Tennis and Kitchen filming

Today we had a day off because of the teachers striking, so we though it was a good opportunity to kickstart our filming. We decided to film the tennis and the kitchen scenes of our music video, which we were able to do in one day as there is a park with tennis courts right near Alice's house, which is where we filmed the kitchen scene. Here is a behind the scenes video that Valentina filmed on her phone:


Here are some of the final shots we got for the tennis scene that we will be using as part of the music video:

Rich Mix Trip: Part 10

While at the rich mix trip we got to hear from two industry insiders; Liz Kessler and Corin Hardy. Although it wasn't necessarily useful for our music videos, as they obviously have access to much more equipment and money than us, it was really useful for our background research about Music Videos, and also to anyone who might want to one day go into the industry.

First we heard from Liz Kessler, who is a Music Video Producer, and worked on a variety of music videos, such as:
Wiley - Numbers In Action



I find this video really interesting, because although it is quite a simple concept it would have take a lot of planning and editing to create, and although it is also a one shot video it is still creative and unusual.
Another music video she has worked on, on a much bigger scale and budget, Is Britney Spears' Criminal. According to Youtube, I'm not allowed to view this video as I am under 18, so I will have to update this post in a few month's time.


Corin Hardy then talked to us about his role as a Music Video Director. As he trained in animation, lots of his videos involve it such as these:






And something quite different to his usual style, which shows that as a Director he has to be prepared to work with lots of different genres and concepts:

Rich Mix Trip: Part 9

MTV to Youtube

2000's
Black artists have by now dominated most music genres, especially Pop, R&B and Hip Hop. Women are also very present, but often very sexualised. For example, this video by 50 Cent really shows women being objectified:






These kinds of videos are also very performance driven, and are often showing the men as being in control, and as having wealth, being attractive and being powerful, in contrast to women.

The invention of Youtube, as well, introduced a new accessibility to music videos; people could now see them whenever they wanted, and even email them to friends, which would easily spread the marketing potential of music videos. However, the ability to easily view these videos, along with being able to download music for free, means that record companies cannot afford to make the traditional massive budget music videos without help, meaning that product placement is a very prominent part of modern music videos.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 8

From MTV to Youtube

1990's
Similar to the 80's there are lots of examples of dance routines and performance videos, especially shown in the singing/dancing group genre that was very popular in the 90's, for example The Spice Girls, S Club 7 and Westlife:



Boybands in particular have a very recognisable Music video style, involving lots of panning shots, close ups of the singers, and concepts to do with being high up, often on skyscrapers or hills. Girl groups often involved skimpy outfits and, especially with the Spice Girls, their own 'identity', to show that each member of the group has a different personality, and thus make up a whole group. 'Wannabe' also uses the idea of a 'one shot' video, which is when the whole video is only one shot, meaning that there is not much editing involved, which can be seen today in videos such as Bruno Mars' The Lazy Song. It can also be very difficult to do these types of videos, as they require lots of choreography and preparation behind them.
Alternatively, there were videos such as Blur's Parklife, which very much refer back to videos such as Can't Buy Me Love and Our House. This was very different to the boyband genre of music videos because they focus much more on the concept aspect rather than the performance aspect of the video. There are also no dance routines or fancy locations involved, as the Britpop genre was more about life in urban and suburban areas, and focuses very much on the lower middle and upper working classes.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 7

From MTV to Youtube

1980's
The 1980's were a very significant decade for music videos, as in 1981 MTV was launched, a channel solely dedicated to showing songs and their music videos. This was a massive breakthrough for music videos, as it made them more easily accessible, and anyone could view them at any time.

An example of an 80's music video is Madness' 'Our House'. Madness were well known for having weird and wacky music videos to go with their unusual music style and multiple band members.


This is quite similar to the Beatle's 'Can't Buy Me Love', as the editing is quite unusual, and it shows the band as being quirky and wacky. The video is also quite humorous, especially as one of the members of the band is dressed up as the 'mum' figure in the house.

Until the '80's, music was quite Britain - dominated, but artists like Madonna gave American music the spotlight. Madonna was also one of the few female recording artists around at the time, and in this video of her song 'Open Your Heart' she uses her gender to sell the song and her video, whilst still being empowered.



Another social group that weren't often represented in music videos until the 1980's were black music acts. MTV didn't think that their audience involved black people, and felt that black people were the only people who would watch black music videos. Artists like Michael Jackson showed that there was an audience that would happily watch his videos when he released Thriller, one of the most famous music videos of all time:



These music videos are much more the sort we would recognise today, with choreographed dance routines, concepts, and unusual shots. They also all include elements of voyeurism, which is unintentional in most videos, but often present.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 6

From MTV to Youtube

1970's
Queen's video Bohemian Rhapsody is often named as the first proper music video, as it was not part of a movie or TV show and was not shown on any kind of video jukebox.


Bohemian Rhapsody is also the first example of a music video having much money spent on it. It cost around £3,000 to make, which was back then a lot of money. It would probably cost less than that to make nowadays, as the equipment is much more accessible and the effects would be easy to create on a computer.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 5

From MTV to Youtube

1960's
The Beatles were a band who were innovators in many ways. They were one of the first bands to have movies made focused on their songs, similar to musicals such as 'Mamma Mia', although they were more focused on showing the songs than having a particular storyline. This 'performance' of Can't Buy Me Love in the film A Hard Day's Night shows the Beatles as themselves, rather than having a concept behind it.

The use of editing is probably the main feature in this video, as it takes some footage of the Beatles mucking about and uses different speeds and shots to make it work with the song. It also add's the band's inmage of being quite wacky and different, and is quite different to the typical videos of the time in that it does not show them as formal or grown up, rather the opposite.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 4

From MTV to Youtube

 1950's
 In the 1950's there was cultural revolution in young people, brought on by the Teddy Boy style and singers like Elvis. Most music performances were on TV, and were often so focused on performance that they were almost music video like.




Although these performances would often have concepts behind them, they wouldn't usually have the range of shots and close ups that a music video would have. However, they did feature choreography, and lots of set design and costumes etc.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 3

From MTV to Youtube

1940's 

In the '40's these things called 'Soundies' were developed. They were like jukeboxes, but they played videos along with the song. The videos were usually promoting the artist, and were often considered quite 'racy'. An example of the kind of video that would have been played on a Soundie is Nat King Cole's Frim Fram Sauce:

There are many elements in this that would be very familiar to viewers of music videos today, as they have lasted around 60 years, for example, the elements of voyeurism, when Nat King Cole observes himself in a Soundie. Also familiar to viewers today is the objectification of women, as the video features an up and down shot of a woman's legs that is entirely irrelevant to the narrative, and was only there for the male gaze.
Soundies were later banned because of the video's racy nature, so then a similar version cropped up in France: the Scopitone. These were in colour, always featured the artist, and often featured some sort of dance routine to grab the audience's attention. Here is an example of a Scopitone:

Shooting Schedule

Today in the lesson we decided to put together a shooting schedule so that we can start filming. Here it is:

It's only the one page because Valentina is away over christmas. Me and Alice are still possibly planning on filming over the holidays but we don't know when we will be free and we don't ant to film in London when there will be christmas choppers and january sales, so we're going to have to film the London parts at another time.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 2

The first half of the trip was Pete Fraser talking about the history of the music video. He did this decade by decade, so I'm going to do individual posts for each decade.

 From MTV to Youtube.

1930's
The concept of the music video was not yet developed in the '30's but the artist Len Lye was among the first to have a video that had visuals to go with music. This was called an 'art video', and was made up of lots of different stills all played together. This video is called 'A Colour Box'




The concept isn't entirely a music video, but there are characteristics that are similar, for example the way the images change with the music. There is also an element of product placement that is still used today, in that the Post Office have advertisements in the video, as back then they would have funded any videos made.

Rich Mix Trip: Part 1

Today we went to the Rich Mix in Shoreditch for a media trip. It was organised by Pete Fraser, the chief examiner for A-Level Media Studies, and included lots of useful information about making our videos, as well as the chance to hear from industry experts, Producer Liz Kessler and Director Corin Hardy. I thought that it was a really successful trip, as it gave us the chance to hear from the examiner himself, and to see what could one day be achieved if we decided to take media studies further into our future careers.

The first part of the day was very informative, as Pete gave us a history of Music Videos, and gave us a task to do over lunchtime, where we had to listen to a song and come up with a concept for a music video for it. I was chosen to pitch our idea (eek!) and Joely came up with the concept. Here is the pitch:




And here is the response (all in darkness because Valentina didn't want to film Liz and Corin):



And finally, here is the song and video that Corin and Liz created for the band Dry The River, the song being the one we came up with a concept for.

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall developed the concept of audience positioning as a result of examining news reports on industrial strikes.
He claimed that media representations established a framework for possible responses – this is like setting an agenda for issues to be raised with audiences.
The responses to an audience watching a media text would be likely to fall into three main categories: 

Dominant readings mean: Audiences respond to the way narrative is constructed and adopt the points of view implied

Oppositional readings mean: Audiences reject the way the narrative is constructed, question and challenge the points of view implied

Negotiated readings mean: Audiences partially accept the way the narrative is constructed but can see both points of view: the dominant and oppositional readings

Aberrant readings are an additional interpretation: where the text is read in a deviant and largely unanticipated manner, the preferred reading not being recognised at all

Foster the People

This is Foster the People's video for their song Call it What You Want. I find this video really interesting, because the locations are incredible, and the use of tracking shot really works with the song. I also really like the way the broken wall acts as a peephole into the action, so it is like they are controlling what we see. A good example of objectifying women in this video is when the band's name is written on women's body parts, and the way the band's name is spelled out on their t-shirts. This is objectifying them as they are using the women as a way to sell their band brand, rather than humanising them.

Duran Duran

 This is Duran Duran's new video for their song 'Girl Panic'. It is quite similar to their video 'Rio' back from the 80's, as it features the objectification of women quite heavily. This video, however, could be considered as much worse as it features many famous supermodels, who are in barely any clothing.