This music video is very controversial as it portrays aspects of sexism as all the women are dressed the same and dance the same, symbolising that all women are the same. They are like robots; they are there to serve men. Palmer’s part and the females were filmed separately; this could also be a sign of sexism.
71 - "All is full of love" by Bjork 1999
70 - "Every breath you take" by Police 1983
69 - "Two tribes" by Frankie goes to Hollywood 1984
68 - "Ray of light" by Madonna 1998
67 - "Sabotage" by Beastie boys 1994
66 - "Subterranean home sick blues" by Bob Dylan 1965
This music video is very unique and effective. It is effortless which makes it more effective, the simpler the better. Bob Dylan simply stands in front of a camera and throws cards with lyrics from the song on to the floor. He doesn’t even stay in time throughout the song, messing parts up and he didn’t even frame it right! The video was filmed in one take and never re shot. This all shows how careless he was and needed to be, as if he could make more lyrics whenever he wanted to, he didn’t need to hold on to old lyrics.
The point of our preliminary task was to help us with our actual music video and to gain experience in the lip syncing precess.
Below is a list of the things we learnt:
Shooting the footage in whole takes, this makes the editing process easier and quicker
Sing the whole song out loud in order to make the lip syncing more in time and believable
Know the song and lyrics in detail in order to get high standard results
Vertical editing is quick and simple to carry out
The pen tool on final cut express is useful for editing and changing the clip without deleting any of the original footage
Using the pen tool can perform straight cuts and dissolved
Once the footage/song has been placed in the correct point of the timeline, the layers must be locked into place so that none of the important footage is accidentally deleted or moved
We have discussed as a group things which we believe we could have done better at and which we should improve on for our own music video, a list is below
Things we need to improve on:
The people starring in the music video must be comfortable enough to sing the song
Whilst lip syncing there must be acting involved to make it look more enthusiastic and believable. This will make it more effective
We must edit at a quicker pace in order to get our video completed in time and make our footage to the highest quality
We should practise more with final cute express in order to find out how all of the tools work and gain the results we are looking for
We carried on with the 100 greatest music videos today. The point of watching these is to gain insight and experience from different genres to increase our knowledge and ideas for our own videos. The ones we watched today are shown below:
89 - "Tonight Tonight" by Smashing pumpkins 1996
88 - "I want love" by Elton John 2001:
This music video was very unique and effective as Elton John did not star in the music video himself, after 30 years of hits, he decided to use Robert Downey Jr. to lip sync for him instead. Choosing Robert Downey Jr. was effective as he and Elton had both shared the same drug issues, Robert drugs and Elton alcohol. The song shows emotion well as it discusses honesty. The video was taken in one long take, it took only 16 shots for the whole take.
87 - "once in a lifetime" by talking heads 1981
86 - "Fit but don't you know it" by The streets 2004
85 - "My way" by Sid Vicious 1979
84 - "I don't like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats 1979
83 - "Stay" by Shakespeare sister 1992
82 - "In da club" by 50 Cent 2003
81 - "Vienna" by Ultravox 1981
This video is effective as it is completely over the top which makes up for the rubbish acting making it look highly dramatic. It as the first mini movie made. to make it more dramatic, director Julien Templar had a tarantula crawl across his face.
In todays lesson we were asked to create a preliminary excercise to experience what it's like to be in a music video and also to get used to memorising the words, recording whole song shots and also lip syncing in time.
The first thing we had to do was listen to the song and make sure we could hear it. The song we got given to do was 'Don't go breaking my heart' by Elton John and Kiki Dee. In order to do this we would have needed to ask someone to transfer the song from their Imac to one of our mobile phones. Although, we managed to avoid this by using the computer in one of the media class rooms by getting the song up on youtube. We chose a version with the lyrics in order to not only be able to hear the song by read the lyrics at the same time in order to not get any wrong and make it look more believable.
After downloading the music video from youtube we set up the tripod and camera and began to film. Our group did not get off to a very good start as we could not decide upon who to place in the music video, the original two members we chose, Leon and Yemi, found the lyrics too hard to grasp to be able to sing the song. Therefore, we wasted quite some time trying to help them to learn the words. Although, in order to be able to do it more quickly we chose two different members. However, these two members were a little nervous and didn't enjoy the fact they had to be in the video. We were asked to not lip sync but actually sing the lyrics in order to make the final editing of the lip syncing with the song more believable, in time and effective. This proved to be embarrassing and an obstacle for the members. We will need to practise and overcome this before our actual song as these two members, Connor and Sarah, will be starring in our actual video. Ideally we would have liked to shoot single shots of the two members in the preliminary task, although we ran out of time. Therefore, we decided to use shots of Leon and Yemi dancing to fill the gaps.
We uploaded the footage onto the computer today and began to edit it. Although, we were unable to complete the footage as we only hada short amount of time. Therefore,we are going to continue this tomorrow and upload it when it is finished.
Editing the footage was much different to the editing process we had previously used the year before for our thriller footage. This was because we had to take long, full shots in order to not get any jumps in the footage or cuts. By doing this, we were then able to use the pen tool found in final cut express, shortening the time we spent editing.
Using the pen tool allows you to edit and cut parts of the footage to change the lengths of the clips and also to edit out any mistakes which we made:
We also found out that we could use split screen which enabled us to edit more easily as we could then hide the bits we had already edited and do not need and see the blips we were editing at the time:
During class today, we also looked at a case study on Jamie Thraves as hewas a very succesful producer and director and certainly one of a kind.This is shown below:
Director:Jaimie Thraves
Made short films at university
Used his short award winning filmsas a 'calling card' to get his foot in the door with the video production company factory films.
Began by shooting 3 very loq budget,£5000, music videos.
How the process works:
A comminsioner from a recordcompany sends a track to 5-10 directors.
Each of the directors submit a treatment if theywish to.
Their staging is unpaid
The director who the record label believe have submitted the best treatment is then commisioned to make the video.
Only then is the director paid
Some tips from Jaimie Thraves for making a music video;
Use the lyrics, but don't be too literall.
Most importantly go with the emotion of the lyrics.
The final music video we were shown during class was 'The scientist' by Coldplay. This was also produced by Jamie Thraves andwas another great hit with the audience. This film was a very creative and uniques video as the whole thig was shot in reverse. I personally found this very engaging, interesting and therefore, my favourite of the three videos we were shown today. This video shows astory as it is going in reverse and one of the main lines are 'back to the start'. Jaimie Thraves managed to also shoot this video in just 3 days but with a £200,00o budget.
This video is shown below:
The next song we were shown during lesson today was 'Just' by Radiohead.
This music video was produced and directed by Jamie Thraves, his first big music video. He managed to film it injust 3 days with a budget of only £100,000. When this music video was fist made it was very popular, new and strange. It showed a completely different aspect to musicvideos, displaing anger and confusion. This puts the audience on edge and forces them to wonder andask questions on what is going on and watche the video untill the very end. The wholepoint ofthe music video was to find out whats wrong with the man, although both Jamie Thraves and the other producers of the film refuse to enlighten everyone with what theman actually says is wrong at the end. This makes the video very unique and interesting. Although, some people may find this music video a let down as they are sucked in to watch it all the way through just to be let down at the end when whats wrong with the man is not even revealed. Also, the man may not have said anything at all, it may just havebeen one of Jamie Thraves' tricks to engage the audience and gain a higher interest.
Today during lesson, we watched a variety of music videos which our teacher believed were very effective showing great deals of emotion and very eye catching. The music video 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash involves a lot of emotion, it entails the end of Johnny Cash's career and life. It is also extremely emotional as it involves many home made clips from throughout his lifetime. This video is very shows sheer emotion as it was his last song he made, apologising to those he has hurt during his life time for the things he regrets.
Today in class, we watched the first 10 music videos in channel 4's countdown of 100 greatest music videos.
These include:
100 - Musical youth: 'Pass the dutchie' 1982
This music video was very important, it was the first young british black band to become a hit. It was also the first black artist music video to be shown on MTV in America. This video was very important as it singnified breakthrough in music.
99 - Supergrass: 'Pumping on your stereo' 1999
98 - Bronski beat: 'Small town boy' 1984
Similr to pass the douchie, this music video stood out from the rest and was a massive breakthrough in the music video world. This video tells a personal story about a young gay mans isolation and was this first blatently obvious video that came out as gay. It is effective as it shows confidence and involves real people and real life situations and obstacles of the time.
97 - Cornershop: 'Brimful of asha' 1998
96 - So solid crew: '21 seconds to go' 2001
This song was very unique and clever, it was able to fit 20 individual rappers and singers into one song. This was because they each got 21 seconds to sing their part, explaining the name of the song. This song was different and popular as it allowed each of the members to make themselves heard. It was also very controversal which increased its views.
95 - The cardigans: 'My favourite game' 1998
94 - Bonnie Tyler: 'Total eclipse of the heart' 1983
93 - Rolling stones: 'We love you'
This song is very emotional and moving as it shows actual footage of Mick Jagger in a bad way on drugs within the video, emphasising that it was their stage of disintergration. It also contains footage documenting the 60's, capturing the era. Furthermore, it captures the danger of the stones well.
Today in lesson, we also learnt that the first music video to be made was a promotional video by Queen for their no.1 seller 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. This video was made due to the vast popularity of the song, staying in the charts at No.1 for 24 weeks. The popular music TV show 'Top of the pops' meant that Queen had to repeatedly show up every week to sing their song to the audience, what No.1 had to, so consequently made a promo video to accompany it. Therefore they'd no longer need to show, this is what started off the regular practise for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases.
Throughout the six weeks holidays our group has been filming, we hope to film more and when we return to school we would like to upload and start editing the footage straight away. We hope to update our blogs on this as soon as possible.
