Final Cut- Weekends

Production Overview

After researching our elements and creating a strong/ perfect pre-production pack for our music video to incorporate them in our production, I believe that our production was very positive and successful.
It was successful due to our organisation, such as the things we need for our music video were made to be sure that it was ready before the shooting day. For example making sure the camera battery is fully charged for the day/ making sure the equipments were ready on the side/confirming that everyone will be at the locations a bit earlier by couple of mintues to get everyone in position and set up the equipments on time. From my experience, it made our production more effecient. This means it has surely saved us time from pressure/stress.

During the process of filming, we remembered from our last years AS preproduction research of different angle set ups and their meaning, we decided to incorporate and tweaking our shot by shooting from lower angles of our actors to make them look more empowered and important.

We decided to have extreme close ups to make it very clear to our audience for our intentions of Andrew Goodwins theory, which was to match visuals to sound. For example, we filmed extreme close-ups, focusing on the handmade instruments of our actors performing and perfectly syncing with the music. Furthermore, extreme close-ups give a perfect good depth of field, which fits the style of music, also makes our music video effective and appealing to our audiences. 

During filming of both of our location, we made sure that we incorporated establishing shots, this helps to convey and identify the two different settings of our band (performance location in Nordern Farm) and our main artist (bedroom location) to our audience. Though it was challenging and difficult to capture a perfect wide/ establishing shot without having it to be a flat shot. We tried to get a depth of field in shot but it was difficualt as the camer lense was focusing on the whole shot it self.
We tried to challange this difficulty to help us to create depth throughout our music video, so we we decided to alter our bands positions by having our lead singer infront of the band and followed by the two guitarist in a line behind the lead singer and then finally followed by the drummer behind the two guitarist. It made the shot slight more efficient, though, however it was still quite flat from a wide shot.

Post-production: Overview

In my experience we did not have much difficulties with creating our final footage. We had basic and more complex experience and knowledge of editing from our previous production in AS A levels. We used and incorporate theses skills/ knowledge in our music video. For example, selecting a specific cut of a footage and arranging it over the music track/ cropping part of the footage that is unncessary/ over layering/ and adjusting the music levels in certain parts of the music video to make lower, etc.

Final Cut Pro is very professional software to use for editing, it is used by professional industry institution that creates videos either for filming a movie or music videos. This helps us to create a magnificent and perfect quality as a professional music video. The advantage of using this software allows us to create sequence for our music video. For example, the sequence would allow us to edit our 1st draft then save an extra copy to edit for the 2nd draft (during editing we don't delete any footage we overlay the final footage) and final save another copy and edit the last 3rd draft to create our final music video. This process allows us to improve our music video and develope it to more better and professional quality standard.

Post-production: Colour Grading

Our final stage of editing after completing rearranging and ordering our sequence, then letterbox each footage and adding the logo, it was finally for colour grading to match the footage colouring with the rest of the similar footage. So that the footage does not look out of it place nor look odd. This will make the match on action more efficient and effective. 

Our aim and intention was to make that the colour or lighting where the exact same/ similar colour level for all of our shots. Most of our shots where either over exposed or under exposed or too much redness (especially in the bedroom location). This mean we had to reduces or increase the brighting of the shot to adjust the colour similar to the following shot so it matches. This will make our music video more fluid due to match on action of lighting. For the redness shots we had to alter and add slightly more blue and green colour grading, so it becomes less warm and not too red. This allows us to balance the perfect lighting. 

Most of our performance footage where more difficult to colour grade. This is because of the stage colour lighting that we used in our music video, which makes it hard for us to identify the lighting that need colour grading. For example, during the performance the stage lighting constantly changes very fast from one colour to another which makes it hard to recognize the odd colour grading within the footage, such as the redness or yellowness or blueness... So we just decided to lower or increase the brightness if necessary. 

Post-production: Letter Boxing & Logo

No matter how something/video is filmed, the best way to present a movie/music video/trailer on video as it was originally created is to letterbox it. This format presents the full, wide picture on the middle of the screen, with black bars above and below it. Letter box preserve the original cinematography of the video, letterbox, or widescreen, videos have become more and more popular in recent years. This technique is especially used in most of professional music videos.

To maintain our final piece of music video we letter box each frame to its original theatrical aspect ratio, 2:35:1, so that you see everything we as a director intended our audiences to see.



Logo-

After completing the editing, colour grading and letterbox it, we decided to research well known TV or Youtube logo for music videos, we thought of choosing Tv logo as we would have more options of different channels and some thing rather more into Rock genre. This will allow us to directly target our target audience. We came up with MTV Rock logo as it it suits our style genre which is 'Indie Rock'. We thought of adding the logo onto the top right hand corner like an actual Tv channel, and becuase it looked more decent. When we copied the logo from google image we had to remove the white background as we didn't have the proper logo copy, this will make it look more professional and realistic without the noisy white background.

Post-production: Matching Visuals to Sound

Once we completed uploading our footage computer and making seperate folders to edit it to the software on Final Cut Pro. We embedded the sound track of the song 'Weekends' to start editing. We had to listen to the sound track couple of times to get a brief idea of the tempo to start adding our footage on top.
Our music 'Indie Rock' style genre, though it has has quite a fast a steady tempo. From our research we found out that the faster the tempo the more cuts there should be, therefore during the fast track of the music we had to make sure we as an audience see it visually fast by adding fast cuts of the band syncing with the music.

Whereas, the steady tempo during the chores we had to make sure that it was less cuts, especially when our lead singer is lip syncing. This make it easier for us to creat a perfect lip sync with the music.
Lastly, during the beginning of the music track it starts quite slow pace and at a more lower volume level, this make it easier for us to start with a narrative and convey the narrative very clear to our audience, to whats happening in our music video. This was helpful to us so that we didn't have to have fast cuts during the opening of the music video, so then we can build up our visuals towards the fast temp.

Pre-production: Shooting Schedule

Booking a day for our shooting day was not so difficult as we didn't have to worry about the lack of travel distance as our location are in our local town, rather than somewhere that is difficult to get to like Bristol.
Our actors are kids, which means they have a set schedule that is similar to ours and can work with. Seeing that their free time for the shooting could only be during the weekends or after school.
This will help us to the book our shooting schedule on any weekend that would suit all of us. We prefered to work on weekends so that we will have more flexiable and longer time (as long as we need) for our shoot. It will also mean less rush during the weekend as everyone would be usually home taking a day off work, which gives us more time to book a spot for our venue and work on it as long as we need. This is an adventage to spend more time setting up and making sure the lighting is perfectly lit as how we wanted it.
We decided the perfect and suitable date to do our shoot was on Sunday 13th of September at 12pm. However on that day, there was an event taking place at 1:30pm on the stage we booked, which means that it was available for us about one hour and a half to shoot in the Nordern farm location. We were luckily to have two DSLR cameras with us, which will increase the speed of the shooting process. This will also help to get through all of our shots we planned in different set-ups on time.

Pre-production: Lighting

Lighting is very important for any type of productions, especially for our music videos. The use of lighting is important for more than one reason, ranging from making it easier to see everything, to portray a certain mood/ genre. Also, it is very important in revealing certain feelings that the song is trying to explain. 

For example in our music video the performance base we considered to use a lot of different colour lighting, this gives the impression that what we are watching is a happy, upbeat, energetic, lively and enjoyable moment. 

It is imortant to create a perfect lighting for our music video. This is important so we have a fair equal amount of lighing and exposure. This means that we dont want our lighting over exposed or under exposed, which means the shot wouldnt be grainy/vintage look, so that we as an audience can see whats going in the scene very clear. To add to that, we need to mae sure that the lighting is perfectly lit on our actors in our music video. The lighting can also help provide the perfect depth.

Indie-Rock genre concerts are usually well lit and bright colours of studio lighting, this would be perfect to incorporate in our music video during the performance base.

Finally, we will nned to consider the lighting in the bedroom for our narative shots. For this location we need to show the real-life (reality) side of lighting. It is very important to get the right lighting and colour, as well as it is imporat to keep our actor well lit and doenoting the natural setting of a bedroom. Thi will help the audience eyes immdeiatly drawn attention towards our main artist. The lighting is also important that our audience recognise our two different locations. The colouring of the bedroom is perfect for connoting warm and homely atmosphere, which is a perfect colour scheme for this location. However, we need to make sure that we do not fall of mistaken the colouring on the camera, we need to make sure that the colour is not too red because it will be quite difficualt to take out the red colour and adjust it to reality lighting in post-production.

Pre-production: Costumes research

The costume worn by particular bans and artist reflect what type of genre they are trying to portray to the audience. The Jacques band consist the 'Inde rock' genre. We decided to research and study couple of similar band that does the same genre, and pick out the similarties in between the different bands costume. I did a small collage of my research:

I found ou that the costume worn by bands relating to Indie Rock genre are 'roughed up' articles of clothing that are often old. the costume worn can be seen as representing a rebellious nature towards the mainstream fashion trends. For example all the members would wear some kind of skinny fitted trousers whether they are jeans or smart trousers. They will all have some form of jacket on and usually sport some 'tatty' vintage footwear (however it could vary from trainers to boots). Most of the band members costumes that are worn, they are usually never the same colour and never worn in the same style as the next members. This reveals that people associated with Indie Rock genre are comfortable and confident with expressing their individuality without going overboard. However, they do it in a simple way with variation of the same style, this further increases their 'cool' reputations as they don't try too hard to be something they are not. they all know that its going to be hot a sweaty so they adopt the attitude of "may as well wear the week and thin old t-shirt, am going to be sweaty which means i'm going to be smelly', this attitude represents a maverick lifestyle.

We all decided that most of Indoe Rock genre wear darker clothing that gives a 'hipster' look.

We then looked at what sort of cloting/costumes The Jacques typically wear. This is because after finding our sutable actors, we need to make sure that the costumes are spot on, so that it fits well with The Jaques iconography. We had to think very clear about portraying the artist and portraying the age of young teenagers.
The Jacques typically wore baggy tops, skinny jean, some sort of smart shoes, dark colour jackets and somtimes they wear some sort of funky hats.
For our final costume decision we decided to incororate dark costumes of skinny jeans, trainers/ converse instead of smart shoes (this is beacuse nowadays young teenagers prefer to wear trainsers as they are more confortable to walk and move around in, also they prefer to wear the recent fashion trend), baggy t-shirt or thin baggy jumpers and a hat for our lead singer.

Pre-production: Props Research

We conformed and decided our final locations which were the Art centre and our main artist bedroom. We need to make sure that the props we are using for our music video suits the 'indie rock' genre. Also, what is the most important props that can represent The Jacques band and perhaps represent their iconography in some way during the music video.

Our first location- Nordern Farm- This location is the set for our performance scene, we decided to use some props that they easily offer/ allow the public to borrow during their booking of the stage. We decided to use their special microphones and drum set. However, for the rest of the instruments we decided to make hand-made instruments out of cardboard (three hand-made guitars, and part of the drum set by using the actual drum set and cover it with cardboard to be the structure of the drum set).

Second loction- Our main artist bedroom- As a homely and friendly atmosphere for young teenagers we decided we would leave all of the props that's already inside her bedroom. This will represent a stereotypically young teenagers bedroom. Though we left props in the room as they were we decided to add some extra touches by adding some props for our music video. The extra touches will engage our audience with our main artist and show them her interest/ love in music, that represents the main artist might want to be part of a musical band. To make this happen we thought of adding music/ band posters, instruments, accossories to be able to hear the music such as Beat headphones/ an ordinary earphones and musical devices that plays music.

Pre-production: Test shots on Chosen Location

Shots in the venue/ Art centre called Norden Farm: We went to visit the Nordern Farm to see if their main stage meets our standards for our performance base in our music video. While we were there, we took couple of test shot from our storyboard to see if our visuals or camera angels and movements will meet our requirements. We took couple of low angle and high angle shots, wide shot, side shots. We also tested the stage lighting but unfortunately we didn't get a chance to capture the lighting. We were to excited too explore more what's behind the back stage that could add extra touches to our video.

Pre-production: Applying Audience

Our music video is based on a narative and performace base. Our idea was that the opening of the music video starts with a nrrative of our main artist walking aggresively up the stairs towards her bedroom as if she is unsatisfied or wants to be alone. She then plays the song 'Weekends' on her phone and place the heaphones onto her ears. We would then see her drifting away to her imagination whilest she is enjoying the song. The audience immediatly see's her performing on a great size stage in a band as if she was performing lively. We decided that during post- production we should jump cut couple of times back to her bedroom throughout the music video so that it gives a clear pictuer of the artist emotions/reaction of her imgaination towards the audience as well as to remind our audience that the performance is not happening in the real-time.

We started with a narative so that our audience is focused onto one clear nartive and understand whats going on in the music video. The jacques are categorised as 'Indie rock' style genre as their music is not widely known, therefore given their unique and distinctive sound to their local audiences. Due to this, their target audience is mostly upon teenagers and young adults who enjoy Indie Rock style genre. Age rand would be roughly around 13-25 of age, mostly this is because younger adults prefer to go out spend and enjoy the concerts/live performance of rock genre with friends or in their indivdual free time.


Our prouduction target audience is targeted to both genders of femals and male young teenagers. Due to our music video our actors are kids represending the actual Jaques band. This idea would influence the younger audiences as the actor is the similar age group as them, also this will make our music video attractive (towards our target audience) to watch as they would be more interacted with the narrative and the performace base.

Pre-production: Chosen Artists & Research

We were specifically looking for an actor to be the lead singer to represent the main artist from The Jacques band. Our initial idea was to have our chosen young artist imagining herself/himself with their friends as a band performing lively. We needed a suitable child actor, to respresent and play the role of the lead singer 'Fin' from The Jacques.
It was fairly easy to find our artists to act and play the role of the band. Our group member immediately came with idea to use her sister in our music video. Her name was Martha. Her appearance was perfect for the lead singer role. She had identical looks/ she looked very similar to the main singer 'Fin'. This could connote that the actor could be Fin as a child, that then grows up and become part of The Jacques band member. This was a high advantage as she was perfect actor to play the main artist part.
Fin has long blond hair that is most of the time covering his forehead and blue eyes. Similarly, our chosen actor has dark blond hair and hazel/green eyes. To be precious her hair is similar length to Fin's hair.

It is important to get at least the main artist looking like Fin the lead singer, as in our music video our lead singer will be driving the narative. We needed to present most of the band as who they are, from what we have and access to. This will allow our audience to recognise our artist looking like Fin at his early teen-age, as well as meeting the iconography of the band (such as having the lead singer in front and centre of the band, also presenting the main artist more throughout the music video).

We also decided to find an actor that could represent and look like the drummer in The Jacques band. We were luckily to find Matthew, who is a close friend to our chosen lead singer. He looks very similar to the main drummer from The Jaqcues band, that there was a clear resemblance between the both. He also had basic knowledge and skills of drumming which is perfect for his chosen role.

Lastly, We need last two actors to represent the rest of The Jacques band, that would play the guitarist and base guitarist. Two girls friends to our chosen artist came forward and offered to be part of the band in our music video. Despite the fact that The Jacque band members are all males. However, we didn't have a problem to use the girls to represent the rest of the band members.

Pre-production: Location Research

We brainstorned couple of chosen location from the start of the proction. We first decided on the most known/ideal venue in a bar or pub. The band is exactly located in the Bristol area, which means we wouold had to work our way around to work near their loaction to make the process as easy as possible for us and the band. Alsoto find a suitable venue that we probably never been/ seen before since the band agreed to be part of our production. However, a slight change and second thoughts, the band backed up and decided not to performe in our music video. Now that we couldn't use the band we had to think of similar location of a venue that we all can easily get to with a low budget.

Now that we have chosen our artists to represent the band (one of our groups sister and her friends), we had to find a suitble location for their age group which is around 12-13. We crossed out the idea of bar/ pub from our minds due to age access and the danger of kids in that atmosphere. We also had to think about the suitable time and date for us because our artists still goes to school which takes up most of the day time, therefore there wouldnt be a lot of time around the eventing to shoot our production.

We needed a venue near by and close that we can easily get to and with a low budget, so we decided to research loaction locally, perhaps within our town. Our venune needs to come with a stage for our performace base. We were luck that one of our group memeber's mum worked at a local arts ventre/venue called Norden farm, which had everything we need inluding couple of stages and insturments (such as the drum set). This was more ideal as we couldn't imagine having kids to performe in a bar stage. This location is perfect and extremely convenient, since it holds a great size stage and has its own stage lighting and mirophones. All these accosseries created extra touchs to create a perfect performance base, just like real media instustions (when they film their artist performing on a stage).

It is located in our town were we all can easily access to in a short period of time (so we dont have to travel a long distance). This will save us time to get there and set up our equipments for filming. To add to that, we found out that they let their main stage for booking out for the puplic use for a few hours at a time.




Finally, we decided to have a second loaction for our narrative. We decided to use our main artist (the lead singer that is driving the narrative) bedroom. The idea that we were using childern for our music videos, we wanted an eviromently friendly and homely atmosphere where childern in this generation usually spend most of their time, especically when they fell alone/ when they want to listen to music. The bedroom setting was a suitble loaction for our narrative, it meets well with all of our criteria. This means it is easy to access to and free.]

Pre-prodution: Risk assessment

Pre-production: Shot Listing

Pre-production: Storyboards

It was important to create storyboard for our production.It had to contain the needed visual of shots and shot types in detail briefe such as, depth of field (focus point) and positioning of artists. This will help us on the shooting day, which will save us time as we have storyboard of how we want to structure our shots.

Planning & researching: Audiences

Audience research is important to meet our audience demands to incorprate it in our music videos.
we need to understand our listeners
Our chosen band The Jacques works with Indie Rock style genre, whcih means the audience that consume and enjoys to listen to that style of genre would be attract to the band and their song. However, The Jacques were the first to form a band and start at a very young age for Indie Rock genre. This means that their target audience would have started with drawing young teeager's attention to expand and become more rapidly well-known within the community.

I researched audience preferences of theire faviourite genre and the most popluar genre:
From looking at the pie charts the most prefered genre is Pop, Indie, Rock and alternative.

I then researched the most viewed or most top 5 global known music videos and their type of genre on youtube to compare it with the pie chart data. This is also to understand what people like. We as a group decided to look closely at the videos conventions such as, lighting, style of editing, camera set ups, and amount of shots, and perhaps use some of the conventions within our music video. The conventions help enage the demographic audience as what they would be watching is what they expected to see.

In our research the first song was most viewed by most of the global audience is 'Gangnam Style' by PSY. It reached about 2,541,784,147 (2.5 billion) views. It was puplished in 2012 and it is still going on around hearing it where ever you go. On the second chart, comes along 'See You Again' by Wiz Khalifa, and it has roughly about 1,576,249,923 (1.6 billion) viwers. It was puplished in 2015. The third on the top 10 chart comes, 'Blank Space' by tyler swift with reaching roughly 1,529,902,797 (1.5 billion) views. This was puplished in 2014. The next song on the top 10 chart, the fourth in line is 'Uptown Funk' by Mark Ranson with 1,467,279,754 (almost 1.5 billion) views. Final but not least, the top 5th on the chart is by Taylor swift 'Shake It Off' with 1,386,951,297 (around 1.4 billion) views. All these top 5 most viwed song are catogrised as pop genre.

Research & Planning: Initial Thoughts & Ideas

Our general ideas from our starting point towards our final concept of our music video. These idea's enables us to take forwards to contruct a strong music video, then this will enable us to work on it further, creating a high standard video.

Our current thoughts and ideas:

• Having different forms and conventions in our music video, such as performance base and narrative. For example, starting our video with a narrative then cut to the performace base and repeat this process through out the video. To do this we decided that we should use a low budget venue. This will benfit us as we would not have to pay a lot for our venue, as well as follow the bands (The Jaques) foot steps (a venue they often use themselves) like conform to a convention of the indie rock genre.
• Using hand-made instruments that matchs the sound of our music such as, guitars and drum set. This idea supports the imagination of our artist that we decided to have in our music video, which make our production more creative and different to other music video performance. This also allows our audience to engage more with the artist imagination and be part of it.  
• Using Andrew Goodwins theory:
  

1. Which relates to matcing sound to visuals. For example capturing extreme close-up shots of the instrument performance matching the music notes/beat. I personally believe applying/ using extreme close ups making it engaging especially towards our audience.
2. Also adding another of his theory such as, matching lyrics to visuals. For example capturing close ups of the artist singing the lyrics while performing.

• We decided that during our narrtive shots of the artist, we should have our main artist wearing the headphones, which gave us the creative idea of adjusting the volume to make it seem as if its coming out of the headphones. This inspration was used before in a music video that we have once analysed during our media lesson. In the beginnning of 'Duke Dument- I Got U' music video a man bought a virtual reality headset, when he puts it on he is transported to any place or visuliastion he has in mind, where wonderful things happen. The video switches couple of times between the visual world to reality, and when we as an audience see the 'real life' scene, the music is muffled, this gives the impression that the music is coming from the indise of theheadset.

• Moreover, I also liked the idea of having a stage for our performance shots, making the main artist imaginagtion seem more lively and realistic towards our audience.

Research & Planning: Lyric Analysis

After researching into our band, and selecting the song, which we chose as a group called 'Weekends'. It was time to analyse the lyrics of the song to maintain synthesia which is were we piture or visual ideas in the minds eye, or when we hear the sound we immediately create an image of the music/ sound in our minds.

I researched the lyrics on the interent, however i couldnt find it anywhere, perhaps The Jaques have not released their lyrics out yet to their songs to stay as an orginal band. We then decided to write out the lyric to our chosen song. I wrote out the lyrics onto my phone and edited to write around what i visuled.

From analysing the lyrics, there where some repetetion of a verse such as 'sing and dance', from this I visual the band performing on a lighten up and colourful stage dancing whilest singing with the beat in a live show, surrounded with audience waving around with the flow of the beat.

To add to that 'they pour their fractured hearts out', i visuled them singing out load and juming around that is mentaly fractured their hearts out.

This analysis is important, if we are including a narative or concept base into our music video, we need to make sure the viwer is watching is essentially seeing what they are hearing.

Research & Planning: Artist (The Jaques) icnography

Iconography defination: Deals with identification, discription of the content image to represent that specific product/ media style. Also the main sybject depicted, the particualr compositions and details used across the media products. Also mean the number of fiqures used, their placing and gestures. (Meaning, like a brand for a specific institiution)


During our media lesson, we did a small activity to define the term 'Iconography' and look at some example of band or any other brands, and discussed about their iconography. We looked at a band that is more broad in the music industry, they are called 'Years & Years'. We saw some of their magazine and posters, we found out that they use their logo/ band name constently through out their brand to represent who they are, this is one of their iconography.
This allows their audience to recognize them through the their name and genre.

After choosing and researching our artist and song, we were then asked to make further research into our chosen artist (The Jacques) and create a collage of iconographies in a powerpoint or word document. This will allow us to accurtely represent them as who they are in our music video. I looked at google images, their twitter and facebook profile of the band, as well as research through their previous music videos that they released on youtube.

When i researched their profiles i found out that they constintly use their band name in a unique font style, specific for their band, it is used throughout their whole productions.

From looking at their music videos and profile pictures, their fasionable style of outfits suits the 'indie' genre style. They usually were dark clothing such as, dark trousers/ jumper, baggy shirts/ t-shirts and doc martins foot wear. In terms of their hair style also suits the indie style genre. Most of the band members have long her, for example, the lead singer Fin has long blond hair which is typical convention of indie rock genre.

The Jacques seems to have a particular syle when making/creating their music video. During Post production editing, the editor applied Andrew Goodwins theory (matching visulas to sound), such as when The Jaques performing the instruments are shown constintly throughout the music video. To add to that, the editor perhaps like to represent them more in Black & white effects in majority of their music videos. The effect makes their videos unquie in style and different to other indie rock genre music videos. It will also help the audience remember them that way. As well as that their songs is more the 90's fastion but combined with this generation to attract their traget audience. The black & white effect helps to reveal a vintage and old video fastion look.

Research & Planning: Artists Appearance (The Jacques)

We decided to contact the band to be in the music video to illustrate their orginality. they firstly argreed to be in our production. Though a slight change of plans of the band, they decided to back up and not become part of our production. This lead us to histation and issue to change our whole plan and song selection. However, I came up with the a decent plan to keep our ideas togther and keep it the same but alter our atrists choice, by having young people becoming/ pretending to be the band.

To add to that, now that we couldnt use the band, and came up with a concept which could portray the band without using the artists, we found a past albums through our research. They have frequently used images of childeren with different effects on them, which would support our idea for using children to represend the band.
For example this these two albums

We decided to choose a girl that is in love with this band and especially in love with this particular song we selected (the weekend). We found our artist quicker than we thought, as one of our team members sister was the perfect for this role. She will be presented as our main artist. We as a group think that she fits the role and character of a main vocalist singer really well from her authentic look, in addition to this, she also looks visually similar to the lead singer in The Jacques band (Fin Jacques). She visually has simialr hair style as it is short towards the sholder and same hair/eye colour as main artist in the band.

For the rest of the band members we decided to select friends of of our chosen lead singer. This will enable them to have a strong connection and chemistry, just like the The Jaques band, which means that they will be able to be more energetic during the perforemance due to their confidence therefore stronger relation between them (our chosen band). 

In terms of costume, we revolved around the idea of our artist dressing and style, which compliments the uniqueness of the song itself. We wanted to keep our choosen artists costume relatively simple, which allows the audience to focus more on alternative aspects of the music video.

Research & Planning: Artist approval and permisssion

We as a group our final song choice is called 'Weekends' by The Jacques. In order to use their song we firstly needed to ask permission for a copy right, if we are allowed to use their song for our music video. We had to get permission from either the band or their manager. Which we did. We had to do this so that ourfinal music video will not be taken down due to breached for copy right purpose. One of our group member had a close connection to one of the Jaques band (the lead singer) on Facebook. She contacted him and we got a respond, in this image bellow shows a breif overview of the converstation:

Research & Planning: Chosen music

Main Task:

In this year’s A2 levels, our main production is to:

'create a music video that has not yet have produced a music video for, from our chosen artist'.

From looking at the main task, it is recurred to select a certain song from the artist that they have not yet released a music video. Therefore, in my theory is to research more less well-known artist within our local distribution and not being attracted by global audiences in this stage. This will enable us to research into their songs and create a video for their music as they are in less budget to create a music video. To add to that, having to choose less well-known artist is more likely for us to create a music video as they wouldn’t have created one before for our chosen song.

"The weekends" by The jacques is the final deciousion song we have chosen to do for our music video.

Research & Planning: Artists (The jacques)

The Jacques band 

The Jacques are a band from Bristol area, consisting of 4 artists that are made up of two sets of brothers. Jake Edwards, Oliver Edwards, Fin O'Brien and Elliott O'Brien. They were all friends from their teens, forming a band in the early 2014 and start to make a noise, first performance in Bristol area where they are based, then, rather quickly, elsewhere. They played at the Dot to Dot Festival and GuilFest and were then a support band for The Libertines show at Hyde Park. On the day of Hyde Park the Libertines big show sees them take down the tent metaphorically, later in the day it will be taken down and closed literally. Then Amsterdam, Glastonbury and, as this summer progresses, North, South, East and West of the UK will be added to the list.

At the center of this band of brothers, (again metaphrorically in addition to literally) stands Fin Jacques. Whom was lyricist and songwriter at a young age, music is one string to a bow that conatins fine art and poetry.

Their genre and style of music is classed as indie-rock which revolves around electronic sounds.  Yhounger audience tend to like the distinctive and unique style of music which they make, because it stands out and contrasts against the mainstream music. We finally decided as a group to choose this artist because their music mood generates creative thoughts, which we can embed a wide range of elements that can be assembled into a music video. This challenge can create a risk to pull it togther and to produce a high standard music video. In order to challenge can create a risk, we have to work hard as a group to illustrate the song and somehow illustrate the band by including their inconography.

3. Analysing Music Video Genre

In an Indie Rock genre, the videos tend to have varying combinations of conventions; such as bright, dark or sometimes black and white depending on the tone of the lyrics and music.

Indie music tend to cover a mixture of narrative and performance base whereby the focal point can either be the main vocalist or the performance of the whole band, or even the band or artist not making an appearance in their music video.

The narrative music videos in this context usually are more representational or symbolic, rather than illustrating the lyrics. In this sense, they are typically quite versatile. The editing techniques differ based on the pace of the Indie music, whereby it can vary from slow to fast pace. The artists are generally presented in a casual manner reflecting upon their outfits. One example could be the band; Kaiser Chiefs.

Kaiser Cheifs band

Examples of their music videos

2. Analysing Music Video Genre

For our music Video we chose The Jacques band that produces Indie Rock genre. In this case I and my group will be studying/ researching similar bands that does the same genre and similiar ideas/concepts ino their videos. This will allow us to represent our chosen band in a high standard concept and conventions within the music video, which will make us produce it similar to big budget music videos.

Imagine Dragons

Imagine Dragons is an American rock band, who formed in 2009. They also produce different genrs within the rock theme including the following, alternative rock, pop rock and indie rock. The band topped the year-end rock ranking for 2013. Imagine Dragons spent nearly two years bringing their passionately inventive brand of alt-rock to arenas around the world.
Their music sound was perfect for "blurring the lines between genres". this was certainly the case for their hit Raidioactive which rose high in the Hot 100, Alternative, and Mainstream Top 40 charts. As a whole, the band's sound is a mix of alternative rock and some pop that focuses on deep bass, strong drums, and powerful vocals. In the music industry, Imagine Dragons' sound is described as distinctly "rhythmic".

Musically, "Radioactive" is an electronic rock song with elements of alternative rock and contains cryptic lyrics about apocalyptic and revolutionist themes.

This song song that has it all – infectious, engaging and memorable melodies, multiple “payoffs,” multiple “magic moments,” deep, engaging lyrics that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.  “Magic moments” are certain aspects of a song that take the listener’s experience to a level far beyond what they were expecting.

The video revolves around a mysterious female drifter (Daddario) who is on a quest to save her friends (Imagine Dragons) from the perils of a sinister, underground puppet-fighting ring. The "Champion" of the fight, a large purple-colored beast, beats and kills innocent stuffed animals and puppets forced to fight. The woman's pink teddy bear puppet enters the ring and fights the "Champion", initially being beaten up. After getting up from the ground, the teddy bear knocks out the champion with a single superpower punch. The owner sends two human body guards to subdue the teddy and both are disintegrated with the teddy's laser vision. The remaining spectators flee, leaving the woman with the owner. She takes a key off the owner's chest and unlocks the band from their dungeon. They walk out leaving the owner in the dungeon. He is then surrounded and attacked by the earlier defeated puppets.

1. Analysing Music Video Genre

In our group we have expressed an interest in creating a music video, which includes both or either narrative/ performance as a base for the music video.

The conventions of a music video differ depending on the genre of the music. However, some general conventions are; the artist are shown performing, the lyrics of the song reflect and influence what is shown in the video, the pace of editing is suitable to the pace of the music, and the codes of outfits tend to reflect the mood of the song. 

We researched a performance based video with relating to Rock/ heavy metal genre.

The Rock genre videos are usually presented in a slightly mysterious and edgy way to create an atmosphere. The video tends to be performance based, with more focus on the main dressed and the make-up, which reflects upon the stereotypical rock look; more so in general, the mise-en-scene is entirely of dark tone. Sometimes, when a narrative based music video is produced, th storyline tends to outline the meaning of the usually dark lyrics. Moreover, the editing of the video tends to have a fast pace to match the tempo of the rock/metal atmosphere.

Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

Deconstructing Nirvana music video:

Throughout the music video there are several shots of members of the band all in equal measure to show that they all make up the band. However, throughout the music video more shots were focused on the lead singer to notify us as an audience that he is the main artist. To add to that, the lead singer is framed centrally compared to the rest of the band to highlight his importance, whilst he is playing his guitar to keep to generic conventions of the rock genre. The artist and the band clothing would have been representative of the rock style when the music video was released in 1991. The lead singer has the stereotypical image of a rock star with long hair and almost 'shabby' looking clothing. Today, however, they are not too symbolic towards the trend of the target audience or the genre because of the changes in fashion. Which means that we thought about our music video outfits to fit within the new fashion to attract our target audience. The narrative in the music video is mostly performance as you are often shown images of the band playing their instruments throughout the video, however as seen there is some concept and abstract idea in the foreground. The fast paced editing of the video, emphasizes the intense and dramatic tone of the grunge music, the low key lighting and evident smoke machine also add to the hectic nature of the rock and roll stars.

I chose to select Rock genre within the period of the 90's as I believe they have a strong Rock genre within their music videos. They also have something in common such as the conventions. They all tend to have performance base either on a stage or in a hall. They also tend to be in a dark tone grading or steamy foggy atmosphere to keep the performance energetically high.

Analysing Music Video Director: 3. Marc Klasfeld

Mar Klasfeld is an American commercial director, film director, screenwriter, photographer and music video director. He has directed over two handred music videos for artist such as Katy Perry, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Britney Spears, Kid Rock, Micheal Buble, Nelly, Foo Fighters, Charli XCX, Jewel, Fun, Avril L avigne, Aerosmith and many others with muliple awards wins and nominations.

His hit videos for Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth's "See You Aagian (Wiz Khalifa song)" is not only the first hi hop video to ever raech 1 billion views on YouTube, but the fastest to ever achieve the landmark. He is also the founder of Rockhard. Rockhard has produced videos for Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Jessie J, Adam Lambert and among others.

Analysing Music Video Director: 2. Jake Nava

Jake Nava
Jake Nava is a British director, best known for his work in music videos and TV commercials. He's created videos for various artists, including Britney Spears, Beyoncé, and Adele. Jake Nava has worked with Beyonce for 12 years, and it's time he does not take for granted. Nava the fifth best music video director of 2011 for his videos “Someone Like You” and “Monster”. The Times placed Nava's video for Beyoncé, “Single Ladies”, at #3 in The 25 Most Influential Music Videos of All Time. It won "Video of the Year” at the MTV Video Music Awards, the MTV Europe Music Awards and the BET Awards.

He prefers to work with instead of having a conceptual or narrative based music video with actors. However, in the music video “single lady”, he decided to make it slightly different that it does not fit his typical type of music video, though he still included performance base with the main artist in focus (centre) throughout the whole video.

To add to that, as you can tell the music video, through post production editing was colour graded in black and white. Normally, Jake Nava works with natural colour grade, for example, like in Usher's music video for his song 'Burn.       

Analysing Music Video Diectors: 1. Director X

Director X

Julien Christian Lutz (born October 31, 1975), better known as Little X, X or Director X. He has been directing music videos since 1998. X has been noted for his high-budget, visually distinctive music videos for popular music singles, including videos for The Wanted, R. Kelly, Usher, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Korn, David Guetta, Nelly Furtado, Sean Paul, Justin Bieber, Drake, Nicki Minaj, T.I., Little Mix, Fifth Harmony, and Iggy Azalea. He always worked with very popular and well-known artists. He is most probably very well-known music video director of the modern age producing music videos from the pop and hip hop genre.

City and Colour - Wasted Love

His trademark is tweaking the letterbox format; instead of just using black bars on the top and bottom of the frame to frame the image, many videos by X actually feature the bars opening vertically to reveal the video and closing vertically at the end, like a letter box.

His official web page: http://directorxfilms.com/home.html

Rihanna ft Drake - Work

There are some similarities between his music videos he produces. As you can see, it seems like Director X prefers to use the artists in their videos, rather than hiring an actor to portray the artist. To add to that, Director X seems to prefer to incorporate some sort of dance routine into his videos, but not in all of his video, for example in Little Mix's 'Black Magic' there is no dance, due to the fact that it's a strong narrative based music video. In addition to directing musical videos, Director X has also had experiences in filming and into fashion and modelling consultancy.

Little Mix - Black Magic

Predicting the number of shots and calculating the percentage

In my media lesson as a whole class we explored the theory by Steve Archer- music video quote(2004)

'Music video typically consist of an excessive amounts of close, extreme close up and voyeuristic shots in creation.'

which suggests that mostly in all music videos the amounts of shots are used are close, extreme close up and medium close up.

We explored this by watching music videos and in each group is to start predicting the number of set up, cuts and medium close up. Then calculate the percentage of the medium close up being used in that particular music video. We calculated the percentage by dividing the number of medium close up by the number of cuts and then multiplying it by 100.

This table shows our results of this theory

Music names	Ed Sheeran	The vaccines- If you wanna	Mcbustard- Air Guitar	Royal blood
Predicted number of set up	17	23	20	15
Predicted number of cuts	64	132	153	243
Predicted number of medium close up	37	80	98	180
Percentage of medium close up is used in the music video	(37÷64) x 100= 57.8%	(80÷132) x 100= 60%	(98÷153) x 100= 64%	(180÷243) x 100= 73%
	faster the tempo

By observing the table and watching the music videos I believe that the faster the tempo the more cuts are used is the video. Under the table there is an arrow showing the music tempo getting faster each time we watch a different video which increased the number of shots, cuts etc. This evidence shows that  the tempo speed need to sync with the shots,  as well as sync with the sound in the music video