Music video analysis

 

We had to create a music video for our course work. We started off by testing test footage such as glow stick tests. This was to get a feel of what we wanted the end result to look like. We also experimented on by doing under and over cranking. We made a video testing these and also did research into how they are done and why they are done, we came to the conclusion that they are done to create emotion within the contexts they are within. We decided to get in contact with an artist before we made a concept for the music video so that we can get a concept that suits the song we chose. We decided to look on sound cloud, instagram and facebook for artists. We messaged around 4 to 5 people on sound cloud; we asked if they would like us to make a music video for them for free. We asked people who had around 1 thousand or less followers but with music we thought we could use to inspire use to create a video. We also did try to get in intact with the wurzels because we thought it would’ve been a good experience for us to get in contact with professionals and if we did end up going through with it, it would’ve been good experience to work on a more well-known artists music and I feel it would’ve put us in a more professional setting and could’ve made us put more detail in our work because of the professional situation we would’ve been in but the Wurzels eventually got back to us after we made a number of phone calls to say that they didn’t need us to make them a music video because they weren’t planning on realising on for a while now. Lucy emailed an artist’s called Mayvision. Lucy originally emailed him but he ended up getting back to her by instagram messaging and he ended up asking us to make him a music video for the song “brain pain”. After we got the song and artists sorted out we decided to talk about doing different concepts for the music video but we ended up deciding to do glow in the dark glow stick man dancing to the rap video. We originally wanted to get shots of someone in slow motion walking around with graffiti in the background but we decided that it didn’t actually suit what we were imagining for the video so we went with the glow in the dark men for the whole video. We spilt it up with three main parts which we keep cutting back and forth. The first is the main story line of a normal stick man becoming more of a rapper as the story goes on, the other is words coming onto the screen with the glow sticks spelling the words and the other part is a fast forward when the glow stick man is now a rapper and is rapping into the camera. We also tried to use different techniques to make the video more interesting. We used editing techniques such as inverts, black and white filters; we also inverted the footage in red, blue, green and other different types of inverts to make the dancing sick man more interesting. We also keyed the colour balance that the colour of whatever is on the screen rapidly change and looks more surreal. This was the only editing effects we did during the video the rest of the video was mostly layering. Because of the lack of actors we had we decided that layering the glow in the dark stick men on a black background makes it seem more like there are more people on the screen than there actually was. This made editing simple things such as the stickman dancing on screen more complicated but I also this shows are ability to edit. Some shots were harder than others. Such as the gun shot scene from our music video. This clip is where we had to film one person doing one action and then we had to film another action and then we had to edit it on top of each other to get what we wanted the final piece to look like but we also did this for a number of different shots to get almost all of the scenes where we had more than two people on scene and other shots such as the stars and the gun shot it’s self are made by us using the glow sticks to make a certain shape and layered on top of the footage but with the gun shot we had someone walk across the room with a black background so we could layered that top of the rest of footage and by matching the gun shot sound and actions to make it seem more realistic. We originally thought this was going to be harder to edit than it was because we were able to mark the bits we needed to get everything in the correct order. During filming we originally only going to use the footage of the man with neon paint on to his face but that footage wasn’t enough to cover the whole 3 min video and with us not having a story board and only using the script to use for reference while filming so we decided to change it up by adding the rapper character with a mask with neon paint to give use more to edit with. While editing we decided to use both footage and make the character one of the same and shows the main character changing through time which is shown within the glitch effect.

 

During post production we came up with the idea to use glow in the dark stick man after we were going round the group we were put in, we each put in our own ideas into the project to see which one will suit the song the most and which one we wanted to create the most. We were originally talking about creating glow in the dark skeletons but after I came up with that idea Shelly showed us a number of different glow stick man. We looked into the glowing tick men and how they are created and what people have done to them in the past so could get inspiration from it. After looking into glow in the dark stick men we found tutorials on how to make the glow in the dark stick men suit from using glow sticks, sellotape, safety pins and a black hoodie. We also did research into the movements the people within the glow stick suits usually do during their performances. They usually do a lot of movements and are trained dance performances but we had problems with this. Within the suits they are quite hard to move in without damaging the suits, we also did research into rap videos and it’s noticeable that the dancers within rap videos usually only do hand movements and are usually camera movements and editing techniques to create the look of action without the rapper actually doing much movements himself. So when it came to filming we decided to do mostly hand movements which are inspired by modern dance movements such as dabbing and other dance movements similar. We also decided to do test shots of the glow in the dark stickmen before filming so we can make sure it looks how we wanted it to look and so we know that we can create the suit without anything going wrong when we do get around to filming. We were also worried. When we started to film the video we started by filming Archie in neon paint because he was originally meant to be the main rapper character but after Julian talked to another group about how the artists wouldn’t like it if they pretended to be the rapper within in the video and the idea of having the rapper glow stick man can be seen as we were replacing him because he wasn’t able to make it to the filming. So we decided to change the rappers design so that it wouldn’t be as human. We also tried to change it as much as possible such as having the yellow glow stick man turning into the rapper played by Archie and he then turned into the final version of the rapper. We did this because we wanted to get the audience more interested into the narrative within the video. When we were editing we realised our original idea was too short and wouldn’t take up the whole length we wanted it to be. Our original idea has the rapper transforming from a glow stick man but we it only came up to a few minutes long so we decided we needed to length it out by having a B story line with the glow stick man shooting another glow stick man because the other glow stick refused to dance along with the rap music. We then follow him as he is killed, goes on to the afterlife but after them struggling to deal with himself and the rap music he then joins everyone back in life as a ghost. Which is why the glow stick man is now permanently black and white to show he’s a Spector. He then joins in with the rap music dancing. Over all I felt happy with the result 

We had many good and bad experiences throughout filming. Some of the good experiences were the fact we were able to get a member of media make up here to help us apply the neon paint to the actors face and to the mask along with the effect we did with the hand filling in for a gun. Other effects I was happy with was the fact we were able to create the glow stick man suits. We made the glow stick suits by buying glow stick from amazon, we got 100 for £10 which we split up all of the pricing between the three of us. We then got the glow sticks and attached them on to our own black hoodies. We bought safety pins and sellotape to attach the glow sticks on to the suit. We used sellotape to keep 2 or more on each person’s legs, and attached 2 glow sticks on each arm by using the safety pins and used the safety pins to create the heads of the glow sticks and we also put the glow sticks down in a line on the actor’s stomach to create the body. We usually did this to the cloths and then put onto the actors because we thought it would be easiest because we wouldn’t have to worry about hurting one of the actors with the safety pins but the glow sticks did end up coming undone but it was simple as doing them back up in order for everything would be the way we were meaning for it to look. Near the end of filming and editing we had to do a side project about inspires us. We made a video and I decided I could overlap the two projects slightly by making clips for the music video and then add it into both projects. The clips I did this for was the shot of someone’s arm with “what inspires me” on it but by using the colour balance editing technique along with echo effects to make it look and feel more surreal. We also made a new stick man character with pink glow sticks over his heart with glow stick glasses. We did this to add more of a concept feel to it and to even out some of the editing tricks so that we didn’t rely on the same techniques repeatly. Editing and filming both went really well and we were all happy with it. We got on a communicated well. Everyone’s ideas were heard and we made sure everyone had a part to play within production even if some roles were larger than other. While filming we had one person filming, one acting and three of using the UV light to make the reaction with the neon paint. Before we decided to do it with only the three of us we decided to have actors do the glow stick man. Such as Ethan and Archie we had act within our video so we could all work behind the scenes but it became to distractive and we decided we would be able to film more and be more productive if only there was our group in the studio. While editing everyone had a say on what would be shown on screen and if someone’s idea wasn’t what the rest of the group wanted we would talk about it and say why we decided we didn’t want it within the video instead of just shutting anyone’s idea down. However we did have a number of problems while filming and editing. One of the main problems we had while filming were the fact the glow sticks would die really quickly. While filming with Archie and Ethan we had two different glows stick suits, one blue and one green. Our original idea was to have four back ground dancers with two different colours but after the blue glow sticks died while filming and we couldn’t buy anymore in time before the green glow sticks would die so we decided to change it so only the green glow sticks are shown within the final video. We thought about the colours we used within the music video to make the audience feel what we wanted them to feel. We wanted a green glow stickman because green shows wealth and growth and because the song is a rap song the rap genre has ties with wealth and power. The growth was based on the fact the artists is a small time artists and there is room for growth which we show with the colours. We also replace the black with white to resemble heaven. This was to give a feeling of the afterlife, which our character played by Archie was heavily inspired by the day of the dead. The character that became inverted becomes black and white; this is to show his return to life and to give the character the appearance of a ghost. We had problems while edit, for an example we didn’t have enough footage so we had to shorten the ending of the song but this work because he doesn’t say any major lines, we also went out to re film bits and we over used filler in order for it to be the length we wanted it to be. We also had a problem while using after effects. We had a scene where the screen smashes into different pieces which we did within after effects to get it to look the way we wanted them to look. But after two weeks off the file corrupted and we couldn’t figure out why it corrupted or how to fix it. But we exported that clip beforehand so it was easy enough to add it back into the final video. We also had some hard issues while doing pre production. One of our group members were meant to do some of our pre production work but they didn’t end up doing it until after the filming was done so even when we were filming we were missing some of our work what could help us of filmed such as a story board to help us visualize what we were imagining.

If I could have done this other again I would’ve been more prepared when it comes to filming. I felt very stressed while filming because the ability to get glow sticks and the amount off glow sticks we had where limited and some of them died faster than other. Because we didn’t have much money to buy glow sticks we could only film what we knew we wanted within the film and we didn’t have much time to experiment while filming. Also because the Amazon delivery time wasn’t rely we didn’t feel comfortable doing re shoots because of the deadline was approaching and we didn’t feel like we had time to buy the glow sticks and re shoots some scenes. We only managed to do 3 re shoots because of this reason so if we started filming earlier this wouldn’t of been as big of an issue. I believe we could have also gone over our edit to change it slightly. Such as some of the white/ inverted clips didn’t take up the while screen which made a black line around the slides. I would’ve also added a glitch sound effect in when you see the glitches because I feel like it’s missing something because you’re expecting the sound but it doesn’t happen. I also would’ve re done the screen shattering because the file originally corrupted and because of the fact I exported that small bit I was able to add it back in. But we didn’t have a long enough clip so thats why it looks like it goes back step during the final product. Also when he says the lines “fuck this shit I know it I was meant to be alone” we could have put more colour theory into it and could have had “to be” last longer on screen. But we did make the words last as long on screen as he says them. We also had some problems editing the words into the video because of another error we didn’t understand when the video clip was nested together it wouldn’t sync up correctly to all the times he said the lines. This could be because he is saying it at different speeds but this made up uncomfortable with nesting footage together unless we were using warp stabilizer. I would have also had the actors move around a lot more because we thought while filming it looked good but when you put it to the music it feels a lot slower so we sped it up. While I’m fine with this speed up because the jittering of not having the correct frame rate suits the look we were going with I can understand people not liking the look. So if I could re do this project I would make sure the actors had more movements even though the dance movements are based on most rapper hand movements and common dances such as dabs but it could’ve been better if there was more movement, the camera also lost a lot of focus during certain bits but because of our inability to do re shoots we had to end it with those shots, we also ended up using a lot of accidental shots because they looked good and suited the film and would’ve started filming earlier to not have the re shoots problems I mentioned earlier. Even though I am extremely happy with how it ended up turning out.

In conclusion I feel like my group worked well together, me and Shelly did good at communicating together and we each put in all of our ideas no matter how small they were. When we were researching the glow sticks to get the look we wanted we didn’t know it was going to look the way it goes. The black empty screen with only a small bit of colour onto it which are the glow sticks is a good way of making the audience feel the way we wanted because they can only see the colours we wanted them to see. Even though we did have problems I believe a better management of time could’ve been better because we could have the time to put more effort into our edit to make sure everything looks and feels the way we wanted and we wouldn’t of needed to worry about re shoots or filler. But as a conclusion I am happy with the final results and any problems within it I feel are miner and didn’t ruin the final product.