Personal Progress Report

I have taught myself how to use my new camera so that I can sucessfully use it to its full potential, making the most of its features and capabilities.

Along with this have been watching countless music video's, of varying genre's to try and gain an idea of what would make a good base to get start making an outline for a video from. I have been mostly looking at abstract video's as these seem to offer the best idea's for a production as they are very like minded as to what I am looking to achieve. While watching these video's I have come across a few past A2 video's, and watching these can give an easy idea as to what not to do. Making the video to literal proves almost mindless as it seems as very little imagination has gone in to the making of it when the lyrics are acted out to the letter.

Music Video deconstruction of: Blur – Coffee and TV / Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”

The two contrasting video’s a chose to deconstruct are Coffee and TV by Blur and “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the video’s contrast drastically as C&T follows a random storyline throughout the video in which a milk cartoon with the missing band member printed on the side decides to cross the city and attempt to find him, coming across obstacles along the way. Whereas YYY’s video see’s the lead singer of the band entering from behind the stage curtain only to be walking down an empty floodlit city street, and then beginning to dance on top of cars and dance around the general public, before coming across the rest of the band in a side street.

Throughout YYY’s video the main focus is that of the lead singer, the first shot in the video shows a theatre front with TONIGHT ONLY.... YEAH YEAH YEAH’s, this gives the impression that the video will be showing parts of a live show at this particular event. The first scene has the band in the dressing room, they get a 5 minute call and so the guitarist and drummer leave to go to stage and the lead singer then follows once she has finished her makeup and finish getting dressed, shown by a close up of her putting on a studded glove. However she gets to behind the curtain and when it opens instead of seeing the crowd that you can hear in the background the shot is actually that of an empty, wet, lit street. With no one else around her, the camera follows her out and then pans around her, revealing that there was no curtain behind her at all. This is a good use of editing as it tricks the audience, the timing of her walking through the curtain matches the point in the song that the snare kicks in and the whole ambience of the song picks up. She dances down the road and her actions match the lyrics, mimicking climbing a rope and clutching the breast of her jacket every time she mentions leather. This coincides with Andrew Goodwin’s theory as the lyrics are amplified slightly by the lyrics, and they very much have their own iconography and music style. However combines Laura Mulvey’s convention that the reason for the lead singer being the focus is that she is female to draw a larger male audience.

She then comes across the rest of the band who are set up in a backstreet with high level spot lights on all 3 members, this shot only continues for a number of seconds until the lead continues walking through the city streets. Similar shots happen a number of times. The next time inside an all night corner shop, with the lighting flickering in time with the beat of the song, this emphasises the whole song and accompanied with the overlaid video, showing varying angles in one overall view. Making for sure that the focus is on the lead singer. The next scene then shows the band in an empty shopping centre, being reckless with shopping trolleys. With a close up on the bands faces as they spin around. This is the only time other than at the beginning that a close up is used throughout the video as the majority of shots are medium shots, with effects used instead of various shot types. This video also has an inspiration of exhibitionism to the video due to the focus, although the video remains to not be sexually provocative. Instead the image of a powerful woman is portrayed, this can also be heard in her voice.

There is a lot of shallow focus used in the video, with the focus remaining on subjects in the foreground and the focus distorting what is seen behind such as neon lights and reflections off the wet floor, along with overlaid images of blotches of light, as if the recording is sometimes taken looking at a reflection like some of the other shots in the video. Combined with this the camera style appears to be hand held a lot of the time as it seems to judder as if walking along with the singer.

The bands image matches their style of music well, the lead singer wears unique cat suit style clothing, seen best when she is in the dressing room, with a latex appearance and then covered up with a leather jacket laden with studs and KO embroidered on the back. The other band members are wearing a lot less noticeable clothes and this is so attention is drawn to the lead singer yet again. They are wearing nearly all black, the drummer wearing sunglasses and the guitarist with highly styled black hair. This shows a rock influence which comes across in their music, the overdrive settings on the guitar, the hard baseline but with the electro touch to make it slightly more unique.

In comparison the Coffee and TV video has a storyline behind it whereas YYY’s video does not as such, it follows what looks like a random night out. Blur’s video uses a higher technological input. The milk cartoon is a man in a suit playing the character and is laid over the background image, which is often out of focus during close up shots of the milk carton. This makes it appear as if the milk carton is actually in the shot. The character saunters with the gentle strumming of the guitar and this gives a cheerful side to what is happening in the video. Any mood is simply portrayed by the expression on his face, and the different people he meets throughout his exploration alternates between nice and good. The motorcyclist stopping and giving him a lift compared to the woman with the streamer chasing him away. This ties in with Dyer’s theory as this is literally a character that is constructed simply for the viewers pleasure.

The distortion caused by the guitar on overdrive is effective as it is when the character is walking down a dark back alley, the angle of the camera also changes to a higher angle which makes him look even more vulnerable than he previously was. This distortion stops as soon as you see the band playing inside, and the missing singer starts singing again. This changes the mood of the scene as you realise the milk has found what he was looking for. The camera at this point is at an odd angle as it is still at the same level as the window that the milk carton was looking through, and as its a basement style studio their playing in the roof line is very low, emphasised by the low hanging lights and the camera not filming the whole of the subjects head.

This random video ties in well with the other video’s from Blur’s album, having songs with equally random video’s such as “Park Life”, “Sunday Sunday” and “The Universal” which has a level of intertextuality to the video as it portrays a likeness to the opening scene to “A Clockwork Orange” which has no relevance to the song.

Before Filming

• Decide on final song (choice of 2)
• Find lyrics for chosen song
• Conclude on style of video
• Cast actors to star in non band sections of the video
• Find appropriate locations for scenes
• Arrange to film with the band
• Shot sequence in time with song
• Considered what will be needed for filming, props, costume, makeup, hair, lighting, other equipment

What needs to be completed before filming the music video

• Decide whether we are definatly going to use the chosen band or not
• If so decide which song we will use
• Think about the video; will it be abstract, narrative etc
• Look at locations, how many will there be in the video?
• Check we definatly have permission for using the chosen band, and are they happy with everything we have chosen to do
• Look at the bands image and decide how we can link (or not) this into the music video
• Create a storyboard of the video so we know what and where we have to film when
  
• Make sure everything has been thought about and ecounterd for, eg. props, lighting, hair, makeup, costume and suitable equipment
• Look for days when we have the same free periods, free time after school and at weekends for exta planning and filming
• Make sure everything has been put onto the blog
  

Individual Progress Report

As a group we are doing reasonably well on the coursework. We designed ideas of CD covers and produced one. I chose some people to stand in as we do not have the real band members yet, and all three of us took photos and we chose the best. We all put some input into the editing, as im still learning about photoshop i gave ideas but was shown how to achieve them. The cover is just an idea as we did not then know much about the band when designing it.
I have done a lot of work into looking at other music videos, both of a different genre and ones of the simular punk/rock genre as we are thinking of focusing our band on, and the different conventions they have. This has made me think as to weather we want the band to be performing or it to be narrative or a mixture or neither. I will give my thoughts to the rest of the group next time we meet.

Our Album Cover

This is just an idea for an album cover as we do not definatly know everything about the band yet.
We have used friends to stand in for the real band members, so we can think about possitioning and editing for the future with the real band.

As you can see the band members are all looking in different directions, this makes them look different and individual unlike a manufactured band. We asked the members to look at the camera for one of the photos but we decided it looked too posed. We told them to stand infront of a brick wall as this adds to the laid back affect, we also told them to slouch slightly not standing up completly straight. The taller member on the end has one leg up against the wall, we asked him to do this to make the shot look less staged. As we just used friends to stand in as the band we had no influence on their costumes, but we asked them to remove or lower their ties to fit in with the rock look.

When it came to editing we decided to make it black and white as it looks older and more classic. It also contrasts against the red TEN O' SEVENS title to make it stand out. We also added the effect to make it look slightly different, and not just four guys leaning on a wall.

THREEO'SEVENS Album Cover

We chose these 4 people to be members of our band as they had a casual vibe which we could make use of, we asked them to loosen their ties and for two of them to take them off, along with top buttons undone. As this is how the band would normally dress.

We considered sight line, camera angle and how the members are standing. This is so that it is obviously a posed shot and so these factors have to be taken in to consideration as part of the Mise en Scene.

There are four different sight lines in the first picture as every member is looking in a different direction as explained below.

These are two of the original photo's we took:

We chose to continue with the first shot as it appeared more natural even though it is posed, we did not want to portray the band as posed and this made them appear more casual.

We cropped the image (framing) so that it contains only the band members and only the simple brick wall behind them which adds focus to the members. We changed the image to black and white and the effect to distort the picture to draw the audiences attention towards the band name and title in red as this offers the most drastic contrast for the overall image as well as matching the punk rock image.

The title is aligned to the left top corner of the cover with the album title written underneath this is also similar to the punk style (Ramones) and the positioning would also make it easily noticeable in a shop.

Our chosen positioning of the members is so that the tallest member was nearest to the camera and the shortest is furthest away this gives an odd perspective in the final shot and also allows the title to refrain from covering over one of the band members faces. The font we used makes the overall image look untidy which connotates the look of the band.