- Meet the cast and audition them to see if they have chemistry.
- Check that they have the costumes
- Do a test shoot on Thursday
- Cut the test shoot to the music
A convention is the expected style and 'formula' of a specific media product. The expected features are different for different star images and audiences.
There are 3 main parts of a music video convention:
There are 3 main parts of a music video convention:
- generic ingredients - eg. elements of a video
- generic style - eg. visuals, camera, editing, colour scheme, costume, lighting
- generic structure - eg. how the video is arranged (performance/narrative)
Genres develop over time, depending on what's popular and what works well (basically what makes money). An analogy of this is biological evolution, where the successful 'mutations' become more and more common in the product population eg. boybands.
Styles are copied because they are more likely to be hired by record companies trying to make a big profit, so invest less in original, indie acts rather than what they know works because it's less risky. They have survived for a reason though; because people like them, so there's nothing wrong with these conventions staying around. Sony, Warner Music, and Universal account for 90% of records sold, so they choose who to hire and what kind of music is out there.
We're making a prezi on the genre conventions of blues-rock - the genre of our band - and have found similar bands to compare them to. Here's a screen recording that Phil took of us working on the prezi together.
Lighting ideas for the studio performance:
Lighting idea for the interrogation scene - mainly dark but with one harsh light:
These are our rough ideas for the sets we need, with some notes on the side about lighting and what may need changing.
Pitch 1
We pitched our two ideas to Luke, starting with the bowling alley one. He said that he liked the theme of bright colours, and that the song fits it, however, he asked us if we'd actually contacted the location and got a positive result (which we hadn't) so that'd be the first thing we did or the video wouldn't work. If we couldn't get the location, we couldn't really do the video unless we came up with a very stylised version to do in the studio.
He also thought that the narrative would be difficult to do, especially if the bowling alley was open and busy since we can't clear everyone out of the way and get access to behind the counter.
We thought about scrapping the narrative and making it aesthetic only (or doing an entirely stylised version in the studio), however this would take a lot of different scenes (around 20) to make it interesting, and also a lot of planning.
Taking all of this into account, we realise that it may be hard to pull this idea off effectively, so we pitched idea 2 to see if it would be better.
Pitch 2
The second pitch went better, although they still think we should get rid of the narrative element because it'll be confusing, and difficult to film, so we thought of skipping out the robbery entirely, and adding in another studio element. I think this makes sense, because it might not be easy to find a shop to fake rob, or an office (with a safe) that looks good enough to actually use, and it may just come across as naff.
They suggested adding different strands, such as the driver of the van. The fact that some of it can be done in the studio makes it much easier, and we can get a van easily from the ones at school. The only issue is how the driver fits in with the rest of it. Is it the singer driving the band? Is it just another accomplice?
We thought of having a lip sync element in an interrogation room (because of their suggestion of adding more), with one harsh light and smokey air. This can be easy to do in the studio and can look cool and effective, as well as fitting with the rest of the theme / colour scheme.
We're considering making the 'police officer' a woman at the station, who's more sensual / flirty during the processing, because it fits with the songs name of her acting as a siren, but is a double entendre as the police sirens link in too.
Philipp found a song that really fits with the idea, called Siren Calls by Death by Chocolate. They're not a well known band, and the song only has around 1000 plays on Spotify. There's not video for it yet, and there's not likely to be one in the future. Here's the album cover, and the song after. The song names are switched on Spotify, so it says it's called The Sun, But it's actually Siren Calls.
We pitched our two ideas to Luke, starting with the bowling alley one. He said that he liked the theme of bright colours, and that the song fits it, however, he asked us if we'd actually contacted the location and got a positive result (which we hadn't) so that'd be the first thing we did or the video wouldn't work. If we couldn't get the location, we couldn't really do the video unless we came up with a very stylised version to do in the studio.
He also thought that the narrative would be difficult to do, especially if the bowling alley was open and busy since we can't clear everyone out of the way and get access to behind the counter.
We thought about scrapping the narrative and making it aesthetic only (or doing an entirely stylised version in the studio), however this would take a lot of different scenes (around 20) to make it interesting, and also a lot of planning.
Taking all of this into account, we realise that it may be hard to pull this idea off effectively, so we pitched idea 2 to see if it would be better.
Pitch 2
The second pitch went better, although they still think we should get rid of the narrative element because it'll be confusing, and difficult to film, so we thought of skipping out the robbery entirely, and adding in another studio element. I think this makes sense, because it might not be easy to find a shop to fake rob, or an office (with a safe) that looks good enough to actually use, and it may just come across as naff.
They suggested adding different strands, such as the driver of the van. The fact that some of it can be done in the studio makes it much easier, and we can get a van easily from the ones at school. The only issue is how the driver fits in with the rest of it. Is it the singer driving the band? Is it just another accomplice?
We thought of having a lip sync element in an interrogation room (because of their suggestion of adding more), with one harsh light and smokey air. This can be easy to do in the studio and can look cool and effective, as well as fitting with the rest of the theme / colour scheme.
We're considering making the 'police officer' a woman at the station, who's more sensual / flirty during the processing, because it fits with the songs name of her acting as a siren, but is a double entendre as the police sirens link in too.
Philipp found a song that really fits with the idea, called Siren Calls by Death by Chocolate. They're not a well known band, and the song only has around 1000 plays on Spotify. There's not video for it yet, and there's not likely to be one in the future. Here's the album cover, and the song after. The song names are switched on Spotify, so it says it's called The Sun, But it's actually Siren Calls.
This video is an example of how the police do fingerprinting with paper and ink, which we could use use as a basis for one of our elements.
A police polygraph would work with the lipsync, and could be done in the studio. Only issue is how to find a real one one / recreate one that looks realistic.
There's also police interrogation that we think would work well as a strand. We could use lighting really effectively with a dark room and a harsh lamp.
A video done in 2006 by the school has a similar idea ours, and is effective in some ways, but not in others. Parts of it look very staged which don't quite work, so we're hoping to make it look more professional, and we want to avoid using a prison set.
This one has a much higher budget and a narrative (which we won't have either of) and is very effective at telling the story. We don't want to do POV shots, but still like the use of handheld camera and might try to put some in our video.
I've had a look at bowling alleys near us and have found a few contenders:
1. Guildford Spectrum: very close to us, but does not have the neon look we're going for. It's too plain and wouldn't come across very well on camera.
2. The Big Apple, Woking: again, quite near to us, and has quite a cool neon look to it. (Also has laser quest and an arcade which could be another element).
1. Guildford Spectrum: very close to us, but does not have the neon look we're going for. It's too plain and wouldn't come across very well on camera.
2. The Big Apple, Woking: again, quite near to us, and has quite a cool neon look to it. (Also has laser quest and an arcade which could be another element).
3. Tenpin, Kingston: not quite as close as the others but has the look we're going for, even if it may be a bit dark.
4. Hollywood Bowl, Tolworth: not that close, but has a good look, and has a retro diner in it that we could get more shots from, and I like the pink neon style.
After choosing our 2 ideas, we chose to use prezi because all 3 of us could work on it at the same time. We had to do a presentation for each because if idea 1 isn't greenlit then we present idea 2 so we might not have to go back to the drawing board.
Idea 2
Idea 1
We still haven't chosen a song for this idea but that isn't a big problem at the moment. We want to keep the performance in the van the same, but we will also add other elements to it, maybe performing in another location. We also have vans at school, so it won't be too difficult to get one.
We want to include the blue and red flashing lights to indicate that the police are after them. We also think that this would look really effective and atmospheric.
We'd lso like to include some money, however this will be a lot of effort to make it all, and will also take ages to pick up if we dropped it on them, so maybe they could just hold it.
We're thinking of including a mad-men style office that they're stealing from, with a large safe because it will be easier to film than an actual robbery.
We want to have a line up at the end with the singer lip syncing. In addition to this, we need some more elements so want to add the band doing fingerprints and a lie detector, which shouldn't be difficult to achieve in the studio.
Idea 2
Because there aren't any roller disco places around us, we've had to change it to a similar location, so we went with a bowling alley as an idea. We think locations will work really well as you can get more from them.
We want to stick with the neon theme and the song, so we'll contact some alleys at some point. There aren't many other developments for this apart from different shot ideas and potentially something in the studio with neon lights. Other shots could be of the arcade, slushy machines.
Luke came into our class today to tell us the dos and don'ts of music videos. He showed us some treatments for some real music videos, and how they look going from from paper to the screen.
Do:
Do:
- include a performance element because you can get a lot of shots from it, and the viewers can see who the artist is (and who plays what instrument)
- try to do it on location because you can get a lot more out of it than a studio
- remember that we're promoting a new band and it's their first single
- make the studio set look stylised because it's hard to make a set look realistic
- get people who know how to play instruments if we do a band because it'll take far too long to teach them how to look like they're playing
- make the elements look similar so they fit well eg. colour palette, theme, visual style
- make it memorable and distinct
- try to have an arc
Don't:
- have too many sets in the studio because we're only in there from 9am to 3pm, and since changeover could take an hour, it'll waste a lot of time
- try to recreate a realistic setting in the studio because the slats have seams and can look fake
- waste time
- only have one element, because it'll get very boring very quickly
Today we got put into our groups for the music videos. There are 3 people in my group, me, Phil and H, and I think we'll work well together.
We created a longlist of all our ideas (there were 9 in total), and from that we created our shortlist by going through each one and thinking about if we all liked it, how it would look, and if the idea in general would work.
1.
+ quite different to other music videos
- hard to get all of the shots, could look bad
2.
+ could be really effective and shouldn't be too difficult
- may need another element, hard to find location
3.
+ again quite different, not too difficult to do
- may be hard to find robbery location, but that element could look very staged
4.
+ very different, not done before
- may be hard to get the idea across, need good dancers
5.
+ again, quite different
- may not work well as a narrative, could be quite predictable / repetitive
6.
+ simple to do
- over done, school studio hard to book and full of mirrors
7.
+ could be very atmospheric
- hard to pull off
8.
+ editing could look really good, cool idea
- hard to pull off, can't make rain happen when we want it
9.
+ different
- hard to do with what we have, some safety issues
Here is our shortlist:
We think that these ideas will come across well on camera and are achievable, but will still need some tweaks and development.
Some brainstorming we did:
This week I pitched my music video ideas to Phil and the class. I put my blog up on the screen and went through each idea, showing them the songs I want to use, the images that went with the ideas, and the storyline that went with it (if there was one).
Here is the video of the feedback (my phone ran out of storage so I only managed to get the first minute).
Idea 1 - Hostage
- Most people liked this one the most
- Easier to do but effective and could look good
- Different
- Reminded me to add the 3rd element of the bank robbery itself to add a bit of movement and action to the video
Idea 2 - Shake Her
- Roller disco is different
- Needs more than one location so I thought about adding in a bowling alley as well as a roller disco to add another element
This feedback helped me to broaden this idea by adding one or two more elements or locations to it, otherwise the same imagery may get boring.
Idea 3 - Talk About Forever
- Could come across as naff, or like a theatre production, so would need good set, costume and makeup to be effective
- Would need a bigger budget to pull off, which we don't have, so the idea may not work as well as I'd want it to
- Someone suggested adding a sacrifice(?)
- Phil said that we'd 'burn through those shots really quick' and would need at least 10 different scenes to make it work and be interesting as it could get old very quickly, so I could think of more shots to add to the video, or make add more lip syncing
This feedback really helped to develop my idea because it made me see how it would actually come across on camera and that it may not be as easy as I thought to create an interesting video from a few different scenes, and makes me need to think of more imagery and what I actually want on camera.
