Teacher feedback

Hello Group 22
Your blog is taking shape now - some very good work on here.  There are some excellent extra blogs too.  I am a little bit worried about the picture you've all posted of 'Andrew Goodwin'.  It's not Andrew Goodwin.... This is Andrew Goodwin:

Also - Kehinde - please can you take your address off the top of the letters requesting copyright clearance.  I don't think it's wise to publicise where you live on an open blog!

Keep up the good work.

Research for Music Video: Mood Board

Here is our mood board. Our artist is called Lucretia and she is a young fresh female solo artist emerging from London and she does songs based around the 'Dubstep' genre.

Until then!

Stephanie

Research for Music Video: Examining the original artist website

So we could get a better feel of the artist, I decided to have a look at the artists original website, which can be found at http://www.thisisnero.com/nero-guilt/. Here is a print-screen of the website.

front page of Nero website

As you can see, the website is very dark and mysterious, using black as the background which has those connotations. It is also quite futuristic as they use silver for the huge NERO sign at the top of the website, which also grabs the readers attention. It is quite clear and precise with the text: information such as videos and shows is shown on the top. making it easy for the consumer click on the links and find out more information. The links are also in a contrasting colour, which again makes it easy to read. Nero do a good job at promoting themselves - on the front page is their latest song 'Guilt'. This is so fans can hear their latest song and perhaps be tempted to purchase their merchandise or songs. In relation to our artist and how we want to portray her, I think we will take on the same modern, futuristic feel, but perhaps we might give it a more feminine feel, as I feel the whole feel of this website is masculine.

Until then!

Stephanie

Planning for Music Video: Analysis of 3 music videos that have influenced us

Me and my group have looked at loads of videos for inspiration, but there were only a few that caught my eye because of the amazing editing skills. Here are the three main videos with explanation, with a bonus for you all! Here is the first, Pixie Lott - All About Tonight:



At the start of this video I really like how she layered the establishing shots of the city with ECU shots and CU shots of her face, so it kind alike hitting two birds with one stone, establishing the setting AND the artist, also it looks really creative too and adds interesting to the opening, so we are probably going to use that as inspiration for our music video. Also, the costume change is what I think makes it a good video because it adds interest to the video and plays around with the viewers eye, so we will probably incorporate some costume changes in our video. Since it won't let me embed this video onto my blog, here are a few stills of this fantastic song and video, Emeli Sandé - Heaven:

What I love about this video is the brightness of the video and how it glows and makes everything in the video appear flawless. Me and my team want to apply the same editing effects to our video and make the artist appear innocent and light. I also like how the artist is portrayed singing in different angles to add interest to the music video. In addition, at some point during the video, it unfocused then focuses to the image, which almost gives the impression of the video being seen in a persons eyes, which really draws the audience in and gives a lasting impression, further more reinforcing Andrew Goodwins point on repetition; you will want to watch this video again! Finally, our final video that has influenced us, Nero - Promises:




When the beat drops in this video, I love the slow yet upbeat dancing within the chorus. Prince really wanted a dance routine, so we are probably going to borrow this type of dance,and edit it with slow motion, fast motion and reversing to the dancing looks almost alien and impossible. Hopefully with all these ideas we will make a truly memorable video!

Until then!

Stephanie

Planning for Music Video: Analysis of original video for song choice

This is the video for Guilt by Nero. In the video it seems to be set in a strip club or brothel, with the pole dancer being the main focus in the music video, with the vocalist Alana appearing in the video subtly, and more attention is paid towards the stylised editing and the background. This is possibly because Nero are a dubstep genre, and with most dubstep artists, for example Chase and Status, don't feature in their video unless doing a cameo appearance. Now to analyse!

THE BEGINNING
At the beginning, there is a very high angle shot of the buildings with 'NERO' on a billboard. I can't quite tell if it is a cartoon or real life but it appears quite animated, as if its a dream, imagination or memory. Also, when the camera swoops down to reveal the location, you see the word 'GUILT' in front of the building, which is a clever trick to embed the song and artist in your head.

LIGHTING AND MISE EN SCENE.
In the video, the lighting is quite dark as it is set at night. but it is brightened up by the strobe lights in the background, which really help to set the scene. I've noticed the lights have a red tone to it, which could possibly connote lust or evil or both of them. This is quite interesting because the pole dancer in the video is quite a taboo subject; because of this it is age-restricted on Youtube. They have put quite a lot of emphasis onto the strobe lighting, it is like a repeated motif throughout the song.

CHARACTERS
The main character in the video is the pole dancer who takes up most of the camera time with her amazing performances and tricks, which is quite an interesting thing to put in the video, as the lyrics specifically talk about guilt, and I don't see the connection with that, which makes this video a disjuncture. If you look at my past blogs, I have explained the different types of videos structure, but to recap your memory, a disjuncture is when their is little or no relationship between the video and the lyrics, or the lyrics contradict the video. We will take some aspects into this in our video. The singer in the video isn't shown that much, CU's and ECU's of her face and facial body parts are shown sometimes, which does signal her as the singer but doesn't really make her the main attraction in the video.

EDITING
The editing with this video has two main aspects. The first is I noticed they use have an extensive use of a cross fade or cross dissolve, so most of the clips merge into one another so its a clean smooth transition, which in turn makes it look professional and well made. Another is they slow down the speed of the clips and make the pole dancers legs look longer, so it looks quite futuristic and modern.

Until then!

Stephanie

Planning for Music Video : Final song choice

After countless (and frustrating mind you!) conversations and debates about  what song we should do, as we had divided opinions about the songs we each chose individually, we decided to scrap it all and choose a song from scratch. We decided to choose a dubstep song, which a newly created genre which is a more mainstream version of drum and bass. Originally we chose Prince's suggestion, Nero - Innocence:

As you can see, it is a brilliant song but it didn't give much opportunity or lip syncing and we didn't have many ideas or mise en scene, as we couldn't get inspiration from the video itself as it is an anime cartoon, and Dan didn't really like it either so we scrapped that. So, I suggested Promises:



But Prince didn't like it as it didn't give much beat to do the dance routine that he wanted to do. So we found a song that combined the two, and came up with Nero - Guilt:

Until then!

Stephanie

Planning for Music Video : Short-list of potential songs

So my group were discussing and we came up with a short list of songs that we might use for our video. Here they are:

Noisettes - Wild Young Hearts


Lowkey - My Soul


Jai Paul - BTFSU


V9 Collective - ?


RD - Do It Like Me


They are all very different and from different genres, ranging from alternative to grime, so hopefully we will make a good decision!

Until then!

Stephanie