Production schedule

This is our production schedule, to have it all completed by the Christmas holidays, we will have to stick to this schedule quite tightly, which will prove difficult especially if people are absent or ill, etc. But if we can stick it to approximately and have at least one member from the group completing the schedule on time, then we should be okay. We may have to split up for certain bits to film or edit but as long as someone is doing bits it should be good. 

Current shot list

This is our current shot list for our video for what we have already filmed. We are unsure of the scenes we have to follow but know that there will be more of Molly & Joe but cannot plan shots until we have decided what we are going to film of them. Also, even though we have now choreographed part of the dance scenes, we are unsure of what shots we would like as it depends on how we want the audience to interpret the moves. For example, when she fails the moves and falls to the floor we may want a high angle to make her seem really inferior and in a low place in her life, but it depends on what the dance move consists of, as we need to make sure we get all of the move in the shot. 

Choreography

As we started to edit together the filming we had done, we decided to incorporate some dance into our video, The idea is to have it relate to the relationship between Molly and Joe. Molly will be practicing a dance routine and cannot seem to get them quite right. (I had the idea to have her come up from falling down, with bruises like the ones at the video to represent this - then to turn and they are gone - as a foreshadow kind of thing). Then as the relationship becomes more of a strain, she finds the moves tougher and then she grows stronger and this will reflect in her dancing. Then at the end when she has kicked him out and is happier with her life and decisions, she will perform the dance properly and do everything well and perfect. These are the dance moves Emily chorepgraphed for the parts of our video that we want dance in.

Branding

Auxiliary Task Research

Division of labour

This is our division of labour - approximately... We all do everything and are all involved in every process but some of us do a little more of something else than others. Even though we all decide the final outcome of something and will discuss everything, initially naturally someone will take more control of something in a group, this is what we all did maybe a little more of...

Mood Board

This is our mood board to show all the themes and ideas that we want to bring to our music video. 

Target Audience Survey Analysis

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

Question 6

Question 7

 Question 8

Our next two questions required the participant to give an opinionated answer so we cannot show it in a graph but will give a few of our favourite answers and the ones we found most useful to our research.

Question 9

What scenes would you like to see included? (eg. fighting/arguing, intimate)

- Some of our best answers were: "not just the cliche relationship, mix it up, don't stick to stereotypes", "something abstract", "intimate", "kindness/caring".

Question 10

What is your opinion on domestic abuse and how do you feel we could appropriately portray it? 

- Some of our best answers were: "don't show too much violence, just insinuate it", "it's an awful thing and so must be portrayed in a realistic way", "through lyrics and video symbolism", "do lots of research to understand it fully and look at both sides of the situation - from both points of view", "mimed drama or abstract contemporary dance would be the best way to show it", "try to do it in a tasteful artistic way and try not to portray it ever being okay for either a man or a woman", "as long as it is not romanticised."

Our results have concluded that we can do our narrative/performance music video with the storyline we want as from the results from our target audience, they would like to see it and wouldn't be put off by anything we want to include. A lot of the answers seem to show that they weren't that interested, eg.  by putting don't mind, but at least we know they wouldn't not want to see what we want to put into our video.

Target Audience

This is our glogster we produced to show the features of what we need to include to aim our music video specifically at our target audience.

Our main target audience is British teenagers/young adults. The only reason our target audience will be more British orientated is because American music videos tend to have a lot of glam and money and are very showy-off whereas we want ours to be simple yet effective. The reason we are aiming at younger people is because they are the ones that tend to be in a relationship currently, even younger people won't have been in a proper relationship and the older generations will either have forgotten what lusting love is like or would not enjoy the music taste, so we have decided to aim it at younger people. We completed a survey to see if our ideas would match what our potential target audience would want to see. We posted a survey on social media sites to get feedback from them...

Photo Storyboard

This is the opening of the video. The abusive boyfriend is hitting the girlfriend in their home, they have just had an argument about something, the man loses his temper. This foreshadows the end of the music video as we are doing the rest of the video as a flashback of their relationship. They have just had an argument about something and then Joe gets really mad and takes it too far by hitting Molly. We are planning on using a variety of shots. Maybe low angles of Joe to show superiority and then high angles of Molly to show inferiority. 

Then it flashes back to the past and she is trying to make her boyfriend happy as that is her main priority. She is making him his favourite meal (beans on toast). She ends up waiting for ages as he is at "work" (having an affair) and everything gets cold - this annoys him a lot. Also, he comes home completely white boy wasted. This will again use a variety of shots, maybe some close ups of their faces to show emotions. 

Then he gets really mad at her for letting the tea go cold. He blames her and threatens her, and then throws everything off the table in a rage. He shouts abuse at her and leaves the room. This will have a lot of low angle shots of Joe to show him and close ups to represent his anger.

She then gets upset trying to clear up everything and she is saying to herself that she won't tell anyone about anything and will keep everything to herself. This will include many high angle shots to make her seem low. 

Then she is out in town or somewhere and sees her boyfriend cheating on her with someone else. This frustrates her and makes her extremely upset. Especially as they look so incredibly happy. This will not be a very long scene as we are not focusing on the affair, but the way Molly recovers from all the abuse and hurt. This will have over the shoulder shots and point of view shots so the audience feel as though they are her and still know who it is watching this action occurring. 

We will then have a scene of dancing to support the feelings and emotions of the main characters. We don't know how much dance there will be. It will be very contemporary dance moves and reflect their relationship. She cannot quite do the moves she wants to while she is with him and then once she breaks it off and kicks him out, she can. This will include many different angles, point of view, close ups, extreme close ups, mid shots, long shots and probably some high and low angles too. 

 

Then we end up back at the beginning shot of him hitting her and them having a major argument. In the beginning it appears she will just put up with it but then she changes her mind. This is how the audience then realise the beginning was intact the foreshadowing of the end. 

In the last chorus, she is going to kick him out the house as she is fed up with his behaviour and fights back. She stands up for herself and it ends up with her looking and feeling a lot more relieved and happy. The audience won't fully understand the storyline until the end - this is our element of concept in our video, we want the audience to keep guessing what will happen until the very end.

Our final idea

This is our final idea for our music video. The features of it are described in more depth and we have thought about it more. 

Planning of our video

These were our initial ideas for our music video - in the planning stages. This was what we discussed once we had decided on a song and chose to elaborate on a few ideas.

Past Student Work Analysis

This is my analysis of past student work. It was the 'Rusted Root - Send Me On My Way' video. 

Past Student Work Analysis

This is my analysis of past student work. It was the 'Viva Brother - Still Here' video. Here are some still images of the video.

Created with Padlet

Music Video Ideas

This is our group prezi of our 3 top song choices. We have chosen to use the song Human by Christina Perri and use the idea we have written here, we may adapt it slightly but this is our main plan.

History of Music Videos

My timeline of music videos

The earliest music video I could find was in the late 1920s which was classed as a short film that doubled up as a music video.

1920s

This is Bessie Smith's - St. Louis Blues which I discovered from my research was an example of a very early music video. It was made as a short film and an example of a narrative music video. This was not a promotional video other than the fact it showed off the artist as it was focused more on the narrative of the video rather than use of lots of close ups of the artist and the artist's prevalence on screen. The female is represented as very needy and clingy whereas the male is represented as someone who does what he wants and can get away with it.

1930s

1940s

This music video is partly performance and partly narrative. The story is of the performer trying to woo the female and then he is performing to her in some kind of bar or hall. This represents the time of 1940s whereby the males had to begin the lead up to a relationship with the female and the female had to wait until she was chosen. This represents men as powerful and in control whereas women very insignificant until needed and used as a prop for marital purposes. This may be a true reflection of the decade but also may have been exaggerated within the media. Also, the 1940s was during and post world war two and so the focus would not have been on music videos. Music was very important to keep people up beat and entertained during rationing times but music videos were an unimportant use of money when people were trying to save every penny. This may show that the music video is unrepresentative of the times as it may have been on a limited budget and time scale to be made and produced.

1950s


1960s

This music video is very simple, it is a performance video and even though there is a few varied camera angles, the shots are very basic with not much variation from mid shots and long shots. With no set change or costume change it would have been a very cheap video to make and produce. The set is so simple as well which would make it even cheaper. This may reflect how technologically undeveloped the 1960s were. There is clear advances as you can tell that there is editing and planning in place.

1970s

This music video is a performance video with elements of narrative. It shows lots of clips of people playing instruments and Paul McCartney singing but also lots of clips of following him round and seeing him as a person. It is a music video which is like behind the scenes. This is a representation of celebrities in the 1970s, the video is trying to show the audience that even though he is a big superstar he is still a human being that likes to have fun and mess around a little bit. This video clearly reflects the style of hair and clothing in the 1970s which is very contrasting from other years. 

1980s

This music video was purely performance and so no representation of people was presented in the video. In the video, there is actually a visual and lyrical connection which is one of Goodwin's Seven music video conventions, this is when they are singing about super trouper (the spotlight) and then the spotlight shines on them. The only representation is of the 1980s which is represented by the hairstyles, makeup and outfits.

1990s

This music video is very basic, typical 1990s and techno. It uses very robotic choreography which is in time to the beat of the music, this is one of Goodwin's Seven as a definition of a music video. The creation of links between the music and visuals creates a very interesting choreography and also very entertaining for the audience, it makes the music more catchy. This video would be very cheap to make as although there were a variety of camera angles, not much else changed. For example, it's a simple and constant set and with no changes of costume or makeup, etc. It would be a cheap music video. The quality of the video reflects the technology of the 1990s which was slowly improving but still had a long way to go before HD quality.

2000s

This music video is a narrative video as there is a clear plot behind it. The lyrics relate to the story and there is acting taking place. The editing is very simplistic although there are some interesting camera angles towards the end when she is standing over the grave. This music video was published in 2006 and so considering the advances of technology by this time, the music video doesn't represent the decade that well. There is also no obvious representation of genders, ethnicity, or ages. Although, there is clearly a range of different people in the video, no-one is represented in any stereotypical or non-stereotypical way. 

2010s

This video is from 2014 and shows the most up-to-date music videos we have. The representation of women is very different from in the past, it shows them as being extremely powerful, vengeful and determined. They are also able to do these things, in other decades, women were second class and not able to train or do anything similar to this. Although, the girls (Iggy and Rita) are still seen as an object by the man in the video and this is also represented through their clothing as they are in skin-tight leather which is very revealing, which they use to their advantage in the video but it also allows the male gaze for the target audience. The men in the video are represented as very gangster and trying to be powerful as they are in smart suits as they seem to be very important people but then the girls walk all over them and are then portrayed as more important.

Overall the degree of difference each decade has with the music videos varies. There will be a great deal of difference after the 1960s and onward as that was when many technological advances within science were made and therefore affected everything. The quality of the videos increased, the wardrobe obviously changed over the years and the use of more conceptual and narrative music videos increased whereas before they were mainly if not all performance with a bit of narrative. This also shows what the target audience is wanting or expecting. The representation of people has changed greatly over the years. In comparison, in the 1920s and 2010s music video which are nearly 90 years apart, the females are contrastingly different where in the earlier video the female is inferior and controlled by the male whereas it is almost the exact opposite in the 2014 video. On the whole, music videos have adapted to their target audience which is the main reason for their change - along with technology obviously!
I cannot find any music videos to represent 1930s or 1950s. I do not know the reason for this.

All of the videos used were sourced from YouTube. 

Controversial Music Video

This is Madonna's music video to the song 'Like A Prayer'. This is a well known controversial music video. 2 reasons for this include: the use of the Catholic church scenes with relation to sex and also the way she shows the injustice of the black man in the situation of the attack. In the time that the video was released, this would have been offensive to many people but she decided to not aim at the target audience, and release a conceptual video with a much deeper meaning about things other people didn't want to discuss or were too afraid to talk about. This actually helped catapult its popularity as it was so talked about. Then a lot of people respected her for standing up for what she believed it and what was right. The issue of segregation was still fresh in people's minds and was still a much talked about issue. Then with the mix of the church and sexual scenes, this was seen as extremely controversial at the time and still today. These two factors made this video so controversial in the society of the 1980s and it is still seen as controversial today because of the rebellion needed for her to be brave enough to release the video. This is definitely something that needs to be considered when making our own video as what makes something popular is how different it is from what else is being released at the same time. Also, the defiance made it popular as it opened people's eyes to real issues and then the appreciation they had for her grew and made the song more approved of.
Although this video stands out compared to others of its time, there are features from Goodwin's seven that feature in the video. There is frequent reference to the notion of "looking" at the female body. This is a common feature of music videos especially of the pop genre which this is. This will attract male attention to the video which is a way of targeting the target audience. Also there are many close ups of the artist which are demands of the record label. This gets the audience familiarised with the artist which is important for promotion of the artist. 

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