Music Video Research and Planning Tasks

Below are some tips from Pete Fraser, OCR Chief Examiner, which you should study first of all as you think about the task ahead. Then, you have 11 Research and Planning tasks to complete. You will be marked out of 10 for each task, which will give you an idea of your progress towards your final mark. Deadlines are given for each task.

RESEARCH AND PLANNING TASKS:
Over the next few lessons and homeworks, you are going to undertake key research into your chosen genre to help you with your production task. For each task, you need to produce your research using different media, for example as a video clip, podcast or animatic with a voiceover. Each task must go onto your Production Blog by the given deadline.

TASK 1: INDUSTRY: Research Sony Music. Make points about:

  • History of the company
  • What sort of products it produces
  • What kinds of artists does it sign
  • Facts and figures - how much profit the company made last year, how many countries it covers
  • Add links to Sony's website, social media pages, different products

DEADLINE: 27th June


TASK 2: ARTISTS: Research two or three award-winning pop artists from the Sony record label. Make a short biography of each, including how long they have been with Sony, their social media profiles, their best-selling products.

DEADLINE: 27th June



TASK 3: CONVENTIONS: Research the key conventions of music videos. Consider how Andrew Goodwin's theories on the conventions of music videos fit with a video of your choice from the pop genre (see here to see Goodwin's book, 'Dancing In The Distraction Factory' (1993). What ideas do they give you for your own music video?

br /> DEADLINE: 27th June


TASK 4: VIDEO ANALYSIS: Look at at least five music videos from Sony Music artists from the pop genre. Use the work you've done on Emeli Sande to help you. Embed the videos in a blog post and use Goodwin's ideas to comment on:

  1. the range of camera shots used
  2. editing of footage
  3. settings used
  4. style of video (e.g. narrative/performance)
  5. types of characters represented
  6. how they use verse and chorus
  7. how they use the beat and rhythm
  8. how they showcase the artist
  9. how much the visuals relate to the lyrics
  10. what's the concept?

DEADLINE: 20th June

TASK 5: TREATMENT
Write a treatment for your music video and website. A treatment is your pitch for the track, with a suggestion of what your 'concept' might be. It needs to be clear, workable and realistic in what you aim to do. If your idea is too elaborate, more can go wrong and you'll only be disappointed!

Present your treatment and get feedback on this from teachers and fellow students and then review it in the light of their comments.
DEADLINE: TREATMENTS TO BE PRESENTED ON MONDAY 1st JULY


TASK 5: COLLAGE: Use found images from the Internet to make a collage of iconic images from music videos for your chosen genre. Comment on how these could link to your own video.
DEADLINE: 28th June


TASK 6: NINE FRAME ANALYSIS: Produce a detailed analysis of the first nine frames of two music videos for your chosen product. This task can be written up as a blog post or in a word document and attached to your blog. What ideas do they give you for your own music video? Use the Titanium Powerpoint to help you.
DEADLINE: 28th June


TASK 7: AUDIENCE ANALYSIS: Research the demographics and psychographics of your target audience - a fun-loving 16-25 mass market demographic'. Make a poster with a picture of your typical audience member, statistics about their demographic and at least 10 points about their psychographics (what they like doing in their spare time, favourite places to shop, favourite things to eat, habits, lifestyle, music they listen to, social media they use...)


TASK 8: AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS: Interview at least five members of your 'target audience' - a 'fun-loving 16-25 mass market demographic' about what they expect or would like to have included in your music video. What ideas do they give you for your own music video?
DEADLINE: 29th June


TASK 8: TYPICAL SYNOPSIS: Take four different music videos of your chosen genre and write a paragraph summarising each. What ideas do they give you for your own music video?
DEADLINE: 2nd July


TASK 9: RISK ASSESSMENT: Just as for AS, you need to do a risk assessment for your filming work. For guidelines on what to consider, click on Staffordshire University's Media Centre.
You  need to assess any risks of damage to property or you/your actors, or any passers-by, and ensure you take appropriate measures to avoid potential hazards. Make a Risk Assessment for each different location you will be filming at, and upload it to your blog. A sample template is here:




DEADLINE: before you start your filming


TASK 10: WEBSITE HOME PAGE: Choose two or three band home pages for your chosen genre. Analyse them in detail for: design; content; connotations of images, fonts and colours; atmosphere; the message the page is giving; the image of the band. You will eventually create your own as part of your assessed production portfolio. What ideas do they give you for your own band website?

TASK 11: Analyse two website home pages and two linking pages for two bands/artists of your chosen genre. Annotate them for colour, use of images, use of sound and video, use of media language such as fonts, layout, typography, backgounds and logos.

TASK 12: Check out different website-making software on the internet. Wix is a popular one. Try out a few and decide which one you find most user-friendly for your own website.
DEADLINE: 14th October


Now read this:

Music Video for A level (by Pete Fraser, Chief Examiner)


Probably the most popular task over the last 20 years in the second year of A level courses has been making a music video. Changes in technology have meant that what students can produce has changed dramatically in that time; from the early days of crash editing between two VHS machines, when you had to do every shot pretty much in sequence to today's digital editing, where you can set up multiple timelines, the possibilities for music video on no budget have been transformed.

First of all, I think it is important to determine what a music video actually is; it would be too simple to say well, its a video and it's got music, so it must be a music video, because those criteria could apply to all manner of short films. I would see six key elements which would be there in almost every music video:

The video lasts at least as long as the track (can be longer if you have an intro or outro or both)
The video features the artist/band quite prominently
The video features some element of performance- singing and playing instruments (usually miming) and often dancing or acting too
The video has some kind of concept along with the track
The video does not feature a complete narrative but the concept may involve fragments of narrative
Different genres of music produce slightly different visual conventions in music videos

These criteria are an important starting point, as often student music videos seem to disregard them, which is a mistake. If you don't show some element of performance by the artist you are entering the realm of a small minority of music videos, which are maybe so strong conceptually that the artist doesn't matter or from very particular sub-genres of dance music. I would beware of this. If you are Chris Cunningham dealing with Aphex twin, it's fine, but at a level it is likely to end up looking like it isn't a music video...

My ten step guide starts with some activities to build skills that you will need later on...

Step 0: limbering up

This involves doing some exercises, just like you would if you were a sportsperson getting ready for the race or game. If you try shooting a karaoke-style multi-angle version of a track for fun, you will have the chance to make lots of mistakes and to get some inhibitions out of your system if you are going to be the performers in your own video. See an example:

 svens edit of jam malice (tom b, jahmal, sven) from cmdiploma on Vimeo.


Totally improvised (!) but shot from three or four setups, this exercise gives confidence and builds skills with synching up performance and soundtrack.

A second exercise which works really well as a whole class and gets everyone to pay very close attention to how the video is constructed is a frame by frame re-make of part of an existing video. By storyboarding this and then filming shot by shot to stay faithful to the original, it helps give you more sense of how cutting works in real music videos. Student ones are often too slow paced, so that when you look at real ones you might see as much as three times as many shots on average being used than in a student one. Again here is an example, along with the 'original'



Step 1: Choosing your track

for your final production, it can be a mistake to go for something too well known as the image of the original will always be hanging over you, particularly the image of the artist. There is plenty of material available from relatively unknown bands which you could use from MySpace or elsewhere; you can create an image from scratch with your own performers adopting the role of the band.

The other things are to choose a track which stimulates some visuals and which isn't too long. Three minutes for a music video is enough of a challenge, so don't go for some five minute epic- you'll struggle to sustain it for the viewer.

Step 2: Write a treatment

A treatment is your pitch for the track, with a suggestion of what your 'concept' might be. It needs to be clear, workable and realistic in what you aim to do. If your idea is too elaborate, more can go wrong and you'll only be disappointed!

get feedback on this from teachers and fellow students and then review it in the light of their comments.

Step 3: Do lots of research

You should be looking at real music videos from the same genre of music as your own, not to copy them slavishly but to get a sense of what the conventions are. look closely at them and break them down to see how they work. (see tasks above)

Step 4: Plan for everything

Storyboard as much of it as possible

It might be tempting not to bother with storyboards but it is a mistake if you do so. You need a visual plan for your work as it won't just happen when you have a camera in your hand! I would recommend using post-its for constructing a storyboard, as you can move the frames around and change the order easily. Once you have done the storyboard, the next step is to turn it into an animatic, which quite literally involves taking a photo of each frame (on your phones or a webcam, nothing fancy) and then dropping the frames onto the timeline of your digital editing program. You can then cut them to length, in time with your music on the audio line and then export the whole thing as an animatic- a moving storyboard. Here's one of the first thirty seconds of a video...



The other crucial aspect of planning is logistics. This involves production management skills, thinking ahead to everything that could possibly go wrong on your shoot and to every little detail of what you will need. Nothing should be left to chance- costumes, props, locations, camera equipment and people all need orgnaising. Don't have your actors just wearing any old clothes- plan what they will wear; don't rely on someone else remembering particular props, have a list of who is bringing what. For a music video, the instruments are props, so don't forget them! Don't assume everyone will simply turn up- make sure everyone has all the phone numbers and everyone knows exactly where they should be and when.

You really will need suitable places for the performances and you will need to think about variety for these. You should also aim to shoot the whole thing well in advance of deadlines, as you may end up having to shoot some of it again!

Above all else, make sure your performers have rehearsed and know the words and that they are willing to throw themselves into it. If they don't look enthusiastic and don't look as if they mean it, the video won't work!

Step 5: set up a blog

This should be the place for all your evidence, showing the journey of your project. You can use it to link to ideas and inspiration, to examples of your research into music video, the genre and your particular artist, to post recce shots and ideas for hair and costume, for your storyboards, your animatic, screengrabs of work in progress and for feedback from others.

Step 6: know your equipment

Make sure you have practised with the equipment and that you know how to set it up and how to get the best from it. Cameras, lights and the edit program are all going to be important to how your video looks, but an easy one to forget is the music- have the track, (preferably with some 'beeps' at the start so it will be easy to synch video material with the master track at the edit stage) and have it on something where it is audible. It is no use just having your singer with headphones on so the camera can't hear the music- it needs to be played out loud!

Step 7: the Shoot

Shoot the performance at least ten times with different set-ups. You may think this is excessive, but if you are going to have something to cut together with coverage of every second of the track, you need lots of material. Make sure you have plenty of cutaways as well, for interesting shots that will retain the viewer's interest. Experiment with extra angles and lighting changes and don’t forget: lots of close-ups, which is the dominant mode of music video !


Step 8: capturing

Label everything you capture and organise it so its easy to find;don’t capture stuff you don’t need, but do capture full takes of the song, as if you stack them on top of each other in the timelines, you can strip away what you don't need easily thereafter. By the way, multi-track timelines like Premiere and Final Cut are ideal for editing music video- iMovie and MovieMaker are much harder to use for lipsynch material.

Step 9: the edit

Synch up performances first and get the whole picture rather than tiny detail
Cut and cut again, aiming for a dynamic piece of work. Do any effects work last.
Upload a rough cut to your blog and get feedback, then act upon this to finesse your final version.

Posted by A level Media at 06:22 


  

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