I had various responsibilities in the project such as in the pre-production I planned the storyboards, wrote the synopsis and treatment, wrote the call sheets and scheduled when shots would happen; I also was the director and the main camera and lighting man. I think my contribution to the project was quite effective but I could have planned out all of the shots more effectively in the Lecture Theatre, as we filmed for an hour and we had a lot of very good shots but I think that would have made me feel better about the project if I’d planned the shots better and quite a few of them were rather shaky. I also could have been a better producer as the Lecture Theatre bits were supposed to feature Ella and Rob; the actual performers, but they didn’t turn up on the day, so I could have phoned ahead earlier and made sure we were more prepared for that eventuality, or at least reschedule it for a different day, but we ran out of shooting time so, I think we did quite a good job. Also when Ella didn’t turn up, we should have reshot the town sequences with Laura and Marc in to improve continuity, as in the finished product you do somewhat wonder who Ella is and why is she there, so in hindsight we should have reshot that.
I’ve learned that stress makes me very productive, and I am quite a good organiser if the things that are out of my control are fine. Throughout the project we had to reschedule some things several times and on our first pitch we were no where near ready and the song wasn’t complete or anything, but in the following week we did everything and on to our finished project. I’ve also learned that I need to be more articulate sometimes as strangely sometimes I have a hard time describing what’s happening in my head and putting that on paper but at least I can work on that one for next time. Also I feel quite proficient on the Apple Mac’s now, and I much prefer them to Microsoft PCs, as they’re so much more useful and straightforward.
I also now understand lighting and the impact that has on what the audience feel and think. These compare to the limited technical skills I had at the start quite majorly as I only had a slight idea of how all the technical things work and have pretty much learned quite a lot now.
I also strangely notice shots and angles and different things in the picture when I watch TV now and I find that rather good.
The technical quality of our finished video is quite high I feel and we recorded the song with an accomplished singer and guitarist so that made our song as good as possible as it always helps to have a good song because otherwise you can’t do much for the video, we also recorded it in a proper recording booth, with the proper technicians that helped us get it to the best quality as possible. The images could be better as I find a HD camera would have worked better and sometimes the images get quite grainy and sloppy, which really brings the feel of the video lower than it should be, it also did some strange 3D thing with Laura in a few shots because of the camera, which wasn’t so bad because it was quite interesting. The editing I feel is quite good, there’s room for improvement however, as some things needed sharpening up and others needed to be reshot but I feel somewhat that I am just nitpicking a bit but I don’t know. Laura did a magnificent job of Lip-Syncing which really helped in the editing stage, and Ella’s voice I feel suits her so you can believe it. Marc also did a good job pretending to play guitar because a lot of people might just have ignored where the strumming was and just strum at random points but because he put that added effort in I think it actually looks like they are performing in a bar or club. I think the lighting was quite good even though it was so simple; just two lights with a blue and red Gel over the top, we also then associated the character with that colour, Laura was always red and Marc was always blue no matter their position on the stage.
I think the effectiveness of the editing was quite good as it was in the same rhythm as the music, and shots of Ella in town interspersed in between, definitely if we had the time I would have reshot the sequences in town with Laura replacing Ella as it just confuses the viewer as they don’t realise why there is a random girl in there. I also would have either made the black and white town bits either more frequent or at least a bit more sequenced as it does seem a bit randomly placed. I think our cinematography was good as there are plenty of different shots and the lighting scheme, I feel suits the song. Our use of Mise-en-scene I feel was quite good, maybe we could have found some more locations to give it a bit more character but I think that if we added any more, it would just seem cramped and crowded.
In the original proposal we had planned much more Narrative to the video and the performance aspect to take a back seat but because our cast didn’t turn up and we ran out of time we had to put that on the back-burner and make the performance side much more prevalent. I also feel that it represents the music quite well as there’s not much to do with such a Open-Mic-Night type of song then have it as a performance; although naturally there is more we could have done.
The ideas for the music video probably took a bit of a back seat in pre-production for too long while we were waiting for the song to be finished, but once we had the demo of the song, we could work on it much better, now to me it seems quite like a different project although it seems to have evolved nicely into the current one and somehow it feels right to have Laura and Marc performing it even though she’s miming along to one of my best friend’s voices, even I think that she suits it. One of the main idea’s we had for it was that the video was about a girl searching for her hand, but very much during shooting and post-production we realised that was just a bit too surreal and also we never did make a false hand and on the day when we were shooting in town, Ella was being quite un-cooperative and I think we were lucky to get quite a lot of that footage as she was complaining and refusing to do a lot of it as it was rather cold and I think she was quite tired.
As I look back on the Synopsis I see that as I have previously said, the narrative side definitely disappeared during the shooting stage but I somehow think that the video is somewhat better for it, and maybe if the bits in town were of Laura it wouldn’t seem so odd that suddenly she was in town. The positioning of the Singer and the Guitarist in the Performance is the same as what I had envisioned apart from we did move them around a bit to make filming easier but clever editing shows that you would never know. The treatment isn’t too much different apart from the narrative has been removed a lot, and yet I find the video almost better of it as I think it would have complicated it a lot to have it with the narrative at the start because then the audience may have thought “If she’s looking for her hand, why is she suddenly singing in a bar?” which is something we’d never thought of in the pre-production stage as we were awfully unorganised. We also used about a third of the planned locations but that was because Ella didn’t much want to do it, which she could have mentioned to me before we had planned it all out so we could have just had Laura from the start. We also decided to make the outside bits black-and-white instead of my previous idea to make it a bit “overexposed and glary”
And in hindsight I find it a good idea we decided not to do that to it.
The target audience I think is probably the same if not a little bit older, maybe now it’s 14 and up instead of 12 and up. So I guess we didn’t much cater for the entire target audience but until we had the finished song I guess we didn’t know, so we made a good guess of it.
The audience responses of the music video, I feel is very interesting as more people like it than I thought they would, unless they were lying as they were saying it in front of the class. The initial impressions of it were that the lip-syncing was fantastic, the lighting was good and that the outside shots were good. Also that it had a “nice feel” and that there was a nice mixture of shots and good performing.
The initial impressions of the weak areas were that the bit at the end looks like a mistake as if we were going more for that sort of “look they aren’t really performing” thing and that if that’s what we were doing we should have but more of those types of shots in. The audience also felt that the Character Narrative bits were overused and unnecessary as the bits of Ella didn’t make sense in continuity and it was quite confusing as to why she was there. The audience felt out use of Cinematography and Mise-en-scene was good as there were lot’s of different shots and good lighting and that it was nice to see the odd bit of equipment as it made it look like they genuinely were performing in a pub or bar, also they felt we could have found more interesting locations for the narrative aspect. They felt that the footage was cut well to the music and went to the pace of the song. They also felt that there were a few issues with sloppiness and the end shot is a big no-no. But overall, the suitability of the visuals and music, the suitability to the Genre and Suitability of representation were all good and worked well. However they felt that it was only somewhat suitable for the target audience.
The things that went wrong in the production were many; Ella was quite unreliable as an actress, I didn’t consult her to make sure that she could meet and attend the necessary things so we had to reschedule a lot. We also started working on out track far too late because we didn’t realise we should have started yet and it was only finished and recorded the day before we started filming and about 20 minutes before the secondary mini-pitch. The organisation was quite an issue as I wrote the call-sheets hoping that the TV studio would be free on the right day and then we found out that it wasn’t free anytime in that week so we had to use the Lecture Theatre instead which actually worked much better as it was a bigger space, we also had to flip the schedules over so we had to film the Tuesday stuff on the Wednesday and the Wednesday stuff on the Tuesday. Apart from a lot of disorganisation during pre-production the rest went alright, the first day of filming was stressful as our actress was unresponsive and we weren’t too sure of what needed to be done. The second day went so much better even though Ella and Rob didn’t turn up, but apart from that it was fine. The post-production was the best, as it was so straightforward; as we’d filmed it so many times all the way through the song from various angles we just had to chop 3 minutes chunks out and lip-sync them and then decide which bits were best, we finished all of the basics in opine day and polished it off in about an hour of another day; so I was very happy with how that went. The Narrative aspect of the video didn’t go quite as well as I had expected because Ella wasn’t available as much as I had thought; and she hadn’t told us that until after she was needed. The Narrative was the only disappointment to me really as the Performance aspect is fantastic and makes me really proud of Laura and Marc, and I think as that’s the main bit, I feel we can forgive the narrative aspects.
I don’t really know how our project compares to other examples of the genre of music video’s as the Genre is a bit iffy, it’s like a big cross between Pop, Country, Pub and Folk music, and I haven’t really seen another song like it, which make me really happy as it’s practically a new genre of music altogether, so maybe people will look to our music video as an example of how to do it, in future. But I feel that if it was a proper genre, they would be a lot like this, just a good fun music video that’s quite basic and plain just like the song.
My overall opinion of the project is positive, although I do feel as if we could have done some pieces a bit better but Laura tells me I am just nitpicking and that I’m fussy so; who knows. If we’d done it again I would have shifted everything we had done, so we had done it a week earlier so we had the song finished before we’d started the storyboards and call sheets so we could have polished that off well before the start of filming, I would also have made sure I was a bit firmer to Ella to make sure she would do it, I feel I could have been a bit more lovingly manipulative, but she brought her girlfriend who I feel distracted her as she felt silly in front of her, however Tasha was quite helpful as she persuaded her somewhat to do what we were saying, but I think Ella just felt a bit embarrassed so maybe I should have told her not to bring Tasha. I can’t quite decide if I would have made it so Ella wasn’t in it at all and Laura had done it all, or if I would have made sure Ella would have turned up and made it her in the performing bit, I just don’t know. If I could, now I would go back and reshoot the narrative with Laura in it just to add to the continuity, but overall I think we did quite a good job, we were just rather unorganised but when we pulled it around and got our heads into what we needed to do, it was fine.
I still feel that it could be a bit better though, but I guess it’s good that I haven’t made the best thing I could just yet because then I wouldn’t have anywhere else to move in the course. And it was a brilliant learning process, I just wish we were more organised and had a HD camera.
Monday, 14 December 2009
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Task 3 Continued - A Different Music Video Director.
Chris Cunningham.
Chris Cunningham was born in Reading and grew up in Lakenheath in Suffolk. He began his career working for the ITV satire programme “Spitting Image” working on the animatronics and puppet sculpture, from there he went on to do the same thing for the film Alien 3.
Stanley Kubrick then employed him in the late 90’s to work with the animatronics on the Film A.I. – a film about a robot child. Cunningham then left that project to pursue a directing career. His first music video was “Second Bad Vilbel” for Autechre, he also does a lot of work for Aphex Twin, having directed five of their music videos, and he also directed “All is full of Love” for Bjórk and “Frozen” with Madonna
Both Frozen and All is Full of love have a blue colour setting which shows that he likes to put effects in, “All is full of love” is also Bjórk as a robot making out with another robot, who is also Bjórk, from this we see that he likes to direct and produce rather strange stuff, but nothing is strange than “Rubber Johnny”. “Rubber Johnny” is an experimental film that started off as a short advert for Aphex Twin’s album, it has Cunningham in the starring role of a young Hydrocephalus mutant child, who is kept in a dark basement with only a small Chihuahua for company, this however evolved into a longer 6 minute short, involving a lot of special effects and it becomes apparent that his parents are slightly ashamed of him and thus he’s in the basement, every once in a while his head explodes, which is rather odd but apparently that’s one of Cunningham’s things.
Some audience responses towards Rubber Johnny are:
“As creepy as this is, it’s an excellently made video!”
“Fantastic video-clip...so goddamn strange, sick ‘n absolutelymind-fucking! Great work...praise the artist”
Cunningham has since done an advert for Gucci promoting the perfume: flora; some of the audience responses to this are:
“That's one of the most like-able ads I have seen in a long time.”
“Cunningham is a genius when it comes to atmosphere and mood.”
From these we can see that the audience appreciates his style but not necessarily its content, as he does make some really ground-breaking videos that people aren’t quite ready for.
Chris Cunningham was born in Reading and grew up in Lakenheath in Suffolk. He began his career working for the ITV satire programme “Spitting Image” working on the animatronics and puppet sculpture, from there he went on to do the same thing for the film Alien 3.
Stanley Kubrick then employed him in the late 90’s to work with the animatronics on the Film A.I. – a film about a robot child. Cunningham then left that project to pursue a directing career. His first music video was “Second Bad Vilbel” for Autechre, he also does a lot of work for Aphex Twin, having directed five of their music videos, and he also directed “All is full of Love” for Bjórk and “Frozen” with Madonna
Both Frozen and All is Full of love have a blue colour setting which shows that he likes to put effects in, “All is full of love” is also Bjórk as a robot making out with another robot, who is also Bjórk, from this we see that he likes to direct and produce rather strange stuff, but nothing is strange than “Rubber Johnny”. “Rubber Johnny” is an experimental film that started off as a short advert for Aphex Twin’s album, it has Cunningham in the starring role of a young Hydrocephalus mutant child, who is kept in a dark basement with only a small Chihuahua for company, this however evolved into a longer 6 minute short, involving a lot of special effects and it becomes apparent that his parents are slightly ashamed of him and thus he’s in the basement, every once in a while his head explodes, which is rather odd but apparently that’s one of Cunningham’s things.
Some audience responses towards Rubber Johnny are:
“As creepy as this is, it’s an excellently made video!”
“Fantastic video-clip...so goddamn strange, sick ‘n absolutelymind-fucking! Great work...praise the artist”
Cunningham has since done an advert for Gucci promoting the perfume: flora; some of the audience responses to this are:
“That's one of the most like-able ads I have seen in a long time.”
“Cunningham is a genius when it comes to atmosphere and mood.”
From these we can see that the audience appreciates his style but not necessarily its content, as he does make some really ground-breaking videos that people aren’t quite ready for.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Yet again it won't ever let me Embed anything.
Britney Spears - If You Seek Amy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FehBgQeVKFQ
Beyoncé Knowles - Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g
These are the videos that i have compared. They were both directed by Jake Nava, who has done alot of modern music videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FehBgQeVKFQ
Beyoncé Knowles - Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g
These are the videos that i have compared. They were both directed by Jake Nava, who has done alot of modern music videos.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Task 3 - Music Video Director Research
Jake Nava was born in Hackney, London and then moved to the USA, He has worked for a lot of current Pop and R ‘n’ B artists and strangely The Rolling Stones, so he is quite diverse in his work. He often works for Britney Spears and Beyoncé Knowles and has made a lot of videos with them. He’s also done a lot of advertisements in his career and Beyoncé is quite a recurring theme as she starred in one of his adverts for Armani.
His target audience for his music videos is probably anyone who is interested in Pop/ R ’n’ B music ages from 16ish to 30. But obviously anyone who doesn’t fit into that probably will like them too.
There isn’t really much about Jake Nava on the Internet, but I can only assume he’s quite revered in the showbiz world as he has directed a whole lot of music videos for very popular, very current artists.
He does seem to have a bit of a style which is a lot of close-ups and wide-shots used in his videos and a lot of Black and White techniques.
He also seems to like slightly strange out of the ordinary shots instead of the plain ones.
Bibliography (Even though I don't know if we need one.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Nava
16/11/09 23:01
:)
His target audience for his music videos is probably anyone who is interested in Pop/ R ’n’ B music ages from 16ish to 30. But obviously anyone who doesn’t fit into that probably will like them too.
There isn’t really much about Jake Nava on the Internet, but I can only assume he’s quite revered in the showbiz world as he has directed a whole lot of music videos for very popular, very current artists.
He does seem to have a bit of a style which is a lot of close-ups and wide-shots used in his videos and a lot of Black and White techniques.
He also seems to like slightly strange out of the ordinary shots instead of the plain ones.
Bibliography (Even though I don't know if we need one.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Nava
16/11/09 23:01
:)
Task 2 - Contemporary Video Research
The two contemporary music videos that I am going to compare are If You Seek Amy by Britney Spears and Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) by Beyoncé Knowles both directed by Jake Nava.
If You Seek Amy was the third single from Britney Spears from her third studio album: Circus, the name is quite an obvious double entendre which basically spells out F.U.C.K me. It apparently isn’t about sex but how she perceives life, which really goes to show how arrogant she is.
I like the video because it’s really weird. It starts out with an American newsreader on a faux news programme with the headline “Britney Spears song lyrics spell out obscenity in disguise”. It seems that Britney plays on that as it cuts to some sort of strange sex party which is finishing. This goes on for quite a while until the middle section in which Britney sports a stereotypically 50’s housewife outfit and style of hair, she then picks up a pie and walks outside with her husband and children all dressed in this style to meet a whole lot of paparazzi. Britney does the stereotypical Britney thing of blowing a kiss and then it cuts back to the newsreader saying: “It doesn’t make any sense does it?” Quite. It really is rather nonsensical but maybe she’s trying to say that in public life she’s a model citizen but when she get’s home the wig comes off and she parties hard, which is anything is the reverse of the truth.
It’s of the pop genre, and I think it shows this quite well as quite a lot of music videos nowadays are really different, strange and odd or very straight forward. There’s never really any middle ground in this genre.
The video has a narrative running through it; even if it doesn’t make much sense. It’s also very much about Britney’s image as she mentions her previous single “Piece of Me” from the album “Blackout” which a lot of her songs do.
The middle part of the video is very much part of the codes and conventions as most music videos are somewhat about the song’s subject matter and as it’s a bit of a sex song and in the video there is a bit of a sex theme. However the last 40 seconds or so are very odd because it isn’t much to do with the subject matter and I think they put that in there just to make it somewhat more interesting as watching the end of a sex party for 3 minutes or so could get very boring unless you’re that way inclined.
The mise-en-scene is rather typical too, as throughout the video she’s pulling her “Sexy” face which makes sense to what she’s singing about. She’s also not wearing much during this part. The 50’s influenced bit is rather good too, because she’d doing the 50’s housewife smile and holding a pie, with her husband and two children; a boy and a girl, basically the perfect family in the 50’s
Also in the video her “daughter” is wearing a smaller less sexual version of the costume she wore in her first video “…Baby One More Time”
Which is think is her saying “I’m not a little girl now I’m a sexy women now… who is also a mother.” Also I think it also means that she still has quite a lot of fun, and to her, her family is perfect. Although this is just my input and it might just be there for the hell of it. I don’t reckon though.
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) is from Beyoncé’s 2nd studio album I am… Sasha Fierce. The music video was shot concurrently with the video from “If I Were a Boy”, and most of the money was spent on that one and the style is based on Madonna’s Vogue photo shoot, says Jake Nava. Beyoncé has an alter-ego for the stage called Sasha Fierce, and in this video she plays her, she seems much fierier than ordinary nice Beyoncé and obviously oozes sex appeal.
The video is just performance and was shot in three parts and edited together to look like it was shot in one take continuously.
Also apparently another inspiration for the music video is Gwen Verdon’s dance from The Ed Sullivan Show called Mexican Breakfast that was performed in June 1969, and i've posted a video of the bit's Beyoncé nicked below ;)
The Song and Music Video is all about Female Empowerment and as Beyoncé is performing as Sasha Fierce who is obviously very much a feminist and a complete diva. Although what I get from the song is that a man has lost his girlfriend because he wouldn’t marry her; which I’m going to assume is a synonym for not committing adequately enough for the likes of this big powerful woman.
It is of the R n B and Dance-pop genres because it has a high speed and catchy lyrics and music which is therefore reflected in the video. I completely understand why Jake Nava decided to do a performance video for this song as there isn’t anything else you can do for such a high speed full-frontal song like this one as it doesn’t really have a very strong narrative and it’s not really about Beyoncé but her Alter-Ego Sasha Fierce, as this I guess is her debut it has Sasha’s image splashed all over it. It also has a minimalistic quality as it’s in black-and-white and it’s just Beyoncé and two dancers who look rather similar dancing with fabulous choreography.
Proof that it is a fantastic video is also that they didn’t spend much on it and it wasn’t supposed to be the main single at all, If I Were a Boy was supposed to be the “Hit”. This just goes to show how music video’s are critical to the artist as If I were a Boy was a good song and a good video but the simpler cheaper Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) was a much bigger hit winning Video Of The Year on the VMA’s.
If You Seek Amy and Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) are similar in many ways in which they both have a lot of sex appeal and are both rather simple and don’t tell much of a story, this is exaggerated in Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’s case. Beyoncé and Britney are both big megastars and are aiming for the same audience with there songs. Which is mainly 16 and over’s but younger children will also enjoy them if only because they are pretty catchy.
Bibliography!
It's very short.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_you_seek_amy
16/11/09 22:09
http://candipop08group1.blogspot.com/2008/09/codes-and-conventions-of-music-videos.html
16/11/09 22:13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Ladies_(Put_a_Ring_on_It)
16/11/09 22:35
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1621294/20090911/knowles_beyonce.jhtml
16/11/09 22:49
And ME :D
21/09/1991 18:30 ish Onwards. :D
If You Seek Amy was the third single from Britney Spears from her third studio album: Circus, the name is quite an obvious double entendre which basically spells out F.U.C.K me. It apparently isn’t about sex but how she perceives life, which really goes to show how arrogant she is.
I like the video because it’s really weird. It starts out with an American newsreader on a faux news programme with the headline “Britney Spears song lyrics spell out obscenity in disguise”. It seems that Britney plays on that as it cuts to some sort of strange sex party which is finishing. This goes on for quite a while until the middle section in which Britney sports a stereotypically 50’s housewife outfit and style of hair, she then picks up a pie and walks outside with her husband and children all dressed in this style to meet a whole lot of paparazzi. Britney does the stereotypical Britney thing of blowing a kiss and then it cuts back to the newsreader saying: “It doesn’t make any sense does it?” Quite. It really is rather nonsensical but maybe she’s trying to say that in public life she’s a model citizen but when she get’s home the wig comes off and she parties hard, which is anything is the reverse of the truth.
It’s of the pop genre, and I think it shows this quite well as quite a lot of music videos nowadays are really different, strange and odd or very straight forward. There’s never really any middle ground in this genre.
The video has a narrative running through it; even if it doesn’t make much sense. It’s also very much about Britney’s image as she mentions her previous single “Piece of Me” from the album “Blackout” which a lot of her songs do.
The middle part of the video is very much part of the codes and conventions as most music videos are somewhat about the song’s subject matter and as it’s a bit of a sex song and in the video there is a bit of a sex theme. However the last 40 seconds or so are very odd because it isn’t much to do with the subject matter and I think they put that in there just to make it somewhat more interesting as watching the end of a sex party for 3 minutes or so could get very boring unless you’re that way inclined.
The mise-en-scene is rather typical too, as throughout the video she’s pulling her “Sexy” face which makes sense to what she’s singing about. She’s also not wearing much during this part. The 50’s influenced bit is rather good too, because she’d doing the 50’s housewife smile and holding a pie, with her husband and two children; a boy and a girl, basically the perfect family in the 50’s
Also in the video her “daughter” is wearing a smaller less sexual version of the costume she wore in her first video “…Baby One More Time”
Which is think is her saying “I’m not a little girl now I’m a sexy women now… who is also a mother.” Also I think it also means that she still has quite a lot of fun, and to her, her family is perfect. Although this is just my input and it might just be there for the hell of it. I don’t reckon though.
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) is from Beyoncé’s 2nd studio album I am… Sasha Fierce. The music video was shot concurrently with the video from “If I Were a Boy”, and most of the money was spent on that one and the style is based on Madonna’s Vogue photo shoot, says Jake Nava. Beyoncé has an alter-ego for the stage called Sasha Fierce, and in this video she plays her, she seems much fierier than ordinary nice Beyoncé and obviously oozes sex appeal.
The video is just performance and was shot in three parts and edited together to look like it was shot in one take continuously.
Also apparently another inspiration for the music video is Gwen Verdon’s dance from The Ed Sullivan Show called Mexican Breakfast that was performed in June 1969, and i've posted a video of the bit's Beyoncé nicked below ;)
The Song and Music Video is all about Female Empowerment and as Beyoncé is performing as Sasha Fierce who is obviously very much a feminist and a complete diva. Although what I get from the song is that a man has lost his girlfriend because he wouldn’t marry her; which I’m going to assume is a synonym for not committing adequately enough for the likes of this big powerful woman.
It is of the R n B and Dance-pop genres because it has a high speed and catchy lyrics and music which is therefore reflected in the video. I completely understand why Jake Nava decided to do a performance video for this song as there isn’t anything else you can do for such a high speed full-frontal song like this one as it doesn’t really have a very strong narrative and it’s not really about Beyoncé but her Alter-Ego Sasha Fierce, as this I guess is her debut it has Sasha’s image splashed all over it. It also has a minimalistic quality as it’s in black-and-white and it’s just Beyoncé and two dancers who look rather similar dancing with fabulous choreography.
Proof that it is a fantastic video is also that they didn’t spend much on it and it wasn’t supposed to be the main single at all, If I Were a Boy was supposed to be the “Hit”. This just goes to show how music video’s are critical to the artist as If I were a Boy was a good song and a good video but the simpler cheaper Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) was a much bigger hit winning Video Of The Year on the VMA’s.
If You Seek Amy and Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) are similar in many ways in which they both have a lot of sex appeal and are both rather simple and don’t tell much of a story, this is exaggerated in Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’s case. Beyoncé and Britney are both big megastars and are aiming for the same audience with there songs. Which is mainly 16 and over’s but younger children will also enjoy them if only because they are pretty catchy.
Bibliography!
It's very short.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_you_seek_amy
16/11/09 22:09
http://candipop08group1.blogspot.com/2008/09/codes-and-conventions-of-music-videos.html
16/11/09 22:13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Ladies_(Put_a_Ring_on_It)
16/11/09 22:35
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1621294/20090911/knowles_beyonce.jhtml
16/11/09 22:49
And ME :D
21/09/1991 18:30 ish Onwards. :D
Task 1 - Purposes Of Music Videos
The purposes of music video’s are for promotion; promoting the artist, the single and the album; without music videos life would be much harder for the artist as instead of producing a music video that can easily be sent to various television networks, they would have to travel to individual studios to perform on stage, which is a lot more time consuming and more expensive in the long term. The first single’s music video tends to have the biggest budget and a more complicated narrative as when the artist releases the 3rd or 4th single of the album, it’s basically being produced for far less people as a lot of people would have rushed to purchase the album after the 1st and 2nd single’s had came out, so producing high budget mini-movie’s would be time and money wasting.
Music videos are also seen somewhat as a status symbol by the artist; if an artist produces a very high standard of promotional video for a single that has a big budget with a well-known director, then everyone can see that the artist is a major name of the music world and definitely worth watching and listening too, also no matter if you really dislike an artist, if they have a really good music video some people could watch them just for that aspect, so it’s all about coverage and marketing of an artist.
Music Video’s that are of current long-standing musicians such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue and the late Michael Jackson were always much flashier and seen more of a status symbol with usually not much to do with the actual lyrical content of the single, but they naturally have a much wider range of resources to use such as bigger producers and directors then a musician that has just broke into the industry and it’s there first music video.
Music Video’s can also improve an artist’s reputation as being a serious artist with consistently good tracks and a lot of staying power, as if you have a great music video, that get’s loads of hits on YouTube and a lot of people tune in to see the Television premiere of the artists new music video at 1 o’clock in the morning on Channel 4, then you know that the artist is very popular and is making the most money for their companies, managers and producers, so then the artist’s producers, companies and managers are going to be more likely to spend the big money on them as they know it will be a guaranteed money-maker.
However, you don’t necessarily need a big music video to make a track a big hit, take for example two singles of Michael Jackson’s; “Scream” and “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”. The former cost 1 million pounds to make and it’s widely regarded to be a bit of critical failure, as opposed to the latter, which was his first music video and cost the least to make out of all and was much more widely regarded so it shows that you don’t necessarily have to spend inordinate amounts of money on a music video for it to be a big hit.
The most widely renowned music video’s are always the one’s that make the most impact on the viewer, whether controversial or not, if there is a lot of public interest about a video then naturally more people will want to watch it.
Another problem of music videos is that sometimes the artist makes a good video for a very poor song, a recent case of this is Cheryl Cole’s 3 Words, which I actually rank in the worst 10 songs I’ve ever heard, and it has quite an interesting video that I had to watch on mute because it’s the most tediously boring song ever. Generally however, nobody will be bothered to sit through 4 minutes of a really boring annoying track even if the music video is a massive work of art.
The first music videos were first made in the 60’s with the Beatles and they weren’t much like the one’s we are used to now, they were very performance based and they fitted the needs of a very sort-after band and prevented the group from flying around Europe five times a day to perform on various shows. Then these evolved during the 70’s when Queen made Bohemian Rhapsody, which was filmed in a few days in a pub, with various new camera techniques and it excited there fans a lot.
The first “modern” Music video was Michael Jackson’s Thriller in which it was a 25 minute long short film. That was very narrative based and had a very soft core slasher theme throughout, such as the 40’s Universal Films.
Also in the 80’s MTV started; and that’s when British acts started coming to the forefront again, as only British acts really had music videos and there was only about 100 of them to choose from so MTV would rotate them a lot and thus helped popularise the British Music Scene again.
Music videos are also seen somewhat as a status symbol by the artist; if an artist produces a very high standard of promotional video for a single that has a big budget with a well-known director, then everyone can see that the artist is a major name of the music world and definitely worth watching and listening too, also no matter if you really dislike an artist, if they have a really good music video some people could watch them just for that aspect, so it’s all about coverage and marketing of an artist.
Music Video’s that are of current long-standing musicians such as Madonna, Kylie Minogue and the late Michael Jackson were always much flashier and seen more of a status symbol with usually not much to do with the actual lyrical content of the single, but they naturally have a much wider range of resources to use such as bigger producers and directors then a musician that has just broke into the industry and it’s there first music video.
Music Video’s can also improve an artist’s reputation as being a serious artist with consistently good tracks and a lot of staying power, as if you have a great music video, that get’s loads of hits on YouTube and a lot of people tune in to see the Television premiere of the artists new music video at 1 o’clock in the morning on Channel 4, then you know that the artist is very popular and is making the most money for their companies, managers and producers, so then the artist’s producers, companies and managers are going to be more likely to spend the big money on them as they know it will be a guaranteed money-maker.
However, you don’t necessarily need a big music video to make a track a big hit, take for example two singles of Michael Jackson’s; “Scream” and “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”. The former cost 1 million pounds to make and it’s widely regarded to be a bit of critical failure, as opposed to the latter, which was his first music video and cost the least to make out of all and was much more widely regarded so it shows that you don’t necessarily have to spend inordinate amounts of money on a music video for it to be a big hit.
The most widely renowned music video’s are always the one’s that make the most impact on the viewer, whether controversial or not, if there is a lot of public interest about a video then naturally more people will want to watch it.
Another problem of music videos is that sometimes the artist makes a good video for a very poor song, a recent case of this is Cheryl Cole’s 3 Words, which I actually rank in the worst 10 songs I’ve ever heard, and it has quite an interesting video that I had to watch on mute because it’s the most tediously boring song ever. Generally however, nobody will be bothered to sit through 4 minutes of a really boring annoying track even if the music video is a massive work of art.
The first music videos were first made in the 60’s with the Beatles and they weren’t much like the one’s we are used to now, they were very performance based and they fitted the needs of a very sort-after band and prevented the group from flying around Europe five times a day to perform on various shows. Then these evolved during the 70’s when Queen made Bohemian Rhapsody, which was filmed in a few days in a pub, with various new camera techniques and it excited there fans a lot.
The first “modern” Music video was Michael Jackson’s Thriller in which it was a 25 minute long short film. That was very narrative based and had a very soft core slasher theme throughout, such as the 40’s Universal Films.
Also in the 80’s MTV started; and that’s when British acts started coming to the forefront again, as only British acts really had music videos and there was only about 100 of them to choose from so MTV would rotate them a lot and thus helped popularise the British Music Scene again.
One Day Lip Sync Project
Seriously, Why doesn't it let me put videos in?!
But anyway, here is Lucy, Hannah and My One Day Lip Sync
Just in case it doesn't work, which is very highly likely because as we have all found out, blogger hates me. :) Here's the link ;)
Which may or not work because i think the internet hates me. Although mainly blogger. It is a cruel mistress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFTyC4HoyXY
Well, basically last monday Hannah, Lucy and I had to make a tiny little music video which showed us lip sync-ing along to a song that John Dempsey gave us, which was MC Hammer U Can't Touch This. So naturally we got a camera and went to the dance studio. I never claimed to be a dancer and you can see the results here. Although i like it. We then went on the Mac and Started editing it down from like 2 hours of footage to fit in with about 4 minutes of song. It was rather a hard song as it's so fast it needs alot of stuff and we almost pretty much ran out of things to put in. There's a few shots of the girls bouncing up and down the stairs in a fun fashion and quite a lot of Hannahs dance skills showing mine up spectacularly. Also the little green man was in the dance studio and we asked him if he wanted to be in our video so he did his thing, which i found rather amusing and then we put it in :)
It is all good in the hood (Y)
It is all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt. Luckily no one did so it was just fun and games :)
But anyway, here is Lucy, Hannah and My One Day Lip Sync
Just in case it doesn't work, which is very highly likely because as we have all found out, blogger hates me. :) Here's the link ;)
Which may or not work because i think the internet hates me. Although mainly blogger. It is a cruel mistress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFTyC4HoyXY
Well, basically last monday Hannah, Lucy and I had to make a tiny little music video which showed us lip sync-ing along to a song that John Dempsey gave us, which was MC Hammer U Can't Touch This. So naturally we got a camera and went to the dance studio. I never claimed to be a dancer and you can see the results here. Although i like it. We then went on the Mac and Started editing it down from like 2 hours of footage to fit in with about 4 minutes of song. It was rather a hard song as it's so fast it needs alot of stuff and we almost pretty much ran out of things to put in. There's a few shots of the girls bouncing up and down the stairs in a fun fashion and quite a lot of Hannahs dance skills showing mine up spectacularly. Also the little green man was in the dance studio and we asked him if he wanted to be in our video so he did his thing, which i found rather amusing and then we put it in :)
It is all good in the hood (Y)
It is all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt. Luckily no one did so it was just fun and games :)
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