought it was would be easy to fit all the editing skills into this theme without them being there for no reason. We used the performance style to incorporate green screen and split screening, and the narrative style to tie in the colour manipulation and variety of camera angles. The narrative included a guy who was in many relationships without the girls knowing, then they all find out and break up with him with a slap to his face. We used lip sinking mainly to portray the males anger for love as he had many girls then ended up with nobody. We used colour manipulation to show the males emotions after each break up. We did this by gradually reducing the colour intensity to dull greys after each break up to show his hope and faith slowly diminishing. To incorporate split screening we took footage of the three ex-girl friends and many other girls singing the chorus to the camera to show their power and unity. Green screening helped us to portray the characters emotions as we could include any backdrop that we wanted. We decided on an army of sad faces for one of the ex-girl friends to show how upset she was that she'd been used, this also helped include comical values. I have learnt a great deal from this experience including how to edit on final cut pro effectively using so many skills.    

Final Cut Pro - Tutorial

We divided ourselves into groups each learning and perfecting a skill to aid our music video editing on final cut. The skill that I learned to do was colour manipulation, this is when you change the colours when editing, varying from lightening and darkening the colour to changing it completely (e.g. red to black). This can be done on a small section of the shot, e.g. eye colour:

The colour of her skin has been washed out and the eyes have been enhanced, this is a prime example of how you can change the colour completely, from a dull green to a vibrant blue.






This can be very useful when showing a change of emotion or conveying a message to  the audience. Certain colours portray characteristsics about the individual, for example dark coloured eyes would imply that the individual is evil and hiding secrets, whereas bright blue eyes would portray innocence and trust.




Equally colour manipulation can be used to change large amounts of the shot, for example the sky.

This is the image before the colour manipulation, you can see that the trees look full of life, and therefore colour, but the sky looks dull and emotionless. Although the landscape is beautiful the misty sky conveys confusion and possibly that the individual has to make some difficult choices without a clear answer.


This image has been enhanced, the sky is a brighter blue and clouds have been defined. The image now portrays happiness and bliss. The trees have been lightened a little as well to convey life and energy in them, this would mirror the characters emotions.





To help and share our new knowledge each group made a tutorial to teach the others how to do their skill. My group made a simple music video but focused on manipulating the colours to reflect the main characters emotions, then made a tutorial of us editing it. We presented to each other then kept the tutorials on a communal drive so anyone could recap how to do the skill if need be, however we unfortunatly all lost our tutorials when we moved campus.

Final Cut Pro Re-Cap

We haven't used the new version of final cut before, therefore we had a tutorial lesson teaching us how to edit with it ans what new features it has.

Music Video Directors

David Fincher 

David Fincher was born on August 28, 1962, in Denver. Known for his image-driven and often dark films, Fincher is one of the most innovative and meticulous directors working today. He developed a love for film at an early age and started making movies after getting a Super 8 camera for this 8^th birthday. Growing up in Marin County, David has some exposure to the film industry. He and his friends watched as George Lucas filmed ‘American Graffiti’ in the area, he even lived a few doors down from the famed director. After high school he worked for Korty Films where he worked on the animated film ‘Twice Upon a Time’. He then joined the staff of Lucas’s special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic.
          He has directed many music videos for well known artists, this includes Modonna, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, George Michael, Iggy Pop, The Wallflowers, Billy Idol, Steve Winwood, The Motels and A perfect Circle. David has also directed some impressive TV commercials for clients that include Nike, Coca-cola, Budwiser, Heineken, Pepsi, Levi’s, Converse, AT&T and Chanel. He has also done some film work, for example Fight club, Se7en and 'The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo'. There are a lot of impressive people and companies that he has worked with, this shows his diversity, talent and commitment to his job. 

Some examples of his work (music Videos):

       This music video is very creative and I personally really like the concept of vintage black and white. It has elements of many music video styles including performance, narrative and concept. The performance gives the artist (Justin Timberlake) the representation of popularity and sophistication, these characteristics are important when portraying an international artist as he has to be widely loved. The narrative makes the video really interesting and breaks up the performance. This is important as the artist doesn't want to be portrayed as a boring if he simply sings the whole song in one frame. The concept style is conveyed through the theme of the classy, black and white look.    

      This music video was a huge hit when originally released and still is widely recognised as an amazing art form. I think this video was so highly praised because it was very unique and individual at the time of release. This is why I'm as such a fan of David's work because it is very refreshing to watch a piece that is new and individual, pretty much all of David's work follows this trait.  

Music Video Styles

Representations - Gender

Britney Spears - Toxic

• A typical representation of air stewardess is that they're sexy and flirty. In this music video Britney conforms to this convention as her costume is a very short dress with a low cleavage cut. This reinforces the idea that all women are good for is their looks, rather than their brains. Although this portrays women as having a job, this job requires them to simply serve drinks and help the 'rich, important men'. 
• In another section of the video Britney is dressed in a full body, glitter, beige cat suit. This is revealing her 'perfect celebrity body' which is presented by the media, this influences girls opinions about their bodies as most music videos have this element to them. 
• There are lots of close up shots of Britney's face and revealing body areas, this shows number 6 of  Goodwin's Seven Theory, which is frequent reference to the notion of looking. This again reinforces that women are mainly for looking at and not their intelligence or personality. 
• A representation of women is that they're caring to children, Britney shows this when she places a blanket over a little boy and kisses him on the head in a loving manner. 
• Another representation of women in music videos is their characteristic of manipulation. In this video Britney manipulates a man into following her to the bathroom to steal his phone.This reinforces the stereotype of manipulating women only thinking about themselves.  

Major and Minor Record Labels

The Goodwin Seven Theory

1. Music videos demonstrate certain genre characteristics
2. There's a relationship between lyrics and visuals
3. There's is a relationship between musics and visuals 
4. The demands of the record label require many close up shots of the artist    
5. The artist may develop motifs or iconography that are seen in multiple aspects of their work
6. There is frequent references to the notion of looking and voyeurism of the female body
7. There are often intertextual references, mostly film, television and popular culture.

Iconic Music Video of the Past

Michael Jackson - Man In The Mirror

- Michael diverged from his normal pop, dancing music videos and clearly saw this as an important opportunity to influence and educate millions of his fans as to the current state of the world.
- This song reflects Michaels contributions to social change and his impressive break through as a black artist who lived through the huge transformation of the civil rights movement. It is very sentimental, idealistic and has gone on to provide the push needed to change individuals behaviour for the good of society.
- Although 'man in the mirror' has a very clear symbolic concept it also shows some iconography, he's wearing his universal red jacket, which link this video to his other music videos. Wearing the red jacket also personalises the message he's portraying to make it more intimate with his fans, which therefore increases the likelihood of them listening to the deeper meaning rather than simply enjoying the song.
- There's a range of camera shots in this video although there's very little use of editing, however I think this makes the footage and message more sentimental, as it's not been dramatised it's simply realistic which is what makes it so devastating.