Shot List

Main Shot Ideas

• Main view of the house - full view, low angle.
• mid-shot of main girl in anger tearing out the book case.
• Long shot of main girl running after a car in tears, driven by the friend she wronged.
• long shot of 2 characters. girl in odd clothing playing the violin and a mime who is copying her actions.
• close up of a girl at the tea party wearing a butterfly mask.
• close up of main girl on chair, looking angry and confused while the camera jerks and shakes and hands are all around her.
• Mid-shot of main girl on the balcony, reaching out. the camera pans to the left.
• long shot/low angle of main girl on the hair sat in an awkward position.
• long shot of the main girl at the tea party with 3/4 other characters. lots of movement while she is still and upset.
• long shot of main girl singing in the destroyed forest, dull lighting (natural).
• close up of teddy bear - stop motion - as he walks towards the main girl.
• close up of face/feet/waist of ballerina in the forest
• mid shot of top/bottom half of ballerina in the forest
• long shot, low angle of ballerina in the forest
• extreme close up of main girl's decorated lips as she lip-syncs
• close up of main girl's face, black tape crossed over her mouth, black tears down her face.
• long shot of girl on the balcony. laying across it and singing.
• zoom in from a long shot to a close up of the girl on a small chair placed awkwardly as she sings
• straight angle, long shot of girl as she comes up from the garage.
• close up of the back of the main girl's head as she slowly turns around to reveal the tape crossed over her mouth.
• over shoulder shot from the main girl with a tear down her cheek as she watches the car leave the gates and drive away.
• close up of main girl still as another girl sings her song in her face.
• mid shot of girl awkwardly crawling out of the small door like its a place for toys to live.
• extreme close up of girl's eyes crying with lots of black eye make-up running down her face.
• a zoom out from an extreme close up of girls eye to reveal her in a different location.
• mid shot of girl miming song and then someone's hand comes and puts it over her mouth to stop her speaking.
• girl dancing on the stair case in extravagant clothing, long shot.
• long shot of girl miming against the archway to reveal the archway and building next to it. 

Meeting 7

During this meeting we arranged to film at our location on saturday the 26th November with the home owner. Looking at the weather forecast, we decided that it would be more practical to film scenes that are inside the house. This was our first meeting in which we had to make sure we all agreed on what costume design we wanted for each scene so that we knew what to bring to the location.
The pictures below show our make-up and costume designs:

Key Frames

Key Frames

I have created a small clip of key frames, I have used a selection of pictures. From these I have put skills that I have learnt in lesson into practice. I have zoomed in on pictures, zoomed out and added text. The skills that I have leant from this exercise will be applied to our animatic storyboard.    

BARB

KISS TV

Average Daily Reach - 182 0.3%

Average Weekly Reach - 986 1.7%

Average Weekly Viewing (hrs:min per person) - 0.01

We thought that Kiss TV would be suitable to play our music video as they play all modern pop videos and this is the typical genre our video falls in to.

MTV HITS

Average Daily Reach - 222 0.4%

Average Weekly Reach - 1,201 2.1%

Average Weekly Viewing (hrs:min per person) - 0.01

MTV Hits is a one of the MTV family that specifies in pop music. Hits shows that the channel shows only the most popular songs around at that time.

4 MUSIC

Average Daily Reach -  1,057 1.8%

Average Weekly Reach - 4,455 7.7%

Average Weekly Viewing (hrs:min per person) - 0.05

4 Music is one of the most popular music channels to play pop music, this is due to the fact that it can reach a broad audience as its available on digital. It generally plays popular music of the time among tv shows so therefore the station would play our music video.

VIVA

Average Daily Reach -  1,097 1.9%

Average Weekly Reach - 4,702 8.2% 

Average Weekly Viewing (hrs:min per person) - 0.05

Viva is a very popular music channel as it reaches are large audience this is because it is accessible on free view so, as it shows the most popular music of variant genres (mainly focusing on pop) we feel that our video would be shown and viewed by many on this channel.


Some channels would be chosen to not air our video such as  KERRANG, MTV Rocks, Vintage TV and more. This is mostly due to the fact that the genres of music played on thee channels do not include that of the pop music genre.


We believe that the channels we have chosen to air our video are ones that will draw in our target audience and these will then be the people that would hopefully buy the track then the prospective album.

Hype Williams

Hype Williams is a very well known music video director in the R&B and Hip Hop genres of music and has done lots of work with many famous artists including; Kanye West, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Jay Z, Beyonce and Drake to name a few. Hype tends to show a continuous style across all his videos in order to show a signature look and to portray the specific genre as well as keep to the demands of the artist and record label.

 

Hype's name on the videos

I will compare Hype Williams’ music videos but focus mainly on Beyoncé’s ‘Check on it’, Nelly and Janet Jackosn’s ‘Call on me’ and Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’. Analysis and comparison of the music videos will be done using Andrew Goodwin’s Music Video Analysis from ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (Routledge 1992).

The main similarity across most of Hype William’s videos is the appearance of his name at some point within the video.

Within his video for Kanye West’s song ‘Gold Digger’ featuring the vocals of Jamie Foxx, it is clear to see Hype’s portrayal of the Hip Hop genre with his use and placement of women within the video. The women are placed in provocative outfits and in sexual situations in order to help sell the track. This is supported by Laura Mulvey’s theory as she states the ‘Male Gaze’ is used to show sexual objectification of women, she believes that in film; audiences have to view the female characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male.

This idea of female objectification used to sell a track is also evident within other videos directed by Hype Williams such as Beyoncé’s ‘Check on it’ video. The sexual image of Beyoncé herself is the main focus of the video as she is dressed in revealing clothing most of the time and the dance routine tend to include some suggestive moves. The dance routine included within the video gives the clear idea that the song holds the genre of pop/R&B. the running pink colour theme throughout the video also shows the pop side of the video as well as the idea that the video is to advertise the film ‘Pink Panther’.

The videos all seem to show similarities in terms of the way in which they’re framed. Each video seems to show emphasis on the main artist(s) from the torso upwards with a key focus on the face. For example; in Gold Digger the background consists of a main colour that fades into the middle to highlight the centre of the screen which is generally where one of the artists are is placed in order to draw audience’s eyes to where the director intended. Similarly, in Nelly and Janet Jackson’s ‘Call on me’ video the artists are placed centrally with still, colourful backgrounds. The artists are able to stand out as they are constantly moving which immediately draws the eye away from the colourful backgrounds and towards the artists themselves.

The fact that Hype tends to focus mainly on the performing artists themselves shows that Richard Dyer’s ‘star theory’ is evident as it is clear to see a realtionship between the star and the audience as well as the stars’ artificial images.

It is clear to see that throughout each of Hype Williams’ videos that they tend to be mainly performance and conceptual as they seem to include artistic situations and ideas along side performing in terms of lip syncing and dancing.

Director Essay - Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry

Although he won an academy award for his filmmaking, Michel Gondry is a talented music video director who is noted for his mise-en-scene manipulation and his inventive visual style. The Auteur Theory suggests that a director creates films that relate to their own personal vision, as if it was their project. Gondry shows to be no exception to this; his variation of music videos show his love for the effect given off by stop motion, and his love for surreal and comical devises are also included in his music videos.

On of these inventive visual styles is his love of stop motion; the video “hardest button to button” by the White Stripes. Having already directed music videos for The White Stripes such as “Fell in Love with a Girl” and “Dead Leaves the Dirty Ground”, the artists were well aware and also fans of his creative vision and style. The music video simply consisted of the two band members in a typical New York urban setting. However, Gondry used 32 identical Ludwig drum kits, 32 identical amplifiers and 16 identical microphone stands during the shoot. The editing style creates a natural but exciting pace to the song; every time meg would beat the drum, a new kit would appear and she would appear that she is moving along. Although being a very time, consuming yet effective visual, the editing matched to the strong rhythm of the song amplifying the beat of the drum making the video seem even more catchy and exciting. 

However, Michel Gondry is not only famous for his editing technique of stop motion, he is also well known for his surreal concept ideas. One of his most famous music videos that demonstrates this is the one for the Foo Fighters. In the music video “Everlong” Gondry created a surreal and satyrical conceptual video with a small narrative style. The video was made up of a number of dream sequences from each band member.

The idea of having a music video made up of dreams meant that Gondry was free to make this video as surreal and extravagant as he wanted when it came to mise-en-scene; in one scene, a band member’s hand swelled up to an enormous size so that he could hit someone and although this hand was obviously not real, it still created a strange and almost comical effect. 

This music video also demonstrates Gondry’s experimental style when it came to visual manipulation; in the music video, Gondry uses only black and white colour in the scenes that are the reality and the scenes in colour that are the dreams. Although the audience know that the dream scenes look more realistic when in colour, they understand that this is Gondry playing around with his visuals.

Another music video that plays around with visuals is his music video for “Let Forever Be” by The Chemical Brothers. Like the White Stripes video, the music has a strong beat which reveals his preferred music genre. This video, however, has a very similar conceptual idea to that of the Foo Fighters video; the woman in the video is dreaming. Here Gondry used inspiration from Ray Davis’ 1975 Granada TV production of “Starmaker”. With the heavy use of props, Gondry allows the mise-en-scene to give the vibe of a performance on a stage, allowing the video to seem exciting but still with a strong dream-like sense. 

Michel Gondry’s directing style is easily recognised in his music videos and is a prime example of the Auteur Theory in which he fills the music videos with the use of personal inspiration, editing and visual preferences.

Auteur Theory

Director: Mark Romanek

Artist: Jay Z

Song: 99 Problems

Mark Romanek is known for his foundry pushing, visually disturbing and thought provoking images. These are seen in some of this most famous music videos Nine Inch Nails- Closer 1994, as well as ‘The perfect Drug’. Both music videos being something disturbing and causing controversy, this being one of the main reasons his videos have been so popular to the audience.

Mark Romanek is well known for his excellent cinematic work, this is shown in Jay Z music video, 99 Problems. It highlights the directors talents as well as his known traits. The director has mostly created music videos for the rock genre so he has used this aspect of rock and roll to create a new and original rap music video, which has never been done before.

Instead of the typical male heterosexual viewer, on looking women as a sexual object (Laura Mulvely ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ 1975), the male gaze is not the main concept in Jay Z’s music video, it has little to do with the way men view women or their relationship.

Instead the concept for this music video was created from something Jay Z had requested and the director worked from this. All he asked for was to portray the areas he grew up in New York, Brooklyn, in a beautiful way. He wanted to portray the area he grew up in, in a different way than one would normally look at it. The idea of making the graffiti on the wall look like a piece of art. The way they decided to show this was by using still images, making these looks like vintage images in black and white. Giving them a crisp and raw look, with a clear artist and beautiful edge.

I will be using Andrew Goodwins ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ to analyse Jay Z, 99 Problems music video.

The pace throughout this music video is extremely fast, showing around 60 different shots in under the first 40 seconds. These quick shots link in well with the rhythm and beat of the song. Having lyrics being said at a very fast pace matches with the quick shot changes.

Each shots is located in an area in which has a meaning behind it, for example the shot of Jay Z sitting on the sofa in a flat. This is the flat that he used to live in when he was growing up, each location has a personal meaning to Jay Z. Which therefore makes this music video have even more depth to it, and a hidden meaning. The dog fighting scene is a real footage of live dog fights, this creates a realistic feel to what living in that area was truly like. Making the music video feel more like documenting moments than putting together a normal music video.

There are some lyrical and visual links throughout the video, such as when the police man come up to Jay Z in the car and he says ‘ I know you’ll gonna need warrant for that’. As the police man wants to search his car. A quick scene shows the car boot being see through allowing the view to see that in the car are what looks like illegal substance. This therefore makes the audience understand the lyrics and the visual. For if the police officer opened up the car boot, he would have found illegal substances and would have therefore changed the whole course of Jay Z’s life, as this was said by him to have been a real life experience. Like many rap songs, expressing moments that have happened throughout their life.

There are not many shots where women are under minded, however there are a few scenes of women wearing very little clothing and washing a car. However I don’t feel this scene is used to improver Jay Z, more for him to express the real life situations that occurred in the area he lived in.

The inspiration for this whole music video concept came from the work of old vintage photos, and making something that to the naked eye may not look very ‘ attractive’, looking beautiful and very artistic.

The director really becomes in charge when he requested to Jay Z getting shot in the music video, the artist firstly did not want this to happen t all but after a while came round and allowed the director to take full control and trust his view. This shot really capture the life in which many people lead in New York, it highlights most issues. Of illegal weapon, gang violence, drug wars etc. It also shows a lifestyle in which Jay Z may have lived in if he carried on doing the illegal things he was doing before his music became his driving force out.

For Jay Z as an artist this type of music video is very boundary pushing and original. Something that you won’t see any other typical rap artist use, its very fresh and raw. It doesn’t use women in a negative way to make the artist seem powerful, it just uses normal clips of people in New York city doing normal things.