RESEARCH: Consumer Profile

PLANNING: Treatment for ONE MORE YEAR by Fij

We have our central character leaving his school days behind for university. We illustrate the lyrics up to point however we also want to incorporate a series of montages of the student with friends doing the everyday things that represent aspects of his life that he is leaving behind.  

The overall structure will be formed with cutaway shot’s of the central figure and his firneds placing his belongins in the trunk. The trunk will be open and empty and the beginning of the song and shut by the end. Throughout the song the trunk gets progressively more packed until it is shut symbolizing the end of their year together and the song.

FINAL SONG CHOICE

We decided to do our music video to One More Year by Fij, an unsigned band composed of a singer/guitarist. The genre is indie / pop and has rhythmic and face paced beat, with several repetitions throughout the song. This particular track has a rap like quality.

We liked the idea of using an unsigned band since that allows us to create a fresh and original take on the song.

Equally, the lyrics of the song are about being about the last year with your friends before university. This is easy for our target audience to relate to as they are likely to be either just leaving for college or to have recently left.


Possible Visuals:

 Initial discussions have been on interpreting the music and how we would treat it visually. We considered the idea of representation of our year group and their daily activities. However we could also frame the story as these people doing these things for the last time, symbolised with the trunk being opened at the start and closed at the end of the video. Throughout the song the trunk gets progressively more packed until it is shut symbolising the end of their year together and the song.

Brainstorming for Song Choices

Hoodie Allen- No Interuption

Fast Beat- Catchy Lyrics-Young Voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t431MAUQlQ

However... Already has a music video made by the artist and has over 4 million views on youtube.



Fij- One More Year

Fast Beat- Tells a story with the Lyrics- Band- Young Voice

One More Year is one of our top choices since the artist of the song is the older brother of a member of our group. This provides benefits since we can talk to the artist for advice on how to present the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdLZYCz-d1E&feature=related

Jack Johnson- Good People

Slower pace- Vocal song- Benefits provided by just the single artist
However... Jack Johnson is a high profile artist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxuCLopcEy4

Research and Planning

Describe and Evaluate your skills development over the course of your production work:

How I have improved after producing my Thriller?

By producing my Thriller " The Black Rose" in AS I have learned several skills that will help me in my A2 project of making a music video. Adobe Photoshop was a graphics editing program which allowed me to manipulate the key image of The Black Rose into a mock webpage for the movie. This program will also be useful this year for my music video. 

I have also improved in my skills with editing movies. Using programs such as iMovie and Adobe Premier Pro CS4, the quality of our production can be greatly increased. 

Having done the Thriller my actual filming technique has become more advanced with the numerous camera angles that I have learnt to include. However, both a thriller and a music video would require different angle shots in order to compliment the subject matter of each one.

How were you creative?

For my AS Thriller opening, my group was most creative in the subject matter of the movie having spent much time on producing a good story board. However, I believe there was more potential to improve the creativity in the characters props. The outfit of the leading character Natalie was very average and we could have built on her profile of a mentally ill woman with her clothing. For the Black Rose several different camera angles were incorporated in order to maximise the effect we were trying to create for the Thriller opening.

Thirty Frames Per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music Video

Steve Reiss and Neil Feiman ( Harry. N. Abrams New York, 200)

The music video has to be densely teetered so that it can hold up over repeated viewings. It has to be edgy enough to be noticed, but palatable enough to satisfy the often divergent demands of the performer, the record company and the public.

A plot-driven narrative usually gets boring...knowing that their music videos are meant to be seen repeatedly, most video directors prefer a denser, more abstract style to telling a simple story.

For Jim Faber ( The 100 Top Music Videos, Rolling Stone October 14 1993), " Video directors reprove what good film directors knew all along- that visuals can also be music. When exacted with élan, an edit becomes a back beat, a crane shot a solo, a close up a hook."

Narrative in Music Video's

Heidi Petters says “Narrativity does not seem to be an absolute necessity within the medium of music videos.” Instead she believes that you can create an emotional connection with your band through a series of poetic montages. She goes on to say that 


“The fact that music videos in this sense are primarily poetic does not mean that clips never contain narrativity. Most music videos do develop a storyline, embedded within its poetic structure and some clips even contain introductory story sequences or non-musical narrative sequences inserted within the video number but "outside" its musical score. Narrative in clips becomes a device to structure the poetic clip world and make it more accessible and recognizable to the viewer.” 


Heidi Petters view contradicts with Richard Dyer's Entertainment and Utopia. A Utopia is an ideal place or  any visionary system. A utopia won't represent the public face and the private struggle, but instead present a perfect society.