Planning Editing

Planning what editing tools and effects that I want in my music video is essential because I've come up with a strong ideology and concept behind what I as a music video producer want to portray and reflect on to my audience. Therefore it's important that I select accurate and conventional elements to the style that's shown in frames and throughout the whole music video.

Some of the editing tools I plan to use are as followed: 

• Colour Balance: In order to create a 'fantasy' and 'fairy-tale' like feel that will be important in the theme of my music video.
• Desaturate: This will show the differences in tense throughout the narrative (present action and flashbacks) but it'll also emphasize the dullness of everyday life against the brightness that fame and the big city seems to have. 
• Glow: Like Desaturate, this helps show the vibrance and promise of London against the lives we're all living at the moment, day-to-day, which my target audience may want to escape from when they watch my music video (as the target audience of R&B do at times) 
• Bad TV: This helps show how sometimes things are 'dream like' and desirable - such as the lives you see on channels such as MTV and in celebrity culture, but there's also flip sides to them that nobody notices until your living the lifestyle. I also plan to use Add Noise alongside this effect to make it seem more TV-like with bad feedback.
• Mirror: This symbolizes the concept of 'through the looking glass' which will hopefully connote the way that the 'Alice' persona in the music video is almost entering a dream-like state of a life she's always wanted, only to have it shattered in the end. 

Further analysis of some of my editing styles: Post-Video Production

Mirror

The mirror effect helped symbolize the 'looking glass effect' and was often used during the London frames to create a more fantasy feel which is exactly what we wanted to show. It also connotes an 'illusion' which is sort of what the 'Good Life' is, meaning it's harder to reach that people who look for it initially think. 

Glow 
Again, the glow effect was used to help me create the Wonderland effect again, which helps keep the theme constant. However, put in place it also helps emphasis the desirability of the high life which is exactly what conventional R&B videos do. Of course though, at the end of our music video you see that the materialistic life isn't being represented positively at all which puts an interesting spin on the ideologies that the audience have been exposed to throughout the length of the music video. 

Contrast and Threshold
Threshold worked really well with some of the London shots as it directly connotes the darkness and hidden negative side which we're trying to show throughout the whole motif of our video. Also, it's a lot stronger than the Desaturate effect that we chose so therefore it was certain that the two types of shots wouldn't have been similar as the aim was to give them different emotions and ideologies behind them. Adding the 'blink' effect which caused the shot to flicker, which almost showed the dark side of the 'Wonderland' shot shown above breaking through and the glamorous side of London stripping down to a darker side. 

Overall 
Overall, I think that editing let me express and place certain emphasis on the shots that were either vital to expressing ideologies, narratives or both throughout the product. This way I made sure that my artist could get a clear message that I wanted to translate and had planned way back in the Research/Planning stages of my brief.

Storyboards

 As a way of planning our music video product, my group and I decided to draw up a storyboard showing the vital frames that we wanted to include within our product. This way we could:

• refer back to it during the filming process to see if we'd missed anything
  
• refer back to it in the editing process to remember the order in which we wanted the music video to play
  
• to see if our final music video would work well and made sense, enhancing the themes and ideologies that we'd set out to show the audience.
  
• help us consider the type of shot (close-up, mid shot, long shot) and what action would be happening in order to make our filming process more efficient and make it easier to create a shot list. 

I think the overall process of creating a storyboard helped me to consider in detail what kind of things I wanted to be happening within my music video product and also because I was using Narrative, Performance and some concept within the video, it helped me to see if there was a clear balance between the three.

When it came to filming, my storyboard along with my shot list made my groups sessions more efficient as we didn't have to try and remember what we'd planned back in class verbally and had it in front of us shot by shot. The story board was a visual way of showing me what each shot had to look like and what piece of music it was going to go to. This then went forwards and helped me with things such as - length, speed, accuracy, lip sync timings etc.

However, I think when it came to editing I began to notice some of the flaws in our work. There were certain sequences within the song that the storyboard hadn't fully covered - luckily it wasn't too much of a problem because they were parts that we'd specifically planned to have the same shot but rewound and so on. But also, once we laid all of the frames out onto the Final Cut Express timeline, it was apparent that there were sections that were performance heavy (i.e. the artist lip syncing for 5-6 seconds as oppose to 2-4) which made watching quite tedious, so rearranging of certain frames was needed. Therefore if I were to do a storyboard again, I think I'd consider in more detail the delicate and tiny bits of detail to save a lot more time when it came to editing and making changes. 

In conclusion, the storyboard helped me a lot in the practical side of my brief as when working towards deadlines (just like music videos do in the real industry) it's effective to be working efficiently and with a visual prompt such as the one I'd created, that skill became possible. 

Meetings

Group Schedule

Week One: My group and I researched into different music videos from YouTube and Vevo in order to look for codes, conventions and ideologies that could perhaps be interrpreted into our own work. For instance we took a look at Katy Perry's 'Wide Awake' music video which had a fairytale/dark Wonderland theme. We liked this ideology and with the help from Andrew Goodwin's Theory we managed to adapt our R&B/Pop conventions into a Wonderland Theme.

• Later in the week in a seperate meeting, we began drawing out our storyboard which helped us consider iconography, cinematography and the artist and actors that we'd be using. This was a very brief outline of what we'd be doing for our final product as we still had many gaps to fill in.

Week Two: Me and my group then went on to looking at existing digipaks and adverts for different inspirations when it came to creating our own ancillary products. For example, I looked at Rita Ora's 'ORA' tour poster and Katy Perrys' 'Teenage Dream' poster which gave me two different perspective on the micro-elements that went into different genres. We decided to do this after looking at secondary music videos because that way we were able to find correlations between the two and find a solid concrete genre that'd run through all three products.

• This lead us on to drafting our inital ancillary packs where we began to experiment with our existing knowledge of Photoshop as well as adapt new skills along the way in order to meet the conventions that we wanted to. Our first seperate drafts consisted of the basic inserting texts, different colours and taking photographs for our photoshoots that we'd use on the products.

Week Three: At this stage my group was beginning to finalize our storyboard and the ideologies behind it. We managed to finalize the shots and conventions that we wanted to abide by too. This gave us the opportunity to put the conventions and themes we'd decided on into our ancillary packs, which also helped the progress of finalizing the design for the two of them.

• Next we decided that we'd finalize our storyboards so that we knew what we wanted to do for our music video as well as get our final digipaks onto our blogs. After this, we were able to finalize our locations as well as begin making a filming schedule in order to get our music video done. We planned to get the London scenes done first and then the bedroom/field scenes after. This also led us to coming up with back-up locations just incase they were needed.

Week Four & Five: My group spent these two weeks visiting our locations in Brick Lane, Oxford Circus and the mutal setting of a bedroom to get all our shots completed. Throughout this process we had to swerve major obsticles along the way like the weather which affected half of our video hence why we moved the field scenes to a bedroom instead. This worked because they both connotated the same thing. We also filmed in front of a brick wall in the local area for our performance shots.

• Towards the end of these meeting periods we also began to export our footage from our camera onto the Macs so that it was ready for our next meetings when we'd begin to put the frames into place, sort through the footage and edit on Final Cut Express.

Final Weeks: During my groups final weeks before the deadline, my group and I began to edit footage on Final Cut Express by exporting our selected track that we'd downloaded from iTunes in advance and picking frames from all of our rough footage that we wanted. Once we'd done this we were able to experiment with effects on the software that complimented our initial themes and ideologies that we'd incorporated into our storyboards.

• Alongside this we worked on neating up our cutting rate and matching our visuals to be in time with the music so that it applied to various theories that we'd studied such as Goodwin's so that we'd have the same broad microelements and conventions.

Final Group Advert

Final Group Digipak (2)

Final Group Digipak

 

Right: Photo (top),  Welcome note (middle), Disc design (bottom)
Left: Photo (top), Tracklist (middle), Cover (bottom) 


This is the final digipak that we've chosen to use for the whole group as we feel it shows many conventions of R&B alongside Pop which reflects the genre of our artist very specifically. First of all we have the backing track; the "Roc Nation" logo in the right hand corner is in reality an established record company owning the likes of our chosen artist Rita Ora along with singers such as Alexis Jordan and J.Cole well known for producing mainstream R&B music sometimes with crossovers of Pop of their subsidiary "Star Roc" and crossovers of Rap since the founder of the label is the well-known rap artist Jay-Z. When potential buyers of the album take a look at the track list and notice the logo in the corner, if they're fans of mainstream R&B making them fit the criteria for our targeted audience, they'll be familiar with the 'Roc Nation' logo and its connotations therefore encouraging them about the fact that the album of this star (who is rising and not already established) will suit their own personal music preferences.

Another reason I feel this digipak is conventional of the mainstream R&B/Pop crossover genre is due to the consistent colour scheme and repeated appearance of the artists face. Showing the artist applies to Goodwin's Theory and also allows the audience to establish some sort of familiarity with the star. In both R&B and Pop the artist is very present on their digipaks and in their music videos as oppose to genres such as Alternative Rock or Dance and Techno. Not only does showing the artist benefit the target audience but it also fulfills the albums commercial side as more exposure of the artists helps transform them into a brand which is what a lot of mainstream record labels aim to do in order to be profitable. This is where the colour-scheme comes in. With the colour red having connotations of edginess (diverting away from the pink fluffiness of a Pop artist) and the white breaking up the harsh contrast between black and red, the target audience will soon get used to this colour scheme and sub-consciously begin to relate the theme to the artist. When the artist eventually becomes more established they can use this feature as a trademark or promotional feature. In real life, some musicians even use objects as their trademark feature. For example:

• Rihanna and the 'R' - Her initial and 'personal trademark' 

• JLS and their primary colours to represent each member 

Lastly, throughout my digipak I've used fonts from Photoshop that contrast with one another a lot. While some fonts are elegant and swirled others are rigid and harsh. This is conventional of the R&B/Pop crossover because it literally connotes the blend of two genres which would otherwise be completely opposite. Any kind of music fan is aware than even mainstream R&B is completely different to mainstream Pop, for instance if we took two proto-types such as Carly Rae Jepsen for Pop and Mary.J.Blidge for R&B it's almost impossible to find any similarities between the two apart from their occupation. However, with a merge of the two genres we get artists that're possibly more popular as they appeal to more genre fans that just one kind, examples of artists like this are Beyonce (R&B/Pop), Nicki Minaj (Rap/Pop), Taylor Swift (Country/Pop), Adele (Blues/Pop), Justin Bieber (Pop/R&B) and Avril Lavingne (Rock/Pop). While the swirly writing shows the bubbly feel that is often found in Pop, the rigid and shattered font shows the controversy and confidence of R&B. 

I think that our target audience will be able to connect with the artist due to the graphological features analysed above but also because of the sentimental value that's translated through intricate detail in each of the covers/slides as most artists do. For our own personal digipak this is shown in the digipaks 'Welcome Note' as well as the text overlaying the photoshoot images. One of them are lyrics to the song which we're making our music video to - this helps the audience become familiar with the style of music as lyrics can tell you a lot about a song and plus "Roc the Life" is supposed to be the hit single on this track which means people may be mildly familiar with it whether they're a fan of the music or not. On the photo slide (on the left side) the overlay of text is of various quotes from the film "Alice in Wonderland" which not only work alongside the theme of our whole album 'Lost in Wonderland' but also brings some ideology to the whole theme of the digipak connoting a journey into fame or to somewhere that'd otherwise be labelled "out of the ordinary", suggesting the artists music in new and up and coming. Looking at my latest digipak which can be displayed above and my first digipak, I think that this one is definitely most conventional and the one that should be used for our group, especailly because it's more detailed and shows the artists face - unlike my inital draft (below) which doesn't even have a single picture present.

       

                       

History of the music video

The Late 1970's

The late 1970's was the era for the famous British music show "Top of the Pops" where artists would go onto television, perform their singles alongside a countdown of the most popular tracks that week. Broadly, this could be argued as one of the first modern ways for music videos to be known as slightly relevant and something of fashion to watch on the BBC. Up until this period, music videos had mainly and still were to some extent performance based videos of the artist with footage of them performing at one their concerts or gigs but even then still used the familiar frames such as long shots, mid shots and close-ups. Examples of videos like this that were used and streamed on to Top of the Pops were "The Kinks" with their song 'Apeman'.



While performance based videos were the main type of thing to be seen in the 1970's period there still was some exceptions of artists who began to advance their videos slightly making them more eye-catching and intriguing to their audience since they'd only been seeing concert/gig videos up until this point. One of the first videos that were mainly performance with possibly a hint of concept  is Queens "Bohemian Rhapsody" and even so, the whole thing was shot and edited on videotape making it no where as near as technically advanced as the videos that're streamed onto channels such as MTV and Kiss today.

However, videos such as this one had an effect on the history of music videos as it began to show signs of how artists, their record labels and the rest of their team had started to realize that there was more than one way of drawing an audience and catching attention other than just the music alone, being different and new was clearly a way to encourage artists audiences to buy into their music, hence making more profit for the company. This is a technique that is still used by audiences today as I've recognized from my research into more modern music videos.

1981 - 1991
After Top of the Pops and the music video slowly being brought to fashion, the whole idea of visuals to aid a song went mainstream and the British public weren't just tuning in to watching music on Top of the Pops. In 1981 MTV (a US Network) aired the likes of "Video Killed The Radio Star" by the Buggles and "Holiday" by Madonna which caused a rise in the want from the music industries audience to see various music videos from their favourite stars. This quickly made music videos an extremely important part of music marketing and was relied on heavily by big stars to create that extra buzz for their material. This doesn't go to say that the videos of this period were still not half as technical or advanced as they are now. Using Madonna as a prime example, music videos began to help artists establish their image. Madonna was very much like a sex symbol in the 80's as oppose to her industry equal Kylie Minogue who portrayed that much sweeter and more family friendly look - quite like the comparisions made between ex-Disney stars Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez in their music videos today, showing that image has always played an impact on the audiences impression of the star.
(Modern day music industry "sweet heart" Selena Gomez (right) and 'good girl gone bad' ex-Disney Star Miley Cyrus (left) proving that image still sparks different assumptions from similar target audiences in the modern day) 

In the 1981-1991 era, recording studios and sets had access to high quality colour video cameras which the majority of music videos from this generation were shot on, these pieces of equipment were fairly inexpensive and pretty easy to use for video directors and camera men. 

However, the following music video is the reason why this era was probably one of the most revolutionary for the history of the music video and that is 'Thriller' by Michael Jackson released in 1983. It $500,000 to film and was was almost 14 minutes long bringing it up to the equivalent of a shot film. Not only was this US stars music video considered to be on such a high budget compared to the standard music video of this time but it was also the first of its kind to have a clear and obvious narrative that Michael's audience could follow. Of course this opened up ideologies that I've researched earlier in the blog such as visuals matching lyrics and music and the image of the star overall. "Thriller" saw the rise of narrative based music videos and set the standards for new and innovative ideas from other artists to come and really draw in the attention from fans of music everywhere.

1992 - 2004 
Despite the 80's opening the window for the image of artists such as Michael Jackson, Madonna and Kylie to develop, the 90's and early 2000's were the years where directors began to get more recognition for their work and so forth were listed onto the credits of music videos which hinted the early signs of a merge happening between the music industry fans and the music industry itself.

 Before technology and the growth of music it was virtually impossible for any aspiring singers to record themselves a demo because it was too expensive to hire a studio for the period of time needed to get a track of standard to hand to a company. This was the same with directing a video. It wasn't until technological convergence and people being able to access affordable and usable cameras and software that people began to have a shot at recording their own music videos as aspiring directors staring out by filming music videos for amateurs at a not too expensive price to allow them to bring it to a record label in order to be signed.

An example of a director who got his break this way during this time is Hype Williams who now at the height of his fame has directed music videos like 2Pacs "California Love", Ke$ha's "We R Who We Are", TLC "No Scrubz", LL Cool J's "Control Myself". Some would say that the growth in video directors during this time period contributed to the original concepts and ideas that we see in music videos today.

2005-Present 
In the most recent years, music videos are almost compulsory whenever an artist releases a single whether they're Marilyn Mason, Robbie Williams or One Direction. With influences from the internet with the earliest video streaming site such as IRC groups who recorded videos off of the television and then uploaded them all the way to certified businesses such as VEVO on YouTube who hold some of the most viewed music videos of the modern century including "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, "Baby" by Justin Bieber - a singer who was discovered on the site and viral internet sensations Psy with "Gangname Style",  music videos are now highly anticipated by target audiences and often act out as the best promotional methods for singles when they release trailers via internet.

Examples of teasers from modern day artists include:
                                                  Katy Perry and her teaser for "Wide Awake"

Beyonce and her teaser for "Run the World (Girls)" 

One Direction and their teaser for "What Makes You Beautiful" 

In this post I have learned to respect where music videos have come from and what it's taken to reach the products that we see today streamed on to our televisions and on the internet. This will help me with my own music video because it'll encourage me to look at the bigger picture and consider the type of director that the genre of my video would want (established or amateur) depending on the stars genre and it also helps me bare in mind how concepts change and develop overtime and how something that's "in" and tasteful now might not be considered as on trend in anywhere as long as 50 years to come or as short as 2 years to come. The process of the music video is ever changing.