Glossary

Glossary

 Styles 

Genre- This is the category that the song that the music video is for falls into and is there for given some specific stereotypes or guidelines for creating and making that specific music video successful. For example, cars with hydraulics and women in bikinis are commonly seen in hip-hop and rap videos, so by applying this would make that specific detail define what kind of genre the video is.

Animation- This is when they use animation in order to create the in tire music video. One group that uses animation for all of their videos are 'the Gorillaz'.

 Pastiche/parody- This is when they make the music video more comical and decide to make the video funnier by sometimes using the lyrics from the song its self. An artist that has quite a few parody music videos is Eminem, in videos such: we made you and just loose it.

 Live (in concert)- This is when the music video is created from footage of the artist performing the song in concert or uses parts of footage from concerts at various different times, that can relate to the particular song. 

Interpretive- This when you use things that signify as a posed to showing the full thing. For example if you show a Christmas tree but it is not stated at any point that it is Christmas, the audience then interprets that the time of year is winter and around the time of Christmas.

Narrative- This is when you interpret the story that is being told in the song. For example if the song is about someone cheating on someone else, the music video would show the story of it going through the time line of the story its self. One example of this is the song 'fireworks ' by Katy Perry which is about have self confidence to pull through the hardest times and this is shown in the video. 

Reference- This is when they make a direct link to another music video done either by that artist or another artist. however this can only really be used if the song lyrics state that particular song/music video. 'For example in the song 'we made you' by Eminem makes a reference to Elvis and then shows them doing a dance in a jail referencing Elvis's 'jail house rock'

Conventions

Lyric interpretation- This is when you take the lyrics and either interpret them as the artist says them in the song, or taking them as a different way to what the artists say them in the song. One video that uses this is Skylar Gray ft Eminem 'c'mon let me ride'.

Allusion- This is when you create a new representation of: people, places, events, literacy work, myths or works of art as either directly or by an implication with in the music videos.

Extending or consolidating meaning- This is when you reach out to people just a little bit more than usual by pulling on their heart strings making the audience connect a little more. It also improves the videos meaning more than the song potentially has. For example in the music video for 'Mockingbird' by Eminem it shows actual footage of his daughter growing up whilst he is singing about it. 

 Techniques

Cutting to beat- This is when you edit the video to the music its self. For example if the music beat drops or cuts out in the middle of the song then you can add a piece of footage with the original sound of the take. 

Miming/ lip syncing- This is when you get the artist to sing the song on set and then in the editing stage line up the sound of the music to the movement of the artists mouth to make it look more authentic. 

Camera movement- This is when the camera moves during the shot. For example, if the shot starts off zoomed in and then zooms out it is a camera moving that can give this look. It is also used for panoramic shots, which is a large shot of the artist and all of the surrounding area.

Shot and angle- This is when you change shot or angel in the same scene of the video. For example, if the artist is looking directly at the camera at one point but then with a change of angle could show exactly the same thing but from a side on view.

Chroma key- This is when you remove one color from a particular shot in order to give off an illusion. For example if there was a actor standing in a blue suit holding a baseball bat, if they removed the color blue from that shot it would look as though the baseball bat was floating in mid air.

SFX- This is when you add specific sound effects to the video in order to create extra effect. Sounds such as explosions, gun shots or even cars driving can be added in as a back ground noise to help create the feel of that particular part of the video.

my media vlog

script for my editing Vlog

Hi, today I’m going to talk to you about editing and why it is important, how it’s used and how it grew to be what it is today. What is editing? Editing is basically the coming together of all the footage that has been collected over the days/weeks of filming. In this process you can add visual effects or CGI to any part of the media production. It also allows tidying up small features and adding or taking out minor glitches. The reason editing is so important is simply because if the editing didn’t happen none of the media productions that you have seen will have been anywhere near the standard of quality that they are. Films such as: transformers, the hobbit and harry potter are all made as good as they are thanks to the use of CGI and editing which is the reason why you can see the movements of everything that happens. Why we edit? (In this section I will be showing various parts of different films those films are: marvel avengers, megashark VS giant octopus, rocky v, fast and the furious Tokyo drift- I will also show clips from different music videos which are: Olly Murs army of two, Eminem we made you) Editing is an extremely important part of the entire production of a media piece. This is because it is in the postproduction stage, meaning it is at the end of the of production process. This means after, any mistakes that are made are then permanent and cannot be altered or changed. This means that all in perfections and all CGI needs to be sorted and done properly, to the best they can possibly do it. When making a sequence that requires CGI, they do the filming in a green room. This is because it allows them to add effects over the top with a lot more ease; this is because it is easier to take the green pigment away from a humans skin compared to the red or blue. This is because a change in red or blue in the shot can change the colour of the skin of the actor/actress. This will then mean a lot harder work for the editors. An example of a film that used a lot of CGI well is ‘marvel avengers’ as you can see there is a lot of action going on I this particular scene and all of the characters that the marvel superhero’s are fighting are not actually there but were put into the film using CGI in the editing stage. (let the footage run for a little bit) A bad example of the use of CGI is in the film megashark VS giant octopus, as you can see the creatures which the film is based around are not at all realistic and therefor makes this a bad example of editing. (Let the footage run for a bit) Another way they do CGI and effects in media productions is the use of ‘white dot sensors’. Which are little white balls or stickers that connect the image to the computer screen. This is mostly used on humans during fight scenes as it allows the editors to overlay the actor with a computer-generated image. So the actor does all the movements but what we see on screen is actually a creature of some sort that someone is fighting. This same technology is used in some video games. Mostly wrestling games and realistic games such as SMACKDOWN VS RAW, mortal kombat, Assassins creed and tomb raider. However this is also used in films, for example in the transformers films, there is an actor doing all that the transformers do and then the actual final product of the transformer is then overlaid on to the actors body therefor giving the final product of the transformers as you will see here. (Let the footage play for a bit) Some scenes in films are completely CGI and no physical acting is needed during these scenes. This allows the editing team a lot more freedom with what they can do in that scene, as they are not restricted by what the actor/actress can and cant do. One great example of this is this scene in the latest spider man movie, this whole section of the film is done entirely by CGI. Enjoy. (let the footage play) Editing is however not only used for CGI and effects. It is also used to add lip-syncing. This form of editing is most commonly used in music videos. But however is also used in films which contain singing such as: mamma mia, high school musical and also Hannah Montana the movie, all of these had the songs recorded separately to the film. This then meant that during the editing stage they had to lip-sync the song to the movement of the actor’s/actresses mouths. (show part of a music video) However the recently released ‘Les miserable’ is the first ever film where they sung live on set and which then required no lip-syncing in order to make the words fit. Lip-syncing is a key part of editing as if the lip-sync doesn’t match up it can ruin the whole production. This is key when creating a music video or even in an animated feature film. (Show a part of an animated film) However they also do Chroma key during editing. This is when you take one colour out of a shot making that colour disappear from that shot completely. This then allows them to make visual effects. For example if you get someone to dress in a blue suit and hold a football, through Chroma key we could remove blue from the shot which would them make the football look as though it is floating in the air with no help at all. This helps to add effects to the footage without having to use CGI all of the time. However this is a very time consuming process and will take a lot of perseverance. Finally from the editing they can pick the best parts from each take of the footage that they have and this will then help create the final effect, one good example of this is from the movie Rocky V with the end fight scene. As you can see in this scene there are a lot of changes between shots of the actors fighting and also quite a few flashbacks. (let the scene play for a bit) How editing has developed Editing has developed massively in the past 100 years, with new ways of editing constantly being invented and used to their full potential. This all started back in the 1800’s with a man called ‘Edward James Muybridge’ who was the first person to properly put together a moving image. This image was the jockey on the horse. This was a similar technique to what some people use as a flick book. Which is a series of the same image that alters a fraction in every new shot. This was a good and effective way of editing but however was very time consuming and also the quality of the footage wouldn’t be to a good standard either. As you can see. Also the development of splicing also helped to push forward the movement in editing. Splicing is when you have a piece of 28mm film stock and literally cut it and stick the parts you want together with some sticky tape. This means that they would then be able to do more efficient editing and means that they could cut to more than one angle during one scene of the production. A 1970’ s-star wars was a new movement in the mode of editing. Using a lot of visual effects that had never been used or done before. For example this was the first development of advance CGI, meaning this was the first stepping-stone to getting to the editing stage that we are at today with editing 1980’-1990’s- they used non-linear editing. This allowed them to film different sections at different times. For example they could film the ending first and the beginning last. This has meant that there are many more possibilities to what films, music videos and even TV adverts are able to do in the way of editing their footage. 2000+- more recently there have been films such as toy story that are completely animated and CGI and also film such as avatar that are filmed completely in 3D. However it is not only the technology that has gotten better but also the general skills and talents of the editors is constantly enhancing being able to create and do more and more each time they edit footage that has been collected. Technology does help them to develop their skills. One of the biggest assets to the editors nowadays is the ability to copy pieces of footage from digital cameras or SD cards and be able to create countless amounts of those takes meaning they can edit each copy different and then decide which looks better without having to keep on deleting the work you have already done to one. Overall editing has developed massively and it may not always be the easiest software to use but the perks of being able to edit the way we can now are un list able. I hope you have enjoyed this, and I hope you have learnt something new Thanks for watching and listening.

my music video

after i have marked all of the footage

This is now what my editing software will look like as I am editing it all together. I have chosen to do it in this way as I have now sectioned and named all of the separate pieces of footage. I did this because I will find it easier to work on one scene at a time as a posed to working on them all at the same time.

The bottom left corner- scene 1

The bottom centre- scene 2

The bottom right corner- scene 3

In the top right hand corner of the picture there are pictures that were taken on the day of us filming. I am going to use one of the pictures at the end of my music video so that I can promote the song via the music video meaning that it is a promotional video which is what most music videos are.

marking up my data

Today we learnt the technique of marking our footage. We also learnt about why this was useful and how it would help during the editing process of making a media production. However in order for use to get the full feel of just how useful marking footage can be we needed to put this into practice for ourselves using our own footage that we filmed for our production of the music video.

From doing this myself i have found out just how useful it can be mark up the footage that we have collected. The reason that it is useful is because during the edit stage it is a lot easier to put the footage in the running order of what you want it to run in. Along side this having a spreadsheet is also helpful as it allows you to put the name of the piece of footage and then say what it is and wether or not it is a good or bad take. This then also helps you in hat footage to avoid and whats best to use.

The picture above is and example of the spreadsheet that goes along with the marking of the footage. As you can see i the far left hand column I have the name of each bit of footage and then to the right of it says if it is good or bad and what the shot is of. On this spreadsheet i have highlighted in red the takes that are not useful and I will no to avoid putting them into my final production of the music video, however the ones that are highlighted in green are the ones I will be using and the ones that are not highlighted I may use at some point if needed. I have also highlighted each of the scenes in a different colour to help section them off. The way I have named my is in a code. for example 'c01s01t03a01sec2' I know what this means.

c01- camera
s01- scene
t03- take
a01- angle
sec02- section

I have named my footage in codes so that I can see how many takes of the same shot I have and I can also then put them into the running order in which they need to go by following the 'section' and 'sene' parts in the code. Every time it is a new 'scene' the 'section' number will go back to one.

Also from this I could also then put each of the scenes into separate folders to section them one step further which would then let me work with one scene at a time, as a posed to all the scenes and sections at the same time.

below is the development stages of my footage marking.

 Above is stage one

Above is stage two

Above is the final stage

I have now completely marked up all of my footage so that I know what is what and where it need to go.

Task 2- style of a music video

There many various styles of music, and each different type of music needs its own style of music video in order for to really set off and become a success. One example of this is the genre of 'hip hop music'. The style/stereo type that has been created for these particular artist is based around what they where and the way that they act. All this gets portrayed in their music videos meaning that the music video develops a style based around the artist. However some artist sometimes break the the stereo type and become a little different in their own way. One example of this is the british 'hip hop' artist 'Professor Green'. the reason i feel he is a break through of the hip hop stereo type is because he doesn't dress exactly the same as you would expect a 'hip hop' artist to dress. For example he wears slim fit trousers and pictured T-shirts as a-posed to the stereo type of baggy jeans and baggy tops so on. He also doesn't wear a lot of jewellery like other hip hop artists. But its not only his image that makes him different but also his music as he has 'rock' feel to his songs meaning that there is a lot more that they can do for his music videos. For example he is able to have a live band play in the video because of the rocky style of some of his songs.

This is a screen shot from Professor Greens video to his song 'Avalon'. In this screen shot you can see the artists, the drummer just behind and the bass guitarist on the left of the screen, also on the right you can see another artist (Sierra Kusterbeck) who featured in this particular song.

overall the different styles of music video usually always are shaped by the style and personality of the artist, meaning that the video is styled by the artist. however the music video also helps to build up the style of the artist. this happens by seeing how successful the song is due to the video. they do this by comparing the sales from before the song had a video to it to when the music video is released. this then helps to shape the music videos for that artist in the future as that could be a unique selling point of that particular artist.

our song choice for our music video

This is the song that we are going to be using for our music video production.

music video analyses

The music video that I have chosen to analyse is 'Linkin Park-New divide'. I have chosen this video because I am very fond the song and also the video uses a great range of different visual effects. This song was also written and used in the film 'Transformers Revenge of the fallen'. This means that it would contain bits of footage from the film. This means that this music video uses synergy.

This songs story is based upon the storyline of 'Transformers Revenge of the fallen' which is about an ancient evil being awaken and causing havoc within the world in which the good guys have to defeat him. However although the song follows the basis of this of the story line for this film the music video doesn't. In fact the video is more of a promotional video for the film encouraging people to go and see/buy the film.

The video its self uses a lot of bright contrasting colours put into a kind of negative format.
When there is a clear shot of the band the set in which they filming looks like one of the scenes from the movie. This means that their is another direct link between the movie and the song and also the music video.

This is an image from 16:00 seconds into the music video and you can clearly see the outline and figures of the characters from 'Transformers'.

At 18:00 seconds the negative piece of footage then morphs into the next piece of footage which is a scene from the film. This whole process only lasts 2 seconds yet is very clear and is very effective into the link between the scenes.

This image from 1:13 of the music is a clear shot from the film 'Transformers'. This shows a direct link between the two.

This image is from 2:02 of the music video, it shows one of the many effects that is used within this music video (heat detector/ thermal imaging), at this moment in the song the singer sings 'there was no where to hide, the ashes fell like snow', as you can see in this image there a small red dots that resemble ashes falling.

Throughout the entire ,music video it splits between the film and the band playing the song. this is very effective as it adds to the effect of the video. I think that it all fits together perfectly and all is really effective in terms of describing the story of both the song and the film.

Overall I feel this is a great video and is very entertaining to watch and the song is also very good. I think this is a good video to help our production of a video as it uses visual effects extremely well and makes it all fit perfectly together and none of it looks out of place.

2 column storyboards

In today's lesson we learnt a bout a new method of creating storyboards. This method is called the 'two column storyboard'. This is when you have two columns, one labelled 'video' and the other 'audio'. In these two columns you write brief or detailed notes based on your idea for a shot during that particular part of the production. For example you can say that- '15 seconds into the song the artist jumps onto the back of a dragon and flies off to Narnia' for an example, that would be the description that would be put into the video column of the storyboard. in the audio column you could put- 'as the artist lands on the dragons back the first beat of the song plays'. this is just an example of could be written into the columns in the storyboard.

'Two column storyboards' are mostly used for small video productions such as: music videos and TV advertisements. these are used as they are effective and take up minimal space and also they take a lot less time to create as a posed to a full scale diagrammed storyboard.

this is our three column story board.

our artist's image

this is one of the top artist of this particular genre that we are going to be basing our artist image on. we have chosen this as she is extremely successful in her genre of music so we fell that by basing our artists image on her it will make our artist reach out and catch the eye of more of our target audience. however we don't want to copy this image top much as this will then lead to everyone thinking that we just want this artist to be the same as Avril Lavigne when in fact we are just trying to create a new kind of image for our artist.

this is the other artist we are also going to be basing the image of our artist on. we are using pink as again she is very successful in the same genre but however her image is completely different to that of Avril Lavigne's. 

For example pink has short hair whereas Avril Lavigne has long hair, so there is a clear difference there in their images. pink also wears more outstanding clothes like funky dresses and overalls and other various things. whereas Avril lavigne wears more jeans, t-shirts and dresses. this is another clear difference between the two artists images.

Chrome-key

CHROME-KEY

We are going to do a trial run of the use of chrome-key. We will be testing this before so that can decide on whether or not we wish to use this in our final production. If we can pull it of it will look very good and will make our production look more like a professional piece. However if it doesn't then it will make our piece look amateur and not as effective. Overall I think it will go well but we still have to cater in the off chance that it may not work. This will show that we are prepared and well equipped for scenarios that may occur on the road to producing our music video.

how Freytag's theory fits our music video pitch

how Freytag's theory fits our music video pitch

purpose of music videos

purpose of music videos

permission letter for the use of our chosen song

---

From: law_lkn@hotmail.co.uk
To: wayne@vmg.co.uk
Subject: Permission
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:02:03 +0000

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am student in the process of producing a music video solely for education purposes as it is required for our BTEC Media A level course. The reason why I am contacting you is to request permission to use the track Porcelain and the Tramps - My leftovers in the music video.

Thank You

Regards

Luigi Kongo

pitch

28/11/2012 - Today we altered our previous idea for our pitch due to the reason that we discovered the idea was very similar to Britney Spears' song 'Baby, One More Time'. Instead we came up with the idea of contrasting the loud attitude of the protagonist with a quiet/sad setting.

Our Finalized idea is this;

The protagonist will be on a date with her boyfriend and catch him flirting with an older woman on a different table.

Then it will cut to a different date where he repeats the flirtatious behavior with a different woman and doesn't pay any attention to her. This is when she begins to sing the lyrics.

She storms off and he follows.

The protagonist will take her boyfriend home and begin to 'play fight' with him, which escalates into her killing him by hitting him around the head with a giant lollipop.

She then goes upstairs to get ready for an occasion that is not yet revealed.

Cut scene to snap shots of the funeral.

The protagonist is walking (whilst singing) in a field with the band and ends up at some kind of gathering.

Close ups of the girls mourning to reveal they are the girls he had been flirting with.

Cut scene of the protagonist replacing his ashes with the sherbet.

She acts sweetly-evil to the girls by giving them sherbet.

The camera moves back to reveal the occasion is her boyfriend's funeral.

It then ends with the protagonist licking her lips

log for the 29th November

unfortunately i missed  a substantial amount of todays lesson due to personal circumstances. however for the amount of time i have been in i have been brought up to speed with the new ideas that the group has had. one thing i have been told is that we have decided to change the whole idea concept of our music video. we have changed it to a funeral based theme and are adding in new ideas as we go along.

log for the 26th November

In today's lesson we decided on the basic concept of our music video. We discussed different ways in which we believed it would make the video production look and feel a lot more professional. One of the ways we come up with was the use of the editing software, explaining how that shot would be possible and why it work using the editing software that we have at our disposal.

The idea that we decided on was that our lead singer would be standing on the stage and sing the last line or two of the song. This will then be followed by a applause which is actually the teacher in the lecture clapping to wake her up. This then angers her and causes her to stand up in rage and start throwing a tantrum to and extent. During this she will be screaming at the teacher (singing the lyrics) and maybe throwing some things. At some point she will look back and see her body sitting in the chair and this posses a question to her. Eventually she will get into the hall and begin singing on the stage. From this a bell will ring and she will then go back to the class room to find she is the only one person left in the room with a piece of paper saying 'my leftovers'.

log for the 16th November

In today's media lesson we discussed what we was going to do for our research.
in the end of this discussion we decided that we would firstly use ten questionnaires each. This will give all four of us very useful information to bring back to the group in order for us to adopt and create new ideas for our media production of the music video.
Once we have completed the questionnaires we are ten going to carry out a focus group. this will help us get a more in depth look into the views and opinions on their answers that they gave us on the questionnaires.
We are going to use people who answered our questionnaire to take part in our focus group. We are doing this as it will potentially give us five different view points of the same song and why they feel that way about that song, enabling us to be able to work more efficiently with the data that we have collected to meet the desires of our target audience. This will then make our music video production a success.
Overall i personally feel that method is a good way for us to get all of the significant information that we need. This will make our plan and ideas for the video come together with a lot more ease as a posed to us getting just written information that doesn't elaborate on their points of view.

my mood board for our production