JT - Feedback Rough Cut 4

Audience: We showed this version of the rough cut to members of our A2 media class (all aged 17/18years old). This is an ideal audience to show the rough cut to because it fits within our primary target audience for the music video of 15-24year olds. 


In yesterdays lesson we got feedback on our rough cut 4:

• Jack on the rocks (zoom, out of time)
• Two pizza scenes
• End gets faster then slower
• Fade music 
• More footage at the end/slow down the existing footage
• Jack :multiple images 
• Smaller layers of narrative
• Performance on too long (leave first one)
• Refilm performance
• Shot distance
• Fade into one another (narrative)
• Artificial zoom
• Zoom into a heart, transition to the next shot
• mobile phone shot, bit awkward and out of place
• Flying: shot should be held longer to time in with music
• Good layering
• Intro of Jack gazing
• Reflection in the tarn and throwing bread to the ducks
• First perfromance: hard to see?
• no order to the narrative, simple linear edit wont work

JT - Carol Vernallis

Carol Vernallis - Experiencing Music Videos (2004)


-As a musicologist, she stresses that the audio takes primacy over the video

GM - Representation in our music video

 1. Gender

• We have kept a very equal gender representation throughout our video. We have used attractive actors however we did not cast them on this aspect. We chose the people because we were friends with them or their family and especially with the younger children we needed the consent of an adult. As it turns out we could say that the older generations provide male/female gaze for the audience.
• The person we cast as Robbie is a male and in the video he is very much in control, however in some places he is showing his more emotional side which is not expected of the male gender in media.
• One place in our video where the woman may be seen weaker than the male and purely there for sexual attraction is in the baking scene where the man graps her bottom and leaves flour hand prints there on her trousers.
• Our video includes a cast of both males and females which keeps the target audience wide.

     2. Sexuality

• Our video portrays a hetrosexual relationship as the norm. We chose this because it is a male singing about a female that he is in love with therfore this scenario made sense and worked well with the lyrics.
• This relationship has also been used because it is the one that traditionally has always been more accepted by society.
• In addition to this it more appealing to the majority of both our core and secondary audiences as hopefully they will be able to relate to what is happening in the music video.

     3. Ability

• In some ways we are following the codes and conventions of music video as it is very rare that a physically disabled individual is used.
• This was not decided in a discriminative manner, Jess and I just decided that it would not fit in with our idea very well.
• Casting would have also been a problem because there are very few people at school or in our friendship group who we could have been suitable for the role.
• We are also inexperienced music video directors so using people with disabilities would have been an added challenge.
• Also it appears it would be more appealing to the majority of our core and secondary audeinces as hopefully with the cast we have chosen they will be able to relate to the narrative story.

     4. Ethnicity

• 
  Our video includes a purely Caucasian cast however this was not intentional. Due to the demographics of our school and where we live, finding an ethnic variety of people to cast was not possible. I do not think that this aspect will narrow the target audience of our video as many existing vidoes are not commercially suffering from this.
• Also, Robbie Williams is a white British singer so we have used a Caucasian cast although this would probably been different had be been a black American.

     5. Age

• We have used a variety of age groups throughout our video. The youngest generation add the 'cute factor' whereas the older two couple add to the music video's appeal to the core and secondary younger audience. By using actors of this age it would allow our target audience to engage with them further and be able to relate to what was happening in our production.
• Robbie has been cast as a younger male, age 18. This was because Jess and I didn't really know anyone who was older to play the part. By using someone older we may have had issues with finding times to film between us being at school and perhaps their work or family commitiments. However I think that by casting Jack he would appeal to all audiences as a cheeky, well brought up young man.

6. Social Class

• Because of where our school is located Jess and I have used actors and actresses from Northern England. There a preconceptions that people from Yorkshire are poor and unsophisticated. However this is usually determind through their accent and we are only using lip syncing so this should not effect our target audience.
• The mise-en-scene has also been heavily influence by the area we live in. All of our scenes are in comfortable areas and the footage that was taken in the house shows middle class.

GM - Narrative theory in music videos

Narrative theories generally do appear in music videos. The narrative in music videos can be put into three main theories for analysis: Todorov (equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium), Propp (each character has a purpose - hero, sender, villain, reward etc), Strauss (the exploration of binary opposites).

An example of Todorov's theory in existing music video is in Hero by Enrique Iglesias. 

Equilibrium - Enrique Iglesias and the girl (Jennifer Love Hewitt) are together and happy.

Dis-equilibrium - The car they are travelling in breaks down and they are attacked by a group of men.

New equilibrium - Enrique Iglesias dies however he knows that Jennifer Love Hewitt is safe away from the men.

A number of features within a music video help determine the theory. These include camera angles (close ups, low angles etc symbolise a hero as someone we look up to), mise-en-scene (rain for a sad scene).

GM - Role of narrative in our video

We have decided to include both narrative and performance footage in our music video for a number of reasons. First of all we though that is we only used performance then the audience would get bored very quickly as it was all the same. In addition to this it would have been very hard to film enough performance with just one person as Robbie to fill the 4 minutes 25 seconds of the song. Had our video been purely performance it would not been appropriate for repeat viewings.

The song we chose was 'She's the One' by Robbie Williams so, like the title suggests, we made sure that our narrative focuses on how the girl of our couple was 'the one'. We did this by showing them growing up together thoughout the video, starting at the young age of 6 through to the beginning of their adult life at 18. Our narrative ideas fit with the lyrics of the song therefore what you see on screen generally emphasises what is being said in the lyrics, presenting it in a way that makes sense to the audience. 

Although we have included narrative in our music video, none of the footage that we have used really fits with any of the three narrative theories or Propp, Todorov or Strauss.

We have used flashbacks in our footage to the couple when they were younger. This is all part of the narrative explaining why 'She's the One'.

GM - Digipak draft 2

We showed this to our teacher who is part of our secondary audience and an original follower of Robbie Williams, remembering his time in Take That and when he first launched his solo career.


Front cover

Back cover

These are both unfinished with the lack of some extras such as copyright information because before we could finish them we recieved some feedback saying that the images we had chosen portrayed the music genre as country rather than pop, the genre that we are wanting to show.

• The QR code is a fully working one, linking to our company blog, NUmusic, when it is scanned.
• We have edited the twitter and facebook logos in Photoshop Elements 4.0 and made them greyscale because this fits in better with our digipak. The coloured versions of them would have looked out of place.
• For our next design we are going to go back to the original font that we used for digipak draft 1 and we are going to crop the barcode down from the top because as it is currently it is too big.

We have planned a reshoot with our Robbie performer for the 21st February to get the new images that we need. He is going to be dressed in a suit as his costume for this draft is too informal. We are still going to try and go for the same scene but from the front and behind idea but this time of him in a tree.

But we recieved feedback:

Issues:

-Long shot

-Nothing light

-Tree shot

-Similing but not cheesy

-Date being sold in 2012

-Change the name:Regeneration

-Kate Bush

-Doesnt feature music video

-old fashioned title

-Just bonus DVD - 3 part list

-Spine, code number and title, artist

-Needs to be pop

-Company logo

-Bar code too big

-Fit text into the back of his jacket

-front cover of digipak-gift wrapping, unwrapped, can sneak a look inside (gift tag)

GM - Final Casting

 

 Generation 1 - John and Sophie (age 6/7)

 

 

 Generation 2 - Zoe and Josh (age 13)

 
 
 
 
 
 
Generation 3 - Katie and Nathan (age 18, 21)

 

Robbie - Jack (age 18)

GM - Digipak draft 1

Front cover

Back cover

Flap 1 inside

Flap 1 outside

Flap 2 inside

Flap 2 outside

Middle panel

This is our first draft of our digipak. At this stage we have not added all the extras that should be seen on the covers such as copyright information and twitter and facebook logos. This is because for now we wasnted to ensure that the images we had chosen were the ones we were going to use and we were just playing around with them.We created these images in Photoshop Elements 4.0. The images are all freeze frames that we took from our music video clips. We chose the title font for the front cover because when we researched Robbie Williams CDs this was the type of font that he used. This was as close as we could get it as he uses thin, simple fonts.

 E.g. of Robbie Williams font

For the images of the couples for each generation we used the gradient tool to fade out the edges. We kept the front cover in colour but changed the younger generations to black and white to symbolise that they are from a longer time ago and are the eldest generation when they were younger.

We did not use this image as our final one after conducting more research into digipaks we realised that a convention of them is to have the image fitting the entire front cover, not how we did it with it only a partial image. When we were creating our digipak we were trying to follow examples such as Linkin Park by having the front and back covers as the same scene but one taken from the front and the other from behind. However we received some feedback that in this case it was not working and also there was a lack of layering and effects

ALL - Music Video Directors

Robbie in a music video directed by Arnell

Vaughan Arnell

• Arnell was the director for Angels and Morning Sun which are two of Robbie Williams songs
• Angels was the first piece of work they worked on together  which then created a friendship and produced more collaborations
• He only does British Music videos
• He is also a T.V commercial director, with his work including some for Nestle and Levi's. Despite this he is mostly known for his music video work

The music videos he has produced for Robbie are:

• Morning Sun - 2010
• Bodies - 2009
• Sin Sin Sin - 2006
• Radio - 2004
• Feel - 2002
• Somethin' Stupid - 2001
• The Road To Mandalay - 2001
• Eternity  - 2001
• Supreme - 2000
• Rock DJ - 2000
• Let Me Entertain You - 1998
• Angels - 1997

Jake Nava 

Jake Nava

• Produced the video for Lovelight (2006) for Robbie Williams
• Nominated for Best Director in 2007 at MTV VMA's for Beyonce featuring Shakira - Beautiful Liar, And also for Video of the year 2007 by BET
• Won a Grammy for best short form music video 2012 for Adele - Rolling in the deep
• Produced the iconic video for Beyonces track Single Ladies, which got best video of the year (by BET 2009), video of the year (by MTV VMA 2009), video of the year (EMA 2009)
• For Beyonce - Crazy in Love it won best female video and best r'n'b video at the VMA
• Jake "often layers a coat of chic style over a rough-edged film scape
• He has also done advertising including projects for Armarni, Bacardi and HSBC

Has worked with artists such as:

Beyonce's famous dance routine
Nava directed

• Beyonce
• Pink
• Blue
• Robbie Williams
• Spice Girls
• Enrique Iglesias
• Britney Spears
• The Rolling Stones
• Adele

Corin Hardy 

Corin Hardy

• Got his early career and gained filmed set experience in props and wardrobe on a varitey of films, t.v and theatre productions including Columbia Pictures "first knight"
• He has also developed a number of his own horror based feature film projects
• Produced videos for Heart Skips a Beat and Busy for Olly Murs, Olly is known as a younger Robbie Williams with his Cheeky approach and music style
• Warriors Dance by the Prodigy won MVA 2009, nominated best dance and animation amongst other awards

Artists hes worked with:

Olly Murs 'Heart Skips A Beat' video
directed by Hardy 

• Keane
• Mcfly
• Olly Murs
• Paulo Nutini
• Biffy Clyro
• The Prodigy
• The Feeling