Risk Assessment

In order to create a safe and organised music video, I had to produce a risk assessment to make sure the people and actors in my video were safe.

As you can see, my risk assessment is not completed, this is because I have not yet filmed. When I have finished filming I will complete the rest of the assessment to evaluate whether I have filmed safely.

Christmas Fun

As the term was drawing to an end for the Christmas break, the class decided to spend our last two lessons working together to recreate a loved Christmas hit. The song that we chose to do was 'Fairytale of New York' by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl. We chose this iconic song since it is a favourite by everyone, with a really distinctive sound and video. In the hour and a half that it took to create the video, we filmed around the school, created an album cover and edited it.

 

 

The video we created let us have some fun with editing without the stress of it being marked, this meant we had a bit more practice with editing. We created the video and made it as accurate to the original video as possible. This shows that the class can mimic a professional video and can use the limited resources that we had around the school.

 

We edited the video by making it black and white, this is because the original video is like this, the reason the video is in black and white is because it sets the mood for the depressing side of the video. This contrasts with the stereotypical emotions used in Christmas songs, which works with the style of song. We also attempted lip syncing but used a comical effect, this was partly because of the spontaneity of the video creation and also because it makes its funnier for Christmas. 

 

I hope you enjoy the video, and Merry Christmas!

Music Video Directors Research

I have decided to research into some music video directors, I am hoping to be influenced by some this will help me to come up with some good ideas to use in my video, this will help me to create a clever and imaginative video.

The first director I will look at is Paul Brown. I am choosing to research his work as he has worked with band 'Slipknot', and this is the band that I am going to produce a music video for. Brown is a graphic designer, photographer, music video & commercial director, having worked on many music videos in the past, in 2008 he worked with Heavy Metal band Slipknot for the video 'Psychosocial'. In my opinion this is a very good video, this is because the shots used are very effective and capture the meaning of the song. Brown uses a lot a fire and destruction in the video, tied in with an effective band performance. Brown has worked with other artists of similar genre to Slipknot meaning that he will be a major influence on my work. Brown stereotypically uses a band performance without a narrative, this is something I will consider, however I am likely to include a narrative in my video.

Another director I will look into is Hype Williams. Williams is a completely different director to Brown (genre-wise). This is because Williams ha worked with artists such as Kanye West and Busta Rhymes. Williams has been successful director in his time, winning awards such as Jackson Limo Award for Best Rap Video of the Year (1996) for Busta Rhymes' "Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check", the NAACP Image Award (1997), the 8th annual Music Video Production Association Award for Black Music Achievement (1997), MTV Video Music Award in the Best Rap Video (1998) category for Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy wit It", MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video (1999) for TLC's "No Scrubs", and the BET Award for Best Director (2006) for Kanye West's "Gold Digger".In 2006, Williams was honoured by MTV with its Video Vanguard Award, presented in honour of his achievements as a filmmaker. This success makes Williams a big influence on me because he is imaginative and creative, meaning that I may use some of his ideas in my music video.

Audience Research

I have done some audience research, this will help me to find out what my audience want to see in their favourite music videos. I have used 'Voki' to produce my research as I have never used this before and it will be fun to try it out. The audience research will help me pick an appropriate song for my audience which will make more suitable and appealing for them. I will ask a number of people to complete a Voki for me, this will enable me to find a range of opinions and will allow me to produce a video that people will enjoy.

World of music blog no.6

I am continuing with my world of music blogs so that I keep up to date with the music world. Todays blog will be about Beyoncé's secret album release. Beyoncé has released her fifth studio album named 'Beyoncé', and it has sold over 430,000 copies in less than a day. Beyoncé has always been a success in the music world and this secret album release has proved her talent and popularity. The singer has had five UK number 1 singles and two UK number 1 albums, the new album is sure to meet the high standards that Beyoncé has set herself.

Buy the album on iTunes here.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/beyonce/id780330041?affId=1930871&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Lyrics of the song

I have decided to post the lyrics of the song that I am going to do my music video on. The song is called 'Spit It Out' and it is by the Heavy Metal band 'Slipknot'. These are quite explicit in places but this is typical of the band and its genre. I feel that with this particular song I will be able to create a good, clear narrative and since its is a metal song I will include some band performance.



 

"Spit It Out"

Did you never gave a d*** in the first place?
Maybe it's time you had the tables turned
Cause in the interest of all involved I got the problem solved
And the verdict is guilty...

...Man nearly killed me
Steppin' where you fear to tread
Stop, drop and roll - you were dead from the git-go!!
Big mouth f****r, stupid c********r!
Are you scared of me now? Then you're dumber than I thought
Always is and never was
Foundation made of p*** and vinegar
Step to me, I'll smear ya - think I fear ya? Bullshit!
Just another dumb punk chompin' at this tit
Is there any way to break through the noise?
Was it something that I said that got you bent?
It's gotta be that way if you want it
Sanity, Literal Profanity hit me!

[2x]
Spit it out
All you wanna do is drag me down
All I wanna do is stamp you out

Maybe it's the way you gotta spread a lotta rumour fodder
Keepin' all your little spies and leavin' when you realise
Step up, fairy
I guess it's time to bury your a** with the chrome
Straight to the dome
You heard me right, b***h, I didn't stutter
If you know what's good - just shut up and beg, brother
Backstab - don't you know who you're dissin'?
Side swipe - we know the a** that you're kissin'!
Bigidy - bigidy b***h boy, halfway hauser
I don't hear s*** cause I keep gettin' louder
Come on, and get a face full o' tactic
Lippin' off hard, goin' home in a basket
You got no pull, no power, no nothin'
Now you start s**t? Well, ain't that somethin'?
Payoffs don't protect, and you can't hide if you want
But I'll find you - comin' up behind you!

[2x]
Spit it out
All you wanna do is drag me down
All I wanna do is stamp you out

'Bout time I set this record straight
All the needle nose punchin' is makin' me irate
Sick o' my b*****n' fallin' on deaf ears
Where you gonna be in the next five years?
The crew and all the fools, and all the politics
Get your lips ready, gonna gag, gonna make you sick
You got d*** when they passed out the good stuff
Bam
Are you sick of me? Good enough - had enough

[8x]
F*** me! I'm all out of enemies!
F*** me! I'm all out of enemies!

[2x]
Spit it out
All you wanna do is drag me down
All I wanna do is stamp you out

Spit
Spit
Spit
Spit
Spit
Spit it out

Research into band

The band which I am going to create my music video for is the heavy metal band 'Slipknot'. Slipknot were a band that consisted of nine members: Sid Wilson, Paul Gray, Joey Jordison, Chris Fehn, Jim Root, Craig Jones, Shawn Crahan, Mick Thomson, and Corey Taylor. However, their bassist, Paul Gray, died in May 2010. This left them with just eight members, their previous bassist Donnie Steele was the band's touring bassist in 2011. In mid December 2013, drummer Joey Jordison left the band for unspecified personal reasons. Slipknot have released four studio albums and one compilation album, four video albums and one live album. The band has completed 5 tours, in addition to performing at various festivals including Download and Leeds and Reading Fest and their self made festival 'Knotfest'.

The band is known for its attention-grabbing image, the members wear matching uniforms, have unique masks respectively and have aliases which are simply numbers. The band are known for wearing masks and attention seeking make-up.

This is Slipknot at Download Festival 2009, with the late Paul Gray.

 

Slipknot is well known for its attention-grabbing image, aggressive music style, and energetic and chaotic live shows. Their videos include similar features, which I will incorporate into my video. Their videos typically include a band performance, which I will include in my video.

 

 

Textual Analysis (Slipknot)

I have analysed a video by the heavy metal band 'Slipknot', I have chosen to do an analysis on them because I will be making my music video for one of their songs. I will pinpoint key features in their videos for me to use in my video. This will help me to create a video that it relevant and appropriate to the band. The song I have chosen to analyse in 'Psychosocial', I feel that this particular song has a lot of key features within it, which will help me to create my music video.

 

 

Album Covers

I have decided to research into different artists album covers and will compare how much different they are depending on their genre. This will help me to create my album cover and make it suitable to the genre of my music video. Some features that I will look out for are colours, fonts and images included on the cover, this will help determine the genre of music.


Katy Perry is a female pop artist, she has designed her album cover with her in the centre of it, this is typical of a solo artists because it is used so that her fans know it is her album. She has used a lot of pink colours on the cover which is typical of a female artist as it is a stereotypical feminine colour, if I were to do make a music video for a female solo artist I would take this into consideration. Perry is also using sex appeal to sell her album by using a picture of her wearing very little, this is to attract male fans to her music, this is also because producers are selling her image as well as her music.

Slipknot is currently an eight-piece heavy metal band, they have shown the whole band on this album cover including previous member Paul Gray, who was the ninth member but passed away in 2010. Showing the whole band is typical of this genres characteristics and will be included in mine if I choose to base my video on a band such as Slipknot. Bright colours are not used in this cover, but dark, dull ones. This is a common feature in band such as Slipknot and other heavy metal bands. The album in called 'All Hope Is Gone', the shot shows a dark, miserable sky which uses pathetic fallacy to establish the mood, the black colour suggesting death and pain.

Eminem is a solo rap artist, and 'Recovery' was his seventh studio album. It was an album following up for from his previous one, 'Relapse', telling the story of how he returned to his addiction to drugs, where 'Recovery' tells us how he overcame this addiction. The album shows what is presumably the artist walking down a long empty road, suggesting the road to recovery. Being involved in drugs is a stereotypical part of the rap genre, so Eminem releasing an album based on leaving his addiction shows how he is breaking the conventions of a rap artist. This influences me to possibly break stereotypical conventions of genre characteristics when I produce my album.

Rihanna in a female R'n'B artist, this is her album 'LOUD', she has used a close photo of her face which is typical of the genre, especially female singers. There is a lot of red used in the picture, emphasising his lips, this is used for sex appeal, similar to the pop artists, It is also similar as it is using the cover to sell the artist as well as her music. The album cover is stereotypical of its genre as most covers of the same genre also feature the artist alone of the cover, when I create my album cover I may include this feature.

Textual Analysis (S.O.A.D)

I have analysed a music video by the band 'System of a Down' (S.O.A.D), this is because it is a similar genre to the video I will creates' genre. Doing this will help will to pick out key features that this genre will use, this means that when I produce my music video I can include some of these features, this means that I will be able to make a video that is fitting to the genre. 

I originally uploaded this video to YouTube, but for copyright reasons, I had to remove, so I uploaded it to Slideshare. 

History of the Music Video

I have researched about the history of the music video. The presentation will show the progress through technology and the popularity if music videos. It shows the importance of music videos to artist through the ages from the first motion picture with sound to TV channels dedicated to broadcasting music videos.

Textual analysis (Hadouken!)

For my research I have analysed a number of music videos. This will help me to create my music as it will give me inspiration and I will know what to do to make my video professional. The first video that I analysed was 'Parasite' by 5 piece band 'Hadouken!' They are a unique genre with many fans, this is why I wanted to analyse their video.

Practice Piece

As a group we created a practice music video for our AS. My group did the video 'Let Her Go' by 'Passenger'. We had to film around the school and had a set deadline.

Here is our completed video, I hope you enjoy it.

World of music blog no.5

My fifth and final blog post about the music industry will be about the return of 'X-Factor'. This talent show allows regular people to show off their musical gift for the chance of making it big. Although many attempt the show, and many are talented, few actually have a successful career at the end of it. The biggest stars to emerge from the show are boyband '1 Direction'. Even though they did not win the contest their fan base has grown majorly, allowing them to tour around the world and even release a film. Last years winner James Arthur, who secured Christmas No.1, has been quiet in the music world, since his time on X-Factor.

Here is last years winner James Arthur with his winner song 'Impossible'.

World of music blog no.4

My 4th post will about the concert held in memory of Stephen Lawrence. Many stars of the UK music industry came together to mark the memory of teenager Stephen Lawrence who was brutally murdered in 1993. This shows how close the music industry is to each other and how caring they are towards their fans. The concert was held in the O2 Arena in London last night to mark the 20th anniversary of Stephens death.

Here is a short video in which artists speak in support if the Stephen Lawrence Charity.

World of music blog no.3

My third blog will be about Miley Cyrus. Her controversial song 'We Can't Stop' has caused her to become a worldwide star. Since its upload, the video has received over 2million views on YouTube, and had gathered a number of dislike, leading to many different parodies of her songs. Miley has also received criticism about her 'Twerking', this is an internet dance craze which Miley performed at the VMA's with fellow artist Robin Thicke. This led to more criticising for both artists.

Miley has brought out another single 'Wrecking Ball', which had received further bad press, mainly do to the explicit content featuring a wrecking ball and Cyrus. The 20 year old takes the criticising well and will continue to produce controversial songs if it allows her to make more money.

Here is her song 'Wrecking Ball'.

World of music blog no.2

My second post will be similar to the first as it is about another artist releasing another album. This artist is Tinie Tempah and in late 2013 he aims to release his second album 'Demonstration'. Having already securing a Double-Platinum debut album 'Disc-Overy',  Tinie will be sure that 'Demonstration' will have the same success. 'Disc-Overy' debuted at Number 1 on the UK album charts, giving Tinie a good base for his second album. Tinie has also stated that he will be doing his UK tour in December this year, after his previous sell out tour, he will be hoping to achieve the same success this year. He has released one song of the 'Demonstration' album so far called 'Trampoline' this has peaked at no.3 in the UK charts. Tinie will be releasing a second song 'Children of the Sun' featuring John Martin on 28th October.

This is Tinie Tempah's song 'Trampoline' featuring rapper 2Chainz.

World of music blog no.1

My first post will be the return of rapper Eminem to music. He has brought out two new singles 'Berzerk' and 'Survival'. He will also be releasing a new album called 'Marshall Mathers LP II' in late 2013, which will be his 8th album release. This will definitely be a success as he a a massive following. XXL Magazine listed it 5th in 'Most Anticipated Albums of 2013. even before the album was titled. Following his recent appearance at the Reading and Leeds festival his hit song 'Lose Yourself' has climbed back into the charts.


This is the video to his new song 'Bezerk', it already has over 14 million views on YouTube in under a week of being uploaded.


 

How our skills have developed

Over the course of the year our video production skills have improved, from our AS piece to our prelim A2 piece. This is because we have practiced and experimented with various techniques and this has helped us to improved our skills. The group has realised that we need to create a synergy between the advert and the CD covers.

These is our advert and CD cover, as you can see they have a synergy, this shows that group had realised that there needs to be a link between the two to show a relation between the two.

 

For the prelim we have realised how important the planning of the video is, a detailed plan allowed us to be efficient with our filming. We made a good plan which meant that we good film quickly and start our editing. This allowed us to alter and modify any problems that we found in the video.

Filming

We started our filming for our prelim music video piece 'Let Her Go' by Passenger, because it is our preliminary we had to film it around the school. We planned and used a storyboard to organise our ideas to make our video how we wanted it.

The group planned to use a mixture of lip-syncing and flashbacks to portray the narrative. We starred me as the male in the video and showed the progress of his relationship between him and the girl. We think this will help us to portray the relationship breaking up so that it fits with the lyrics 'Let Her Go'.


Below are some pictures from our filming.

These are some pictures of our storyboards. The group planned well, this helped us the film because we knew exactly what we were going to do.

This is a shot of the tree, it is a very important feature of the video as it is where the character spends most of his time in the video. We used this tree to portray flashbacks and when the character moves on from the relationship.

Finished Filming

We have finished our filming and editing for our prelim music video. We used Adobe Premier Pro to edit it. We found that the lip-syncing was difficult to achieve to make it look professional and impressive, but the group overcame this challenge. We edited the video and changed the colour balance to distinguish between the flashback and the present tense.

This is a picture of editing the video, because we had planned our storyboard so well, the group was able to finish filming and editing in just three days. We are happy with the standard of the music video and we are looking forward to creating our final piece next year.

Magazine Article

Today we are creating a magazine article for our single, to make it professional we will make the style consistent with our advert. For example we will make the colours and font the same as our CD cover and insert. This will make the advert and the magazine article look professional. On our magazine article we will make sure the sizing of the font is consistent with the CD cover. This is because it create synergy between the two, so that customers will recognise the two when they see either of them, this will make it authentic because real music companies will use this technique to help customers recognise their music.

We will make the magazine article on 'Microsoft Publisher', which will make it easy to keep to two consistent and similar. We will create the article and use very similar features as the advert to create synergy, this will help customers to recognise our single and artist. We will use consistent logos to help this, along with the name of the single and the artist being in the same font and size. 


This is is the finished magazine article for the single. It is very similar in style to our CD cover which will create synergy and will help customers to recognise the music.

CD Back Cover

Today we have be creating our back cover for our CD.

We have created it on Microsoft Word and have made it match the rest of the album so that the genre fits.

This is the finished back cover, we have put a bar code, an ITunes and Google Play Store icon on it to make it look authentic. We have also created a QR code which will link to the Passenger website.

Planning our preliminary album cover and insert

We are planning our album cover and insert for our preliminary piece 'Let Her Go' by 'Passenger'. We have taken inspiration from Passenger to make our covers. We have taken a number of pictures to choose from to make our album cover and then we will use photoshop to adjust it to make it suitable for our album cover.

This is one of Passengers album covers that we have taken inspiration from. This cover shows tree with a dark background, we can use this to inspire our album cover because it sets the mood for the song choice.






This is Passengers 'Let Her Go' single cover, this is the song that we are creating a cover for. This is the CD cover for the single that we are doing, this will help us to create a single cover because we can take inspiration from this and make our cover.




This is the image that the group took for our album cover, we also took a picture of space, because on Passengers album cover he used stars. We then used Photoshop to merge the two pictures so that it was similar to Passengers.

This is how we altered the image that we took, we used photoshop to merge the photos together and make it how we wanted.





This is the finished CD cover, we have taken inspiration from Passenger, but made it different so that it is unique.

Music Advert

We had to create an advert for our music single, it included the date that the song will be released, title and name of artist.

Photo stills for our music video

Here are some of the photo stills we took for our preliminary music video, we took them around the school grounds. The song that we are doing for our preliminary music video is 'Let Her Go' by 'Passenger'. We looked around the school so that we could find the best place to film for our music video. We considered the mise-en-scene so that we could make it better for the video.

Here is a screen shot of the real video that we are going to create and change for ourselves. We may look at the video for inspiration but we will make sure that our video is unique and different from this music video. This means that we won't be influenced by the video and our video will be original.

Deciding the song

The group has decided to make an advert for the song 'let her go' by Passenger. We will make one each to promote the single. This is the single cover for let her go, when we create our own, we will take inspiration from it.

This is Passenger, the artist who performs the song which we are using to base our music video on.
.

The song that we have chosen allows us to create a music video with a narrative which we feel will be better.

This is the song which we are going to create a music video for.