Conventions - Post Creator

https://www.postcreator.com/p/25576




In this post I have looked at the different conventions in pop music videos and through this we can work out what we will include in our music video.

Symbolic Codes - Conventions of the Pop Genre

https://www.postcreator.com/p/25579

Conventions- technical codes

https://www.postcreator.com/p/25574

Final Song - Fletcher War Paint

As a group we chose this song because we thought it was unique and interesting. We also though it would be a good song because of the variety of genres we could play around with to give us a wider opportunity.

Genre Representation- image

I've chosen the genre of image and also relating to pop genre. My group choose to lip sync with the song Bad Blood to fit with the genre of Pop. Our costumes consists of everyday, slightly dressed up to create an image of fashionable girls. I edited to cut to the next scene of each member of the group, this is so that each member is shown. Also I used colour correction to get more colourful images which links to a colourful theme, which matches the beat. Also I used overlaying to make the sequence more interesting than just still videos.
What I think is effective is the overlaying and colour correction, as it made the sequence more interesting. What I could do better next time is to use different scenes and cut to the beat, or use more interesting sequence for each scene.

Genre Representation - Girl Rock Band

Each little clip relates to the genre of girl rock bands because of the colouring I have used. I have used the threshold colour effect on the first couple of clips, which can suggest the boldness of the separate member of the band. The cinematography shows each person as similar and in a medium/long shot of their body to show what they are wearing. We chose to wear similar outfits that are quite dark, we have used the similar black colour palette for our outfits, including different types of jackets. This links to a girl rock band because it is quite grungy and dark, creating a rock atmosphere. I think we have presented the members to be very outlandish in a way and have made them to look fierce looking. I think that this links to Goodwin's 5th rule of image and presenting them in a way to have a certain persona in following music videos. I think the split screen is very effective because it includes each member and advances our use of editing to make it look like we are standing next to each other. I also The bad thing about this is the change in lighting as the clouds were forever changing the lighting. Trying to edit this on FCP is quite difficult and I have tried to get it to look very very close and similar. This is something that we can definitely work on. I think that I could have expanded my editing further by making the clips move, and add further colour isolation, which I think I need more practise on. This will enhance the way the music video will look like. Depending on listening to the song a couple more times I think we could make it grungy, but not a girl rock band, as in our chosen song there is only one female singer, so therefore it would be harder to achieve.

Genre Representation of Dance/Pop

In this short sequence I wanted to explore the Dance and Pop genre, using a cover of the song Bad Blood originally by Taylor Swift, as a stimulus. 

The first ballet sequence suggests the genre as it focuses on the the costume of the dancers shoes; immediately suggesting to the audience a dance genre music video. The location of the sequence represents the modern pop genre as the dancer is not in a ballet or dance studio linking to the lyrics of the song about rebellion, one of Goodwins rules. I edited the ballet shots to be sped up with a 'aged TV' filter to show the binary opposite of ballet being a classical dance, used in the music video of an upbeat modern song. I believe this was very effective as increasing the speed of the sequence meant that it went well with the beat of the song.

I also used editing to represent the dance/pop genre by using an overlay of two ballet shots at different angles to make the video more interesting for the audience. Along with this I edited the music and signing with my own lip singing and attempted to make it as accurate as possible. This part of the sequence suggests the pop genre of the song because I am sining in the music video as well as dancing. I believe this was successful because by having a mixture of the two genres you are representing and promoting the artists talent.

Record Labels

Big Machine Records, LLC is an independent American record label specializing in country and pop artists. Big Machine is based in Nashville, Tennessee. The label was launched in September 2005 by former DreamWorks Records executive, Scott Borchetta and is distributed by Universal Music Group (UMG).

In November 2014, 88 employees were a part of the music company in areas of music publishing, management, and merchandising.

One of the biggest artists that are signed to this label is Taylor Swift with her most recent success in the album 1989 the company have grown larger and more popular.

Epic Records is an American record company, founded previously as a jazz and classical music label in 1953, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.

The company later expanded to include other musical genres more relevant to the time, including pop, R&B, rock and hip hop. Historically, the label has signed popular artists such as Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jackson and Shakira.

Along with Columbia and RCA Records, Epic is one of Sony Music Entertainment's three main record labels.

Shady Records was founded in 1999 by rapper Eminem along with his manager Paul Rosenberg. This was after the highly successful release of Eminem's album The Slim Shady LP (1999). It promotes rap artists such as Eminem himself and is described as the label that signs ‘real rap.’

Shady Records has signed ten acts and is currently home to five. Another interesting fact about this label is it was also the label to be contracted for putting together the soundtrack to the Eminem-starring film 8 Mile, which had the lead single "Lose Yourself". The song went on to take the first ever Academy Award for Best Original Song given to a song in the hip hop genre.

Another previously signed artist that was involved with this record is 50 cent.



Record Labels

Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records is an American company which was founded in 1947 Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. This record company specialises in R&B, Jazz and Soul recordings.  In 1967, Atlantic Records became an owned subsidiary of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, now the Warner Music Group, and expanded into rock and pop music with releases by bands such as Led Zeppelin and Yes.

Hi or Hey Records

Hi or Hey Records is a record label created by Australian rock band 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS). The name for the label was chosen via a fan vote on Twitter on 22 January 2014.

 On the Hi Or Hey Records website, the band explained that not only would they be releasing all of their music through Hi Or Hey Records in conjunction with Capitol Records and Universal Music, but they would also be signing a roster of their own bands and releasing them via the label.

On March 24, 2015, the label signed rock band Hey Violet. Hey Violet is the only band signed to the label. Both bands signed are pop rock based. This is an example of a smaller record company.

Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group is an American global record company headquartered in New York. The music company was founded in 1958 and it is one of the "big three" recording companies and the third largest in the global music industry. It was previously owned by Time Warner, the company was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange until May 2011, when it announced its privatisation and sale to Access Industries, which was completed in July 2011. Warner Music Group employs in excess of 3,500 people and has operations in more than 50 countries throughout the world.

Song Choice

Record Label

I have made out own record label that's suited for our artist.
It's called Aspire.
The expectations for our record label are:

• artist within the pop genre
• we support single upcoming artists  
• but they have to reach certain level during their first year working within our company (be in the top 40 in the charts)

 
 

Record Labels

Abby Road Studios

Abbey Road Studios- in London is the most famous recording studio complex in the world. Abbey Road has an unparalleled history of recording, having worked with some of the world’s most celebrated artists, producers, composers and orchestras.
They invest in many artists at every stage of their careers and strive to provide the most creative and commercial opportunities possible. Also provide UMG artists with the latest technology to keep track of the performances of their music, both financially and from a marketing perspective.




The Commercial Group (Sony)

The Commercial Group consists of three divisions: Frontline, Legacy, Nashville and Sony Classical.

The Frontline team is responsible for TV advertised compilations and artist Best Of and new releases from adult oriented acts like Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand. Legacy is responsible for reissues and re-releases from Sony Music's rich and diverse catalogue of recordings - from The Clash to Simon & Garfunkel, from Jimi Hendrix to Meat Loaf.

The Classical team is responsible for curating Sony's fantastic classical music heritage and releasing new albums from a host of modern stars including Lang Lang, Jonas Kaufmann and Amy Dickson.




 

Critical

One of the most successful independent record labels in the UK today. Nurturing new talent and releasing some of the freshest breaks and beats from the cream of the scene, it has gone on to build a loyal following around the world driven on by Kasra’s never ending quest to release quality underground bass music.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Screen Representation

This was my first attempt at green screen editing. I used the basis of the spectacle genre and therefore including dancing and crazy stunts to intrigue the audience. It is clear that I need to work on the precision of the green screen to try and make the video more professional. Next time I will try to position myself more central of the green screen to avoid the chance of seeing any background.

Spectacle Green Screen

I chose the flamingo as a prop because spectacle/concept is very random and I think that it is very different and is also telling a narrative in it's own way. I added the backgrounds to make it more unique by using a Kaleidoscope adding more effect to the spectacle genre. I think that this is connected a lot to Lady Gaga's songs. In this screenshot below it shows the link of the split screening and the kaleidoscope effect in the background, which reinforces the spectacle genre. I think that my example of this would be used effectively in a spectacle genre video.

Lauren's Media Language Analysis

We were given the task to find out how directors use media language to make their music videos more interesting. I have chosen to analyse Lady Gaga 'Edge of Glory' and Justin Bieber 'Love Yourself.'

How Directors Use Media Language To Make Creative Videos

We were given the task to look at two different creative videos and talk about them equally. I spoke about how the director of each video made it look creative and inventive by looking at the media language posed in the different music videos.

Media Language

Here I am using the green screen for the first time.
The genre that I was going for was spectacle; my concept for this is a person walking through different locations (one may think that she is leaping through time). To make it more of a conceptual vidoe I have used props and costume. Firstly an umbrella, as the idea of using an umbrella in all types of environment seems strange. Also I happened to find a card costume and decided to use it. If I carried on the music video I could make a narrative.
Similar style of concept music video is Paradise by Coldplay.

How do directors use media language to produce creative vidoes?

Talking about how directors use the media language to produce certain music videos.

Animals - Practising Editing

We took a variety of clips to edit together because we were looking at how breakdancing style video clips were made. We were given some music and the animal clips to join up with the dancing. I think this helped up edit the videos to the beat to give it more effect and show a continuous flow.

Bruno Mars Lip Sync 2nd Edit

I decided to re-edit the video as the lip syncing wasn't in time and so I took a second edit with the comparison to the real version in the corner.

Bruno Mars - Grenade | Preliminary Task

This is our finished preliminary task, in the left bottom hand corner we have decided to put the real video so that we are able to see if we can compare it and see what we have done the same or different. There are definitely some differences as we couldn't get the correct mise-en-scene.

Semiotics Analysis

Genre Stills

This is a set of stills I put together that are evidence of the genres Performance, Narrative and Image. I used a variety of editing techniques to try and portray these genres which will furthermore help me when creating the music video.

Performance:
- I first of all took three separate shots of each person and followed this by creating a three way split screen to edit the images together. I then added the moving lights filter and increased the brightness. The props used in this still, the microphone especially, suggest the performance genre as well as the three people suggesting this could be a band. The band Little Mix in the image below show a similar formation.

- The next shot also used the prop of a microphone however it focuses on the artists face suggesting one of Goodwin's rules, the notion of looking rather than the talent of the singer. This is usually popular in Image videos however performance also try's to show off the bands 'look.' The camera recording filter that I used makes the still more interesting because performance music videos can often lack originality because it just focuses on the artist or band singing and not a storyline.

- We shot the next still and planned to use it in the future to create more exciting backgrounds that we would not necessarily be able to find where we live, giving us an advantage to make our music video more extravagant. I used a simple filter of adding a darker tint on the outside of the image and an increase in saturation to make the artists look better.


Narrative:
- I added the an old sepia effect to the first still as the effect could tell a story for example, someone looking back at an old photo of their friend. One of Goodwin's rules says that the lyrics have to match the visuals. In this case the song would have to be about a friend that the artist is missing or could have been lost.

- I enhanced the saturation of the next image as I wanted a brighter look as the still was orginally quite dark. The location, a school classroom, props, a textbook, chairs and tables, and the actors, looking bored, could suggest the actors are in detention. These are the semiotics (studied and theorised by Barthes) could tell an audience more about the artists intentions of the song through the visuals of the music video.

- The overlay that I used for the next image adds an effect that could be viewed as a security camera that is buffering, suggesting a song about rebellion or crime. In this case the music would have to be fast pace, possibly using instruments like electric guitars and a drum kit, so that it would match the visuals.

Image:
- I put this image in black and white as I thought it would make the still more interesting. Image music videos focus highly on the eyes and lips and it is common to use closeup shots to show these features. Image music videos also like to show long shots of the body to represent the image of the artist, for example in Beyonce Single Ladies.

- The next image is very similar however there is a microphone being used suggesting that it could be a cross over between image and performance because even performance music videos love to show off the artist themselves and not always just their talent. We can link this to one of Goodwin's rules that says the demand of the record label may want to brand their artist as this is usually how more fans are created as they become more popular. I decided to decrease the saturation and the brightness and added a tint of orange to create this filter.

- The final image shows the whole body in a distorted fashion. This could be because of the genre characteristics that are needed to link the song to the visuals. I decided to use the whole body because that is sometimes what is focused on rather than the artists singing.

Genre Stills

Performance- For performance I added two overlays and cropped them to fit the image. I did this to feature all the people in the group, which helps to complete the image. I think that this is more effective so that you can see all the members in one image performing. However an improvement would be to make sure that the three pictures have the same lighting, as the brightness change disrupts continuity. And also maybe have different instruments for each member.

Image- Here I have changed the picture by firstly adding one overlay, on this overlay I have changed the saturation and added several changes to the tone, colour etc. I placed the picture directly on top of the other one and to achieve continuity I have matched up the cone on the two pictures. I think this is effective, as it adds two similar image of the artist while one stands out more due to brighter colours etc. However I could improve it by maybe cropping the pictures directly in the middle.

Narrative- Here I have added a transition as the image changes and also text. I don't think this is as effective because the transition is too flashy, for the real music video I will use simple transition especially for the genre Narrative. I think that the text was effective, as it was big enough to be clear but not too big to overpower the image.

Real Music Videos

Zayn- Pillowtalk

This is an example of overlays in Zayn's music video, the genre is image. The similarities of this to mine is that there are multiple overlays. However a difference is that his overlays are slightly tiled to create a circular effect. I can use this in my own work by playing around with the image, such as having one overlay upside down.

Zayn- it's you

this music video uses saturation to have the video in black and white. However it's different from my stills because it's completely saturated of colour, unlike mine which has some colour. I can use this for my music video by using it on certain scenes, especially if there's a certain atmosphere or theme that I'm achieving.