A2 Music Video

Today all the masks we ordered have arrived. Upon opening them, we realised that they were kids sized masks and were slightly smaller than we anticipated. Instead of sending the masks back and spending nearly twice as much money to get full-face adult ones, we decided to just extend the elastic around the back of the masks, so that they didn't look as tight... This worked perfectly and gave the masks a more professional look to them!

Blossoms are an Indie pop band from manchester and their music is quite similar to that of Bastille. Because of this I decided to look at this music video for their song 'Honey Sweet'.  This video uses lots of gritty, urban locations such as these above. This is common of the indie genre as they like to show they are real people and not manufactured pop stars. All throught the video the weather is very dull and grey. In our video we want to find locations like these to film in and weather like this. They contrast fast paced short takes with slow motion long takes throughout the video. They also use lots of jump cuts to show the band are on a journey and are travelling. We could use these ideas to show the protagonists journey in our video.

Tzvetan Todorov's narrative theory suggests that all narratives follow a three part structure where they begin with equilibrium, where everything is balanced, progress as something comes along to disrupt that equilibrium, and finally reach a resolution, when equilibrium is restored. Here is our  narrative  applied to Todorov's theory: Equilibrium  At the beginning of our narrative the main protagonist is seen taking his white mask off, exposing the word 'Weak' on his forehead. Although he is reluctant to do so, he leaves the house without his mask on. Disruption As he walks through the streets without his mask on, it is obvious that he doesn't fit in with society due to the way the public behaves towards him. As we see the reaction of his girlfriend when she sees him without his mask on, it is made very clear that he isn't fitting in.  Re-equilibrium  Equilibrium is then restored when...

During todays lesson, we carried on with our story board ideas and also started to have a look at white masks online (prices & shops.) As our video is all about 'identity' we decided to base our narrative on everyone wearing white masks and 1 person not wearing their mask one day, which therefor causes an upset with everyone in society. We searched and compared prices and style of masks then clubbed money together to buy these masks. We are looking to buy between 20-30 masks. Here are some examples of masks that we found.. We looked on website such as EBay, Amazon, Hobby Craft, The Works and The Little Crafty Bug Company. *insert picture* After researching all different types and styles of masks, we finally settled on the white masks that only covered half the face (forehead and eyes) as we believed that not only would the word on the persons forehead, describing who they truly are be covered, but facial expression of people would be more clear and therefor more effect...

Over the past few lessons we have been working on our story boards as a part of our planning. So far we have managed to do 18 frames of what we plan to do when we start filming our video. Over the next few lessons, we plan to continue doing the story boards and plan what we are going to film swell as start to draw the pictures.

Today, we presented our pitch to the class. Our teacher confirmed that we were able to go ahead with our idea. He also gave us some suggestions on some good ideas that we could use in our video: He suggested a very effective ending where we could have a shot of the mask coming towards the camera to show that even the audience have to conform to society and are not able to show who they really are He said that a good location to film would be a warehouse for the band performance 

In the music video for 'Girls' by The 1975, the band performance really captures what we aim to achieve in our video. The band are enthusiastic whilst still looking 'cool' as is typical of the indie genre, they even go so far as to mock the video in an intro before the music starts saying that everything is "too pop". The way the band members interact with each other and use the space in these performance sections above is something we would like our band to be able to achieve when we film them. They are also all wearing black clothing which makes them look like a group and a collective. Although we can dress our band in black if we use a black background we will try and have a theme in all of their clothing. In their video for 'The Sound' the performance is very strong. They put a lot of effort and energy into the performance and look like they really believe what they are singing about. They use lots of short takes and a very wide variety ...

Analysis of Middle of the Night by The Vamps I have decided to analyse a video of The Vamps as they are a boy band which is what we are using for our video. They are also of a similar genre of what our band is going to be from. Lighting The lighting on the band performance is blue and red lights and performed on a black background, which I think looks really effective. It makes the band performance look very professional and edgy which links to the indie/pop genre. I believe we could use this idea in our video by using the drama studio which is a black background and use the lights to make it look effective.  Costume All of the people in the video, both band performers and actors are wearing very plain clothing- no brands or logos. Therefore I think we should use this idea in our video by making our actors wear plain clothing and no br ands as this may distract the audience to their clothing rather than the actual video.  Camera Throughout the video there is a ra...

In today's lesson, as a class we looked at 3 music videos and talked about how we would use elements of them in our videos. The first video that we looked at was Naïve by The Kooks. In the video, the people had stereotypical clothing on for the indie genre. There was also dingy lighting which again reflects the indie genre which makes it realistic and edgy. There was also a long introduction which also gives It an edgy feel as the audience question who it is. There was also a retrospective narrative which was very effective. It was also edited on a guitar strum on several occasions which was very effective as it linked the narrative and performance together, almost.  From this video, we are going to use the idea of the video being edited/changing shots on a drum beat/guitar strum, as we found this very effective. Bastille are also an indie band which we will reflect through the clothing of our actors and band members. The second video which we looked at was Last Nite...

I have analysed Bastille's music video for their song 'Blame'. The video begins with text on a black screen, introducing the narrative of the video. I feel that this editing techniques will be useful for our narrative for 'Snakes' because it will help the audience understand the story line from the very beginning. Perhaps our intro will state "Who really are you?" or "What darkness hides behind your mask?"  I have analysed Bastille's music video for their song 'Send them off' In this narrative, it follows the protagonists journey through his day, whilst all the other faces around him are blurred. This links to our narrative for snakes where the only person's face you can see is our protagonist because everyone else is wearing masks. A similar idea is portrayed in 'Flaws' where characters have their faces painted.  The start of 'Good Grief' begins with a drum beat which is presented on screen with th...

Using power point we have created a mood board that presents our intended theme/mood for our music video, particularity the narrative.  Symbolism that we intended to use throughout our video includes: Mask- Hiding the real identity of individuals.  Snakes- Due to the name of the song being snakes we have used the idea that snakes are cunning and duplicitous. We have used this idea to represent society in our video.  Bridges and Stairs- Symbolic of getting from overcoming something by going from one place to another. Showing the main protagonist change from the beginning of the video to the end, from being 'Weak' to 'Strong'. Derelict locations- Showing the isolation and loneliness of the main protagonist, reflecting societies views on him since he is different as no one is seen to be around him in the locations. 

In today's lesson we created a pitch that we have to present to our teacher and class to ensure that out ideas are suitable.   (ADD POWERPOINT)

When we found the song 'Snakes', we liked the idea that the symbol of a snake represents a person who is sneaky and can't be trusted. This then led to the idea that no one in society can be trusted because they hide who they really are by conforming; following what everyone else does. This created the idea of the masks. The masks in our video will represent that everyone is hiding who they truly are. No one is an individual, everyone is the same. Therefore, the plan for our video is to have our protagonist take his mask off, to reveal the word 'weak' on his head, which is the word that mostly represents who he really is. Under every characters mask, there will be a word written on their forehead, showing who they really are. Our protagonist challenges society by leaving the house without his mask. This causes him to be hated and isolated by the world. The video will show our protagonist making his way through his day, and the difficulties he has with showing his t...

Here is a mapped out plan for our narrative from beginning to end:

Today we analysed some of the lyrics of our song and linked them to how we could use them as a part of our narrative. These are some of our initial ideas that we hope to explore further to make are narrative fit together. 

I looked at the music video for Pompeii by Bastille. It is there most famous song and as we are using a song by them for our video it is necessary we see how they convey their songs through film. Firstly, they have used a title in their video. They have used a bold font incorporating their logo and the distinctive triangular A. They have added it over the image and not over a black screen as some artists do. In our video we will use a title like this at the beginning of our video to introduce the song. The locations used are often urban and worn looking buildings and streets and lots of the video is filmed in cloudy weather or at dusk to add a sombre effect as the music is often about serious topics and bright sunshine would not be appropriate. In our video we will look for locations similar to this and also the weather and time it is filmed in. However in contrast to this they use quite unique spectacular settings such as these which adds more contrast ...

So from our survey we have identified our desired target audience... It is going to appeal to both male and females that are interested in the indie/pop genre music. We are going to do this by including both genders in our music video so the audience an identify with the people in our music video. We are going to make sure that we include all elements of the indie/pop genre in order to make it as professional as possible.

Our chosen song is by Bastille so we have done some research into the band.  Bastille are a British Indie band which was formed in 2010.  The group began as a solo project by lead vocalist  Dan Smith , but later expanded to include keyboardist Kyle Simmons, bassist and guitarist Will Farquarson, and drummer Chris Wood.  The name of the band derives from  Bastille Day , which is celebrated on 14 July, the date of Smith's birthday.  After an independently released debut single and a self-released EP, the band signed to  Virgin Records . Their first studio album,  Bad Blood , was released in March 2013 and entered the UK Albums Chart at number one.   The band was nominated for four  Brit Awards  at the  2014 ceremony , winning the  British Breakthrough Act .    As of November 2014, Bastille have sold over 5 million records in the US and 2.5 million records in the UK.  

Today we went on to brainstorm ideas specifically for our song now that we have decided we are doing 'Snakes' by Bastille. We did this in the form of a mind map as you can see here, we focused on each aspect and connotations of things we were planning to use and things linked to the lyrics of the song.

Here is the feedback from our target audience. We used an online survey because we were aware that our target audience were more likely to answer a digital version. The link to our survey is:  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FDTXF7Z From this we can see that music videos are extremely important to the success of a song. Therefore, the video needs to entice the audience in order for it to be successful.  Although, the majority of our responses come from females, we have decided that our video should appeal to both genders.  Indie and pop were the most popular genres, therefore we have decided to go for an Indie Pop genre for our song and video style. From this, we have decided to create quite an emotional video which is thought-provoking, with a hidden meaning that will increase the connection between the audience and the video. We feel that a symbolic video like this will encourage the viewer to watch the video more than once.  From this, we...

After a long summer of thinking about ideas for our music video we have came together to explore our initial ideas. Firstly, we decided that we wanted to have a song by a male band so as a group we thought of many relevant bands. We then went through their songs on you tube and Spotify to try and find songs that didn't have music videos. After listening to them all and thinking which one would be best, we decided on Snakes by Bastille.