Account of Music Video Shoot

The band

Sam - lead singer

Joey - bassist

Jannis - lead guitarist
Jesse - drummer

 As mentioned below, the first thing I’ve done before our Preliminary Music Video Shoot was researching some other videos of bands that have a similar style to ‘Acres Of Life’ such as Tokio Hotel, Sum 41, Bless the Fall. I was inspired by certain shot choices that were used in their clips (examples in the post below ‘1. Research’)

     

 

The day of the shoot began with us students meeting in the Edit Suite and then going to the studio where we met the band and actually immediately got ready to shoot.

As we prepared all our shots we wanted to take in form of a timeline, writing down at what point in the music we want what shot and for how many seconds.

We thought about a very simple set ‘keeping it real’ and seeing all the instruments cables and wires and equipment to create a tough image and that this band just comes from garage rehearsals but is going to make it big!

+Timeline

Shots

My group and I thought about a lot of different shots and when it then finally was our turn to take over the camera, it was harder as I thought to get effective but interesting shots. Because we only had 25 minutes time to fill 59 seconds of the song we had to just get some basic shots such as CUs and WSs and then we could experiment a bit more. That was what I though the biggest difficulty – the time pressure.

Except for a high angle CU on the lead singer that we thought would have looked really cool and a low angle on the boys’ feet jumping around – we got all the shots we wanted and had enough footage to edit and cut interestingly together.

I think next time we all know that we have to plan a bit more realistic and don’t take complicated shots and camera movements too easy.

 

Location
Using the studio as location had its advantages, for example we had all the equipment available close to us and an efficient lighting because it was artificial and we didn’t have to hope for good weather or sunlight or anything like that. The lighting was quite low key and enhanced the punky image of the band. On the other side it was quite a small space and I was quite relieved as I was in the last group and everyone else already went to the Editing. Also, at some points we had to move around the band members to get everyone into the shot and in one shot the lead singer Sam covers the drummer which I saw too late.

 

Post production
In the post production process, again, we were very pressured with the time and we only had 1 hour to edit. I thought that it would have been difficult to match the sequences with the song but it was easier than I expected as we just deleted the live recorded sound track on the footage and used one playback track that accompanied the whole edited together section of the song.

The section of the song my group had was the last bit and had two extremes – a very calm section and a very chaotic and loud section. So we chose to start with a lot of Close Ups on the singer and then increase the pace by cutting from CUs on instrument to the next one and the next one to convey a crazy finale of the song.

My Group
We were 5 members in my group and were swopping the jobs of director, cinematographer, sound technician. I’d say I operated the camera most of the time but also directed. I like doing both because I like to take over responsibility. I'm not really good with all the technique involved in a digital camera but I still find it really interesting to learn a bit about it.

Evaluation
I think that we were a quite effective team but some member contributed more ideas to the whole prject than others. But better than having an argument because everyone wants it just the way he or she thinks its the right way! We pretty much always agreed eachother and had same opinions. Also in the editing progress we almsots all gave our ideas constantly and worked together, so when we ran out of time we were pretty much finished, but we had to still finish it completely. But as only I had time to do it, I ended up finishing it by myself but I didn't mind!

Overall, I am very happy and satisfied with the result ! Even though we were different groups shooting and editing different sections of the song and then just putting them together, the video as a whole did not look patchy or something, as a viewer you could not tell that it was made by different teams! This is I think a very good achievement of which we can be proud of as a Media class! Also I think that we all were very concentrated and really wanted to get this music video done as professional as possible.
But the most important - Is the band happy with their video??
I heard that they were very pleased and thought that we acted very professional.
Feedback by 'Acres Of Life' will follow....

Thanks Guys! X

'Acres Of Life' Video-Shoot - 1. Research

In preperation for the music video shoot of 'I love to make pretty girls smile' by the newcomer band ACRES OF LIFE, I'm looking at successful bands whose look and style is similar to get more ideas for the shoot, in terms of set design, camerawork, editing and directing.

Bands I looked at are:

Tokio Hotel - 'Rette Mich' (=Safe Me) and 'Durch Den Monsun' (= Monsoon)

Elements I  want to use for filming Acres Of Life:

Camerawork

• CU on lead singer with band in shallow focus in background
• Low or high angle CUs ‘Jumping into camera’
• CUs on instrument playing
• Panning from face down to instrument
• Breaking the rule of thirds!
• Canted angles
• Handheld/shaky wide shots

Editing

• Quick cuts showing all the band members
• Black out at end
• Increasing pace towards ending – ‘Finale'

Mise-En-Scene

• Well can’t really use the rain….

·        But the sense of clothing should be similar!

·        Crazy hair!

Bless The Fall - 'What's Left For Me'

 Camerawork

• WS from low angle and from the side
• Shot from behind a speaker, showing a bit of speaker and cables etc.

Editing

·        Quick cuts on shaking heads and throwing hair -> chaos/crazy/limitless young rock band

·        Shifting focus!!

Mise-En-Scene

• Dancing and jumping around – ‘poging’

Sum 41 - 'Fat Lip'

Mise-En-Scene

• Looking into the camera – communicating with the audience
• Groupies / fans?

Narrative in music videos

In what ways is narrative important of the success in music videos?

By referring to theories and video examples and discussing the question: How do stars sell their image through narrative?

In today’s music industry, everyone knows how important a good music video is to a song to make the song become popular or increase its popularity or purely, for financial reasons, make more profit. Surely, there are crazy, outstanding and extravagant music videos a la Lady Gaga style that just raise awareness because of their unusualness… but what is actually the meaning behind the flashing images? And how are these meaning conveyed and structured? The answer is - by a narrative. Even if not every music video tells a story, again like Lady Gaga mostly, we can spot narratives in almost every music video. I will show and evaluate how important a narrative is to a music video by discussing theories of Todorov, Barthes and Propp and giving examples of music videos of The Band Of Horses, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé.

All narratives demonstrate structure, causality and agency.

Firstly, agency tells us how we recognize certain characters. Looking at Propp’s ‘Morphology of the Folk Tale’ in which he claims that in every narrative there are certain character types. The villain, the hero, the donor, the helper, the princess, the father, the dispatcher and the false hero. These roles can slightly alter or not all be in it when it comes to a music video in contrast to a film with a far more developed narrative. But these character types still appear or leave hints of them, whether it is the artist himself, dancers, hired actors or featured artists.

In the music video to ‘Dilly’ by The Band Of Horses we can apply this theory and identify the character roles. Even though the beginning of the video introduces the band as a motorbike gang with tattoos and beards and shades which signifies rather bad boys and could be the villains, they turn into the heroes in this video because we sympathize with them because they have magical powers and randomly start dancing a funny dance. Main focus is given to the topless guy with the curly hair because he gets most screen time and stands in the front of the band. Therefore he can be identified as the hero and the other band members are his helpers. The quest could be finding someone such as the princess who is the pretty girl sitting in the bar looking upset. The dispatcher of the villain is another man in the bar who calls the chief who is the actual villain. He has a gun and an angry face signifying he wants to chase the hero gang. It also has a typical ending when the heroes overpower the villain and his helpers and are filmed in a heroic position from a low angle from the dead chief’s body.

Due to the use of narrative in Dilly, the viewer likes the band as they are the good characters and we think about them as something supernatural which refers back to Dyer’s theory of the stardom, saying that one paradox about the star image is that he has to be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. This happens here with the Band of Horses as they are normal biker boys but at the same time have super powers and win against evil. The success here is supported by narrative because we like the unusual idea and it makes us follow the song and the clip which raises the interest and attracts consumers.

Secondly, the structure is analysed by another theorist, Todorov, who says that all mainstream narratives adhere to a similar structure. This includes the equilibrium, the first force or the disruption of this, the recognition or the disequilibrium, another force as the resolution and finally a new equilibrium. For example, in Beyoncé's video to ‘If I Were A Boy’ we can find this structure and apply Tomorrow’s theory. The equilibrium is the marriage between Beyoncé and her husband who lacks trust and respect as he takes her for granted. But she takes over the role of the husband which stands for the disruption and shows him how it feels like being treated like that. The disequilibrium is when Beyoncé starts flirting with her attractive colleague and the husband recognizes this situation, as well as Beyoncé when she gets caught almost kissing him by her husband. The resolution is when Beyoncé realizes that she was only dreaming and is thrown back into reality, where her husband is actually doing all this to her which is the new equilibrium although it’s like the original one. This structure of the video makes us see the video as a film and increases the entertaining factor. Also, relating it to Beyoncé as a star, we see her from two different sides as two different roles – the one makes her fans think how strong and attractive she is as a woman and on the other side how beautiful and fragile underneath and that she is just like us, a woman worrying about her love life and relationship. This again goes back to Dyer and the second paradox on which the star image is claimed to be based: she is in the video and therefore absent, but at the same time dealing with human problems which bring her close to the audience.

I think that this video reinforces the significance of a narrative even in a music video as it makes it more interesting and creates emotions for the viewer.

The last narrative theory that can be applied to approach the question how narrative is important to music video is Roland Barthes’ theory of the five narrative codes. These help the audience to understand the sense of the events but also encourage polysemy of them. In this case, the focus is on the Hermeneutic/Enigma code and the proairetic code which hint on the problems or events that going to happen and then on the possible resolutions. We can identify codes in, for example, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé's very filmic video to ‘Telephone’. First of all, the location of a female prison is an Enigma code as it articulates the question ‘Why is Lady Gaga in a prison? What has she done?’ and suggests that the clip is either about her life in prison or her break-out. This code keeps the story going and raises curiosity in the viewer. The next proairetic code we can spot is the phone that Lady Gaga nicks off the woman while they are making out and then the matching shot of the helicopter in the sky. This gives a suspension to the story and makes us asking ourselves ‘Why did she take she phone? Does the helicopter belong to Lady Gaga? What’s going to happen?’ Another proairetic code might be Lady Gaga’s wink into the camera when she leaves prison suggesting that she has a plan and makes us think ‘Who bailed her out? What is she going to do when she’s free again?’ The next big code, an enigma code, is the car in front of the prison picking her up that then reveals Beyoncé sitting in it. The questions ‘Who is that woman? What does she have to do with Lady Gaga? Are they going to commit crime together?’ are raised. And so on….

Overall, we can see that the narrative analysis in music videos has a lot in common with films with the little difference that a good narrative is key for films whereas a music clip can be interesting and enjoyable to watch even if it doesn’t really tell a story as its length is so much shorter and is more allowed to break conventions of camera and editing etc. But still, how I just showed with the examples of videos, a narrative is almost always present and increases the value of a music video. It is the way in which a story is told, keeping the video comprehendible to the audience. It is the coherence of the story and makes the audience stay interested in it and in the best case – like the video.

Research into Music Video Industry

Textual Analysis
'Sonnenbank Flavour' - Bushido

In this textual analysis of the music video to the song ‘Sonnenbank Flavour’ by the Arabic/German rapper ‘Bushido’, I will discuss how the constituent features (Mise-en-scene, Camerawork and editing) of the video help to represent Bushido’s image as a rapper.

Mise-en-scene

The song is basically a listing of words that describe the rapper’s life and his environment. This is almost just factually accompanied by images of these listed words to enhance their meaning which is in a sense the original purpose of a music video: to visualise the song.

First of all, it takes place in a white location which looks like it is in the middle of nowhere where there is nothing but a sunbed. This introduces immediately the main topic of the song, or at least hints on the title: Sonnenbank (= sunbed). The fact that it gets cleaned by the second featured rapper suggests he’s not as important as Bushido and in a lower status position which is then revoked by him getting attention from the sexy blonde girl signifying he is indeed popular and a player. But as it is a music video and doesn’t imply the common film conventions, it is very likely that just the use of humour is made and Eko Fresh ‘takes the piss’ with his cleaning as this is the opposite of his usual image.

When the music kicks in Bushido is established in the white empty space everything focusing on him. As the rap starts in which he lists the things that are closely related to his life, almost every word is visualised by a motion picture. For example, we see the flags of his country, a group of people representing his big family again referring to his nationality as it is said that muslim families have lots of relatives. His wealth is among other things shown by the big black expensive looking car (BMW?) and him wearing a pretentious watch. Close reference to his success in the music industry is made by showing gold record awards, music TV channels and his record label title, but also telling us about his amazing party life as a famous rapper with images of a popping Moet champagne bottle and also its rough aftermath by a Aspirin pain killer pill. All these elements are combined and alternately seen with sexy women dancing and moving on the sunbeds. All in all this creates and supports Bushido’s obvious gangster rapper image as he’s rich, famous, successful, likes partying hard and a lot but in an ostentatious way, has lots of women, but apparently still stays the same and claims that his Arabic origins but also his country Germany and his family and friends are very important to him and mentions that no one should try to be against him shown by weapons such as a baseball bat which also supports his Gangster Rapper image and that he kind of knows how it is ‘out there on the streets of Berlin’ so his audience/fans can still identify with him.

The aspect of sunbeds and  the dancing women on them are almost a little bit abstract and don’t really convey meaning, although it could be seen as a hint on nudity reinforcing the sexiness of the dancers around Bushido, but also the artificiality of fame and and celebrity.

Camerawork

In contrast to the rest of the clip, the beginning is quite clearly kept in terms of shot sizes and angles. The clip starts with a close-up on the one rapper’s hand cleaning the sunbed. This immediately gives a humorous aspect to the music video which we like as an audience because we would never see our gangster rapper Eko Fresh cleaning something infront of our eyes. Then a cut-in on the backside of a girl only dressed in a bikini represents the stereotypical player image of a rapper. As the music kicks in, an establishing shot of Bushido gives all the attention on him and framing him standing infront of the expensive care tells us the close relationship between him and the car to convey his wealth. Throughout the whole video, close-ups on the things he lists in his rap accompany and enhance their meanings mixed with more cut-ins on feminine body parts of the dancers and wide shots and close-ups on him reinforce his player image and the fact that he has everything in his life, from his tough backround, family and friends, wealth and success and being attractive to women. This is emphasized by the ‘male gaze’ when tilting up and down the almost naked body of one dancer.

The bird’s eye angle down on him surrounded by the dancers again shows him in the centre of attention and popularity. Also, since it is a music video this high angle is a utile angle to film the choreography taking place on the sunbeds, as this allows to show the girls’ faces and gives a little peak into their decolltés which is showing skin to an extent that is reasonable but could easily go too far, which could be referred back to the rappers’ image as the topics the rap about are always desputable whether they are appropriate or x-rated.

Editing

Certainly, the whole clip is quick paced through the high amount of cuts and intercutting from prop to dancer to rapper etc. to create an artificial environement around Bushido that involves all the elements significant for him. We could therefore even say that this achieves to recreate his life by adding all the things he raps about to him in the white wide empty space he’s situated in. Match on action cuts are used to show and vary the dancers’ choreograhy. Quick cuts between CU’s on him and wide shots of the girls dancing could be seen as eye-line matches which suggest how he looks and the girls and how they dance for him.

Small use of CGI is made for example when his family or his gang is shown there’s a short moment when the picture turns into a blueish color like a X-Ray photo – this could signify that for Bushido his family/gang is what’s inside him and the close relationship he has to them.

To finish off, we see a fading wide shot of Bushido that cuts back to the starting CU image of Eko Fresh filmed through the … of the sunbed which looks like a window. This suggests a completely new idea: Everything we saw was watched by an outside individual hinting on the sleeplessness of fame and that Bushido’s whole life can be and is observed by strangers.

All in all, even though this music video uses a different idea of editing and camerawork and looks very different to common rap videos, the star image of the artist is still the sterotypical gangster/player from the steets reputation who made it to someone rich and succesful.

A2 - Music Industry: Advanced Production Brief

In this second year of Media Studies, I will create a promotion package for the release of an album of a new artist, including...

•  a music video to his or hers first single
• the cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD package)
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD package).