Equipment

                                            Our Equipment

Camera- A Nexus 5 phone. This we will use to take many different shot from the side, front and back and this will enhance our video. We also need a good quality camera for the best possible effect in the video and its also better than just a Phone.

USB- We are going to need a USB to transfer our video onto a computer; essential if we want to be able to make changes on different computers.

Computer- We are going to need a Mac for it's top quality Editing software; iMovie. This is ideal for our music video because one of our members, Shahel, is experienced with this programme and can help everyone else to understand how to use it.

STLR Productions

Representation In Music Videos

Music videos don't present a story, performance or a combination of both just for the sake of entertainment. A lot of the time they are trying to represent a particular group of people, which is usually a social group commonly associated with the genre of  the music.

For exapmle, the music video for 'Somebody To You' by The Vamps features many conventional stereotypes of teenage love/affection. This is an interesting video, as it moves almost chronologically from day in the beginning to night right at the end. Perhaps highlighting the typically 'all day, all night' thoughts teenagers are commonly associated with having towards love interests. While this is a subtle point, there are much more obvious ones that feature in the video.

There are several scenes that highlight teenage stereotypes. When the group of girls are walking and together on the beach, the female protagonist makes eye contact with the lead singer (and
male protagonist of the video), causing one of the other girls to turn her attention to the main female protagonist, appearing to playfully tease her. This is a stereotypical moment that many teenage girl would be able to relate to, therefore it makes for effective representation.

Another scene I found interesting was when the group of boys, with the male protagonist among them, are watching the female protagonist and another girl play tennis. This was a very short scene but the representation used was very obvious. The boys definitely appeared to be admiring the girls as they played which is more commonly referred to as 'checking out' again, something that the teenage viewer would relate with, which means they have been successfully represented.

As for our video, representation is a little more challenging to achieve. There are not many stereotypes associated with depression and running away apart from looking 'down in the dumps'. For our representation we will try to use a clear narrative that highlights what the protagonist is going through, as well as several scenes which show his isolation from the world. This will enable the audience to relate to our video

People Involved, Location and Shooting Schedule

Who will we need? Where? When?

This is the list of people we are going to need for our Music Video:

Main Protagonist:
-  Shahel Ahmed

Cameraman:
- Tai Campbell

Directors:
 - Lourenco Borges
 - Riaz Hoque
 - Tai Campbell
 - Shahel Ahmed

STLR Productions



Shooting Schedule: 2 recording days - December 27th & January 2nd. 

On the 27th we will capture our darker footage by going out in the evening.

On the 2nd we want to capture brighter recordings so we will be going out in the afternoon


Locations: Alexandra Palace, Angel, Kings Cross

Progression Updates

Start of project: 02/10/14

This was the day that we created our blog. We produced two posts; one relating to target audience research which I posted myself, entitled 'Our Typical Viewer; and another which was for genre research, 'Grinding Down Into Videos' - which contained contributions from the other three members of the group. The feedback from our teacher was helpful, as well as encouraging. It was mainly to do with adding certain details, not removing what we already had, which showed we were on the right track.

The 'Our Typical Viewer' post eventually had to be changed around to fit the profile of a character that would better match 'Mad World', as we were originally planning to do 'Amnesia' by 5 Seconds of Summer. This wasn't a challenging task, as I was able to fix things up in around 5 minutes. 

09/10/14

On this day we added 'Getting to Know Mandem' to the blog - our questionnaire for the target audience research, courtesy of Lourenco. With every member of the group helping out on this at least once, this proved to be the most difficult task to get right.

On our first attempt we recognized this as a seemingly straightforward assignment. Then came feedback - questions too open. OK,  lets all try to figure this out. Second attempt - too closed.
We were taking one step forwards an two steps backwards. Finally, on the 22nd of January, Lourenco and Shahel returned to this post after weeks of it being untouched, and we FINALLY got there. Now with the thumbs up from our teacher and peers, hopefully we won't have to write any more questionnaires.

16/10/14 

The day we added our copyright permission letter to the blog. An actual straightforward task unlike the one mentioned above, I came across no problems when writting it. However, like the 'Our Typical Viewer' post I had to make some changes in order to make it appropriate for 'Mad World'


13/11/14 Blog Overview & More

After nearly a month away from the blog we returned with a bit of work to do. We created a blog overview in order to see how much more we have to do, allowing us to assign ourselves to incomplete tasks.

On this day, three more posts were made: the list of people involved, locations and shooting schedule; our mise-en-scene and the equipment list. All three of which would now be irrelevant due to complications which led to the change of song. These have now been updated

People involved, location, shooting schedule: Completed by Lourenco and myself
Mise-en-scene: Completed by Shahel
Equipment: Completed by Riaz and Lourenco

20/11/14

Added two more posts to the blog; the mood board and the conventions/categories of music videos. The mood board was created by Riaz and Lourenco.

We posted the Conventions/Categories of music videos. An effort shared by myself, Riaz and Shahel; this task was an interesting one to approach and really opened our eyes to things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.


27/12/14

First recording session

We all went to Alexandra Palace to record scenery and performance. As the camera operator I had some problems with the strong wind on the day which caused some footage to come out as shaky, on the other hand the wind combined with the dark did actually add to the effect of depression we intended to create. Another problem was the result of my inexperience in recording; when watching our footage back we noticed that the shots varied between portrait and landscape which would obviously lose us marks. From then on all the recording done was to be in landscape. Overall it was an efficient recording session and we were able to get some good clips.

02/01/15

Second recording session

We went out again and filmed at various locations. This time we came across no problems with the filming and we captured much more footage.


22/01/15

We are currently one week into the editing of our music video for the song 'Mad World' following some feedback from our teacher we have decided that we will record some more footage that is in a lighter setting. Last week we presented two music videos to our teacher and she told us what her preference was and how we can improve it. This was after our initial idea to use the song 'Amnesia' by 5 seconds of summer had to be dismissed as we were unable to find a female to partner our protagonist.  As deadlines were approaching we were under pressure to think of another idea. The two songs that we turned our attention to: 'Mad World', by Gary Jules and 'Welcome To My Life', by Simple Plan. Our thought process regarding this was simple - depression. As we were unable to find a female to star in our video the first time, we chose to turn our attention to songs that would allow for a solo narrative and performance.

Categories/Conventions Of Music Videos.

 Performance Based videos

Performance based music videos feature a solo artist or a band performing to the camera.  The aim is to focus on the artists and convey them in a particular way to the viewing audience.  This category can also include recording an artist as they perform live, with the aim of promoting the artist in manner that is not captured in the recording, such as capturing the energy and enthusiasm of live fans. An example of a performance-based video is Switchblade Smiles by Kasabian. This only features the band and their instruments.  The camera focuses on each instrument as they enter the song, such as the zoom out from the drums at 1:00 and the pan across to the bass at 1:24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SQNNLe6WPA  

  


Narrative Based Videos

Narrative based music videos are videos that have a clear-cut storyline. The whole video; or the majority, would be telling a story. This is effective in engaging the audience because it's more than just a performance and gives a meaning to the video. Most of these types of videos are songs that feature in a film's soundtrack. Having it heavily based on the narrative can be good, but also bad. If your storyline isn't extremely attractive then you can lose the viewer's interest, but if the narrative is quality; your viewers would love it, maybe even share/replay it! An example of this is Bruno Mars’ ‘It will rain’ video. This is the twilight breaking dawn soundtrack. This includes footage from the film being played through a projector in the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-w3WfgpcGg&ob=av2e

Concept Based Videos

Conceptual - This type of music video is based on a singular idea or concept and can be very unusual and abstract. No particular genre of music is more likely to use concept-based music videos than another; a range of artists that cover all genres has used conceptual videos. Abstract videos can be engaging to an audience as they are usually quite mysterious and allow for inference.  An example of a conceptual music video is 'Little Talks' by Of Monsters and Men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I