AS2: Task Two – Analyse the artist

Task Two – Analyse the artist

Electric Guest as an artist has a casual image in their everyday lives, so they don't wear anything that is colorful like Katy Perry would or a Lady Gaga abstract outfit, they are just casual when they go out to red carpets and in their music videos. 

Here is an example in this video, you can see that the two members of the group of the band are casually dressed. As you can see in the picture, majority of the clothes that they wear are is dark, just to note they wear different colours not just one when they wear their casual clothes. In-which our music video we are going to be wearing casual clothes.

Electric Guest's song style is indie rock/pop, this genre is calm and quite cheeky. Electric Guest show that in their lyrics and through their music videos as well. Also, it can be fun like the music video 'This Head I Hold' where a bunch of performers do fun stuff and that's what they are.The have a single called 'This Head I Hold' which has been heard on the IKEA advertisement. 

AS2: Task One – Choosing the track/gaining permission

Task One – Choosing the track/gaining permission

The track we are going to use for our music video is, by Electric Guest 'Holiday'. With choosing this track, so that our music video will not infringe any copyright laws for our video we are asking for their permission to use their track.  

Here is the song by Electric Guest 'Holiday

Task Five - Understand the techniques of music videos

Task Five - Understand the techniques of music videos

In this task, I am going to inform about what I understood about editing this video of 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' by Kiki Dee and Elton John. The first minute of the song was edited.

There were many shots that we took for the video, for the whole of the one minute section of the song. It took us about 7 takes or more to get this correct for each type of shot such as the normal shot that has the 2 characters, the close ups; the shot were at the two individuals so it showed the first character recording the one character and the other just so you could see them perform their verse. And lastly, the crane shot, since there are two characters performing with the microphones, using the crane shot will just make the video even more interesting. Which, then leads to my point of, if this video wouldn't have any shot variety then this video would just be boring because there are only two people standing and singing, with one shot all the way through it will just be plain and boring. The camera was angled in front of the character, to catch the both of the characters. Then, it was angled at the left side and the right side of both of the characters to catch individual close ups. 

I directed the actors by telling them by giving more camera looks and enjoy the song by dancing over the music as they are the backup singers to perform their cue. I think that the music really helped the performers really perform in time with the music and it was helpful with the lip-syncing and dance in time with the music. This helps because while editing the music video, the song will just be placed, so I could tell them over the video to just smile more and dance, also everyone sang during the music video so that lip movement matches whats being said on the song which is how we made the performance look realistic. 

Editing this video was really quite tough, the first thing was what footage am I going to begin with and how its going to flow together. The usage of markers was very helpful in the fact that it helps to cut to the music or even a cue for the backup singers part of the song. Below is an example of the green marker to mark the cue on the top of the picture. 

How I lip synced the footage was trial and error, with this it took quite a while to get the lip syncing on point. This helped me cut to the beat and let the video flow really well and using the fade tool really helped to cut to the beat again it just helped the video flow. Using the markers helps you use the tool at the right time also. 

Task Four - Understand the techniques of music videos

Task Four - Understand the techniques of music videos

The process that I went through creating the animatics with the video clip it self has consumed a lot of time of executing it. First of all we had to watch about 45 seconds of the video and draw the shots that were shown to match with whats going on in the scene. What I have learned in these 45 seconds was that there are a lot of different shot types, and the pace of the video is really fast because it goes with the guitar playing in the beginning of the video. Also, the pace is fast because its just the band playing and it needs to show all of the band members, and loads of different shots to make the video more interesting and because there is no story to the music video, thats why there is a lot of different shot types within the short time period of 45 seconds. With this video I understood that there was a shot variety of different shots such as long shots, mid shots and crane shots with the rapid editing. This was understood while making the storyboards that there were different shots, and how the rapid editing was understood. This was so fast that I needed to mark where it cuts to a different shot. 

Here is an example of where you see the example of marking when to cut since it was a very fast sequence that was going on. The quicker the sequence is of the music video, the longer it is going to take to complete finishing editing to the music in time with it. 

Task Three - Understand the techniques of music videos

Task Three  - Understand the techniques of music videos

In the process of making this music video, I understood some of the techniques that were ideal for the music video while using Adobe Premiere Pro. While editing some effects were used for this video to make it entertaining, which leads on to the tools that were used for this project. 

For this music video, I had to choose clips that can set the tone in the beginning of the video, we had to cut to the beat since it dropped six times. To help me find where the beat dropped I had to manually navigate where it dropped, and the equalizers on the right side of the picture helped me mark where they were. Everytime the beat dropped the scene had to be cut so it could go with the music effectively. I thought this was useful because it shows that the video is well orchestrated by cutting to the beat, if this wasn't used then it will be boring and it just won't be suitable with the rap music and also it is quite fast, so the pace of the visuals have to go with the music.  

To make this even more interesting using special effects, one I used was lightning as you can see in the photo above of yellow and blue. On the right side, is the settings to make the lightning big and small, the speed of the lightning itself and many more settings. This effect was used because I thought it could make the music video unique and different to other ones just to interest viewers. 

Split screen, because the teddy bear was the best dancer in the video, I decided to use the split screen on the bear with his funky dance moves. Up above the three shots, is the sequence of where the video shots are placed. Where there are three bars of the video shots, was when i decided to have three boxes of a split screen going on at the same time. What I did to execute this was, while I used the main video shot going on, on top of this clip I added two more clips going on at the same time so that it can come together cohesively. 

With editing this video, by using key techniques such as cutting to the beat, using special effects and using split screen, it has been a long process of executing and using these techniques. With cutting the beat in the video it is good because when I was trying to find out where I had to cut for a scene change I would mark where it was as implicated before. Although, going through this process of marking and finding where it was and finding out how to do it was time consuming. Furthermore, it was hard since this was a rap song because it was fast and the visuals had to keep up with the pace. Using the special effects such as using the lighting and using a really weird shape was used to make the visuals much more interesting. With using the twirl effect to make the visuals weird, with this effect it had to be place on the video clip, so that when the video effects settings can be adjusted just as the lightning effect. And lastly, the split screen. The split screen part of this was quite hard to get, by putting the clips on top of each other on the sequence and then crop the scenes into a size where it can be seen properly. Just as cutting to the beat, this was time consuming. Successfully, the time payed off by really taking the time to add the effects and to edit this video at a whole, even though it took time to get this video to edit I thought that it came together cohesively. 

Task 2: Andrew Goodwin's 6th Convention: Intertextual References

Convention 6: Intertextual References

For Andrew Goodwin's final convention, he states that music videos are often filled with intertextual reference to films, TV, programmes and other music videos, so through the process of creating ideas of a music videos, ideas can be taken from something else that has been visually shown. This has been used over the past, till this very day this convention is still being used.

An example of this is Jennifer Lopez's music video of 'I'm Glad'. In this music video she acts as the main character from a film called 'Flashdance' and in the music video, the scenes in this video has been really rein acted from the film. So like the film it takes you through this girl's journey of her dreaming to be a dancer which really illustrates in the music video. 

Jennifer Lopez's music video, with the scenes in her video matches with this video below here.

Another example that falls under this convention is Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy' music video featuring Charli XCX. This music video has an intertextual reference to the film 'Clueless', some scenes in the music video really imitate with some of the ones in the film. 

Here is the video that Iggy Azalea's music video imitates.

Lastly, one more example is Beyonce's big single in 2009 'Single Ladies'. This intertextual reference is different to the others that have been talked about in this task, because two of the music videos have a reference to films. Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' single was referenced to a dance performed in her music video, the part of the video when Beyonce and her back-up dancers were doing a dance move that was specific which was implemented in her music video. Also, not only the dance move Beyonce also has the two backup dancer behind her as well as Gwen Verdon. 

Here is the video of Gwen Verdon and Beyonce comparison of the dance.